‘You’re too late, Renfield,’ Bryant told the sergeant. ‘I’m not your chum, your pal or your mate. Rather, I have some news of my own that may surprise you. I’ve put in for official retirement. I stuck the envelope into Raymond Land’s top pocket a few hours ago.’
May looked thunderstruck. Renfield’s broad jaw fell open. Everyone knew that the day Bryant retired he would most likely drop dead.
‘I know it’s a shock,’ said Bryant, ‘and I know what you’re thinking, retirement will probably kill me, but I’ve made up my mind. Actually, you’re partially responsible for my decision.’
‘Me?’ Renfield distractedly set the remains of his mushroom vol-au-vent to one side. ‘This is about our pathologist’s death, isn’t it?’
‘Well of course,’ said Bryant. ‘Although I’m not really blaming you. Oswald Finch died because of the case you brought into his morgue, it’s true. But it’s not about what you did. You made me understand something in myself that I hadn’t seen before. It’s as you’ve always told me, I’m miles past my best. My powers of observation were at their peak thirty years ago. When Oswald died in such tragic circumstances, I was as much in the dark about the cause as everyone else. Oh, I understood at once what had happened to him, but not why. I couldn’t appreciate the human origins behind the tragedy. When you lose that ability, you start putting others in danger.’
‘But Arthur, you were out of town when it happened,’ his partner reminded him. ‘How could you be expected to fully comprehend a crime that had taken place hundreds of miles away? You couldn’t conduct an investigation without any resources.’
‘The point was that I thought I could,’ said Bryant. ‘I should have shared information instead of hogging the little knowledge I had. I failed to observe the most fundamental rules of crime detection. I wanted to test Janice and the others, to make them come to their own conclusions.’
‘Jack, leave us alone for a minute,’ May told Renfield. ‘I need to speak with my partner.’ He pushed Bryant away from the bemused sergeant.
‘Outside, you. I’m not having this argument in front of our staff.’
Seizing Bryant by the shoulders of his absurdly baggy coat, he steered him down the steep nicotine-brown stairs of the Devereux public house and into the narrow courtyard that filled with bankers and lawyers on summer evenings.
‘How on earth could you do this to me, Arthur? Could you not have had the decency to discuss it with me first?’
‘What, and have you try to talk me out of it?’ asked Bryant. ‘Just look at me, John. I’m half-blind. I have to use four sets of spectacles: my reading glasses, my bifocals, my computer lenses and my distance-driving goggles. My observation skills are limited to noting whether or not it’s raining. I wear a hearing aid. I take tablets twice a day. I use a walking stick, but might be better off with a spirit level. I’m older than Picasso’s minotaur paintings. I can’t remember my email address. My memory operates in an almost entirely arbitrary fashion. My sense of orientation is so poor that I’m lucky to find the front door of my house without the aid of an Ordnance Survey map. And on top of all that, I appear to be shrinking. How many more organs have to pack up before I accidentally cause somebody’s death?’
‘Look, I know Raymond said that your powers of observation were failing, but he was talking rubbish as usual, and I am absolutely not going to have this kind of self-pitying conversation with you,’ May protested, holding up his hands. ‘You’re as tough as an ox. Your father was a weight-lifting champion, for God’s sake. You told me his neck was the same size as Victoria Beckham’s waist. Your dentist reckons you have the strongest tongue in London. He has to put you out just to clean your teeth. You know how you always exaggerate your faults. You’re feeling guilty because you weren’t here to save Oswald Finch, but there’s no point in blaming yourself because you couldn’t have done anything. A detective is someone whose life operates on a strict binary system, Arthur – you’re either working flat out and fully committed or completely off the case. If you stop now, you’ll really see how many parts of your body can start to fail. It’s the job that keeps you supple in mind and spirit, can’t you see that? I’m going to find Land and take that damned envelope away from him.’
‘You’ll do no such thing, John, not if you value our friendship.’ Bryant looked up at him with an aqueous, azure gaze. ‘Don’t you see? It’s important to know when the time has come to stop, and Oswald’s death has made me realize that I’ve reached the point. Back in that pub there are younger, more energetic members of the PCU who can continue our legacy.’