“Nineteen.”
“Nineteen, eh?” Bryant rolled his pale blue eyes. “That’s a bit young for this lark.”
“Not at all,” May bridled. “There were lads younger than me lost at Scapa Flow.”
“You’re right, of course. Eight hundred on the
“Apparently.” May tried to sound nonchalant. “I was on a oneyear intensive but I wasn’t able to finish the course. It’s impossible to get into Hendon, and our place was closed down. They’ve run out of instructors.”
“So they just bumped you up? Very decent of them. I’m twenty-two and absolutely forbidden from participating in investigations unaided because they think I’m irresponsible, but there’s no one else available to head the unit, ha ha. They probably sent you here because you look sensible. Good trick, that.” Bryant peered round the edge of the blackouts, saw that the street was growing light and opened the curtains, hastily switching off the desk lamps. “We can’t afford to get fined again,” he explained, looking down through the X-taped windows. “I’m hopeless at remembering to turn things off.”
“You didn’t get called up?”
“Well, I did, but I’ve a bit of a dicky pump.” He gave his chest an exploratory tap. “And there were other factors that prevented me from going,” he added mysteriously. Years later, May found out that Bryant’s brother had died on a Thames barge, and because their mother lived alone in Bethnal Green without financial support, the Port of London Authority had arranged a special dispensation for her surviving son. There was another mitigating circumstance that protected Bryant from conscription, but it was not something he felt comfortable speaking of. “What about you?”
“Essential industry. I’m waiting for a post to come up. I’ve been recommended for cypher-breaking. Shortlisted for a special unit intercepting codes coming from the Atlantic.”
“They’re putting something together in Hertfordshire, aren’t they? If they don’t get a move on it’ll all be over. Do you want a pipe? We’ve still got some tobacco, but it’s a bit ropy.” Bryant waved a wallet of foul-smelling shag past him and dropped it into the chaos of the desk.
“I don’t, thanks,” said May, removing his coat and looking for somewhere clean to put it. “There’s a very good code station already running, but they’re stocking it with the best of the Oxford grads. I’ll just have to wait my turn.”
“You probably want to know what this is all about,” said Bryant, pushing a chair at him. “Sorry no one could tell you much, but the MoI and the Home Office are very big on public morale at the moment.”
“I’ve noticed,” said May. “The block on information is a bit stiff. Part of Hyde Park near Marble Arch was roped off at the weekend. They reckon an underground shelter was blown to bits, heads and arms and legs everywhere. The only way they could tell the girls from the men was by their hair. But I didn’t see anything about it in the papers.”
“No, you wouldn’t. I can understand that, but some of the other directives are driving us barmy.” Bryant sucked noisily at his pipe. “This business with lifts having to be kept at the bottom of shafts during raids, except in tube stations, where they have to be kept at the top. I suppose it’s sensible, but all transgressions have to be reported, and it makes so much paperwork. Not that you’ll have had any paperwork on us.”
“No, they wouldn’t even tell me what PCU stood for.”
“Peculiar Crimes Unit, isn’t it frightful? I think their perception of the word ‘peculiar’ and mine differ somewhat. I’ve got some bumph here you can read through.” He rooted around among his papers, sending several overstuffed folders to the floor, but failed to locate anything specific.
Thinking about his first impression of Arthur Bryant some years later, May was reminded of a young Alec Guinness, bright-eyed and restless, distracted and a little awkward, filled to exhaustion with ideas. May was less excitable, and his habit of keeping a rein on the more excessive reaches of his imagination pegged him to others as the reserved, serious one. After their deaths, it was said by their biographer that ‘Bryant said what he meant and May meant what he said’. May was the diplomat, Bryant the iconoclast, a decent combination as it turned out.
“They meant ‘peculiar’ in the sense of ‘particular’, but the damage is done, and the name is attracting some very odd cases. We had a report last month of a man sucking blood out of a Wren in Leicester Square. It’s hopeless. The Heavy Rescue Squads are busy trying to locate people who’ve been buried alive under tons of rubble, most of the central London constabulary remaining at home have left to join the ARP, the ATS and the AFS, and we’re expected to go chasing around after Bela Lugosi. Morale again, you see. They don’t want people to think there’s a bogeyman roaming around in the blackouts, otherwise they won’t head to the shelters. Panic in the streets; it’s an image that scares the hell out of them. You’d think we were more of a propaganda unit than a proper detective squad.”
“How many of us are there?” asked May, moving a stack of handwritten music scores from a chair and seating himself.
“Half a dozen, including you. Superintendent Davenport’s the most senior DI, spends all of his time haunting the HO and the Met, or playing billiards with Sergeant Carfax, who’s married to his ghastly sister. She comes creeping around here on the scrounge for salvage donations, got a face like a witch doctor’s rattle. No, we don’t see too much of Davenport, luckily. Then there’s Dr Runcorn, rather ancient and not much cop but the only forensics wallah they could spare us. We have a young pathologist called Oswald Finch, tragically born without a sense of humour, we use him for the serious stuff. DS Forthright is also a part-time member of the WVS. Then there’s us two, and finally a couple of utterly vacant PCs, Crowhurst and Atherton. Crowhurst has something wrong with his depth perception and falls over a lot, and Atherton used to be a greengrocer.”
“My father is a greengrocer,” said May indignantly.
“No offence, old man,” apologized Bryant, whose own father had abandoned his family to earn drink money in Petticoat Lane peddling rings for blackout curtains at a shilling a dozen, “but poor old Atherton really would be better employed shifting sprouts. Oh, and we’re getting one more today, a former copper called Sidney Biddle. I’ve got his details around here somewhere. Davenport was very keen about taking him on. I get the feeling he’s coming in as a bit of a spy, though I’m not sure what he’ll find to report on. We’re rather a dead-letter office. To date we’ve had a hand in a couple of prosecutions, but nothing that can be made public.”
“Why not?”
Bryant rubbed his nose ruminatively. “The sort of cases that pass through here are a bit of an embarrassment for everyone concerned. The regular force can’t handle them, so they end up on these desks.” He indicated the overflowing surfaces of the two desks that had been shoved back to back beside the window. “I’ll have a clear-up while you get settled. Have Forthright find you a tea mug, and hang on to it. You never know when there’ll be a shortage. We can get most things, but you hear rumours and everyone goes mad.”
May knew what he meant. With each passing week, a household item, so taken for granted before the war, would vanish from the list of available home comforts. Last week there was a run on toothbrushes. The smallest rumour was enough to spark panic buying. Foods were fast disappearing from the daily menu. Oddly, the commonest items seemed to cease first, so that sugar, butter and bacon were rationed while milk chocolate remained available.
At lunchtime, Bryant took his new partner for a walk down to the Thames. The city was turning itself into a fortress, barricaded, sandbagged and patrolled in imminent expectation of invasion.
“What topsy-turvy times we live in,” laughed Bryant, striding across the windy reach of Waterloo Bridge, his scarf flapping about his prominent ears. “I’ve stood here after the alert has sounded and watched the German bombers flying low along the river, dropping their loads on the docks, then I’ve gone back to the unit to investigate a theft of cufflinks from some diplomat’s quarters in Regent’s Park as if it was the most important thing in the world.”
“What’s your speciality?” asked May, pacing beside him.
“Mine? Academic studies, really. Classics. Abstruse thought. The HO thought the war might throw up a few cases that need sensitive handling, and realized that there were no brainboxes in the field of detection.”
“Who decides which cases we get?”
“Well, Davenport likes to pretend he does, but the orders come from higher up. He’s not a total dunderhead, of course, just ineffectual. I think being placed in charge of this unit is a bit beyond him. He’s rather straitlaced. The RAF wouldn’t have him because he’s short-sighted, and he’s still miffed. My word, I don’t like the look of that.”
In the distance white clouds were breaking, and shafts of sunlight glowed above patches of oily water.
