Bryant And May On The Loose - A Peculiar Crimes Unit Mystery Part 24

'I don't know. Cruelty, savagery. That part is still a mystery. You have to admit it makes more sense than Renfield's solution.'

'But if Cavendish's killer is cleaning up the mess he made, it would be logical to go after the last of the group who knows his ident.i.ty-Richard Standover.'

'Exactly,' said Bryant. 'When a man becomes involved in murder he opens himself to the same risks faced by his victim. You're not bringing in a killer, John, you're bringing in someone who's about to be killed.'

45

COMPLETE

Richard Standover worried about his collection.

Now that it was finally complete, something indefinable had been lost. That magical, mystical day in 1968 had been catalogued and pinned down, every last minute accounted for. He had been there, at location number five, reading a Beano comic on the park bench in the graveyard attached to St Pancras Old Church, when the Fab Four had turned up with their photographers.

They were rowdy and filled with laughter, and he was seven years old. John Lennon had insisted that he join them in the group shot on the bench, and had even put his arm around his shoulders. Pa.s.sers-by had stopped to gawp through the gates of the churchyard, but were too awed to come in. People were in those days. It was a working cla.s.s area; the old'uns were dismissive of pop stars, and the young were shy.

The photographs were taken, then all four were off with a smile and a wave to be filmed in a flower bed of crimson hollyhocks beside the hospital buildings. Paul McCartney was in a pink suit, George Harrison wore a bright blue shirt and orange-striped trousers. The heat of the afternoon sun was starting to fade. Cool green shadows crept over the lawns as the watchers dispersed. Standover had remained on the park bench, touching the wooden slats where his heroes had sat, laughing and joking with him as if they were his older brothers.

It was the day his collecting habit had begun, and now the most important part of it was complete, sealing the faded memories of his childhood behind cardboard and clear plastic forever.

Going on-line, he printed out a boarding pa.s.s for a 7:20 a.m. Easyjet flight from Luton and threw a few clothes into a holdall. He would rent out the flat until it could be sold, but the slender envelope of photographs would remain in his hand until he arrived in Majorca, where it could take its place in the doc.u.mented schedule of that extraordinary day.

His cleaning lady had promised to drop off her keys before he left. When the doorbell rang, he a.s.sumed it was her.

Renfield and Bimsley knew something was wrong as they approached the block of apartments in Bloomsbury where Standover lived. The lighting in the front-facing third-floor living room was askew; Renfield had seen enough rooms where fights had occurred. A lamp had been knocked to the floor, its shade displaced. A shadow stretched, the upturned beam pa.s.sed across the opposite wall, then the ceiling, rolling fast.

'I know these flats,' said Bimsley. 'There are exits all over the b.l.o.o.d.y place.'

Renfield broke into a run, with Bimsley close behind him. He powered through the unlatched main door and up the stairs, through the open apartment door and into the dim hall. He could already see the bright scarlet smears in the room ahead. Standover was on his back, his right hand still frozen in a posture of defence, the left gripping his throat, ebbing rivulets of blood pouring between his fingers. He was already dead.

'Roof,' said Renfield. 'Come with me.'

There were smears and splashes on the staircase above, and on the landing over that. The exit door led to the lift mechanism and a shingled flat roof set in a hollow square, four apartment buildings with an internal garden at their centre. The low London night was yellow enough to see ahead, but they heard his crunching steps first. Renfield led by experience, with Bimsley hard on his heels.

At the far edge they saw him, a small figure in a knitted brown cap, moving with shocking agility. They saw him look back in panic, then brace, but could not believe he would actually jump. The noise of his landing was immense; a wide gap onto the next building, too wide for men as heavy as Renfield and Bimsley to chance, one floor down and onto an angled metal-skimmed awning that allowed little purchase.

Bimsley was calling in the description as Renfield searched for another way across. They ran back to the roof door, but four flights of stairs took them outside with no obvious way around to the next building. Even as they ran, they knew they were dealing with someone unusual, a man who knew exactly where he was going. They would search now, but their quarry had gone. Standover was dead, and somewhere in Bloomsbury's confusing maze of streets was a blood-smeared madman.

Renfield was always angry, and never more so than when a life which might have been saved was cut short. He had no way of knowing that in one sense, Standover had died with his world completed at last.

46

PIECES

Marianne Waters was the kind of woman who only noticed members of staff when they made a mistake, and she regarded everyone of lower status as a member of staff, whether they worked for her or not. She handed her overcoat to the maitre d' of the discreet Italian restaurant without engaging eye contact and found her own way to Oskar Kasavian's table. She had no time for pleasantries and no facility for small talk.

'Oskar, don't ever try to palm me off with one of your juniors again, do you understand?' She poured herself a gla.s.s of wine but did not remove her jacket. She could unsettle anyone by confounding their expectations. 'I thought the Home Office had cleared out people like Faraday years ago.'

'He's a legacy.' Kasavian sighed. 'His father-'

'I know who his father was. The children of famous parents are nearly always less talented, which is why they make such messes of their lives. From now on, I'll deal only with you.'

'I don't know what more you want, Marianne.' Kasavian regarded her coldly. 'Your construction crews are all back at work.'

'I wanted Alexander Toth charged, not released. Your special unit let him go.' Kasavian was shocked at the news. He had specifically asked Faraday to plant a spy at the PCU and get feedback every night.

'Now the press are crawling all over this multiple-murder case. The media's desperate to suggest that it's the tip of a corruption scandal and they're sniffing around us, but so far of course they have no evidence. We can't be investigated now, not at this crucial juncture. Our investors are nervous enough as it is. One has already pulled out, and the others are keeping a close eye on developments. n.o.body wants a spotlight shone on their finances or their internal policies, and they certainly don't want to attract the attention of the Inland Revenue Services. I'm not saying there are any irregularities, just that any audit would throw us off schedule. I need to know what you're doing for us, Oskar. I want your press officers to get something out by tomorrow morning at the latest.'

She knew-everyone knew-about Kasavian's affair with Janet Ramsey, the editor of Hard News Hard News. Strong women were Oskar's weakness. Marianne Waters was surprised and a little insulted that he hadn't made a pa.s.s at her, not that she would have given him encouragement; she was seeing a twenty-two-year-old Lithuanian barman from the Sanderson Hotel who made up in vigour what he lacked in experience.

'I'm not one of your suppliers, Marianne; I represent the state,' Kasavian pointed out. 'You all think you're above the law, but if we decide to investigate you, we will do so at our convenience and our leisure, without your permission.'

'I have the word of the Secretary of Trade on this,' warned Marianne. 'We have put mechanisms in place to ensure that the work is finished on time.'

'And I have the ear of the Prime Minister,' Kasavian reminded her. 'You need to remember who you're talking to. It's your job to make sure that your investors hold their nerve. Tell them the situation has been resolved.'

'Has it?'

'That's no concern of yours. The unit handling the investigation is being removed tomorrow evening. Islington and Camden will combine their CID departments and take over, and the whole thing will fall under the jurisdiction of the Commissioner of Police. He'll make the appropriate rea.s.surances. The work must be completed on schedule.'

'But not at the expense of a financial scandal. I don't want your people-'

Kasavian leaned over the table and searched her face. The effect was unnerving. 'King's Cross is a dirty area, Marianne. I suggest you go back to your office and make sure everything is thoroughly clean.' clean.'

It was a good time to fish for eels. In the dark they swam nearer to the surface, and the boy did not have a proper fishing rod. He'd owned one when he was smaller, but his father had broken it. His father smashed up everything when he was drunk. Now the boy sat beside the ca.n.a.l beneath the bridge at York Way, dangling the string and waiting for a bite. It was cold and damp here, but better than being at home listening to his parents fight.

The minutes pa.s.sed without any movement in the line. He was about to give up when the plastic Christmas tree ornament he had tied to the end of his line shivered and ducked. He pulled on the line. The weight was wrong for an eel, too heavy, too still. He had snagged the hook on something. Pulling harder with his left hand, he shone the flashlight down with his right, peering into the murky green water. Slowly a pale object began to surface.

At first the boy thought it was a shopping bag. Kneeling on the concrete lip of the basin, he tugged again and leaned closer. He could see the shape rising into view.

A pair of dark eyes stared back up at him.

47

BRIGHTENING DARKNESS

Oh, something wicked this way comes,' said Bryant with a shiver. 'I can feel it in my bones.' It was still early in the morning, and the trees behind them were rattling in the rising wind. 'Do you believe that evil can grow inside a man? A brightening darkness, like a torch in reverse?'

'I don't think you should keep putting the w.i.l.l.i.e.s up people, Bryant,' said Raymond Land. 'It's bad enough that we're having to work in some kind of satanic sorting office without you adding to the sinister atmosphere all the time.'

Land hovered uncomfortably in front of the door to the St Pancras Mortuary. The strange building unsettled him. He thought of heading back to the office, but that place was almost as bad.

'What's taking Kershaw so long?' he demanded. When he looked back, Rosa was standing in the open doorway staring up at him. Land recoiled in fright.

'He's waiting for you downstairs,' she answered, drifting back into the corridor.

'And she gives me the b.l.o.o.d.y heebie-jeebies too,' Land whispered. 'Creeping up like that. There's something extremely odd going on around here.'

'So you're finally allowing the dark history of Battlebridge to get to you,' said Bryant cheerfully. 'Good. You need shaking up a bit.'

'Why is it so gloomy in this place?' Land complained, searching the hall for the light switch. He hated being dragged out of his office, but May was over at the headquarters of ADAPT and Bryant liked having someone to talk to.

'What have you got for us, Giles?' Bryant asked as they entered the morgue. 'You have Maddox Cavendish's head now. That's all the body parts accounted for.'

'I've still got a long day in front of me,' said Kershaw. 'I can't access any information. The system won't recognise my PCU status. I'm having to use my predecessor's tutorial notes-it's very primitive methodology. I feel like a Victorian coroner, operating from old medical textbooks. At least Professor Marshall was thorough when it came to keeping records.'

'Have you got anything fresh for us?'

'Not this head, for a start. The rats have been at it. Let me show you.'

'Do you have to?'

'Perhaps you'd rather start with Mr Standover.' He crossed to the farthest autopsy table and rolled back the green plastic sheet on it. 'The puncture wound suggests the same weapon: slender, flexible, long, four-sided. I'd go for a sharpened meat skewer. He stabs behind the base of the ear and punches it hard upwards, penetrating the brain to cause instant-and I mean instant instant-death.'

'Can you be absolutely sure that it's the same attacker?' asked Land.

'Well, I can't without referral to a national DNA database, can I? Dan is dying to pick up an LCN sweep from the items he removed in Delaney's apartment, but he can't do that, either.' The Low Copy Number project could track DNA from tiny sources, but was expensive, time-consuming and only available through routes that were currently closed to the PCU.

Kershaw indicated the slashes across the victim's left palm. 'He's got a distinctive sweep from right to left, giving Standover a faint defence cut on his raised left hand. He's a little shorter than his victims, but his arms are long and strong. It's the same man all right, but now he's attacking more violently. This time he's gone a lot deeper. The earlier hits were nowhere near as deep. But I have to say that even in his anger he's got a steady, purposeful hand. He's a danger, this one, attacking in fury but always maintaining control. Very, very angry with himself.'

'Himself?' said Land in surprise. 'You mean with the victim.'

'No. Things have gone wrong for him. The first two victims were dismembered and hidden. Even if he hadn't planned to kill them, he certainly worked at hiding them. But the third and fourth were attacked with no thought of the consequences.'

'So now that his housekeeping has been completed, he can go to ground until something drives him to kill again.' Bryant was tapping an old pipe stem against his false teeth, thinking. The noise irritated everyone. 'That chap in the Midlands, former nightclub bouncer, just got convicted of murdering seventeen girls over a period of twenty years. That's what worries me.'

Silence followed as the others tried to figure out what he was talking about.

'Driven by an unstoppable anger, of course, but something else develops over time. An arrogance born of familiarity. This chap knows the area. He hides in plain sight. He's a lousy burglar, but he's accidentally become a good killer. He gets away with it; he kills again. He considers himself invulnerable. He thinks he's wiping away the traces that lead to him, but in doing so he's creating another path, one that we can follow.'

'You're a very annoying man, Bryant,' said Land suddenly. 'You're like a Blackpool fortune-teller, handing out bits of information without actually helping.'

'Well, you always have a go at me if I say what I really think.'

'Good G.o.d, if you've got any clue as to where we find this man, I think now's the time to tell us!'

'All right. First, I think the first two victims are connected by something more than the methodology. There's the area, for a start. All of the victims have been found within a tight radius. We've established that our killer lives right here, knows these streets, knows when they're busy and when they're deserted.'

'If we could access the CCTV cameras around the church and the station we might be able to pick him up,' suggested Land.

'He knows how to stay outside of their limits. Besides, it would take days to go through all the cameras and the hours of footage. What did we do before we became so reliant on technology? We managed perfectly well before, and we can again. Second point, he severed the heads for a reason, even if it's a subconscious one. He knows the history of Pentonville, St Pancras, King's Cross and Battlebridge. It's too much of a coincidence that he picked the one place in the city where such specific rites were recorded.'

'Please don't suggest he's performing human sacrifices,' groaned Land.

'I didn't say that. He's interested merely in saving his own skin, which is why he threw Xander Toth in our path. He knows we're here.'

'What?' Land all but exploded. 'How do you work that one out?'

'Look at the map. Caledonian Road, King's Cross, York Way, the railway line. Islington Met handle the east side; Camden have control of the west and south. Remember Islington had to give Delaney's body to Camden because the boundary line runs down the middle of the Caledonian Road? I checked the maps at Camden Town Hall; it doesn't, not quite. The boundary line stops one road back. The two areas don't meet up. There's a small gap in the middle that neither of them covers-the west side of the Caledonian Road isn't patrolled by anyone. That's where he chose to leave the body, and that's exactly where we arrived a couple of weeks later. We've been asking around, walking the streets, conducting interviews. The local shopkeepers already know about the PCU moving in. If this is our man's patch, he'll know, too. The advantage to us is that others must know him him. Beneath the commuter crowds this is still a village, with residents, store owners, street vendors, neighbours who see each other every day. You can't operate here and not be seen.'

'We've been talking to people ever since we arrived,' Land pointed out.

'We haven't asked the right questions before,' Bryant replied. 'Who is the area's most vocal resident? Who knows everything that's going on?'

'Toth,' said Land.

'Precisely. Toth's a historian; he runs the local community Web site; he's made it his business to know about everyone who lives here. We were too busy treating him as a suspect to think of him as a lead. I'm sure Toth knows the ident.i.ty of the man we're looking for. And that means our killer knows Toth. And if he's really planning to clean up all of his loose ends, Toth's life could also be in danger.'

'We'd better not find this one dead,' Land warned. 'We'll take my car.'

48

ELEMENTS OF CHANCE

You stay here,' warned Land as they pulled up. The apartment looked miserable and forbidding in the dim rain. 'There's no point in you running up all those stairs. I'll be quicker.'