Bryant & May and the Invisible Code (Bryant & May 10) Read online

  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

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Acknowledgements

  Part One: The Case

  1. Close to God

  2. Death in the Wedding Cake

  3. Health Check

  4. String

  5. The Enemy

  6. Persecuted

  7. The English Disease

  8. Sabira

  9. Permissible Material

  10. The Invisible Code

  11. The Glass

  12. The English Heart

  13. In Coram’s Fields

  14. Connections

  15. Ghost Imprint

  16. Watching

  17. Destabilization

  18. Lucy

  19. Method In Madness

  20. A Fatal Flaw

  21. Breaking Free

  22. At Home

  23. The Fourth Solution

  Part Two: The Chase

  24. The Escape

  25. Death’s Puzzle

  26. The Cardano Grille

  27. The Warning

  28. The Strangeness Of Churches

  29. Cause of Death

  30. The Witch Test

  31. Tunnel Run

  32. Method and Madness

  33. Conspiracy Theory

  34. Doxies and Rakes

  35. Bring it Down

  36. Runaway

  37. The Sickness of the Moon

  38. Rough Music

  39. Bloodline

  40. The Thread

  41. The Blood Link

  42. The Rooftop

  43. Low Castes

  44. Conflagration

  45. Dead in the Water

  46. Shadow Image

  47. Mr Merry

  48. Final Call

  49. Witchcraft

  50. The Outsiders

  About the Author

  Also by Christopher Fowler

  Copyright

  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 squ
ares 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.

  ‘What does she really look like?’ asked Tom. ‘I mean, when she drops her disguise?’

  Lucy answered without hesitation. ‘She has a green face and a hooked nose covered in hairy warts, and long brown teeth and yellow eyes. And her breath smells of rotting sardines.’ She thought for a moment. ‘And toilets.’

  Tom snorted in disgust as he looked around the courtyard for likely suspects. Nearby, an overweight woman in her mid-thirties was standing in a doorway eating a Pret A Manger crayfish and rocket sandwich. She seemed a likely candidate. The first of the summer’s wasps was hovering around, scenting the remains of office lunches. The woman anxiously batted one away as she ate.

  ‘It can’t be her,’ said Lucy.

  ‘Why not?’ asked Tom.

  ‘Witches don’t feel pain, so she wouldn’t be scared of a stupid wasp.’

  ‘Can a witch be a man?’

  ‘No, that would be a warlock. It has to be a woman.’

  Tom was getting tired of the game. Lucy seemed to be making up extra rules as she went along. The June sun shone through a gap in the buildings and burned the back of his neck. The sky above the courtyard was as blue as the sea looked in old films.

  He was starting to think that this was a stupid way to spend a Saturday morning when he could have been at football. He had been looking forward to seeing the Dr Who exhibition as well, but right at the last minute his dad had to work instead, and said, ‘You can come with me to the office,’ as if it was a reasonable substitute. There was nothing to do in the office. You weren’t allowed to touch the computers or open any of the drawers. His dad seemed to like being there. He always cheered up when he had to go into the office on a Saturday.

  The only other father who had brought his child in that morning was Lucy’s, so he was stuck playing with a girl until both of their fathers had finished their work. At least Lucy knew about the game, which was unusual because most girls didn’t play games like that. She explained that she had two older brothers and always ended up joining in with them. She didn’t tell him they had outgrown the game now and spent their days wired into hip-hop and dodgy downloads.

  ‘How about that one?’ said Lucy, taking the initiative. Her brothers could never make up their minds about anything, and always ended up arguing, so she was used to making all the decisions.

  ‘Nah, she’s too pretty,’ said Tom, watching a slender girl in a very short grey skirt stride past to the building at the end of the courtyard.

  ‘That’s the point. The prettier they look on the outside, the uglier they are inside. Too late, she’s gone.’

  ‘I’m bored now.’

  ‘Five more minutes. She’s here somewhere.’ There were only a few workers left in the square, plus a motorcycle courier who must have been stifling in his helmet and leathers.

  ‘It’s this one. I have a feeling. I bet she belongs to a coven; that’s a club for witches. Remember, we have to get them before they get us. Let’s check her out. Come on.’

  Lucy led the way past a sad-looking young woman who had just seated herself on the bench nearest the church. She had opened a paperback and was reading it intently. Lucy turned to Tom with an air of theatrical nonchalance and pointed behind the flat of her palm.

  ‘That’s definitely her.’

  ‘How can we tell if she’s a witch?’ Tom whispered.

  ‘Look for signs. Try to see what she’s reading.’

  ‘I can’t walk past her again, she’ll see. Wait, I’ve got an idea.’ Tom had stolen a yellow tennis ball from his father’s office. Now he produced it from his pocket. ‘Catch, then throw it back to me in her direction. I’ll miss and I’ll have to go and get it.’

  Lucy was a terrible actress. If the sad-faced young woman had looked up, she would have stopped and stared at the little girl gurning and grimacing before her.

  ‘I’m throwing now,’ Lucy said loudly, hurling the ball ten feet wide of the boy. Tom scrambled in slow motion around the bench, and the young woman briefly raised her eyes.

  Tom ran back to Lucy’s side. ‘She’s reading a book about babies.’

  ‘What was it called?’

  ‘Rosemary’s Baby. By a woman called Ira something.’

  ‘Then she’s definitely a witch.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  Lucy blew a raspberry of impatience. ‘Don’t you know anything? Witches eat babies! Everyone knows that.’

  ‘So she really is one,’ Tom marvelled. ‘She looks so normal.’

  ‘Yeah, clever isn’t it?’ Lucy agreed. ‘So, how are we going to kill her?’

  2

  DEATH IN THE WEDDING CAKE

  EVEN THOUGH THE presses of the Fourth Estate had been shifted to London’s hinterlands by Rupert Murdoch, St Bride’s Church was still known to many as the Printers’ Cathedral. Tucked behind Fleet Street, it stood on a pagan site dedicated to Brigit, the Celtic goddess of healing, fire and childbirth. For two thousand years the spot had been a place of worship, and for the past five hundred it had been the spiritual home of journalists. Samuel Pepys, no mean reporter himself, had been born in Salisbury Court, right next to the church, and had later bribed the gravedigger of St Bride’s to shift up the corpses so that his brother John could be buried in the churchyard.

  St Bride’s’ medieval lectern had survived the Great Fire and the Luftwaffe’s bombs. It still stood bathed in the lunchtime sunlight, barely registered by the tourists who stopped by to take photographs of just another London church. The building had been badly damaged in the firestorm of 29 December 1940, but had now been restored according to Wren’s original drawings.

  With the paperback in her hand, the sad young woman walked into the church and looked about. Amy O’Connor had been here many times before, but her visits had never brought her the satisfaction she’d hoped for. She knew little about the church except the one thing everyone knew: that the shape of a wedding cake came from its tiered spire. It was usually empty inside, a place where she could sit still and calm herself. Her encounter with the children in the courtyard had disturbed her. It was as if they had been slyly studying her.

  Before her the great canopied oak reredos dedicated to the Pilgrim Fathers stood in front of what appeared to be a half-domed apse, but it was actually a magnificent trompe l’oeil. A striking oval stained-glass panel, like an upright eye holding the image of Christ, shone light down on to the polished marble floor, which was laid with black Belgian and white Italian tiles.

  Amy looked around the empty pews with their homely little lampshades. If there had been any lunchtime worshippers here, they had all gone back to work now. The churchwarden was still on his break and had probably headed up the r
oad for a pie and a pint in the Cheshire Cheese. Someone had taken over for him, and was manning the little shop selling books and postcards near the entrance.

  Seating herself in one of the oak chairs arranged near the pulpit, she closed her eyes and let the light of God shine through the dazzling reds, blues and yellows of the stained glass on to her bare freckled arms and upturned face. It was like being inside a gently shifting kaleidoscope. The light divided her into primary colours. She swayed back and forth, feeling the changing patterns on her eyelids. She thought of lost love, wasted time and missed opportunities.

  She was still furious with herself for losing the only man she had ever loved. She had been angry for more than two years now, and only coming to St Bride’s could dull the ache of loss. If she had taken him more seriously and tried harder to help, she was sure he would still be with her.

  His death had hastened the end of her trust in God, but here in the church he must have loved she felt a connection between the present and the past, the living and the dead. She could believe that angels were watching and guiding her thoughts.

  But when she opened her eyes, she found that pair of children still peering through the door at her. Where were their parents, and why were they staring?

  They looked as if they were waiting for something to happen.

  The church’s thick walls kept it cool even in the heat of summer. The chill radiated from the stones. But now, after just a few minutes, the interior started to seem hot and airless. The light from the windows hurt her eyes. She could feel her face burning.

  Suddenly aware that she was perspiring, she wiped her forehead with the paper tissue she kept tucked in her sleeve, and looked up at the drifting motes of dust caught in the sunlight coming through the plain glass on either side of the nave. Perhaps it was her imagination, but today she really did feel closer to some kind of spiritual presence in here.