does community work. And he can test out some of the more extreme theories he has about inherited criminal genes, because no-one would ever know that – ”
“We have to go the other way here,” said the gormlessly thin Gosling, throwing an elbow into his fellow pupil’s ribs. Longbright watched them leave, wondering how much Billings might have given away if he’d finished his sentence.
¦
Across town, Arthur Bryant was attempting to enjoy a pint of John Smith’s bitter in the smoky brown upstairs den of The Plough in Museum Street, while he listened to several members of the Grand Order of London Immortals entering a spirited debate on the flashhouses of Seven Dials, and why Hogarth used rooftop cats to indicate brothels in his engravings. He was about to add his own opinions when a familiar face bobbed in front of him.
“You said you’d call on me again after our date, Arthur,” said Jackie Quinten, suddenly elbowing her way to his attention. “You never came back.”
“Hullo, fancy seeing you here,” Bryant stalled, eyeing Kentish Town’s diminutive local historian, the only person dressed more haphazardly than himself. “Er, there was a rather important case to deal with; I was very tied up.” He searched for an escape route, but members were blocking the staircase exit, spitting crisps over each other as their arguments grew more heated.
“I wouldn’t mind, but I’d made the most enormous kidney casserole because you said you were a big eater. We seemed to have so much in common when I helped you out on that Water Room business. Did I misread the signs? Am I too old for you? I know I’m not very smartly turned out. It’s funny; I don’t mind men of my age, but men don’t like women of my age. They all want someone younger, and that strikes me as profoundly unfair.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t hear you,” replied Bryant, pretending to fiddle with a non-existent earpiece.
Mrs Quinten was on a roll. “Why is it,” she asked, stabbing the smoky air with a beringed digit, “that we’re expected to put up with old men’s ways, all breaking wind and nose-hair and toenail clippings in the bath and not wanting to go anywhere, yet when it comes to the reverse – ”
“What we men have to do in return,” Bryant interrupted, “is eat our own body-weight in trifle while you Hoover the curtains fortythree times each week. Curtains hang vertically, for heaven’s sake, they don’t need Hoovering.”
“I thought you said you’d never lived with a woman,” said Jackie suspiciously.
“I haven’t – I don’t think of Alma as a woman; she’s my housekeeper, and merely happens to be of the female gentler, like a ship.”
“So you have someone to take care of all your…personal requirements.” Jackie couldn’t have extracted more innuendo from the sentence if she had been Kenneth Williams.
“It’s not like that at all. Mrs Sorrowbridge is a respectable widow whose duties include washing my clothes whenever they’re left without somebody inside them for more than twenty minutes, and the insertion of mothballs into my socks when I least expect it.”
“But every man has other needs,” Jackie pressed on.
“Possibly, but my needs are not every man’s. They involve the prompt arrival of my Gold Top and finding a shop that still sells sherbet lemons, although I assume you’re presumptuously referring to sex, to which all I can say is Self-Control, madam.”
“Look, I’m a woman of the world,” Mrs Quinten reasoned.
“Ah, but which world?” asked Bryant. “What are you doing in this one?” He gestured about the smoky room.
“The Immortals? It’s just a fancy name for a bunch of dry-as-dust historians. They’ll talk the back wheels off an omnibus, but this is the only society of its kind, which makes it special. They’re interested in London’s most infamous characters – political brigands, celebrity criminals, unapprehended murderers, anyone who has managed to become immortalised in the city’s collective memory by doing something notorious and getting away with it. Jeffrey Archer used to come until they banned him. A step too far, they felt, but he’ll probably enter the pantheon after he’s dead.”
“Murderers who aim for immortality,” repeated Bryant, absently studying the nicotine-stained portraits around the walls.
“Oh.” The realisation hit her. “You’re here about the Highwayman. Do you think someone in the society might be responsible?”
“Not at all,” Bryant revealed. “I’m here about another case entirely. I imagine these people understand the historical power of manipulation. A killer might well be drawn to such a meeting of like minds. Do you know many people here?”
“I should do. I’m one of the founding members. We don’t get much new blood, I’m afraid. These are all very familiar faces. We occasionally attract researchers and lecturers.”
“Anyone new in the last few weeks?”
“A girl planning a documentary for the BBC. And a rather sexy teacher from a nearby school. That’s about it.”
“Tell me about the teacher, Jackie.”
“He had a funny name. Something Victorian, like Kingdom.”
“Brilliant Kingsmere?”
“That’s it – you know him?”
“Our paths have crossed. Do you remember what he was doing here?”
“He gave us a lecture about the history of Robin Hood. We ended up discussing London murderers, mainly from a political perspective. We mostly attract ineffectual men and bossy women here, not exactly your cup of tea. He made a nice change. Didn’t come back, though.”
“You don’t think I might learn anything from him?”
“Knowing you, Arthur, you’ve established the psychology behind the murderer’s actions without turning up a clue to his identity.”
Bryant frowned, hating to be found out.
“I’ve never had less information this far into a murder investigation. All I know is the usual stuff; that he’s emotionally frozen, driven by cold ideals. Probably let down by someone in the past, statistically likely to be in his early thirties, guarded, crafty, living a solitary life within a five-mile radius of the deaths.”
He sighed, his eyes straying to the window. “There is another city inside London, you know, one that can’t always be seen, only sensed from sidelong glances, caught in snatches of conversation, spotted from the upper- deck windows of night busses. Do you have any idea how much of the population lives alone? You only have to examine the backs of flats in Earl’s Court or Stepney or Hammersmith or Bow from the night bus. You spot tenants pottering around their conversions, the kitchens overlit and narrow as ship galleys, spindly spider plants neglected on window ledges.
“Loneliness is such a normal state in this city now that public demonstrations of affection are frowned upon even by lovers. In the 1950s, couples were making love in Hyde Park in the middle of the day. The war had taught people to be glad they were still alive. How quickly we rewrite the past to suit ourselves.” His watery blue eyes seemed focussed far beyond anything in the room. “But the city is still filled with secret idealists, finding temporary ways to defer pain and solitude. Some are worn down and leave for good; a few grow strong and stay until they die. And there are the others, the odd ones out – who kill to keep the pain of loneliness at bay.”
“You think killing stops him from being lonely?” asked Mrs Quinten. “Is that any logical reason to commit murder?”
“It’s been reason enough for many recent murderers. Besides, logic is all I have to go on,” muttered Bryant. “Take it away from me, and I would have no way of solving anything. These are crimes without anger or financial gain. Loneliness is the only other motive I can imagine.”
He surveyed the crowd as he turned up his collar. “You read of detectives who put themselves inside the minds of criminals. I’ve never been able to do that. I only see ideas and circumstances and secret histories. I can learn nothing more here.”
“At least let me come with you, Arthur. Just for a while.”
From the way he looked at her, they might never have met before. “No,” he said with finality. “I’m lost, and I will lose those who follow me. I have to make my way through to the end of this alone.”
She remained watching helplessly as he carefully threaded his way towards the exit.
