Bryant & May on the Loose

∨ Bryant & May on the Loose ∧

38

Shadow Figure

“Harry was my old man,” said Keith Barker. “He lived in Camley Lane right to the end of his life. He was a station guard at St Pancras, and his wife worked in the ticket office. Not my mum, you understand, she died in 1964 – his second wife. You’ll never guess what my grandfather’s job was: He collected the holes from bus tickets. He used to box ‘em up and sell ‘em outside the church for confetti – at least that’s what he told us.”

At five on Saturday, Arthur Bryant had arrived at the Barker household. That was twenty minutes ago, and Mr Barker had yet to pause for breath. The little flat off the Holloway Road was filled with trophies and awards for keeping tropical fish, but there was no room in the place to put an aquarium. Bryant decided that it would be a good idea to keep Barker away from the subject of fish, or he’d be there all day. There was a time when men like Mr Barker would have sat at home in suspenders and a collarless shirt. The old man seated before him was wearing sneakers and a shiny blue track suit.

“I’ve got a heart condition so I don’t get out now,” Mr Barker explained. “All our family lived around Camley Lane, generations of us, which was handy ‘cause you could keep an eye on the old’uns. It turned into a rough area, though, ‘cause a lot of traders moved into the arches after the war, and so many people were bombed out that the quickest way to make a bit of money was to open a lodging house. Every house in King’s Cross had a dozen boarders in it, and naturally you got trouble, what with them all living on top of each other.”

“I’m particularly interested in the Porters’ house,” said Bryant, attempting to guide Barker back on track.

“Bombed to matchsticks, that place,” said Mr Barker. “When Mrs Porter lost her husband and her home, she went to live with Granddad. Later on, she came to live with us, ‘cause she was like one of the family by then. There hadn’t been a warning that night, see. Granddad said the ARP wardens were quick enough to turn up if you had a light showing through your curtains, but they were so busy ticking things off in their little books that sometimes there was no-one manning the sirens. The nearest siren to us was on the roof of the St Pancras Old Church, but half the time they kept the churchyard gates locked at night, ‘cause they didn’t want no-one sleeping in the graveyard. Four flying bombs fell around here. Some streets were totally bombed out of existence.”

“Why didn’t they rebuild Mrs Porter’s house?” asked Bryant.

“There was nothing to rebuild. Plus, there was the problem of the well.”

“The house was built over St Chad’s Well.”

“That’s right. None of us knew it was there, although Auntie Reeny – that’s what we called her – she complained it had always been damp, and she swore that her husband had known it was there, because he’d talked to her about it but she didn’t really listen. The authorities sent some bloke from the historical society down to look at it, but he didn’t do nothing, then the rubble from the bombing was used to block it up and they put prefabs on top for the families who’d been bombed out. Trouble is, they was made of asbestos, so they had to come down. Then they extended the old jam factory over the land, but that wasn’t successful, so finally they turned the extension into a pub – for a while it was called the Stag’s Head. I moved here, but I still went back, of course, ‘cause all my old mates were around there. They hung on waiting to be bought out, ‘cause there was talk of the railways buying the land.”

“Then it was finally sold to the ADAPT Group.”

“I figured that’s why you’re here, because of Terry Delaney.” Bryant was brought up short. “You know him?”

“He came to see me, ‘cause ADAPT decided to go ahead and clear the site completely, and they brought him in, ‘cause he knew the area. They brought the bulldozers in but there was a question over who owned the land. Terry was hired to tear down the remains of the Stag’s Head. He told me he was a bit of an amateur historian, and knew a lot about the street. He tore up the foundations and found the well, but of course it had been filled in with bricks and then concrete had been poured over it, so there was nothing much left to see.”

“So how did he end up coming to you?”

“He found the deed. See, old Mr Porter never got around to putting his house deeds in the bank. A lot of people didn’t, in them days. He kept his important documents in a tin box in the basement. Nobody ever went down there much ‘cause it was too wet, and bad for the chest. I suppose when the house was bombed the box fell into the well. It couldn’t have fallen very far, though, or Terry would never have found it. They’ve been turning up all sorts of things on those old properties, but apparently you only get a short time to dig up the site before they’re covered by the new buildings.”

Bryant thought of the remains of London’s Roman basilica, now only viewable from the basement of the hairdresser’s off Gracechurch Street that had been built over it, and the sportswear shop that had housed the ancient and venerable London Stone for so many years. Notoriously, archaeologists had been given just six weeks to uncover treasures beneath a part of the London Wall before it was concreted into an office car park.

“You’re telling me that Mr Delaney found the original freehold property deeds to number eleven Camley Lane and traced them to you?”

“He used a pile driver to break the well open, and there was the box. Terry thought it was a bomb at first. He told me there’s over five thousand unexploded bombs still buried in London soil. He said he wanted to return the deeds to their rightful owner. Thought that way they’d have a chance to claim the land before the registration date passed, ‘cause it was due soon.”

The deed expires on the day of the greatest sacrifice, thought Bryant. I knew it. The city has plans for us all.

“I explained that I wasn’t the owner, that Mrs Porter had just lived with us until she died.”

“So who is the actual owner?” Bryant asked.

“I told him,” said Mr Barker, “that would now be her granddaughter. But I didn’t have her address.”

♦

After Dan Banbury had visited her at Yield to the Night, Janice Longbright had reached a decision. She would no longer wear the obscure lingerie brands from the 1950^s that were both uncomfortable and inappropriate for work. She would stop dressing like a post-war movie starlet. She had kept her signature look for many years, but you couldn’t be young forever, and it was time to start dressing like a woman in the full bloom of her middle years. Away would go the bleaches and lipsticks worn by Diana Dors and Jayne Mansfield. No more cleavage-revealing sweaters or strappy heels. She had not dressed for men, but to make herself feel good.

So she had bought herself jeans, sneakers and a shirt, and started to look like everyone else.

Bad timing, Janice, she decided now. Because she was lying on Liberty DuCaine’s sofa bed in his flat in Vauxhall, wishing she wasn’t wearing her sensible Marks & Spencer underwear.

When you haven’t touched anyone else’s lips for a long time, Longbright thought, it’s a really weird sensation. Her ex-boyfriend’s kisses had lacked subtlety, consisting of either pecks or tongues. Liberty, however, had explored her mouth with gentle languor. For a brief moment she realised what she had been missing for so long.

He was a physically imposing man, and now he seemed to take up the entire room. He surrounded her with gentle warmth, his thighs touching her hips, his palms on either side of her face, his soft breathing, a smile in the dark.

At some point – she could not later recall when – he tore off his shirt with thrilling enthusiasm; he threw the garment behind him and it settled over a lamp. His soft skin had a faint, clean base-note of sweat that lingered on her hands. She heard herself say “Maybe we shouldn’t do this,” but didn’t believe her own words.

His chest hair formed a neat black trapezoid, a ladder of tight curls tracing to his navel and down into the waistband of his jeans. The wide, dry breadth of his hand covered her bare stomach. The shock of a man’s cool touch on her was extraordinary; she could not recall the last time someone had cupped her so gently, unfolding her desires with such lightness and loving care.

She sank down deep into his IKEA cushions, her PCU uniform scratching against the blanket on the sofa bed. Suddenly it felt so tiring to be an English policewoman, to behave correctly wherever she went, to be strapped into a tight uniform and providing a role model for others all the time. She wanted him to tear at her clothes, to press her deep into the comforting night, the muscles in his thick brown arms lifting and widening as he raised his body over her. She felt him connecting with her at six or seven points, from her toes and hips to her mouth, and wondered if they could simply melt into each other, becoming one.

It felt like a seduction conducted out of sequence, starting with a fierce culmination, his eyes never leaving hers, his body moving with increased connection, gentler and gentler, resolving to a faint and tender kiss.

She fought to stop herself from being sensible. She knew they had to work together. She knew that it could create problems if they decided not to be this close again. She knew she had to get rid of the IKEA cushions. Her eyes were fully open to all the attendant dangers.

But right now, on this cold, starry night in May, it seemed far better to let them gently close.

♦

After Longbright had called him from Brighton about the connection between two of the victims, Bryant had barely been able to contain his excitement. His interview with Keith Barker had lent further shape to the ideas that were developing in his head.

As the two detectives walked along the rainswept Caledonian Road that night, heading for John May’s BMW, he started piecing together events. Old Mr Barker did not realise it, but he had just placed an international corporation at the heart of a conspiracy to murder.

“While Cavendish was clearing land rights for the ADAPT Group,” Bryant told May, “he found that in the case of a few plots of land, ownership couldn’t be verified – but the project has been in development for thirty years, so what’s a few more months? All ADAPT had to do was wait for the rights to lapse, and that’s what happened in most cases. I suppose if the worse came to the worst they could take a chance and quietly go ahead with construction, hoping that nobody came forward. But then the builder Terry Delaney threw a spanner in the works. He turned up a house deed, and went to Maddox Cavendish with news of his find. That was their first contact; Delaney rang Cavendish for advice. Then Cavendish took Delaney out to lunch and tried to obtain the deed. Whatever happened over that lunch, Delaney didn’t feel comfortable about simply surrendering the deed to ADAPT, and told Cavendish that he was determined to trace the rightful owner. Cavendish needed the deed to stay hidden in order to prevent the blocking of the project, or he had to be able to purchase it. But now, it had surfaced in the worst possible manner. He must have been having kittens.”

“How crucial is the property to the group’s plans?” asked May, ushering Bryant into his car.

“Let me show you.” Bryant pulled a crumpled roll of paper from his pocket and spread it out on the dashboard. “Most of the houses in Camley Street were subdivided before the war, except for number eleven. The Porters – the ones who were bombed, yes? – their garden extended all the way to the edge of the canal and down both sides of the property. It’s right in the centre of the mall’s main wing. This isn’t a proposal that can simply be junked and moved a few hundred feet to the left – it’s taken years for the public hearings and for the council to approve the plans. Worse still, any publicity could bring to light the fact that the house is constructed over one of Britain’s oldest sacred sites, and although archaeologists usually get limited time frames in which to examine ancient remains, this one might be important enough to have a stay of execution granted.”

“So you think Delaney was trying to return the deeds to their rightful owner when he was killed. But if this is about property, why was it necessary to commit murder?”

“One scenario presents itself. Cavendish realised he had single-handedly screwed up Europe’s biggest building project. He had failed to locate a key property ownership for the site, and knew that his future was on the line if he didn’t resolve the situation. He went to Delaney’s apartment and ransacked it, but Delaney returned home early and surprised him. In the ensuing struggle, Delaney died.”

“Come on, Arthur. Cavendish was a small, rather mousey executive. It seems highly unlikely that he would then decide to decapitate Delaney with all the professionalism of a hit man before dragging the rest of his victim’s body to a chip shop in the Cally Road.”

“Banbury told me Cavendish wasn’t well liked and didn’t socialise with the rest of the department, rarely went for a drink with them even when it was someone’s birthday. When he wasn’t in the office, he was in the company gym. And they all thought he was too ambitious.”

“But if his bosses got wind of what had happened, others at the ADAPT Group may be culpable to varying degrees. It could take years to prove anything.”

“Yes, that’s a problem,” Bryant agreed. “And derailing the project for a full investigation would be disastrous.”

“So, how would Cavendish have felt, presented with this do-gooder who, over the course of a lunch, decided he’d do the right thing and return the deed?”

“We can assume he panicked, and came to the realisation that he had no other choice but to set about burgling Delaney’s flat.”

“All right, let’s say he did; why would he murder two people and remove their heads according to an ancient legend? Where does that leave Adrian Jesson, a coffee shop manager with no connection to the other two?”

“There’s something wrong with the theory,” Bryant admitted. “Who killed Cavendish? Right now we need to find the woman to whom Delaney passed the property document.”

“What about the rest of the project’s key leaders?” asked May. “Are they suspects? Or are they in need of protection?”

“The only way we’ll be able to answer that is by finding out exactly what Cavendish did when Delaney told him he couldn’t have that deed.” Bryant shook his head gloomily. “I have to know what happened, but I don’t know how to access the information. I can’t turn back time.”