‘Nothing. He was asking about my time-sheets. I know he’s suspicious about our continued surveillance of Ubeda. What are you going to do?’
May had been able to keep the case on their official records because the protection of Greenwood, as a government-think-tank adviser, could conceivably come under the jurisdiction of the unit. However, as the academic didn’t appear to be in any danger, and wasn’t bringing his colleagues into disrepute by pursuing what appeared to be some kind of esoteric hobby in his spare time, May had no justification for continuing to maintain surveillance.
‘Look,’ said Bryant, ‘I’ve got Longbright’s notes from her conversation with Ubeda, so why don’t I follow it up in my spare time?’
May knew all about his partner’s offers of help; they came with riders, like insurance contracts. ‘What do you want in return?’ he asked.
‘Keep talking to the residents of Balaklava Street for me, would you? I don’t trust them.’
‘Which one in particular don’t you trust?’
‘Any of them. Somebody knows something they’re not telling. Ask yourself some questions. Tate, the tramp, why was he watching the girl? I must admit I always found the image on the side of that treacle tin damned odd. After all, the stuff’s made from sugar, not honey, so why are the bees there? No one’s managed to interview the couple who live right next door to her, Omar and Fatima-I don’t seem to have last names for them, and it’s not good enough. The medical students, what do they know? That rather smug family, the Wiltons, they must have seen something. And I want photographs of everybody, preferably caught off guard. Even murderers smile when they know they’re having their picture taken, and that’s no good.’
‘I’ll do what I can-’
‘Land’s creeping around the building checking on everyone; it’s not very conducive to crime detection. He can’t play golf because it’s raining, and the last thing he wants to do is go home to a houseful of moaning women, three ghastly daughters and his dreadful wife, so he mooches about making life miserable for everyone else. He’s got the charm of a rectal probe, and no social skills to speak of, so nobody wants to go for a drink with him. Let’s face it, dogs have more to look forward to in later life-at least they can go to the park and roll in shit.’
‘Ah, Raymond, we were just talking about you,’ said May hastily.
Land stood in the doorway, fuming. Bryant had decorated the area around his desk exactly as it had been before the fire. Statuettes of Gog and Magog, voodoo dolls, his beloved Tibetan skull, books with reeking singed covers rescued from the conflagration, some odoriferous plants that lay tangled in an earthenware pot-tannis root, probably, marijuana, certainly-an ancient Dansette record player scratching and popping its way through Mendelssohn’s ‘Elijah’, papers and newspaper clippings everywhere, a half-eaten egg-and-beetroot sandwich dripping on to a stack of uncased computer disks.
‘I thought we’d agreed to keep the new offices clean and spartan, moving toward a paper-free environment,’ said Land weakly. There the senior detectives stood, side by side, working as a team against him, undermining his confidence with knowing looks. ‘I thought that having been given all this nearly-new equipment, you’d give a thought to changing your methodology. Instead I find the place more like the set of
‘Oh, come on, Raymondo,’ smiled Bryant, knocking out his pipe on the side of the waste bin and blowing noisily through it. ‘You know we’ll sort the outstanding workload in our own time.’
Land’s face reddened. ‘I think your time’s run out. I want you to pack up this business in Kentish Town, for a start. You’re probably going to get a verdict of accidental death, you know. You’ve come up with no useful evidence whatsoever. The case wasn’t even assigned to you.’
‘Look here, Raymond, if there’s going to be a fundamental sea-change in the way we work-the way we’ve always worked, I might add-’ here he nodded conspiratorially at May-‘I think you should give us some official guidelines and a bit more warning.’
‘You’ve had about thirty years’ warning, Arthur, don’t come the old acid. I mean it-closed files and clean desks. Your new regime starts first thing on Monday.’ He slammed the door hard as he exited, hoping to leave behind a positive impression.
‘We finally get an office door and he tries to knock it off its hinges,’ sighed Bryant, packing his pipe with a handful of dried leaves. ‘From now on, we’re going to have to hide our tracks more carefully.’
‘Arthur, you have to explain why you’re so convinced there’s something going on in Balaklava Street.’
‘That’s not so easy.’ Bryant dropped into his chair and recklessly lit the pipe. ‘It’s the kind of neighbourhood that looks utterly mundane, but there are undercurrents and subcultures in London that hardly anyone is aware of- people who live entirely outside the law. Who knows who you might meet? Mental patients from St Luke’s walk the streets with demons dwelling behind their eyes. I suppose the whole thing interferes with my notions of home. Threaten that and you damage something very fundamental to your well-being. Kallie Owen had no real personal difficulties before she moved in, it’s not in her character to attract trouble. She’s inherited someone else’s bad karma, buying a house from a murdered woman. We’re seeing reactions to some buried situation known only to one or two people. This runs much deeper than we can imagine.’
‘I hate it when you talk in riddles,’ May complained.
‘I only do it because I don’t fully understand the meanings myself, but it’s there in front of me, I know that. Just as I know there will be another attempt on a life. Whoever committed these crimes is more confident now, because we’ve failed to get close enough to be a threat. You’ve seen this kind of behaviour before, John, don’t pretend you haven’t.’
‘Like it or not,’ May warned, ‘we need to repay Raymond’s faith in us. We have to start afresh, Arthur, and if we can’t do it, then it’s time to go. I don’t need to spell out what will happen if either of us are forced into retirement.’
Bryant wasn’t used to being lectured. He regarded May sceptically through the cloud of illicit smoke that had transformed the office into a Limehouse opium den. ‘I suppose you’re right. Raymond has been a thorn in my side longer than I can remember, but he’s always fought for us. Perhaps we do need to change our approach. If we’d had more staff, I’d have searched the entire area door to door. As for your pal Greenwood, we should have pulled him in and put the fear of God up him, and that would have been the end of that.’
‘Then let’s have one last try. You find out what Greenwood’s up to. I’ll talk to the residents of Balaklava Street. And we must keep looking for Tate. Somebody has to know something.’ He caught a look of pain crossing Bryant’s face. ‘What is it?’
‘My greatest fear is that we’ve found something rare-a killer hidden in plain sight.’
‘It’s the kind of case you would once have dreamed of, Arthur.’
‘Not any more,’ he told May. ‘Death stands too close to me.’ Bryant felt a chill in his bones that no amount of warmth could dispel. The time was coming when he would no longer understand the way of the world, and then he would cease to have a purpose. Murders were tests, and solving them was the only way of staying alive. Explaining the murders in Balaklava Street would provide more than a stay of execution; it would extend their life spans, and give them a reason to continue. Although he was tired, Bryant set to work once more.
26. NAVIGATION
There was no other library like it in London.
In place of the usual plaques reading ‘Romantic Fiction’, ‘Self-Help’ and ‘DIY’ were signs for Eleusinian and Orphic Studies, Rosicrucianism and Egyptian Morphology. While the books gathered under its roof were far too esoteric for general public consumption, the collection was too incomplete for scholastic study.
Most of its contents were a bequest from Jebediah Huxley, the great-grandfather of Dorothy Huxley, the library’s present and doubtless final custodian. Under the conditions of the bequest, the collection could only be dispersed and the building sold with the approval of the last surviving family member. Dorothy had no living dependants, and was in her eighties. Greenwich Council was itching to get its hands on the small redbrick Edwardian block, tucked in permanent dank shadow beneath the concrete corner of a flyover in the south-eastern
