Ten Second Staircase (18 page)

RENEGADE MINDS

They met in the middle of the bridge.

What had once been undertaken as an evening constitutional had now assumed talismanic value, a requirement of their continued survival. Throughout the passing decades, the pair had walked beside the surging sepia waters of the Thames to the bridge's centre, and now the habit was unbreakable. They reserved their secret histories for this moment, their private doubts, their hidden knowledge. It was one of the few places where Bryant was still legitimately allowed to smoke his pipe and where May could steal a few puffs on a forbidden cigar. They usually walked at sunset, but early on Wednesday morning the bridge proved to be a convenient meeting place before their return to the unit. A thin dawn mist spiralled from the river, its tendrils clinging to the stanchions of the bridge, sharpening the air with the brackish tang of mud and mildew.

'God, what a business,' said May, passing over a cardboard coffee cup. 'We have to keep a united front on this, Arthur. It will sink us otherwise.'

'You pessimist,' said Bryant, sniffing his coffee. 'Has this got sugar in?' He leaned on the cold stone balustrade and marvelled at the rising dark outlines of the city. 'Look how it's changing.'

'You always say that,' May countered. 'You love St Paul's, the Gherkin, County Hall, the Royal Festival Hall, and the London Eye. You hate the mayor's building and Charing Cross Station. I know exactly what you're about to say because you always say the same thing.'

Bryant was affronted. 'I'm sorry to be so predictable. Habit and familiarity provide me with comfort. What's wrong with that?'

'You're going to get out those strange boiled sweets now, aren't you? The ones nobody sells anymore. What will it be today, Cola Cubes, Rhubarb and Custard, Chocolate Logs, Flying Saucers?' He turned to face his astonished partner. 'Come on, what have you got?'

Bryant looked sheepish as he unwrapped a crumpled paper bag, revealing strings of red licorice. 'Fireman's Hose,' he said apologetically. 'Do you want one?'

'No, I bloody don't.'

'What's wrong with you?' Bryant's trilby had folded down his ears, and his scarf was pulled up to his nose. He looked like a superannuated schoolboy who'd been held back for half a century. Nobody would take him seriously looking like this. May sighed, turning back to the balustrade.

Before them, a pair of police launches were fighting the tide, heading towards the pier at Greenwich. 'Look at us. How absurd we are. All these years spent bullying bureaucrats for budgets, working ridiculous hours, losing friends, having no social life, leaving no trace of our efforts. All the stress, all the pain, and we're no further forward than the day we met each other.'

'That's not fair.' Bryant dunked a rubbery length of hose in his coffee and sucked on it ruminatively. 'Think of the destinies we've altered. The lives we've saved. The weight of knowledge we've accumulated.'

'You understand less now about the criminal mind than when you started,' said May. 'You're always complaining that life is speeding up around you, yet you make absolutely no effort to change.'

'What is this about?' asked Bryant suspiciously.

'Nothing—I'm just frustrated, that's all.'

'We're still investigating. We haven't been beaten yet. You don't fool me. Something's happened.'

'It's our ambitious new Home Office liaison officer,' replied May. 'Leslie Faraday has ordered psychiatric evaluation reports on us. He's gathering background material as ammunition.'

'When did you hear that?'

'I found an e-mail waiting for me from Rufus when I got in last night.'

'Faraday won't find anything of interest. Why are you so worried?'

'Perhaps you don't understand the gravity of our situation. He's looking for a way to shut us down, and he wants it done as quickly as possible.'

'You don't know that for a fact.'

'You have no friends in the Met, Arthur. I do, and they keep me informed. You forget some of the things Faraday could uncover. We freed thirty illegal immigrants last month. We hid their trail and falsified the case's documentation. Do I need to remind you that you also placed a minor in a position of danger, allowing him to be lowered into a sewer with a registered sex offender?'

'When you put it like that, it sounds bad,' Bryant admitted.

'That's how Faraday will put it. Wait until he discovers how many cold cases we have on our files.'

'That's part of our remit, John. Half of those investigations were already cold when they came to us.'

'If he reopens any of them, he's going to find more than just procedural anomalies. We've broken rules. We've faked reports. We've buried evidence.'

'Only for the benefit of the victims, John, and to ensure that justice is done. Truth and fairness are more important than procedure. "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds"—Ralph Waldo Emerson.'

'But when a policeman disobeys the law he becomes the worst kind of criminal in its eyes. We won't just lose the unit. We could both go to jail. We've been behaving like renegades for too long.'

Arthur selected another strand of licorice and chewed it. 'This morbidity doesn't become you, John. I'm usually the negative one. Put it out of your mind. You know how the system works: If we get this right, everything else will be swept under the carpet. We never make mistakes; when we break the law, it's absolutely deliberate.' He beamed hopefully, his bleached false teeth expanding what he'd intended as a life-affirming smile into something both innocent and creepy.

'There's something else you should know. The rumours are starting up again. April has only just joined the unit. I don't want her to hear them. I can't have that conversation with her right now.'

'She'll be fine. You always said we were a family, didn't you? We'll look out for each other and ride it out. Come on, concentrate on the case. I can't do it without you.'

May shook his head. 'I'm not sure I can walk into the briefing room and face everyone this morning.'

'You have to see it as a challenge. Two very public deaths, linked by sightings of a horseman.' His scary smile grew wider.

'They're linked by more than that,' said May.

Bryant could see that he was holding something back. 'Have you found something out?' he asked.

'There's another link. I couldn't sleep after reading the e-mail, so I started looking for Saralla White's ex-husband, the executive whose sex life she first exposed. It only took a few minutes to locate him; he'd left a trail through dozens of Web sites. His name is Leo Carey. He was working at Bell and Lockhead in the city, handling public relations for their corporate clients, but was fired because his wife's exposure of their private life destroyed his credibility with clients. Guess what he does for a living now?'

'I've no idea.'

'He's Danny Martell's publicist. I got hold of his mobile number and rang him. He told me he'd met up with Martell on the night of his death. Even better—they had a fight.' He raised his fist. 'A proper punch-up.'

Bryant's smile grew so broad his teeth nearly slipped out. 'You're joking.'

'It set me thinking. PR agents jealously guard their contacts, but their circles overlap. I'm pretty sure both victims have a number of colleagues in common. We just haven't uncovered them yet.'

'What did they fight about?'

'You can ask him that yourself,' said May, checking his watch. 'What time do you make it?'

Bryant squinted at his ancient Timex. 'Twenty past.'

'Twenty past seven?'

'Not entirely sure, old bean. My hour hand appears to have fallen off.'

'They're holding him for us at Albany Street. I said we'd get there as soon as we could. Did you remember to pay your congestion charge this morning?'

'Don't be ridiculous; I wouldn't know how to. I've never paid for Victor.' His rust-bucket hippie-era Mini Cooper was hardly worth more than a month's CC fees. 'I keep a length of reflective tape in the glove box, pop it over the plates this side of the cameras, and take it off on the other side. I don't feel guilty for doing so; the unit should be exempt. We've one staff car amongst eight, and I'm certainly not going to wait at a bus stop to get to a crime scene.'

May broke into a smile, digging a package from the jacket of his smart suit. 'I thought you might like to pay it today.' He handed his partner the box. 'Happy birthday.'

'It's my birthday? Are you absolutely sure?' He thought for a minute. 'Good heavens, October twenty-fifth, you're right. I wondered why Alma served my eggs with her earrings on this morning.' He tore open the paper and examined his gift. 'This is really most kind of you, John.' He grinned. 'What on earth is it?'

'It's the very latest in mobile technology. You can access the Internet from it and find your position from satellites, and do all sorts of things.'

Bryant was touched. He ran his fingers over the sleek brushed metal of the telephone as if handling a piece of Meissen. 'You mean you're actually trusting me with a gadget?'

May shrugged. 'I have to take a leap of faith sometime. It might as well be now.'

Leo Carey was more accustomed to conducting consultations in the calm woody gloom of Claridge's or the immaculate etherea of the Sanderson Hotel. He glanced up at the moulting distempered walls of the Albany Street nick with the same level of discomfort on his face that film stars showed when posing for police mug shots. His sleek Bond Street-tailored suit and Cambridge tie did little to erase the image presented by photocopies of him tied naked to a toilet that were currently making their way around the police station. Every few minutes one of the Met constables peered in through the meshed glass of the interview room and smirked knowingly.

'Popular opinion is formed by small groups of highly influential people,' Carey told the detectives. 'Everyone else is unimportant. It's my job to ensure that the key opinion-formers attend our events.' The grinning officers at the window were distracting him.

'Take no notice of them,' May advised. 'Tell us about Saralla White.'

'I'd been working for British Petroleum as an image consultant,' Carey explained. 'I met Sarah at a launch party, while she was still repping graphic artists around town. She told me she was being kicked out of her Bermondsey flat, and had nowhere to stay. I took her for a bite to eat, and she suggested sleeping on my sofa. We'd only known each other for about an hour! I'd never met anyone like her before. She was so angry and passionate. I had just broken up with Olivia, my girlfriend. I had no experience of girls like Sarah before. She was exciting to be around.'

'And before you knew it, you'd become involved,' May prompted.

'She wasn't easy to be with, mind you, too volatile for comfort, but a lot of fun. Life was never boring. Then I found out why she'd lost her apartment.'

'We know about the drugs. She was dealing cocaine from the premises. We have her arrest details.'

'It was nothing to do with me. And nothing was ever proven. The case got thrown out of court because someone had messed with the evidence. At that point Sarah decided to stop representing artists and become one herself. She came up with an angle, changed her name to Saralla, and asked me to help her get media attention.'

'Are you saying that her artistic status was just a pose, that she didn't believe in the causes she supported?'

'No, she believed in them, but I taught her how to use her own personality to create controversy. Belief isn't enough; you have to go out and stir up trouble in the public arena. I taught her everything I knew, and did my job a little too well. She was keeping a Web log of our life together, complete with photographs and filmed footage, and was publishing it behind my back. We fought and I threw her out, but by that time she no longer needed me. Her career had taken off. That should have been the end of it, but she wouldn't keep her mouth shut. The more the press goaded her, the more she told them. She embellished the truth, then completely reinvented her past. Suddenly I was no longer her mentor, but the man who made her pregnant and forced her to have an abortion. She needed a villain in the story, and had enough photographic evidence to flesh out her fantasy.'

'When did you last see her?'

'I didn't. I mean, I broke all contact after hearing about the photographs.'

'Why didn't you take any legal action?'

'Damage limitation. The more you defend yourself, the guiltier you look. My clients started cancelling contracts, so I got out before the company folded on me. I came from an entertainment PR background, and needed to build a client base.'

'So you started low by picking someone with an image problem,' Bryant surmised.

'Martell came with such a bad reputation that nobody else wanted to touch him. I figured if I could make this a success, other offers would come. I thought that after Sarah I could handle anyone, but Martell was a nightmare. Insecurity is a tough trait to deal with. There were rumours about his private life. The tabloids were suspicious, and went fishing for stories about how he spent his evenings, but he was dumb and vain enough to keep taking the bait. This latest escapade has broken within hours of his death, so everyone will think he killed himself. Martell was convinced he'd lose his TV deal. He'd used up all of his friends. He was still popular with the public, but his ratings were starting to slip. He caused offence on ITV1's breakfast show the week before—he'd been caught on camera making sarcastic comments about his fans—and was getting hate mail as a consequence. If you're going to start manipulating public opinion, you need a clever game plan, and Martell wasn't exactly the brightest bulb in the billboard.'