Bryant & May on the Loose

∨ Bryant & May on the Loose ∧

25

Visions and Portents

Lying on her back only increased the uncomfortable fullness in her stomach. Dragging the duvet over her breasts, Lizzi turned onto her side, wondering how anyone managed to bear a child in the heat of the summer. It was only May. My child is turning within me, just as I turn, she thought, as if a secret alliance had already formed between them. Reaching out her arm, she distantly registered the fact that the other side of the bed was empty, but knew that Xander often rose early to work on his computer in the kitchen.

The soft click of the front door told her that he had returned from outside, so she assumed he had been to the Cally Road gym. “Xander,” she called out, “where are you?”

“I’m sorry.” His muscular frame appeared in the doorway. He was wearing his ragged brown sweater with the holes in the sleeves. As he tugged off his knitted cap, she saw that his hair had not been combed in days.

“Look at you,” she said sleepily. “Hope no-one’s seen you like that.”

“I’ve been organising the picket,” he told her. “Marianne Waters is going to be at the mall for the ground-breaking ceremony, and the press will be in attendance. We’re planning to lie down in front of the tractors as they enter the site. I had to meet the others at ground zero and it’s been raining, so I put on my old clothes.”

She had asked him to attend the Camden pre-natal clinic with her on Thursday morning, just as she had several times before, but he had clearly forgotten again. It was probably for the best, Lizzi decided; he would only get in her way and slow things down. She loved him, but wished he would show as much passion about his unborn child as he did about his protest meetings. Tomorrow morning, as ADAPT announced the next construction phase of their shopping plaza, a long-disputed area would finally be fenced off, and Xander would begin another round of protests.

“Did you remember to ring the Islington Gazette?” she asked him.

“Damn, I forgot.”

“You won’t get any local coverage unless you remember to tell the media. And you’ve got to sign on for work.”

“I’m not sure there’s going to be time,” he told her, scratching his hair flat. “I’ve still got to finish painting the banners.”

She pushed herself up on one arm. “You have to do it, Xander. We can’t live on my salary.”

“I have to prioritise what’s important. We want more provision for public housing, not more offices, and we’re asking for the area’s historic pagan connections to be respected. If we don’t picket the offices of ADAPT tomorrow they’ll continue to run roughshod over everyone, tear up the last of the old town boundaries and build another soulless business district that has no respect for the area’s original layout. The ancient hedgerows – ”

“I know all about the ancient hedgerows,” Lizzi interrupted, climbing out of bed. “You’ve told me a thousand times.” Mired in endless controversy, the battle over the sale of the railway’s grounds had continued in London courts for nearly three decades. “The public consultations are all finished, and the appeals have all failed. Ten people lying in a field isn’t going to make any difference now. It gives you no credibility, Xander. Worse, it makes you look stupid. Protests are no longer won by tree-huggers; they’re established in courts of law along proper legal guidelines.”

“I didn’t think you’d give up on me as well. I thought you were on my side.”

“I am, but we’ve also got to start thinking of ourselves. You’re going to be a father soon. I want to be able to rely on you.”

“I can’t just suddenly abandon my ideals, Lizzi. What they’re doing is illegal, but the police don’t care. We have to protect the disputed property twenty-four hours a day.”

“The people you’ve got in those tents look like tramps!”

“That’s because there are no washing facilities. Look, I’ll make you some breakfast, but then I have to go. The burial grounds of St Pancras Old Church will be under threat from the new building extension. Somebody has to show these people how to lead a protest. I have to conduct the rehearsal. Somebody has to care.” He stormed off into the kitchen to clatter about with breakfast dishes.

Lizzi often thought back to the University of London party where they had first met. Their class differences had been more pronounced in those days. He had introduced himself as Alexander Toth. It seemed that his family owned quite a lot of land in the city, but he had fallen out with them and was living in a squat in Bloomsbury. Gradually his accent had changed until it had become virtually cockney. Lizzi, a genuinely working-class girl born within the sound of Bow Bells, had spent her teenage years trying to speak with a more middle-class accent, and at some point they had passed each other, heading in opposite linguistic directions.

Xander’s idealism and commitment had excited her at first, but Lizzi could not help wondering if his devotion to a lost cause was a form of autism. He focussed on the reclamation of King’s Cross to the exclusion of everything else. She had grown jealous of the protestors who shared his days, but she also pitied them, a straggling handful of unemployables, embittered single fathers and disgruntled ex-council workers who devoted their time to the noble art of failure. If they genuinely cared about restoring a healthy environment they would come up with realistic plans, plant trees and flowerbeds, remove graffiti, start youth groups, instead of sitting outside the headquarters of companies with incomprehensible slogans painted on bedsheets and leaflets demanding the return of pagan sun temples.

At first she had listened to Xander’s angry rhetoric and offered her help, but at some point the effort of believing in him had exhausted her. He thought he could turn back time to reach an arcadian idyll that had only existed in myths and legends. What he wanted was impossible. The history of King’s Cross was murky and violent, a clash of obscene wealth and grotesque poverty, filth and gold, peacocks and coal dust. She accepted that its new incarnation as an upmarket business district was a natural economic progression. She needed the old Xander to return, but to do that he would have to be convinced to let go of his cause.

There are six weeks remaining to the birth of my little boy, she thought. If I can’t change his ways by then, I’ll raise my son alone.

♦

At seven-thirty on Thursday morning, the detectives met with their team and planned out the day’s schedule, but within minutes the meeting had fallen apart in disarray, largely as a result of Raymond Land’s foul mood. By agreeing to resolve the case by the end of the week or have themselves removed from the investigation, he had created a painful paradox for his own future. Failure would doom the PCU’s plans for reinstatement and finally free him from his loathed position as so-called Acting Temporary Chief, but success would enhance his reputation and trap him at the unit. As a consequence Land was behaving like a traffic light with an electrical short, switching plans until everyone was confused.

“Raymond, let me handle this,” said John May finally. “I’ll put in a call to Kasavian’s superior and explain that the investigation has expanded. I don’t think he’ll have much choice but to extend the deadline. Why don’t you go and get some air?”

“We’re in King’s Cross,” said Land despondently. “There isn’t any air.”

“April, you saw Delaney’s ex-wife yesterday; what did you get?”

“Not a lot. He’d fallen behind with his child-support payments and the ex was trying to stop him seeing his daughter until he paid up. He was nuts about the kid.”

“That’s tragic,” said Banbury, shaking his head in sorrow. “If he hadn’t come back from work early he wouldn’t have surprised a burglar. He might still be around for his little girl now.”

“You’re convinced this is a burglary that went wrong?” asked May.

“The signs are clear as day, all over the flat. The problem is that it doesn’t fit with the beheading. If it was a hit, there’s no reason why his killer would turn the place over. But you don’t carve someone up like that just because a robbery goes wrong.”

“What about Delaney’s girlfriend, have you tracked her down?”

“She’s coming in this morning,” replied Longbright.

“Anything else on the first victim? Colin, have you been back over the premises?”

“I’ve had the floorboards up, boss. Nothing. I’m taking one more look later today.”

“Before you do that, take Meera with you to the site where they found the second body,” said May. “ADAPT has got some kind of PR announcement happening there at ten this morning. There’s a rumour that the event is going to be disrupted by picketers. And Arthur – ” He looked around. “Where the hell is Arthur?”

“He’s on his smoking deck,” said Longbright.

“What smoking deck?”

“That’s what he calls it. The little iron balcony at the back of the building.”

“Go and get him, will you?” May ran a hand over the nape of his neck. “Keeping you lot in one room is like herding cats. Who hasn’t got anything to do? Renfield, do you feel like doing door-to-door?”

“Not really, no.” Renfield was also in a lousy mood, knowing that he had to sneak behind everyone’s backs all week to report to Faraday.

“Fine, then, it falls to you: I want the rest of the statements, anyone who knew Delaney, or saw him, or employed him, on my desk by the end of the day. Come on, ladies and gentlemen, I want you thinking beyond the obvious.”

“You’re looking for me?” Bryant sauntered in, still smouldering from pipe tobacco.

“You can’t use that platform as a smoking area; it doesn’t look safe,” May warned. The balcony had once contained a block-and-tackle for raising cargo into the building, but now the iron framework was rusted through, so that the entire cage shifted when any weight was placed upon it.

“Can I enjoy my pipe in here?”

“Certainly not,” said Land.

“Then I shall continue to indulge this innocent pleasure on my deck. What would you like me to do?”

“I thought you might like to help me find out who is leaving body parts all over the neighbourhood. You could lend a hand, preferably one that’s still attached to an arm.”

“Has anyone ever told you you’d make a first-class nightclub comic?”

“No.”

“They never will. I think I can help you with the vexed question of extremities,” said Bryant, tearing open a bag of mints and doling them out. “I was pondering the problem just now. Did you know that the Celtic area of Penton, part of King’s Cross, is directly connected with the severing of human heads?”

Land looked blankly back, as if struggling to decipher what he had just heard.

“It’s true. The Celts believed that the spirit dwelt in the head, and built a sacred mound in which they buried the heads of their enemies. This is the mound that was known as the Penton, hence Pentonville, town of the sacrificial mound. It is also in the diocese of St Pancras, who was himself beheaded. It would seem that the sighting of the Horned One, our chap in the stag’s outfit, and the headless victims are historically linked. King’s Cross is a land of great mystical significance, after all.”

“No, no! I will not go down this route, Bryant.” Land raised his hands in complaint. “One minute everything is normal, and the next you’ll have crackpots with spirit-meters and dowsing rods taking over the place.”

“Look, it’s very simple,” Bryant explained patiently. “St Pancras Church as we know it was founded in the third century, but it’s built on a temple to Mithras, and the area has deep connections with the occult. The Horned One is intent on reclaiming his land. I’ve been working too, you know, interviewing witnesses and checking through local records, and I think this vision which has been spotted on the King’s Cross construction site is intended to be regarded as an incarnation of the great god Pan himself, Jack-in-the-Green, London’s oldest and most enduring myth. Now, I’m not saying it is him, of course, merely that it is a representation.”

“Why do you think this mythical creature would leave a body in a freezer? Why are you so sure that the events are connected?” May asked his partner. Sometimes Bryant tried too hard to join facts together.

“If you understand the motivation, everything else follows,” said Bryant, screening out reasonable argument. “Think it through. Once the bulldozers move in, the battle is lost. There are no valuable buildings to save on the site, no architectural wonders to fight for, just derelict factories and barren waste-ground used by prostitutes and drug addicts, so who could possibly raise an objection when companies offer to pump millions into a neighbourhood?” Bryant raised a wrinkled finger. “Ah, but imagine someone with a different agenda, a plan to restore the area’s lost religious significance, someone still intent on disrupting the building schedule. What’s the best way to do that? Complain to the board of directors? Forget it; it won’t work, because the consultations have all been concluded. Corporations pay huddles of lawyers vast fortunes to crush the council’s paltry opposition teams. So how about simply frightening off the workers, many of whom are migrants with a limited grasp of English who’ve been plonked down into a strange land? Visions and portents. Evil omens. Simple, cheap and extremely effective.”

“That’s the best you can come up with, is it? The Scooby-Doo defence? It was the mill owner dressed as a ghostly stag? Plus, it doesn’t give us any clue as to who might be responsible,” said May.

“Oh, I think it does,” Bryant disagreed. “In fact, we can meet up with him this morning if you like. But I warn you, identifying him and proving his culpability are going to be two entirely separate problems.”

“It sounds to me like he doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

“That’s precisely what makes him so dangerous,” Bryant warned.