‘Your new chap, Giles Kershaw. Apparently you’re refusing to use him.’
‘His
‘Well, no doubt you’ll use your legendary diplomatic skills to sort the whole mess out,’ Land smirked. ‘I mustn’t keep you, I’m sure you have plenty of work to do.’ He turned to leave, and stood on the cat’s tail. One of the workmen putting a partition across the office dropped his circular saw. It shot across the floor, making everyone scream.
The Peculiar Crimes Unit at Mornington Crescent was open for business once more.
4. OPENING DOORS
By Tuesday morning, the irradiation of the long dry summer had already faded to a memory as the temperature tumbled and a translucent caul of rain returned the city to silvered shadows. Cracked earth softened between paving stones. Pale London dust was rinsed from leaves and car roofs. Back gardens lost their parched grey aridity, returning to rich moist greens and browns. The air humidified as wood stretched and mortar relaxed, the city’s houses pleasurably settling into their natural damp state. Rain seeped through split tarmac, down into uneven beds of London clay, through gravel and pebbles and Thanet sand, through an immense depth of chalk, to the flinted core and layers of fossils that crusted the depression formed by the city’s six great hills.
London’s workforce barely registered this mantic transformation. It certainly didn’t take long for DC Bimsley and DS Longbright to cover the ten houses in Balaklava Street and the properties backing on to Mrs Singh’s house. Longbright came along because her flatpacked desk was still being assembled-too few dowelling pieces had been provided. While her colleagues bickered amiably, she armed herself with May’s newly programmed electronic interview-pad and headed for the street. She still liked footwork because meeting the public kept her connected, and it did her good to get out. The rain was scouring the acidic urban air, making it fresh once more.
She had worked with the bull-necked Bimsley before, and enjoyed his company. He was an extremely able officer, but also one of the clumsiest, lacking coordination and spatial awareness while retaining the grace of a falling tree. It had seemed an endearing trait the first few times they had met. His baseball cap usually covered a bruise.
It occurred to Longbright that everyone who ended up working with Bryant and May had some kind of physical or mental flaw that prevented them from functioning normally with fellow officers. Oswald Finch, for example, had been the unit’s pathologist since its foundation. He was a man not given to delegation. He trusted his instincts, was rational and cautious and prone to calm understatement, but everybody hated dealing with him except Bryant, because he looked like a Victorian mourner and reeked of cheap aftershave, which he used to cover up the cloying smell of death.
‘That last woman, Colin, was it really necessary to listen to her talking about shopping trips?’ asked Longbright, who had never known the pleasure of spending because she was always broke. Most of the clothes she owned had been bought at thrift shops and dated back to the 1960s, lending her the air of a disreputable Rank starlet. She was smart and tough, and scared men with a kind of carnality that she had never learned to turn off.
‘You have to listen to them, Sarge. Mr Bryant taught me that. You get more out of them after they think you’ve stopped taking notes.’
‘All right, but I’ll do this one, speed things up a bit.’ She ticked off the ninth house and climbed the steps to the next on the list. May’s notepad translated her handwriting to text and emailed it to his terminal for appraisal.
‘I like this street, sort of cosy and old-fashioned,’ said Bimsley, tipping rain from the collar of his jacket. ‘Like my grandma’s old house in Deptford before they pulled it down. Council said it was a slum just ’cause it had an outside lav, but she was happier there. Odd the way the numbers are laid out, though. Thirties and forties on one side, three to seven on the other.’
‘One side probably continued the numbers in the street joining it. The other side was built at a later date and had to start over. You see it all the time.’ Longbright rang the doorbell of number 43. ‘How many are we missing?’
‘Only three not at home so far, that’s pretty good.’
‘They’re starter-plus-ones, that’s why.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Your first purchased home is probably a flat, right? These are the houses you buy after selling your first place-something with a garden to remind you of childhood, but the rooms are small, best for a couple with one young child, husband’s on the career ladder so the mum’s usually at home. Next stop after this is something bigger, a bit further out, where your family can grow.’
‘You don’t think the wife’s out working as well?’ Bimsley asked.
‘Depends. The area’s Irish Catholic, they’re not much given to childminders.’
‘I don’t know where you get your facts from, Janice.’
‘Knowing the terrain. Call yourself a detective.’
The door opened, and an orderly blond woman in her late twenties smiled coldly at them. She wiped her hands dry on faded jeans, waiting for an explanation. In the background a loud television cartoon was keeping a child amused.
Longbright pointed to the plastic-laminated ID card on her jacket. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you. We’re checking the street to see if anybody knew the elderly lady who died at number
‘I didn’t know she’d passed away.’
‘Perhaps I can take your name, for elimination purposes?’
‘Mrs Wilton-Tamsin. My husband is Oliver Wilton. When did she die?’
‘Sunday evening. Were you at home?’
‘Yes, but I didn’t hear or see anything.’
Longbright made a dismissive mental note. This was the type of woman who recognized her neighbours but never spoke to them. An implicit class barrier, faint but quite implacable, would prevent her from getting involved.
‘No unusual vehicles in the street, no one hanging around outside the house between the hours of eight and ten?’
‘Not to my knowledge.’
‘Perhaps you could ask your husband.’
‘I don’t see that he would be able to-’
Longbright checked her pad. ‘He was doing something to his car last night, wasn’t he?’
Mrs Wilton looked affronted. ‘Actually, it’s my car. And he was just cleaning off some leaves and emptying the boot.’
‘Is he at home today?’
‘No, it’s a workday, he’s at his office.’ Mrs Wilton stared at Longbright as though amazed by her stupidity. If the look was intended to intimidate, it didn’t wash. Like so many of the old movie stars she admired, the detective sergeant’s glamorous aura was constructed over the epidermis of a rhinoceros. She handed over the unit’s contact card. ‘You can freephone me at this number, or email us if either of you think of anything.’
‘Did Mr Bryant do door-to-doors when he was younger?’ asked Bimsley as they walked away.
‘He still does occasionally, although he’s supposed to use his cane for distances. John bought him a beautiful silver-topped stick from James Smith amp; Sons in New Oxford Street, and he’s finally been forced to use it. He’s very good at doorstep interviews because he has so much local knowledge. Although of course he’s appallingly rude to people, but witnesses put up with it because he’s elderly. He doesn’t mean to be so vile, it just comes out that way. Politeness used to be one of law enforcement’s greatest tools. We just outsmiled the opposition. Now it’s liable to get you shot at. Let’s do the other next-door neighbour.’
They had called at number 4 and introduced themselves to a shy Egyptian woman, Fatima Karneshi, who
