The Invisible Code
Read The Invisible Code Online
Authors: Christopher Fowler
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Mystery & Detective, #Crime
About the Book
The game the two young children are playing is called Witch-Hunter. Spying a woman sitting alone in a church courtyard, they curse her and wait for her to die. And die she does. Her body is found in St Bride’s Church – a building that no one else has entered.
Unfortunately Bryant & May are refused the case. Instead they’re investigating why the wife of their greatest enemy has suddenly started behaving strangely, including embarrassing him at official functions. He seems convinced that someone is trying to drive her insane; she believes she’s the victim of witchcraft.
There’s a brutal stabbing in a London park and suddenly a connection is found between the two investigations. As Arthur Bryant sets off on a trail that leads to Bedlam and Bletchley Park, and into a world of madness, codes and the secret of London’s strangest relic, the rest of the Peculiar Crimes Unit are tested to their limits.
Probing behind the city’s facades, they uncover a world of private clubs, hidden passageways, covert loyalties and murder. It seems that this case might not just end in disaster – it might also get them all killed…
Contents
28. The Strangeness Of Churches
BRYANT & MAY AND
THE INVISIBLE CODE
CHRISTOPHER FOWLER
For Peter Chapman
‘Money can’t buy friends, but it can get you a better class of enemy.’
Spike Milligan
‘It started with me. It ends with me.’
Unnamed teenager, when asked about the history of London
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
‘Make your leading characters younger and put in more sex and violence if you want them to be a success,’ a critic warned me as I embarked on the first Bryant & May mystery. Blithely ignoring his advice I ploughed on, determined to create a pair of intelligent Golden Age detectives who are forced to deal with the modern world. I knew I’d have fun just watching Arthur Bryant trying to use a smartphone.
Luckily, there were others who always agreed with me. Simon Taylor, my editor at Transworld, is so wonderfully enthusiastic that I sometimes doubt his sanity but never his
savoir faire
. Thanks too, to Lynsey Dalladay, who has restored my faith in publishing PR. Both she and Mandy Little, my charming agent, prove it’s not all standing around drinking champagne and that we can also have fun going to secluded libraries on wet winter Wednesdays.
I really hope there are further Bryant & May adventures to come, as each book is more pleasurable to write than the last. Remember, the strangest parts of these tales are true. You can uncover lots more information at
www.christopherfowler.co.uk
Peculiar Crimes Unit
The Old Warehouse
231 Caledonian Road
London N1 9RB
STAFF ROSTER FOR MONDAY 18 JUNE
Raymond Land, Acting Unit Chief
Arthur Bryant, Senior Detective
John May, Senior Detective
Janice Longbright, Detective Sergeant
Dan Banbury, Crime Scene Manager/InfoTech
Giles Kershaw, Forensic Pathologist (St Pancras Mortuary)
Jack Renfield, Sergeant
Meera Mangeshkar, Detective Constable
Colin Bimsley, Detective Constable
Crippen, staff cat
BULLETIN BOARD
Housekeeping notes from Raymond Land to all staff:
As you know, we now have a fully activated secure swipe-card entry system on the front door. It worked perfectly for two whole days, until Arthur Bryant accidentally inserted an old Senior Service ‘Battle of Britain’ cigarette card into the slot instead of his electronic keycard and somehow jammed it. The engineers hope to have the system working again by Thursday.
The new common room is to be used as a neutral zone for calm reflection and the sharing of information. It is not an after-hours bar, a videogame parlour or a place where you can stage chemical
experiments, impromptu film shows or arm-wrestling matches for beers.
When the fire inspector came to test the smoke detector in the first-floor corridor last week, he found a box of Bryant & May matches wedged in place of the alarm battery. Obviously only a disturbed, selfish and immature individual would risk burning his colleagues alive in order to smoke a pipe indoors. I’m not mentioning any names.
I want to put the rumours to rest about our new building once and for all. While it appears to be true that a Mr Aleister Crowley once held meetings here (and decorated the wall of my office with inappropriate images of young ladies and aroused livestock), the building is most emphatically not ‘haunted’. It’s an old property with a colourful history, and has Victorian pipes and floorboards. The noises these make at night are quite normal and certainly don’t sound like the ‘death-rattles of trapped souls’, as I overheard Meera telling someone on the phone. May I remind you that you are British officers of the law, and are not required to have any imagination.
There’s a funny smell in the kitchen. It might be a gas leak. Our builders, the two Daves, are coming back to rip everything out. If I find one of you dropped a kebab behind the units, you’ll be on unpaid overtime for a month.
Finally, I was under the impression that Crippen, our staff cat, was a neutered tom, but this appears not to be the case as she is clearly pregnant. Can someone please take care of this? I DO NOT want anyone unexpectedly giving birth in this unit.
PART ONE
The Case
1
CLOSE TO GOD
THERE WAS A
witch around here somewhere.
The Fleet Street office workers who sat in the cool shadow of the church on their lunch breaks had no idea that she was hiding among them. They squatted in the little garden squares while they ate their sandwiches, queued at coffee shops and paced the pavements staring at the screens of their smartphones, not realizing that she was preparing to call down lightning and spit brimstone.
On the surface the witch was one of them, but that was just a disguise. She had the power to change her outward appearance, to look like anyone she was standing near.
Lucy said, ‘She won’t be somebody posh. Witches are always poor.’
Tom said, ‘I can’t tell who’s posh. Everyone looks the same.’
He was right; to a child they did. Grey suits, black suits, white shirts, grey skirts, blue ties, print blouses, black shoes. London’s workforce on the move.
Lucy pulled at her favourite yellow T-shirt and felt her tummy rumble. ‘She’ll have to appear soon. They often travel in threes. When a witch starts to get hungry, she
loses concentration and lets go of her disguise. The spell will weaken and she’ll turn back into her real self.’
She was crouching in the bushes and wanted to stand up because it was making her legs hurt, but knew she might get caught if she did so. The flowerbeds bristled with tropical plants that had spiny razor-sharp leaves and looked as if they should be somewhere tropical. A private security guard patrolled the square, shifting the people who looked as if they belonged somewhere else too.