The Memory of Blood

∨ The Memory of Blood ∧

2

Clairvoyance

“A fresh start!” said Raymond Land, striding into the Unit’s smart new open-plan office in the warehouse at the corner of Caledonian Road. Over the weekend it had been painted arctic white and filled with furniture, admittedly secondhand, but it provided the staff with a pleasant communal space.

Land was pleased to see that the holes in the floor had been repaired. The workmen had almost finished redecorating the building. Broken windows had been replaced. There were no longer bare wires hanging down from the ceiling. There was a door on the toilet and a banister on the staircase. The coffee machine was finally working. The funny smell had gone from the Evidence Room. He slapped his hands together with an approximation of good cheer and beamed hopefully around the place.

His joy was not reciprocated.

“What are you so bloody happy about?” asked Jack Renfield, not bothering to look up. The sergeant was crunching indigestion tablets and checking his emails, attacking his keyboard with great bearlike paws.

Land looked pathetically expectant. “It’s the start of a new week, the sun’s out, summer’s on the way, nice new paintwork everywhere, we haven’t been blamed for anything awful in nearly a month. Makes you feel glad to be alive.”

“There’s a bad storm coming,” said Meera Mangeshkar. “It’s going to be chucking it down by noon. We’ll have to put the lights on.”

Land felt he had every reason to be in a good mood. He and his wife, Leanne, were going on a sailing holiday around the Isle of Wight at the end of the week. His desk had already been cleared in readiness. His monthly budget had been met. The Home Office was leaving him alone. The crime figures were down. Only the staff seemed fed up, but they always looked like that when he came into the room. A more sensitive chap might almost doubt they were pleased to see him.

“Come on, you lot,” he jeered, “perk yourselves up a bit. You should be thankful. You’ve got a nice new office, and the mean streets of King’s Cross are quiet for once.”

“We’d rather be busy,” grumbled Mangeshkar, flicking a rubber band at the cat. Colin Bimsley was making a paper sculpture of a flamingo from old witness statements. Dan Banbury was reading Forensic Analysis in the Home – Volume 4: Drains.

Land found it hard to share Meera’s sentiment. Being busy at the PCU usually meant risking his career, health and sanity. He still fantasized about running a police department in a sleepy Spanish village, the kind of place where the most exciting thing that ever happened was a cow wandering into a shop.

London was not much smaller than New York but averaged around 130 murders a year, compared with the Big Apple’s rate of over 460 in the same period. Most of the London cases were handled by the CID, but the more troublesome crimes were reluctantly placed in the hands of the PCU. Raymond Land had inherited the worst of both worlds; the cases that the Home Office preferred the CID not to handle were the most awkward and unsolvable, and were also the least likely to win public praise for their solution. The PCU received no help from the Met divisions, which meant that they effectively operated in a vacuum.

Land liked order. He liked graphs and bar charts and Venn diagrams, and Excel spreadsheets of policing figures, even though he didn’t really know how to use them. He didn’t understand waffling academics and weirdos, and disorganization and mess, and strange, elliptical ideas that led to investigative dead ends.

He didn’t understand the PCU.

Sticking his hands into his pockets, he wandered over to the window and sat on the ledge. “I thought you’d all be happy,” he said plaintively. “For once, everyone thinks we’re doing a good job. You can take it easy. You don’t have to spend the week going through someone’s rubbish or sitting in a car all night staring at a front door. You can go home at the normal time, catch up on your emails, watch some telly, cook a meal that doesn’t come in a plastic tub. For once, you can get on with your lives.”

But as soon as he said that, Land realized he had made a mistake. Working at the PCU meant surrendering all thoughts of a normal private life. It meant abandoning loved ones, working unsociable hours, falling out with friends, never having time to do the comfortingly habitual things civilians did. His staff barely existed beyond their working lives. Their refrigerators remained empty, their bills piled up, their houseplants died and their voice-mails were never played back. Even their pets gave up on them. Apart from a brief, disastrous stay at Raymond Land’s house, Crippen had spent his entire nine lives in the office.

“Well, I feel good about today, and I’m not going to let you lot put the mockers on it,” Land said, rising and turning.

He looked back and found that suddenly everyone seemed to have brightened up a little. Perhaps his positivity had proved inspirational after all. Bimsley was trying to suppress a laugh. Meera was smiling and shaking her head. “Right,” said Land, “we’re going to use this week to get organized and learn to behave like a proper police unit.” He looked down to discover a thick arctic-white stripe across the seat of his new black trousers. “You can start by getting the workmen to stick a bloody Wet Paint sign on this ledge.”

Bimsley burst out laughing.

A dark thought crossed Land’s mind. “And where are Bryant and May?” he demanded to know.

“Look here, can somebody give me a hand with this?”

Bryant appeared in the doorway right on cue. If Land hadn’t known better, he’d have suspected that his most senior detective had been waiting outside to make an entrance. Bryant moved to reveal a crimson-painted wooden case. It was about five feet tall and covered in cobwebs. “I found her in the attic.”

“What is it?” asked Land. “How did you get it down the stairs? Must you bring it in here?”

Bryant leaned against the case with a mischievous smile. He removed his battered trilby, leaving his hair standing in a frightened white tonsure. “I hear we’ve got no work on – this is total disaster. What are you doing about the situation, Raymondo?”

“Don’t you understand, Bryant, it’s good news. Nobody’s doing anything they shouldn’t be doing.”

“Of course they are, it just means the Met are picking up the cases before they get to us, which will make us redundant.”

Redundant. Land rolled the word around in his head, savouring it. Redundancy pay. An image sprang to mind; he was lying in a beach hammock in the Maldives with Leanne serving him a cocktail in a coconut.

“So I suggest you get on the phone to your opposite number in Islington and find out how we can be of use,” Bryant was saying as he halfheartedly attempted to haul the case into the room.

“Here, Mr Bryant, let me give you a hand.” Colin Bimsley sprang up to help. Together they manoeuvred the dusty object into the centre of the floor. The box was on squealing casters, and the top half of one side was covered in filthy glass. Bryant pulled a large chequered handkerchief from his pocket, dipped it into Land’s tea mug and, before the Unit chief could protest, started to wipe the window clean.

John May appeared from behind the case, patting cobwebs from his suit. “I couldn’t stop him once he’d seen it, Raymond,” he said apologetically. “He had to bring it down here.”

“It’s Madame Blavatsky,” Bryant proclaimed. “Not a terribly good likeness I’ll admit, but it’s clearly meant to be her.”

Land sniffed at the box and recoiled. “Who the hell is Madame – Who is she, and what’s she doing in our attic?”

“Madame Blavatsky was a noble-born Russian spiritualist who founded the Theosophical Society. She was a Buddhist who believed in reincarnation and the spirit world. She died right here in London.”

“What the bloody hell’s she doing upstairs?”

Bryant ignored him. “Her followers thought she was steeped in the wisdom of the ancients, whereas I’m more of the opinion that she was a barking mad fascist, and a racist to boot. And she’s been living in our attic for donkey’s years. Remember I told you the history of this place? About Aleister Crowley’s Occult Revivalists’ Society of Great Britain using the building for their meetings until the 1930s? Well, I was up in the attic looking for my first edition of Nachtkultur & Isolationism, and found her under a blanket. There’s all sorts of weird stuff up there, including a spirit horn and an electromagnetic field detector, the kind geologists used to use. They were popular in spiritualists’ circles. I think there must have been many other occult societies here before Crowley’s, because most of the stuff hasn’t been touched for the best part of a century. We’re at the centre of several ley lines, you know. They cross underneath our basement floor.”

“Are you sure this is something to do with our previous tenants?” asked Land suspiciously.

“Indubitably, old trout.”

Land thought for a moment. “Is it worth anything?”

“Good Lord, it’s not about the monetary value.” Bryant had conducted some research about the PCU’s new home just after Raymond Land had discovered an alarming mural of a witchcraft ceremony hidden under the paintwork on his office wall. “The Occult Revivalists’ Society split from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and lived here with some ladies from the Lodge of the Isis-Urania Temple until they all fell out with each other. I think there was something saucy going on between them. The real Madame Blavatsky stayed here on her way to India, and the poet William Butler Yeats held his first seance in this building. It all turned nasty after Yeats materialized a terrifying spirit calling itself Leo Africanus in the room – right where you now have your desk, Raymond. Apparently the creature claimed to be Yeats’s Daemon or Anti-Self, and threatened to kill everyone and drink their blood.”

Land looked appalled. Bryant was enjoying himself.

“Because of his experience, Yeats adopted the motto Daemon est Deus inversus – commonly translated as The Devil is a God Reflected. The occult order became a Satanist society in the Second World War, and it all ended very badly in the mid-1950^s. I’m writing a brief monograph on the history of the building at the moment. I’ll give you a copy when it’s finished.”

Arthur Bryant, as you may have gathered by now, was capable of holding forth on virtually any subject for any amount of time. This made him initially interesting, then exhausting, and finally annoying. He had an aloof and self-contained manner, as if he never quite heard what most people said to him (and often he didn’t, depending on whether his hearing aid was switched on).

His partner John May knew this, and was usually on hand to head him off from conversational culs-de-sac. But when the two of them were alone, Bryant could banter on about everything from geomancy to abrakophilia, and May would simply tune in and out of his friend’s lectures, remembering to interject the odd ‘yes’, ‘no’ or ‘really’, because that was what old friends did.

The rest of the PCU had grown accustomed to his ramblings, but Bryant’s erudition – albeit an erudition of the most abstruse kind – always made Raymond Land feel duped and dull-witted. He was convinced that Bryant deliberately tried to undermine his authority at every available opportunity. He was wrong about this; Bryant had no interest in power games. He simply soaked up knowledge and sprayed it back out, hoping to breed enthusiasm in others, like a gardener cultivating ideas instead of flowers.

May found some cleaning fluid and squirted it on a sponge, wiping away the grime on the glass. The round pug-nosed face of Madame Blavatsky slowly appeared. She was made of beige wax that had taken on the translucence of dead flesh. She had green eyes (one slightly sunken) and an ebony hair-clip, and was dressed in the grubby black crinolines of a dowager duchess. Her right fist was raised to her formidable bosom. She wore a cameo brooch and had golden earrings. Her hair looked suspiciously real.

Gladdened by the distraction, the staff moved in for a closer look.

“Have a shufti around the back, John,” Bryant instructed. “There should be a plug somewhere.”

“There’s just a lead with bare wires,” said May, crouching down.

“Well, stick them in the wall socket.”

“There are only two wires and there are three holes.”

“Jam a fork into the earth, that’s what I do at home.”

“Wait – you’re not going to plug that thing in here!” Land protested.

Too late. May flicked the switch and the case started buzzing. There was a smell of burning hair. Slowly the medium’s eyes glowed into life. The figure was life-sized, constructed with what appeared to be opticians’ glass eyes and cracked rubber lips.

“But what exactly is it?” asked Meera, who had been trying to look uninterested.

“I might be mistaken, but I believe she’s an automaton. She tells your fortune,” said Bryant.

“We’ll need an old penny,” said May. “Anybody got one?”

“Don’t be so ridiculous,” Land snapped. “The government got rid of pounds, shillings and pence in 1971.”

“I’ve got one,” said Bryant, pulling a handful of illegal tender from his overcoat pocket. “Let’s see, a threepenny bit, a florin, a couple of conkers, half a crown – ah, here we are.”

May took the huge brown coin from him and inserted it in the slot at the front of the machine.

“You don’t honestly think that ridiculous contraption is still going to work after all these years, do you?” Land stood back and folded his arms, refusing to be drawn in.

“Now give me your hand,” said Bryant, grabbing Land’s wrist, “and place it palm down on the brass panel.” The automaton was humming with errant electricity.

The rectangular plate beneath the wax figure was dotted with a hundred tiny holes. Unwilling to appear a spoilsport, Land placed his hand over it. Pins shot out of the holes in a ripple, stinging his fingers. “Bloody hell!” Land shouted, trying to pull his hand free, but Bryant held it in place. He had a surprisingly strong grip.

The medium’s eyes flickered more brightly and she jerked forward, as if trying to examine Land’s palm. Inside the case, gears groaned and unoiled pistons squealed in discomfort. “I’ll get some WD-40 on that later,” said Bryant.

Land’s hand was tingling – the metal pins had delivered a mild shock. “I’ve just been electrocuted,” he complained dramatically.

“Yes, some automata do that,” said Bryant with interest. “The Victorians thought it was very health-giving. Wait a minute.”

Madame Blavatsky’s eyes dimmed, then flared. Her right arm swivelled forward and her fist partially opened to drop a white oblong card, which rattled into the slot at the front of the machine. Rubbing his fried hand, Land retrieved it and examined the stamped-out lettering.

DEATH WILL REPAY ALL DEBTS

“What kind of fortune is this?” he exclaimed. “It’s a paraphrased quote from The Tempest,” said John May. “Even I know that.”

“Well, it’s a bloody depressing thought for a Monday,”

Land said, tossing the card onto his desk. “Get this thing out of here.”

“Fine,” said Bryant. “I’ll have it beside my desk.”

“Must you? The office is already starting to look like your old space in Mornington Crescent.”

“But of course. It’s the contents of my head.”

“Well, it certainly contains the contents of a head, unless you’ve had the brainpan of that stinking Tibetan skull cleaned out.”

“No, I mean it acts as my excess memory. It contains all the things there’s not enough room in my head to hold. Clutter, either mental or physical, is the sign of a healthy curiosity.” As Bimsley began rolling the automaton towards the door under Bryant’s guidance, Raymond Land looked back at his own bare office space and tried to figure out whether he had just been insulted again.