‘Not much to go on, is it?’ Bryant threw his pencil stub across the room. ‘We could come up with a hundred different theories for their crossed paths. Pass me that book behind you with the purple binding next to Maltese Cross: Mediterranean Eye Injuries Volume Two.’
May searched the shelf. ‘What’s Volume One called?’
‘Venetian Blind.’
‘I swear you have these specially printed. Is this it?’ He blew the sawdust from a copy of Mileposts of Old London. ‘What are you expecting to find?’
‘Cockneys.’ Bryant cracked the spine and ran his finger down the list of contents. ‘Here we are. We know the killer’s last site has to be St Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside. The great bell of Bow.’
‘Ah, got you. Anyone born within its sound is a cockney.’
‘Correct. Except it’s gone.’
‘What has?’
‘The great bell of Bow was the tenor bell of the church’s twelve bells. Hang on, let me find the page.’
‘Why would it be in a book on mileposts?’ May asked.
‘You haven’t done much research, have you?’ He flattened out a double page and read. ‘“The bell … cast in 1762 … weighed fifty-eight hundredweight” – yadda yadda yadda – “six tons of reinforced ironwork braces” – boring … Ah, it was destroyed in an air raid in 1941:
‘Of such importance is the church that on the road from London to the coast there are mileposts measuring outwards from its doors. These are cut with cast-iron rebuses, pictographic puzzles. The Bow mileposts show four bells and an archer’s bow. The bells ring out across the world and are regarded as the epitome of London. On top of the Bow steeple is a golden dragon with a St George’s cross.’
‘Which tells us plenty about the church but absolutely nothing about the killer,’ said May.
‘It’s an appropriate ending for the task he’s set himself, don’t you think? An atrocity in the bedrock of England?’
‘I don’t know, Arthur. I don’t know how he thinks. I don’t know who he is.’
‘But I do, sort of.’ Bryant closed the book. May looked up. ‘If Bow is to be his last attack, he’ll make it especially tricky for us.’
‘We need more staff on the ground, Arthur. The Met isn’t going to help us out.’
‘I realize that. But I need to talk to you about something else.’ Bryant rose and closed the office door. ‘The arson attack. Elise Albu and I went back to her husband’s bookshop. I was looking for something that would link it with the later deaths.’
‘Why?’
‘I imagined a scenario in which one of Albu’s customers gave him a manuscript to read, presenting it as a work of fiction. Albu over-enthusiastically printed a few copies. When the killer decided to turn his fantasy into deed he needed the manuscript back to protect himself from discovery. Perhaps he looked in on Cristian one day and asked for it casually, only to have the bookseller stall him, and that’s when he realized he had opened himself up to blackmail. Worse, he discovered there was a printed edition!’
Bryant looked through the stack of books he had taken from the burned-out shop. ‘Cristian was a connoisseur. I think he knew he wasn’t just reading a novel but seeing a blueprint. In their pub meeting, he underlined “Kind Hearts are more than coronets” in his poetry volume, pointing out the marked similarity to a cheated murderer leaving behind his memoirs. The killer couldn’t find all the copies so he torched everything.
‘I found a number of intact books that Cristian had printed privately, but not the one we need. What I did find, however, was the one book in the shop that couldn’t be burned.’ He opened his desk drawer and drew it out. ‘The rare asbestos-covered edition of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, printed in 1953 and signed by the author, selling for twenty-eight thousand pounds, earmarked for his mystery buyer. There were some faint pencil marks on the title page so I had Dan take a look at it.’
He held it up so that John could read Peter English’s name.
46
Crown Estate
Sidney found her way to the map restoration department at the back of the British Library’s first floor and was met by a bearded man-mountain in a checked flannel shirt, red braces and dungarees who looked as though he’d just been replacing a truck carburettor in Arkansas. Raymond Kirkpatrick, academic, antiquarian and heavy metal enthusiast, pulled his headphones from his ears and greeted her with a bone-crushing double-clasp handshake.
‘Mr Bryant says you’re the best,’ said Sidney.
‘I’m the best available on the PCU budget. And I come in on Sundays, just for the sheer bloody joy of working. I know all about you, Miss Hargreaves. Welcome, come on through.’ He led the way through to the map room. ‘I need a break. I’ve been hunched over a Stanford all week, recolouring a balloon-view of London. Janice warned me you’d be over. What have you got for me?’
Sidney opened her satchel and removed a clear plastic folder. ‘I know you restore stuff. Can you get anything from this?’
Kirkpatrick carefully removed the blackened page from the folder and placed it under an immense rectangular magnifying glass. ‘Blimey, there’s not much of it left, is there?’
‘It got burned.’
He gave his beard a good scratch. ‘May I ask where it came from?’
‘Mr Bryant brought it back from a bookshop that suffered an arson attack. It’s all there is left.’
‘Why didn’t he bring it to me himself?’
‘He doesn’t know I have it. It was stuck to the end of his scarf. I didn’t want to waste his time.’
‘So you thought you’d waste mine. What makes you think it contains anything?’
‘I could read one word.’ She pointed to the least burned corner.
‘“Murderer”. That’ll do it. Well, I usually test paper for acidity, pH balance, thickness, age and weave but in this case it’s best to start with these.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘The peepers. We might be able to intuit something first.’
She watched as he bent over the sheet, working with a scraper and an eye-dropper containing a blue liquid. ‘How’s John doing? I heard he was out of hospital and back at work.’
‘I’ve only just met him.’
‘So how are you finding the PCU?’
‘Nobody knows what they’re doing. They muck around a lot.’
‘There used to be lots of units like the PCU and they all had their own specific methodology. I can probably only recover part of this.’
‘How?’
‘Infrared.’
Sidney watched as the page was sprayed with a fine solution and flattened. Kirkpatrick subjected it to LEDs from a lamp shining at a forty-five-degree angle, which turned the blackened paper a sickly purple. He put his headphones back on while he worked, listening to a band called Satanic Disgust. The lead singer sounded as if he was being stabbed to death and his screams bled from the archivist’s earpieces, making Sidney wonder what it must be doing to his brain.
Finally Kirkpatrick pulled off his phones and withdrew the burned sheet. ‘There’s some legible type in the centre.’ He copied it out on to a separate sheet. ‘There you go. At the top we’ve got what looks like a cap M, then lower-case a – k – i – n—’
‘Making a Murderer,’ said Sidney absently.
Kirkpatrick stepped back to show her the page.
‘I think it’s part of the manuscript Mr Bryant was looking for, but there’s no author name. Have you ever heard of someone called Peter English?’
‘Yeah. I met him at a drinks reception here last year. They hire out the atrium for sponsored events. He gave a speech.’
‘What was he like?’
Kirkpatrick thought for a moment. ‘I didn’t spend much time with him, of course, but he struck me as a suppurating bunghole with all the allure of a hair on a toilet seat. His company never got around to paying their bill. Is he involved in this?’
‘Everyone seems to think so. He may not have done it.’
‘I hope you
nail him, all the same. Preferably to something solid.’ Kirkpatrick harrumphed. ‘People like him have always done something.’
Meanwhile at the PCU, the detectives were getting ready for a party.
‘I’m having doubts about Peter English,’ said Bryant. ‘It feels like we’re clutching at straws.’
‘The rich think they will never be caught,’ May replied. ‘We need to go to the launch event marked on English’s office schedule. It starts at two.’
Bryant looked out of the window. Storm clouds were brewing above the Cally Road Pie Shop. ‘I could have one glass of champagne, purely for medicinal purposes. There might be things on sticks.’
‘Do you have a tie?’ asked May
‘No, I have a jumper,’ Bryant suggested. ‘I also have a comb and some aftershave.’ He held up a lime-coloured glass bottle of Hai Karate.
‘A budget cologne that was popular fifty years ago.’ May took the bottle away from him and examined the label: ‘Price five shillings and sixpence. How long have you had this?’ he said. ‘Let’s go and surprise English.’
Three complementary London squares, Belgrave, Eaton and Chester, had housed everyone from Margaret Thatcher to Mick Jagger (it being the perennial fantasy of rebel rock stars to live like aged viscounts). Their houses now fetched thirty million pounds apiece. Today two hundred guests had gathered in Chester Square beneath an unseasonal yellow and white striped marquee that covered its unprepossessing flagstone cross. As English was head of the residents’ committee there had been no complaints.
The occasion, the detectives gathered, was the launch of yet another Better British Business initiative, although the marquee roof was mercifully unadorned with its awkward Union Jack-styled logo, which was instead displayed on an easel by the entrance. Red, white and blue balloons clustered like polyps around the dark cave of the marquee. A pair of greeters, blank-eyed blondes freezing in evening dress, waited to take their names.
‘You won’t find us down there,’ said Bryant, waving at the greeter’s electronic pad. ‘We’re part of the security detail.’ He showed his ID.
‘I’ll have to check,’ said the blonde, a little thrown.
‘Can we get some proper badges made, something with a shield and a bit of gold instead of a laminated card?’ Bryant asked his partner. ‘It looks like we’re trying to sell photocopying equipment. This photo doesn’t do me justice.’
‘We haven’t got all day,’ said May sternly as the girl let in a group of Chinese businessmen.
‘Let me find someone,’ she told him, half-heartedly looking around. While she did so Bryant pushed his partner forward and they suddenly found themselves inside.
A violin trio was playing a rendition of British maritime themes. As these had been composed mainly for brass instruments, they sounded like the Last Night of the Proms heard down the wrong end of an ear trumpet.
Bryant had a horror of corporate events. Worse, it looked as if speeches were about to begin. As they made their way to the raised platform he picked up a leaflet, read a few lines, scrunched it up and threw it over his shoulder, not noticing that it bounced off a woman’s head.
‘What’s it about?’ May asked.
‘Oh, the usual rubbish about building bridges and making trade deals.’
‘Are we actually going to lead him out of here past all his associates? We’ll get hell for it.’
‘We can threaten him with arrest if he refuses,’ Bryant suggested, taking a lurid square of tuna ceviche from a passing tray. ‘There he is.’
Peter English had the tanned complexion of someone who spent a lot of time on a yacht. It made him look wealthy and unsympathetic, as if at any moment the smile might be replaced by a call for guards. He was standing at the centre of a group that might have been meeting to plan a coup, and was eyeing the nearby lectern waiting for his cue.
‘Arthur, are you sure?’ May asked again, adjusting his collar. ‘We’re really going to do this?’
‘Come on, it’ll be fun. We haven’t dragged anyone important off the street for ages.’
‘Oh God. Let’s get this over and done with.’
They walked to the platform just as the businessman was about to start speaking. It took a moment for English to register who they were. Without missing a beat he smoothly moved them to one side, turned to his audience and told them that his speech would start in a minute.
‘What are you two clowns doing here?’ His eyes were hard black marbles. ‘How did you even get in?’
‘It’s not a social visit,’ said Bryant, ‘which is a shame as the vol-au-vents look enticing. We need to interview you in connection with the murders of, well, quite a few people actually.’
To their surprise, English started laughing. ‘Most amusing. Did Faraday put you up to this?’
‘Just gather anything you need to bring with you and we’ll quietly take our leave,’ Bryant suggested.
English looked from one to the other, incredulous. ‘You can’t be serious.’
The detectives did not move or speak.
‘It’s not going to happen, is it? I’m here with my wife, who is fragrant and high-born and has never had to come into contact with people like you.’
‘I must remind you that it is illegal to resist or wilfully obstruct an officer of the law in the execution of their duty,’ said May, ‘and in this event you may be taken into custody under restraint.’
‘Did you just come here to insult me?’
‘No,’ said Bryant, ‘but the opportunity arose and we thought it was too good to miss.’
English’s smile seemed to reveal rows and rows of sharp teeth. He appeared to grow before their eyes. ‘Do you have the faintest idea how much trouble you’re in? This is Crown Estate land. You have no jurisdiction here, no permission to set foot inside or even to speak to me. What I have, on the other hand, is a group of Westminster’s most powerful MPs, including the Minister for International Trade, a battery of the country’s finest lawyers and the God-given legal right to have you tossed out on your grubby little ears. Now, I’m about to take the stage and deliver a keynote address on the future of British exports to some of the most powerful investors in the country. You could humiliate yourselves by attempting to disrupt the event, or you can leave quietly and we’ll pretend this embarrassing faux pas never happened and your careers didn’t come to an abrupt, ugly end today.’
Bryant cleared his throat, never an attractive sound. ‘In that case, I am arresting you. You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you do not mention something which you later rely upon in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’ He turned to May. ‘How was that? I thought I might have forgotten the words.’
May felt a dark presence at his side and turned. Two security men had slid into place beside them. Without taking his eye from English, May called in a support request. The amplified crackle of his shoulder-mic alerted the nearest guests that something was wrong.
It was an incredibly uncomfortable tableau, the detectives apprehensive and uncertain, the suspect seething. May switched to his mobile and waited while he was transferred between departments. By the sound of it, he didn’t get much of a chance to speak.
‘We have a Stand Down,’ he finally told his partner, incredulous.
‘Perhaps you now realize that there are places where you cannot go,’ said English with soft menace. ‘These enormous, volatile gentlemen will happily escort you off the premises. I want it to be known that I treated the pair of you with deference and respect – God knows why.’
47
Mythical Friends
The detectives stood in the doorway of Raymond Land’s office looking so sheepish that they might have had tags in their ears.
‘Perhaps I could prevail upon you to step inside instead of loitering in the corridor like a pair of superannuated Teddy Boys,’ Land suggested. ‘Say one word about me not having a door and I’ll have you boiled.’
They stood awkwardly befo
re him, knowing what lay ahead.
‘Come further in,’ said Land. ‘I don’t want Floris overhearing this.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Were either of you aware that Peter English is about to be made a knight of the realm? Perhaps if you had, you wouldn’t have accused him of murder in front of the French ambassador. OK, nobody cares about the French but two members of the Awards Intelligence Service, who helped to get him there, were watching as you two attempted to entice him to the local cop shop with all the effectiveness of a pair of balloon animals.’
‘Nobody can be allowed to walk away from a murder inquiry,’ said May. ‘What does he have to do to get arrested – bash open someone’s head in public? Oh I forgot, he’s already done that.’
‘Actually he hasn’t,’ said Bryant. ‘He gets others to do the hands-on stuff for him, but we can’t prove it. The Met could put a hundred officers out there tomorrow and all they’ll do is make him change his plans.’
‘I’m meant to be reprimanding you,’ Land reminded them.
‘Well, go on then,’ said Bryant.
The unit chief ran his fingers across the spot where most of his hair used to be. ‘You cannot wander in off the street and finger a suspect in the middle of a government-sponsored event.’
Bryant was indignant. ‘We kick council-flat doors off their hinges. Why should he get special treatment? He’s linked to a series of violent deaths. That should be enough to pull him in. The only people in the UK who can’t be arrested are the Queen and children under ten – and him, apparently.’
‘What do you even know about English?’ Land demanded. ‘You have nothing solid on him.’
‘We have what we would normally need to bring a Person of Interest in for questioning,’ said May.
‘It’s not enough. There’s no forensic evidence linking English to any of the crime scenes. Once you’ve got that, I’ll get the approval for his arrest.’
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