Bryant & May - The Burning Man (27 page)

Now, as he scrolled through the divisions covered by his department, he was horrified to discover that the Peculiar Crimes Unit was there once more, like some kind of stubbornly returning verruca, and that he was in charge of their budget. Scrunching away the headache that was building behind his eyes, he patted down his non-existent hair and considered the situation.

Perhaps they had changed. Maybe they had mellowed. Arthur Bryant could have calmed down a little and agreed to take a back seat for once, and John May might have stopped supporting his insane partner’s every move.

No
, he concluded, looking at the case schedule that showed him they had been put in charge of the Findersbury murder investigation,
they’ll be just as nightmarish as they’ve always been. If they solve the case they’ll get covered in glory and I’ll be the one who comes away with his foot in a bucket of paste. Unless I do something right now to put a stop to it.

He depressed the intercom button. ‘Miss Queally, would you please come in here? Bring your notepad with you.’ It was odd that the press hadn’t picked up on the story. It was time they discovered what had been going on.

‘Can I have a word with you?’ Raymond Land asked Longbright, seating himself opposite her without waiting to be asked. He liked her room; it smelled of perfumed roses, a scent you never found in a regular cop shop. It reminded him of his mother. ‘I just had a call from Dr Gillespie.’

‘Oh.’ Janice pushed aside the tick-box forms that made part of each day so tiresome. ‘What did he say?’

‘He thinks Bryant is developing an unusual form of Alzheimer’s, not one he’s seen before. He wants to run some further tests, but of course Bryant doesn’t want them. Did you know about this?’

‘I guessed that might be the case,’ said Longbright. ‘Did he say how long it takes to advance?’

‘He can’t tell. There’s no standard rate of progression. It’s irregular, and it might have been going on for years, in which case it could be reaching a point where we lose him quite quickly. The question is: How long can he keep on working?’

‘You can’t take his work away from him, Raymond. Don’t you see he has nothing else? He’ll drop dead if he’s forced to quit. Retire him and you’ll kill him.’

Land looked pained. ‘Janice, this is the case of our lives. It’s all tangled up with this bank thing, and we’re in the firing line whatever we do. If we allow him to continue, he could place everyone in danger.’

Longbright rubbed at her tired shoulder, thinking. ‘Does John know about this?’

‘Not yet. I wanted to talk to you first. I thought you’d be more … impartial.’

‘Apart from anything else, you’d be killing our only chance of cracking the case. You know we can’t do it without Arthur.’

‘And we can’t do it with him.’ Land was determined. ‘He’s making mistakes, Janice, and that puts us all at risk.’

‘He’s always made mistakes. He’s always been scatty and confused in his thinking. But he gets it right most of the time. John and I are taking turns to accompany him.’

‘Yes, but he keeps managing to slip away, doesn’t he? Do you know what will happen if anyone finds out that we’ve been covering up for him?’

‘No one must know,’ said Longbright firmly. ‘You owe him this much. John and I will take full responsibility for him, just until we see the case out.’

‘Janice, I don’t see how I can—’

‘Please,’ said Longbright. ‘I’ve never begged you for anything before. We can take care of it, Raymond. Please let us try until the end of the week, at least.’

‘All right,’ said Land uncertainly. ‘But only until the weekend. Then he’s off.’

As Land left, Longbright returned to the coroner statements. Death by fire, three times over. Her nightmare was slowly rising into daylight. With each passing day more of the city was aflame, and a killer was somehow finding the opportunity—

Opportunity
.

She went next door to talk to May. As soon as she saw his face, she knew he had also received a call from Dr Gillespie. ‘Arthur’s gone to the British Library,’ he told her. ‘He can’t get into trouble there.’

‘What are we going to do?’

‘Cover for him, of course. We can’t tell the others.’

‘I was thinking,’ said Longbright. ‘He could be right. We keep assuming that whoever is doing this started using the riots as an opportunity to act, but what if it’s the other way around now? What if our guy’s somehow
causing
the riots?’

‘How could one person manage that?’

‘By leaking the news about Cornell’s insider deal and sparking the first protest, then bolstering it with further deaths.’

‘But the press embargo is still in place.’

‘The more I think about it, the more sense it makes,’ Longbright insisted. ‘We need to find out how the news got out about Cornell. Maybe Arthur’s not the only one who’s been in a fugue state lately. Maybe we all have.’

‘Speaking of which,’ said May, ‘do you have any idea what Arthur’s up to?’

‘No, I thought you did.’

They both rose together and headed for the chaotic stacks of paper on Bryant’s cluttered desk.

The most polluted route in London takes you along the Euston Road, an ashen artery that traverses the city from west to east, palisaded with dismal concrete boxes. And yet, in one of those anomalies so typical of London, there are all sorts of oddities tucked away on it, including several excellent pubs, a couple of scalding Szechuan restaurants and half a dozen excellent if somewhat idiosyncratically organized bookshops, one of which is in the basement of the British Library. It was here that Bryant found Monica Greenwood waiting for him. The wife of a brilliant but disgraced academic, she’d had a hard time coping with her husband’s newly acquired criminal status, but had somehow emerged with her dignity intact. She had lightened her hair and tied it up loosely, in the way that certain sexually confident women in their late forties did without a moment’s thought. Her face shone as soon as she caught sight of him.

‘It’s good to see you again, Arthur.’ She hugged him warmly but carefully, knowing that he was liable to leave bits of liquorice, cabbage and tobacco stuck to her.

‘I took a chance,’ said Bryant, doffing his homburg. ‘I wasn’t sure if you were still here.’

‘I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch. I tend to get a bit too lost in my work these days.’ She smiled a little ruefully. ‘Paul’s out of prison now but we split up. I suppose you knew that.’

‘No, I didn’t. I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be. We’d reached the end of the road long before his little transgression. What are you working on?’

‘That’s where I thought you could help me. I remember you were a member of the Conspiracy Club.’

‘Oh,
that
.’ She walked around a stack of books, replacing the errant titles. ‘I gave it up, Arthur. They got a little too wacky even for me. It was around the time they came up with “scientific proof” that Michelle Obama was a man.’ Monica had the kind of laugh that made others smile. ‘A step too far, I’m afraid. I joined a lot of cranky societies while Paul was in jail. Funnily enough, it helped to keep me sane.’

He indicated the ‘Art & Design Section’ sign beside her. ‘So you’re back in paintings now?’

‘Sort of. I’m collaborating on a new book about
The Night Watch
. You probably know the theory.’

Bryant rolled his eyes. ‘I did, but I’ve forgotten.’

‘Experts argue that Rembrandt filled his painting with symbols and hidden layers of meaning, the so-called “Fifty-one Mysteries”. Ostensibly it’s a portrait of a Dutch militia company, so who is the ghost figure, why are there five light sources, why is the soldier behind the central characters firing a musket into the middle of the crowd, stuff like that. It’s supposed to involve Rembrandt launching an accusation of murder and corruption that led to his own downfall. The painting was certainly altered, but the “conspiracy” looks more and more like a prank perpetuated by artists and film-makers. It’s what we find with most conspiracies: they only exist because somebody wants them to.’

‘That’s what I always suspected, however much I’d like some of them to be true,’ Bryant admitted, loosening his scarf.

‘We all would,’ said Monica, ‘because everyone else out there is denying the very things we can see with our own eyes. We live in a world where a Fox News presenter can tell her audience it’s been proven that Jesus Christ and Santa Claus were both white, instead of Palestinian and Turkish—’

‘—or mythical—’

‘—and the chancellor of the exchequer can stand up in the House of Commons and say that the directors of a British bank are entirely above reproach.’

‘He did that?’

‘This morning. So how do we react? Either we invent a convoluted unifying theory to explain everything we’ve ever expected – an Illuminatus conspiracy – or we act on our gut instinct and fight back. Which is what they’re doing just a couple of miles from here.’

‘It sounds like you and I share the same attitude to anarchy,’ said Bryant, ‘which is good because I have some inside knowledge about the London riots. I think they’re traceable back to one person, and I’m trying to find him.’

‘Of course you are. We’re all trying to find someone to blame.’

‘No, I mean I really
am
trying to find him.’

‘I don’t see how I can help you there.’

Bryant fixed her with a gimlet eye. ‘You have a very visual mind, Monica. You know, our unit was founded by freethinkers who decided that all serious crime was basically problem-solving. They hired people like me because I see things differently. That’s what I need from you. Here.’

She waited while he trawled through his pockets, finally handing her a blue plastic memory stick. ‘This contains all the photographs I could cull from journalists covering the riots. You’ll also find the faces of five men and one woman in a separate file. I want you to search for them in the crowds. The person I’m looking for must have attended some of the demonstrations. I’m afraid it’ll be horribly time-consuming.’

‘No, I’m fast at facial recognition. Aren’t there computer techniques you prefer to use?’

‘I asked Dan, our IT chap, and he said it was too expensive. We don’t have the software in-house, so we’d have to outsource it.’

‘And I’m cheaper.’ Monica tucked the flash drive into her bag. ‘You’ve got a nerve. How soon do you need it?’

‘Before the fifth, if possible.’

‘I’ll give it a go, but I can’t promise anything.’

‘Thank you, Monica. You’re a wonderful woman.’

She gave him an old-fashioned look. ‘You sent my husband to jail, Arthur.’

‘I know. I thought I’d redeem myself by getting you to work for naught but the thanks of a grateful nation.’

She laughed, despite herself. ‘You never change, you know that? I’ll call you. Presuming you still have a phone that works?’

‘After a fashion. Don’t worry, I know where to find you. The future of the city may depend on this.’

Monica Greenwood watched as her old friend attempted to leave via the stockroom, then the toilet, before she finally headed him towards the stairs.
I’m glad the future of the city is in such good hands
, she decided.

Janet Ramsey, the editor of
Hard News
, didn’t know much about journalism but she had a nose for a good story. A little London girl reunited with her lost puppy was worth ten famines in Africa because it was human interest. People were tired. They didn’t want to hear about mass tragedy, and besides, there was always a famine occurring somewhere. It was like these protests, a lot of unemployed troublemakers running around with nothing better to do, and over what? A corruption scandal, as if that was news these days. It was so hard to put a human face on the damned thing. Cornell had been done to death. They needed a new angle.

Her staff knew how she felt, which made it all the more surprising that they decided to hand her the oddly wrapped cardboard package. Inside, Janet found a set of photographs and a card.

She shouted across the open-plan office to her associate editor. ‘Miles, do you know anything about this?’

Miles waddled over, eating some kind of chocolate cake, because there was always a birth, marriage or leaving party to be celebrated with empty calories. ‘It came in for your eyes only,’ he said, wiping his mouth.

Ramsey checked the envelope. ‘No stamps. Did someone drop it off?’

‘Dunno.’

‘Well, can you bloody well find out?’

He leaned over the desk, trying to see. ‘Who prints photos any more?’

‘Someone who wants to catch my attention, obviously. I wonder how many more of these went out. We might not be first to run with it but we can put a fresh spin on the story. I want this in tomorrow’s edition.’

Miles checked the wall clock and shook his head. ‘Not going to happen, chief.’

‘Yes, it is,’ said Janet. ‘Jonathan De Vere’s been murdered.’

‘Christ! Are you sure?’

She held up the photographs. ‘You tell me. And there’s a note, just in case we’re too slow to make the connection. Our old friends at the PCU are handling the investigation.’