Bryant & May - The Burning Man (6 page)

‘So all this technology we have in the Square Mile is useless,’ Bryant harrumphed.

‘Not at all. It’s just time-consuming. We have another clue as to his ID. In the bottom of the sleeping bag was a plastic wallet. It melted but there were a couple of cards inside, and once we separate them out we might get the remains of a chip from one.’

‘If he was sleeping rough, they won’t have been credit cards. Are they here?’

‘Hang on.’ Kershaw carefully shook out a plastic envelope, and a gnarled, blackened lump dropped into his desk tray. Bryant untangled a pair of reading glasses and squinted at it.

‘That’s a staff card for the Bloomsbury Sustainable Market,’ he said without a second’s hesitation. ‘It’s a collective where students stack shelves in return for groceries.’

‘I don’t see how you can possibly know that,’ said Banbury. ‘We’d need to get some chromatography on it before—’

‘When I was a child,’ Bryant interrupted, ‘I was very good at jigsaws. That little mark in the corner …’ He tapped the blob. ‘… that’s the bottom part of a picture. It’s the handle of a kitchen whisk – the market’s symbol. I’d recognize it anywhere.’

‘OK.’ Banbury shrugged. ‘We’ll get on it.’

‘What do you think happened?’ Kershaw asked.

‘Scylla and Charybdis,’ said Bryant. ‘He got caught napping between them. The riot police arriving on one side, the protestors kettled on the other.’

‘It’s hard to believe he didn’t wake up with all the noise in the next street,’ said Kershaw.

‘Have you ever spent a day on the streets?’ asked Bryant. ‘You’re on the move all the time. It’s incredibly tiring. By the time it gets dark all you want to do is drop down in your tracks and sleep. I doubt this poor devil would have been woken by a bomb going off.’

‘Right,’ said Kershaw. ‘I’ll make some calls back at the PCU and we’ll get this wrapped up.’

But Bryant showed no signs of budging from the remains of the body. ‘It’s worse than it ever was,’ he muttered. ‘Bankers with million-pound bonuses stepping around kids who aren’t even guaranteed a place to lay their heads. The poor are worse off now than they were in Victorian times. What’s happened to my city?’ For a moment he looked as if he was standing at the edge of an unimaginable abyss.

‘Come on,’ said Banbury gently, taking his boss’s arm. ‘I’ll walk back with you.’

John May sat back in his chair and thought about the office he had shared for so long with his partner.

It wasn’t the same room, of course – that had changed many times since Bryant had accidentally burned down the unit years before – but somehow it always reinvented itself with the same layout, the same esoteric books, the same haphazardly accumulated bric-a-brac. Looking at the empty green leather chair opposite, May suddenly had a change of heart. Bryant had flung caution aside and followed his instincts, heading off to visit St Pancras simply because he could not allow his natural curiosity to be quelled. So, May wondered, why was
he
sitting here content to follow orders? What did that ever gain him?

Grabbing his coat, he left the building and hailed a taxi to Crutched Friars. The least he could do was take a look at the façade of the Findersbury Bank. He did not expect to find anything of value there, but it usually helped to understand the exact geographical layout of the incident scene.

As he walked over the wet tarmac towards the bank’s blackened foyer, he saw a pair of firefighters bent over by the entrance examining something in the soot-stains. One stood up at his approach and raised a hand in greeting. ‘Hey, John, they’ve got you on this too, eh?’

‘Just an ID job,’ said May. ‘What have you got there?’

The other officer rose and turned to him. ‘Senior Officer Blaize Carter. Good to finally meet you, Mr May. I’ve heard a lot about your unit.’

May blinked and stared, lost for words.

Carter looked at her colleague wearily, then back at May. ‘Go on then, have a laugh. It’s not my fault – I was christened with it, OK? My mother actually wanted me to be a concert pianist.’

May decided it was better to let her assume he was taken aback by her name, but he was thinking something else entirely. Carter was slim and tough-looking, with the build of a runner or a gymnast, in her upper forties, her kinked auburn hair tied back, her face free of make-up. There was a world of patience and kindness in her eyes, something he often saw in nurses and firefighters.

‘I, um, it’s … a nice name.’ He mentally kicked himself. ‘You looked like you’d found something.’

‘Yeah, maybe nothing but – here …’ She stood aside to let him see the base of the entrance. ‘The doors have varnished wood surrounds. One side doesn’t open. You’d think anyone trying to torch the place would throw missiles here, against the doors, where there was the best chance of setting something alight, but the shards’ – she indicated the spot with her boot – ‘well, they’re all in the opposite corner, so that’s your impact spot. Johnnie Walker label, see?’

‘That’s a concrete step.’

‘Exactly. Nothing to burn. Not strictly true. There must have been one thing in the corner: the homeless guy’s head. Arsonists often miss their targets but he got pretty close before throwing the bottle. You can see by the force of the impact. So, was he aiming for the bank or the sleeper? Have you got someone doing the site forensics?’

‘Yes, my chap’s already been,’ said May. ‘Didn’t anyone tell you?’

‘
He’s
supposed to be in charge, isn’t he?’ She jerked her thumb back at Link, who was having some kind of argument with a junior officer. ‘I don’t think he knows what he’s doing. Maybe you could get your—’

‘Banbury,’ said May quickly. ‘Dan Banbury.’

‘Great, if you could get him to call us direct, maybe we can cut through some of the red tape. At the moment the bank staff are having to use the side entrance. It’s not fit for purpose, but they refuse to close so I’d like to get the doors reopened as soon as possible.’ She rubbed the tip of her nose with the back of her hand, leaving a smear of soot.

‘Of course. How do I—’

‘This isn’t my jurisdiction,’ interrupted Carter. ‘I’m based at Euston Road. I guess you know most of the team there.’

‘A few, yes.’

‘Then now you know me as well.’ She turned and knelt once more.

Blaize
, thought May as he walked away towards the bridge.
Blaize Carter.

Superintendent Darren Link held a meeting with the specialist support unit for public order at the CoL’s Snow Hill station, one of the three he worked between in the Square Mile. The building had mullioned bay windows set in discoloured Portland stone, and looked like the headquarters of some benevolent Victorian charity. Inside, there was very little charity to be found today. On its first floor, Link was losing his temper.

‘You’re telling me you can’t even round up the ringleaders?’ He stared down the support unit with his fractured eye, daring them to argue back.

‘Not while they’re engaged in legitimate protest,’ said one of them, a legal expert named Ayo Onatade. ‘They held meetings with us about the prescribed route and the road closures, and we agreed hours and dates up front, all of which they’ve adhered to.’

‘Did you agree which windows they could chuck bricks through? Which cars they could set alight?’

‘We’ve been over this,’ said Onatade with weary patience. She was used to bearing the brunt of police wrath. ‘The original protest group was joined by unregistered outsiders who were bussed in from other parts of the country.’

‘But if the march hadn’t been announced in the first place, these thugs wouldn’t have come down to join them. How are we supposed to tell them apart?’

‘We told you to issue the legitimate campaigners with passes. And you can blame the media for the uproar, not the marchers. There’s been a lot of scaremongering coverage. It was intended to be a peaceful demonstration. The press were out on the streets looking for trouble long before the march had even begun.’

Link pulled out the updated fact sheet he’d been handed and read from it. ‘Twelve burned-out vehicles, six office buildings set on fire, a “peace camp” which consists of some Glastonbury tents and a lot of cardboard, the Bank of England barricaded, Cannon Street and Mansion House stations still closed down. The Square Mile’s becoming unsafe. One hundred and three civilian injuries so far, twenty-one officers injured and one fatality.’

‘A fatality?’ repeated Onatade, shocked.

‘A homeless guy sleeping rough in a doorway, burned to death by one of your peaceful protestors.’ He paused to let the news sink in. ‘And I hope you haven’t got any shares invested right now, because the FTSE’s taken a right old hammering this morning.’

‘Do you have someone in custody for the death of the homeless guy?’ asked Onatade, who was more interested in the personal cost of the protest than in falling stocks.

‘We’ve turned up some blurry CCTV footage of a bloke in trainers, grey tracksuit bottoms, a
V for Vendetta
face mask and a grey hooded sweatshirt. You’re welcome to try to identify him – or her,’ said Link sarcastically. ‘We’re pushing to remove the legality of your urban guerrillas to wear masks, effective immediately.’

‘You can’t do that; it’s a human-rights issue,’ warned Onatade.

‘No, Ayo, it’s a criminal issue.’ Link had intimidating body language, and used it effectively. ‘We can prove our killer wore one, and that means we can stop anyone else from wearing them until we’ve got someone in custody. I will not allow these events to escalate because people are hiding behind masks. This meeting is over.’

He rose and stalked out of the room, knowing that Onatade would be on her phone challenging the issue’s legitimacy within seconds. It had been the tech man over at the Peculiar Crimes Unit, Dan Banbury, who had found the image collected by one of the cameras in Crutched Friars. Even if the shot couldn’t be used to identify the bomb-thrower, it had already served its purpose, and would now prevent the anarchists from hiding behind masks.

Unfortunately, the image had a less welcome side effect; it persuaded his bosses to pass the case over to the PCU. While the riots continued, they explained, City of London police would be too engaged to handle it.

Raymond Land studied the headline of the brochure he had been handed outside King’s Cross Station at lunchtime. It said: ‘D
O
Y
OU
H
AVE
W
HAT
I
T
T
AKES TO
B
E A
L
EADER
? D
ISCOVER
H
OW TO
B
E
M
ORE
E
FFECTIVE AND
D
YNAMIC IN THE
W
ORKPLACE
!’

With a heavy heart he tore the pamphlet into pieces and looked around for a bin. He hated visiting the room that Bryant and May shared because he never knew what was likely to happen once he was inside it. Land turned a blind eye to the thriving marijuana plant underneath Bryant’s desk, having been provided with many contradictory excuses for its existence, but there was always the problem of where to sit, and what he might find himself sitting in.

Then there were Bryant’s fanciful lectures on policing to contend with. Once he started there was no escape, and Land found himself agreeing to the most appalling proposals. He was weak; he knew it and they knew it. His indecisiveness arose from fear, and the only time his fear vanished was when he was really, really angry – as he was now, standing before his detectives.

‘I don’t believe it,’ he complained vociferously. ‘I already paid my deposit, I’ve bought an easel, and now I have to cancel.’

‘You can still go to the Isle of Wight,’ said Bryant, cheerfully picking the shell off a boiled egg. ‘Go on, hop it, you deserve a break. So they’ve given us the case – once Dan and Giles have nailed their ID it doesn’t look like there’ll be much more to do. We can manage perfectly well without you here.’

‘Thank you, I remember what happened the last time I left you alone,’ Land replied. ‘You filled my office with Tibetan monks and gave the Bishop of Southwark a black eye. Do you understand how important this case is? The government is going to use it as an excuse to change the civil-liberty laws.’

‘I see the problem,’ said May. ‘Remove the masks and soon you’ll be preventing the wearing of burqas.’

‘No, it’s not that. I’m worried about the publicity. We’re not very good at operating as a covert unit. No,’ Land decided, ‘my conscience won’t allow me to go away now. At least I might still be able to get a refund on the caravan.’

‘Don’t worry about a thing,
vieille saucisse
,’ Bryant agreed serenely. ‘Dan’s about to get his leg-bone reading and the rest of the team will be trawling through footage, tracing his attacker. We’ll have this put to bed before you get back to your cold, empty house.’