The man, who really was the architect, asked when the ‘disturbances’ occurred and, when I told him the previous week, gave me a relieved smile.
‘It wasn’t us, Officer,’ said the man. ‘None of us were here last week.’
Given the scaffolding and how much of the interior was missing they must be working bloody fast – I said so, which got a laugh.
‘If only,’ said the man. ‘We’ve been at this since March. We had to suspend work last week. We were waiting for some marble, white Carrara in fact, and it just completely failed to arrive and until it did arrive, what was I to do?’
He’d sent his contingent of Poles, Romanians and Croats home for the week.
‘I still paid them,’ he said. ‘I’m not entirely heartless.’
‘Was there any sign of a break-in?’ I asked.
Not that he’d noticed, but I was welcome to ask his workers, which I did despite the language barrier. Only one guy reported anything, and that was a vague sense that things might have been moved around while they were gone. I asked them if they’d enjoyed their week off, but they all said they’d gone and found casual work.
Before I left I asked if I could have a quick look round and the architect told me to help myself. The first two storeys of the house had been knocked out. I could see the remnants of the plaster moulding and a dirty line of exposed brickwork like a high tide mark. As I stepped into the middle I got a flash of piano music, a bit of tortured pub upright, roll out the barrel, knees up Mother Brown, it does you good to get out of an evening. And with the piano the smell of gunpowder and patchouli oil and the flick flick flick of an old-fashioned film projector.
It was
When I came out I did a quick canvass of the houses either side. Most of the residents hadn’t noticed anything unusual although one had thought that he’d heard piano music a couple of evenings back. I asked what kind of piano music.
‘Old-fashioned,’ said the neighbour, who was white, thin and nervous in an expensive kind of way. ‘Rather like a music hall in fact. Do you know, now I think of it, I believe there was singing.’
I noted that as ‘some evidence that the premises had been in use the week previously by person or persons unknown’ which could go in the report and ‘heavy magical activity’ which would not. I sat in the Asbo with the engine running and wrote out a first draft of my statement. You need to get this stuff down as soon as possible, so you can make a clear distinction between what you plan to write down and what really happened.
I was just detailing the statue and trying to remember where I’d written down its evidence reference number when my phone rang.
I checked – the number was being withheld.
‘PC Grant?’ asked a man.
‘Speaking,’ I said. ‘Who’s this?’
‘Simon Kittredge CTC,’ he said. ‘I’m Special Agent Reynolds’ liaison.’
CTC is SO15, Counter Terrorism Command, which, despite the name, does all the spook-related stuff for the Metropolitan Police. Including providing experienced minders for friendly foreign ‘observers’ to ensure they don’t observe anything that might upset them. I couldn’t think why he was calling me, but I doubted it was good news.
‘What can I do you for?’ I asked.
‘I wondered if Agent Reynolds has made contact with you recently?’ he said.
If he was phoning strangers it could only mean that Reynolds had given him the slip.
‘Why would she want to talk to me?’ I asked.
A definite pause this time as Kittredge weighed up his embarrassment at needing my help against his need to find his wayward American.
‘She was asking after you,’ he said.
‘Really? Did she say why?’
‘No,’ said Kittredge. ‘But she’s picked up the fact that you’re not part of the regular team.’
Bloody hell, that was fast – she’d only just got off the plane.
‘If she makes contact what do you want me to do?’ I asked.
‘Call me straight away.’ He gave me his number. ‘And give her some flannel until I can get there.’
‘Yeah, well, I’m good at flannel,’ I said.
‘So I’ve heard,’ said Kittredge and hung up.
Heard from who, I wondered.
I checked my watch.
Time for some culture, I thought.
Onward to point C – in this case Southwark, the traditional home of bear baiting, whorehouses, Elizabethan theatre and now the Tate Modern. Built as an oil-fired power station by the same geezer who designed the famous red telephone box, it was one of the last monumental redbrick buildings before the modernists switched their worship to the concrete altar of brutalism. The power station closed in the 1980s and it was left empty in the hope that it would fall down on its own. When it became clear that the bastard thing was built to last, they decided to use it to house the Tate’s modern art collection.
I parked the Asbo as close to the front entrance as I could get and trudged through the ankle-deep snow that covered the forecourt running from the gallery to the Thames. At the other end of the Millennium Bridge a floodlit St Paul’s rose out of a white and red jumble of refurbished warehouses, the spire brushing the bottom of the clouds. In the distance I saw a couple of Lowry figures scuttling across the bridge.
The central chimney of the museum was a blind wall of brick a hundred metres tall and the main entrances were two horizontal slots either side of its base. An approach path had been swept clear of snow recently but was already starting to refill, and there were plenty of fresh footprints – obviously James Gallagher hadn’t been the only one with a flyer in his AtoZ and a yen for culture.
Inside, it was merely chilly rather than freezing and the floor was wet with snowmelt. There was a temporary rope barrier and a very genteel-looking bouncer who waved me through without asking for an invitation – I suspect they were glad of all the bodies they could get.
A painfully thin white girl in a pink wool minidress and a matching furry hat offered me a glass of wine and a welcoming smile. I took the wine but I avoided the smile, what with me being on duty and everything. Amongst the crowd most of the women were dressed better than the men except for the ones that were gay or dressed by their partners. My dad always says that only working-class boys like him appreciate proper style, which is funny since my mum buys all his clothes. It was a
I did a quick scan just in case Lady Ty was lurking in a corner somewhere.
The Tate Modern is dominated by the turbine hall, a vast cathedral-like space that is high and wide enough for even the largest artistic ego. I’d come with the school once to see Anish Kapoor’s dirigible-sized pitcher plant thing that had filled the hall from one end to the other. Ryan Carroll didn’t rate the whole hall, but he did have the elevated floor that projected across the middle.
Because of the crowd I had to get quite close to the sculptures before I could see them properly. They were made out of shop mannequins with what looked like bits of steam-powered technology riveted into their bodies. They’d been posed as if twisting in agony and their facial features ground down until they presented smooth faces to the world. It reminded me uncomfortably of Lesley’s mask or the head of the Faceless Man. Brass plaques were attached to the mannequins’ chests, each etched with a single word:
Steampunk for posh people, I thought. Although the posh people didn’t seem particularly interested. I looked around for another glass of fizzy wine and realised someone was watching me. He was a young Chinese guy with a mop of unruly black hair, a beard that looked like a goatee that had got seriously out of hand, black square-framed glasses and a good-quality cream-coloured suit cut baggy and deliberately rumpled. Once he saw he had my attention he slouched over and introduced himself.
‘My name is Robert Su.’ He spoke English with a Canadian accent. ‘I’d like, if I may, to introduce you to my employer.’ He gestured to an elderly Chinese woman in what was either a very expensive dove-grey Alex and Grace
