wrong.”
“I wrote everything on the backs of gallery guides; sorry about that. You can add your own notes at the bottom of each page. I’ll type them up later.” Janice Longbright was no ordinary DS, but an organisation of oddly developed talents, all focussed on the idea of pruning Bryant’s chaotic scraps of investigative information into some form of cohesive assembly. She’d been doing it for years and getting no thanks, as her mother had before her. “The visitors are getting pretty restless,” she cautioned. “I’ve let them make calls to warn their families that they’ve been delayed, but no-one’s been allowed to leave the gallery. Colin has made up a simple floor plan. It should give you a rough idea of where everyone was when the body was discovered.”
Bryant squinted from the drawing to the gallery. “You haven’t got much sense of scale, have you?” he complained.
“I wasn’t planning to submit it for the Royal Academy summer exhibition,” Longbright bridled.
“There’s no need to get shirty.” He riffled through the witness statements. “Anyone outside the main chamber hear a scream or a splash? It’s pretty quiet in here.”
“That’s because there’s an ambient noise cancellation system in operation.” Calvin Burroughs pointed up at a pair of small black speakers bolted into the corners of the room. “It damps down background sounds and allows better concentration. It also means that there’s very little bleed-through from one room to the next.”
“Even so, two of the kids in the main chamber say they heard a shout.” She checked through the statements and found the appropriate pages. “Gosling and Parfitt. I interviewed them separately; they both said the same thing. A high-pitched cry, presumably a woman, short and sharp, nothing else.”
“And they didn’t do anything?”
“They’re teenagers, Mr Bryant. Eventually they decided to go and have a look, but it wasn’t a very organised response.”
Bryant nodded at the crowd as he unwrapped a boiled sweet. “Any men over six foot amongst that lot?”
“The teacher, Elliot Mason. I’d say he’s about six one.”
Bryant peered over the coffee counter and checked out the teacher’s shoes. “Suede slip-ons; they’re no good. Turn the place over, every cupboard and crawlspace, see if you can find any discarded clothes or footwear. You’ll have to use the Met boys. I can’t spare unit staff. I don’t suppose there’s anyone in here actually wearing motorcycle boots?”
Longbright shook her head. “No, and no equestrians, either.” In reply to Bryant’s quizzical look, she explained. “I think our only witness has an overactive imagination. A boy called Luke Tripp reckons some kind of horseman rode into the gallery, grabbed White, and threw her into the tank. I told him he’d have to talk to you.”
Bryant looked over at the schoolchildren and blanched when he spotted their distinctive navy-and-gold blazers. “Oh, no,” he groaned. “Not them. It’s the school where I gave the lecture last week, St Crispin’s. I can’t talk to them. They’ll be prejudiced against me.”
“These are the kids who barracked you?” May grinned. “Don’t tell me you’re scared of them.”
Bryant unfolded a pair of filthy spectacles and squinted through them. “I don’t know if these are the exact ones, although that jug-eared homunculus over there looks familiar. But they’re from the same school. They’re bound to have heard what happened. John, couldn’t I leave you to talk to them?” he wheedled. “It’s cold in here. I need to go somewhere and warm up.”
May and Longbright watched in amazement as Bryant tucked in his unravelling scarf and shuffled slowly from the cafeteria. “Well, I’ve never seen him like this before,” said May, worried.
“I think they really got to him.” Longbright shrugged. “He’s convinced he’s lost his touch. It’s not a generation gap, it’s a solid brick wall; he won’t listen to the young, and they won’t listen to him. You’re the only person he’ll take advice from, John. Can’t you have a word, show him how it’s done? If he cuts himself off like this, he’ll become even more isolated.”
“Arthur always says he’s too old to change. But he’ll have to learn a few new tricks if we’re going to get Leslie Faraday off our backs. The new minister is gunning for us. Take a look at this.” May unfolded a sheet of paper and passed it over.
Longbright read the memo. “Where did you get this?”
“From Rufus.” May employed the young hacker to keep an eye on e-mails running between the Home Office’s hopelessly insecure central server and the unit. “Faraday’s planning to make a name for himself by ‘clearing out the deadwood,’ as he calls it. The file corrupted as I downloaded it, so I lost the date and recipient, but I suspect Raymond Land has had a go at him about us. The last thing we need right now is Arthur providing them with more ammunition.”
Before Longbright could voice an opinion, Giles Kershaw came over to join them. “Mr May, there’s something you should see.” He held up a plastic bag and shook a flat metal key into the palm of his glove. “Machine-cut brushed aluminium alloy, nicely stencilled and finished. No obvious fingerprints, but I’ll run it under a spectroscope.”
“What is this?” asked May, squinting at the stencilled sections.
Kershaw took the key back, as if suspecting that May could not be trusted with it. “A pictogram of some kind. Now watch.” He tilted the metal and angled his pocket torch over it. “Set the light source to one side and it reveals a picture.”
They found themselves staring at a
“Where did you find it?” asked May, intrigued.
“Placed right against the side of the tank, where I think it was intended to be found. He’s left us a calling card. But look at the serrated edges. This isn’t a standard configuration. It wouldn’t fit any cylinder or mortise lock that I know of, so why cut it in the shape of a key at all? Besides, it would bend if you tried to twist it. And there’s another thing. Check out the back.”
He turned over the key to reveal a row of numbers:
May caught Longbright’s eye and knew she was thinking the same thing. “If there’s one thing that will restore my partner’s enthusiasm, I think it will be this,” he said. May remembered the first time he ever met Bryant, at the age of nineteen. The young trainee detective had asked him to decipher a message hidden in butterfly wings. “Arthur may not know much about the young, but he knows an awful lot about breaking codes.”
? Ten Second Staircase ?
9
Phantom in the Noose
All police units are underfunded, but the PCU had been so broke for so long that the sudden budget increase they had experienced after the successful resolution of their last case had merely confused the staff. John May had upgraded the computers, Sergeant Longbright had bought a coffee machine, and Arthur Bryant had purchased a set of highly inappropriate Aubrey Beardsley prints. Still, the improvement in the Mornington Crescent offices was noticeable. There was upgraded computer software. There was a reception area. There was a sofa. There was a nasty smell in the bathroom, but as it stemmed from Bryant’s abortive experiment to determine the burning point of horsehair, nobody knew how to get rid of it.
Late on Monday afternoon, Janice Longbright caught up with her boss as he was about to enter the unit’s interview room.
“Where have you been?” asked May. “I’ve been phoning you for the last half hour.”
“Sorry, chief, my flat was burgled at lunchtime. Some little sod kicked the door in and stole my telly. I was waiting for the K-Town cop shop to send someone around.”
“Can you not refer to Kentish Town by its gangsta name? And why on earth didn’t you get Banbury to come over?” asked May, amazed.
“Wouldn’t like to pull rank, sir. Not fair on other people.” Longbright tucked a lacquered curl back into place and thrust out her formidable chest. “Hope I’m not too late.”
“No, they just arrived, come in.”
May and Longbright seated themselves beside Luke Tripp and his tailored mother. It was intended that the
