Longbright shot him a silencing look. Land spent his days justifying the unit’s expenditure in long, boring documents, and lived for the chance to belittle anyone who treated paperwork with disdain. No one was more disdainful than Bryant, who had once provided a report written in ink that rendered itself invisible when placed in the higher temperature of Land’s office.
‘I can’t hear a word you’re saying, I’ve gone deaf,’ said Bryant loudly. ‘I’ve been injured in the course of duty.’
‘Yes, I heard you got blown up again,’ snapped Land. ‘I trust you’re not going to make a habit of it. Do you want to see Doctor Peltz?’
‘No I don’t, thank you. He gets cramp writing out my prescriptions as it is. But I do think it would help speed things up if we had more resources at our disposal.’
‘You’re in no position to request a larger budget. Whatever else happens in this case, it will only ever be an irritating pimple on the nose of the face that is London’s crime problem. Right now the ground forces are out there trying to cope with the serious gunsters. Do you, in your rarefied little world up here, have
‘You only just agreed that there is a case,’ May complained, chastened.
‘That’s because no one had bothered to point out the connection between their deaths.’
‘What connection?’ asked Bryant.
‘Four instances of suffocation, of course,’ Land all but shouted. ‘A common repeat method. Stone me, it’s not rocket science.’
‘Hardly a repeat method.’ Bryant waved the idea aside. ‘I mean, all the deaths have involved blockage of the lungs, but that’s not unusual. Life-traumas have to affect either the lungs, brain or heart. A drowning, a burial, an asphyxiation and now arson, it’s more a matter-Oh, Raymond, Raymond, you’re a genius!’ Bryant’s eyes widened excitedly. ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’
‘Think of what?’ asked Land, mystified.
‘Not now, there’s a chap-come back later once we’ve had a chance to go over this.’ Bryant waved him from the room. ‘I’m sorry we’re not getting into machine-gun battles with your posses, but perhaps we can make an advancement here after all. Go on, off you go.’
‘I will not be shooed out of my own unit,’ warned Land lamely.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, it’s not your unit, any more than Number Ten Downing Street belongs to the Prime Minister. I swear to you this will be sorted out in the next twenty-four hours, in time for your new Monday caseload. Now do us all a favour and bugger off.’
‘You’re really going too far, Arthur.’ Land trudged away as Bryant booted the door shut.
‘I’m getting senile, John, my synaptic responses aren’t what they used to be. I should have spotted this earlier.’
‘What?’
‘It’s blindingly obvious now. The four methods of death correspond to the four elements. Ruth Singh-water. Elliot Copeland-earth. Jake Avery-air. Tate-fire.’
‘Now wait a minute, Arthur, don’t go running off-’
‘Are we dealing with something pagan and elemental? London has always had strong connections with the four elements, you know. Look at the Ministry of Defence on Horseguards Avenue, framed by the elements: two stone naked ladies, symbols of earth and water. There were going to be two more statues, but fire and air were lost in spending cutbacks. More alarmingly, does that mean it’s now at an end? If the killer has successfully concluded his business, how will we ever discover the truth? Successful murderers know when to stop, John. Suppose he’s achieved his aim without us ever getting on the right track? We need some confirmation from old miseryguts. We have to go and see Finch.’
‘The only good thing about still having to work with you, Arthur,’ said Oswald Finch, carefully folding away something that looked like a body part in tin foil, but was in fact a liver-and-onion sandwich, ‘is that you’re now so fantastically old, you no longer have the energy to play disgusting practical jokes on me.’ Finch had been the butt of Bryant’s amusing cruelties for nearly half a century, and had thought-wrongly, as it turned out-that semi-retirement would protect him. Only last month, a whoopee cushion attached to a cadaver drawer had nearly given him a heart attack.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t bet on it,’ grinned Bryant. He usually only smiled when hearing of someone else’s misfortune. Consequently, most of his acquaintances had learned to dread the glimpse of his ill-fitting false teeth. ‘Look at you, though. Not in bad nick for an old fart. Exactly how old are you now?’
He watched as the ancient pathologist, so pale and serious that permanent misery-lines had formed on either side of his mouth, eased himself from the counter to search the cadaver drawers. He still had the spiky hair and raw bony hands of his youth. Even in his twenties the sight of Finch, with his long death’s-head face, his creaking knees and lab coats that reeked of chemicals, caused all but the most optimistic people to avoid him. He still worked part-time at the Central Mortuary in Codrington Street, but was available to certain small, specialized branches of the Met because younger pathologists were considered more valuable employees, and therefore not a resource to be spared to such an esoteric, pointless unit as the PCU. And he wasn’t thrilled about being dragged over to the makeshift mortuary at Mornington Crescent on a Sunday morning.
‘I’m eighty-four,’ he said. ‘Or eighty-three. There were conflicting reports from my parents.’
‘Last time you told me there was coffee on your birth certificate,’ said Bryant. ‘You don’t have to lie about your age any more, Oswald, they can’t fire you now. You’re so far past retirement age nobody even remembers you’re still alive. Do you have a body for me? Fire victim, filed under Tate but we’ve no idea of his real name. Probably died of smoke inhalation.’
‘You might let me be the judge of that. I thought you were going to send over Kershaw. I liked him. Don’t tell me you’ve driven him from the unit already.’
‘Incredible as it may seem, he’s still with us. I’m just keeping him busy. He’s still getting used to the idea of having to work a seven-day week.’
Finch grunted as he struggled with the drawer, then tugged back a slick grey sheet covering the corpse. ‘We’re testing this out-bloody clever stuff. Made of the same material they use to cover satellites. Stops the skin fragmenting in cases of extreme epidermal damage.’
The body was charred as black as barbecue embers. Very little skin remained intact, and his eye sockets were empty. Only his feet had been spared the flames; his ankles were bizarrely still sheathed in trousers, his socks and shoes intact.
‘He would have been in better condition if the developers had insulated their floors properly. It’s the same old story: corners cut and lives lost. It’s all very well to spray the walls with fireproof resin, but not much good if you’re going to leave cavities under the carpets without any batt insulation. Protective foam or loose fill would have worked just as well. The residents sneak in booze, you see, usually high-proof spirits because they’re smaller to hide, then after a few drinks-’ He slapped his hand against the steel side of the drawer, ‘-whoosh-they knock over the bottle and it soaks between the floorboards. Not enough to start a fire from a falling match, you understand, but over time. . sounds as though this was arson, though. The lovely Longbright informs me that there was white-spirit residue all over the place consistent with someone splashing it from a bottle. Not my field of expertise, of course,
