The Lonely Hour, page 14
His bed had a tall oak headboard with a pair of immensely thick white pillows placed at the centre. The hideous tasselled purple Tiffany lamp on his bedside table was a gift from his landlady, who had insisted on replacing his Victorian candlesticks after he nearly burned the flat down. The paintings were his own, produced in the aftermath of the Water Room case, when for a brief period he had misguidedly thought that his talents might lie in the direction of brush and palette. The woman in his version of Degas’s L’Absinthe resembled a baboon in a hat, and in Echo and Narcissus it looked as if Narcissus was being sick into a pond.
His pipe had gone out, leaving a wildflower fragrance in the room. Bryant sat back and sipped his brandy, letting its spicy sharpness warm his mouth. He was dissatisfied and restless. He had always savoured his invisibility, but lately he had noticed how most people avoided him and gravitated towards his partner. They sought John May’s advice and approval, and hoped that something of him would rub off on them. Nothing of Bryant rubbed off on people. Rather, he shed on them: toffee wrappers, strands of tobacco, inexplicably sticky bits of paper, cinders, crumbs, red wine and static electricity.
By Bryant’s own admission he was a necessary evil. Good police officers were like good doctors; they exhibited high levels of curiosity and suspicion, low levels of sentiment and empathy. They believed in fair play but knew that life was entirely unfair, and were able to reconcile the paradox of this knowledge. It led them to believe that at some deeply buried level they were always right. Certitude doesn’t protect you from injury, however, and many were lost to stress, depression and addiction.
Not so Bryant. He had somehow soldiered on, reaching the age when most of his friends were either mad or feeling very ill. It was not always easy to maintain stability in a topsy-turvy world, but May was his plumb line, his base rate, the control in the grand experiment. His partner rarely complained, only took chances with reasonable odds and never frightened people. Bryant struggled to understand how they were still friends. Their relationship was no marriage but perhaps an alignment.
It was late and he needed to sleep, but something other than the case was keeping him awake. A vague sense of foreboding hung over him. Nothing lasts for ever, he told himself. At your age you must be prepared for sudden changes. The most unsettling surprises came at you from directions you least expected.
And he could not sleep because he needed to understand. Why 4.00 a.m.? Why wait until the city is dormant? Affairs that walk at midnight have in them a wilder nature than the business that seeks dispatch by day, he thought, paraphrasing Shakespeare’s Henry VIII. The idea led him to the night play Macbeth, in which conspiracies throve beneath the blanket of the dark.
Was it simply that? A dead and silent time when a predator could be sure of locating solitary victims? Bryant struggled to comprehend random acts of cruelty; he sought patterns and connections. Thoughtless acts made a mockery of order. They told him that there was no purpose in trying to understand the world, and he had spent a lifetime believing the opposite. If he accepted that societies were born to fail after reaching the most minimal level of competence, he would have to accept that he had wasted his life. It was not an idea worth pursuing at this time of night, when harmful forces sought out the spiritually confused.
He took his brandy to bed with a copy of Urban Cosmologies: Disparity and Desolation. It wasn’t particularly restful bedtime reading so he switched to ‘The Case of the Slaughtered Stripper’. When sleep eludes you, embrace wakefulness, he told himself, and read until dawn.
John May had not opened his mail for days. Usually it consisted of bills, reminders about hospital appointments and brochures for Saga holidays. With a sinking sensation he unfolded the letter and ran a fingertip lightly across the address. Broadhampton Clinic, Lavender Hill, London SW11. The few lines below were bare and unforgiving: ‘… sorry to inform you … patient Jane Alice May, née Partridge … complications following pulmonary oedema … arrangements at your convenience …’
Jane, his wife for all too brief a time before her demons overtook her, had been institutionalized for so many decades that seeing the name formally transcribed gave him a shock. He needed to inform Alex. His son lived in Canada, caring for an invalid daughter. His granddaughter April was out there with him.
He had been expecting the letter for years. He told himself that the sense of relief overwhelming him was for the end of her suffering, not the lifting of his guilt. Carefully folding up the page, he set it back on the table. So strong was May’s belief in balance that every loss required a gain, every subtraction created the need to add. The letter made him want to be with someone. It was late, but the right time to call Norah.
‘I’m glad you rang,’ she said. ‘I had such a good time with you last week.’
‘Are you on-site?’ he asked.
‘Not tonight. There was no football on so it’s quiet out there. Where are you?’
‘I’m back at the flat. It’s been a long day.’
‘Are you all right?’ She had a supernatural way of sensing moods.
‘Yes. No. I had some sad news tonight. Look, do you want to meet?’
‘What is this?’
‘Just to …’ He sought the right words. ‘To be with someone.’
‘You want to come to Belsize Park? I’m not a shoulder to cry on.’
‘I know that, Norah.’
‘Come up.’ She rang off.
He glanced back at the folded letter once more, then donned his coat and called a taxi.
Three episodes of Game of Thrones, back to back. Colin had seen enough throat-slittings to last a lifetime. ‘It’s a quarter to three. Can we go to bed now?’ he asked, gently lifting the remote from Meera’s hand.
She pulled herself upright on the sofa and rubbed her eyes. ‘What did I miss?’
‘If I tell you, you’ll complain about me spoiling the plot.’
‘Just give me the main points.’
‘A couple of kings died. An old version of Emma Peel turned up. Winter came.’
She looked around for her shoes. ‘I have to go home. Why didn’t you wake me earlier? Why are there Twiglets all over the sofa?’
‘You fell asleep eating them. You don’t get enough kip, Meera.’ He rose and placed his arms around her waist, dragging her upwards, but she clung around him leglessly. ‘You have to help me. Come on, up the wooden stairs to Bedfordshire.’
‘You haven’t got an upstairs. I want to live in a house.’
‘I’ll buy you one in about fifty years’ time.’
‘With a garden.’
‘A huge garden and an ornamental fountain, I promise.’
‘I can’t stay over. My mother will go bananas.’
‘Then stay over. We can put her in a home.’
‘I should have brought my bike. I can get a night bus.’ She was awake now and became a model of practicality once more, dusting herself down, looking for the TfL app on her phone.
‘Not at this time. I’ll book you a cab.’
‘I think I was dreaming about the case. Why is he up at this time of night?’
‘Maybe he’s an insomniac.’
‘Or he works shifts. London Transport. Someone in the public service sector. Security, catering, hospitals, cleaning services. I read that one in eight Londoners works nights.’
Colin checked his phone. ‘The cab’s here. Want me to come down with you?’
‘I’m fine.’ Meera swung her bag on to her shoulder and reached up to kiss him. ‘See you in a few hours.’
‘Stay in the light,’ he called after her. It was in his nature to watch until she was safely inside the car.
Janice Longbright slept with a mask because her blinds weren’t thick enough to blot out the street lights. It was made of mauve satin and had eyelashes, a perfect copy of the one Lady Isobel Barnett had worn on the 1950s television show What’s My Line? Like Bryant, Longbright had been born out of time. In her dreams she inhabited a city of misted empty streets and chromium-grilled cars. The river, the stations and the pubs were filled with smoke. There were nannies in Hyde Park, barrow boys in Covent Garden, spivs in Soho and jellied-eel merchants on Cable Street. It was the age before her birth, her mother’s world, and therefore fabled.
She had been awoken by the ping of a message arriving on her phone. Dragging her mask over spray-stiff hair, she squinted at the screen. Four missed calls and three texts from Jack Renfield. Presumably he was in a bar with his old mates from the Met. He always chased her when he was drunk. At first she had enjoyed his renewed interest because she had the upper hand, but now it felt as if he was simply trying to take back control. He knew she could not turn off the phone because the line needed to be left open during investigations.
The tone of the text messages decided the matter; she would talk to him at the first opportunity and explain that she had thought the matter over carefully and decided there was no possibility of them getting back together.
Her mind was now too alert for sleep. The next deadline was only an hour away, but there was no one in the office to organize a response. As she rose to make tea, an idea came to her. Taking a pen and pad to the kitchen table, she began to map out a plan.
Raymond Land sat on the end of his sofa bed in his pyjamas and dressing gown, watching Crippen asleep in her basket. The vet had found cysts in her stomach, too many to remove. First Leanne walks out on me, he thought, then the cat gets sick. There’s only the goldfish to go, and he’s already looking dicey.
He decided to make himself a builders’ tea. The kitchen clock read 3.35 a.m. He felt tired all the time. He needed something to distract him from worrying thoughts. He wished he liked music or knew something about art. He had no outside interests to sustain him. Standing at the window with his chimpanzee tea mug looking down into the deserted streets, he tried to imagine a different life. He was trapped between civil servants who treated him with poorly concealed disdain and staff who regarded him as a benign nuisance, like an oxpecker on the back of a buffalo, but he had dreams just like everybody else, although not many hopes.
He had never been outstanding – middle of the class in school, last to be picked for cricket, kindly turned aside by the girl at the edge of the dance floor who badly wanted to dance but not with him, cast in the role of Second Leper in his local church’s production of The Story of Jesus.
Now he had once again been landed with an investigation designed to fail, so that his superannuated detectives could finally – finally – be shipped off to a museum.
But what if he showed them all? What if he did something unexpected? What if he led the team to success by becoming the leader he had always dreamed of being? The very thought of it brought rising heat into his chest.
He looked down and realized he had spilled tea down his dressing gown.
18
PRIVACY
Hugo Blake looked up at the tower block, its name picked out in silver lettering backed by piercing blue lights: ‘The ArcAngel 200 City Road’.
There were hardly any lights on in the building. Glass had a way of looking desolate where brick did not. As he walked up to the illuminated entrance, he decided that the best way to get in was the way all smart burglars got into the houses of the rich: through the front door. He remembered an old trick and checked the key pad beside the door handle to see if it would work.
The apartment numbers were illuminated. The key pad was made of brushed steel. Its oval buttons fitted flush. Around the edge of each number was a seal made of clear plastic so that the LEDs behind them could shine through. When residents punched in their code they followed a memory muscle pattern, dragging their greasy fingers from one digit to the next. The City Road was always busy; dust settled all the time. He studied the keys and saw that the left-hand edge of the nine had a thin line of dirt that continued up and across to the five, then to the two and the three, where it stopped. What was the point of keeping the security code secret if anyone with a keen eye could track it?
He pulled the grey cotton hood from beneath his leather jacket and checked his watch. He would be out just after 4.00 a.m., whatever happened.
Punching in the number, he waited for the door lock to click and entered the reception area. The walls on either side were coated in slivers of dark mirror that refracted gold spotlights. The air smelled of antiseptic cleaning spray.
The lift would not work without a swipe card; he hadn’t foreseen that and was forced to climb sixteen floors. The staircase had sensor lighting but no cameras; they were all tucked in the corners of the communal areas and were only useful during the day, when a bored guard sat behind an acre of stone and steel in the foyer. Since the property downturn, residents had grown reluctant to pay raised service charges. It meant that half of these new apartment buildings relied on cheap technology instead of night porters and monitors.
He exited at the sixteenth floor and turned into a corridor that reminded him of any large mid-priced hotel. The apartment doors looked solid enough, but he knew their weak spots. Each had a spyhole set in the upper panel, but he had followed the service company’s email exchanges with the tenants and knew they had complained about poor visibility. He could tell by the depth of the brass ferrules that the wood was thin.
He rang the doorbell and waited. His right hand ran over the handle of the silver instrument in his pocket. No answer. He checked the corridor and rang again. Now he heard the faintest of footsteps, a rustle of material, bare feet on wood. He had calculated the distance between the bedroom and the front door, and the maximum time it would take her to reach the latch, but she took longer than expected. He suddenly realized why; she was coming from the living room, which was further away.
The trocar was engraved with his name. His fingers removed the cover from its tip and lifted it out of his pocket. The point could be brandished with a single movement.
He had waited long enough. As he threw his weight against the lock he realized he had applied too much force. The door popped open and slammed back. The jamb was made of such soft wood that it splintered apart as the lock tore through it and smashed the occupant against the wall. The plasterwork registered a perfect dent. The girl fell slowly, sprawling face down, her long black hair fanning over the wood floor.
He took out the trocar and crouched beside her, preparing to grab a handful of hair and pull her head back, exposing her throat.
‘I need you to tell me—’ he began. Something shiny caught his eye and he looked up, glimpsing the flat’s shadowed interior. On the kitchen counter was a golden maneki-neko, a ‘beckoning cat’ meant to bring good luck. There were other talismans dotted around: daruma dolls and a koinobori, a pink paper carp. He reached down and removed the strands of hair from her face.
She was not meant to be Japanese.
He got back to the ground floor at six minutes past four. Outside, leaning against the recycling bins, he felt a flush of extreme heat ripple through his body, as if he had eaten something bad. He tried to feel remorse for the girl lying on the floor of her flat upstairs, but there was nothing inside him. You made a mistake, he told himself, it doesn’t change anything. The most overlooked point about enemies was that they never realized they were the enemy. Hugo knew exactly who he was. He wanted his targets to know it too; it was important that in their final moments they understood he was right and they were wrong.
Attacking the wrong person was a setback, that’s all. There were always civilian casualties. He had expected something like this to happen. War was an inexact science. Napalm had been developed at Harvard in 1942, and wasn’t banned until Barack Obama’s first day in office. There were always some casualties before the scales were balanced.
He wondered if the press had picked up on the jacket button yet. What was the point of leaving behind a clue if they failed to report it? Murders barely warranted a couple of lines in today’s papers.
He took a deep breath and realized that he was not going to be sick after all. Once it was over he would be able to rest, knowing that what he had done was not only right but fair.
Setting off into the empty backstreets, he resolved to stay the course until the mission was completed.
‘You’re not going anywhere without breakfast.’ Alma Sorrowbridge placed the bowl before him and folded her arms. In her pink quilted dressing gown, matching curlers and fluffy slippers she was not a woman to be trifled with. ‘It’s chilly outside.’
‘What is it?’ Bryant peered down through the steam and sniffed.
‘Plum porridge with cinnamon, powdered limes and cocoa nibs.’ She placed a spoon in his hand.
‘But I’ve already got my coat on.’
‘You can keep it on just this once. I want to see a nice clean bowl.’
‘Alma, we’re due at a murder site.’ John May was by the kitchen door, checking his watch and anxious to leave. ‘He’s not a five-year-old.’
‘Then I’ll save it for later. If he keels over it’s your fault,’ she warned, reluctantly standing her tenant upright and throttling him with an unsuitable scarf. ‘Have you been to the toilet?’
‘Madam, I do not need to be dressed, coddled, nagged, fed, watered or referred to in the third person,’ said Bryant. ‘Go and bake something.’
‘He’s just showing off,’ said Alma. ‘Have him back by eight.’
The detectives ventured outside. The morning was purblind, the sky filled with furious clouds. May held the car door open for him. ‘Your laces are undone,’ he warned.
