The Memory of Blood
Bryant & May #9
2011, EN
? The Memory of Blood ?
Prologue
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EYES ONLY – THIS COMMISSIONED OBSERVATION REPORT (COR) BG298/10-14 WATERMARKED TO H.O. WHITEHALL – INTERNAL SECURITY POLICY UNIT – EYES ONLY
A GUIDE TO THE PECULIAR CRIMES UNIT, ITS STAFF AND AIMS
AN EXPLANATORY NOTE ON THE ORIGIN OF THE PECULIAR CRIMES UNIT, 231 CALEDONIAN ROAD, KING’S CROSS, LONDON N1 9RB
The Peculiar Crimes Unit is not like other police divisions.
It was founded soon after the outbreak of the Second World War, as part of a government initiative to ease the burden on London’s overstretched Metropolitan Police Force. In this time of desperation most able-bodied men had been taken into the armed forces, and seven new experimental agencies were proposed by the Churchill government. The Peculiar Crimes Unit was one of them.
Its aim was to tackle high-profile cases which had the capacity to compound social problems in urban areas. The affix ‘peculiar’ was originally meant in the sense of ‘particular’. The government’s plan was that the new unit should handle investigations into those situations deemed uniquely sensitive and a high risk to public morale. To head this division, several young and inexperienced students were recruited from across the capital.
The crimes that fell within the Unit’s remit were ones that could potentially cause social panics and general public malaise. Its staff members were outsiders, radicals and freethinkers answerable only to the War Office, and later the Home Office.
THE OTHER LONDON UNITS
One of the other experimental units created at that time was the Central Therapy Unit, set up to help the bereaved and the newly homeless cope with the psychological stresses of war. This unit closed after just eleven months because bombed-out residents continued turning to their neighbours for support rather than visiting qualified government specialists.
A propaganda unit called the Central Information Service (later to become the COI) was set up to supply positive, uplifting news items to national newspapers in order to combat hearsay and harmful disinformation spread about our overseas forces, and to fill the void left by the blanket news blackouts.
A further unit based at the War Office employed a number of writers and artists, including members of the Royal Academy and novelists Ian Fleming and Dennis Wheatley, to project the possible outcome of a prolonged war with Germany, and to develop stratagems for deceiving the enemy. The most famous wartime deception created by this unit was Operation Mincemeat, in which the corpse of a dead Welsh tramp was disguised as a drowned naval officer, planted with false plans and left for the Germans to find.
The most successful of the seven experimental units launched by the Churchill government in wartime was the cypher-breaking division based at Bletchley, where Alan Turing and his team cracked the Enigma Code, and in doing so laid the foundations for modern computer technology.
THE PCU SINCE 1945
The PCU remained in operation through the war and has continued in one form or another ever since that time. In the past two decades, reorganization of the national policing network has aimed at reducing the influence of individual units and creating standardized practices operating from guidelines laid down for a national crime database, subject to performance statistics.
The PCU unofficially aided a number of high-ranking politicians in the past, and as a consequence has remained exempt from these measures. Subsequently, a series of high-profile embarrassments has placed the Unit on a cross-governmental blacklist of Organizations of Potential Detriment, which is the reason for this ongoing internal surveillance.
RAYMOND LAND
TEMPORARY ACTING HEAD OF THE PCU
Raymond Land’s original PCU contract was intended to last for eighteen months but was extended indefinitely after no other applicants could be recruited. He has applied for a transfer from the PCU on no fewer than seventeen separate occasions, which gives some indication of his dissatisfaction with the Unit.
Land comes from Luton, which says it all. He’s never really lost his suburban temperament. He finds it hard to work with his detectives, who appear to pay no attention to his directives and treat him with amusement and disdain. His attempts at discipline go unheeded.
As a former graduate of the Central London Criminal Biology Unit, Land has on occasion proven himself to be intelligent, driven and meticulous, but I once heard it said about him that ‘he could identify a tree from its bark samples without comprehending the layout of the forest’. Most members of the PCU seem to share this flaw.
In the past he has shown himself to be a strong government ally, but he can’t be trusted to toe the party line, and has switched sides on more than one occasion. He could probably be easily manipulated with a promise of relocation/early retirement.
ARTHUR ST JOHN BRYANT
SENIOR DETECTIVE
Where do I start with Arthur Bryant?
Bryant is the original thorn in the side of the establishment. I could point out that he managed to blow up his old headquarters, that he released illegal immigrants into the underground system, infected a Ministry of Defence outsource unit and offended a member of royalty, but let’s stick to the more salubrious facts.
Bryant was born in Whitechapel, East London. Formerly of Bow Street, Savile Row and the North London Serious Crimes Division. In policing terms, Bryant has really covered the waterfront. He’s handled just about every type of case, including multiple murder, kidnap, vice, burglary, public affright, terrorism, the disappearance of a pub and the theft of forty cats. Typically, it was the solving of this last case that most endeared him to the general
