up starting the kind of social panic this unit was originally set up to defuse.”
“Besides,” added Bryant, “I’d say the use of the highwayman costume has a profound resonance that goes beyond the knowledge of most uneducated men.” He sat back, refusing to elaborate.
“Both of the victims had fights just before they were murdered,” Bimsley suggested. “And they both had estranged ex-partners who were upset with them. White’s mentor and the possible father of her child, Calvin Burroughs, and her ex-husband, Leo Carey. And there’s Martell’s ex-wife.”
Emboldened by the others, April half-raised a hand. “Anyone could find out where the victims were,” she offered timidly.
“What do you mean, April?”
“Well, their movements are published on Web sites and in celebrity lifestyle magazines. Their favourite restaurants, even their home addresses are easy to discover. Anyone could have figured out the times of their appearances at the gallery and the gym.”
“Very good point,” said May. “Anything else?”
“The physical impossibility of the murders,” suggested Banbury. “We’ve been over the figures a hundred times. Not a single person unaccounted for in the gallery. Thirty-three adults and fourteen children surrounding the room in which she was killed. No other way in or out except via the electronic turnstiles. The same situation with Martell; no-one else in the gym, which was locked from the inside. White was dropped into a tank over eight feet high, as if she really had been thrown by someone on the back of a horse. Martell had been hit by lightning in a room that has no electrical appliances apart from the recessed neon lighting panels overhead, none of which had been tampered with, by the way.”
“What about the paradox of the Highwayman himself?” asked Bryant. “You don’t attend a fancy dress party if you don’t want to be seen. So why go to the trouble of leaving no trace at the murder site if you’re then planning to parade around in period costume? He wanted someone to spot him. Why else would he wear the outfit?”
“He could belong to one of those historical societies,” said Longbright. “You know, Cavaliers, Roundheads, guys who dress up and reenact the Battle of Culloden. I can run a check on memberships.”
“You don’t have much of a physical description to go on,” warned May.
“We know he’s tall, about six six, broad-chested, black-haired – ”
“The hair sounds like a part of the disguise.”
Longbright tapped at her notepad. “The witness reports suggest he might have five o’clock shadow, which makes him dark-complected. No fingerprints, because he’s wearing leather gloves that appear to be part of the outfit.”
“We can’t go to Land with this,” said May, shoving back his chair. “None of it hangs together.”
“That’s what bothers me most,” Bryant admitted, tipping back his chair dangerously. “He leaves an elaborate calling card at the first crime scene, then leaves a very different one at the second. He dresses conspicuously and chooses to attack in public places, but nobody sees him in the act of taking lives. And – ” Bryant’s watery blue eyes dilated, refocussing across the room at a point halfway up the wall, like a cat. Everybody waited.
“And what?” prompted May.
But Bryant was thinking of the symbolic head on the logo of the Roland Plumbe Community Estate, and had decided not to speak.
He looked at the anxious faces surrounding him, and found himself unable to elucidate his half-formed thoughts. Kershaw had placed the Highwayman’s age between twenty-five and thirty-five, the statistical range for a serial killer, but Bryant was sure these were no crimes of passion; they were calculated for some other purpose entirely. He wanted to explain that they were not looking for a stalker or a madman, but for a very moral human being, someone filled with a righteous sensitivity and the invisibility of ordinariness. In the eyes of the killer the victims were immoral, and in the hearts of the public, they deserved to suffer. It was why the Highwayman wanted to be seen. He desired acknowledgement, recognition for his services, perhaps even hero worship. The choice of clothes, grand and elegant; the deliberate appearances in crowded spaces.
Bryant wanted to say all this but something stopped him, because he felt he would lead them all to a strange and dangerous place. It would confirm Faraday’s worst suspicions and jeopardise the unit’s existence.
¦
The Right Honourable Leslie Faraday MP was seated behind the most imposing desk Raymond Land had ever seen, an acre of green glass that made him appear to be sitting upright in a stagnant pond. The pudgy, wide-eyed young man with slicked sandy hair whom the detectives had first met in the 1970s was now a bloated, bald, and bad-tempered time server who had never managed to shake off his image as the government’s most pedantic minister.
In a long and almost entirely unmeritable career he had been shunted all over Whitehall. When civil servants are bad at their jobs, they are never cast out and prevented from pursuing their chosen career; they are merely moved elsewhere until they find a department that will have them. As Minister of State for the Arts, Faraday’s remark about Andy Warhol’s work consisting of ‘boring old photos painted in the kind of colours black people like’ had resulted in the outraged cancellation of a major exhibition. As minister for Rural Affairs and Local Environmental Quality, he had managed to bring the nation’s low-waged road-gritters out on strike during the worst blizzard in a century after calling them ‘a bunch of work-shy Irish layabouts’. As Minister of State for Sport, he had sparked off a race riot by inviting a white South African paramilitary leader to a Brixton Jail cricket match. After spending two years as a Minister Without Portfolio (where, by definition, he was unable to find anyone to offend) he was rehabilitated in the Home Office with a new brief: to make specialised police units pay, or shut them down.
Incompetent men exist in every profession, but they are easily dealt with. Faraday remained in Whitehall because of his single great talent, also his curse, which was that he never forgot anything.
“Mr Land,” he announced. “We met on August seven, 1971, did we not? It rained all afternoon. Then I met you with Mr Bryant, and again with Mr May two years later, under more clement circumstances. How are you?”
Shaking his hand, thought Land, was like dipping your fingers into warm Swarfega: clammy and clinging. As Faraday reseated himself, his brown suit constricted his stomach and his shirt collar throttled his throat seemingly to the point of asphyxiation. He tapped at an old-fashioned intercom. “Diedre, could we have two teas? Brooke Bond, very weak for me. And see if we have any of those ginger biscuits, the oblong ones with the little bits of peel in.” When he suddenly tipped his chair back, Land thought for a moment that he had submerged, but he bounced up again in a move that had been practised across an eternity of dull Whitehall afternoons. “I must confess I’m at a bit of a loss to know what to do about your two detectives,” Faraday admitted. “I mean, they’ve been at the unit a jolly long time, so they must be doing something right.”
“I was hoping you’d give me some advice, sir,” said Land. He waited for a response. A clock ticked distantly. Dust settled.
Faraday sighed like a leaking, tired balloon. “From your memorandum, it’s clear that you’d like to transfer to a more – professional – unit. I’ve given the problem some thought, and have decided that, because I know Mr Bryant and Mr May personally, I’m probably not the right chap for the job, so I’m going to hand the matter over to my new assistant. He has the kind of specialist knowledge that might be required for a more covert operation.” Faraday pressed a buzzer on his desk. “Diedre, would you send in Mr Kasavian?”
Land had only met Faraday a handful of times, but their wives had once been crown green bowling together, and he thought he had the mark of the man. Now, though, he sensed that he might be getting out of his depth.
As Oskar Kasavian entered, the sun passed behind a cloud outside Faraday’s office, and the room was plunged into shadow. Kasavian looked as if he was used to the recurrence of this effect. Tall, dark, and – well,
“I’ll take over now, sir,” Kasavian warned Faraday, effectively dismissing him from the conversation. He towered darkly between them, folding his hands behind his back with an unsettling crack of the knuckles.
“I read your memo with interest, Mr Land, and found that it suits our current need to cut spending by a third across the specialised units. The simple fact is that murder is becoming far too expensive. As I’m sure you know,
