Bryant had studied the tidal charts and suspected that, as much as he wanted to blame Theseus, suicide could not be ruled out. He supposed no-one would ever get to the absolute truth surrounding Jukes’s death.
Mandume, the Namibian guard, was in his usual place. Providing twenty-four-hour security for Theseus Research required three men, but Bryant had calculated the shifts correctly. His obvious respect for the security officer and his performance of general doddery politeness stood him in good stead. Mandume saw him and smiled, happy to approach. He even opened the gate slightly to chat.
“Hi there. Any luck with your walking club?”
“We’ve decided to reroute our tour through another part of town, but thank you for asking. I missed you yesterday, when I came to visit my grandson.”
“My day off,” the guard told him. “I went to visit my little boy. He lives with his mother.”
“It’s difficult to know where to take the kids sometimes, isn’t it?” said Bryant, as if he had any clue at all about children and divorced parents.
“He likes dinosaurs, so we went to the Natural History Museum. You know that place?”
“Certainly, I’ve been there many times. I daresay they shall put me there when I retire. A joke.” The guard had looked blank, but now smiled. “Why don’t you bring your boy here to see where his father works? I’m sure he’d be interested.”
Mandume’s smile vanished. “No, no, not here.”
“Where is your grandson today? Could you not give it to him yourself?”
“No, he has to visit his wife in hospital, and they’re not allowed to use cell phones inside, so I can’t call him.”
“Or if I can’t leave it on his desk, perhaps you could. I’d be very grateful. No child’s birth should go uncelebrated in the eyes of Our Lord, don’t you agree?” For a fleeting moment, Bryant wondered if he was overdoing it.
Mandume looked so uncomfortable that Bryant felt bad about pushing him. “I could leave it behind reception, in the janitor’s room…”
“But he may not get it then. He goes straight up to his desk from the car park. You know how things can go missing in a building this size.”
The guard glanced back at the building nervously. Bryant knew it was bristling with cameras. “Sure, I am allowed up there. I can go wherever I want.”
“Thank you, it’s a small thing but he’ll be so very pleased.” He passed the small, ribbon-tied box and card through the gate.
“Hey, no problem. You take care of yourself.”
Paradoxically, the idea had come from Harold Masters himself, and his revelation at the beginning of the week that a crystal vial containing the blood of Christ was liable to hold germs that would be dangerous in a modern environment. It had set Bryant thinking, and reminded him that they were employing a man with connections in such a field.
Dan Banbury had done a brilliant job at short notice.
Going to the press about Theseus would require leaving a trail back to the PCU, so Dan had suggested that an appropriate way to deal with the company was to send them a message showing that their secret was out. Inside the chocolate box was a soluble membrane filled with a colourless, odourless fluid. Banbury had whipped it up in Kershaw’s lab from ordinary household ingredients, using a recipe detailed on an anarchists’ Web site.
It would take approximately five hours for the membrane to dissolve at room temperature, releasing the chemical through the slotted plastic base of the box. As it evaporated, the exposed oily particles would be drawn into the working ventilation system and would cling to every surface inside the building.
The chemical components would induce mild nausea and vomiting, but would have no lasting effect. However, the offices would need to be evacuated and quarantined while everything was cleaned. In a nice touch, Banbury had thought to include the photographs of the four women who had died because of what they knew. Resignations would no doubt be tendered, questions would be asked and new brooms would discreetly sweep clean, but ultimately the company would survive.
As he walked away, it occurred to Bryant that the only person to get hurt by his actions would be the guard.
? The Victoria Vanishes ?
48
The Last Farewell
On the following Wednesday morning, Arthur Bryant stood motionless in the rain on Gray’s Inn Road, watching the iridescent carapaces of black taxis chug past King’s Cross station.
Beyond the railway tracks, cranes were moving girders with regal slowness, replacing the demolished Victorian housing blocks with vast glass boxes.
Once there were recognisable London types, ranks as distinct and separate as bird families were to twitchers. They had been replaced by fluctuating, instinctive tribes. Now, the occupants seemed united by tension and velocity.
He remembered empty wet streets where the sound of clinking milk bottles acted as alarm clocks, where the clop of a carthorse was a call to bring out unwanted furniture. He remembered so much that the weight of it all made him tired.
A faint nightscape of stars like sugar grains in the smoky dusk above London Fields.
Ragged children running after a Bentley driven slowly through Bethnal Green, the same children who danced behind the trucks that sprayed water on roads during August scorchers.
The rickety Embankment tree-walk, illuminated with Chinese lanterns made of coloured paper.
Raucous chimps’ tea parties at the London Zoological Gardens.
His mother swimming in the Thames, sunbathing on the sickly yellow artificial beach at Tower Bridge.
Thomas and Jack, his uncles, mending beehives behind Southwark Bridge, delivering sacks of root vegetables for illegal sale in the side streets of Bermondsey.
His crazy half sister Alice playing the untuneable piano in her dive bar in the basement of the Borough Corn Exchange, the same bar that had the channel of a forgotten underground river sluicing through the back of its Gents’ toilet.
Nothing had yet appeared in print about the contamination of a defence ministry outsource agency, but two
