Bryant & May - Oranges and Lemons

by Christopher Fowler - Bryant

  Dan froze the image. ‘The toxin on the knife blade is interesting. There’s a drug similar to scopolamine, the active ingredient in seasickness tablets, called burundanga. It’s a ground-up extract from the seeds of the borrachero shrub and accounts for half of all ER admissions in Colombia. It’s also known as the Devil’s breath. It’s commonly blown into the face, and is available here as a street drug. Lately it’s been used by Chinese nationals on women in West End night-clubs.’

  ‘Two cheers for human ingenuity,’ said Bryant. ‘Let’s move on before I get too depressed.’

  ‘The next one won’t make you feel any better,’ Banbury warned, pulling forward another screen. ‘The death of Judge Tremain presents us with a familiar problem. Evergreens. Why couldn’t he have worked in an office behind a tree that sheds its leaves? The foliage obscures the window because the camera is only concerned with the doorway.

  ‘Which brings me to the fourth, and here it gets messy. There were people and cameras everywhere in Shoreditch, but we’ve nothing from St Leonard’s churchyard itself because it’s on ecclesiastical land and they see no reason to spend money on cameras when the property is locked at night. I thought there must be a direct view of the portico from the other side of the road. There’s a 360-degree camera installed on the first floor of that terrace, but guess what, it’s been stolen. The property-owner looked shocked, couldn’t remember the last time he checked it, et cetera. The failure would have been flagged up at the surveillance centre but no one seems to have noticed, which means we have no footage of the suspect’s egress from the churchyard. We’ve plenty of video from the drone but it’s of the runner who was hired to decoy us.’

  ‘This is not working,’ said Bryant, waving his hand at the screens. ‘All this over-reliance on technological data. It’s not your fault, Dan, it’s what we all do now, sit around being fed electronic half-truths, using that’ – here he stabbed a finger at Dan’s monitor – ‘when we should be using this.’ He knuckled the side of his head. ‘Whatever happened to hunches, feelings, taking a few chances?’

  ‘Yeah, well, that’s how Timothy Evans ended up being hanged by mistake,’ said Meera.

  ‘Who’s been hanged?’ asked Colin, who had momentarily zoned out.

  ‘Evans was executed for murder in 1949 but his landlord was the serial killer Reginald Christie, who fed the police false information to cover up his own guilt,’ Bryant explained.

  ‘Why did the cops listen to him?’

  ‘Because they liked him. They wanted to believe him.’

  ‘Which was over seventy years ago and I know that seems like yesterday to you, Mr Bryant, but can we get back to the present?’ Banbury asked. ‘I can’t fix the drone in time to use it for St Dunstan’s.’

  ‘Can’t we borrow one?’

  ‘I can try, but there’s not a lot of goodwill out there at the moment,’ said Dan. ‘Do you know the area?’

  ‘The streets are quiet. Anyone turning up at the church will be there for a reason. It isn’t a place you just happen to be passing. It’s flat and exposed. He won’t be able to slip away into a crowd this time.’

  Bryant had stopped listening. Tired and frustrated, he left the operations room and returned to his desk, settling himself with the items he had taken from Elise Albu: the sales ledger, four scorched self-published volumes and some correspondence that had survived the flames.

  But he couldn’t simply let go of the ‘Oranges & Lemons’ rhyme. There was something about its harshness that drew him back. He looked along his bookshelves and plucked down a title – The Compendium of British Nursery Rhymes, published the previous year by Eleanor Chester.

  The chanted children’s game of Oranges & Lemons began as a square dance with the same tune, which imitates the sound of church bells. It was first noted around the year of the Great Plague, 1665, and was sung on festival days. It is fanciful to think that the end of the song, ‘Here comes a chopper to chop off your head’, is the logical conclusion of the prisoner’s journey to Tyburn Tree as debt was not a capital offence, although offenders could be hanged for ‘fraudulent bankruptcy’. Charles Dickens’s father was sent to the Marshalsea Prison in 1824 for a debt owed to a baker.

  The rhyme is based on an older, considerably longer version called ‘London Bells’. In it, ‘“Bullseyes and targets,” say the bells of St Margaret’s’ refers to nearby archery ranges and ‘“Brickbats and tiles,” say the bells of St Giles’ is a reference to neighbouring builders’ yards. ‘“Pokers and tongs,” say the bells of St John’s’ is more sinister. This church is situated on the second floor of the White Tower inside the Tower of London, where instruments of torture were stored.

  Other verses refer to local tradespeople and businesses within the vicinity of each church. St Dunstan’s has existed for well over a thousand years. It has been suggested that the reference ‘“When will that be?” say the bells of Stepney’ could refer to sailors’ wives wondering when they would see their husbands again.

  Eleanor Chester had an address in Bloomsbury, barely ten minutes’ walk away. That was good enough for Bryant. He put in a call, then stuffed his battered hat on to his tonsured head and grabbed an umbrella.

  ‘I’m coming with you.’ Sidney was standing in the doorway.

  ‘You don’t even know where I’m going,’ said Bryant in some irritation.

  Sidney laughed. ‘Do you know you talk to yourself? I literally just heard you say where you were going.’

  ‘Are you sure you want to come with me?’ Bryant eyed her red rain-hat, matching jacket and sparkly black leggings with suspicion. ‘I thought perhaps you had a job interview at Cirque du Soleil.’

  ‘Has anyone ever told you you’re funny?’

  ‘No, and—’

  ‘—they never will,’ they both said.

  ‘Come on then.’ He held out an arm to her. ‘I could do with a walk.’

  ‘Do you want me to book an Uber?’

  ‘I do not wish to stare at a small drawing of a car turning back and forth while I shout, “You’re going the wrong way” at it, thank you.’

  ‘But I thought as you’re old you would prefer—’

  He patted her arm. ‘Try not to speak.’

  They argued all the way there.

  40

  The Idea of London

  Raymond Land looked up as Sidney led a scrofulous pile of clothes past his door. ‘He’s not going out, is he?’ he asked Tim Floris, who was seated beside him. ‘Where’s she taking him?’

  ‘Who?’ asked Floris, looking around.

  ‘Him. That one-man slum. Bryant. I explicitly told him not to leave the building. You have to treat the staff here as if they’re children. Sometimes they need to be smacked.’

  He could feel Floris’s disapproval. It never showed in his features, but it was there. Land didn’t know how to deal with millennials. Floris’s reaction to incoming news (usually bad) was odd in that he hardly reacted at all. He absorbed, processed and remained silent, never becoming involved or seeking to persuade. When Land made an effort to teach him a little about the workings of the unit, he’d said offhandedly, ‘It’s OK, I’m not going to be doing this for ever,’ which left Land feeling crushed. Sidney was worse, an extrapolation of what had begun in Floris’s generation.

  He had expected Floris to ask him why he was not stopping Bryant from leaving, but no such question was forthcoming. He told himself that the Home Office official was not on his side, or indeed the side of anyone at the PCU because he was duty-bound to report everything he saw and heard. Probably over dinner in Chelsea.

  ‘Shall we try again with a new email?’ Floris patiently suggested, moving his chair closer. Land was embarrassed at having his technological limitations exposed, but desperately needed help. Banbury had given up on him after realizing that his explanation of how attachments worked was being met with a look that suggested Land was engaged in a staring contest. The unit chief could no more grasp the concept of Cloud storage than h
e could imagine what the fourth dimension looked like.

  As he laboriously opened a new window on his screen he asked, ‘What’s it like working for the Home Office?’ This was perilously close to asking a personal question, so he expected a circumspect answer.

  ‘Disappointing,’ said Floris with a rare hint of forthrightness. ‘They deal in statistics. They don’t know any real people.’

  ‘I always suspected that,’ said Land. ‘I applied for a position there once but Faraday turned me down.’

  ‘Mr Faraday is …’ Floris considered his choice of words. ‘Challenging.’

  ‘He’s distancing himself from me, I can feel it. He stopped returning my emails but he’s happy to contact you.’

  ‘It’s different for me. I’m staff. You’re a rival.’

  Land showed Floris what was on his screen. Out of the blue, Faraday had suddenly sent a furious demand to see him immediately.

  ‘He says you’re not answering your phone,’ said Floris.

  ‘There’s still something wrong with the landlines. Although I have been reluctant to call him, I admit. One hates to be the bearer of endlessly bad news. He wants me to act without his sanction so that he has someone to blame when this is over. Could you possibly have a word with him?’

  Floris looked uncomfortable at the turn in the conversation, but Land was always the last one to pick up on such things.

  ‘You have the ear of the Home Secretary, you’ve been here all week making reports, couldn’t you just – make up a little something extra?’

  ‘I can’t falsify information, Mr Land, if that’s what you’re implying.’

  Land inwardly winced. ‘Of course not, and I would be the last person to ever suggest such a thing.’ He patted Floris on the arm. ‘Let’s forget we had this conversation.’

  Arthur Bryant and Sidney Hargreaves sat in a small harshly lit room, the cheap furniture and bare walls suggestive of trimmed government funding. A pity, because Senate House was a grand edifice, as solid as a pyramid, the academic heart of the University of London. Its main hall had the solemnity and sweep of a Greek temple, as befitted the home of higher learning, but Eleanor Chester’s room was hidden behind an upper deck of wood-panelled staircases, bridges and corridors, most of them now blocked off by incongruous steel swipe-card barriers.

  ‘It was designed by the architect who created the art deco tube stations,’ said Bryant, looking about.

  ‘Not this room though.’ Sidney looked as if she might pass out from boredom.

  ‘You’re being paid to observe.’

  ‘I’m an intern, I’m not being paid anything.’

  Eleanor Chester was younger than he had been expecting, but of course everyone was these days. Forget the constables looking fresh-faced, Bryant thought, so are the judges. ‘I’m a musicologist,’ she explained, setting down a tray of tea and biscuits. ‘I see you brought the book with you.’

  ‘I thought I might get a signature,’ said Bryant, using up one of his big smiles.

  ‘I wrote it because parents sing these songs to their children without knowing anything about them. Even the simplest songs tell a story. It’s just that the meanings have been lost.’

  ‘What about “Oranges & Lemons”?’ Bryant suggested. ‘I need anything that will spark my thinking in a new direction.’

  ‘My first thought was George Orwell.’

  ‘Oh, why?’

  ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four,’ said Sidney.

  ‘That’s right. The song is repeated throughout the book and feels more threatening as it becomes harder for Winston Smith to escape. It’s used to show that his chances of survival are becoming impossible. After I spoke to you on the phone I had a quick rummage and found this.’ Eleanor took a long roll of paper from her table. ‘I’ve been following the investigation in the papers. They’re saying some rather rude things about you.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t mind so long as the reports are wildly inaccurate.’

  ‘Hold the corners, will you?’ Together Sidney and Bryant rolled the paper out across the table, pinning the edges down with tea mugs and a sugar bowl.

  ‘This is a pictorial nineteenth-century version of the original song “London Bells”. There are fifteen bells referred to in the rhyme,’ Eleanor explained. ‘People struggle to make sense of the references. For example, there’s an academic theory that this one, ‘“Two sticks and an apple,” say the bells of Whitechapel’, refers to a famous crippled beggar who sold fruit outside the church. And a line about the Aldgate parish was supposedly cut because it was colloquially known as “the Prostitutes’ Church”. One of Jack the Ripper’s victims, Catherine Eddowes, was seen outside it on the night she died.’

  ‘So the nursery rhyme’s tangled up with real-life murders,’ said Sidney before Bryant silenced her with a look.

  ‘Does it really matter what’s true or false?’ asked Eleanor. ‘Over time all facts become legend. Our memories lie as we seek to humanize the past and rearrange it into something meaningful.’

  ‘Very true,’ said Bryant. ‘I remember my mother as a joyful woman, but as I grew up I discovered she was deeply unhappy. I suppose false memories are more comforting.’

  ‘Do the deaths correspond to the words of the rhyme?’ Eleanor asked.

  ‘At first they did explicitly, with the leaving of fruit and farthings at the crime scenes.’ Bryant donned his trifocals to study the scroll. ‘He’s working from the song’s shorter version so we’ve only the bells of Stepney and Bow left. All I know about the great bell of Bow is that Dick Whittington was called back by it.’

  ‘Another piece of false witness.’ Eleanor pointed to a drawing of Whittington resplendent in scarlet and green, peering over London with his boot on a milestone. ‘The real Richard Whittington was on his way to Gloucester but turned back at Highgate Hill, so he’d obviously chosen the scenic route and got lost. His sense of direction might have been shot but there was nothing wrong with his hearing: he was over five miles away from St Mary-le-Bow when he heard its call. The great bell of Bow went on to represent London. The BBC always played the peal of Bow bells at the beginning of their broadcasts to occupied Europe during the war. Bow became a symbol of the city.’

  ‘Which makes me a true cockney,’ added Bryant. ‘Born within the sound of Bow bells.’

  ‘Yeah, and me,’ said Sidney without looking up.

  ‘But I think the symbolism of the bells goes deeper than that,’ said Eleanor. ‘You have to imagine what London was like when steeples still dominated the city skyline. No trucks or planes, no police sirens, no pneumatic drills. Religion was stitched through the city like threads in a tapestry. Each peal of bells delineated its neighbourhood. Away from London, chimes carried across counties. If you heard your church bell tolling you knew you were home. And you could sing along because the peals were so familiar and so full of major chords that words have always been affixed to them. The lyrics are largely single-syllable because the chimes are short and we hear one note at a time, hence “When – will – you – pay – me”: simple and memorable.’

  ‘So if Bow and the bells of London represent England, removing leading figures in our political, cultural and entrepreneurial life could be symbolic of its downfall.’

  Eleanor laughed. ‘That’s a rather romantic idea. The Georgians and Victorians built fake follies to recreate ruined grandeur. The sciences roared towards the future while the arts took a great nostalgic step back. Greek and Roman legends were updated and relocated in mythic English landscapes. When the Victorians attained a great empire they tidied up their backstory. Their confidence became arrogance.’

  ‘My point entirely,’ said Bryant. ‘To undermine a city you first destroy the self-assurance of its people. Churchill’s propaganda machine convinced Londoners that they could never be beaten. It was a brilliant trick, but a trick all the same.’

  ‘What you’ve described is the opposite, a nemesis seeking to destroy morale,’ said Eleanor. ‘But to what end? Public c
onfidence is shaky but it isn’t going to collapse because a few familiar faces disappear. The city has changed. In Nineteen Eighty-Four Winston Smith tries to recall the words to “Oranges & Lemons” because if he fails to do so the memory will die, taking history with it. I hate to inform you, Mr Bryant, but that kind of history has gone.’

  Told you, Sidney mouthed.

  Eleanor rolled up the rhyme scroll. ‘Only academics remember the bells or their meanings, or think they’re of any importance at all. Now the city barely even takes a tangible form. It’s a ghost version of itself that loosely inhabits the land plots of the past. Bomb it flat and it will still be there, an idea as much as a place.’

  ‘Maybe he wants to become part of the legend,’ said Sidney, and for once Bryant could not disagree with her.

  41

  Making a Murderer

  I remember my mother smiling but she was never happy. Why would she have been? Her grandmother opened the door for her and kicked her through it, although she slipped her some money to help her survive. I later discovered that something similar had happened to her when she was young.

  We moved from one rented room to another, my mother and me, only stopping until the money ran out. Catford, Stonebridge Estate, New Cross, Dog Kennel Hill Estate, Tottenham – everywhere we lived had a bad reputation. ‘“From Putney, Hackney Downs and Bow, with courage high and hearts aglow”,’ my mother said, because her name was Mattie, short for Matilda, and when she was little she read ‘Matilda Who Told Lies, and Was Burned to Death’. It was the only poem she could recite, written for children. Pretty downbeat, but I guess it left an impression.

  The flats got smaller, the houses shabbier, the neighbourhoods more dangerous. We always moved on before the back-rent got too high, and left a trail of debts and false promises. I was never christened. I didn’t have an NHS number. It was as if I didn’t exist. At first my mother was too ashamed to admit I was hers, although everyone knew. It’s because she was raised religiously, with the burden of original sin. I was the memory of what had happened to her in a church.