Bryant & May on the Loose

∨ Bryant & May on the Loose ∧

36

St Pancras Day

Ed Tremble, Camden Council’s land registry officer, seemed to be more covered in dust than ever. Bryant was starting to wonder if they stored the man in a broom cupboard overnight. There were fresh flecks of white in his hair. He caught Bryant staring and apologised.

“Oh, I was painting my kitchen ceiling last night. It’s emulsion.”

Bryant threw him a disbelieving glance, then shifted Maggie Armitage into his line of vision. “This is my friend Mrs Armitage,” he explained. “She’s going to help me go through the files.”

“Hello, Mrs Armitage. Are you an archivist?” asked Tremble.

“No, love, I’m a witch. A white one, so don’t disturb yourself.”

“Ha-ha, very good.” Tremble looked unsure whether it was good or not. “I’ve laid out all the documents you asked for.” On the plans chest before them a large-scale ordinance survey map had been constructed from dozens of separate overlapping pages, taped together. “I’ll just be in my cupboard when you need me.”

I knew it, thought Bryant.

“That’s mine, just down there.” Tremble pointed to a wooden cubicle filled with precarious stacks of folders and shambled off.

“I like him; he’s come in useful to you, he has the aura for it. So – what are we looking for?” Maggie rubbed her hands together briskly, jangling her bracelets. It was freezing in the basement of the land records office.

“Mr Tremble has assembled copies of all of the land rights the ADAPT Group purchased before it could submit its plans to the council for approval,” Bryant explained. “The answer’s here among these documents. This case is about ownership.”

“I don’t understand why you’re so sure.”

“Maddox Cavendish had helped to buy land for ADAPT, and Terry Delaney was hired to help clear it. That leaves Adrian Jesson, who has no connections with the company beyond the fact that his body was found near its offices. Jesson was an obsessive-compulsive, involved in a bitter feud with a rival collector of memorabilia named Richard Standover. It turns out that Standover lives with Jesson’s sister in Spain, so Jesson has another reason to hate him.”

“Has anyone checked up on him?”

“Janice found out that Standover was in Majorca with the sister on the day his rival was murdered, so that’s a dead end.”

“It doesn’t mean he wasn’t involved. You should have him brought in.”

“Comic-book collector psychically slaughters three while holidaying abroad? Doesn’t seem very likely.” He groped in his overcoat pocket and produced something that looked like a ball of brown modelling clay. “Do you want some of this?”

Maggie examined the lump with suspicion. “I don’t know. What is it?”

“Carrot cake with yoghurt icing. It’s come out of its packet.”

“No, thanks. I’m trying to lose weight.”

“I can’t imagine why. It’s not as if you make an effort to attract men.”

“I want to feel good about myself. Don’t be so horrible. Your aura turns a very unhealthy shade of heliotrope when you’re rude to people. Beneath the witch I’m a woman, you know. I do have feelings.”

“Well, can you not? We need to get back to the map. I want to see if ADAPT bought everything legally. I don’t want to go back through the past property owners or check the original boundary lines – we’ll be here forever if I do that. What we do is place the last owner’s deed details on top of each property and see if that turns up any anomalies.”

“This is such a boy’s job,” Maggie complained. “Making lists and rearranging the order of things.”

“You offered to help.”

“Only because Daphne is servicing my boiler this morning and I can’t get in the kitchen. She wanted to place it under an enchantment but I told her to use a wrench.”

They worked in quiet harmony for an hour, but Tremble had done most of the preparation for them. Soon they had filled the great triangular map of land with names, addresses, dates and purchase prices.

Bryant pointed at the map. “So, this area to the east was entirely covered in factories and light industrial units…But on the other side of the canal there were five rows of terraced houses. The canal itself and the paths on either side of it are owned by British Waterways. That just leaves this bit, here.” He tapped a small oblong plot on the map. “No name. Open space?”

“No, it was part of a street called – hang on, I saw it here a minute ago – Camley Lane. It should have an owner.”

“It’s right at the centre of the company’s plan for the extension to the shopping mall. They can’t build on it without the transfer of title.”

“Look, there are three others in the same street that changed owners during the Second World War.”

“A typical bombing pattern,” Bryant pointed out. “One house wasn’t rebuilt, and it doesn’t look like the owner ever sold on the property deeds.” He summoned Ed Tremble from his cupboard. “Ed, there are no property deeds for number eleven, Camley Lane.”

“Interesting that you picked this one. It was bombed flat during the war. The remains of the house were pulled down and the site was cleared. A small local jam factory occupied the site for five or six years in the fifties. After that it became a café and then a pub, first the Tothele Manor Tavern and then the Stag’s Head, and eventually that also closed.”

“It’s as if the ground itself was bad luck,” remarked Maggie.

“The company wanted permission to build on the land, but due to the property’s tangled history there’s no current deed of ownership on file.”

“What happens in that situation?” asked Bryant.

“According to British law an occupier must last for eleven years on a piece of property in this area before claiming the right to own it, so I imagine the land belonged not to the pub or the jam factory, but to the original owner of the bombed-out house.”

“Why?”

“Because most of the pre-war owners in this street were on their land for far longer than eleven years, and it would have been officially registered in the resident’s name.”

“And if ADAPT can’t locate the deeds?”

“They have to wait for the time limit to be reached.”

“But they’re preparing to build on that section beside the canal right now. Are they acting illegally?”

“Not necessarily. They might have timed their work order to commence from the date of expiration.”

“Is there any way of finding out the actual expiration date?”

“Give me a minute.” Tremble disappeared.

“Corporate skulduggery,” said Maggie while they waited for his return. “You’re thinking they turned to murder, aren’t you, Arthur?”

“I’m sure of it. Thousands of people displaced and relocated, billions spent on contracts, funding raised and companies created for Europe’s biggest development project. Suppose one difficult man stood in the way of all this progress? Imagine how easy it might have seemed to simply get rid of him. What if something went wrong, resulting in the deaths of two others?”

“If you think captains of industry colluded to quietly remove one blockage in the system,” said Maggie, “why would they draw attention to themselves by cutting off people’s heads?”

“I have no answer for that.”

“I do. They’re following this area’s ancient tradition of severing the heads of sacrificial victims, in order to win themselves favour with the pagan gods of the forest who are the real owners of the land.”

“Dear Lord.” Bryant ran a hand over his face. “I’m the first person to back you up when it comes to spiritual matters, Margaret, but I really can’t see myself explaining that to the Home Office.”

“Fair point,” said Maggie with a shrug. “Let’s keep looking.”

“Here you are,” said Tremble, returning with a yellowed sheet of paper. “It’s unusual for such a deed to have a specific expiration, but in this case it appears to be exactly one hundred and twenty years after the original land purchase.”

“That’s in three days’ time,” said Bryant, attempting to whistle through his false teeth.

“St Pancras Day,” said Maggie, awed. “A day of great mystical significance. A time for the greatest sacrifice.”