Full Dark House (4 page)

‘No, you wouldn’t. I can understand that, but some of the other directives are driving us barmy.’ Bryant sucked noisily at his pipe. ‘This business with lifts having to be kept at the bottom of shafts during raids, except in tube stations, where they have to be kept at the top. I suppose it’s sensible, but all transgressions have to be reported, and it makes so much paperwork. Not that you’ll have had any paperwork on us.’

‘No, they wouldn’t even tell me what PCU stood for.’

‘Peculiar Crimes Unit, isn’t it frightful? I think their perception of the word “peculiar” and mine differ somewhat. I’ve got some bumph here you can read through.’ He rooted around among his papers, sending several overstuffed folders to the floor, but failed to locate anything specific.

Thinking about his first impression of Arthur Bryant some years later, May was reminded of a young Alec Guinness, bright-eyed and restless, distracted and a little awkward, filled to exhaustion with ideas. May was less excitable, and his habit of keeping a rein on the more excessive reaches of his imagination pegged him to others as the reserved, serious one. After their deaths, it was said by their biographer that ‘Bryant said what he meant and May meant what he said’. May was the diplomat, Bryant the iconoclast, a decent combination as it turned out.

‘They meant “peculiar” in the sense of “particular”, but the damage is done, and the name is attracting some very odd cases. We had a report last month of a man sucking blood out of a Wren in Leicester Square. It’s hopeless. The Heavy Rescue Squads are busy trying to locate people who’ve been buried alive under tons of rubble, most of the central London constabulary remaining at home have left to join the ARP, the ATS and the AFS, and we’re expected to go chasing around after Bela Lugosi. Morale again, you see. They don’t want people to think there’s a bogeyman roaming around in the blackouts, otherwise they won’t head to the shelters. Panic in the streets; it’s an image that scares the hell out of them. You’d think we were more of a propaganda unit than a proper detective squad.’

‘How many of us are there?’ asked May, moving a stack of handwritten music scores from a chair and seating himself.

‘Half a dozen, including you. Superintendent Davenport’s the most senior DI, spends all of his time haunting the HO and the Met, or playing billiards with Sergeant Carfax, who’s married to his ghastly sister. She comes creeping around here on the scrounge for salvage donations, got a face like a witch doctor’s rattle. No, we don’t see too much of Davenport, luckily. Then there’s Dr Runcorn, rather ancient and not much cop but the only forensics wallah they could spare us. We have a young pathologist called Oswald Finch, tragically born without a sense of humour, we use him for the serious stuff. DS Forthright is also a part-time member of the WVS. Then there’s us two, and finally a couple of utterly vacant PCs, Crowhurst and Atherton. Crowhurst has something wrong with his depth perception and falls over a lot, and Atherton used to be a greengrocer.’

‘My father is a greengrocer,’ said May indignantly.

‘No offence, old man,’ apologized Bryant, whose own father had abandoned his family to earn drink money in Petticoat Lane peddling rings for blackout curtains at a shilling a dozen, ‘but poor old Atherton really would be better employed shifting sprouts. Oh, and we’re getting one more today, a former copper called Sidney Biddle. I’ve got his details around here somewhere. Davenport was very keen about taking him on. I get the feeling he’s coming in as a bit of a spy, though I’m not sure what he’ll find to report on. We’re rather a dead-letter office. To date we’ve had a hand in a couple of prosecutions, but nothing that can be made public.’

‘Why not?’

Bryant rubbed his nose ruminatively. ‘The sort of cases that pass through here are a bit of an embarrassment for everyone concerned. The regular force can’t handle them, so they end up on these desks.’ He indicated the overflowing surfaces of the two desks that had been shoved back to back beside the window. ‘I’ll have a clear-up while you get settled. Have Forthright find you a tea mug, and hang on to it. You never know when there’ll be a shortage. We can get most things, but you hear rumours and everyone goes mad.’

May knew what he meant. With each passing week, a household item, so taken for granted before the war, would vanish from the list of available home comforts. Last week there was a run on toothbrushes. The smallest rumour was enough to spark panic buying. Foods were fast disappearing from the daily menu. Oddly, the commonest items seemed to cease first, so that sugar, butter and bacon were rationed while milk chocolate remained available.

At lunchtime, Bryant took his new partner for a walk down to the Thames. The city was turning itself into a fortress, barricaded, sandbagged and patrolled in imminent expectation of invasion.

‘What topsy-turvy times we live in,’ laughed Bryant, striding across the windy reach of Waterloo Bridge, his scarf flapping about his prominent ears. ‘I’ve stood here after the alert has sounded and watched the German bombers flying low along the river, dropping their loads on the docks, then I’ve gone back to the unit to investigate a theft of cufflinks from some diplomat’s quarters in Regent’s Park as if it was the most important thing in the world.’

‘What’s your speciality?’ asked May, pacing beside him.

‘Mine? Academic studies, really. Classics. Abstruse thought. The HO thought the war might throw up a few cases that need sensitive handling, and realized that there were no brainboxes in the field of detection.’

‘Who decides which cases we get?’

‘Well, Davenport likes to pretend he does, but the orders come from higher up. He’s not a total dunderhead, of course, just ineffectual. I think being placed in charge of this unit is a bit beyond him. He’s rather straitlaced. The RAF wouldn’t have him because he’s short-sighted, and he’s still miffed. My word, I don’t like the look of that.’

In the distance white clouds were breaking, and shafts of sunlight glowed above patches of oily water.

‘They’re trying to restrict movement around the city, putting up a lot of barricades, something about not wanting too many people out on the streets, but I managed to flannel a couple of passes out of Davenport that should get us anywhere we want to go. Where do you live?’

‘I’m staying with an aunt in Oakley Square,’ May explained, leaning on the white stone balustrade and looking down into the water. ‘Camden Town. I’ll be able to walk in if the services are disrupted. I was born in Vauxhall, not a very salubrious area, but my mother managed to get me into a decent school.’ He laughed. ‘They’ve shifted all the children from our local Mixed Infants down to Kent for the duration. Poor people of Kent.’

‘I heard a country woman on the wireless say that she would rather take a savage from Fiji than a child from Birmingham,’ said Bryant. ‘Those kids will probably give the countryside a good shaking up.’

‘I take it you’re a town man, then.’

‘Lord, yes. I went on a hop-picking holiday once and was never so miserable in my entire life, although I did learn how to poach rabbits. I’d hate to be out of the city and miss all this. Everyone’s so friendly all of a sudden. I think it’s because we’re part of something at last, not pulling in different directions. Can’t you feel it? Things are shaking up instead of sticking where they’ve always been. Remember how everyone used to hate the ARP wardens before Christmas, going on about how they did nothing except play darts and cards all day? Look at them now, being treated like heroes. I think some good will come of it. The old sangfroid is starting to melt, don’t you think? Lords and layabouts sharing the same misfortunes.’

‘Spoken like a communist,’ joked May.

‘I believe in liberty but I’d fight for it, I’m not a conchie,’ said Bryant hastily. The wind was watering his pale eyes. ‘I’d like to have fought in the Spanish Civil War but I didn’t know anyone else who was going. There aren’t too many people in Whitechapel who’ve heard of Franco. I think it’s mostly the upper classes who can afford to support their ideologies, not us proles. And you don’t have to be politically astute to know that Neville Chamberlain behaved like an arse. I was sixteen when I saw newsreel footage of Hitler’s Congress of Unity and Strength, and I remember thinking, nothing good will come of this. All those fervent torchlight parades. If I could see it, why couldn’t politicians? Are you a Catholic?’

May was taken aback. ‘No, C of E. Why?’

‘You have the unperplexed attitude of a boy raised by priests. Practising?’

‘Not terribly regular.’

‘So what’s your take on all this?’

May looked gloomily into the shadows beneath the bridge. ‘I suppose we’re being tested.’

‘Think you’ll come out of it with your faith intact?’

‘I’m not too sure about that.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Very possibly not.’

‘Interesting. A war to shake the faith of the Church. Combat is supposed to strengthen one’s resolve. Well, we’d better be getting back. There’s not much on at the moment, but I’m expecting Sidney Biddle after luncheon. Davenport wants me to make him feel welcome.’

‘I’ve got some sandwiches,’ said May, pulling a square of greaseproof paper from his jacket pocket. ‘Egg and mustard cress, do you want one?’

‘I’ve got ham and beetroot, we can have half each. Let’s eat them here. We might see a plane come down.’

‘It’s a deal.’

The two young men stood in the middle of the bridge exchanging sandwiches as the first of the Luftwaffe’s bombers appeared low over the Thames estuary.

6

ACTS OF VIOLENCE

May closed the transcribed files on the laptop and shut its lid. Beyond the bedroom window above the pub, a car stereo was playing hip-hop at a deafening volume, the bass notes shaking the glass in its casement. The elderly detective rose and watched the vehicle fishtail rubber streaks on tarmac. His partner Bryant had always liked noise, thriving in the dirt and chaos of the city streets.

May’s instinct, when away from Bryant but thinking of him, was to pick up the telephone and call for a chat. The day before the funeral he had absently done just that, and had been disconcerted to hear Bryant speaking—in that confused tone he adopted with all technological devices—on his office voicemail line.

Now he rang the unit and asked to be put through to Liberty DuCaine.

‘We’ve got no incendiary evidence matching the blast pattern yet,’ Liberty told him. ‘It’s hard to say what sort of device caused it. There was a piece of shell casing found in the next street, but it’s still being analysed.’ He sounded harassed and distracted. There was a lot of noise in the background.

‘But you have a team on the case, don’t you?’ asked May.

‘Sort of. There’s a lot going on here at the moment.’

‘This was a bomb attack that killed a senior police officer, for God’s sake. It should receive the highest priority.’

‘I’m aware of that, Mr May.’ Liberty’s voice was filled with patience. ‘But right now we have a full-scale drug war on our hands. Two gangs of fifteen-year-old wannabe Yardies running around the streets of Lambeth armed with AR-15 laser-sighted armour-piercing rifles that fire nine hundred and fifty rounds a minute. Damned things are accurate to six hundred yards, not that any of them can shoot straight. The little bastards are buying them from American websites. We’ve got two civilians dead and one of our men down. You must have seen the newspapers.’

‘Forgive me, no, I haven’t picked up a copy. The unit’s not supposed to get involved with stuff like that.’

‘Under these conditions everyone has to help out. I’m sorry, Mr May, I understand how upset you are, but things are bad here. I promise we’ll have someone call you as soon as there’s any news.’

May thanked him and hung up. He felt obsolete. The new crimes infecting the crowded city streets were almost beyond his comprehension. People were being shot—shot!—for the most trivial reasons: a jumped traffic light, an altercation in McDonald’s, simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. When had it started to go so wrong?

May thought back to the war, and his first meeting with Arthur, and that led him to the murder. The first one, his first sight of a dead body. That had changed everything. A fall from innocence, and the start of a lifelong fascination with violent crime.

7

FINAL STEPS

The lights. The wings. The devil’s face. She saw them again and again, until she was dizzy, until she felt sick. The slender woman, her arms raised tightly above her head, spun on the empty stage until she began to fall.

Tanya realized how tired she was when her pirouette nearly toppled her into the orchestra pit. It was Sunday, 10 November 1940, and she had been rehearsing the whole of the afternoon. Angry with the failure of her limbs, she continued to work on her solo long after the rest of the company had grown tired of competing with her. Now the cast had gone across to the Spice of Life pub, hoping that an air raid would force them all down to the cellar, where they could stay, hurricane-lit and vintage-fed, for the remainder of the evening. They had left her alone with her restless energy, a solitary figure marking out her steps in the penumbral auditorium.

This time she had only just managed to stop at the edge of the stage. As she walked off into the wings to collect her towel, the muscles in her calves trembled with exertion. Stan Lowe, the stage doorkeeper, was supposed to wait for her to leave, but even he had gone off to the Spice. Her stomach was unsettled. She found a foil-wrapped chunk of marzipan chocolate in her bag, and chewed it. London theatres were beautiful but claustrophobic, designed to present the tableaux of traditional plays, and although the stage of the Palace was deep, it was not wide enough to be occupied by a cast of their size. Choreography had to be reined in, grand gestures expunged from Tanya’s repertoire of movement.

This was not to be a late-nineteenth-century production of the kind usually associated with Jacques Offenbach; there were no monobosoms, trains, boned corsets and fans to restrict the movement of the dancers, leaving them with only the jumps and lifts of a traditional ballet corps. Instead their gestures were to be free and unrestricted, but this created problems in the finite space, especially now that the wings had been deepened. Tanya wondered how she could augment her moves without antagonizing everyone. The wings, necessary to hide the ranks of dancers from the audience’s view while they were queuing to go on, ate into the performance space, reducing the area in which they could operate.