“Hm.” Frank read in silence for a few minutes. “Appears to be a series of lessons passed on from lawbreakers to their pupils, full of slang. Listen to this:
“Can I take this away with me?”
“No, but I can make you some photocopies.”
“That will have to do.” Bryant flipped the pages. “It says that attackers chewed licorice to make them more long-winded during foot escapes. Sensible advice. There are cases here that go back to Charles the Second.”
“This might be of use,” said Frank, wiping a thin green layer of mildew from the cover of a small tome. “
“Show me.” Bryant flicked his fingers at the librarian. On the front of the book was an embossed drawing of a highwayman. In his right hand he held playing cards: a four of clubs, known as ‘the devil’s bedposts’, and two pair, aces and eights, the so-called dead man’s hand.
He read the frontispiece. “
“Why did they need their own language?” asked Frank.
“Because the criminals of London were transported for petty larceny and buying stolen goods, and hanged for everything from shoplifting to murder. They needed to be able to function below the eye level of the law.”
“Well, you can take your pick here. It’s a complete linguistic guide. Substantives but not many nouns, plenty of adverbs, and something referred to as the Copulative. Do you honestly think all this stuff is going to help you with the case?”
“He’s leaving me clues,” said Bryant. “I need to be able to understand them. There’s not a society of highwaymen, is there?”
“How do you mean?” asked Frank.
“Oh, you know the sort of thing, people who dress up and research their favourite characters. I presume the library is listed as a resource for all sorts of clubs and associations.”
“Yes, it is,” Frank agreed. “I can probably get you a few addresses, but it’ll mean making some phone calls.”
“I haven’t got much of a budget,” Bryant warned. “Do it for Dorothy.”
Back outside the library, though, Bryant began to wonder. He was cold and tired, he’d forgotten to take his tablets, and his legs were playing up. He was also halfway across the city poking about in arcane library books when he should have been getting his report ready for Faraday’s inspection.
If the time he’d invested in this esoteric trawl through the forgotten world of London’s thieves failed to pay off, there would be no way out. How did knowing that the Leicester Square Vampire had modelled himself on Robin Hood help to close the case?
May had insisted on reattaching himself to the Vampire investigation. Bryant knew that his own erratic methods could drag them both down, as well as stranding some of the country’s best minds without hope of employment.
As he passed the murky trash-filled alleyway behind the library, the Highwayman was close enough to reach out and touch his scarfwrapped neck. Instead, the leather-clad wraith shifted back into the darkness until only the dull gleam of his eyes remained.
? Ten Second Staircase ?
34
Elaborate Acts
“Let’s go, Peculiar!”
Dan Banbury raised a hand on either side of him. The rest of the group stood in a ragged circle, joined at their fists. Only Meera Mangeshkar looked sceptical, mainly because she was having to hold Colin Bimsley’s hand.
“Come on, you lot, put your backs into it this time,” said Banbury, attempting to sound hearty.
“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go, Peculiar!” echoed the group, lifting their arms high. They stopped in mid-chant and turned towards the door.
Arthur Bryant was watching them with his mouth open. “What on earth is going on here?” he asked finally. “What are you all doing in my office?”
“Team-building, sir.” Banbury began confidently, but his voice broke. “Stimulates the brain and releases stress-inhibiting hormones. Only way to keep our spirits up.”
“Well, could you kindly not,” snapped Bryant. “I don’t want this place infected with happiness. Nothing will be achieved unless you’re all dead miserable.”
“I thought in the light of Mr Kasavian’s announcement this morning, it might prove beneficial.”
“Well, you thought – What announcement?”
“About closing down the unit on Monday, sir.”
Thunderheads rolled into Bryant’s eyes. “Whatever you’ve heard is wrong, and whoever told you is a lying hound. Besides, if that had been the case, Raymond Land would have been creeping around here by now, visiting his particular form of spiritual ebola on us.”
“Come on, there’s no need to cushion us; we all received the memo, old bean,” said Kershaw nonchalantly.
“I’m not cushioning you, you upper-class nincompoop. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“There’s to be an internal investigation of the whole Leicester Square Vampire business. Your comment about him possessing eternal life made the papers this morning.”
“Eternal life?” repeated John May, stepping in from the corridor. “Tell me you didn’t say that, Arthur.”
“I’ve been misquoted. I said he was an example of an eternal myth,” Bryant barked. “I was just answering a question posted on the unit Web site.”
“And you didn’t realise it was from a journalist?”
“I stand by my remark. The Leicester Square Vampire’s physical appearance is a universal archetype, a perverse spirit of old England, if you will. Take a look at the evidence in engravings and photographs; every few years the same kind of creature appears. Ultimately he eludes capture, because question marks hang over the guilt of the condemned culprit. Look at the mythology surrounding the Vampire – he ran through alleys, launching himself at strangers, drawing symbolic blood before soaring aloft, untouchable and unstoppable, before vanishing through brick walls. He didn’t, of course; they were merely illusions caused by our unwillingness to accept more mundane truths. We want to believe in divine retribution, even when it appears to be directed at innocents. We never checked back far enough. All the evidence was there. When the first crime occurred, we studied only the recent files. Nobody thought of going back through the centuries.”
“I wonder why,” said May bitterly. “Arthur, I gave you licence to be unorthodox, but this mental meandering has to stop.”
“Even you noticed the similarities between the Highwayman and the Vampire,” Bryant reminded him. “The same ideals connect them spiritually and ideologically, if not physically. They share a common root, and it goes right back to Robin Hood. The idea that a murderer can somehow be rehabilitated in the public mind as a hero, a people’s champion, has enduring appeal and goes back hundreds of years. The Vampire knew it, and so does the Highwayman. And the reason why I’m performing this ‘meandering,’ as you put it, is to get the Vampire’s case
