‘Why won’t you let John come and see you?’ she asked gently. ‘You know he wants to.’
‘He’ll try to convince me to go to Whitehall with a begging bowl,’ Bryant complained. ‘He’s an eternal optimist; he thinks we’ll survive by calling in a few old debts, but we’ve used up all our favours. Our work together is over and there’s no point in pretending it isn’t. I don’t want to end my days arguing with my oldest friend.’
For once, Alma was stumped for an answer. Her mouth opened, then shut again.
‘I think I’ll have a sleep now if you don’t mind,’ he said, lowering his head onto a cushion and closing his eyes. ‘Leave me alone. I feel tremendously weary.’
He had taken the news that they were to be thrown out on the street with alarming equanimity. She needed to shock him out of his complacent attitude, but could not imagine anything working, short of attaching her van’s jumper cables to him. His fire was fading, like a setting sun. She resolved to summon John May against his partner’s wishes, even though Bryant had expressly forbidden her to invite him over.
‘Suit yourself,’ she told him finally. ‘Do as you wish. But you can get rid of that skull on the mantelpiece. It stinks.’
‘That, Madame, is a religious artefact. It was smuggled out of Tibet.’
‘Yes, and it’s going to be smuggled into the dustbin. If you need me, I shall be upstairs. I have some urgent ironing to attend to.’ Slipping the telephone into her pocket, she beat a hasty retreat to the kitchen, wondering what on earth she could do to save her old friend from himself.
8
STALEMATE
Colin Bimsley was smudged with thick white dust. It was matted in his cropped fair hair and even falling out of his ears as he hopped about on the kerb outside the derelict takeaway at the end of the Caledonian Road. He seemed inordinately excited about something.
‘I wasn’t sure if you’d got my message,’ he called to the approaching detective. ‘I tried Mr Bryant but his phone was switched off.’
‘Yes, it would be,’ agreed John May. ‘The last time we spoke, Arthur told me he was getting too many phone calls from the dead. Apparently he subscribed to a psychics’ hotline and is now being pestered by people wanting him to avenge their murders. It’s a scam to make him use premium phone lines, but he doesn’t realise that. What are you doing around here?’
‘This is Rafi.’ Bimsley introduced his new friend. ‘I called you first. Rafi’s got a serious problem, and I thought he’d be better off talking to you.’
‘Let’s go inside.’ The dark flat-bottomed clouds above their heads were threatening a deluge. Bimsley led the way through the store to the cluttered rear room and opened the lid of the freezer. May peered in. The body was virtually hairless, Caucasian, ordinary, mid-thirties at a guess.
‘Rafi bought himself a lease on a shop and found he’d already got his first customer. The freezer had been hidden behind some boxes.’
‘You didn’t know this was here?’ May asked Rafi.
‘I swear. I don’t want no trouble. I just want to get my shop open.’
‘Who had the place before you?’
‘An African guy—’
‘—But Rafi got it through an agent,’ Bimsley explained. He felt the need to protect this man, who had given him a job without knowing anything about him. ‘He didn’t meet the former owner, and the place was left empty for a month with the door unlocked, so anyone could have come in. We’ve got a white male with his head removed; the only noticeable identifying mark is a tattoo around the left upper arm. And you’re going to find my dabs all over the lid.’
‘Let’s have a look at the tattoo,’ said May, gingerly raising a swollen limb to examine the wreath of entwined ivy branches. ‘It goes all the way around.’
‘Armbands were popular in the 1990s: Buddhist mantras, twisted ivy, roses and thorns—a lot of clubbers had them, and this is a big clubbing area.’
‘It doesn’t make sense. If someone’s gone to the trouble of cutting off the head, they’d also remove the tattoo and the hands to prevent the body from being easily recognised. He’s done a lot of manual labour; the fingers are pretty calloused.’ May examined the edges of the freezer. ‘No blood? Seen any on the floor?’
‘Look at the state of this place, John. Builder’s rubble everywhere. We’ll have to strip it.’
We won’t have to strip it, they will, thought John May, knowing that the case would go to either Camden or Islington Met, depending on whose jurisdiction the store fell under. The dividing line between the boroughs ran somewhere around here. He dropped to his haunches and looked about. ‘You’re right. I’m dying to have a look, but we’d create problems moving anything right now.’