Bryant & May 03; Seventy-Seven Clocks

Christopher Fowler

Seventy-Seven Clocks

Bryant & May #3

2005, EN

? Seventy-Seven Clocks ?

Prologue

“Talk me through peculiar.”

“What do you mean?” asked Arthur Bryant. “I mean,” said the young biographer, “why does this special police unit of yours only get the peculiar cases?”

“There, you can speak properly when you try,” said Bryant. “I don’t hold with slang.” He fiddled with his trouser turn-up and extracted the stem of his pipe. “I’ve been looking for that all morning. When we were founded as an experimental unit, ‘peculiar’ meant ‘particular,’ as in ‘specialized.’ But we started to attract certain types of case, ones which were potentially embarrassing for the government, ones nobody else could get to grips with. Before we knew it, we were dealing with goatbothering bishops and transvestite Conservatives, not that the latter constitutes much of a peculiarity these days. We acquired the cases that proved too obtuse for traditional police methods.”

“Like the business with the Water Room.” The biographer had just finished recording Bryant’s thoughts about this case because it had only just concluded, and everyone’s memories of it were still fresh, even though they displayed Rashomon-style discrepancies. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever dealt with anything like that before.”

“Actually, you’re wrong; there was another case involving water and art, although it was very different. And it happened much earlier, in 1973.” Bryant eyed the young man and wondered if he could get away with lighting his pipe in the small closed room.

“All right, we’ll try that. What do you remember about it?” The biographer had given up attempting to keep his subject’s recollections in chronological order. He switched on his recording equipment in hope.

“Not a lot,” warned Bryant. “I wouldn’t make a very good elephant.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Memory.” Bryant tapped the side of his bald head with a wrinkled forefinger. “Or rather, lack of it. Information and experience. I mean, I have them both, but I’m for ever losing the former and forgetting the latter.”

“If you could try to think hard,” the biographer pleaded. His patience had been worn down over the last few weeks of interviews. He was beginning to regret embarking on his project: Bryant and May: A Life of Peculiar Crime. No one had written about London Peculiar Crimes Unit’s legendary detective team before, and he could see why.

“1973, let’s see.” Bryant raised his watery azure eyes to the ceiling and thought for a moment. “It was the year we joined the Common Market, although I don’t think anyone noticed. The Foreign Secretary, Sir Alec Douglas Hume, had drawn up paperwork for the agreement, and I recall it had to be accepted on the fifteenth-floor landing of the Common Market headquarters in Brussels, because there was no one left in the office. Luckily, the building’s concierge remembered to run up a Union Jack. An inauspicious start to the year, I thought.” Bryant’s memory veered between two points: hopelessly vague and absurdly detailed.

“I meant could you remember the case, not the year. Do you have any details about the investigation?” asked the biographer.

“We had a terrible heat wave,” said Bryant, providing the answer to an entirely different question. “President Nixon had started a second term, even though the Watergate investigation was well underway by then. There were still anti-war protests in Trafalgar Square. Spiro Agnew was done for tax evasion, wasn’t he? And Gerald Ford started to fall over a lot. I’m pretty sure Elton John released Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, which had ‘Funeral For A Friend’ and Princess Diana’s memorial song ‘Candle In The Wind’ on it, isn’t that strange?” Bryant pursed his lips, thinking. “Picasso died at ninety-one, a ripe old age. We were involved in the so-called Cod War with Iceland, over fishing rights. It was a dreadful year for haircuts. My partner John had gone in for sideburns, not a good idea at his age. I think the Bahamas got their independence, because I remember laughing when a canopy dropped on Prince Charles’s head during the handover ceremony. The ceiling of the Shaftesbury Theatre fell in as well, and Hair had to close. Such a shame, I loved that show. ‘Let The Sun Shine In,’ what a nice sentiment. There was the IRA bombing campaign, of course, and strikes everywhere. The unions had more power in those days. We had blackouts, and everyone stockpiled candles. There was a fuel crisis. We all had to queue for petrol. Arab terrorists attacked an American jet at Rome airport, didn’t they? And I bought some new shoes from Mr Byrite, but the soles came off.”

“Yes,” said the biographer, exasperated, “but can you remember anything at all about the crime?”

“Well, of course. I kept it all here in my notebook.”

“You mean you had it written down all the time?” The biographer was aghast.

“Yes, but I transcribed it in a hieroglyphic code.” Bryant riffled through the pages, puzzled. “I wrote everything in code back in those days. I don’t know why I bothered; my handwriting’s illegible. I numbered all the translation keys, and kept them together for safekeeping in my landlady’s cow.”

“I’m sorry?”

“She kept a china cow in her kitchen cabinet. An Edwardian milk jug. Hardly an heirloom, but it served its purpose.”

“So you can decipher your notes?”

“No, she threw the cow away when the Queen Mother died, I have no idea why – wait, I do remember something. The newspapers referred to it as the case of the seventy-seven clocks. There was quite a fuss at the time. We got into terrible trouble. But you probably know all about that.”

“No, I don’t,” the biographer admitted.

“You don’t? Dear fellow, it was one of our most truly peculiar cases. Hardly seems possible, looking back. You have to remember that we had no computers in those days, no mobile phones. Most equipment was still mechanical. Typewriters and carbons and telexes – it slowed you down. The whole awful business could have been so easily avoided. Instead, there were frightful deaths, and I had to deal with that appalling family. I remember as if it was yesterday.” This was patently untrue, for Bryant remembered very little about yesterday.

“Why don’t you tell me all about it?” the biographer suggested.

? Seventy-Seven Clocks ?

1

Lights Out

She recognized the symptoms immediately.

The stipple of sweat in the small of her back. Ice-heat prickling her forehead. A sense of skittering panic in the pit of her stomach. As she walked faster, she thought: This is absurd, it can’t harm me. But beneath her mind’s voice ran another, dark and urgent. It’s not the night, but what waits in it.

The sun had barely set, but the road ahead was indistinct in the fading light. She refused to consider what