The Invisible Code(10)

‘You weren’t supposed to go there. Maybe he’s being pressured.’

‘That makes no sense unless someone at the Home Office thinks the case is more important than it looks. Amy O’Connor was a low-paid bar manager. Apparently she studied biology at Bristol University, but dropped out. She’s not connected to anyone important. Unless there’s something in her past. I could take a look at her employment records and see if—’

‘Arthur, maybe she really did just black out and fall.’

‘Without a cause of death? Next you’re going to tell me she was struck down by the hand of God. Nobody dies without a reason, and no reason has been found. If I can just go back through her history …’

‘But it’s not your—’

‘Don’t say it again, all right? Here we are.’ Bryant stopped in front of the bookshop and pointed proudly at the window. ‘Sally’s given me pride of place.’ Bryant’s wrinkled features peered up from the cover of a slim volume entitled The Casebook of Bryant & May, by Arthur Bryant, as told to Anna Marquand. Beside it, a joss stick protruded from the head of a green jade Buddha, as if in funereal remembrance.

‘It’s just the first volume, as you know, but it covers quite a few of our odder investigations, from the Leicester Square Vampire and the Belles of Westminster, to the Billingsgate Kipper Scandal and the hunt for the Odeon Strangler.’

‘And you honestly think the public wants to read this stuff? People aren’t interested in the past any more. The young want to get on and make something of their lives. They don’t want to wallow about in ancient history.’

‘I didn’t write it for the ambitious young,’ said Bryant primly. ‘I wrote it for the mature and interested. And, if you don’t mind, it isn’t ancient history, it’s my life. Yours, too.’ Privately, though, Bryant had to admit that the events of his life were receding into history. Last Christmas the milkman had come in for a warm-up and had asked his landlady if she collected art deco. ‘No,’ Alma had replied, ‘this happens to be Mr Bryant’s furniture.’ Yesterday’s fashions were today’s antiques.

The owner of the small bookshop greeted Arthur. Now in her early fifties, Sally Talbot was an attractive blue-eyed blonde with the natural freshness of someone raised on a warm coastline. John May was a great appreciator of beautiful women, and his pride required him to smooth his hair and pull in his stomach.

‘Nice to see me in the window,’ Bryant commented. ‘I’m not sure about the incense, though. It looks as if I’ve died.’

‘Oh, we’ve got damp,’ said Sally. ‘It’s better than the smell of mildew. Thank you for coming by to sign the stock. You only went on sale this morning but we’ve already sold a few copies.’

‘One of them wasn’t to a man who looks like a vampire bat, was it?’ asked Bryant. Oskar Kasavian, the cadaverous Home Office Security Supervisor, had made it publicly known that he objected to Bryant writing his memoirs, and had been trying to get hold of the manuscript so that he could vet it for infringements. The Peculiar Crimes Unit was the flea in his ear, the pea under his mattress, the ground glass in his gin, but at least he had lately abandoned his attempts to have it closed down. So long as the unit’s strike rate remained high, there was little he could do to end its tenure. He was not against the idea of the place so much as its method of operation, which defied all attempts at rational explanation, beyond a vague sense of modus vivendi among its staff.

‘No, they went mostly to sweet little old ladies who love murder mysteries,’ said Sally.

Bryant dug out his old Waterman’s fountain pen, uncapped it and shook it, splodging ink about. ‘How many do I have to sign?’ he asked.

‘Well, five if you don’t mind.’

‘Is that all you have left?’ Bryant beamed at the bookseller. ‘How many did you sell?’

‘Three.’

‘Oh. What’s your bestselling biography?’

‘Topless by Katia Shaw,’ said Sally. ‘She’s a glamour model.’

Bryant turned to his partner in irritation. ‘You see? This is what’s wrong with the world. A young lady with bleached hair, an estuarine accent and unfeasible breasts can outsell a respected expert with decades of wisdom and experience.’

‘She’s human interest,’ replied May. ‘You’re not. People reading her story will feel that if she can make it without talent, maybe they can.’

‘Well, I find that phenomenally depressing.’ Bryant’s theremin call sign sounded once more. ’Well, speak of the Devil,’ he said, checking the number, ‘it’s Mr Kasavian himself. I bet I know what this is about. I’d better take it outside.’