‘Yes you will. I thought you lost all your books.’ Longbright examined the flyleaf of Witchcraft through the Ages. ‘You’ve stolen these from the library.’
‘Incoming email marked urgent,’ warned Meera Mangeshkar, getting wet paint down her sleeve as she looked in. ‘Do you know anything about a Christian Right minister from Alabama whose legs were found in a bin-bag behind Camden Stables?’
‘Is his name Butterworth?’ asked Bryant.
Mangeshkar ducked back and checked her screen. ‘No, Henderson.’
‘Wait, I’m thinking of a Baptist, torso in a bin-bag behind Sainsbury’s.’
‘Home Office wants a unit representative to go up there this evening. Angry Republicans placing phone calls to Westminster, doesn’t look good.’
‘Ah, Arthur, John.’ Raymond Land squeezed past Mangeshkar and hailed them with patently false bonhomie, which faded as he tried to climb around the partially assembled photocopier. ‘I’m glad you’re both here. The Home Secretary would like to see you for a brief chat tomorrow. He’s very upset that you’ve been rude to his brother-in-law.’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ Bryant told him. ‘Who the hell is his brother-in-law?’
‘Your new chap, Giles Kershaw. Apparently you’re refusing to use him.’
‘His brother-in-law? You’re joking. What a total Quisling. I didn’t like the cut of his jib the moment I saw him. Quel crapaud.’
‘Well, no doubt you’ll use your legendary diplomatic skills to sort the whole mess out,’ Land smirked. ‘I mustn’t keep you, I’m sure you have plenty of work to do.’ He turned to leave, and stood on the cat’s tail. One of the workmen putting a partition across the office dropped his circular saw. It shot across the floor, making everyone scream.
The Peculiar Crimes Unit at Mornington Crescent was open for business once more.
4
* * *
OPENING DOORS
By Tuesday morning, the irradiation of the long dry summer had already faded to a memory as the temperature tumbled and a translucent caul of rain returned the city to silvered shadows. Cracked earth softened between paving stones. Pale London dust was rinsed from leaves and car roofs. Back gardens lost their parched grey aridity, returning to rich moist greens and browns. The air humidified as wood stretched and mortar relaxed, the city’s houses pleasurably settling into their natural damp state. Rain seeped through split tarmac, down into uneven beds of London clay, through gravel and pebbles and Thanet sand, through an immense depth of chalk, to the flinted core and layers of fossils that crusted the depression formed by the city’s six great hills.
London’s workforce barely registered this mantic transformation. It certainly didn’t take long for DC Bimsley and DS Longbright to cover the ten houses in Balaklava Street and the properties backing on to Mrs Singh’s house. Longbright came along because her flatpacked desk was still being assembled—too few dowelling pieces had been provided. While her colleagues bickered amiably, she armed herself with May’s newly programmed electronic interview-pad and headed for the street. She still liked footwork because meeting the public kept her connected, and it did her good to get out. The rain was scouring the acidic urban air, making it fresh once more.
She had worked with the bull-necked Bimsley before, and enjoyed his company. He was an extremely able officer, but also one of the clumsiest, lacking coordination and spatial awareness while retaining the grace of a falling tree. It had seemed an endearing trait the first few times they had met. His baseball cap usually covered a bruise.
It occurred to Longbright that everyone who ended up working with Bryant and May had some kind of physical or mental flaw that prevented them from functioning normally with fellow officers. Oswald Finch, for example, had been the unit’s pathologist since its foundation. He was a man not given to delegation. He trusted his instincts, was rational and cautious and prone to calm understatement, but everybody hated dealing with him except Bryant, because he looked like a Victorian mourner and reeked of cheap aftershave, which he used to cover up the cloying smell of death.
‘That last woman, Colin, was it really necessary to listen to her talking about shopping trips?’ asked Longbright, who had never known the pleasure of spending because she was always broke. Most of the clothes she owned had been bought at thrift shops and dated back to the 1960s, lending her the air of a disreputable Rank starlet. She was smart and tough, and scared men with a kind of carnality that she had never learned to turn off.
‘You have to listen to them, Sarge. Mr Bryant taught me that. You get more out of them after they think you’ve stopped taking notes.’