Bryant & May 07; Bryant & May on the Loose

and hours counting down on his face. Tremble appeared to be having trouble remaining upright. The solicitor looked like he was covered in dust: baggy grey suit, thin grey face, thinning grey hair. On closer examination he actually was covered in dust, having just returned from the basement archive where he had been digging up information for the insistent detective who had called him (on his cell phone, a number he was sure he had never given out) at an unearthly hour on Thursday morning.

Tremble had a secret, however. Underneath his dreary exterior, he was quite interesting. When his penchant for investigating the area’s past was indulged, a light shone in his eyes and he became almost passionate, which was why his wife kept a stack of local history books on her bedside table.

“I’m not entirely sure that some of this information isn’t classified,” said Tremble, plonking down a huge stack of filthy green folders and leaving more dust on his jacket in the process. “The development of the King’s Cross site has been under public scrutiny for three decades. Nobody wants to make any more mistakes.”

“What do you mean?” asked Bryant, unwrapping a lemon drop.

“Well, the building of the Regent’s Canal and the Great Midland Railway turned a thriving area into an industrial wasteland. The river was filled in and the fields were turned into cheap housing for French immigrant workers. Dickens called the site ‘a suburban Sahara’. So this time the consultation process took in every local group and involved literally hundreds of meetings. Summary reports were produced after every stage. Perhaps you’d rather see those.”

“No, I want to go right back to the beginning,” said Bryant. “I’m interested in the very first tranche of purchases made by ADAPT.”

“They weren’t in the picture back then,” said Tremble. “It was called the King’s Cross Central Development Office in those days. The company became a public-private partnership in the mid-1990^s, and finally changed its name to ADAPT in 2003. All the companies have sexier names now. Process, Change, Pulse – I can’t keep up. What are you really looking for, Mr Bryant? I mean, what interest could the police have in old land purchases?”

“All wars are fought over territory, Mr Tremble. And this is a fascinating piece of ground. How much do you know about King’s Cross?”

“Far too much for my own good,” Tremble admitted. “What’s most striking is the way it has always switchbacked from rural idyll to urban squalor. One decade you have swans and spa fountains, the next, dustheaps and decay.”

“What do you know about Xander Toth and the Battlebridge Action Group?”

“He’s a pain in the rump, but I suppose he has more reason to be than most.”

“Why is that?”

“The name, Toth. The area around Euston was once the Manor of Tothele, later Tottenham Court Road. I suspect it derives from a word meaning the sun. Altars on druid sites are called Heal or Hele stones, because the sun rises over them. Helios is Greek for sun. Tot-Helios became Tothele, or Sacred Sun Site. The manor was a royal residence of King John in the thirteenth century. He hunted in the surrounding forest. Very popular with the royals, that area. Edward the Fourth, Elizabeth the First and Charles the Second’s mistress Nell Gwynne all lived there. By the 1670^s it had become Tottenham Court. So it was a rare example of a sacred site that became a royalist stronghold. Which means that Mr Toth can trace his ancestry back to the throne of England. That might explain why he feels so strongly about the land.”

“So it would be a prestigious area for ADAPT to own in its entirety, presuming they could purchase back all the separate properties and reunite it into one site?”

“Indeed. I think it even comes with its own sovereign laws, rights to hunt and dig, that sort of thing.”

“That’s very useful, Mr Tremble. You’re wasted here.”

“Tell me about it,” said Tremble.

¦

Bryant headed for his next stop.

The elderly detective looked hopelessly out of place in the arctic-white reception area of the ADAPT offices. He was rumpled and tired, and very nearly ready to slide off the vast white leather sofa and fall asleep. He was at the age where he fantasised about having a nap in the afternoon. Indeed, he had done so throughout his fifties, but now he was old enough to be constantly aware of his fragile place in the world, and would not allow himself to miss a moment more of his life.

So there he patiently sat with his brown trilby squashed between his hands, his presence making the place untidy. Bryant’s shabby overcoat was so vast that he appeared to be vanishing inside it. His wispy white tonsure was still fanned up around his ears as if he had just risen from bed. An impossibly slender young woman approached the sofa where he sat, but changed her mind when she saw its occupant. Bryant kept his watery blue eyes locked on the receptionist, daring her to leave him stranded in this snowy wasteland of designer chic for much longer.

After a few minutes, a small boy with a perfect blond designer haircut and an outfit that made him look like a miniaturised member of a boy band sat down next to him and began hammering a hand-held computer game. Electronic explosions and power chords filled the lobby. The boy punched the air, texted his success to a friend, then grew bored. He turned his attention to Bryant, studying him with vague distaste.

“Are you more than a hundred years old?” he demanded, as if interviewing an Egyptian mummy.

“I feel like it most days,” Bryant admitted. He did not like children because he had always been an adult.

“Then how do you stay alive?”

“I eat small boys.”

“Yeah, right.”

“You don’t believe me.”

The boy looked disgusted. “Duh. Get real.”

Bryant removed his false teeth and nipped the child hard on the arm with them. The boy screamed and burst into tears.

“Mr Bryant, you can go up now,” the receptionist called. “Miss Waters is ready for you.”

As he passed, she whispered urgently at him, “That’s Miss Waters’s son.”

“Good. Where is she?”

“Her administrative assistant will meet you on the third floor.”

The closing lift doors snipped off the sound of the wailing child.

Marianne Waters had a corner office with floor-to-ceiling glass overlooking a steam-cleaned courtyard lined with chrome uplighters and silver birches. She was a strong-looking woman, Bryant decided, studying her tight black suit. Hard-bodied and muscular, without a centimetre of body fat. He tried to imagine her saying silly words like ‘ping-pong’ and ‘hippopotamus’, but the image wouldn’t spring to life.

“Do you ever watch television, Mr Bryant?” she asked, walking to the window. “I always enjoy the historical adaptations, all those happy street urchins and ladies in bustle skirts worrying about their suitors. The reality was down there.” She tapped a nail against the double-glazing. “It’s hard to imagine how tough urban life used to be. These buildings were blackened with soot and filled with laundresses who were too old and ill to work by their mid- thirties. A woman of twenty-five looked fifty.”

“At least you were able to save some of the original buildings,” said Bryant, dropping onto the nearest seat.

“These factories were left over from the bad old days. Their staff worked with mercury, lead and arsenic. The dyes rotted their nails, and mercuric vapour burned out their bronchial tubes. They suffered from anaemia, blood poisoning, cardiovascular disease, dermatitis, kidney damage. The employment laws favoured management, of course. The rates of pay were whatever you could get away with. Now the offices are air-conditioned, and have natural light. We’ve improved the environment beyond all imagining.”

“I agree that our standards are different now, but the gap between rich and poor remains. It’s not your fault. Most of the office workers we interview hate their jobs and are only doing it to pay their bills. They binge-drink and take drugs and go mad with frustration and boredom.”

“You’re right. It isn’t my job to rebalance the whole of society, Mr Bryant.” Her mood changed as soon as she realised he would not be easily led. “Why are you here?”

“A rather esoteric subject for an investigation unit, I’m afraid. Land purchases. You made over two hundred and sixty of them in order to secure this land, and it took thirty years. Any problems there?”