hem of her skirt, he had become so distracted by her shiny dark thighs that he had emptied a jug of milk down the front of his trousers. When Gladys looked up and saw Bryant staring at her she seemed genuinely surprised. “What?” she had asked loudly in Bow Bells elocution. In the manner of British gentlemen across the centuries, everyone had looked away, embarrassed.
There was something peculiarly unselfconscious about Gladys. She didn’t seem to care what anyone thought of her. Bryant was aware of other people every second of his life. What women thought of him mattered to a punitive degree. It was to do with being young, of course. After he adjusted to the idea of being undesirable, life became easier. By the time he hit forty, he no longer cared about the effects of what he said or did, which was good for him and bad for everyone else.
Forthright had put a highly promising pathology career on hold in order to gain field experience in the unit, and planned to continue her studies at night, but the war had come along and changed everything. The last thing she had wanted was to have some lovesick young man mooning over her, especially one as callow as Bryant. She knew it was only infatuation, and told him so. Worse was to follow when it became apparent that she was in love with a much older man. Utterly fed up, Bryant had allowed work to fill his waking hours, and tried not to think about Forthright and her fiance spending their weekends locked away in some bedroom retreat, at it like knives while bombs fell around them. Now she was going, to hearth and husband and probably loads of children, leaving them stuck with the ghastly sneak Biddle. Was it any wonder he felt frustrated?
“I can’t imagine why Longbright wants to get married at his age,” complained Bryant. “Harris is old enough to be your father.”
“Not in the legal sense. Thirteen years, if you must know. We can still have children.”
“Vile thought. I’m surprised he still has the ability after working in the radiography department for so long. They all get tired sperm. And you’ll be working for him, which won’t be healthy.”
“I’ve worked for him before. He’s the best there is.”
Bryant pulled his scarf over his ears and threw it onto the bunk by the door. Atherton, Crowhurst and Runcorn were seated glumly beside one another, reminding May of a Victorian souvenir brought back from an unfashionable resort. “Do sit down and relax, John. You’re going to be seeing a lot of this place.” Bryant turned to Forthright. “You’ll have no one to take you to the flicks, old sausage. I hear Longbright hates picture palaces.”
“You might as well face the fact,” she ran a crimson fingernail over the permanently windswept tufts of Bryant’s hair, “you’ve run out of ways to stop me leaving.”
“You’re the only one who knows how I like things,” Bryant wheedled.
“Mr May will soon learn to cope with your foibles. He can be the other half of your brain from now on, can’t you, Mr May?” She patted a smudge of soot from Bryant’s collar. There was a dull smokiness to the afternoon air of London that hung in the clothes these days, as though someone was constantly lighting bonfires. “It’s about time you treated yourself to some new shirt cuffs. I’d have sent you a formal invitation to the wedding, but it’s in a register office and I know you don’t approve.” Forthright’s eyes twinkled. “It’s a pity. There wouldn’t have been anything nicer than to see your funny little face peering over the top of a hired morning suit.”
Bryant flopped back his hair and gave her a helpless look.
“He’s all yours, Mr May.” Forthright pulled off her police sweater, and nearly took their eyes out. “I have to get changed. That’s the allclear. Arthur, why don’t you go and keep an eye on your other new recruit?”
Bryant brightened a little. “Making his life a living hell might cheer me up. He’s taking a long time with that tea. You don’t suppose he’s been flattened? This is for you, by the way.” He produced a badly wrapped package from his coat and passed it to her. The red ribbon slipped from the brown paper the moment Forthright touched it.
“Oh, Arthur.” She looked down at the dog-eared copy of
Atherton had a camera with a flashbulb, and suddenly took a picture. Everyone looked surprised.
“Go on now, bugger off,” said Bryant, reaching for his pipe as the others started to file out. “Mr May and I have a lot to discuss. Someone has to explain what’s expected of him.”
Forthright went to her WVS meeting. Biddle sullenly reappeared with mugs of tea just as they were leaving the cell. Back in the unit, the young detectives settled themselves in chairs opposite one another. Bryant opened a window and tamped down his pipe.
“Shall we risk it?” he asked May. “The sun’s come out. I bet they’re copping it out in Essex.” He cleared a small patch of his desk. “Everything gets so dusty.” He held up a brochure. “Now this,” he pointed to the title page, “is your bible. Davenport wrote it, so of course it’s gibberish, but I can give you the gen. The unit was originally planned years ago as part of something called the Central London Specialist Crimes Squad, but they received unhealthy publicity after they failed to solve the Paddington trunk murder of nineteen thirty-five. The squad never really flourished, and was finally disbanded three years later.
“The following year our superintendent persuaded West End Central and the City of London police that their more troublesome cases should be siphoned off to a renegade group. Davenport’s no diplomat, and he upset them right from the outset. Whenever we’re criticized I send a letter to the HO reminding them that we handle only the files no one else knows how to tackle. I’ve been granted powers to develop my own specialist team, the brief being to deal with fringe problems, but in reality this means becoming a clearing house for everyone else’s rubbish. The unit was defined by the Home Secretary as London’s last resort for sensitive cases, but it’s becoming a home for dubious and abnormal crimes. It’s also acting as a resource for officers seeking to close long-term unsolved murders. London’s regular forces have their hands full with looting, not to mention the assaults and robberies they’re getting in the blackout, although of course we’re not allowed to talk about those.”
Bryant sucked hard at his pipe, made a face and relit it. “We’ve been given autonomy, but the problem lies in the types of witnesses and materials I attempt to have included in our cases. The lawyers kick up a fuss about admission of evidence. They’re not open to new ideas.” He decided to spare his new partner the details of how the testimony of a spiritualist proved the last straw for a Holborn judge, who refused to hear any more from the unit’s witnesses until Bryant could assure him that they were all technically alive and in human form.
The PCU worked on unaided, unappreciated and unloved in rooms above Montague Carlucci, the bespoke tailor’s next to Bow Street station, holding the front line against all that was malevolent and profane, until war broke out and their casebooks suddenly filled, at which point Davenport saw a chance to please the Home Office. The unit had started to draw crazy people like moths to a flame. It was the war, everyone said; the war was to blame for everything that could not be explained.
For the time being at least, it suited the purposes of those in power to use the unit as a clearing house for unclassifiable misdemeanours. London faced an accelerated crime rate. It was to be expected in a place where everyone thought that each day was to be their last. Nobody wanted the city to get a reputation as a centre for spies, crime syndicates or murderers. It was important now, more than ever, to show the world that Britain could cope. Privately, though, Bryant wondered how long the line would hold.
“We had a lot of fuss about a man who was frightening the wife of the Greek ambassador. She said he appeared in their garden walking strangely, and that it looked as though his head was on back to front. Naturally it turned out to be an Italian, putting some kind of curse on the poor woman by wearing his coat the wrong way around. Silly, you’d think, but dangerous too. Given the current situation between Greece and Italy, we had to be very careful. The Eyetie eventually led us to a man who supplied Mussolini with cheese, and the War Office immediately started developing plans to poison him. They’re working on something similar with Hitler and watermelons. Or was it bananas?”
As the afternoon waned, Bryant described his favourite case histories, even acting some of them out, and revealed the nonconformist methods he was keen to introduce into standard investigative procedures. He left the barmier-sounding ones for May to discover in his own time. For Bryant, the important thing was to make sure that he had an ally against the cuckoo, Biddle, whom he suspected of making mental notes against him.
By the time John May left the alleyway in Bow Street it was night and the traffic had virtually ceased, leaving him alone once more in the disconcerting darkness of a city under siege. As he groped his way home, the case file of a murdered dancer was making its circuitous way towards the unit.
