Bryant & May 07; Bryant & May on the Loose

a tight uniform and providing a role model for others all the time. She wanted him to tear at her clothes, to press her deep into the comforting night, the muscles in his thick brown arms lifting and widening as he raised his body over her. She felt him connecting with her at six or seven points, from her toes and hips to her mouth, and wondered if they could simply melt into each other, becoming one.

It felt like a seduction conducted out of sequence, starting with a fierce culmination, his eyes never leaving hers, his body moving with increased connection, gentler and gentler, resolving to a faint and tender kiss.

She fought to stop herself from being sensible. She knew they had to work together. She knew that it could create problems if they decided not to be this close again. She knew she had to get rid of the IKEA cushions. Her eyes were fully open to all the attendant dangers.

But right now, on this cold, starry night in May, it seemed far better to let them gently close.

¦

After Longbright had called him from Brighton about the connection between two of the victims, Bryant had barely been able to contain his excitement. His interview with Keith Barker had lent further shape to the ideas that were developing in his head.

As the two detectives walked along the rainswept Caledonian Road that night, heading for John May’s BMW, he started piecing together events. Old Mr Barker did not realise it, but he had just placed an international corporation at the heart of a conspiracy to murder.

“While Cavendish was clearing land rights for the ADAPT Group,” Bryant told May, “he found that in the case of a few plots of land, ownership couldn’t be verified – but the project has been in development for thirty years, so what’s a few more months? All ADAPT had to do was wait for the rights to lapse, and that’s what happened in most cases. I suppose if the worse came to the worst they could take a chance and quietly go ahead with construction, hoping that nobody came forward. But then the builder Terry Delaney threw a spanner in the works. He turned up a house deed, and went to Maddox Cavendish with news of his find. That was their first contact; Delaney rang Cavendish for advice. Then Cavendish took Delaney out to lunch and tried to obtain the deed. Whatever happened over that lunch, Delaney didn’t feel comfortable about simply surrendering the deed to ADAPT, and told Cavendish that he was determined to trace the rightful owner. Cavendish needed the deed to stay hidden in order to prevent the blocking of the project, or he had to be able to purchase it. But now, it had surfaced in the worst possible manner. He must have been having kittens.”

“How crucial is the property to the group’s plans?” asked May, ushering Bryant into his car.

“Let me show you.” Bryant pulled a crumpled roll of paper from his pocket and spread it out on the dashboard. “Most of the houses in Camley Street were subdivided before the war, except for number eleven. The Porters – the ones who were bombed, yes? – their garden extended all the way to the edge of the canal and down both sides of the property. It’s right in the centre of the mall’s main wing. This isn’t a proposal that can simply be junked and moved a few hundred feet to the left – it’s taken years for the public hearings and for the council to approve the plans. Worse still, any publicity could bring to light the fact that the house is constructed over one of Britain’s oldest sacred sites, and although archaeologists usually get limited time frames in which to examine ancient remains, this one might be important enough to have a stay of execution granted.”

“So you think Delaney was trying to return the deeds to their rightful owner when he was killed. But if this is about property, why was it necessary to commit murder?”

“One scenario presents itself. Cavendish realised he had single-handedly screwed up Europe’s biggest building project. He had failed to locate a key property ownership for the site, and knew that his future was on the line if he didn’t resolve the situation. He went to Delaney’s apartment and ransacked it, but Delaney returned home early and surprised him. In the ensuing struggle, Delaney died.”

“Come on, Arthur. Cavendish was a small, rather mousey executive. It seems highly unlikely that he would then decide to decapitate Delaney with all the professionalism of a hit man before dragging the rest of his victim’s body to a chip shop in the Cally Road.”

“Banbury told me Cavendish wasn’t well liked and didn’t socialise with the rest of the department, rarely went for a drink with them even when it was someone’s birthday. When he wasn’t in the office, he was in the company gym. And they all thought he was too ambitious.”

“But if his bosses got wind of what had happened, others at the ADAPT Group may be culpable to varying degrees. It could take years to prove anything.”

“Yes, that’s a problem,” Bryant agreed. “And derailing the project for a full investigation would be disastrous.”

“So, how would Cavendish have felt, presented with this do-gooder who, over the course of a lunch, decided he’d do the right thing and return the deed?”

“We can assume he panicked, and came to the realisation that he had no other choice but to set about burgling Delaney’s flat.”

“All right, let’s say he did; why would he murder two people and remove their heads according to an ancient legend? Where does that leave Adrian Jesson, a coffee shop manager with no connection to the other two?”

“There’s something wrong with the theory,” Bryant admitted. “Who killed Cavendish? Right now we need to find the woman to whom Delaney passed the property document.”

“What about the rest of the project’s key leaders?” asked May. “Are they suspects? Or are they in need of protection?”

“The only way we’ll be able to answer that is by finding out exactly what Cavendish did when Delaney told him he couldn’t have that deed.” Bryant shook his head gloomily. “I have to know what happened, but I don’t know how to access the information. I can’t turn back time.”

? Bryant & May on the Loose ?

39

The Find

A little more than two weeks earlier, the city had been a slightly different place. The PCU had still been in limbo, and Terry Delaney had still been alive.

Delaney watched as the canary-yellow bulldozer roared into reverse, trying to pull itself free from the remaining wall. His work boots found traction in the viscous mud and he quickly moved out of range as the brick slab toppled backwards and crashed over, lifting its concrete base out of the earth, spraying rocks and clumps of soil everywhere.

While the driver of the bulldozer concentrated on shoving the last chunks of rubble back into a pile, Delaney went over to the ragged crater and climbed in. He should have been working in a team today, but the other guy had called in sick, said he had food poisoning. Alcohol poisoning, more like, thought Terry as he checked the base of the hole.

Nobody was sure whether there were any foundations to the remains of the building they had just pulled down. The plans didn’t show a basement, but they were often wrong. The worst job Terry had ever undertaken was digging out the lower ground floor of a warehouse in Wapping. The buildings on the docks were built without foundations, so their stability was provided by making them pyramid-shaped, with the thickest layers of bricks at the bottom. They had run weeks over schedule on that one.

He checked the perimeter but found no sign of another floor. He was just about to climb out of the hole when he noticed the faint circle of bricks in the very centre of the pit. He knew at once that it was a well; the whole area was peppered with them. Most old factories had drawn up their water from boreholes sunk into the river Fleet. Terry knew a lot about King’s Cross. His family on his father’s side had come from the area, and he enjoyed studying historical documents, matching what he read with what he had been told by his grandparents. The wells usually ran deep, and upon discovery would have to be reported, studied, then filled in – all in a short space of time, if the work schedule was to be kept.

He pulled out a couple of the loosened stones and then shovelled off a layer of earth, but found ragged stumps of concrete poured over broken brickwork; someone had filled it in, probably during the war. But something else had been exposed by the bulldozer, a flattened black box that at first glance appeared to be some kind of land mine. But now he saw that it was made of cheap tin, and had been cemented inside the well wall like a letter box, someone’s homemade safe. The lid had been crushed and twisted when the bulldozer had pushed down