“But books don’t hold the key to people.”
“They hold the key to society, and if we ignore that, we know nothing. Now put everything back in the same order.”
“There was no order.”
“
“What about these, then?” Longbright held up a set of tattered blue volumes. “
“I’ll show you. Over there in the corner you’ll find a small corkboard.”
Longbright picked up the board, which was divided into nine panels.
“Stand it on the shelf behind John’s desk,” Bryant instructed, pulling out a pack of cards. “Now pick one of these. Look at it, then pick eight more.” Longbright drew the three of spades, and added eight more cards. Bryant gave her a handful of pushpins. “Shuffle your cards and pin them facedown on the squares of the board.”
“I’ve got more important things to do with my time,” the DS complained. She completed her task and turned to find Bryant pointing a gun at her. It looked like a Colt Single Action Army revolver. “Where did you get that?”
“Evidence room. Get out of the way. You don’t know which square holds the card you picked, do you?”
“No. Are you sure this is safe?”
“Of course. It’s a Victorian parlour trick.” Bryant aimed randomly, squeezed his eyes shut, and fired the gun. The explosion made their ears ring. “Check the board,” he instructed. Longbright found a bullet hole in the centre of one card. She unpinned it and turned it over.
“Is that the card you chose?” he asked.
“No. I picked the three of spades. This is the nine of clubs. What did you do?”
“You were meant to pick the nine of clubs. An identical card with a bullet hole was pinned to the back of one of the board’s squares. The square is on a pivot. When you pressed the card onto it, you activated a timer that flicked the square over. Persistence of vision covered the switch. The gun was loaded with a blank, obviously.”
“Well, if you’d forced the right card it would have worked,” said Longbright encouragingly.
Just then, Raymond Land came storming into the office. “What the bloody hell is going on?” he demanded to know. “Someone just fired a gun!”
“That was just a blank,” Longbright explained. “Mr Bryant was showing me a trick.”
“Blank, my arse! The bullet came straight through my wall. You could have killed me! It missed my ear by about two inches and exploded Crippen’s litter tray. Gave him the fright of his life. Look.” He held up a squashed slug.
“My mistake,” Bryant apologised absently. “I’m sure I gave you the nine of clubs. I think I’ll just step out to my verandah for a smoke and a ponder. Behave appropriately while I’m gone.”
“Wait, come back, you’ve got no right – ” Land began, but Bryant had slipped out.
Land was looking for someone to blame. “And you, the way you encourage him…” he sputtered, shaking a finger at her.
“Don’t look at me, boss. Mr Bryant’s teaching himself magic.”
“Well, I’ll teach him how to disappear if he’s not careful,” Land concluded ineffectually, stomping back to his room.
Longbright replaced the books in their rightful places, but the dust was setting off her hay fever. Checking her watch, she noted that Liberty DuCaine’s funeral would soon be starting. Although the Unit had been warned to stay away, she felt that someone should represent them. Reaching a decision, she donned her jacket and set off.
? Off the Rails ?
6
Best Boy
At first glance, the City of London Crematorium appeared to be nothing more than a pleasant London park. There were a great many rose beds neatly arranged like ledgers, and a variety of clipped English trees – elm, walnut, chestnut, beech. On closer inspection Longbright noticed the small rectangular plaques set at ground level in the grass. An aquamarine sky released soft patters of rain, accentuating the landscape’s greenness, releasing the fresh smell of spring leaves.
Feeling guilty because she had forgotten to change from her PCU staff jacket, Longbright turned up her collar and headed for the chapel’s anteroom. She could hear an organ recording of ‘From Every Stormy Wind That Blows’ coming to an end.
The doctor at University College Hospital had told her that if Liberty DuCaine’s neck wound had been a centimetre lower, it would have been over his jawbone. The tip of the weapon would have been deflected and prevented from going into his brain. Instead it had slid straight up, tearing into his temporal lobe. Longbright had spent the weekend trying to imagine what she could have done differently. But there was no use in wondering, because they were all at fault; they had fatally underestimated the capabilities of their suspect.
“What do you think you’re doing?” demanded a large Caribbean woman, watching her from the damp archway.
“I was just reading the tributes on the flowers,” said Longbright, straightening up.
“We don’t want the police here. Did you even know my son?”
“I worked with him for a while.”
The older woman examined the badge on Longbright’s jacket. “He wasn’t at your unit for very long.”
“No, but we brought him in on a number of special investigations before he joined full-time.” Longbright held her ground. She had heard about Liberty’s mother, and knew what to expect. “I’m sure you’d rather not have anyone from the PCU here, Mrs DuCaine, but I counted myself as a close friend.”
“How close?” Mrs DuCaine gave her a hard stare before approaching the floral display with a weary sigh. She bent with difficulty and tidied the tributes with the air of a woman who needed something useful to do. “If you want to be here, I suppose I should accept with grace. There’s too much bad blood in the world.”
“Thank you.”
She stood with a grimace, sizing Longbright up. “I’m as much to blame as anyone. I encouraged Liberty to enter the force. We all did. But I didn’t want him joining that crazy unit of yours. Most of his friends were against it. They said it would damage his career, that it wasn’t even part of the real police.”
“There’s a lot of prejudice against us, Mrs DuCaine. We don’t operate along traditional lines.”
“Then what
“We look after cases of special interest. Sometimes people commit acts that can cause – unrest – in society.”
Mrs DuCaine waved the notion aside with impatience. “I don’t know what you mean by that.”
Longbright tried to think of a good example. “Suppose two people were killed in your street in one week. People would think it was a bad neighbourhood.”
“We already live in a bad neighbourhood.”
“Well, in such a situation the Peculiar Crimes Unit would be called in to find out if the deaths were connected, or if it was just coincidence. We would try to lay public fears to rest. A lot of people live and work in this city. Someone has to look after its reputation. Your son was invited to help us do that. Not many people are good enough to be asked.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better? My son ended up getting stabbed in the neck.”
“It could have happened to him anywhere, Mrs DuCaine.”
“As soon as I heard the doorbell, I knew.” She reached past Longbright and delicately replaced a card on top of a spray of yellow roses. “It was the stupidest thing. My mother had a plate, a big Victorian serving plate with scalloped edges, covered in big red roses. I dropped it. We never use that plate, it stays in the dresser and nobody touches it. But that day I used it. I remember looking at the pieces of china on the floor and thinking something just broke.”
