‘Do you believe Peter English is guilty?’ May asked.
‘Oh, I know he is. That’s not the problem.’
An elderly and somewhat infirm verger came out of the side entrance and undertook the adventure of crossing the cobbled courtyard. ‘Ah, there you are,’ he called. ‘I’m afraid the vicar can’t be here to greet you. He just wanted me to check that there wouldn’t be too much disruption here today.’
‘We’re rather hoping for a miracle to occur,’ Bryant replied.
‘This is a church with modest expectations.’ The verger exuded an air of natural melancholia, like rising damp. ‘If you’re having doubts perhaps our contemplative atmosphere can help. Just not today. The bells are being repaired again. It’s a never-ending saga. Would it be sacrilege if we switched to recordings, I wonder? Would the congregation notice? I hope you get your miracle, although I imagine the chances are slim in this city of Mammon.’
May’s shoulder transceiver buzzed. ‘Peter English is approaching the church,’ said Meera. ‘He’s walking down the middle of the pavement in plain sight. Should be coming into range – now.’
Dave One was a big man who would quite happily squirm his way through a tight doorway, but he was stuck. ‘Pull on my boots,’ he called back to Dave Two. ‘If that doesn’t work I’ll have to take my trousers off.’
‘I’d rather be spared the sight of your Noddy and Big Ears pants, thank you,’ said Dave Two, tugging hard. How he knew about them was one of life’s lesser mysteries.
His workmate re-emerged covered in plaster dust. ‘There’s something weird going on in there,’ he said, pointing back through the doorway. ‘We should have finished bricking it up or left it open, because that ain’t right.’
The pair were in the unit’s dank basement, where the low rumble of tube trains mixed with the gastric gurgle of the underground river. The small chamber beyond was all that was left of the old passageway connecting the basement to the below-street bar in the building next door.
‘What do you mean, something weird?’ asked Dave Two. ‘There shouldn’t be nothing in there because I relocated the junction box after all that trouble we had with that bleedin’ corpse.’fn1
‘Nothing in there, eh?’ Dave One stepped aside to let his workmate see through the gap. ‘What’s all that then?’
A row of tiny red eyes winked back at them.
Sidney Hargreaves leapt along the corridor with her open laptop balanced in her right hand. She found Janice on the phone in the operations room.
‘You have to see this.’ She turned the screen towards Longbright and ran the clip.
Janice hung up the phone. ‘Where did you get it?’
‘It dropped on to Twitter for about thirty seconds before vanishing, but I was able to pull it in time. It was sent from a fake host.’
She ran it again. The video clip was taken from a phone on the steps of St Martin-in-the-Fields. It was only four seconds long. The audio was muddy and the visual was in deep focus but the foreground was diamond-sharp. Chakira Rahman was falling to her knees. The figure walking away from her only looked up at the camera for an instant, but was easy to identify. Peter English’s dark eyes caught the camera lens for a split second, then continued onward.
‘John’s just spotted him arriving at St Mary-le-Bow,’ said Janice, ringing him back. ‘John, we have filmed evidence of Peter English a couple of seconds after the attack on Chakira Rahman,’ she explained as he answered. ‘Go ahead and make the arrest.’
The verger was confused. The detectives to whom he had been chatting had suddenly jumped to their feet and shot off like much younger men, following a smartly suited fellow who was striding with speed and purpose towards the church entrance.
As Bryant set off after him May caught up.
‘What’s English doing? There’s no one else here except him.’ May thumbed back at the verger.
‘The bells,’ said Bryant. ‘There’s a man working on them.’
The church’s blue and cream interior had been freshly painted. Instead of pews, plain chairs had been laid out in a semi-circle. The stained-glass windows on either side of the organ were blood red.
Bryant looked around and failed to find English, even though he had only just entered the church. Spying the door that led to the bell tower, he listened for the tap of shoes on stone, but his ears had yet to stop ringing after the bomb.
There was nowhere else he could have gone. Bryant knew that neither he nor May could get up there. He was about to call the others when Colin slid into the apse from the street and ran for the staircase, closely followed by Meera.
‘Bring him down in one piece,’ Bryant called after them. ‘He’s not going to hurt you.’
Colin entered the bell tower. Its interior was a maze of dusty wooden struts with ropes tethered to them like giant spiderwebs. Each arrangement of beams supported one of the great bells and its accompanying flywheel. At the centre of them stood the largest of all, a great bronze bowl deeper than a man, currently propped upside down so that it could be worked on.
On the staircase above him was English.
‘Mate,’ called Colin, holding his ID high, ‘I don’t know what you’re doing but you need to come down from there.’
‘This has nothing to do with you.’ English stared into the upturned bell, then carried on climbing around it.
Colin waited a moment, then continued up. Above his head the octagonal walls narrowed. The steps turned to a slim wooden platform running around the edge of the steeple. There were no more handrails to rely upon. He was not the ideal person to send to the top of a spire, but none of the Met’s back-up officers had appeared. He tried not to think about the drop beside him. He could sense Meera closing in behind.
There was a papery thrashing of wings as half a dozen pigeons were shaken from their roost, spraying feathers, dust and guano, batting their way up to the broken wood panels at the steeple’s peak.
Edging past an immense brown curtain of dirt-encrusted cloth, Colin caught a glimpse of English as he reached the great bell at the top and leaned over the parapet towards it. What was he trying to do?
English was no more than ten feet away from him. Colin had gone as high as he could. The tower plunged away just beyond his right boot. The bolts holding the ramp in place squeaked and grated as he moved upwards.
English stretched out over the railing towards the bell, intent on his task.
Colin barrelled into him. The great bell of Bow shifted from its upturned position, but English threw himself after it as the flywheel rotated. The momentum was impossible to stop. He went over the edge as the bell swung down. His feet caught other bells, which began pealing cacophonously from the tower.
When the dust cleared Colin saw that English was hanging from the clapper of the great bell. His tie clip – who wore those any more? – pinged from his tie and bounced down through the bell chamber.
Colin ran back down to the point where the stairs became a ramp. He was underneath the great bell now. English was swinging helplessly back and forth above him, just out of reach. He looked less elegant with his stomach hanging out of his striped shirt. The echoing ring of metal shook down dust and pieces of mortar.
‘Let go and I’ll try to break your fall,’ Colin shouted, unsure whether English could hear him over the din.
On the third swing English’s grip slipped and he had no choice but to drop. Colin spread his arms wide and snagged his catch but the weight pulled them both over, crashing them on to the wooden platform as the bolts popped from the walls, firing across the interior of the spire like bullets.
Meera was less concerned about stopping English than making sure that her sudden offer of marriage didn’t end before it had begun. Grabbing Colin and shoving him back from the edge, she dropped beside English and locked his arms behind his back just as a chunk of the platform pulled way from the wall.
They half dragged, half walked the bedraggled businessman back to safety, the clanging of
the bells subsiding above them.
‘You bloody idiots,’ he warned them, ‘you don’t know what you’re doing.’
When they reached the base of the spire Meera picked up the grimy paper packet that had fallen from its place on top of the upturned bell’s clapper. She pushed it inside her jacket as Colin pulled English out of the church, the verger watching them in amazement.
‘Get your hands off me, I’m not some grubby common little criminal.’ English shook Colin’s arm and tried to maintain his poise, but had been reduced. Out in the courtyard he quietly called his lawyer, then fell silent and allowed himself to be led away.
‘We came in that patrol car,’ said Bryant, watching them go. ‘Why are we the ones who have to take the tube?’
‘You know we can’t travel with the prisoner,’ said May. He turned to find an impossibly young Met officer running up to them.
‘Sir, we just had a phone call about a stabbing on Bread Street. We heard some bloke got hit with a machete, really bad, like his head is hanging off.’
‘Have you been there?’ asked May, checking his badge: Adrian Tomkins.
‘We had a quick shufti but couldn’t see anything so I thought I should come and get you.’
‘You should have conducted a thorough search first, Tomkins,’ Bryant told him, but May was already heading over to the next street.
‘You can see the church from there,’ May called back. ‘“Here comes a chopper to chop off your head.”’
51
Bait and Switch
Ever temperamental, London had wiped away its azure sky to hurl rain at the windows of 231 Caledonian Road.
Raymond Land sat back in his chair and considered his choice of words. The email to Leslie Faraday sat unfinished on his computer screen.
He scanned the sentences once more and signed off the letter with a heavy heart. Having taken Faraday’s periodic silences as a rebuke, he had written out a measured strategic retreat from the investigation. Although he was a good man at heart, Land gave up too easily. He had always been willing to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. As he read back over his words, he realized he was looking at the unit’s suicide note. It couldn’t be helped. It was time to admit that they were beaten.
He hit send.
Sitting back in his chair, he waited for the whoosh that would signal the end. Any second now the dead weight of responsibility would begin to rise from his shoulders.
Nothing happened.
He checked that the sound was turned up. He tried to figure out whether the email had gone or not. It wasn’t showing in his sent folder. He was suddenly looking at a blank screen. What had Tim repeatedly told him to do? Turn it off and turn it on again.
That didn’t work. There was something odd going on. He wandered out into the corridor. Where was everyone?
Janice Longbright was not at her desk, and there was no one in the operations room. Floris’s office was empty. Land picked up the framed photograph beside the civil servant’s laptop. It showed the Home Secretary and his police team around a champagne-laden table at a black-tie bash. Nobody at the PCU had been invited to a formal event since the jelly fight at the Met Excellence Awards Dinner. From somewhere upstairs came the sound of rainwater pinging into a bucket.
When he went back into his office something caught his attention in the corner of the room. A tiny red eye was staring at him. Had Dan installed some kind of new surveillance equipment?
‘Is there anyone around?’ he called. Silence. Something tapped at the window. He turned to find Stumpy the pigeon on his sill, giving him a death stare.
As he headed back out and turned the corner he bumped into Dave One and nearly went into cardiac arrest.
‘Blimey, Mr L., don’t creep about like that,’ said Dave One. ‘I wanted to see you. Have you got a sec?’
‘I’m really busy,’ Land lied, unnerved.
‘It’s just here, look.’ He bent down and lifted the corner of a corridor carpet tile. Beneath it was a fine black cable. ‘It’s not one of ours. Someone’s playing silly buggers. Has anyone from outside got keys to the unit?’
‘You know we’re the only ones who can get in,’ said Land. ‘And sometimes even we can’t. So what is it?’
‘I don’t know, but it goes all the way down to the basement and it wasn’t there a few days ago. Mr Faraday must have access to the site, mustn’t he?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Land lamely.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Dave One, pulling at his moustache, ‘the first victim, that Mr Claremont, he didn’t die, did he? You lot have been trying to reach him without any luck, as far as I heard. That struck me as odd. ’Cause I read an Agatha Christie once where these people went to an island—’
‘What, you want to be a detective as well now?’ asked Land. ‘We’ve already got a girl barely out of her teens running around giving us the benefit of her great experience. And what’s wrong with the phones? Why can’t you ever get them working properly?’
Dave One did not care to have his workmanship maligned. ‘There’s nothing wrong with them. Maybe the person you’re calling sees your number come up and doesn’t want to speak to you.’
Land had not thought of that.
As he went downstairs and hurried out of the building he realized he had set himself a daunting task: to find a working telephone box in King’s Cross that didn’t have someone breaking the law in it.
Trying to ignore the astonishing odour of McDonald’s boxes marinated in urine, Land stepped into one and called Leslie Faraday’s direct line, wiping the receiver before gingerly putting it to his ear.
Faraday’s PA was screening his calls. After he laboriously explained why he was calling, she put him through just to get him off her phone.
‘I’ve been trying to track you down for ages,’ Faraday complained, which was clearly a lie. ‘Where the hell have you been? Miss Hamadani rang you several times and kept getting put through to a Turkish gentleman who insisted he was an electrician. He tried to sell her a flat. Now Mr Floris informs me you’ve arrested Peter English without authorization.’
So much for promising to take our side, thought Land, misremembering their conversation. I knew he was a creep from the moment I laid eyes on him. He had already forgotten that Floris had just spent several days helping him out.
‘We have new proof linking English to the investigation,’ Land explained hurriedly. ‘I tried to send you an email requesting a detention period of ninety-six hours. We have no holding cell at the moment but there’s an arrangement in place with the hotel on the corner.’
‘I don’t even know where to begin with that last sentence,’ said Faraday, suddenly sounding tired. ‘Are you really committed to this?’
‘It will end the investigation,’ Land promised.
Faraday thought for a moment. ‘You have to take full responsibility for him.’
‘Fine,’ said Land, accepting that whatever happened he would always get the blame. ‘Any minute now we’ll have the killer in custody.’
He rang off and ducked back through the rain, but when he reached the unit he found that the hall stairway lights were now out. The two Daves were supposed to have installed new LEDs in the ceiling, but he could see only bare wires hanging down. It looked as if someone had deliberately pulled the fittings out.
Thunder rumbled overhead, bouncing off the rooftops of Caledonian Road. As Land climbed the stairs, he wondered where Bimsley and Mangeshkar had got to. They should have arrived with English by now.
On the first floor he checked the operations room, then Longbright’s office, but found no one around. The building was dark and wet and oddly deserted. There was usually someone left behind. He felt a prickle of cold air on the back of his neck, as if a window had suddenly opened.
Land turned sharply, but there was no one there.
With an involuntary shudder he returned to his office and tried the lights, but the switch did not work. His computer was still functionin
g so there had to be a problem with the fuses. The junction box was in the basement and he had no intention of going down there by himself.
What on earth was going on?
Bryant and May stood in the middle of Bread Street and looked along the glass palisade of offices that lined it. The pavements on both sides were empty but for a ragged lad with a sleeping bag at half mast, going through a bin.
‘Who took the call about this chap with his head chopped off?’ asked May.
PC Tomkins shifted uncomfortably. ‘It came through on the emergency number. We thought what with the church being so near we’d better—’
‘—walk over to us before checking whether it might possibly be a hoax,’ said Bryant. ‘You stupid boy.’
‘I don’t know what we’re doing, sir. Everyone’s telling us different things.’
Bryant angrily ground at the kerb with his stick. ‘I sent a warning out to everyone: don’t trust what you see, check it first. It was a hoax designed to get you all away from the church. It’s a good job we got to him before he could cause any further harm.’
May gave up on his phone. ‘I can’t get through to anyone at the PCU. Tomkins, can you try?’
The officer called in, waited, rang again. ‘No answer. It sounds like a line fault. I can have it checked.’
‘No time – something’s wrong.’ Bryant headed to the junction, searching for a taxi. ‘We need to get back right now.’
‘Calm down,’ said May, ‘I’ll find a cab. You know they don’t like to stop for a scary old man waving a walking stick about.’
May hailed a black cab before it had a chance to turn into Bread Street and opened the door for his partner. ‘English will set his lawyer on Colin and Meera. They won’t get anywhere with him.’
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