May’s partner could not have been more unlike himself. Arthur Bryant was three years his senior and considerably more shopworn. Perched on a counter stool, he looked like a jumble sale on a stick. He seemed shrunken within a voluminous ill-fitting raincoat picked out by his landlady; a small balding man with no time for the urgency of the modern world. Bryant was independent to the point of vexation and individual to the level of eccentricity. While his partner embraced the latest police technology, he proudly resisted it. He was a literate and secretive loner, whose mind operated – when it found something worthy of its attention – in tangential leaps that bordered on the surreal.
It should have irritated Bryant that his partner was so gregarious and popular. May was a methodical worker who grounded his cases in thorough research. For all they had in common, their friendship should not have worked at all. They made a rather ridiculous couple, but then, they were little concerned with orthodoxy.
Although they had grown a little more like each other with the passing years, it was the clash of their personalities that remained the key to their success as detectives. Neither man had much regard for the politics of power, and none of their investigations ever followed the official line. They were tolerated because of their success rate in solving serious crimes, and were admired by the younger staffers because they had chosen to remain in the field instead of accepting senior positions. During the part of their week not taken up with teaching, the pair would arrive for work early so that they could filch the most interesting cases from other officers’ files. At least, they had been able to do that until two months ago. Now they were out on their own.
“Want another?” May pointed at his partner’s empty coffee cup.
“I suppose so,” said Bryant listlessly, unstrangling his scarf. “There’s been no sign of my acid-thrower.”
“Somebody must have seen him leaving the gallery. Sounds as if he was wearing fancy dress. Barking mad, obviously.”
“That’s the point. I don’t think he was.” Bryant’s aqueous blue eyes reflected the cafe lights. “He pinpointed a particular painting for destruction. He knew exactly where to find it. The exhibition had only opened the previous week, so he must have visited it earlier to work out his escape route. Perhaps the opportunity didn’t arise for him to inflict damage on his first trip. Also, this was sent up from Forensics.” Bryant rummaged around in his overcoat and produced a typed note. His sleeves were so long that they covered the ends of his fingers. “The acid used was a compound, ethyl chlorocarbonate, chloracetyl chloride, something else they can’t identify – it was constructed to do the maximum amount of damage in the shortest possible time. And it did. The painting isn’t salvageable.”
“Not at all?”
“A little at the edges. The canvas has been eaten right through. It would mean starting from scratch, and although there are transparencies of the work on file they don’t reproduce the exact pigments used. Apparently we can’t produce paints in the same manner any more. Their reflective qualities are hard to reconstruct accurately. The original has gone for ever. I dread to think what will happen when the Australian government finds out.”
“Why?”
“Their arts minister is trying to get a number of aboriginal artefacts returned, but we’ve been refusing to give them up. The Aussies were extremely reluctant to loan us any Pre-Raphaelites at all. This will only prove that their fears were well founded.”
“Do you have anything to go on?”
“Not much,” admitted Bryant, sipping his fresh coffee. “There were no prints on the acid bottle, and no one in the surrounding streets saw him, despite his extraordinary appearance. The weather was terrible. People tend to keep their heads down in the rain. I’m one of the few reliable witnesses.”
“You were in the gallery?” said May, surprised.
“Purely by chance. I know the concept of looking at pictures is anathema to you, but you should try it some time. The chap who put the exhibition together is an old friend of mine. I’m seeing him tomorrow. Come along if you want.”
“Not me.” May drained his cup. “I have to go to the Savoy Hotel. Last night one of their guests dropped dead while reading his newspaper in the lobby. The house doctor thought at first that he’d had some kind of a haemorrhage.”
“And he hadn’t?”
“Oh, he had all right. With a vengeance. Finch did an autopsy on him last night and found his innards in a state of complete liquefaction. Apparently the ambulance men were lucky to make it out of the foyer without their load falling to bits. I’m told that there’s absolutely no known medical condition that could account for such a thing. They wondered if he could have drunk some kind of chemical compound.”
“While sitting in the lobby of the Savoy? I thought their cocktails were supposed to be first rate. Wouldn’t the taste have tipped him off? It’s very hard to drink a poisonous liquid. The more potent it is, the more pungent it tastes.” Bryant’s eyes took on a rare gleam. “How very odd.” He drained his cup and set it down.
“It would be if it was in your jurisdiction,” said May. “It could be – if you wanted to join me at Mornington Crescent.”
Bryant pointedly examined his hands. “I was wondering when you were going to offer me a position.”
“I was waiting to be given full authority from above. Of course, it’ll mean sharing an office for a while, until we get everything sorted out.”
Bryant had been holding out at Bow Street, a small stab at independence that was really an excuse to make everyone miss him. “Are you still smoking those filthy cigars?” he asked.
“I’m afraid so.”
“Have they told you who the acting superintendent will be?”
“Raymond Land. I know you don’t get on with him, but he’ll only be there until a permanent replacement is decided upon.”
“I’m not sure. I’ll be sorry to leave Bow Street.”
“Don’t lie to me, Arthur. You know very well they’re going to close Bow Street down eventually.”
“The word around town is that you’ll be able to choose your own investigations. People are already getting jealous.”
“That’s not quite true. It’s strictly a high-profile murder squad, no more diamond robberies or gang beatings. It’ll include a lot of long-term unsolved stuff. That means research-heavy crimes.” They were Bryant’s speciality.
Until now no permanent murder squad had ever been set up in Great Britain. This was partly because the country had a comparatively low per capita murder rate. There was virtually no gun crime. Squads were only formed to solve individual murders, with superintendents drafted in from an Area Major Investigation Pool (AMIP), supported by local detectives from other cases.
Now the system was changing. If the freshly separated PCU worked out successfully, it could affect the structure of the Metropolitan Police. Other specialized units would be formed. John May was aware that quite a few of his colleagues in the AMIPs were happy with the system in its present state, and would be glad to see the new division fail. Consequently, he needed all the friends he could get. More than that, he needed his old partner back.
“This office of yours,” said Bryant, “does it have decent-sized windows?”
“Huge ones.”
“Good. I need more light these days. Could I have the room painted? I can’t think clearly in tasteless surroundings.”
“Choose any colour you like. How’s your present caseload?”
“I’ll follow through this business with the National Gallery. The rest can be dumped on to someone I hate. I must say your proposal isn’t entirely unexpected. You took your time.”
“I had to get the place up and running first. You didn’t think I’d leave you behind, did you?” May smiled. He knew how much the daily routine at Bow Street bored his old partner, and hated the thought of Bryant’s mind going to waste. As he rose to leave, the afternoon sun threw a lurid glare across the smeary windows of the cafe.
¦
“I made a standard Y incision from the shoulders to the chest and down to the pubis, as you can see,” Finch began, pointing at the splayed corpse in front of them, “and I couldn’t believe my eyes. The organic damage is quite phenomenal.”
