Police Constable
This chap appears to have joined the Unit without any Home Office approval. It seems Bryant took it upon himself to offer the lad a job. Can somebody do some digging on him?
NB There have been numerous Health & Safety infringements at the Unit, including unsecured weapons in the Evidence Room, illegal wiring and dangerous chemicals stored on-site. There also appears to be a cat called Crippen (a surviving relative from Bryant’s feline investigation) wandering around the place. Unfortunately, although the Caledonian Road building is unsafe, it was privately rented by Bryant in a deliberate attempt to exploit a legal loophole, and therefore does not technically fall under the jurisprudence of the Home Office.
Although it is entirely possible that the HO could find a way to close the Unit down, the basic problem continues: So long as the PCU is useful, it remains a necessary evil.
This report commissioned by Leslie Faraday (Home Office Liaison), for Oskar Kasavian (Internal Security)
Arthur Bryant stood there pretending not to shiver.
He was tightly wrapped in a 1951 Festival of Britain scarf, with a Bloody Mary in one hand and a ketchup-crusted cocktail sausage in the other. Above his head, a withered yellow corpse hung inside a rusting gibbet iron.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘this is nice, isn’t it?’
His partner, John May, was not so consoled. The great chamber was freezing. Rain was pattering into an array of galvanised buckets. The smell of mildewed brickwork assailed his nostrils. A few feet behind him, the Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins was stabbing a thin-bladed knife into a screaming priest, looking for the marks of the Devil. On the other side of the detectives stood a torture rack and several members of the Spanish Inquisition clad in crimson robes, armed with flaming brands and scourges.
‘You could have made an effort and put on a clean jacket, instead of that ratty old overcoat,’ said May. ‘You look like a character from Toad of Toad Hall.’
‘This is Harris Tweed,’ said Bryant, fingering a frayed hole in his soup-stained sleeve. ‘It was handed down to me by my grandfather.’
‘Was that before or after he passed away?’
‘Funny you should say that. He died in it. Gave himself a heart attack trying to get the lid off a jar of gherkins. My grandmother thought it was a pity to waste good fabric.’
A distorted tape loop of chanting monks began to play once more from hidden speakers, adding to the chamber’s pervasive gloom.
May sighed. ‘Of all the things you’ve put our Unit through over the years, this has to be the strangest. Hosting a cocktail party in a house of horrors in order to catch a murderer. If you ever say a word about it in your memoirs, I’ll kill you.’
‘I didn’t hear any better ideas from you,’ Bryant reminded him cheerfully. ‘This is absolutely our last chance to break the case. At midnight we’ll be forced to unlock the doors and we’ll lose everything, unless we can flush him out in the next hour. Keep your eyes peeled for anything unusual.’
May looked around at the kidnapped party guests, most of whom were glumly wedged between rotting corpses. ‘Unusual,’ he repeated, trying not to lose his temper.
Bryant sucked the celery stick from his Bloody Mary thoughtfully. Somewhere above the stalactite-spiked arches of London Bridge station a train rumbled. The bricks trembled and soot sifted down. The shunting mingled with the thunder outside. Rain was pouring under the front door and pooling around the sodden shoes of the guests, all of whom were underdressed for the occasion. In the silences between rain, thunder and trains, May saw the group’s breath condensing and imagined he could hear their teeth chattering. A waitress passed them, bearing a tray of bloody eyeballs on sticks. On closer inspection, these turned out to be dyed pickled onions.
‘Masks,’ said Bryant, apropos of nothing.
May turned to him. ‘Explain?’
‘They’re all wearing masks. Look at them all nodding and drinking.’ He waved his sausage at the partygoers. ‘You wouldn’t think we had to bring them here under sufferance and lock them in. They were as jumpy as cats when they arrived, but they’re attempting to pretend that everything’s normal. Middle-class people with upper-middle incomes. They come alive at parties, no matter how strange the circumstances. They discuss house prices and holidays and restaurants, and give opinions on the plays they’ve seen. But after all that’s happened in the last seven days, they know they’ve been brought here for another reason. What do you think is happening behind those forced smiles?’
‘I imagine they’re morbidly curious, the way people are about watching traffic accidents.’