Bryant & May 06; The Victoria Vanishes

Acting Chief

Peculiar Crimes Unit

Well, he said to himself, you’ve really done it this time. You can still change your mind. It’s not too late.

Fanning the envelope until the ink was thoroughly dry, he slipped it into the top pocket of his ratty tweed jacket, checked that his desk was clear of work files and quietly left the office.

Passing along the gloomy corridor outside, he paused before Raymond Land’s room and listened. The sound of light snoring told him that the unit’s acting chief was at home. Usually Bryant would throw open the door with a bang, just to startle him, but today he entered on gentle tiptoe, creeping across the threadbare carpet to stand silently before his superior. Raymond Land was tipped back in his leather desk chair with his mouth hanging open and his tongue half out, faintly gargling. The temptation to drop a Mint Imperial down his throat was overpowering, but instead, Bryant simply transferred his envelope to Land’s top pocket and crept back out of the room.

The die is cast, he told himself. There’ll be fireworks after the funeral this afternoon, that’s for sure. Bryant was feeling fat, old and tired, and he was convinced he had started shrinking. Either that or John was getting taller. With each passing day he was becoming less like a man and more like a tortoise. At this rate he would soon be hibernating for half the year in a box full of straw. He needed to take more and more stuff with him wherever he went: walking stick, pills, pairs of glasses, teeth. Only his wide blue eyes remained youthful. I’m doing the right thing, he reminded himself. It’s time.

¦

“Do you think he ought to be standing on a table at his age?” asked the voluptuous tanned woman in the tight black dress, as she helped herself to another ladleful of lurid vermilion punch. “He needs a haircut. Odd, considering he has hardly any hair.”

“I have a horrible feeling he’s planning to make some kind of speech,” Raymond Land told Leanne Land, for the woman with the bleached straw tresses and cobalt eye makeup who stood beside him in the somewhat risque outfit was indeed his wife.

“You’ve warned me about Mr Bryant’s speeches before,” said Leanne. “They tend to upset people, don’t they?”

“He had members of the audience throwing plastic chairs at each other during the last ‘Meet The Public’ relationship-improving police initiative we conducted.”

They were discussing the uncanny ability of Land’s colleague to stir up trouble whenever he appeared before a group of more than six people. Arthur Bryant, the most senior detective in residence at London’s Peculiar Crimes Unit, was balanced unsteadily on a circular table in front of them, calling for silence.

As the room hushed, Raymond Land nudged his wife. “And I don’t think your dress is entirely appropriate for the occasion,” he whispered. “You’re almost falling out of it.”

“My life-coach says I should be very proud of my breasts,” she countered, “so why shouldn’t I look good at a party?”

“Because it’s a wake,” hissed Raymond. “The host is dead.”

“Ladies and gentlemen!” Bryant bellowed so loudly that his hearing aid squealed with feedback. “This was intended to be a celebration of our esteemed coroner’s retirement, but instead it has become a night of sad farewells.”

The table wobbled alarmingly, and several hands shot out to steady the elderly detective. Bryant unfolded his spectacles, consulted a scrap of paper, then balled it and threw it over his shoulder. He had decided to speak from the heart, which was always dangerous.

“Oswald Finch worked with the Peculiar Crimes Unit from its inception, and planned to retire on this very night. Everyone had been looking forward to the bash. I had personally filled the morgue refrigerator with beer and sausage rolls, and we were planning a big send-off. Luckily, I was able to alter the icing inscription on his retirement cake, so it hasn’t gone to waste. ‘The funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables,’ only the other way around, and with retirement substi tuted for marriage.”

“What’s he talking about?” whispered Leanne.

“Hamlet,” said Land. “I think.”

“Because instead of retiring, Oswald Finch died in tragic circumstances under his own examination table, and now he’ll never get to enjoy his twilight years in that freezing, smelly fisherman’s hut he’d bought for himself on the beach in Hastings. Now I know some of you will be thinking ‘And bloody good riddance, you miserable old sod,’ because he could be a horrible old man, but I like to believe that Oswald was only bad-tempered because nobody liked him. He had dedicated his life to dead people, and now he’s joined them.” One of the station house girls burst into tears. Bryant held up his hands for quiet. “This afternoon, in a reflective mood, I sat at my desk and tried to remember all the good things about him. I couldn’t come up with anything, I’m afraid, but the intention was there. I even phoned Oswald’s oldest school friend to ask him for amusing stories, but sadly he went mad some while back and now lives in a mental home in Wales.” Bryant paused for a moment of contemplation. A mood of despondency settled over the room like a damp flannel.

“Oswald was a true professional. He was determined not to let his total lack of sociability get in the way of his career. True, he was depressing to be around, and everyone complained that he smelled funny, but that was because of the chemicals he used.

And the flatulence. People said that he didn’t enjoy a laugh, but it went deeper than that. In all the years I worked with him, I never once saw him crack a smile, even when we secretly attached electrodes to his dissecting tray and made his hair stand on end when he touched it.” Bryant counted on his fingers. “So, just to recap, Oswald Finch – no sense of humour, no charm, friendless, embittered, stone-faced and bloody miserable, on top of which he stank. Some folk can fill a room with joy just by entering it. Whereas being in Oswald’s presence for a few minutes could make you long for the release that death might bring.”

He paused before the aghast, silenced crowd.

“But – and this is the most important thing – he was the most ingenious, humane and talented medical examiner I ever had the great pleasure of working with. And because of his ability to absorb and adapt, to think instead of merely responding, Oswald’s work will live on even though he doesn’t, because it will provide a template for all those who come after.

His fundamental understanding of the human condition taught us more about the lives and deaths of murder victims than any amount of computerised DNA testing. Oswald’s intuitive genius will continue to shine a beacon of light into the darkest corners of the human soul. In short, his radiance will not dim, and can only illuminate us when we think of him, or study his methods, and for that I raise a glass to him tonight.”

“Blimey, he’s finally learning to be gracious,” said Dan Banbury, the unit’s stubby crime scene manager. “I’ve never heard him be nice about anyone before.”

“He must be smashed,” sniffed Raymond Land, jealously turning aside as the others helped Bryant from his wobbly table. He glanced down at the white-and-blue-iced fruitcake that stood in the middle of the pub’s canape display. The inscription had read Wishing You the Best of Luck in Hastings, but Hastings had been partially picked off and replaced with a shakily mismatched Heaven. The iced fisherman’s hut now had pearly gates around it, and the stick figure at its door had sprouted wings and a halo, picked out in sprinkles. “I hope the cake has more taste than the inscription,” muttered Land, shaking his head in despair.

Nobody had expected the retirement party for the Peculiar Crime Unit’s chief coroner to become a wake, but then life at the unit rarely turned out according to anyone’s expectations.

Oswald Finch had died, sadly and suddenly, in his own morgue, in what could only be described as extraordinary circumstances. Yet his death seemed entirely appropriate for someone who daily dealt with the deceased.

Raymond Land had never expected to stay on this long at the PCU. After all, he had joined the unit for a three-month tour in 1973, and was horrified to find himself still here. Arthur Bryant and John May, the unit’s longest-serving detectives, had been expected to rise through the ranks to senior division desk jobs before quietly fading away, but were still out on the street beyond their retirement ages.

Detective Sergeant Janice Longbright had been expected to marry and leave the force, perhaps to eventually