Bryant & May 01; Full Dark House

∨ Full Dark House ∧

2

CRIMINAL PAST

“You mean to tell me that amateurs are being invited to solve murders?” asked Arthur Bryant with some surprise. “Have a pear drop.”

“Is that all you’ve got?” May rattled the paper bag disappointedly. “They kill my mouth. A study published by the Scarman Centre had apparently found that trained investigators are no better than nonprofessionals at telling whether a suspected criminal is lying.” The centre was a leading crime-research institute based at Leicester University. Politicians took its findings very seriously.

“Surely the Home Office and the Association of Chief Police Officers won’t endorse the scheme?” Bryant squinted into the bag. “I thought there was some Winter Mixture left.”

“I don’t know where you get those sweets. I’m sure they don’t make them any more. HO’s already endorsed the plan. They reckon any respected person with common sense and an analytical mind can be recruited. Civilians are going to be given unlimited access to evidence and records. I thought you’d be pleased. You suggested the same thing years ago.”

“Well, the general public have a distinct advantage over us.” Plastic carrier bags floated around the traffic lights at the end of the Strand like predatory jellyfish. The hum of traffic around them was like the drone of bombers. The air was acrid with exhausts. Bryant leaned on his walking stick to catch his breath. The stick was a sore point; May had bought it for his partner’s birthday the previous year, but Bryant had been horrified by the suggestion that he was facing mobility difficulties. It had remained in his conservatory for several months, where it had supported a diseased nasturtium, but now the elderly detective found himself discreetly using it. “Civilians aren’t limited by knowledge of the law. I’ve been employing members of the public ever since the unit opened in nineteen thirty-nine.”

“Looks like HO has finally come around to your way of thinking,” May remarked. “They’ve got a new police liaison officer there, Sam Biddle.”

“No relation?”

“His grandson, I believe.”

“How odd. I was thinking about old Sidney Biddle only the other day. So sensible, solid and efficient. I wonder why we all hated him? Do you remember, I once tricked him into shaving his head by telling him that German bomber pilots could spot ginger people in the blackout. I was terrible in those days.”

“The grandson is forwarding candidates to us. We could do with more recruits like DuCaine. It’ll be a fresh start for the unit. I rang you last night to discuss the matter, but your mobile was switched off.”

“I think it broke when I dropped it. Now it keeps picking up old radio programmes. Is that possible? Anyway, there’s no point in having it turned on when I’m playing at the Freemason’s Arms.” They stepped through the scuffed gloom of the buildings hemming Waterloo Bridge. “I once took a call while I was going through the Gates of Hell, hit one of the pit-stickers and nearly broke his leg. The cheeses weigh about twelve pounds.”

“Am I supposed to have any idea what you’re talking about?”

May asked.

“Skittles,” the detective explained. “I’m on the team. We play in the basement of a pub in Hampstead. The discus is called a cheese.”

“Playing children’s games with a bunch of horrible old drunks isn’t my idea of fun.” He tended to forget that he was only three years younger than his partner.

“There aren’t many players left,” Bryant complained.

“I’m not surprised,” replied May. “Can’t you do something more productive with your evenings? I thought you were going to tackle your memoirs.”

“Oh, I’ve made a healthy start on the book.” Bryant paused at the centre of the bridge to regain his wind. The pale stone balustrades were dusted with orange shadows in the dying sunlight. Even here the air was musty with vans. There was a time when the stale damp of the river permeated one’s clothes. Now the smell only persisted at the shoreline and beneath the bridges. “They say there are fish in the river again. I heard another human torso was washed up by Blackfriars Bridge, but there was nothing about salmon. I’m looking up old contacts. It’s rather fun, you should try it. Go round and see that granddaughter of yours, get her out of the house.”

“April had a breakdown. She can’t bear crowds, can’t relax. The city gets her down.”

“You have to make the best of things, fight back, that’s what Londoners are supposed to be good at. You really should go and see her, encourage her to develop some outside interests.” Bryant looked for his pipe but only managed to find the stem. “I wonder what I’ve done with the rest of this,” he muttered. “I’ve just finished writing up our first case. Did I tell you I went back to the Palace to look over the files? They were still where I’d left them in the archive room, under tons of old photographs. The place is exactly as I remember it.”

“Surely not,” exclaimed May, amazed.

“Oh, theatres don’t change as fast as other buildings.”

“I thought some of the finest halls were destroyed in the sixties.”

“Indeed they were, music halls mostly, but the remaining sites are listed. I watched as they put a wrecking ball through the Deptford Hippodrome.”

“How many other files have you got tucked away?”

“You’d be surprised. That business with the tontine and the Bengal tiger, all documented. The runic curses that brought London to a standstill. The corpse covered in butterflies. I’ve got all our best cases, and a register of every useful fringe group in the capital.”

“You should upgrade your database. You’ve still got members of the Camden Town Coven listed as reliable contacts. And do I need to mention the Leicester Square Vampire?”

“Anyone can make a mistake,” said Bryant. “Look at that, a touch of old Shanghai in London.” He pointed as a fleet of bright yellow tricycles pedalled past, dragging bored-looking tourists around the sights. “Do you want to buy me a cup of tea at Somerset House?”

“It’s your turn to pay.”

“I didn’t think you’d remember.” Bryant squinted at the fading sun that was slipping behind the roof of the Savoy, as pale as a supermarket egg. “Not only were the files on the Palace Phantom still in the archives, but I discovered something interesting about our murderer. I’ve often thought of him over the years, poor old bugger.” Ahead, the Embankment was picked out in neon, fierce reds and blues, part of a Thamesside festival. It looked like a child’s drawing of the river finished in crayons.

“What did you find out?”

“I was thinking of paying a visit to the Wetherby tomorrow morning,” Bryant announced, not quite answering the question.

The Wetherby was a sister clinic to the Maudsley on Southwark’s Denmark Hill, and housed a number of patients suffering from senile dementia.

“Are you finally going to have yourself checked over? I’d love to join you, but I’m having lunch with an attractive lady, and nothing you say will persuade me to do otherwise.”

Bryant made a face. “Please don’t tell me that you’re entertaining the notion of relations.”

“I have every hope.”

“I must say I find it rather grotesque that you still have a sex drive at your age. Can’t you just use Internet porn? How old is this one? She must be younger because you don’t fancy women as old as you, which makes her, let me guess, late fifties, a post-war child with a name like Daphne, Wendy or Susan, a divorcée or a widow, a brunette if your track record is anything to go by. She probably considers you the older child she never had, in which case she’ll be mooning over you, wanting to cook you meals and so on, and won’t mind waiting a little longer for the pleasure of finding one of your vulgar off-the-peg suits hanging in the other side of her wardrobe.”

Irritated by the accuracy of his partner’s predictions, May dug out his lighter and lit a cigarette, which he wasn’t supposed to have. “What I do in my free time is no concern of yours. I’m not getting any younger. My cholesterol’s through the roof. This might be my last chance to have sex.”

“Don’t be revolting,” snapped Bryant. “You should pack it in, a man of your age, you’re liable to pull something in the pelvic region. You’re better off taking up something productive like wood carving. Women cost a fortune, running up restaurant bills and trawling shops for a particularly elusive style of sandal.”

“They still find me attractive. They might even consider you if you smartened up your act a bit.”

“I stopped buying shirts after they went over six quid. Besides, I like the trousers they sell at Laurence Corner, very racy, some of them.”

“They sell ex-military wear, Arthur. That’s the lower half of a demob suit you’re wearing. Look at those turn-ups. You could park a bike in them.”

“It’s all right for you, you’ve always been able to impress women,”

Bryant complained. “You don’t have the demeanour of a badtempered tortoise.”

May’s modern appearance matched the freshness of his outlook.

Despite his advanced age, there were still women who found his attentiveness appealing. His technoliteracy and his keen awareness of the modern world complemented Bryant’s strange psychological take on the human race, and their symbiotic teamwork dealt them an advantage over less experienced officers. But it still didn’t stop them from arguing like an old married couple. Their partnership had just commenced its seventh decade.

Those who didn’t know him well considered Arthur Bryant to have outlived his usefulness. It didn’t help that he was incapable of politeness, frowning through his wrinkles and forever buried beneath scarves and cardigans, always cold, always complaining, living only for his work. He was the oldest active member of the London police force. But May saw the other side of him, the restless soul, the gleam of frustrated intellect in his rheumy eye, the hidden capacity for compassion and empathy.

“Fine,” said Bryant. “You go off with your bit of fluff, and I’ll go to the clinic by myself. There’s something I want to clear up before I close my first volume. But don’t blame me if I get into trouble.”

“What sort of trouble could you possibly get into?” asked May, dreading to think. “Just make sure you wear something that distinguishes you from the patients, otherwise they might keep you in. I’ll see you on Sunday, how’s that?”

“No, I’ll be in the office on Sunday.”

“You could take some time off. I’ll even come and watch you play skittles.”

“Now you’re being patronizing. But you can come to the unit and help me close the reports. That’s if you can tear yourself away from…let’s see, Daphne, isn’t it?”

“It is, as it happens,” admitted May, much annoyed.

“Hm. I thought it would be. Well, don’t overdo things.” Bryant stumped off across the bridge, waving a brisk farewell with his stick.

That had been on Friday evening. May had no idea that Sunday would be their last day together in Mornington Crescent.