Strange Tide (16 page)

‘You can't be sure of that,' said Longbright. ‘Maybe it's what they genuinely believe.'

Bryant looked up at the ceiling, listening to the steady drip of water somewhere. ‘People choose what they want to believe. I believe that London was once called New Troy,' he said, ‘and that it was founded by the giants Gog and Magog. I believe that the London Stone once stood in the centre of the Thames long before the Romans arrived. I believe that every single legend about this city has at its root a grain of truth, so if a pregnant young woman is found chained in the river instead of being dumped on a piece of waste ground, I believe there is premeditation and a logical reason why the site was selected for her death.'

Even May couldn't entirely argue with that. ‘But it's not to do with the river, Arthur, it can't be,' he said. ‘The club – there were drug busts in the past but no convictions. Why not?'

‘That's a question for CO14, not us,' said Longbright. ‘Dalston is Darren Link's old territory. He headed up the local vice unit before he moved to the City of London. Do you want to ask him what happened?'

It was never a good idea to lock horns with Darren ‘Missing' Link. The superintendent now worked for the City of London's Serious Crime Directorate, and was an old-school copper who came on like a cross between a betrayed Presbyterian and a recently woken bear. He believed he was morally superior to his weak-willed officers, a minatory man who preached a gospel of expiation before proof of guilt and punishment before rehabilitation. In the fluctuating miasma of urban criminality, where officers had powers to determine the fate of offenders before trial in order to alleviate pressure on the courts, it was not fashionable to be so unbending. Hard-to-prove cases could be resolved with a handshake and a warning in order to save everyone time and money, but that was never good enough for Link; he expected to see some Old Testament suffering. He would have closed down all the shady clubs in his district if he could, and if he hadn't shut the Cossack it was because he had found a better way to hurt them.

‘You think Link's mob were on the take, is that it?' asked May. ‘It would have to have been without his knowledge.'

‘I heard his officers in CO14 regularly raided the clubs and brothels around Dalston in the name of combatting trafficking and coercion,' Longbright told him. ‘They checked the girls' employment status and National Insurance numbers, and reported them to the immigration authorities. Sometimes in the process money went missing without receipts. Link wouldn't have been too worried about that so long as he kept them all in check.'

‘Why would Dalladay work there at all?' asked May. ‘She could have got all the money she needed from her folks.'

‘Only someone who loves women a lot can misunderstand them as much as you, John,' said Longbright with a wry smile. ‘She did it for herself. For pleasure or power, to be in control of something for once in her life. But she had no discernment. Maybe she mixed with the clients and maybe some of them were on Link's squad. She could have got into something she couldn't get out of. We have to dig deeper.'

‘You know what Link will say,' warned May.

‘You're asking if my team used the club as
clients
?' asked Superintendent Darren Link twenty minutes later. Raymond Land had him on the speaker in Bryant and May's office, and hastily turned down its volume with a wince. ‘Do you want a moment to think about this before you go any further?'

Land beckoned the detectives closer. ‘The Cossack had several run-ins with vice during the time you were in charge of the squad, so it makes sense to check with you first,' said May reasonably. ‘The present owner is currently living in Moscow. We're having trouble tracking him down. The bar manager admits they had a problem with dealers operating out of the club in the past, but insists they're clean now. If they were professionals they'd supply their own.' May knew that the high-end clubs employed suppliers to ensure that nobody died of bad MDMA on their premises. ‘Whatever they're up to – and they're definitely up to plenty – could still be going on.'

Link stonewalled them. ‘If you have hard evidence you should be talking to the current vice squad, not to me,' he warned.

‘I've got three separate raids dating from your watch,' said May. ‘All of your cases were closed; none of the charges stuck.'

‘I'm not prepared to go through the fine print of investigations that occurred outside your jurisdiction,' said Link with weary disdain in his voice. ‘You don't deal with vice. Anything you uncover in that area has to be turned over to the appropriate agency.'

‘It may have a direct bearing on the Dalladay death,' said May.

‘If it does we'll have to take the case away from you.'

Bryant made an urgent throat-cutting gesture. May took the point. ‘We'll get back to you when we have something solid,' he said, killing the line.

Land was annoyed. ‘You must have known that would happen. It's not our area of expertise, John. The girl was murdered because someone didn't want to be linked with a hooker, pure and simple.'

‘You don't know that,' said May. ‘Janice says some of the other girls saw local officers on a professional basis but not Dalladay. Giles says she showed signs of regular cocaine use. She was a wild card who kept bad company. That doesn't make her a hooker.'

‘You won't find her killer through a hair sample.' Land knew that cocaine caused hair growth to slow down. ‘You've nothing to connect her death to the club, or to any of Link's old team-mates.'

‘Then we'll concentrate on Freddie Cooper,' said Bryant, perking up. ‘I'll go and talk to him this time.'

‘Oh no you don't,' warned Land, ‘you're staying right where we can keep an eye on you. Freddie Cooper isn't the father. You're not leaving this room. I can't have you wandering around out there like—'

‘Marley's ghost? Coleridge's Ancient Mariner?' Bryant suggested. ‘Or someone you've already written off as no longer being capable of the job?'

‘Come on, Arthur,' said May gently. ‘It's late anyway. I'll take you home.'

It was only a short walk to Bryant's Bloomsbury flat, but the night was bleak and grey with damp, so May drove him back. They sat in the car looking up at the building in Hastings Street. Alma's light was still on; she always waited up for him.

‘There's something strange at the heart of this case,' said Bryant, peeping over the top of his moulting green scarf. ‘You see a girl who was killed because she was pregnant. I see a victim sacrificed to the city's most ancient deities. I try to look at it your way, the obvious logical way, but I never could and I still can't even now, just when I need everything to be cogent and consistent.'

‘But that's your great strength,' said May gently. ‘Are you sure you want to get further involved in this?'

‘Are you asking me if I'm up to it?' Bryant gave a sigh. ‘I can cope with any debilitation if it's simply a matter of finding the strength. What I can't handle is the sheer unpredictability of my senses. They're altering as they depart, and I have no idea what to expect next from them. You know, I always thought of long-term illness as a series of battles with incremental losses, but I swear this is proving to be more like a stimulant. It doesn't make sense. Earlier this evening when I was down by the river I had a kind of waking dream. I saw and heard and
smelled
things that were impossible.'

‘What do you mean? What sort of things?'

‘It's going to sound ridiculous. I imagined I was back in Victorian times.' Bryant held his hands before him, as if daring the visions to return. ‘It was as though my subconscious mind was pointing me in a particular direction. I don't know where the next stop on this strange journey might be.'

‘Then make sure you stay close. Alma will keep watch on you when you're in the flat and I'll ferry you to and from the unit. But you can't go out on your own from now on. You know that, don't you? I need a promise from you.'

‘I promise I'll try,' said Bryant, and May knew it was the closest he would get to an assurance.

Monday had been a long day. Tuesday morning was drained of light and life, the landscape as damp and drab as codfish skin. No computer model of the city's thrusting new tower blocks had ever envisioned them huddled beneath such lugubrious skies, their gleaming carapaces as mottled and clouded as antique mirrors.

In Highgate, Janice Longbright finished applying Smudge-Proof Cherrybloom Foundation (‘Alma Cogan's Favourite!' said the jar) and closed the 1950s make-up box she had inherited from her mother. She glanced back at her neatly made bed, feeling a pang of regret for driving away the man who had filled its other side. Her independence had quickly reasserted itself but right now it would have been nice to depend on someone again, just to pick up a few of their habits rather than always falling back on her own. Being in control was different from being a control freak, but she knew that sometimes one state led to the other.
That won't be me
, she thought, defiantly pulling off her black unit sweater and replacing it with a Jezebel Crimson Leopard Bust Dress and leggings.

In Shad Thames, John May stood at the front door of his manicured minimalist apartment, looking out at the falling rain. Reluctantly, he exchanged his elegant Church's shoes for a pair of hated but practical Adidas trainers. Once the narrow street beyond had been filled with the rumble of coopers' trolleys, the clanking of cranes, the aroma of cardamom, cloves, pepper and tea. Now there were only single professionals with cyberspace jobs who had no time for anything as unproductive as passing conversation. The thirty-somethings took one look at his silver mane and neatly knotted tie and fled back to their phones. No matter how non-judgemental they tried to be in their day jobs, they couldn't countenance the idea of talking to older people in their precious spare time.

Since moving to the flat from St John's Wood he had failed to make a single friend in the building. Residents' meetings had been abandoned after it was discovered that most of the owners existed as offshore addresses lodged in company ledgers. May's world revolved around the unit. It was where he came to life. The question was what would happen when his tenure ended. He had no safety net of family, friends or even savings to rely on. He would simply cease to exist.

You know what Arthur would say
, he thought disapprovingly.
This is no time for morbidity, stop being a miserable old ratbag and pull yourself together.
Choosing his favourite red scarf, he stepped out into the half-light and prepared to face the day.

In Bloomsbury, Arthur Bryant folded his Rupert the Bear pyjamas beneath his pillow and removed the sardine and tomato sandwiches Alma had left in his Tibetan skull, sliding them into a paper bag which he then squashed into the pocket of his overcoat. The sight of the falling rain pleased him immensely. It would rinse the pavements and keep the day dark enough for thinking. Who knew what it held? Would there be hours missing? Would he black out and come round in the Whispering Gallery or the London Sewing Machine Museum? Would he find himself serving under Boadicea in her final battle against the Romans, performing before a Jacobean audience as Ferdinand in
The Duchess of Malfi
or agreeing to bomb the
Belgrano
in Margaret Thatcher's war cabinet? Life was suddenly an adventure to be seized upon.

In Hammersmith, Raymond Land sat in a workmen's café watching a fried egg drip out of his sandwich. Leanne, his ex-wife, had taken their house, so he had moved into a rented top-floor flat off Shepherd's Bush Road, sharing the building with a bad-tempered Chinese pensioner, a cheery Latvian pastry chef, a pair of unbelievably shrill Brazilian dancers and a clearly deranged cockney landlady who changed the locks on a weekly basis and spoke like a character from an Ealing comedy.

This is what happens to people like me
, Land thought gloomily.
This is where we wash up, the disappointed, in the last remaining transport caffs and laundromats, betting shops and old-geezer pubs, milling around like paddle-tubs on a boating lake waiting to be called in when our hour is up. Once I had ambition and drive. I should have done something important while I still had some hair. Why didn't I stand up for myself and make people take me seriously? What happened to the springtime dreams of my gilded youth?

‘You've got egg on your trousers,' said the waitress, taking his teacup.

Janice Longbright shook out her umbrella and entered the darkened hall of the Peculiar Crimes Unit, the first one in again. It was easy to get out of bed early when there was no one else in it. She ignored the video security system that had not worked since its installation, stepped over Crippen's litter tray and headed into the staff kitchen to put the milk away. While it was nice not to come across any severed fingers in the salad crisper, something that had happened on more than one occasion, she found herself wondering if the badly behaved Arthur Bryant of old would make a final reappearance, or if he would now subside into the darkness of his disorder, never to resurface as the appalling old man she had so long adored.