Bryant And May On The Loose - A Peculiar Crimes Unit Mystery Part 8

On that night, they too saw the horned man. He was draped in deerskins and wearing metallic stag antlers that shone in the streetlamps. He stood against the low wall of the bridge across the ca.n.a.l, sometimes moving out of sight when a car pulled up at the traffic lights.

They were picking their way over the field from Battlebridge Road to York Way, going for a drink before heading for the Keys club, and the stag-man was handing out flyers; several had been tossed aside and were tumbling away toward the embankment. Izabella had thought nothing of it. So many flyers were handed out, usually at the end of the night. She picked one up and tried to read it in the dim light: a horned skull and some kind of poem. The printing was poor and she could only catch the last four lines.

Long have two springs in dull stagnation slept, But taught at length by subtle art to flow, They rise; forth from oblivion's bed they rise; And manifest their vengeance to mankind.

What was it advertising, a Goth pub? There was nothing printed on the back. The stag-man was still there when they left the Keys several hours later, and this time his appearance was more memorable, perhaps because he stood out in stark silhouette against the electric darkness. From the way he was weaving about beside the bridge, he appeared to have been drinking.

She recalled thinking that the sky was strange, a sickly ochre reflection of the radiant city beneath. The air was cold and gritty, and left a cuprous tang in the mouth, like being near a steelworks or in the proximity of blood. The night was not right. They had argued over something ridiculous-a spilled drink-and left. A lone girl was tottering ahead of them, fawn-thin legs in a too-short dress. She looked awkward, frozen and friendless, as if, leached of life and colour, she might fall over and expire at any moment.

Izabella was still sniping at Piotr on their way to the night bus stop, a hectoring banter they had evolved when they were feeling frazzled and fractious. She saw the thin girl approaching the bridge from the corner of her eye, saw her long black hair whip up around her dark eyes, and then the stag-man was there as well, towering over her. Backlit by the ca.n.a.l lamps behind the bridge, Izabella saw his antlers glitter and fracture the light. She heard the girl scream or laugh hysterically, but the sound was s.n.a.t.c.hed away by the wind. She watched in shock as he lifted her up, placing her under one arm, and seemed to drop beneath the bridge.

By the time Izabella reached the spot with Piotr, there was no sign of either of them. No ripple on the petrol-iridescent surface of the ca.n.a.l, only the cold breeze from the tunnel and a fading sigh in the trees, as if the pair had evaporated into the thickening mist like a pair of exorcised ghosts.

16

FIRST DAY

I spent two hours at something called the King's Cross Police Shop in the early hours of this morning, waiting to be seen, and after I got to make a report they made a phone call and finally sent me to you, only you weren't open, 'Izabella told DS Janice Longbright. All I wanted to do was explain what I saw, okay?' She took a look around the room and wrinkled her nose, trying to make sense of it. 'This isn't a police station. What is this place?' spent two hours at something called the King's Cross Police Shop in the early hours of this morning, waiting to be seen, and after I got to make a report they made a phone call and finally sent me to you, only you weren't open, 'Izabella told DS Janice Longbright. All I wanted to do was explain what I saw, okay?' She took a look around the room and wrinkled her nose, trying to make sense of it. 'This isn't a police station. What is this place?'

'We're in the process of moving in,' said Longbright. 'We're a specialist unit.'

'What do you specialise in, pest control? I just saw something in the hall that looked like a rat.'

Smart mouth, thought Longbright. She'll make a good witness She'll make a good witness. 'Yeah, we have a few of those. Look, I've read your statement and I know you're telling the truth about the man you saw, but are you sure he actually abducted someone?'

'I was with my-' She stopped herself. 'A friend. He saw it, too. The dressed-up guy, he was pretty big-'

'How big?'

'I don't know-he had to reach down to her, he put her under his arm, actually under his arm, she was a skinny little thing, then when I looked back they were gone.'

'You think they went down onto the ca.n.a.l?'

'No idea. The path to the waterside is further back along the road. I'd have seen them if they'd used it, but I suppose they might have ducked into the tunnel. They disappeared so quickly I thought I must have imagined it.'

'Did you?'

'No, I didn't.'

'This girl, she didn't fight back?'

'I don't know. I guess so-I mean I saw her hands go up in the air and I think I heard her scream.'

'What do you mean, you think?' think?'

'At first I thought it was a laugh, like maybe she thought he was joking, but it turned into something that sounded like a scream.'

'What did she look like? If I was trying to recognise her in the street, how would you describe her to me?'

'Skinny, very pale, wearing a short pink skirt with little black ruffles, black high heels, dark hair. Maybe there was more colour-you can't really tell under those yellow streetlights. She was kind of invisible, like everyone else who comes out of a club. I didn't see her face.'

Not much to put out a MisPer for, thought Longbright. 'And no-one apart from you saw what happened?'

'No, it gets really quiet around there before the Keys shuts down. I couldn't do anything because they were too far away and it happened so fast, but you hear about bad things happening to girls by themselves, and I hate the idea that she might have been abducted without anyone coming forward.'

'You did the right thing. I'm sorry they made it difficult for you. The problem I have is that your description of this girl doesn't give us much to go on. We can get some leaflets posted around the club, ask around, see if anyone's failed to check in at home, but we can't do much more unless she's reported missing.'

'This guy was handing out flyers, so he's not trying to hide himself away, is he? I thought he was advertising a club but it was some kind of poem.' She dug in her pocket and produced a crumpled ball of saffron paper.

As Izabella left, she pa.s.sed Constantin waiting in the corridor. His right leg and ankle were heavily bandaged and he was on painkillers that were sending him to sleep, but he still took a great interest in her backside.

'The guy out there saw him too,' said April, dropping a report on the arrangement of tea chests that served as Longbright's desk. 'He was so shocked that he fell down the unlit stairwell behind him and broke his ankle.'

'What was he doing there?' asked Longbright, digging out a pair of mad rhinestone-winged gla.s.ses with which to skim the statement.

'He's an electrician working on the site's new mall,' April explained. 'There's a hypermarket going in, and they're running behind schedule. He was terrified. He could have been killed. Luckily they hadn't started pouring concrete, so he landed in dirt. This might have started as someone's idea of a joke, but it's going beyond that.'

'You don't need me to re-interview him, do you?' Longbright asked. 'Nothing's working here, and I could really use some time to get straightened out.'

'Well, he has an interesting twist on what he saw.'

'What do you mean?'

'He's Romanian and very superst.i.tious. He insists he saw-Hang on.' She checked her notes. 'Veles, the Slavic G.o.d of sacred animals. According to this guy, it's a forest creature that has horns like a ram or a stag, and protects hallowed land from enemies. He's refusing to go back to work on the site, and he's told his friends not to go back, either. He insists it's an indication that something evil has been disturbed. That the land wasn't meant to be built on.'

'Hm. Is he cute?'

'I'd go to a boxing match with him if he promised to let me touch his chest afterwards.'

'Fair enough,' said Longbright. 'Send him in.'

'You're enjoying this, aren't you?' said May, narrowing his eyes at his old partner. 'Look at you, sitting there surrounded by dirt and chaos, eating your Licorice Allsorts and reading witness statements about a character from Eastern European mythology. You think you're back on track. This is not an office, Arthur, it's a chamber of horrors. We've got bare bulbs in the ceiling, no phones, no computer network, no authorisation, no legal existence at all, a broken toilet and hardly any floorboards. By comparison, Mornington Crescent was Silicon Valley. I should never have let you pick a rented property without consulting me.'

'It was cheap,' said Bryant, happily patting the arms of his new chair, a studded green leather number on broken castors that exuded horsehair stuffing like a disembowelled corpse. 'Besides, I knew you had your hands full getting the team back together. We'll manage somehow.'

May looked up at the blackened ceiling and wrinkled his nose. 'I'm wondering what was here before; I keep finding joss sticks and pots of strange-smelling incense behind the doors. Poor Raymond nearly had a conniption fit when he saw the place. I think he actually started pining for his old office.'

'Raymond's only happy when he's got something to complain about.'

'Chief, how's your knowledge of local poetry?' asked Long-bright, sticking her head around the place where the door should have been. 'Message from the stag-man.' She threw the balled-up flyer onto the arrangement of crates that const.i.tuted a pair of makeshift desks.

Bryant hooked up his reading gla.s.ses and unfurled the page. The silence that followed was broken by a piece of ceiling falling down.

'I know this; it's part of a long chunk of doggerel written when Battlebridge was still a spa town of royal patronage. It's always quoted in books about the actress Nell Gwynne. The last line has been altered:... from oblivion's bed they rise; And manifest their vengeance to mankind from oblivion's bed they rise; And manifest their vengeance to mankind. But it's not supposed to be "vengeance," it should be "virtues."'

'Amazing,' May exclaimed. 'When I went to pick him up this morning, I had to wait twenty minutes while he remembered where he'd left his shoes, but he can recall a one-word mistake in a two-and-a-half-century-old poem.'

'It's not a mistake,' Bryant explained, 'it's a threat. Janice, get everyone together, will you? I think we should talk to them in our new briefing room.'

'And where might that be?' asked Longbright.

'The big black-painted room opposite. They can sit on the floor and take notes.'

'I'm not one to make a fuss, but there are rats.'

'Let Crippen out. He'll take care of them. I'll be there in a minute.' Bryant tore open a cardboard carton and dragged out a stack of books. As May watched, his partner seemed to be reversing the ageing process, becoming visibly younger and happier before his eyes.

It had taken only one working day for the team to re-create a semblance of their old offices. Now they had time to reacquaint themselves with each other. 'Hey, Jack.' Dan Banbury held out his hand to Renfield. 'How have you been coping for the last month?'

'Just been getting on with it,' replied the taciturn sergeant.

'Raymond, I thought you were determined to stay retired,' said May.

'Yes, I thought so too,' Land admitted despondently.

'Come on, everyone, this is great, we're all here again, feel the love, group hug,' said Bimsley. Someone threw a piece of wood at him.

Giles Kershaw had popped in from the Coroner's Office in Camley Street to welcome his old friends back and offer them his limited facilities at the morgue. Even Meera accepted a bear hug from Colin Bimsley, telling herself that it would probably never happen again.

When Bryant entered the room he received a round of applause. 'All right, you lot,' he called, 'settle down, we're losing time. John, run through the salient points, will you?'

May stepped forward. 'In order to make this work we have to be very organised,' he told them. 'I know the place is a dump-we won't even have a functioning bathroom until Friday at the earliest, so you'll have to use the one in the pub opposite-but the freedom we have does give us a few advantages.'

'The Home Office won't be able to find us,' remarked Bimsley, causing laughter.

'That's true, we have a few days in hand before the old restrictions kick in. They want this so-called "gang killing" dealt with before word gets out, and we have to work with them. If they've covered up our existence, the press won't know where to look for us, but even so I reckon we only have two or three days' grace. You'll have read Janice's notes on what we have so far, which isn't much at all-no positive ID on the body, no cause of death, no motive, no suspects.'

'Situation normal, then,' said Meera. There was more laughter.

'We have an approximate date of demise-a week ago, around last Tuesday-we think our victim was a welder, and he probably wasn't killed on the site. Islington CID's only suspect has been released on bail. A gentleman named Rafi Abd al-Qaadir-have I p.r.o.nounced that right?-who purchased the shop's lease. Oh, and the original owner of the property has been traced to Nigeria. We're waiting for the Lagos police to interview him, but you won't be surprised to hear that they're being uncooperative and are refusing to tell us when that will be.'

'So we have no leads at all?' asked Banbury. 'I don't know how we're supposed to work without access to police databases.'

'I found traces of mud that appear to match the construction site up the road,' said Kershaw, 'where they're building the new King's Cross development. But it's all over the area, trodden into the pavements and gutters. It's probably just transferred material.'

'Unfortunately,' said May, 'there are more welders and general building workers in King's Cross than anywhere else in London right now, which is going to make your job much harder. Start with all the site foremen, see if they're missing anyone. We need to hit all the shops on the Cally Road and find out if anyone saw the door to number seventy-three being forced. Try the tattoo parlours in Camden, see if there's anything unusual about the ivy-wreath tattoo. And find out whether anyone noticed a van parked outside the shop at night.'

'Vans park along there all the time after six-thirty p.m.,' Ban-bury pointed out.

'Ask anyway. Janice has a task list, and you'll see that everyone has been a.s.signed a specific set of duties over the next few days. It's by-the-book stuff, and we stick to it until we get a break. Giles, if you could spare the time I'd like you to take a look at the location with Dan. We're treating it as a murder site. The place is full of plaster dust and timber-whoever did this must have left something behind. I'm sorry we haven't got any safety kit or any Airwaves-you'll have to use your mobiles to contact us, but it's not as if you'll be requesting S019.1 Any questions?' Any questions?'

'Good. Let's move onto the other odd event in the neighbourhood,' said Bryant with relish. 'The sighting of a man dressed as a stag near the Keys nightclub, and the possible abduction of a young female last night.'

Meera blew through her nose and looked at the ceiling. Bimsley shot her an angry look.

'Arthur has a very good reason for wanting to investigate this second matter,' said May. 'The issue here is that some of the more superst.i.tious workers on the surrounding building sites hail from remote villages in Eastern Europe. Stories about such creatures are apparently still part of their cultural heritage. Since these sightings, some of them have started refusing to operate on buildings nearest this creature's supposed haunts. If the employers can't keep their workers, and at the same time get wind that a gangland killing has occurred in the area, they'll start asking questions the police can't answer. At this point there can be no loss of confidence in the King's Cross project. It requires a gigantic leap of faith in a neighbourhood that has always been a.s.sociated with poverty and crime.'

'Wait, so which of these are we investigating?' asked Renfield, confused.

'Both,' said Bryant.

'The gang slaying,' said May, glancing over at his partner. 'Arthur will have to take care of the other matter by himself.'

'But if any of you would care to give me a hand, I'd be grateful.' Bryant summoned up his pitifully helpless look, even though it had long since stopped being effective.

'I suppose we're working round the clock until we get something,' said Meera.

'You're not officially working at all,' May pointed out. 'If you need money we may be able to give you a small cash advance, depending on how much Raymond can draw out on his ATM card.' He looked at Bryant and gave a grim smile. 'Just catch us a murderer before the King's Cross project crashes. That's not so much to ask, is it?'

1 armed back-up armed back-up

17

THE HORNED ONE

What did you mean by that?' asked Bryant angrily as soon as the meeting had dispersed. 'You tricked me into coming back here by telling me about the stag-man, and now you try to prevent anyone from helping me find him.'

'I didn't trick you,' said May. 'If you remember, Meera volunteered the information quite by chance and you seized upon it. We only have a short time to solve an extremely nasty murder, and we're not equipped to do the job. I can't have you directing the others to go gallivanting off in search of someone who's obsessed with stag nights.'

'A girl may have been abducted.'

'We don't have proof of that. This witness, Izabella what's-her-name-her boyfriend wouldn't back her up so we only have her opinion about what she saw, and no-one has reported a missing girl. I'm not saying you can't investigate it, just that you can't use the others until we get a grip on the case we've been hired to crack. This is another chance, Arthur-no, another last last chance. Have you got your mobile?' chance. Have you got your mobile?'

'Of course, and it's charged up, although I miss my old Storno, don't you? Fine piece of equipment, never went wrong.'

'Well, we're in the twenty-first century now, and stop changing the subject.'

'All right, I can see I'm going to have to explain why I'm so interested in our antlered abductor. Come to my office.'

'You haven't got an office. None of us has.'