Bryant stepped outside the theatre foyer and back into the natural light of the morning. Across the road, workmen had barricaded the pavements and were digging holes, searching for cracked gas mains. The Pioneer Corps were salvaging furniture from a bombed office in Shaftesbury Avenue. In schools across the city, children were swapping souvenir incendiary bomb fins from the night’s raids. At this point in the war, over two hundred tons of high explosives were being dropped on London every night.
He took a deep breath. The burning smell lingered in the air even on the freshest days. He wondered whether they were mad, trying to discover how just two people had died, when all around them men, women and children were being killed violently and unexpectedly. The AFS men had been putting out oil bombs in the next street all night long.
Some theory, he knew, would have to reveal itself soon or he’d be in for it. With a sigh of resignation, he stepped back into the chill shadows of the theatre.
24
READING SIGNS
Sidney Biddle was getting angrier.
From what he had seen so far, the Peculiar Crimes Unit was aptly named. The place was a total shambles. There was no excuse for it, war or no war. Everything was just as Farley Davenport had predicted. Procedural policy appeared to be non-existent. There was no chain of command, and members of staff were allowed to do exactly as they pleased. True, Arthur Bryant was the last to leave each night, after diligently entering the day’s activities into the unit’s logbook, but he kept it locked up in his office, so it was impossible to guess whether his entries were accurate or fanciful.
More bothersome was the fact that he, Biddle, appeared to have been excluded from Bryant’s circle. He had been identified as the enemy in the camp and was shut out of all conversations, notes, briefings and interviews concerning the events at the Palace.
And the black-marketeering that was going on! All around him, all day, everyone was on the fiddle. Runcorn and Finch bartering tea, sugar and armfuls of rhubarb with the boys in the tailor’s shop, PC Atherton, Crowhurst and the Bow Street constables coming in with buckets, kettles, clocks, tin openers, gardening tools, boots, pencils and tins of furniture polish. Everyone seemed to know that a potato peeler in good nick was worth two spanners.
Once again, he was an outsider. Sidney sat in the window of the office behind Bow Street station and morosely sipped his tea, watching the clearance boys at work. The empty offices beyond the Royal Opera House appeared to have been commandeered as fire-alarm stations and first-aid posts. Perhaps he should have taken a job with the Press and Censorship Bureau. At least they were performing an essential duty. Last month, the corner of Leicester Square had been bombed flat, and holes had been blown in the District Line railway tunnel at Blackfriars; right now the bureau would be busy suppressing the truth, retouching photographs, stemming negative information, tucking away all morale-damaging reports until after the war.
With a twinge of annoyance he realized that he would rather have been accepted by the others in the unit than marked out as someone to avoid. Even Runcorn, the miserable forensic scientist, ducked back into his office whenever he saw him approaching.
Everyone associated with the unit appeared to hold Arthur Bryant in high regard, although what Bryant had done to earn their esteem was far from obvious. And the other new chap, May, was creeping around in his partner’s footsteps, clearly filled with awe.
Biddle checked the spelling in his report and recapped his fountain pen. By the end of his first week he hoped to have a dossier on Bryant that would draw a constricting ring of common sense around the unit. Davenport had made it clear that he wanted them closed down before the month was out. He’d clearly had enough of boffins being allowed a free hand while everyone else had to buckle down.
Biddle knew something else the others didn’t know, because he had taken the call himself. DS Gladys Forthright would soon be on her way home, because her fiancé had backed out of the wedding. All they needed now was an unstable woman moping about the place. He smiled to himself as he blew on the page and closed it. She might just prove to be the straw that broke this peculiar camel’s back.
‘I’m so glad you could spare the time to have lunch with me,’ said Bryant awkwardly. He never knew what to say to women. Consequently his behaviour around them was formal and slightly unnatural.
‘I’ve always had a soft spot for the police. My brother’s a crown court duty officer, not that I ever see him. I have to be getting back in a minute.’ Elspeth pushed away her soup plate. The café was steamy and crowded with customers queuing for tables. ‘There’s a dress rehearsal this afternoon. Helena feels that several of the scenes aren’t working so she’s changing them. There are no out-of-town try-outs, and unless you tour first, the team only has rehearsals and previews to get it right.’