Ten Second Staircase

∨ Ten Second Staircase ∧

9

Phantom in the Noose

All police units are underfunded, but the PCU had been so broke for so long that the sudden budget increase they had experienced after the successful resolution of their last case had merely confused the staff. John May had upgraded the computers, Sergeant Longbright had bought a coffee machine, and Arthur Bryant had purchased a set of highly inappropriate Aubrey Beardsley prints. Still, the improvement in the Mornington Crescent offices was noticeable. There was upgraded computer software. There was a reception area. There was a sofa. There was a nasty smell in the bathroom, but as it stemmed from Bryant’s abortive experiment to determine the burning point of horsehair, nobody knew how to get rid of it.

Late on Monday afternoon, Janice Longbright caught up with her boss as he was about to enter the unit’s interview room.

“Where have you been?” asked May. “I’ve been phoning you for the last half hour.”

“Sorry, chief, my flat was burgled at lunchtime. Some little sod kicked the door in and stole my telly. I was waiting for the K-Town cop shop to send someone around.”

“Can you not refer to Kentish Town by its gangsta name? And why on earth didn’t you get Banbury to come over?” asked May, amazed.

“Wouldn’t like to pull rank, sir. Not fair on other people.” Longbright tucked a lacquered curl back into place and thrust out her formidable chest. “Hope I’m not too late.”

“No, they just arrived, come in.”

May and Longbright seated themselves beside Luke Tripp and his tailored mother. It was intended that the sergeant would gently coax the boy into providing a more detailed description, but one look at Mrs Tripp’s face forced them to change tactics. May ran through the legal ramifications of the statement, then let Longbright defuse the unhappy parent.

“Your son is the only witness to this crime,” she explained. “Nobody else saw the man he described anywhere in the vicinity of the building. That’s why we need him to provide exact details of the event.”

“You’re suggesting he’s a liar.” Hannah Tripp turned to her son. “Luke darling, you don’t have to tell them anything if you don’t want to. They’re not real policemen.”

“It’s true we’re not bound by the rules of the Metropolitan Police Force, Mrs Tripp, but we have other powers granted by the Home Office that you may find quite draconian if we choose to enforce them. I think it’s easier for everyone if Luke just tells us, in his own words, exactly what he saw.”

“Is that a threat?” asked Mrs Tripp. “My husband’s in a senior management position at Sotheby’s salesroom. He’d have something to say about this.”

“That’s fine, Mrs Tripp. We’ll be happy to accept his advice if we need a Ming vase valued, but as far as your son is concerned, we need to get to the truth.”

“I don’t care for sarcasm.” Mrs Tripp smoothed her son’s hair. “Luke is an only child. He’s highly sensitive. When he was little, all his friends wanted to be pilots and firefighters. Not my boy. His big dream is to star in his own play at the Royal Court Theatre. He paints, he sings, he loves listening to Donizetti. He only looks young, you see; he’s nearly fourteen. An experience like this could seriously affect his school performance. The man he saw was a murderer.”

“That’s why Sergeant Longbright is here,” May explained. “She’s trained to deal with precisely this kind of delicate situation.”

“Then the sergeant alone should talk to my son.”

This was precisely what May had wanted. “Fine. I’ll be outside if you need me,” he said quietly, rising to leave.

Longbright left a respectful pause until after the door had closed. “Perhaps we could go back to the moment when your class first arrived at the gallery, Luke,” she suggested.

♦

Arthur Bryant’s office was starting to look like a collision between a greenhouse, a secondhand bookshop, and a crypto-zoological museum. Shoving aside the dead cactus Raymond Land had angrily returned (Bryant had placed it in the Acting Head’s office as a gift, but it had germinated poisonous seeds that left purple stains everywhere until, in desperation, Land had sprayed it with lighter fluid), he adjusted his spectacles and studied the numbers on the aluminium key again: 21.9.17.05.

“Well, obviously, it’s a date,” he said finally. “The twenty-first of September, 1705. I have a book of historical dates somewhere.” Seated at his green leather desk beneath a pool of amber light, he appeared to have regained some of his former confidence. He rattled an aniseed ball against his false teeth as he took down a gilt-edged volume of British history and began leafing through it.

“Hmm, work began on Blenheim Palace, War of the Spanish Succession, the queen of Prussia died, nothing very relevant there. Queen Anne would have been on the throne, but we need something more localised, something…” A smile crept across his face. “I think we need to schedule a staff meeting,” he told Kershaw.

At four P.M., all members of the PCU staff were summoned to its freshly painted briefing room. April sat nervously at the rear, until coaxed to a forward seat by her grandfather. She had no idea what to expect from her new job, except that its daily operations would prove unorthodox. The senior detectives preferred to conduct discussion groups before assigning work to their colleagues. According to Bryant, creativity was the key to criminal investigation, not data control. Most Met officers found his theories ludicrous, and argued that his effectiveness was the result of blind luck.

April looked expectantly around the room, wondering what would be demanded of her. Crippen threaded his way between her legs, looking for affection. The moulting feline belonged to Maggie Armitage, the unit’s affiliated information source for all crimes involving elements of witchcraft or psychic analysis, but she had loaned Crippen to Bryant indefinitely because he had given her accordionist fleas during madrigals.

“Our first officially recorded briefing session,” Bryant began, dragging a polychromatic scarf from the rack and knotting it around his throat. “It marks the start of a new level of efficiency and professionalism here at the PCU. Would anyone like a sherbet lemon? There are flying saucers and licorice all-sorts as well.” He shook the box of childhood confectionary and dumped it out on the table before him. While Longbright was serving tea, Bimsley tipped his chair too far back and fell off it. Meera tapped her pen impatiently and shot him a filthy look.

“I hope you’ve all had a chance to access the initial report?” May’s question cued paper-rustling and murmurs. “I just talked to Raymond Land, and he informs me that the White murder has been given Signal Crime status.” Signal crimes were criminal acts that garnered a disproportionate amount of publicity, sending out disturbing signals to the public about the unsafe state of society. They were required to be dealt with quickly and quietly, before faith in the national policing system sustained damage. “Given its high profile, we’ll need to clear the decks here for at least forty-eight hours, so Janice will help re-prioritise your outstanding casework. White’s death has already made the news, and there’ll be plenty more to come, especially if we fail to find leads. I’ve appointed Dan Banbury to act as press liaison officer.”

The stocky, crop-headed crime scene manager turned to the rest of the group. “Before we start running through witnesses and suspects, a bit of media news. As you know, the unit can’t afford bad publicity after receiving increased funding. We’ll have Shadow Cabinet MPs screaming like stuck pigs. We’ve not scheduled an official press conference yet, but they’ll be doorstepping White’s family and friends for opinions as I speak.

“The tabloids are all planning to take the same tack: Crazy artist used state funding to fling a pot of paint in the public’s face, made enemies wherever she went, basically deserved what she got. The Guardian, The Times, and The Independent want to ask the bigger questions about safety and security in public places. They’ll run interviews with abortion opponents, and speculate on internecine troubles within the art world. There’s been a suggestion that Saralla White may have had a stalker. Ever since she got plastered on national television, she’s been painted as a bad girl in the press. She also appeared in a notorious nude photo shoot for Loaded magazine, and released Internet footage of herself having sex with a male friend in the toilets at Claridge’s, no less. She was good at deflecting criticism, and apparently referred to the last act as ‘guerrilla art’ and ‘a political statement.’ She’s had trouble in the past, and there’s also the question of her own medical history.”

“What do we know about that?” asked May.

“She was committed twice in her early twenties, and has a history of substance abuse, mostly alcohol and amphetamines,” said Longbright, checking her notes. “Her body’s being released to Oswald for examination later today.” Oswald Finch, the unit’s pathologist, was an ancient professional doomsayer who took delight in refusing to retire. Goading Bryant into a state of apoplexy was one of the things that kept him alive. “Arthur, perhaps you’d like to look in on Finch?”

“Nothing would give me less pleasure.” Bryant peered in annoyance over the top of his reading glasses.

“We have half a dozen more interviews scheduled for this afternoon,” continued Longbright. “John, you mentioned meeting with an anti-abortion group?”

“That’s right.” May rose to his feet and drew on the white wipe-clean board behind him. “Murders carried out by anti-abortionists are more prevalent in North America than here – they’ve had over eight thousand criminal acts committed at abortion clinics since Roe v. Wade.”

Mangeshkar raised a hand. “What’s that?”

“The 1973 legalised-abortion ruling, Meera. At the extreme end of violent incidents visited on pro-abortionists we get high-profile bombings, anthrax threats, knife attacks, and shootings. The links here are interesting, because such acts are often organised by Web sites, and strongly tied into the religious right.”

“Which explains the lower incidence in England,” interrupted Bryant. “We have far fewer active Christian fundamentalists here. These sites, like the Army of God network, also incite racist and homophobic attacks, and are known to target Islamic groups. They talk about the slaughter of God’s children. This, I suspect, is the main reason why Raymond wants us to give the case highest priority. I can’t help wondering if he’s had some kind of tip-off from the Home Office. George W. Bush is coming to London next month, and his administration has banned a number of abortion procedures, as well as reducing federal funding to organisations that perform abortions. Faraday may well be concerned about political leaders drawing links with the murder.”

“We don’t know that, Arthur.” May disliked his partner’s habit of forming speculative connections but was usually powerless to stop him. “Let’s stick to the basic facts for now.”

Bryant dug about for his pipe, saw eight pairs of eyes facing him, and thought better of it. “Fine by me,” he told them. “Here are some facts you might like to consider. One, the Burroughs gallery has a single entrance through which every visitor must pass. They can’t be admitted to the artworks without a bar-coded, timed ticket. Without the ticket, the main glass doors can’t be opened.

“Two, the register has been tallied and matches the exact number of visitors County Hall received yesterday morning. The employees have their own passes, all of which are accounted for. If any of them had arranged to slip someone else into the gallery, the counter clerks seated on either side of the narrow entrance hall would have seen them, and besides, they wouldn’t have been able to access the main gallery.

“Three, there are two emergency fire exits, neither of which, according to Mr Banbury here, has been opened in several days. There are no keys missing and no signs of forced entry. All the windows are designed to open no more than three inches, due to health and safety regulations.

“Four, in order to enter the octagonal central chamber and kill Saralla White, the murderer would have had to pass through at least two other rooms. All of the rooms were occupied by several visitors, but nobody passed them. There were even some occupants in the main chamber – schoolkids drawing at the far end of the room – but they didn’t see anything. Which just leaves sensitive little Luke Tripp sitting near the tank when it happened, and he has maintained a consistent story – despite some probing trick questions from Janice here – that he saw a horseman in funny old clothes ride up on a glossy phantom stallion and make off with the nice lady.

“Finally, we have this.” He held up the bag containing the aluminium key. “The attendants swear it wasn’t there when they opened up. A stencilled pictogram of a man’s masked face, and he’s wearing a tricorn hat, just as Luke said he was.” Bryant tried to sound annoyed, but everyone could see the excitement in his eyes. “On the other side of it is a date, the twenty-first of September, 1705. It’s this date that convinces me young Luke Tripp isn’t lying, or even mistaken in what he saw. On this day, an Essex butcher’s wife gave birth to a legendary criminal, one Richard Turpin. So now we have a physical description of the man for whom we are meant to be searching.” Bryant conveniently ignored the fact that the highwayman had died over two hundred and sixty years earlier. “Etchings of Dick Turpin depict him at around twenty-six years of age, in a wig and tricorne, fresh-coloured features scarred with smallpox, broad cheekbones, narrow chin, at least five feet nine inches tall, broad-shouldered, powerfully built. He was arrested for horse-stealing and executed at York on the seventh of April, 1739. So what do we have? A politically sensitive situation, an impossible crime, a murky motive, no obvious leads, and a suspect who’s been dead for nearly three centuries. Although of course we might simply be searching for a phantom who models himself on a hanged highwayman. I think you can see why the call came through to us.”

“This means that we’ve been given another chance to screw up in front of our peers,” warned May. “No-one is to make a move without clearance from Mr Bryant or myself. Any questions at this juncture?”

“You don’t think this is some kind of setup?” asked Bimsley. “I mean, to make the unit look bad.”

“I can think of a dozen easier ways to do that,” said May.

April raised a tentative hand. “Are you speaking to Ms White’s former lovers? There’s been quite a lot of acrimonious stuff printed about them in the papers lately, because of her abortions.”

“If you have any useful news items, I’d like to read them.”

“Calvin Burroughs was having an affair with her; that’s why she – ” April looked around and shrank back into her seat. “Sorry.”

“Please, if you’ve heard anything, April, you must share it with us. And that goes for all of you. We’ll be interviewing her fellow artists, her work colleagues, and anyone who was close to her. Janice has task lists to distribute. Let’s get started.”

As the meeting broke up, Bryant lit a surreptitious pipe at the window, and allowed his thoughts to wander to nooses and duelling pistols. Most of all, he wondered why anyone would link himself to an almost forgotten breed of British criminal, and what he might gain by doing so.