The Invisible Code(5)

Bryant was aware that the City of London’s impact extended far beyond its Square Mile inhabitants. Marked out by black bollards bearing the City’s emblem and elegant silver dragons that guarded the major entrances, it contained within its boundaries more than 450 international banks, their glass towers wedged into Palladian alleyways and crookbacked Tudor passages. As the global axis of countless multi-national corporations, it demanded a bespoke police force equipped to protect this unique environment with special policies and separate uniforms.

‘If there’s a reason why we should take over the investigation we can put in a formal request,’ he suggested.

‘True, but I can’t think of one.’

‘How did you know about it?’

‘I picked up the details as they came in,’ said May. ‘It was kept away from us because Faraday wanted it to be handled by the City of London.’

Leslie Faraday, the Home Office liaison officer charged with keeping the Peculiar Crimes Unit in line, was under instruction from his boss to reduce the unit’s visibility, and therefore decrease their likelihood of embarrassing the government. His latest tactic was to starve them of new cases.

‘But you made some notes, I see.’

‘Yes, I did, just out of interest.’

‘Well?’ asked Bryant, peering over a stack of old Punch annuals at May’s papers like an ancient goblin eyeing a stack of gold coins.

‘Well what?’ May looked innocently back across the desk, knowing exactly what Bryant was after.

‘The details. What are the details of the case?’ He waved his ballpoint pen about. ‘There, man, what have you got?’

‘Look at you, you’re virtually salivating.’

‘I have nothing else to concern myself with this morning, unless you happen to know where my copy of The Thirteen Signs of Satanism has got to.’

‘All right.’ May pulled up a page and held it at a distance. Vanity prevented him from wearing his newly prescribed glasses. ‘It says here that at approximately two twenty p.m. on Saturday, a twenty-eight-year-old woman identified as Amy O’Connor was found dead in St Bride’s Church, just off Fleet Street. Cause of death unknown, but at the moment it’s being treated as suspicious. No marks on the body other than a contusion on the front of the skull, assumed by the EMT to have been incurred when she slipped off her chair and brained herself on the marble floor.’

‘So what did she die of?’

‘It looks like her heart simply stopped. There was a lad running the church shop, but he left his post to go for a cigarette a couple of times and didn’t even notice her sitting there. She was found by one of the wardens returning from lunch, who called a local med unit. The only note I have on the initial examination is an abnormally high body temperature. The building has CCTV, which the City of London team requisitioned and examined. They know she entered the building alone, and during the time that she was in there nobody else came in. That’s about all they have.’

‘Where was she before she entered St Bride’s?’

‘She was seen sitting on a bench in the courtyard outside the church. A lot of the area’s local workers go there at lunchtime. Quite a few work on Saturdays. O’Connor was alone and minding her own business, quietly reading a book.’

‘Was she working in the area?’

‘No. She had a part-time job as a bar manager at the Electricity Showroom in Hoxton.’

‘Why would an electricity showroom have a bar?’

‘They kept the name from the building’s old usage. It’s a popular local hostelry. There aren’t any electricity showrooms as such any more, Arthur, even you must have noticed that.’

‘What about her movements earlier in the morning?’

‘Nobody’s too sure about those. She was renting a flat in Spitalfields, had been there a couple of years. Her parents live on the south-west coast. She’d never been married, had no current partner, no close friends. There, now you know as much as anyone else.’

‘Where was her body taken?’

‘Over to the Robin Brook Centre at St Bart’s, I imagine. They handle all the cases from the Square Mile. But you can’t go near the place.’

‘Why not? I know the coroner there. We used to break into empty buildings together before my knees packed up.’

‘Why did you do that?’

‘Oh, just to have a look around. I think I’ll pop over.’

‘No, Arthur. I absolutely forbid it. You can’t just walk into someone else’s case and stir things up.’

‘I’m not going to, old sport. I’ll be visiting an old friend. There’s a big bowling tournament coming up. He’s a keen player. I think I should let him know about it.’ Bryant rose and jammed a mouldy-looking olive-green fedora so hard on his head that it squashed his ears. ‘Want me to bring you anything back?’