Janice Longbright was seated on a stack of Tampax boxes trying to type with two fingers. Outside, on the steps of Kentish Town police station, a gang of teenagers were screaming at each other. The former detective sergeant forced herself to block out the noise and concentrate. With the Mornington Crescent offices blown to smithereens, the unit’s surviving personnel had been evacuated to the nearest annexe, but with the force on full alert, no chairs or desks were available for them to work from. The Tampax boxes had been found in the boot of a boy’s car, cushioning a number of rifles and stolen army pistols, and made a passably comfortable seat.
The sounds in the street were becoming more confrontational. Longbright looked around the overcrowded office at men and women barking into phones, and was unsurprised that no one had the energy to go outside and stop the fight before someone got hurt. The gang members would be at each other again the second the police departed. Trying to help them was like sticking a plaster on a cut throat.
With John May still off on leave, Longbright had reluctantly agreed to return to the unit for a few weeks. Balancing the telephone on her knee, she tried Sam Biddle’s number. This time she got through to him. The Home Office’s new police liaison officer was supposed to be providing them with relocation plans and news of emergency funding, but was proving evasive.
“I can’t give you anything concrete at the moment,” he insisted. “There are too many other priorities.”
“So I keep being told,” replied Longbright impatiently. “Presumably we all have to be firebombed before we get your attention.”
“We have to make sure the police can protect civilians first. Yesterday we had tourists getting caught in crossfire at Stockwell tube station. Once this situation is under control we can take a look at the unit’s future.”
“What’s happening in this city isn’t a ‘situation’, it’s an epidemic, things are out of control. And who said the unit’s future was in question?”
“Your building is gone, Longbright.”
“We still have our staff.”
“No, you have one of your two directors left alive, and he’s beyond retirement age.”
“We have DuCaine and the other new recruits.” Longbright was stung by Biddle’s reversal of attitude. Only days ago he had been talking about recruiting amateurs, in accordance with the Scarman Centre’s findings.
“The minister’s position on this is that Mr Bryant was caught up in some kind of internecine feud that resulted in his demise. We don’t have the manpower or the money to investigate all of the surrounding circumstances. Obviously what happened is unfortunate, but it’s our position that Bryant was acting alone and knew the hazards of doing so. We’re concerned about the dangers to the public posed by the collapse of the building, but as mishaps go these days, it’s pretty much off our radar.”
“Your grandfather was a great friend of Arthur Bryant’s. He would be ashamed of you now, Mr Biddle.” Longbright slammed down the receiver just as the stack of boxes slid away beneath her.
To calm herself she went to her car for a cigarette. A young girl with a sharp face and scraped-back blond hair challenged her.
“This your motor? You gonna give me a tenner for saving your stereo?” Her hands were thrust defiantly into the cheap cotton of her jacket. Longbright presumed she was carrying a knife. “I’m a police officer. Fuck off before I arrest you.”
“You can’t arrest me, bitch.” The girl stuck out her chin. She was all of fifteen. Longbright knew without looking that she had track marks on the backs of her legs.
“I’ll think of a reason if I have to.” Longbright moved her aside and climbed into the car, quickly locking the door. She watched the girl walk back to her mates, feeling almost sorry for her.
A cigarette soothed her nerves. She exhaled smoke and sat back in the seat as sirens started up in the police station car park. Poor John, she thought. Wherever he is, he’ll have to figure this one out by himself.
? Full Dark House ?
17
IMPRESSIONS
“There is no precedent for what we’re trying to create here, Mr Biddle,” explained Bryant. “There are no superior officers correcting our mistakes. The last thing I need is you going to Davenport and informing him of our progress.”
Bryant had received another scalding telephone call from the unit director about the amount of time the detectives had spent at the theatre, and he could have found out only through his newly appointed agent.
“I’m just doing my job,” said Biddle hotly. “Mr Davenport wants the matter cleared up quickly, and for the law to be observed. How else can he report back to the victim’s father? Your absence from the office contradicts – ”
“You don’t decide how I choose to work.” Bryant ran his hands through his floppy fringe and thumped down behind the desk, then dug about in a drawer for a packet of ‘Nervo’ fortified iron pills. Bryant did not enjoy the best of health, and was forever testing new cold remedies. In this case his cold symptoms were more to do with the resentment he felt at losing DS Forthright to something as pointlessly career-damaging as the state of matrimony. He studied Biddle resentfully. He had seen the type before. Thin-skinned, competitive, angry with the world. School had been filled with boys who saw everyone else as a threat. Half of them became so confrontational that they lost their friends by the time they left and ended up in the Territorials, where the war would take them.
“We can investigate this case in any way we see fit,” explained Bryant. “We have none of the prejudices of the regular police force.”
“You have none of the resources. No equipment. No manpower. They’ve given you nothing at all,” muttered Biddle. “That’s why they leave you alone, you don’t cost anything.”
“We have our minds, Sidney, the most powerful weapons we possess.” As far as Bryant was concerned, his office was a monk’s cell, a sanctified if incredibly untidy billet where acolytes concentrated on their devotions to the cause. It was not simply a cheap place to dump dead cases.
“You’ll see I’m using a blackboard,” Bryant pointed out. “I gave Mr May a chance to explain his audiophonic filing system and it failed to impress me, so I’m falling back on a tried and trusted method.”
“You didn’t give it a chance, Arthur,” May pointed out. “It’ll work if you just learn how to use the deck.” He had borrowed the cumbersome tape machine thinking it might help, but Bryant had managed to wipe the tape clean and irreparably damage the recording heads, although quite how he had managed to do it remained a mystery. It didn’t help that he kept magnets in his overcoat pockets. For Arthur this was the start of a lifelong stand against technology that would one day result in his crashing the entire central London HOLMES database and part of the air traffic control system at Heathrow. The young detective possessed that peculiar ability more common to elderly men, which produces negative energy around electrical equipment, turning even the most basic appliances into weapons of destruction. The more Bryant tried to understand and operate technical systems, the deadlier they became in his hands, until, at some point in the nineteen sixties, just after he had set fire to his hair by jiggling a fork in a toaster, man and machine had been forced to call a truce.
“So,” Bryant brandished a chunk of chalk, “Runcorn’s mysterious footprints suggest a second person at the death site, but not much else.”
“We can’t be sure who was in the theatre at the time,” said May, pulling on the overcoat he had borrowed from his uncle. The office was freezing. The radiators had packed up again.
“Everyone is required to sign in with – what’s his name?” asked May.
Bryant consulted his notes. “Stan Lowe checks members of the company through the rear stage door. Elspeth Wynter keeps an eye on the front of house. Geoffrey Whittaker sees everyone in the auditorium. Between the three of them they usually know who’s in the building. We’ll have a roll call by the end of the day.”
“She was a beautiful girl,” May pointed out. “Too beautiful for others to get close to.” The cast at the theatre had proven reticent on the subject of their friendships with the dancer.
“But somebody did, though, didn’t they?” said Biddle fiercely. “Maybe she led her boyfriend on, drove him to attack her. It happens all the time.”
“No, Sidney, ordinary murders do not happen like this. Most occur at home, within the family unit, where the perpetrator is a spouse, sibling or friend. War changes that. Crimes start to happen without reason, because people
