The Memory of Blood (2 page)

Bryant is past Civil Service retirement age and his health is far from good, but despite having had a heart attack and needing a walking stick, he seems surprisingly robust. He’s extremely eccentric, offensively rude and is known to smoke cannabis, supposedly for his arthritis. We could probably get him for that.

Bryant’s success rate in investigations is far above the capital’s average, and this is the main reason why Whitehall continues to sign off on his budgets. Arthur Bryant & John May have a long history of refusing promotion, and the loyalty this engenders allows them to maintain control of the Unit. They are still well connected in political circles.

Bryant garners much of his information from a loose network of psychics, healers, New Age fringe-dwellers, police time-wasters and anarchists, many of whom have lengthy arrest files. He is also an expert on the subject of London and its history.

Bryant’s oddly lateral thought processes remain a total mystery to us. The University College of London is currently offering a course that attempts to explain his methods. Whether deliberate or inadvertent, he has a habit of making us look bad. He has broken local, national and international laws on numerous occasions, but somehow always seems to get away with it. He remains entirely beyond the reach of influence. I simply wouldn’t go there if I were you. Personally, I find him incomprehensible and utterly ghastly.

JOHN MAY

Senior Detective

Bryant’s partner was born in Vauxhall, South London. He’s the human face of the team, and could be considered to be Bryant’s alter ego. There’s one sister, Gwen Kaye (married name), living in
Brighton, married with two children. May moved from Hampstead to St John’s Wood, and now resides in Shad Thames. He was married to Jane Upton, now divorced, has an estranged son, Alex, and had a daughter, Elizabeth, who also worked for the PCU until her death on active duty.

The source of the estrangement between May and his son is not known. May’s ex-wife was declared mentally unstable soon after their divorce. His granddaughter, April, suffered from agoraphobia until resolving issues about her mother. She worked at the Unit for a while, but we understand she now lives with her uncle in Canada.

May is a pragmatic, determined worker well liked by his colleagues, but like Bryant, he has a few secret anti-government contacts we’re not happy about. On a personal level, he’s fitter, friendlier and certainly a lot more pleasant to deal with than his partner. He is three years younger than Bryant, drives a silver BMW, knows a surprising amount about new technology.

On a personal level, he has loneliness issues, and continues to date women the department classifies as high security risks. May suffers from high cholesterol and has a history of lower back pain. His continuing loyalty to Bryant is complete and unfathomable; there seems to be little likelihood that he could ever become an ally of the department.

JANICE LONGBRIGHT

Detective Sergeant

Longbright’s parents were Gladys Forthright and Harris Longbright, both highly respected former Metropolitan Police officers. She was once an Olympic javelin hope until an injury ended her career. Janice Longbright has been employed by Bryant & May for almost her entire adult working life, and is fiercely loyal to them, largely because of their relationship with her mother.

She dated DCI Ian Hargreave for ten years, but inexplicably chose not to marry him. Her last partner, Liberty DuCaine, died on active
duty. She lives alone in Highgate. Not to be underestimated. Lately there have been odd rumours about her supposed clairvoyant abilities, although perhaps someone is pulling our leg on this. There was also some kind of scandal involving her role in the running of a Soho burlesque club, but we haven’t been able to uncover any details.

GILES KERSHAW

Forensic Pathology

Kershaw was a child prodigy who dropped out of Queen’s College, Oxford, after his wealthy family became newly impoverished, but he subsequently took his medical degree at UCL. He has now left the Unit to become the St Pancras coroner, but continues to work with the PCU on special investigations. By a peculiar coincidence, an earlier St Pancras coroner, Sir Bentley Purchase, was the supplier of the corpse for Operation Mincemeat (see above). When a government representative had trouble finding the coroner’s office, Purchase famously suggested that he would get there quicker if he got hit by a bus. Kershaw’s brother-in-law was the last Home Secretary. His reputation is unimpeachable, and his loyalty to the PCU is also entirely unfathomable.

DAN BANBURY

Crime Scene Manager/InfoTech

Banbury is the only staff member who seems completely normal. Born in Bow, London. Married with a ten-year-old son. Lives in Croydon. He’s a solid worker, eager and enthusiastic and reputed to show intuitive brilliance at crime scenes. He’s a dyed-in-the-wool tech-head who once ran afoul of the Official Secrets Act while still a teenager. The case file on that incident appears to have been mysteriously erased. Another loyal supporter of the PCU, despite the fact that his wage level has remained unchanged for nearly three years.

JACK RENFIELD

Sergeant

Formerly a duty sergeant based at Albany Street police station, Renfield’s a bit of a thick-eared old-school copper, and has a reputation for playing it by the book. He’s on record as being an outspoken critic of the PCU, but lately appears to have been won over and has started siding with them, which turns him into a liability. I’d love to know what Bryant & May put in the water that makes their staff become so doggedly loyal.

MEERA MANGESHKAR

Police Constable

She’s a tough South Londoner from a large Indian family, hardworking, responsive, with a strong sense of duty. She has argued with her superiors and lodged complaints against them in the past, but things seem to have gone quiet on that front. However, there are rumours that she’s not happy in her current position. Has anger management issues. Could be exploited.

COLIN BIMSLEY

Police Constable

Another inherited employee; his father and uncle were both former members of the PCU, so he’s pretty much bound to the Unit for life. By all accounts decent enough, he suffers from Diminished Spatial Awareness (DSA), which made him a liability at the Met. Trained at Repton Amateur Boxing Club for three years until suffering a head injury. Maybe Health & Safety could look into this?

FRATERNITY DUCAINE

Police Constable

This chap appears to have joined the Unit without any Home Office approval. It seems Bryant took it upon himself to offer the lad a job. Can somebody do some digging on him?

NB There have been numerous Health & Safety infringements at the Unit, including unsecured weapons in the Evidence Room, illegal wiring and dangerous chemicals stored on-site. There also appears to be a cat called Crippen (a surviving relative from Bryant’s feline investigation) wandering around the place. Unfortunately, although the Caledonian Road building is unsafe, it was privately rented by Bryant in a deliberate attempt to exploit a legal loophole, and therefore does not technically fall under the jurisprudence of the Home Office.

Although it is entirely possible that the HO could find a way to close the Unit down, the basic problem continues: So long as the PCU is useful, it remains a necessary evil.

This report commissioned by Leslie Faraday (Home Office Liaison), for Oskar Kasavian (Internal Security)

A
rthur Bryant stood there pretending not to shiver.

He was tightly wrapped in a 1951 Festival of Britain scarf, with a Bloody Mary in one hand and a ketchup-crusted cocktail sausage in the other. Above his head, a withered yellow corpse hung inside a rusting gibbet iron.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘this is nice, isn’t it?’

His partner, John May, was not so consoled. The great chamber was freezing. Rain was pattering into an array of galvanised buckets. The smell of mildewed brickwork assailed his nostrils. A few feet behind him, the Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins was stabbing a thin-bladed knife into a screaming priest, looking for the marks of the Devil. On the other side of the detectives stood a torture rack and several members of the Spanish Inquisition clad in crimson robes, armed with flaming brands and scourges.

‘You could have made an effort and put on a clean jacket, instead
of that ratty old overcoat,’ said May. ‘You look like a character from
Toad of Toad Hall
.’

‘This is Harris Tweed,’ said Bryant, fingering a frayed hole in his soup-stained sleeve. ‘It was handed down to me by my grandfather.’

‘Was that before or after he passed away?’

‘Funny you should say that. He died in it. Gave himself a heart attack trying to get the lid off a jar of gherkins. My grandmother thought it was a pity to waste good fabric.’

A distorted tape loop of chanting monks began to play once more from hidden speakers, adding to the chamber’s pervasive gloom.

May sighed. ‘Of all the things you’ve put our Unit through over the years, this has to be the strangest. Hosting a cocktail party in a house of horrors in order to catch a murderer. If you ever say a word about it in your memoirs, I’ll kill you.’

‘I didn’t hear any better ideas from you,’ Bryant reminded him cheerfully. ‘This is absolutely our last chance to break the case. At midnight we’ll be forced to unlock the doors and we’ll lose everything, unless we can flush him out in the next hour. Keep your eyes peeled for anything unusual.’

May looked around at the kidnapped party guests, most of whom were glumly wedged between rotting corpses. ‘Unusual,’ he repeated, trying not to lose his temper.

Bryant sucked the celery stick from his Bloody Mary thoughtfully. Somewhere above the stalactite-spiked arches of London Bridge station a train rumbled. The bricks trembled and soot sifted down. The shunting mingled with the thunder outside. Rain was pouring under the front door and pooling around the sodden shoes of the guests, all of whom were underdressed for the occasion. In the silences between rain, thunder and trains, May saw the group’s breath condensing and imagined he could hear their teeth chattering. A waitress passed them, bearing a tray
of bloody eyeballs on sticks. On closer inspection, these turned out to be dyed pickled onions.

‘Masks,’ said Bryant, apropos of nothing.

May turned to him. ‘Explain?’

‘They’re all wearing masks. Look at them all nodding and drinking.’ He waved his sausage at the partygoers. ‘You wouldn’t think we had to bring them here under sufferance and lock them in. They were as jumpy as cats when they arrived, but they’re attempting to pretend that everything’s normal. Middle-class people with upper-middle incomes. They come alive at parties, no matter how strange the circumstances. They discuss house prices and holidays and restaurants, and give opinions on the plays they’ve seen. But after all that’s happened in the last seven days, they know they’ve been brought here for another reason. What do you think is happening behind those forced smiles?’

‘I imagine they’re morbidly curious, the way people are about watching traffic accidents.’

‘But they’re careful to keep up the illusion of appearing unconcerned. An interesting phenomenon, isn’t it?’

‘That’s the English for you,’ said May, studying the gathered guests. ‘We’re great pretenders.’

‘Yes, an odd mixture of exaggerated politeness and thoughtless cruelty. The true mark of English conversation is not being able to tell when you’ve been insulted. I think the more sophisticated society becomes, the more it hides behind the masks it manufactures.’

‘Do we have to discuss this now, Arthur? We’re on a bit of a deadline here.’

Bryant ignored his partner. ‘It’s just that we seem to be so good at hypocrisy. I always think when an Englishman says “We really must get together soon,” he’s telling you to piss off. We bury ourselves so deeply inside complex personas that it’s amazing we remember who we really are. Which makes this room,
for example, very hard to read. You know me, I don’t play those games. I prefer honesty.’

‘Yes, but you’re downright rude to people,’ retorted May. ‘And I do know you. It’s a class thing. This lot make you feel uncomfortable. You’re from a working-class background. Your mother cleaned cinemas for a living. You hate the idea that one of the guests might get the better of you tonight.’

‘No,’ said Bryant firmly. ‘I hate the idea that one of them thinks they can get away with murder.’

‘Well, our legal priority over the investigation ends in exactly’—here May checked his classic Timex—‘fifty-five minutes. You’re cutting it a tad fine.’

‘I know. We have to watch for the smallest signs, an odd look, any betrayal of emotion that might cause one of them to give the game away.’