do. Where did you meet, in some dimly lit Soho dive bar?”
“No, at the wet fish counter in Waitrose. She was having a fight with the fishmonger over prawns. She only wanted the ones with their orange tails on, and started shouting at him in French. I helped her out, then we went for coffee. I knew a little about her hometown because of that business Arther keeps referring to as the White Corridor case. She poured cognac into her cafe au lait from a hip flask. It was ten-thirty in the morning.”
“So she’s an alcoholic, too.”
They walked on in silence. If a woman came between Bryant and May, April doubted that her grandfather’s partnership could ever be restored.
? Bryant & May on the Loose ?
5
Career Opportunities
The first punch sent the postman slamming into the oak table at his back. The second knocked him over the bench and onto the floor. Glasses from the tipped table rolled and smashed about him. Colin Bimsley had barely wiped the blood from his grazed fist when the other postmen jumped on his back and dragged him toward the door. One of them punched him in the kidneys while another planted a boot on his
Bimsley had not expected postmen to be so ready for a punch-up, but they had not taken kindly to being described as a bunch of useless work-shy tossers. Contrary to popular belief, Londoners are generally hard to entice into a scrap. Usually they’ll settle for a sarcastic remark and a withering look before walking away, but the postmen of the Pakenham Arms, the pub nearest to North London’s Mount Pleasant Royal Mail Sorting Office, were clearly made of sterner stuff.
Bimsley dusted himself down and examined the torn sleeve of his jacket. This had been his third fight in as many days, and none of them had proven really satisfying. Anger and alcohol were a lousy combination, he told himself, but for now it suited his mood. He felt betrayed, not by Bryant and May, who had done everything within their power to keep the unit open, but by their cowardly bosses, men who hid behind their computer terminals as they totted up the savings to be made on each closed department.
Bimsley had no job to go to. The Met would never take him back, because he had repeatedly failed his medical. Only the unit had agreed to overlook his condition, which was brave of them considering that Diminished Spatial Awareness, an inability to judge distances, was a pretty serious drawback in a job that required him to chase criminals down alleyways and over rooftops. He had hoped to make Detective Inspector, but was now considering taking a position as a private security guard. As his self-respect faded he had started hitting the pubs, and then their patrons. Bimsley had trained for three years at Repton Amateur Boxing Club in the East End, but the fact that a bunch of postmen could whip him suggested it might not be worthwhile pursuing a career as a pugilist.
Meera Mangeshkar had stopped returning his slurred late-night phone calls. Bimsley’s hopes of winning her respect and her love had vanished along with his ambitions. Tucking his ripped shirt back into his jeans, he headed off toward the next pub in the street. He was vaguely aware that he smelled of sweat, spilled beer and crisps.
¦
“Hullo? Are you open?” Dan Banbury, the late unit’s Crime Scene Manager and IT expert, pushed back the door of the little red-painted shop in Camden High Street. Yield to the Night was named after a noir film starring buxom British sex-bomb Diana Dors, and sold clothes from the 1950s and 1960s. Its windows displayed the kind of sequined battle-dresses that could transform a shy, slightly overweight woman into a hardbitten, sexy nightclub hostess.
“Hullo, Dan, what are you doing here?” Detective Sergeant Janice Longbright made a magnificent entrance through a shimmering curtain of rose-coloured beads. She had pinned back her newly auburn hair with tortoiseshell barrettes and was wearing a curvaceous Dorothy Lamour sarong, one of the shop’s best sellers and a masterpiece of intelligent engineering. Her maquillage was a theatrical mask of exaggerated sensuality. Her lipstick was bright enough to warn ships away from rocks.
“Blimey,” said Dan.
Thick, sweet incense smouldered in the air. The crimson-draped counters were stacked with pink garter belts, patent-leather stilettos and forgotten cosmetics. Longbright gave her old colleague a kiss that marked his cheek like a cattle brand.
“I thought you were going away on holiday,” she said, releasing him.
“We were until I lost my job,” Banbury explained, wiping his face and looking around. “I decided we couldn’t afford it. My nipper was well put out. How are you doing?”
“All right, I suppose. I’m helping an old friend, just to tide me over.”
“You enjoying it?”
“Yeah, I’m on commission. The money’s better than I was getting at the unit. Want to pick up something for your wife?”
“You’re joking. This stuff’s a bit too risque for her; she’s more the jeans and t-shirt type.”
“We can soon change that. We run pole-dancing courses every Wednesday and Friday.”
“I’m not having my missus sliding her gusset down a length of cold steel when she should be defrosting my dinner, thank you. I just wondered if you’d spoken to anyone.”
“I’ve talked to John a few times. I left a message for Mr Bryant on the old work number but he hasn’t called back.”
As Banbury was surrounded by pointy-busted mannequins sporting wired cutaway brassieres, he elected to stare down at his shoes. “So, no news from anyone. About the unit, I mean.”
“Not a sausage. I had a spot of lunch with Meera the other day. She says Colin’s drinking too much. He’s been making booty calls at two in the morning, begging to come round. But she hasn’t heard anything about the unit. According to John, the Home Office isn’t prepared to discuss the matter with us, so I wouldn’t keep your hopes up. I’m beginning to think that too much time has passed now.”
“Oh.” Banbury was never the most voluble of men, but he seemed even more tongue-tied than usual. “I just thought – you know the Met has frozen us out as well.”
“What do you mean?”
“I thought there was a chance that we might get our old jobs back, so I made a few calls. None of them want to know.”
“You can’t be surprised about that, Dan. They barely tolerated us at the best of times. The only one who’s likely to be offered his old job is Jack Renfield, and that’s because he’d only just joined the PCU when it was closed down. They’ll probably feel sorry for him, and he was on their soccer team.”
“Even so…I keep thinking if I just wait for a while, Mr Bryant will somehow persuade them to re-form the unit.”
“I did too at first. I think when something gets this badly broken, it’s pretty tough to fix. We went down upsetting a hell of a lot of people.”
“We got letters of support.”
“Yeah, but more of them were glad to be rid of us. I was sent a black wreath from some joker at Albany Street nick.”
“I thought the old man had some well-placed government pals. I was hoping he’d pull in a few favours. That’s what he’s done in the past.”
“I don’t suppose Arthur’s in the right frame of mind to whip up fresh support in Whitehall.”
“You’ve known Bryant and May longer than anyone, Janice. Why did they never accept promotion?”
“Because they knew most investigations would go to DCs, TDCs and PCs. They didn’t want desk jobs, and they didn’t want to end up in something specialist like working with Tactical Support Groups.” Riot police needed their senior ranks to be involved on the ground, but it was a general rule of thumb that the higher you went in the police force, the less chance you had of regaining the excitement of your early days.
