The Victoria Vanishes (2 page)

He tried not to think about the sinister manila envelope in his briefcase, about the X rays, the Leicester Square Clinic's referral letter, and what this meant to his future. For once he just wanted to enjoy London and think of nothing in particular, but the city wasn't letting him.

I remember when the square was different. Bigger and leafier, with cars slowly circling it and thousands of starlings fluttering darkly in the trees, that busker in a fez doing a sand-dance for coins outside the Empire. Look at the state of the place now. Kids need a purpose for coming here other than getting their iPods nicked. What will the next tawdry attraction be, I wonder, celebrity mud-wrestling or the National Museum of Porn? At least I won't be here to witness the indignities thrust upon it. I'll be long gone. I used to drink mild and bitter in The Hand & Racquet with Arthur, then take a Guinness in the Green Man & French Horn over in St Martin's Lane. I wonder if we'll ever do that again? I always thought he would go first, but what if it's me? What on earth will Arthur do then?

Bryant & May. Their names went together like Hector and Lysander, like Burke & Hare, unimaginable in separation. May still felt young although he was far from it. He still looked good and felt fit, but his partner in crime detection, Arthur Bryant, was growing old before his eyes. Arthur had all his critical faculties, far more than most, but the physical demands of the job were wearing him down. May wondered whether to hide his news from his partner for fear of upsetting him.

Despite his dark thoughts, May was still at his happiest here, walking to work through the city on a rainy February morning. Being near the idealistic young was enough to pro-vide him with the energy to survive. He tried to imagine how visitors felt, seeing these sights for the first time. Every year more nationalities, more languages, and the ones who stayed on became Londoners. It was an appealingly egalitarian notion. More than anything, he would miss all of this. Culinary terms were appropriate for the metropolis; it was a steaming stew, a broth, a great melting pot, momentarily levelling the richest and poorest as they rubbed shoulders on the streets.

Striding between the National Portrait Gallery and St Martin in-the-Fields, he briefly stopped to reread the wording beneath the white stone statue of Dame Edith Cavell, the British nurse who faced a German firing squad for helping hundreds of soldiers escape from Belgium to the Netherlands. The inscription said:'Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness for anyone.'
If there's a more respectful creed by which to live,
May thought,
I can't imagine what it is.

He put the blame squarely on London and
the strange ef
fect it had on people. If he hadn't come here as a young man and met Bryant, he would never have been infected with his partner's passion for the place. He wouldn't have stayed here all these years, unravelling the crimes deemed too abstract and bizarre to occupy the time of regular police forces. And even now, knowing that it might all come to an end, he could not entertain the thought of leaving.

Curiosity finally got the better of him, and he stopped in the middle of the pavement to take out the envelope and tear it open. He could feel the letter inside, but did he have the nerve to read it?

A good innings, some would say. Let the young have a go now. Time to turn the world over to them. To hell with it.
With a catch in his heart, he pulled out the single sheet of paper and unfolded it, scanning the two brief paragraphs.

A tumor attached to the
wall of his heart, a recommenda
tion for immediate surgery, a serious risk owing to past cardio-vascular problems that had created a weakness possibly leading to embolisms.

He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Worse than he had expected, or better? Did he need to start planning for the
inevitable? Should he tell anyone at the unit, or would it get back to Arthur?

You can't go, old bean,
Bryant would say when he found out, and find out he would because he always did.
Not without me. I'm coming with you. You're not going off to have the biggest adventure of all on your own.
He'd mean it, too. For all his appearance of frailty Bryant was an extremely tough old man;
he'd just recov
ered from wrestling a killer in a snowdrift, and all he'd suffered was a slight chest cold. But he wouldn't want to be left behind. You couldn't have one without the other, two old friends as comfortable as cardigans.

Damn you, London, this is all your fault,
May thought, shoving the letter into his pocket and striding off through the blustering rain toward the Charing Cross Road.

3

END TIMES

A
rthur Bryant blotted the single sheet of blue Basildon Bond paper, carefully folded it into three sections and slid it into a white business envelope. He pressed the adhesive edges together and turned it over, uncapping his marbled green Waterman fountain pen. Then, in spidery script, he wrote on the front:

Well,
he said to himself,
you've really done it this time. You can still change your mind. It's not too late.

Fanning the envelope until the ink was thoroughly dry, he slipped it into the top pocket of his ratty tweed jacket, checked that his desk was clear of work files and quietly left the office.

Passing along the gloomy corridor outside, he paused before Raymond Land's room and listened. The sound of light snoring told him that the unit's acting chief was at home. Usually Bryant would throw open the door with a bang, just to startle him, but today he entered on gentle tiptoe, creeping across the threadbare carpet to stand silently before his superior. Raymond Land was tipped back in his leather desk chair with his mouth hanging open and h
is tongue half out, faintly gar
gling. The temptation to drop a Mint Imperial down his throat was overpowering, but instead,
Bryant simply trans
ferred his envelope to Land's top pocket and crept back out of the room.

The die is cast,
he told himself.
There'll be fireworks after the funeral this afternoon, that's for sure.
Bryant was feeling fat, old and tired, and he was convinced he had started shrinking. Either that or John was getting taller. With each passing day he was becoming less like a man and more like a tortoise. At this rate he would soon be hibernating for half the year in a box full of straw. He needed to take more and more
stuff
with him wher
ever he went: walking stick, pills, pairs of glasses, teeth. Only his wide blue eyes remained youthful.
I'm doing the right thing,
he reminded himself.
It's time.

'Do you think he ought to be standing on a table at his age?' asked the voluptuous tanned woman in the tight black dress, as she helped herself to another ladleful of lurid vermilion punch. 'He needs a haircut. Odd, considering he has hardly any hair.'

'I have a horrible feeling he's planning to make some kind of speech,' Raymond Land told Leanne Land, for the woman with the bleached straw tresses and cobalt eye makeup who stood beside him in the somewhat risque outfit was indeed his wife.

'You've warned me about Mr Bryant's speeches before,' said Leanne.'They tend to upset people, don't they?'

'He had members of the audience throwing plastic chairs at each other during the last "Meet The Public" relationship-improving police initiative we conducted.'

They were discussing th
e uncanny ability of Land's col
league to stir up trouble whenever he appeared before a group of more than six people. Arthur Bryant, the most senior detective in residence at London's Peculiar Crimes Unit, was balanced unsteadily on a circular table in front of them, calling for silence.

As the room hushed, Raymond Land nudged his wife.
And I don't think your dress is en
tirely appropriate for the occa
sion,' he whispered.'You're almost falling out of it.'

'My life-coach says I should be very prou
d of my breasts,' she countered,
so why shouldn't I look good at a party?'

'Because it's a wake,' hissed Raymond.'The host is dead.'

'Ladies and gentlemen!' Bryant bellowed so loudly that his hearing aid squealed with feedback.
'This was intended to be a celebration of our esteemed coroner's retirement, but instead it has become a night of sad farewells.'

The table wobbled alarmingly, and several hands shot out to steady the elderly detective. Bryant unfolded his spectacles, consulted a scrap of paper, then balled it and threw it over his shoulder. He had decided to speak from the heart, which was always dangerous.

'Oswald Finch worked with the Peculiar Crimes Unit from its inception, and planned to retire on this very night. Everyone had been looking forward to the bash. I had personally filled the morgue refrigerator with beer and sausage rolls, and we were planning a big send-off. Luckily, I was able to alter the ic-ing inscription on his retirement cake, so it hasn't gone to waste.
"The funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables,"
only the other way around, and with
retirement
substituted for
marriage,'

'What's he
talking
about?' whispered Leanne.

'Hamlet,'
said Land.'I think.'

'Because instead of retiring, Oswald Finch died in
tragic cir
cumstances under his own examination table, and now he'll never get to enjoy his twilight years in that freezing, smelly fisherman's hut he'd bought for himself on the beach in Hastings. Now I know some of you will be thinking "And bloody good riddance, you miserable old sod," because he could be a horrible old man, but I like to believe that Oswald was only bad-tempered because nobody liked him. He had dedicated his life to dead people, and now he's joined them.'

One of the station house girls burst into tears. Bryant held up his hands for quiet.
'This afternoon, in a reflective mood, I sat at my desk and tried to remember all the good things about him. I couldn't come up with a
nything, I'm afraid, but the in
tention was there. I even phoned Oswald's oldest school friend to ask him for amusing stories, but sadly he went mad some while back and now lives in a mental home in Wales.'

Bryant paused for a moment of contemplation. A mood of despondency settled over the room like a damp flannel. 'Oswald was a true professional. He was determined not to let his total lack of sociability get in the way of his career. True, he was depressing to be around, and everyone complained that he smelled funny, but that was because of the chemicals he used. And the flatulence. People said that he didn't enjoy a laugh, but it went deeper than that. In all the years I worked with him, I never once saw him crack a smile, even when we secretly attached electrodes to his dissecting tray and made his hair stand on end when he touched
it.' Bryant counted on his fin
gers.
'So,
just to recap, Oswald Finch—no sense of humour, no charm, friendless, embittered, stone-
faced and bloody miser
able, on top of which he stank. Some folk can fill a room with joy just by entering it. Whereas being in Oswald's presence for a few minutes could make you long for the release that death might bring.'

He paused before the aghast, silenced crowd.

'But—and this is the most important thing—he was the most ingenious, humane and talented medical examiner I ever had the great pleasure of working with. And because of his ability to absorb and adapt
, to think instead of merely re
sponding, Oswald's work will live on even though he doesn't, because it will provide a template for all those who come after. His fundamental understanding of the human condition taught us more about the lives and deaths of murder victims than any amount of computerised DNA testing. Oswald's intuitive genius will continue to shine a beacon of light into the darkest corners of the human soul. In short, his radiance will not dim, and can only illuminate us when we think of him, or study his methods, and for that I raise a glass to him tonight.'