Bryant & May 08; Off the Rails

her.”

“You see, that’s your trouble right there. You can’t do two things at once. I’ve got a dozen different things going on in my mind.”

“Yes, and none of them make any sense.” Cutting away from the crowded thoroughfare of Euston Road, the detectives found themselves alone in Camley Street, which angled north beside the railway line. “Do you honestly think Faraday will allow us to remain operational? We allowed a suspect to escape.”

“He’s not a suspect, John, he’s a murderer, and his continued freedom provides us with a reason for staying open. We’re the only team likely to catch him. If anything, his arrest will trigger our closure. A cruel paradox. Let’s see what Giles has got for us.”

The desolate redbrick building behind the graveyard of St Pancras Old Church was situated in one of central London’s emptiest spots. It might have been built on the edge of Dartmoor, for the number of guests it received.

“I wonder what the staff do for lunch?” Bryant asked, looking around. “I suppose they must bring sandwiches and sit among the gravestones.”

“You realise that every time we’ve been here in the last month, Mr Fox was probably watching us?” May pointed to the rowan tree where the murderer had waited for them. Mr Fox had been employed as a caretaker by the church. He had befriended both the vicar and Professor Marshall, the previous coroner of St Pancras, in order to steal secret knowledge from them.

“I know, and it gives me the creeps. You can never be quite sure what’s lurking below the waterline around here.” Bryant rang the bell and stepped back. “Look out, here comes old Miseryguts.” He waited while Rosa Lysandrou, the coroner’s daunting assistant, came to the door.

“Mr Bryant. Mr May. He’s expecting you.” Rosa stepped back and held the door wide, her face as grim as a gargoyle. Dressed in her customary uniform of black knitwear, she never expressed any emotion beyond vague disapproval. Bryant wondered what Sergeant Renfield had seen in her. He couldn’t imagine them dating. Rosa looked like a Greek widow with an upset stomach.

“How very lovely to see you again, Rosa,” he effused. “You’re looking particularly fetching in that – smock- thing.”

Rosa’s lips grew thinner as she allowed them to pass. “She has hairy moles,” Bryant whispered a trifle too loudly.

“Dear fellows! So remiss of me not to have swung by.” Coattails flapping, Giles zoomed at them with his hands outstretched. Although he had achieved his ambition to become the new St Pancras coroner, he missed his old friends at the PCU more than he dared to admit. “Come in! We hardly ever seem to get visitors who are still breathing: there’s just me and Rosa here.”

The energetic, foppish young forensic scientist had brought life and urgency into the stale air of the Victorian mortuary. The building’s gloomy chapel and green-tiled walls encouraged reflection and repentance, but Kershaw’s lanky presence lifted the spirits.

“I heard about Liberty DuCaine, poor fellow, I thought it best to stay away from the funeral. There was something grand about that man; what an utterly rubbish way to die. Have you got any leads?”

“We’re running lab tests on his flat and re-interviewing witnesses, but no, we’ve nothing new apart from a cryptic little warning note,” May admitted.

“Your Eller grew up in these streets, didn’t he? I’m keeping an eye out for him and will bring him down with a well-timed rugby tackle if spotted, rest assured.”

“You’re very cheerful,” remarked Bryant with vague disapproval. “What’s wrong?”

“What’s right, more like.” Grinning broadly, Kershaw dug his fist into his lab coat and pulled out a letter, passing it over. “Have a read of that, chummy.”

May snatched the envelope away from his partner. He couldn’t bear having to wait for the protracted disentangling of spectacles that preceded any study of writing less than two feet high. A Home Office letterhead, two handwritten paragraphs and a familiar signature. “I don’t believe it,” he muttered, genuinely awed.

“What? Show me,” barked Bryant, who hated not knowing things first.

“Giles, you are a genius. He’s pulled it off, Arthur. He’s done something neither you nor I could achieve.”

“Let me guess. He’s worked out why people who don’t drive always slam car doors.”

“No, he’s got the Unit re-instated.” May waved the paper excitedly.

“How did he do that? Give me that.” Bryant swiped at the page.

“You’re not the only ones with friends in high places,” Kershaw told them, obviously pleased with himself. “But I did owe you a favour. It cost me a couple of expensive lunches at Le Gavroche.”

Although he had been told often enough, Bryant had forgotten that Kershaw had once dated the former Home Secretary’s sister-in-law. “So you pulled a few strings for us.”

“Less string-pulling than back-scratching,” Kershaw replied. “He’s pleased that you recommended me for the position. The old St Pancras coroner, Professor Marshall, was a scandalous old Tory of the More-Than-Slightly-Mad school. Got caught charging the construction of a duck pond on his expenses. They’d wanted him out for years.”

“We recommended you because you were the best person for the job, Giles. You deserved the chance of advancement.”

“Well, you’re to be officially recognised once more, effective from next Monday. And you’re to be allocated an annual budget. It’s conditional on your clearing up this business with Mr Fox by then, but I’m sure you’ll be able to do it, won’t you? You might even get some new equipment out of it.”

“That’s wonderful news,” said May. “Giles, you’re a star.”

Bryant slapped his hands together gleefully. “Don’t tell Raymond Land; I’ll do it. I want to watch his face drop. All we have to do now is recapture London’s most elusive killer by Saturday.” His irony fell on deaf ears.

“I know why you’re here today. Come and meet Gloria Taylor.” Kershaw ushered them through to the morgue’s autopsy tables.

Gently unfolding the Mylar wrapping around the badly bruised face of a black woman in her mid-twenties, he pulled out the retractable car antenna Bryant had given him as a going-away present and tapped the corpse with it. “Identifying marks, well, the teeth would have given us her name if the contents of her bag hadn’t. Unusual bridgework. Ms Taylor is single, lives in Boleyn Road, Islington, has a kid, a little girl of five, no current partner. That’s all I know about her life so far, but I can tell you a little more about her body.”

“Why do coroners always refer to their clients as if they were still alive?” Bryant wondered.

“Well, they are alive to us, just not functioning. Her hair and nails are still growing. There’s all kinds of activity in her gut – ”

“Thank you, you can stop there. You’ll end up giving everyone the creeps, just like your predecessor.”

“She was in pretty good shape, but she’d had an operation on her right leg below the knee. It had left this muscle, the tibialis anterior, severely weakened. It’s why she wasn’t able to stop herself when she fell; she knew it would hurt to throw sudden weight on it. Instinctively, she tried to protect her head but still fell badly, breaking her neck. It was all over in seconds. It didn’t help that she was wearing ridiculously high heels. A terribly dangerous fashion, but women won’t be told. There are the usual surface injuries you’d expect from this kind of fall, damage to the knees, hips and wrists. She slipped, went headfirst, velocity kept her going all the way to the bottom. It’s a pity nobody thought to grab her dress as she passed. The English stand on the right and walk down on the left. In the case of a fixed staircase like this, there are still unspoken right and left rules. Those on the right walk slowly, the ones on the left walk faster.”

“I imagine the weight imbalance on the treads of moving escalators is the reason why they’re constantly being replaced,” Bryant remarked, inadvertently reminding the others that he was more concerned with the mechanics of death than the tragedy of its victims.

“The slow-walking people probably thought she was being rude, trying to barge past, and got out of the way. Certainly no-one stopped her. I understand there weren’t many on the staircase – the rush hour hadn’t properly started. In any event there was nothing to impede her fall. She hit the ground with a wallop. The impact was enough to tear her dress, which, according to Janice, is an original Balenciaga outfit from the 1950^s.”

“Trust Janice to know that. So you think it was an accident.”

“From a forensic point of view, yes. If you fall off a tall building, you reach terminal velocity at around two