public debate, some silly man will stand up and start complaining about police brutality until I want to beat him to death with my stick.”
“You know in your heart that’s not true,” replied May, wondering if it was. “When you conduct your London tours, what’s the feeling between you and your audience?”
“Antipathy bordering on mutual hatred,” said Bryant glumly. “We usually can’t wait to get away from each other.”
“Then it’s time you started learning to empathise more.”
“You’re asking me to give up my carefully nurtured ideals and start reveling in humankind’s myriad imperfections.” Bryant took up the Chatterton volume and buffed its cover with his sleeve, scattering dust.
“If you want to put it like that, yes.”
“I won’t remember the names of pop stars,” he warned. “I’d prefer to keep my memory filled with useful data.”
“But how useful is the data you store?” May tipped back his leather armchair and raised his highly polished Oxfords to the desk. “You know precisely how many Thames crossings there are between Teddington Weir and the Tower of London – ”
“Of course, twenty-eight, everyone knows that – ”
“ – and you told me why there are metal pine-cones on top of half of the railings in London – ”
“ – the Georgians adopted the pinecone as an architectural motif because it was the Roman symbol of hospitality, that’s common knowledge – ”
“But it’s not, don’t you see? Yesterday you told Janice here that there are eight statues hidden underneath Vauxhall Bridge, and that they can only be seen from a boat, but most of the people we deal with don’t give a monkey’s fart about such architectural idiosyncrasies. Why should they? Such things have no relevance to their lives.”
“Rubbish. The details of everyday living enrich us all.”
“But they’re not useful. The majority is more interested in finding aspirational role models amongst celebrities, which makes you the outsider. And if you’re an outsider, they’ll never take you into their confidence.”
“Your utilitarian attitude is very taxing,” Bryant complained. “I don’t throw away knowledge just because it ceases to be of immediate use. Crimes are more complex now, so you never know what will come in handy. Remember how it used to be? An emerald robbery in Hatton Garden, a broken window, a clanging alarm, grassing spivs on the Mile End Road, a trip round to a safe house in Southwark, ‘Can we search the premises?,’ ‘It’s a fair cop, guv,’ on with the handcuffs and up before the beak.”
“I think you’re confusing your life with an Ealing caper,” said May drily.
“Very possibly,” Bryant admitted, “but that’s how things were in my day. Or possibly not.”
“Your day is still continuing, sir,” Longbright felt duty-bound to point out.
“Janice is right, old fruit. You remain accountable to the public so long as you’re employed, and that means keeping up with them.”
“Get your coat on, Mr Bryant,” said Dan Banbury, looking around the edge of the door. “A nasty murder on the Embankment, phoned through a couple of minutes ago, sounds right up our particular cul-de-sac.”
? Ten Second Staircase ?
5
Eternal Destiny
The riverside spot had once been a tumbledown jumble of wharves, timber yards, and stonemasons, twisted ropewalks and moss-green jetties slipping into the brackish brown waters of the Thames. The politicians gathered in the Houses of Parliament opposite had complained about the eyesore in their sight, and down it had all come, to arise in a single splendid building typifying the Edwardian renaissance. The architect’s drawings for County Hall showed a great colonnaded crescent finished in Portland stone and red Italian tiles, pallid sculptures, steep sloping roofs, and sun-flecked central courtyards.
But nothing runs smoothly in the rebuilding of London. In the middle of the clearance and excavation, they had discovered the boat.
The vessel had been carvel-built of oak, and ran to twenty metres in length. Coins found inside it dated from the reigns of Carausius and Allectus, suggesting that it had been built by Romans late in the third century. A magnificent find, though incomplete; the broken section pulled from the reeking Thames mud had disrupted the construction on the South Bank of the river. The monumental edifice of County Hall eventually housed the wrangling assembly of London, and appropriately enough, took over half a century to complete. It was grimly inevitable that the council should then be abolished and replaced with a more controversial body, which decided to move to a different spot altogether, beside Tower Bridge, in a modern building finished in brown glass and shaped like a giant toe.
Poor County Hall, ignored when it should have been admired, then reviled for the plan Prime Minister Thatcher unveiled to turn it into a Japanese hotel. When this future also disintegrated it became an aquarium, sleek grey sharks gliding through waters where earnest councillors had once fought to divide the boroughs of London between themselves.
Here also were housed Salvador Dali’s melting clocks and arid landscapes in permanent exhibition; his great elephant sculpture is placed on the embankment, teetering on attenuated giraffe legs, where it appears to stride over Parliament itself, surely a vision that would once have brought a charge of treason. In the front of the building (for the river faces its back) the former Charles Saatchi collection of modern British art, now the County Hall Gallery, awaits visitors, who balk and complain at the idea of paying to see ideas made flesh, especially when there’s nothing traditional on display.
A home for artistic visions, then (for perhaps we can include its cool blue panoramas of drifting iridescent angelfish), and also a suitable place for a murder, a great wood-panelled beehive of tunnels and passages. Through the shadowed oak corridors, across the sepia parquet blocks, into the main domed chamber like an immense wooden
But something was wrong here; the liquid in the tank had overflowed, slopping onto the surrounding floor, and the foetuses had been joined by a larger form.
“It was only unveiled last Monday, now it’s buggered.” The young guard was uniformed but uncapped. He absently touched his bristled ginger hair, wondering if he would somehow be made to take the blame. DCs Colin Bimsley and Meera Mangeshkar had cordoned off the area and were taking rudimentary notes, but could do little until the specialists arrived.
“You’re not the regular police, then,” asked the guard, eyeing the slim silver panels on their black padded jackets. “PCU – what does that stand for?”
“No, we’re not…Simon.” Bimsley checked the guard’s badge and ignored his question. “How long have you been on this morning?”
“Since nine A.M.”
“Everything was normal at that time. Otherwise you’d have noticed, wouldn’t you?” Bimsley stabbed his ballpoint in the direction of the tank. “Body floating facedown in there, water everywhere, it stands to reason.”
“Not water, mate. Formaldehyde. You know, to preserve the babies. That’s what the smell is.”
“I read about this artwork. It’s been causing quite a fuss.” Mangeshkar approached the tank. “Isn’t the liquid supposed to be clearer than this?”
Simon the guard turned around to see. “Something must have gone wrong. It started turning cloudy at the end of last week. The gallery chiefs are supposed to be meeting to discuss the problem.”
