Ten Second Staircase (49 page)

Concerning the disbanding of the Peculiar Crimes Unit: In anticipation that you may find it difficult to abandon a process that has now been placed in motion, I would like to remind you that I am prepared to release a full account of the investigation surrounding the arrests of Nicholas Gosling, Thomas Jezzard, Daniel Parfitt, Marcus Billings, and Luke Tripp. Part of this report will, of necessity, need to focus on the unorthodox relationship conducted between Mr Kasavian and the features editor of
Hard News,
Mrs Janet Ramsey.

I anticipate that you may encounter some resistance from Mr Kasavian to returning the Peculiar Crimes Unit to its former operational status, in which case may I request that you make the focus of my report known to Mr Kasavian, in order that he may decide for himself whether or not he wishes to commit career suicide and face personal discomfort at the sight of his fragrant wife being questioned about her knowledge of his extramarital affair, and the possible security risk it poses to Her Majesty's government. I do this with the full knowledge and cooperation of Mrs Ramsey herself, who no longer wishes to be associated with her former partner, and is fully prepared to explain her side of the story in the above-mentioned periodical if her wishes are not met.

Please also find attached the PCU's official request for increased funding, which I trust will be received favourably in light of the above.

I remain,

Yours sincerely,

Raymond Land

Acting Temporary Head of the Peculiar Crimes Unit (1973—ongoing)

They sat on the black iron bridge crossing the converted warehouses on the fourth floor of Shad Thames, peering down at the narrow cobbled street beneath them. The faintest traces of cinnamon and pepper, imports that had given the Spice Wharves their name, still hung in the evening air. The setting sun had turned the river a bilious shade of heliotrope. Tourists wandered between the glowing art stores and neon restaurants, looking lost.

'How could you possibly afford a place like this?' asked Bryant. 'Is there anything left in that bottle?' He gestured at the magnum of champagne standing on the occasional table they had dragged out from the tiny kitchen.

'I'm swapping a huge apartment in St John's Wood for this miniscule flat because I want to be near the Thames again,' May explained. 'When I was a kid, only the poorest of the poor lived here. In a sense, I'm coming home.' May watched the distant golden river pensively. 'I don't need much space. My world is shrinking. Friends are dying, opportunities are disappearing. Soon all I'll have left is my work.'

'Welcome to my world,' said Bryant, dipping a Jaffa Cake in his champagne glass and sucking it pensively. 'Although if you're really going to be like me, you'll start forgetting where you left your shoes. The main thing is, you have April back. All that time the two of you wasted, when you could have been close.'

'How was I to know Renfield had told her about Elizabeth's death? And I hadn't seen this.' He removed the crumpled page of his confession from his jacket. 'Janice gave it to me. She managed to trace the female officer who acted as my co-witness. Apparently I once recommended her for promotion, back in 1996. She told Janice I'd signed the statement under abnormal circumstances, and that she would never betray my secret.'

'Give it to me.' Bryant held out his hand. He touched a match to a corner of the sheet and watched it blacken and curl in flame.

'Are you okay about the Highwayman case?' asked May. 'My granddaughter is worried about you.'

'I have to accept a new order of criminal,' Bryant replied, sprin kling ash over the balcony. 'I need to try to understand. London has always been a city of sedition and disorder, from the Peasants' Revolt to Bloody Sunday, Broadwater Farm, and the Poll Tax riots. Violent dissent is in our blood. It is simply taking a spiteful new form. How can we be surprised when television teaches children that it's normal behaviour to tear each other's characters to shreds in public?'

'Television is dying. It's being replaced by a computer network in which everyone has a right to say what they feel, and about time, too. Those schoolboys had the measure of you, didn't they?' May reached over for a biscuit. 'Choosing the home of the Knights Templars to kick your psychogeography fetish into action.'

'Christ's blood is still out there somewhere,' said Bryant. 'I'll go looking for it one day. I've got the surveillance maps. If the bones of St John the Baptist can survive to this day in Istanbul, then why not the blood of the Saviour?'

'I was just thinking about Gosling and his friends. I looked into their eyes and saw nothing at all. No love, no hate, just blankness. All bets are off now. What's to stop any teenager from buying their way into celebrity by committing murder?'

'We have to pray that the spirit of a more benevolent myth hangs over the city to protect it,' said Bryant, 'something that can counteract the cruelties of murderers and highwaymen—the benign and secret spirit of Mother London.' He refilled their plastic cups. 'The mistake I made was thinking that the victims were worshipped by the young. The young don't feel represented by such people, they feel ignored and invisible. We'll never understand them, and we'll have no way of stopping them next time. It's the kids on the estate who have a staircase to the future. They have to fight or fail. Their victories are small and hard-won. The boys in Brilliant Kingsmere's class are already lost.'

Bryant tore open a fresh packet of biscuits; no mean feat, considering he was wearing woollen mittens. He squinted at the label. '
New advanced recipe
? What does that mean? Advanced beyond the poor-quality recipe they were selling before? Everybody lies to you. Especially in this city. London is the ancient personification of corruption.'

'Now you're sounding like the Highwayman,' said May. 'Or even Robin Hood.'

'Perhaps I'm reconnecting with my own past,' said Bryant. 'I certainly remember it more clearly than the present.' He looked over the balcony. 'I say, some traffic wardens are trying to tow my car away.' He removed the pickle fork from his jacket. 'They'll be lucky. I've got the key. Pour some champagne over them.'

'We still have to find out who the week's final victim was supposed to be, you know. None of the boys is talking.'

'I would have thought it was obvious,' said Bryant. 'Brilliant Kingsmere was being saved for last.'

'But why?' May was mystified. 'He's a well-intentioned liberal who's spent a lot of time trying to understand their generation.'

'Exactly,' Bryant replied. 'But it's not his prerogative to do so. Nor is it ours. Perhaps we must be content in our seniority, and stop trying to manipulate the young. We should enjoy being our age and appreciate the benefits of experience. It's like a favoured old jumper, something one can relax in. Besides, Kingsmere was more likely than anyone to discover the truth. He was the connection between the past and the future.'

May gave in. 'I'm not going back to the unit tonight. Let's finish the bottle. I keep thinking of Luke Tripp sitting there, impassively watching while his classmates drowned Saralla White in her own installation. In a way, he was the worst of them all, lying with such wide innocent eyes. What will he be like when he grows up?'

'Gosling, Parfitt, Billings, and Jezzard may find themselves confronted with a younger, altogether darker nemesis. Each generation fears the one coming next. But on we go, dancing merrily towards the grave.'

'It's strange,' said May, watching the translucent evening mist curl up against the embankment railings in ghost tentacles. 'I thought this case would be the end of us, but somehow it feels like a new beginning.'

'If that's so, I'm getting rid of these. They're supposed to improve my balance. Instead, I nearly fell off a roof.' He pulled the boxes of red and blue pills from his pocket and threw them as far as he could from the balcony, which wasn't very far at all, but at least the point was made. A pair of young women were peppered with tablets, and looked up at him in annoyance. 'And now that we've regained respect for the unit, I want a raise. And bigger bookcases. And new hips. And the return of everything we've lost. Kindness, grace, taste, politeness, self-restraint, dress sense,
The Wednesday Play,
Fry's Five Boys chocolate bars, the BBC Home Service, the Pakamac, I-Spy books, pensioners' cinema double bills for one and sixpence on Monday afternoons, and at least five more years spent successfully solving horrendous crimes. What do you want?'

May's gentle, melancholic smile was lost in advancing shadows. 'I want, more than anything—' But he stopped himself from speaking, and allowed himself to be engulfed in the encroaching darkness.

'I know what you want,' said Bryant. 'I was just thinking of the city in the most recent quarter of its life. All the dark and bloody history that's being forgotten so quickly out there. London, the site of the Guy Fawkes plot, home of Newgate and Bedlam. The tarred heads of Jacobites on spikes at Temple Bar, the Cato Street conspiracy, the Sidney Street siege, the Gordon Riots, and the Lollards. Thomas Blood and the stolen Crown Jewels; the highway robbers John Cottington, Dick Turpin, and Moll Cutpurse; John Sayer stabbed in the Mint; Elizabeth Brownrigg torturing her maids; Jack the Ripper; the Krays; Ruth Ellis; Jonathan Wild; Jack Sheppard; the Fenian outrage of 1867; the Dynamite Plot of 1883; the Battle of Stepney; the death of the bomber Bourdin; Charley Peace; the Mannings; Franz Muller the Railway Murderer; Crippen; Christie and Nilsen; the Tichbourne Claimant; the Smithfield burnings; the crowds at Tyburn Tree; Execution Dock at Wapping; the Ratcliffe Highway murders; the Shooter's Hill executions; the scaffolds and gaols at Southwark, Bridewell, Clerkenwell, Wandsworth, Coldbath Fields, Ludgate, Millbank, Brixton, Holloway, Pentonville, Wormwood Scrubs, Fleet, St George's Fields; and the floating prison hulks at Woolwich—an overwhelmingly populous timeline of death, desperation, and the damned. You want to be here, amongst it all.'

'Until the very day I die,' said May, his smile first shy, but slowly broadening.

'Then we must drink to your continued health,' said Bryant, raising his glass.

'And to yours,' replied May. 'And to the dark lady who always stands between us. To London.'

They drank and watched in contented silence as an iridescent sun sent shivers of golden light across the water of the Thames, lighting the serpentine channel of the radiant river, opening a path to the heart of the city.