On the Loose(6)

Home Office Police Liaison Officer Leslie Faraday concurred with his department’s findings. He told us, ‘The PCU was a great British achievement of which we should all be justly proud. It’s high time we closed it down.’

Despite their unorthodox methods, the Peculiar Crimes Unit enjoyed an unusually high success rate on murder cases originating in the Greater London area. Many of their investigations encouraged the press to create colourful personas for the killers they sought, including


* The Leicester Square Vampire



* The Shoreditch Strangler



* The Water Room Killer



* The Highwayman



* The Deptford Demon



* The Belles of Westminster



* The Palace Theatre Phantom





Arthur Bryant and John May, the capital’s most highly experienced detective team, helmed the PCU through its most productive decades, but both are now beyond the official retirement age. Neither was available for comment.

Detective Sergeant Janice Longbright confirmed that the unit was closed down effective immediately after the staff resigned in solidarity with Mr Bryant and Mr May, who may have their pensions revoked pending investigation into issues of alleged misconduct. Despite the fact that a record number of retired detectives posted messages of support for the PCU and have set up a legal fund, the Home Office today issued a statement suggesting that the unit would not be reopened under any circumstances.

As the officers of the Peculiar Crimes Unit now search for new jobs in the private security sector, it seems that a piece of London police history has been lost forever.





4

MOVING ON


The alarm clock’s mechanism pinged inside its tin case. He listened to the spring slowly unwinding, waiting for the catch to be released and the bell to ring. He was always awake before the clock went off. There was a pause, a dull click and the ticking continued as before. There was no jarring call to force him from his bed.

Of course. He had unscrewed the clapper and thrown it out of the window.

He settled his weight more deeply into the mattress, sinking into the feather pillows, pulling the eiderdown over his cold ears, ready to return to his dreams. Except that now his brain was awake and he hated just lying here, because memories would rise in his unclouding mind like road markers appearing out of fog, guiding his way back to vivid moments of triumph and regret. Back to times when he wished he had done things differently.

It was better to get up than to lie here remembering. There was nothing in the past that could be put right from the confines of a bed. Still, there was no reason now to rise. Better to let tepid sleep fold itself over you, he thought, a little more each day, like calibrations of death. He turned over, fidgeted, tried to settle, but finally pulled back the covers and slowly forced his aged, aching bones to an upright position.

Catching sight of himself in the dressing table mirror, he was repelled by the scrofulous old hermit he found staring back. If I get any wrinklier I’ll be mistaken for a shar-pei, he thought. His eyes were red on the outside, worse on the inside. His white tonsure stuck up around his ears. He looked like a frightened monk.

He peered out at the rough planked floor, the dust meandering in beams of watery sunlight, a petal divorcing itself from the dehydrated roses on the wonky little bedside table. The bare grey day stretched ahead with nothing to mark it from the ones before or after. Inertia drifted onto his numb shoulders like a gathering weight of snow.

There really was nothing to get up for.

‘Oh, sod it.’ Surrendering to his body’s apathy, Arthur Bryant allowed himself to fall back into the enveloping warmth of his bed.


The morning was so sharp with winter sun that the yellow streets were striped with black shadows that looked as if they had been painted into place. Light like this belonged in Paris, not London, John May decided. The masts to Chelsea harbour glittered and rattled, pretending they were in Monaco, but no amount of money could replace sluggish brown Thames water with the raunchy azure of the Mediterranean. The old wharf that had once housed coal for the railway industry had been redeveloped into lofts for the conspicuously wealthy, clinquant shops and blind-eyed offices. On weekends there was more life on the surface of the moon.

May walked through the dock with his granddaughter. April was so translucently pale that she always looked cold. The winds that ruffled the surface of the river caught at their coats as if anxious to detain them. This stroll was a test of April’s agoraphobia; it had shown signs of returning in the weeks that had passed since the unit was disbanded. The spaces between walls pressed a sense of panic upon her that she fought to ignore.

‘It’s going to rain later,’ she said. ‘You need a haircut.’ Her grandfather’s elegant silver mane was over his collar, but he appeared well. He always knew how to look after himself. John May was private and organised. He filed away his emotions as neatly as he kept his apartment, and considered a bad temper to be a sign of weakness. While this level of control was generally thought to be a good thing, it also meant that you could never have a really good fight with him, and sometimes April longed to clear the air between them.