Bryant & May 06; The Victoria Vanishes

days ago he had received notification from Leslie Faraday that the PCU had been officially disbanded owing to public-spending cuts.

The offices above Mornington Crescent tube station had already been filled by a new department specialising in some kind of electronic fraud. Nobody had been told who comprised the new team, or what exactly they did. The old locks had already been replaced with a swipe-card system, and white shutters had been lowered over the arched windows. At least we stayed true to ourselves, he thought with a smile, even if it did involve poisoning a government building in an act of revenge. A small subversion, perhaps, but a necessary one.

The tall blue shape flapping through the downpour toward him coalesced into the figure of John May. “Arthur, what are you doing here?” he demanded to know. “I thought we were going to meet on Waterloo Bridge as usual. You’ll catch your death of cold.”

“I wanted to be somewhere different today,” said Bryant. “I’m very wet.”

“Is there a decent pub around here?”

The elderly detective swivelled himself about, checking in either direction. “That way,” he pointed, peeping out above his scarf.

They went to The Water Rats on Gray’s Inn Road. “I know this place,” said May, pushing open the door. “Bob Dylan performed here in 1962. Oasis too but we won’t hold that against them.”

“I suppose they’re a pop group of some sort,” said Bryant, hauling himself onto a bar stool.

“More of a Beatles tribute band. I thought you were going to stay up-to-date with popular culture,” May admonished.

“Oh, I tried, but it was so boring, just affairs and divorces and who’s snubbing who. Like the 1950^s, only more vulgar. I don’t understand why the young admire celebrities who possess the charm of intestinal parasites. I saw that soccer player’s wife in the paper, the very thin singer with a face like a shaved monkey, complaining about how she hated to be recognised. In the accompanying photograph she had chosen to reveal a substantial portion of her pubic bone below a black leather corset. Within ten seconds of finishing the article I had already forgotten her name.”

“I thought you had got your memory back.”

“Mrs Mandeville’s techniques worked wonders, I must say. I still tend to favour remembrance of the arcane over the irrelevant, but that’s more to do with personal taste.” He held up his pint, waiting impatiently for it to settle. “For example, do you know why this pub is associated with music, and how it got its name?”

May raised an eyebrow. “I have a feeling you’re going to tell me.”

“You’ll like this one. I’m thinking of including it on my next guided tour of London. At the end of the nineteenth century, some music hall performers purchased a puny little horse called Magpie, and used its race winnings to help the London poor and Eastern European refugees. One rainy day, a day not unlike this, a couple of the owners were returning the soaked Magpie to its stable when a passing bus driver asked what it was. They replied that it was a trotting pony. ‘Trotting pony?’ mocked the driver. ‘It looks more like a bleedin’ water rat!’ From that remark was born the Grand Order of the Water Rats, a show-business brotherhood presided over by Prince Philip and Prince Charles that performs charitable works irrespective of race, creed or colour. Not bad work for a run-down boozer behind a railway station.”

“Perhaps it’s important that someone should remember things like that,” said May.

“Indeed. So long as somebody remembers, the city remains alive.”

“I’ve been thinking about the PCU all week,” May admitted with a sigh. “It’s the others I feel sorry for. Where will they go? I don’t suppose the Met will want any of them back. Why are gifted individuals always forced out by the mediocracy?”

“True. If you’re a woman, or senior, or Muslim, you’ll only ever get so far. They make sure of that. But we’ve done all our best work in our later years. Men only come to their senses in their fifties, around about the time that most housewives go mad. They realise what they’ve lost and what they can still achieve.”

“On the way over here I was thinking about the years we spent in the rooms above Mornington Crescent tube station.”

“I’m going to miss the place. We had some fun there, didn’t we?”

“You mean when we weren’t blowing it up, hiding wanted criminals in its cupboards, freeing groups of illegal immigrants, burying evidence, falsifying documents and telling dirty jokes to members of the royal family?”

“It was all for the public good.” Bryant was wide-eyed with innocence, but it was a look that would have fooled no-one. “Although I’ll admit I’m quite surprised that the ministry didn’t pay someone to knock us off, simply for being a constant source of embarrassment to them.”

“I heard you took Dan Banbury back to the supermarket in Whidbourne Street the other day.”

“Yes, I thought I’d search for signs that the pub had been installed there. He told me they were pretty easy to spot once he knew where to look. Screw-marks, scraps of tape and paintstencil marks. Of course, the building had originally been converted from a pub to a shop, so it required very little effort to turn back time for an evening. They simply placed painted flats over the lower half of the extended shop windows and whacked some plant-holders on top. We can’t press charges on the store owner, as it seems he was pressured into co-operation by people from Theseus. Some kind of bureaucratic error to do with his immigration visa. I’d love to have seen the look on Harold Masters’s face when Pellew told him what he wanted next. Masters was over a barrel by that time. What could he do but comply with Pellew’s request?”

“He’ll take the fall for all of this, you wait and see. He’s the perfect scapegoat. A dazed, embittered academic, trapped into compounding a series of crimes by proxy. How convenient for everyone.”

“I can’t feel too sorry for him, John. He chose his path long ago. I shall enjoy writing up the case for my memoirs.”

“And to think we would never have uncovered any of this if you hadn’t decided to wander home half-sloshed,” said May.

“I just wish I could remember what happened to Oswald Finch’s ashes,” said Bryant, “because that was really where it all – oh, my God.”

“What’s the matter?”

“I’ve just remembered what I did with them.”

“What you did with them?”

“I’ll admit I was a bit drunk. I was standing at the bar staring at that ghastly cheap urn, thinking about how much Oswald would have hated being in it, and decided he should have a better home.”

“Oh no.” May clenched his teeth, preparing for the worst.

“I unscrewed the lid and took out the contents. The ashes were in a plastic bag. I was going to transfer him to Alma’s tulip vase. I thought he’d be happier in there.”

“Why didn’t you just take the urn home with you?”

“I hated it. I threw it into the bin behind the bar.”

“What did you do with his ashes, Arthur?”

“I put them in the only bag I could find. The one Janice had bought for the office.” Bryant tried to suppress a laugh, but it escaped and grew until May too understood what had happened, and found himself joining in.

? The Victoria Vanishes ?

49

The Colour of Blood

Arthur Bryant stood before the illuminated glass case containing the holy relic, and knew that he had discovered the answer to an extraordinary conundrum.

His hands shook with the knowledge of something so incredible. “I’m the only other one who knows,” he told May, “the only other person to figure it out, and it’s all because of something Harold Masters said.”

They were back in the British Museum, far beneath the sound of pattering rain, in chambers filled with artefacts few tourists bothered to examine.

“The mythic ancient pubs, like The Jerusalem in Britton Street and the Rose and Crown in Clerkenwell, they