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? Bryant & May on the Loose ?
44
Someone in the Shadows
Arthur Bryant was not happy. He paced across the cluttered lounge, peered from the windows into the rainy night, clapped his arms about himself, muttered under his breath, paced back again.
“Could you stop walking about?” asked Alma Sorrowbridge. “You’re going to wear out my Persian rug.”
“The closest this threadbare runner has been to the East is the East End,” said Bryant testily. “Where is he? He said he’d be here by now.”
“He only dropped you off a few hours ago. You see enough of each other during the day. I don’t know why you have to spend your evenings together as well. It’s nearly midnight. Most respectable people are in bed.”
“I told you, I’m awaiting news of a development. Besides, compared to a great many people I meet these days, I’m positively respectable. John May is the other half of my brain. I have to try my ideas out on someone.”
“You should be more worried about the compulsory purchase order on this place. We’re about to be made homeless and you’re going on about murderers. There’s always going to be murderers, but we might not find another place to live.”
“I knew I couldn’t expect you to understand. I’ve spent nearly an hour explaining my thought processes to you tonight.”
Alma didn’t like to admit that she had been concentrating on her knitting. “I tried to follow what you were saying. It would help if you made a jot of sense.”
The doorbell rang. “I don’t know why you don’t give him a key,” Alma complained. “You’re like an old married couple.”
“Oh, go and make yourself useful. Boil something. And bring us food. We’ll be working late.”
Alma let John May in. “He’s over-exciting himself,” she warned. “He won’t take his blue pills. Says he’s worried they’ll make him sleepy. Can you do something?”
“I’ll try,” said May, hanging up his wet coat. “I thought you’d prefer him like this to when he’s not working.”
“Well, I do,” Alma insisted, “but he’s scaring me with all this talk of a murderer. I have my faith, but there’s a limit to how much Jesus can do when Mr Bryant starts talking about chopping heads off.”
“Well, you can both rest easy now. We’re bringing in his man. I’ve come to pick Arthur up.”
“What’s that?” asked Bryant. “You’ve got someone?” He seemed suddenly confused.
“You know we have. Our boys have gone to arrest Richard Standover for the murder of Adrian Jesson. I thought you might like to be there for the interview.”
“No, no, that’s wrong.”
“What are you talking about? You were there when Jack put forward his theory and you didn’t say anything.”
“I didn’t want to demolish Renfield in front of everyone without a theory to put in its place. The idea that one man might teach another to kill would be feasible if they were gang members, but we’re talking about two middle- class businessmen here, not a pair of disenfranchised kids.”
“Don’t tell me you’re jealous of Jack,” said May, “just because he came up with a solution you couldn’t reach.”
“That’s just the point,” replied Bryant. “I do have a solution, or at least part of one. What I don’t have is a way of catching him.”
May seated himself on the arm of the sofa. “All right, go on. Explain. I’m listening.”
“Renfield’s theory has been bothering me. It leaves too many loose ends, and we have no scrap of proof that Cavendish and Standover even knew each other. I think there’s someone else still in the shadows, a connection we haven’t been able to draw out. Maddox Cavendish would have been too scared to do his own dirty work. I know his type. He had to save his career by getting the deed back fast, but he wouldn’t have been able to do it himself. People like Cavendish always hire others to handle the heavy lifting.”
“Where was he going to find a burglar?”
“I don’t know. There are plenty of workmen on the site; maybe one of them knew somebody. But he wouldn’t want the risk of involving anyone from his own company. Besides, the workmen would see him as management, and I don’t suppose he found it easy talking to them. I think he went out on the street to look for someone who didn’t know him, someone who would steal that deed from Delaney and melt away into the crowd. It had to be done the hard way, by discreetly asking around. He wouldn’t have used the office phone or his mobile, and anyway, who would he have called, Rent-A-Thug?”
“You really think it’s likely that he just went out on the street?”
“He was working in King’s Cross,” said Bryant. “How hard could it be? You can get drugs easily enough there just by talking to a few people in a pub. It wouldn’t be much more difficult to find a burglar. What else was Cavendish going to do, a nice white-collar worker with no known criminal connections? Follow me on this.”
“All right, I’m listening.”
“Having found someone, Cavendish had to have a way of contacting his man, because he needed to make sure the job got done and the deed would be delivered back to him. Presumably he then also had to pay him, unless he gave him the money up front, which would make him a complete idiot. We know Cavendish withdrew an unusually large amount of cash before he died. They could have had a pre-arranged meeting place. Probably somewhere in the station. God knows it’s big enough. But he’d still need a number, an address. Without it how could he be sure that the guy wouldn’t let him down?”
“We didn’t find anything.”
“No, because his murderer destroyed the evidence. Think about it. Cavendish hires someone to steal the deed. What if Standover hired the same man to steal a packet of photographs? It would explain why he has an alibi for the night of Jesson’s death.”
“So working with your theory, Cavendish and Standover don’t know each other at all. The only connection is this Mr X.”
“Correct. What if the man they both hired is prone to violence, and didn’t like being disturbed in the middle of a job? Delaney walked in on his attacker. Suppose Jesson did exactly the same thing? That’s two of the three deaths accounted for.”
“But what about Cavendish?” asked May. “You think he was killed by this phantom he hired?”
“Cavendish clearly knew his attacker; he let him into his office. Now you have one killer for all three victims, using the same MO.”
“It doesn’t explain why the heads were severed.”
“I don’t know. Cruelty, savagery. That part is still a mystery. You have to admit it makes more sense than Renfield’s solution.”
“But if Cavendish’s killer is cleaning up the mess he made, it would be logical to go after the last of the group who knows his identity – Richard Standover.”
“Exactly,” said Bryant. “When a man becomes involved in murder he opens himself to the same risks faced by his victim. You’re not bringing in a killer, John, you’re bringing in someone who’s about to be killed.”
