Bryant & May - The Burning Man (39 page)

‘You say a van,’ said May. ‘What colour? Did you get a look at the make or the licence plate?’

‘I know the make, a white Ford Transit, my brother used to drive one; it had something about the gas board on the side, but I couldn’t see the plate.’

‘It won’t be hard to track,’ May told Banbury. ‘There are cameras at the top of the road. Where is the boy?’

‘One of the officers is sitting with him,’ Yolanda said. ‘He didn’t know anything about it. He only woke up when the police arrived.’

‘Dan, stay and give this place the once-over, will you?’ May tapped Renfield on the arm. ‘Come on, there’s nothing we can do here.’

‘Think it’s our man?’ asked Renfield, following him.

‘Right now half the country hates Cornell’s guts, and over a million of them have passed through the city wearing Guy Fawkes masks,’ said May, heading for the door. ‘Why wasn’t he protected? Where the hell were his bodyguards, just when they were needed?’

Saturday morning loomed into view with the kind of ligneous dampness the city had only intermittently seen since the invention of the motorcar. The newly refurbished outer walls of King’s Cross Station were already coated with the verdant velvet of emerald moss, and near its roof buddleia sprang in sturdy clumps, as it had since the terminus first opened in 1852. A frosty mist refused to unveil the passing buses, and barely visible cyclists risked their lives in the traffic at the corner of the Euston Road, where Bryant had become so hopelessly unmoored.

The dank atmosphere seemed to go hand in hand with the evening’s planned festivities. Guy Fawkes Night always took place in such grim weather, as if English pleasures were to be endured rather than savoured. Summer was delineated by the sight of men huddled over rain-sodden barbecues, royal processions were surrounded by fields of umbrellas, and at the Lord Mayor’s Show the mournful climate blew a raspberry at the pompous dignity of the city’s leaders. But Guy Fawkes Night was usually the most inclement of all, and this one looked unlikely to buck the tradition.

Paradoxically, Arthur Bryant awoke in the smudged grey dawn with a perfectly clear head. He knew who and where he was, but not how he had got here. The hours after his meeting with Kirkpatrick were missing, as neatly as if someone had clipped around them and thrown them away.

He opened his bedroom door at his landlady’s first knock, making her jump. ‘Yes, what do you want?’

‘I came to see how you were,’ said Alma.

‘Do you come bearing toast? Crumpets? Anything remotely edible?’

‘I’ve made you some sandwiches for lunch, and I have orange sultana muffins in the oven.’

‘Then kindly bring them with strong tea, scalding, as soon as is humanly possible.’ The door slammed shut.

At least he’s back to normal
, thought Alma, hastily heading for the kitchen.

Bryant had indeed found his rightful place in the world once more, but was angrier than he had ever been in his long, eventful life. Always his own harshest critic, he was appalled by the encroaching failures of his body. Eyesight could be ameliorated, hearing artificially restored, hips replaced and joints scraped. Digestive acid, stomach ulcers, veins, lumps, bumps and blemishes were all easy to deal with, but this stealthy stealing away of time horrified him.

His mental fogs followed no line of reason, appearing and vanishing without will or purpose. If he tried to rationalize the process, noting that the fugue states seemed more precipitous before he slept and after he had eaten, he knew that he was merely attempting to impose a rational pattern over something perniciously unpredictable.

The answer, he decided, was to focus on the case and nothing else, so as soon as he had washed and shaved he called his partner. But before anyone could answer, the bedroom door opened and there May stood, immaculate as ever in his elegant cashmere overcoat and navy silk tie.

‘What did Alma tell you?’ Bryant asked suspiciously, after listening to his partner’s account of the abduction. ‘You have a look of supercilious concern about your features.’

‘She didn’t say anything,’ May lied. ‘I take it you’re feeling all right?’

‘If one more person asks me that this morning they’ll feel the benefit of my Georgian toasting fork where they least expect it. I’m perfectly fine. About Cornell—’

‘Oh, so you know.’

‘Amazingly, I’m still following the case. What are the odds of his kidnapper being our killer? It sounds duff to me, turning up at his flat like that, as if one of the protestors has turned copycat.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ May replied, glad that the conversation had moved to safer ground. ‘It’s not his MO. But that doesn’t lessen the danger of the situation.’

‘You misunderstand. I said it
sounds
duff, but then I thought more carefully and realized that might be what he’d want us to think. Cornell’s a practising Catholic. He’s the
coup de grâce
. It also crossed my devious little mind that he might have staged his own abduction to shift the blame elsewhere. Which would explain why his minders were nowhere in sight.’

‘Whether he was abducted by the killer, a copycat or himself no longer makes any difference,’ said May. ‘We don’t have control of the investigation. Darren Link has ring-fenced it because there’s a legal problem with the CoL’s ongoing fraud inquiry.’

‘Rubbish,’ snapped Bryant. ‘He’s taking it away because he can’t allow us to continue. How would it look if two elderly men, a handful of unemployable obsessives and a team leader who’s as effective as a charity-shop tea towel ended up solving such a high-profile case?’

‘I’m not
elderly
,’ protested May, nettled. ‘I’m mature.’

‘Like old cheese. I assume we’re not going to look for Cornell?’

‘No, Link’s got his team on that and we don’t have the resources. We need to stay on track.’

‘He’ll strike again tonight,’ Bryant predicted. ‘With the smell of gunpowder and charcoal in the air, how could he not want to be a part of it?’

‘I was hoping you’d feel the same way,’ May said. ‘Perhaps you’d come with me to the unit.’

Bryant dragged a crumpled Hawaiian shirt from a drawer and assessed its wearability. ‘Where else would I be going at this time of the morning? Can I get away with this look?’

Despite himself, May laughed. Bryant flashed a wide white smile, and in its sole appearance before a long day of rain, sunlight finally flooded the room. ‘Alma!’ he called into the hall, ‘stay out of my things while I’m gone or I’ll have your church closed down!’

‘I guess we’re back in business,’ said May as he held open the door.

‘Mr Bryant, you’re back.’ Colin Bimsley was unable to suppress a smile. The energy in the room palpably rose.

‘I haven’t been away, you idiot,’ said Bryant, rattling out his umbrella and spraying everyone with the run-off. He unwrapped his mummy-bandage scarf and looked about. ‘That’s a nasty bruise you’ve got. Did they have to pump your stomach?’

‘No, sir, antibiotic jab.’

‘A lucky escape. John and I once chased a burglar called Pearly Gates across Chelsea Bridge and he dived off the side to escape us. Died instantly. Not from the water, though. He went through the roof of a passing banana barge.’ He looked around. ‘There had better be some tea on, and make sure it’s not bags: we need the hard stuff today.’

It was frustrating to hear about the search for Dexter Cornell without being able to take part, but there was nothing they could do without access, so the PCU team concentrated on the more mundane business of checking call logs and CCTV footage. But at least now they moved with a spring in their step.

Renfield called a mate of his and was updated about the abduction. The van that was filmed leaving Moon Street, Islington, was lost after it hit a poorly covered patch on the north side of the Balls Pond Road, and turned out to be unregistered. Police were now covering routes all the way to the Midlands and the east coast.

‘I could tell them not to bother,’ said Bryant, bouncing about in his old armchair in anticipation of refreshment.

‘You know where he’s heading?’ asked May.

‘I have a good idea.’

‘Do you wish to share it with us?’

‘You’ll get annoyed if I do.’

‘I’ll be more annoyed if you don’t.’

Bryant blew out his cheeks, thinking. ‘All right,’ he decided. ‘It’s one of four places.’

May groaned inaudibly. Then audibly. ‘There are no straightforward answers from you, are there?’

‘That depends.’

‘All right, I’ll bite. Why four?’

‘He’s a pyromaniac.’ Bryant lost interest in the subject as Meera set down his tea mug. She goggled at the tropical shirt he had dragged over his long-sleeved vest.

‘That’s not an explanation.’

‘Dear Lord, how much do you need spelled out?
It’s Guy Fawkes Night!
There are a hundred and thirty-seven licensed firework displays in the Greater London area spread across the week but only three major events in Central London tonight: Paddington, Southwark and Russell Square. The rest are in places like Crystal Palace and the Royal Gunpowder Mills at Waltham Abbey. He won’t go to those because he wants international attention. The three central displays are the largest in London and will all be filmed.’

‘You said there were four places.’

‘So I did. The fourth is in Lewes, Sussex, and it’s the biggest in the country. There are seven separate bonfire societies there, each preparing to burn Catholics and political figures in effigy tonight. But one is larger than the rest: the Cliffe Society. They own their own fire site and fireworks company. Tonight they’ll sing their traditional song, “
Remember, Remember the Fifth of November
”. Ahem.’

Pressing one hand to his chest, Bryant sang out in a penetrating off-key baritone:

His singing voice was appalling. Once May was sure the cacophony had ended, he ungrimaced his face. ‘Now that you’ve proven you couldn’t carry a tune in a bin bag, what do you propose we do?’

‘What does everybody want to do? Burn Dexter Cornell at the stake. We don’t need to worry about the Central London displays.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because, old fruit, the Guy Fawkes Night event in Lewes is the only one that burns
giant
statues of unpopular public figures. And tonight it’s burning the hated Catholic financial fraud Dexter Cornell in effigy, along with Vladimir Putin, Justin Bieber and the French. I already called them and got all the details. Cornell’s going to be the centrepiece of the Cliffe Society display.’

‘Then why don’t we just alert their constabulary?’

‘Because we can’t trust them to catch our man in the act. I have a much better idea of what we’re up against.’

May wasn’t so sure. ‘If we get it wrong, Cornell will die.’

‘I know,’ agreed Bryant cheerfully. ‘We always work better when the stakes are high.’

‘There’ll be thousands of people there. I don’t see how the two of us can begin to cover it.’

‘We won’t be alone. Meera, you can book train tickets for all of us. Charge it to the investigation. Raymondo can stay here and mind the store. We’d better leave Fraternity with him, in case we need data access.’

‘We have no travel budget, Arthur,’ May warned.

‘Put it on my credit card. We’ll be able to sign off whatever we like after this.’ Bryant sounded confident. May studied his partner, puzzled. He seemed calm and free of confusion, utterly sure of himself, like the Bryant of old. And then he realized why:
I’ve seen that look before. The crafty old devil knows something he hasn’t told me.

‘What time do you want to go down?’ he said aloud.