‘All right,’ said Fenchurch. ‘There’s no one pressuring me, and we’re short-staffed. I suppose I can sit on it for forty-eight hours without too much trouble.’
‘You’re a pal. Saturday night, weekend after next, bowling, you’re playing for us. Eight p.m. sharp for warm-up drinks at the Nun and Broken Compass.’
‘I won’t do it,’ said Raymond Land, shaking his head angrily.
‘I don’t see why not,’ said John May. ‘The City of London’s on a high alert because of the banking protests, their resources are overstretched and I’m sure they’d appreciate the offer of help.’
‘You just don’t get it, do you?’ Land hissed. ‘They hate us. All of them, from the Commissioner downwards. Not just us. They especially hate Arthur. He makes them look bad. He swans in and nicks all the high-profile work, solves the cases and gets the column inches, and accidentally forces up their targets. Why should they give him a case that’s already been assigned? He’s been in to see me about it and I said no. Absolutely not. We have to keep our noses clean for a while.’
‘Fair enough,’ said May, raising his hands. ‘The others wanted me to ask.’
‘Wait, what others?’
‘Everyone. Janice, Jack, Meera, Colin, all of them.’
‘Are you telling me you’ve been going around canvassing support behind my back?’
‘Of course not. But you know when Arthur gets a hunch it usually turns out to be right.’
Land caught sight of himself in the mirror and saw the usual mix of puzzlement, frustration and anger stirred together like a pudding in a bowl. The little hair he had left was turning grey. He wanted to show authority, but how could he when his detectives defied him at every turn? ‘Look, it’s bad enough having to fight everyone else in the police service without internal divisions as well. Bryant is a detective, not a mystic. He chases these cases because he fancies having a crack at them, not because he has some strange psychic ability to know exactly when—’
Land’s office door opened and Bryant shambled in, his hands thrust deep in the pockets of a shapeless, patched corduroy jacket, his unlit pipe jutting from the side of his mouth. ‘Wind’s changed direction. It’s in the east,’ he said meaningfully. ‘Looks like there’s a storm coming.’
‘Where have you been?’ asked Land, annoyed.
‘Ah. I was on my veranda having a quiet smoke and a think.’
‘You haven’t got a veranda. This is King’s Cross, not New Orleans. It’s a rickety old loading platform and it’s unsafe. Please don’t stand on it.’
Bryant gave a derisive snort. ‘It doesn’t matter at my age. These days I’m amazed if I just wake up in the morning. Senior citizens should take more chances, not less. Teenagers sleep all the time and us oldies manage four hours a night. Life is upside down. I have a hypothesis about how Amy O’Connor died.’
‘You can’t possibly know anything about her,’ Land protested as a faint but ominous roll of thunder rattled the windows. He glanced out at the seething grey skies above the station, unnerved.
‘The old insurance office,’ said Bryant, removing his pipe. ‘They were tearing down a Victorian building in Salisbury Court, right behind the bench where O’Connor was sitting, but work stopped while they excavated a Roman floor in the basement. Some very nice mosaics. I’ve just been over there. I looked down into the ruined brickwork and saw something lying in the shadows. It might have been the reason for her death.’ The raising of his eyebrow was a study in Stanislavskian method acting.
Land was dumbfounded. His attempts to show leadership were always undermined by his utter amazement at the abilities of others. As a student of human nature he would have made a fine pastry chef. ‘Are you telling me that she was murdered?’
‘I didn’t say that. But I can see how she might have died. I need to find the children who were playing ball in the courtyard.’
‘Well you can’t, it’s not your case.’
‘No,’ said Bryant, ‘but it soon will be.’
‘So you’re some kind of clairvoyant now?’ said Land, exasperated.
‘Answer the phone,’ said Bryant, pointing to the desk. ‘It’s your wife.’
The phone suddenly rang, making Land jump. He gingerly raised the receiver. ‘Raymond Land. Oh, Leanne, it’s you. Yes, I know. I won’t be late. All right.’ He put the phone down. ‘How did you …?’
‘The same way I know that you’ve developed a fear of rats, that you think you’re undergoing a mid-life crisis and you’ve recently started to believe in the supernatural,’ said Bryant.