His shirt collar was far wider than his neck, and the white nimbus of his hair floated up around his prominent ears as though he had been conducting experiments in electricity. Overall, he looked like a soon-to-be-pulped Tussaud’s waxwork.
Peering out through a gap in the curtains at the sea of gold-trimmed navy blazers, Sergeant Longbright saw that the auditorium was now entirely filled with pupils. “It’s a very well-heeled audience, Arthur,” she reported back. “Boys only, that can’t be very healthy. All between the ages of fifteen and seventeen. I don’t imagine they’ll be much interested in crime prevention. You’ll have to find a way of reaching them.”
“Teenagers are suspicious of anyone over twenty,” Bryant admitted, brushing tobacco strands from his lapel, “so how will they feel about me? I thought there were going to be more adults here. Young people can smell lies, you know. Their warning flags unfurl at the slightest provocation. A hint of condescension and they bob up like meerkats. Contrary to popular belief, they’re more naturally astute than so-called grown-ups. The whole of one’s adult life is a gradual process of dulling the senses, Janice. Look how young we all were when we started at the PCU, little more than children ourselves. But we were firing on all synapses, awake to the world.”
Longbright brushed his shoulders with maternal propriety. “Raymond Land says the sensitive are incapable of action. He reckons we need more thick-skinned recruits.”
“Which is why our acting chief would be better employed in parking control, or some public service which you could train a moderately attentive bottle-nosed dolphin to perform.” Bryant had little patience with those who frowned on his abstract methods. Critics offered him nothing. They made the most senior detective of London’s Peculiar Crimes Unit as irritable as a wasp in a bottle and as stubborn as a doorstop.
“The school magazine is out there waiting to take your picture. They’ve seen you on TV, don’t forget. You’re a bit of a celebrity these days. Show me how you look.” Longbright jerked his tie a little straighter and pulled his sleeves to length. “Good enough, I suppose. I need photographic evidence of you in a suit, even though it’s thirty years old. Make sure you stick to Raymond’s brief and talk about the specifics of crime prevention. Don’t forget the CAPO initiative – we have to reach them while they’re in the highest-risk category.” Seventeen-year-olds were more likely to become victims of street crime than any other population segment. Their complex pattern of allegiance to different urban tribes was more confusing than French court etiquette – territorial invasion, lack of respect, the wrong clothes, the wrong ethnicity, attitudes exaggerated by hormones, chemistry, geography, and simple bad timing.
“My notes are a little more abstract than Raymond might wish,” Bryant warned.
Longbright threw him a hopeless look. “I thought he vetted your script.”
“I meant to run it by him last night, but I’d promised to drive Alma to her sister’s in Tooting. She fell off her doorstep while she was red-leading it, and needed a bread poultice for her knee.”
“Surely the head of the department ranks above your landlady.”
“Not in terms of intelligence, I assure you.”
“You should have shown him what you’re planning to say, Arthur. You know how concerned he is about the media attention we’ve been receiving.”
The unit had lately been the subject of a television documentary, and not all of the press articles following in its wake had been complimentary.
“I couldn’t stick to Raymond’s guidelines on the history of crime fighting because I don’t want to talk down to my audience. They’re supposed to be smart kids, the top five percent of the education system. I don’t want them to get fidgety.”
“Just fix them with that angry stare of yours. Go on – everyone’s waiting for you.”
The elderly detective took an unsteady step forward and balked. He could feel a cold wall of expectancy emanating from the crowded auditorium. The hum of audience conversation parried his determination, stranding him at the edge of the stage.
“What’s the matter now?” asked Longbright, exasperated.
“No-one in our family was good with the young,” Bryant wavered. “When I was little, my father tried to light a cigarette while holding me and a pint of bitter, and burned the top of my head. All of our childhood problems were sorted out with a clout round the ear. It’s a wonder I can name the kings of England.”
“Don’t view them as youngsters, Arthur; they’re at the age when they think they know everything, so talk to them as if they do. The head teacher has already introduced you. They’ll start slow handclapping if you don’t get out there.” It occurred to her that because Bryant had attended a lowly state school in Whitechapel, he might actually be intimidated by appearing before an exclusive group of private pupils from upper-middle-class homes.
Bryant dragged out his dog-eared notes and smoothed them nervously. “I thought at least John could have been here to support me.”
“You know he had a hospital appointment. Now stop making a fuss.” She placed a broad hand in the small of his back and gently propelled him onto the stage.
Bryant stepped unsteadily into the spotlight, encouraged by a line of welcoming teachers. Having recently achieved a level of public fame for his capture of the Water Room killer, he knew it was time for him to enjoy his moment of recognition, but today he felt exposed and vulnerable.
The detective wiped his watery blue eyes and surveyed the hall of pale varnished oak from the podium. Absurdly youthful faces lifted to study him, and he saw the great age gulf that lay between lectern and audience. How could he ever expect to reach them? He remembered the war; they would have trouble remembering the 1980s. The sea of blue and gold, the expensive haircuts, the low sussurance of well-educated voices, teachers standing at the end of every third row like benign prison guards. It was surprisingly intimidating.
Most of the students had broken off their conversation to acknowledge his arrival, but some were still chatting. He fired a rattling cough into the microphone, a magnified explosion that echoed into a squeal of feedback. Now they ceased talking and looked up in a single battalion, assessing him.
He could feel the surf of confidence radiating from these bored young men, and knew he would have to work for their attention. The boys of St Crispin’s were not here to offer him respect; he was in their employ, and they would choose to listen, or ignore him. For one terrifying second, the power of the young was made palpable. Bryant was an outsider, an interloper. He rustled his notes and began to speak.
“My name is Arthur Bryant,” he told them unsteadily, “and together with my partner John May, I run a small detective division known as the Peculiar Crimes Unit.” He settled his gaze in the centre of the audience, focussing on the most insolent and jaded faces. “Time moves fast. When the unit was first founded, much detective work was still based on Victorian principles. Anything else was untried and experimental. We were one of several divisions created in a new spirit of innovation. Because we’re mainly academics, we don’t use traditional law enforcement methods. We are not a part of the Met; they are hardworking, sensible men and women who handle the daily fallout of poverty and hardship. The PCU doesn’t deal with life’s failures. The criminals we hunt have already proven successful.” His attention locked on a group of four boys who seemed on the verge of tuning out from his lecture. He found himself departing from the script in order to speak directly to them. He raised his voice.
“Let’s take an example. Say one of you lads in the middle there gets burgled at home. The police handle cases in order of priority, just like doctors. Then they send a beat constable or a mobile uniformed officer around to ask you for details of the break-in and a list of what’s missing. They are not trained as investigative detectives, so you have to wait for a specialist to take fingerprints, which they’ll try to match with those of a registered felon. If no-one is discovered, your loss is merely noted and set against the chance of the future recovery of your goods – a possibility that shrinks with each passing day. The system only works for its best exemplars. But at the Peculiar Crimes Unit, we adopt a radically different approach.” As he still seemed to have their attention, Bryant decided to forge ahead with his explication.
“We ask ourselves a fundamental question. What is a crime? How far does its moral dimension extend? Is it simply an act that works against the common good? If you are starving and steal from a rich man’s larder, should you be punished less than if you were not hungry? All crime is driven by some kind of need. Once those needs were simple: food, shelter, warmth, the basic assurances of survival. We can predict the sad lives of many criminals as surely as if they were specimens in a petri dish. Let’s imagine a boy like any one of you, but born on a run-down estate. His family is poor, he never knows his real father and is beaten up by his stepfather, he’s trouble at school, a nuisance on the streets, put into care, abused, arrested by the time he’s ten, doing custody at the age of fifteen. He’ll be lucky if he makes it to thirty. Our prisons are full of such people. But as soon as our needs are taken care of, new crimes appear within society. As we become more sophisticated, so do the reasons for our misdeeds. Once we are warm and fed and properly raised, we covet something more complex: power. Spending power, power over
