Bryant & May - Oranges and Lemons

by Christopher Fowler - Bryant

  ‘I can’t open this. Could you hold the light steady?’ Elise pulled at the handle of a metal cabinet. Bryant went behind the counter, took a fair-sized hammer from his satchel and gave the drawer a thumping whack. It slid open with a metallic screech.

  ‘What else have you got in there?’ asked Elise.

  ‘Madam, you don’t want to know.’

  Elise removed the accounts books. ‘They’re scorched but legible, just about.’ She separated the top volume from the others. ‘This is the most recent. What are we looking for?’

  ‘Something valuable, listed and now gone. I’ll take it with me if I may. What are these?’ He pointed his beam at a sagging black shelf filled with swollen blank-spined paperbacks.

  ‘Cristian had his own imprint. He privately published a few works,’ she explained. ‘He hardly ever sold a single copy but it made him feel that he was playing his part by helping aspiring authors.’

  ‘Where were they printed?’

  ‘At Tiptree in Essex, by a small private firm.’

  ‘Did he clear the self-published editions for copyright or libel?’

  ‘I don’t imagine so. They weren’t intended for widespread distribution.’

  ‘Tell me about the books.’

  ‘A few were based on unsolicited manuscripts he personally liked, printed in small runs for private consumption. I think he hoped they might get noticed and picked up by a major publisher. And there was some vanity publishing – Cristian printed editions for would-be authors. It’s a common practice that hurts no one. You know the sort of thing: My Interesting Life as a Bus Driver, twenty copies intended for the author’s family.’

  ‘I’m familiar with the practice,’ said Bryant. ‘Our fishmonger self-published a book about Rudolf Nureyev.’

  Puzzled, she watched as he bundled armfuls of the books and dumped them on the remains of the counter, blackening himself in the process. ‘What are you looking for?’

  ‘Oh, it’s just the way my mind works,’ he said guiltily. ‘In a case like this, one would instinctively search for an enemy bearing a grudge, someone personally known to you both, but my first thought was to check the stock and see if there was anything unusual about it. Where did your husband store the editions he printed?’

  ‘Here,’ said Elise. ‘The print runs were tiny and he didn’t want to pay for storage, so they all went into the first-floor stock room.’

  ‘Which I’m now looking at because it fell through the floor.’ Bryant began to check through the least damaged editions. ‘I think I should take a few of these with me. And I might have to borrow that delightful copy of Wood-Burning Stoves of the Soviet Union.’

  ‘I don’t understand. You think someone would set fire to the entire stock in order to destroy one book?’

  ‘Did Cristian ever get over-enthusiastic and publish something without telling the author?’

  ‘He was passionate about his new discoveries.’

  Bryant crouched with some difficulty and extracted an entirely unharmed volume from the lowest bookshelf. It had a strangely heavy grey cover. Leaning on his stick, he rose with it. ‘This is a very rare edition, Mrs Albu. Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, bound in fireproof asbestos in 1953 and limited to two hundred copies. A book about book burning that couldn’t be burned. It’s worth a small fortune.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘You’re not convincing me. Was your husband selling rare editions on the side? Don’t say anything now. Perhaps it’s best that you think about your answer for a while.’

  Only the cover was flameproof, but it had perfectly protected the pages. Leafing through it, he came to a loose sheet of paper that was clearly not from the same volume.

  ‘Mr Bryant, there’s something you’re not telling me either.’

  Bryant removed a plastic bag from his coat pocket and slipped the page into it. ‘I didn’t want to raise any false hopes. If you’ve never seen the film Kind Hearts and Coronets, it’s about an aggrieved gentleman who kills every member of the family who stands in his way. He tells the story by confessing all in his memoirs, but at the end he accidentally leaves the incriminating manuscript where someone will find it.’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand what this has to do with—’

  ‘Let’s hypothetically imagine that your husband was illegally selling rare books. My first instinct is to assume that one of his buyers wanted something very badly that Mr Albu could not or would not sell, so he stole it and burned down the shop to shift attention from the theft. Book collectors are notoriously obsessive, and there are those who are prepared to do absolutely anything to get their hands on a rare edition.

  ‘But now I wonder if I have that wrong. Suppose your husband went for a drink with one of the writers who had given him a manuscript and they demanded it back? Mr Albu pretended he didn’t get around to reading it, but not only did he read it, he was so impressed that he printed up his own edition. But then he realized the dangerous situation he was in. The more his client demanded the return of the manuscript, the more your husband perversely wanted to keep hold of it. He had the Tennyson in his pocket and perhaps without even thinking, he underlined the title that pointed to the film.’

  ‘But Cristian only published fiction, so how could such a thing be dangerous?’ Elise asked.

  ‘History shows us that books can be very dangerous. Perhaps it was just fiction. But suppose it explained crimes the writer was about to commit? Now it was incriminating. And what if your husband accidentally let it be known that there were printed copies? The writer would have to get them back at all costs and make sure they were destroyed.’

  ‘Cristian could never bring himself to destroy books,’ said Elise. ‘He would have kept them in the shop.’

  ‘The only sure way of removing the evidence was by setting fire to the bookshop.’

  To Bryant the incident felt like a rehearsal for the Oranges & Lemons murders. Overwhelmed by financial problems, Albu would appear to have destroyed his own store. But his nemesis had reckoned without the incompetent Sergeant Flowers.

  ‘There’s hardly anything left,’ said Elise, looking into the dripping darkness in despair. ‘There can’t be any copies left.’

  ‘Maybe your husband sold some.’ Bryant held up the scorched ledger. ‘I’m hoping this will supply the answer.’

  Back at the PCU, Raymond Land was feeling lost. Leslie Faraday had read his report and was far from happy. Phrases in Faraday’s email jumped out and poked him in the eye. ‘Unfortunately typical behaviour’, ‘offensive in the extreme’, ‘disappointed on every level’ and the kicker, ‘in reconsideration of your pension’.

  Land knew he would have to cancel all leave and warn the staff that shifts would now run round the clock. He conveniently misremembered the past, telling himself that he hadn’t wanted to come back to the unit in the first place, and that it didn’t matter to him what the Home Office thought. Mortified, he consigned the email chain to the bin, then rang Paula Lambert at Hard News.

  LAND: Yes, I know what time it is. We’re making terrific progress with the case. I just wondered what the mood is like out there.

  LAMBERT: When you say ‘out there’ do you mean our office, where everyone thinks you’re doing a terrible job, or the general public, who all hate you?

  LAND: Well, I was thinking of the general public really.

  LAMBERT: They all hate you.

  LAND: But apart from that—

  LAMBERT: They’re just hearing about another Oranges & Lemons death on the busy streets of their city right now, Raymond, how do you think they feel? If law-abiding citizens can’t step out of their front doors—

  LAND: Accidents, Paula, they’ve all been accidents.

  LAMBERT: So the fact that the latest victim happened to be struck on the head by a falling clock on the very steps of the next church in your nursery rhyme is just a coincidence, is it?

  LAND: It’s not my nursery rhyme, it’s hundreds of years—

 
LAMBERT: You’re not getting behind this, are you? It’s a dream case for us, the kind our readers live for. I’m amazed Netflix haven’t sent a documentary team over yet. We’re placing bets as to how long this can go on before one of you accidentally trips over the killer in the dark.

  LAND: You’re underestimating the amount of work involved—

  LAMBERT: Just around the corner from where your clowns were this afternoon two seventeen-year-old kids were stabbed to death, and the Met arrested eight people less than an hour later. Eight people. On a day when they also managed to foil one of the country’s biggest terror plots.

  LAND: I say, that’s a bit unfair—

  LAMBERT: I’m just telling you what worries our subscribers, that’s all. When they hear about kids being shot they think it’s drug gangs and shrug. But when the targets are just like them they panic because it’s relatable. We’re going with the headline ‘Oranges & Lemons Murders: Attacker Pips Police’.

  LAND: You’re running a punning headline and you’re claiming the moral high ground?

  LAMBERT: If you haven’t had time to catch up with our coverage you can read all about it on our site. We’re getting our information straight from source.

  LAND: Wait, what do you mean? Has the killer been in contact with you?

  LAMBERT: I’ve told you before, we’re claiming press confidentiality on that.

  LAND: If you’ve heard from him you have to turn over your evidence. You can’t obstruct the investigation.

  LAMBERT: What investigation? We don’t see any progress being made at all. When you start getting somewhere, we’ll consider sharing our information with you. Until then, I’ve got a team coming up with fruit-based jokes for future editions.

  LAND: You’re a very shallow human being, Paula.

  LAMBERT: Darling, I’m a journalist.

  LAND: You’re way lower than that. You’re a feature writer.

  LAMBERT: See you tomorrow for the next headline event.

  35

  The Boundaries of Normality

  It was past nine by the time the detectives met up with Giles Kershaw. There were no spring flowers crowding the tombstones outside the St Pancras morgue. Winter had crept back under cover of darkness. They approached the building beneath pattering umbrellas, Bryant stumbling over a gravestone in the gloom.

  ‘We should leave this country and set up somewhere warm,’ said May. ‘It would do my rheumatism a world of good.’

  ‘Except that most really sunny places are boring,’ Bryant replied, enveloping them in pipe smoke. ‘I took a holiday in Greece once. I ate a lot of olives and saw a goat. It’s a trade-off; you have to choose between freezing and interesting or hot and dull. Although I wouldn’t mind living in a country where it’s practically a legal requirement to fall asleep after lunch. Janice says she sent you an ID on the victim who was clocked at St Leonard’s.’

  ‘His name is Jackson Crofting,’ said John May. ‘He lives in part of a warehouse off Columbia Road so St Leonard’s Church was on the way home.’

  ‘Bit of an odd place to head for after work, but go on.’

  ‘He’s twice divorced, a real loner – someone from his office came in to identify him. The director of a very successful video games company in Old Street. There were no messages on his phone but he has dozens of devices and accounts, so he could have been contacted and persuaded to go to the church in order to meet someone.’

  ‘Any connection to the others?’

  ‘Nothing yet.’ May rang the doorbell and Kershaw admitted them.

  The lanky pathologist looked absurdly fresh and healthy, as if he’d just come off a lawn tennis court.

  ‘Hello, Giles, has Rosa gone home?’ asked May. ‘That spares her from being tormented by my comedy partner.’

  ‘Go right through,’ said Giles. ‘Let’s see if the latest victim puts a sense of urgency under you.’

  The body in the white plastic bag was shorn of identity, the broad, fleshy face washed but bruised and peppered with small maroon cuts. Mr Crofting had been lifted out of a tangled, hurtling life and placed in this timeless room, calm and still and precise, where every action was considered and calibrated. Giles had set his computer to play Debussy nocturnes, from his playlists chosen for working with the dead.

  ‘What did he do to incur this?’ Bryant wondered. ‘Do you have a cause of death?’

  ‘See for yourself.’ Kershaw carefully lifted Crofting’s head and revealed a small but deep-looking incision above the left side of his collarbone. ‘It looks like the same kind of blade that was used on Ms Rahman outside St Martin-in-the-Fields. Thin, strong, wielded by a right-hander. Obviously I haven’t had time to run toxicology tests yet. I assume we’re meant to think that the clock did the damage, but no forensic examiner would buy that.’

  ‘He doesn’t care about being believed,’ Bryant replied. ‘He wants to cause confusion.’

  As Giles searched inside the incision May turned away from the body. The sight of death disturbed him more since his own brush with mortality. ‘They must have all known each other,’ he said. ‘There would be no sense in planning something like this and then picking random victims.’

  Arthur peered at the body with cheerful prurience. ‘I suspect the answer lies in the book that Cristian Albu should never have had printed. The only trouble is, I can’t find it.’

  ‘Even for you two I have to say that this is extreme.’ Kershaw removed his tweezers from Crofting’s neck. ‘Someone arranges to meet this chap in a church, stabs him and then drops a clock on him? In what world is that normal?’

  ‘The boundaries of normality are shifting, Giles.’ May kept his eyes averted. ‘None of us ever imagined that the nature of criminality would change. Each time the world tilts a little more you have to readjust and work with it. When Russian spies start putting radioactive poison in teapots and perfume bottles, don’t you think others might learn from them and follow suit? Crazy leaders teach us crazy habits. Do you have anything else?’

  ‘Only that he was about to die anyway.’

  ‘You haven’t opened him up yet,’ said Bryant, puzzled.

  ‘I had a look at his NHS file,’ Giles explained. ‘Pancreatic cancer. He’d known about it for over a year.’

  ‘I wonder if his killer knew,’ said Bryant. ‘You’d have to really hate someone to make sure you beat the reaper.’

  ‘We have a suspect but we can’t get to him,’ May explained. ‘He’s surrounded by lawyers and comes up clean on every search. We’ve got some of his cached emails. Everything else has been declared off limits by the Commissioner.’

  ‘Then may I make a suggestion?’ Kershaw offered. ‘If the legal approach isn’t working do something less legal. It wouldn’t be the first time. Your evidence wouldn’t be admissible in court but you might get a confirmation of guilt.’

  ‘Perhaps we should burgle his offices,’ Bryant pondered aloud.

  ‘I merely posited a theory.’ Kershaw looked blankly at May. ‘Did you hear me say anything about a break-in?’

  ‘You said “less legal”.’

  ‘Before we start arguing about semantics, here’s what was in his pockets.’ Kershaw handed over a clear plastic Ziploc bag, which Bryant promptly tore open and dumped out on to a non-sterile table. ‘I give up,’ said Giles, walking away.

  Bryant thumbed through Crofting’s wallet.

  ‘I don’t know what you expect to find in there,’ said May dismissively. ‘He ran a games company. He has a virtual wallet.’

  ‘Virtual means nearly,’ said Bryant. ‘He can’t nearly have a wallet but he does have this.’ He held up a white plastic card. ‘It’s a swipey-thing.’

  ‘It’s not a swipey-thing,’ said May, feeling suddenly tired. ‘Any more than a phone app is a “buttony-thing” or a Kindle is a “plastic book”. It must be exhausting to be in such a continual state of amazement at the modern world.’

  ‘As soon as I get used to something it changes,’ Bryant complained.
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  ‘That’s because it takes decades for you to get used to anything. You’re only just coming to terms with Wi-Fi.’

  ‘I’m happier with cables. Anything solid. You used to know where you were with a piece of string.’ Bryant flicked the card across to his partner. ‘Look at the logo.’

  The symbol above the name was a drawing of a green pea with a shoot rising from it. ‘Pea?’

  ‘P.E.A. Peter English Associates. It seems Mr Crofting had his own pass for English’s building. There’s a barcodey-thing on the back.’

  ‘You’re just doing it to annoy me now. Why would he have this?’

  ‘I assume English funds, part-owns or deals closely with Mr Crofting’s company. We have a legitimate reason for going in. I’m sure I had another one but I’ve forgotten what it was.’

  ‘Giles has a point,’ Bryant said as they left the St Pancras morgue. ‘Less legal might be better.’

  May felt that the seed had now been planted in his partner’s mind, but Bryant was way ahead of him, mentally filling a holdall with wire cutters, balaclavas, grappling hooks and coils of rope.

  ‘We’ll go in first thing tomorrow,’ Bryant said. ‘The weekend staff will be on.’

  ‘Or we could keep it all above board and conduct an official inquiry,’ said May.

  ‘You know that will get us nowhere. You’ve already experienced how this fellow deals with the authorities. Deflect, lie, blame, confuse, avoid.’

  ‘And what are we looking for?’

  ‘A smoking gun,’ Bryant replied. ‘If you’re all right with that image.’

  May looked sceptical. ‘I have a feeling it won’t make any difference if we find one. You said it was all about planning. If that’s the case, he’ll have already thought of everything we might come up with.’

  ‘Nevertheless, I think we should let him know we’re on to him.’

  May led the way through the tunnel that returned them to King’s Cross. ‘He’d never get his own hands dirty, but if he hired others to do it there’ll be communications between them.’