Bryant & May – England’s Finest Read online

  He picked up a hire car at Cluj-Napoca Airport and headed off towards Sighişoara to meet Alexandra. If she did know where to find the item he sought, he hoped she would be able to guide him through any access restrictions, but it was important not to alert her to his real purpose.

  Transylvania occupied the central part of Romania and was bordered by dark, spear-like mountain ranges. The car he’d hired was a primrose-yellow piece of junk called a Dacia Logan. The Dacia was seemingly the only car available anywhere. It took hills like an old man with bad lungs climbing a staircase.

  Charlie passed through villages that hadn’t changed in a thousand years, accessed through avenues of tall trees in the tops of which sat bushes of leeching mistletoe like cranes’ nests. It was tempting to use the vampiric analogy, because everyone was getting something from someone else; tucked away from the beauty spots were the smoke-belching factories owned by rich corporations reliant on cheap labour.

  As the Dacia struggled on Charlie was overtaken by men in black felt hats driving teams of carthorses, hauling logs. It looked as if the whole country ran on burning wood. Every town he passed was walled and had a graveyard built right beside its houses, as if to remind families that they would always be surrounded by the dead. Stoker may have only worked from what he’d read, but he’d got the atmosphere of the place right.

  Sighişoara looked shut. Its main attraction was a complete medieval village with covered wooden walkways. Around that was a town with one hipster coffee bar called the Arts Café, lots of bookshops, a couple of Russian Orthodox churches, some post-war Communist buildings finished in cheap crumbling concrete and some stunning fin de siècle neo-baroque houses painted in odd colours: rust red, custard yellow, lime green. Wet sleet slanted across the empty streets. There were a handful of shops selling tourist crap, the weirdest item being the pleading chicken, a china figurine of a bird with its wings pressed together in prayer, begging for its life. Eastern European humour, he decided.

  ‘You do know if it did exist it would be regarded as a national treasure, right?’ said Alexandra, smiling with secret knowledge. She raised a glass to her dinner companion. Between them stood a terrifying steeple of pink sausages and pork parts, surrounded by hard-to-identify vegetables in gravy. Luckily, it was more delicious than it looked.

  ‘Everyone said the manuscript was lost,’ Charlie reminded her.

  ‘But the “official” manuscript has some glaring gaps, which is possibly why it never reached its reserve at the Christie’s auction. It just wasn’t that collectable. Stoker was never a great writer, you know that. His prose is purple and really not very interesting.’

  ‘Everybody said the same thing about the Pre-Raphaelites, but look how their stock jumped.’ Charlie stabbed another sausage on to his plate. ‘And Dracula will become more valued in time. You know what makes the difference? Movies. There have been nearly three hundred films made from that one book so far, almost as many as from all of the Sherlock Holmes stories.’

  Alexandra pushed back her plate and took out a pack of cigarettes, then remembered that the country’s no-smoking policy had come into force. ‘You have to face the fact that Dracula doesn’t have the same cachet.’

  The last thing Charlie wanted was Alexandra figuring out what he was up to. He wondered how much she knew about the real value of the book. She was an academic; she cared about language and history, not resale value. He needed her help, but she had to make the offer unwittingly.

  ‘It was the wrong time for the sale of the manuscript,’ she said, spearing white asparagus. ‘That’s why it was withdrawn. Its value is higher now.’

  ‘I still believe the Blue Edition is out there. I’d just like to see it once. Then I’ll never have to dream about it again.’ For a moment, Charlie even convinced himself. ‘What else do you know about it?’

  ‘In May 1897 Constable published the first edition, bound in yellow cloth.’ Alexandra held an unlit cigarette between her fingers. ‘It wasn’t a success. The export edition was also to be in English but printed differently, with more narrowly spaced paragraphs and a blue leather cover. Stoker approved this second limited run even though the advance was almost nothing. He sent off the manuscript and waited for the paperwork to arrive. It never came.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘The theory is that the printer complained. The edition he’d been sent was not the one he’d read. It was longer – a liability for the export version – and had a different ending. I think Stoker sent them his first version of the manuscript not even bothering to keep the master, and this became the Blue Edition. He’d told them they could edit it for length if they wanted. He just wanted the money.’

  ‘You want to smoke that, don’t you?’ said Charlie, leading her out to the freezing veranda. ‘What makes you so sure it’s here?’

  ‘I know they ran off at least one uncut copy because there was a photograph of the book in a sale catalogue printed in 1905 in Braşov, Transylvania, and it totalled 556 pages. It had to be from the longer manuscript. The book was described as having eight woodcuts and a dark-blue cover. It was bought by the priest of a town called Viscri. On the receipt he had written his reason for the purchase: to form the centre of a display showing how Transylvania’s fame had reached the world outside. The priest didn’t die until 1979 – just before the “official” manuscript failed to meet its reserve. No other Blue Edition ever surfaced, making it virtually priceless.

  ‘I have one other interesting piece of information.’

  ‘Please, tell me.’

  ‘I have to be able to trust you, Charlie.’

  ‘Rare books are my life, Alex, you know that. I just want to see it.’

  ‘I have provenance.’ She blew smoke out into the pink dusk-light. ‘The library at Viscri was appropriated by the government to help make the interior of Bran Castle look more authentic.’

  ‘So you think it’s there …?’

  ‘The Blue Edition could be gathering dust on a shelf somewhere at Bran Castle, a genuine rarity dressing up a shelf of fakes. There’s irony for you.’

  The next morning they breakfasted early and went to Bran Castle.

  Around its base were dozens of wooden huts selling Dracula fridge magnets, key rings, woollen hats, fur waistcoats and snow globes containing castles that swirled with bats when you shook them. Mamas in shell suits were buying vampire teddy bears while feral dogs cruised the takeaway stands, hoping to catch pieces of sausage. Castles always had peasant huts around their foundations.

  Alexandra and Charlie headed up to the ticket booth.

  Arthur Bryant attempted to crunch the car into gear, but was swaddled in so much padded clothing that he had trouble moving. With his woollen scarf tied around his head he appeared to have been hand-knitted.

  As the detectives headed into the black hills below the Carpathian Mountains the weather changed and visibility dropped. The sleet turned to great powdery flakes of snow the size of paper scraps, and soon began to settle. The next few hours were spent stuck behind filth-encrusted trucks lumbering along single-lane highways, barely getting out of third gear while the locals overtook at hair-raising speeds.

  ‘Let me give you a little historical background,’ said Bryant, trying to open a packet of extra-strong peppermints without letting go of the wheel.

  John May had allowed his partner to take charge of the hideous yellow Dacia, figuring that Transylvania might be the one place where Bryant’s unorthodox driving skills would go unnoticed. ‘As the radio’s not working you may as well,’ he said.

  Bryant warmed to his subject. ‘In 1920 Bran Castle became a royal residence and the favourite home of Queen Marie. It was inherited by her daughter, who ran a hospital there in World War Two. The Communists booted out the royal family in 1948, but in 2005 the Romanian government said they’d acted illegally, so the castle was given back. Since then—’

  ‘I have a hangover, Arthur,’ said May. ‘I drank too much pălincă last night. Fru
it brandy – never again. Please try to keep it simple for me. A lot simpler, as in no dates.’

  ‘Anyway,’ Bryant continued, entirely unfazed by his partner’s disinterest. He attempted to overtake a horse and realized the car wasn’t up to it. ‘It was opened to the public as a private museum but now it’s up for private sale, so nobody knows whether it will be preserved or closed down for good. This may be my only chance to see inside it. That’s why I wanted to come here. And you said you needed a break.’

  ‘I was thinking of a weekend at a spa in Dorset,’ May groaned.

  ‘This is a lot cheaper.’ Bryant swerved around a goat. ‘Transylvania in February isn’t high on too many wish-lists.’ He tried to see through the windscreen but one wiper had stopped working.

  It was still snowing lightly as they passed another walled village that had barely altered in a millennium. Only a couple of cars parked by a church set them in the present. Everything else looked like a medieval woodcut. He was getting tired of staring at tarmac and truck wheels. ‘This weather’s awful. I can’t see, and you know I can’t see anyway. Let’s get some lunch.’

  ‘Around here?’ asked May incredulously.

  Bryant pulled into a street that looked derelict. At the end they found a café with rather too many raffia lamps, but at least the food was heartwarming. They ate goulash served in an entire loaf, and pork ribs sluiced down with Ciuc beer.

  A wrinkled babushka who looked like a crazy old woman from a Frankenstein movie came over to the table and tried to press a foot-high icon on Bryant. The portrait of the crucified Christ had been badly printed on to plastic and glued to a piece of chipboard. When Bryant explained that he didn’t want to buy it, she swore at him for a couple of minutes before wandering off to sit on the other side of the café, where she ordered a pizza the size of a drain cover and sat glowering at him as she folded pieces into her mouth.

  ‘Cursed by an old gypsy,’ said May. ‘All we need now is to be chased by wolves.’

  Stuffed, they headed back to the car, which was already half buried by fresh snow.

  The journey to the castle couldn’t have been more atmospheric if they’d chosen to make it by stagecoach. Cutting through the Carpathian Mountains in a snowstorm was an exhausting experience. May offered to take over as his partner’s driving was making him queasy, but Bryant was determined not to let the hairpin bends and sheer drops dampen his spirits or, indeed, reduce his speed.

  ‘We’re nearly at Castle Dracula,’ said Bryant, squinting up through the windscreen. ‘DA-da-da,’ he sang off-key. ‘DA-da-da, you get it? DRAC-u-la.’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ said May wearily. The springs of the passenger seat were already starting to dig into his spine again.

  ‘James Bernard wrote the music to the Hammer film Dracula and keyed the notes around the syllables in his name. Look out there, it’s just like a horror film.’

  The arrival at the castle itself was inevitably a bit of a let-down; the area proved more suburban than anything in the surrounding region of Braşov. At his first sight of the building Bryant thought: Is that it? It was certainly a lot smaller than he’d imagined, and those photographs showing its pointed circular turrets against a background of steep cliffs must have been taken from a very narrow perspective, because it was surrounded by ugly modern houses and what appeared to be a funfair with a boating lake.

  Yet as they drew closer he began to appreciate its melancholic grandeur. It was stark and unadorned, imperious and somehow alone.

  ‘We’d better be staying in a decent hotel,’ warned May.

  Bryant had checked them into a three-star lodge called the Hotel Extravagance. It had a yellow plastic fascia and a life-sized model of a fat pink chef in a chequered apron holding up a severed pig’s head. The receptionist was a smiling, pretty girl of about twenty who cheerfully admitted that she had been on duty for over twenty-four hours. It was the standard length of a shift in these parts, she said.

  ‘Can you send the porter for our bags?’ May asked, accepting his key.

  ‘We have no porter,’ she replied, stifling a yawn.

  ‘Then which way to the lift?’

  ‘We have no lift. You are only on the fourth floor. My mother could manage your bags.’

  May was horrified. ‘I would never let her carry them.’

  ‘No, I meant she could manage them so you should be able to.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’

  The detectives headed for the stairs.

  ‘All right, what are we really here for?’ May asked as he hefted both bags.

  ‘I don’t know to what you are referring,’ said Bryant, looking shifty.

  ‘Yes you do, you’re up to something. We didn’t come to Transylvania just to wander around a castle.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve got you here rather under false pretences,’ Bryant admitted. ‘A fellow called Kemp, an antiquarian book dealer based in Mayfair and Paris. Most of the editions he sells are extremely rare and stolen to order, and when he can’t fill an order he sells a very good fake. It’s a big-time racket, and the Organisation Internationale de Police Criminelle have been after him for several years.’

  ‘What has this got to do with us?’

  ‘They got in touch with the City of London Police, who sent his file through to the unit, but Raymond Land told me not to act on it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Kemp has to be caught in the act, and you don’t mess with the Romanian police. But he’s our villain. Unfortunately we’ve got no one on the ground here, and I’d always wanted to visit …’

  ‘You crafty old sod. So we’re here without back-up. Why do I let you involve me in these things?’ May stopped before a door and tried the key. ‘This one’s yours,’ he said. ‘What has Kemp done this time?’

  ‘It’s what he might be about to do. The OIPC intercepted a series of emails suggesting he’s come here to pull off some kind of heist. We know he has arranged a meeting at Bran Castle. Casual visitors aren’t aware that there’s a private library on the premises. It contains works that have been in the castle’s collection for centuries and is mostly used by historians. I think he’s going to steal a book for a private client.’

  ‘Something rare in the castle’s collection?’

  ‘No,’ said Bryant, hefting his case on to the bed. ‘Rare is a Shakespeare first folio. This is unique. The only full version in the world.’

  The next morning, the detectives parked in a sloping field full of strutting turkeys and made their way to the castle entrance. The stone staircase was so steep that Bryant had to keep stopping to catch his breath. May had to push him up the last six steps.

  Tall studded doors opened into a courtyard, but the interior of Bran lacked grandeur, and none of the mismatched fixtures were original. The bookshelves were nearly all empty. The walls had been painted white, which destroyed the atmosphere – still, it wasn’t a film set, Bryant realized, just the inspiration for a novel. Rereading the book on the journey, he still found the prose flat and earnest, but the sense of dread accumulating in the tale excited him. There were some details he had forgotten, like Jonathan Harker realizing the castle had no staff when he spied Dracula making the beds. He couldn’t imagine Christopher Lee agreeing to do that.

  Standing in the central courtyard, they could see that the castle was criss-crossed with narrow, open-sided corridors, winding staircases, spires, turrets and a deep well that conjured up memories of old Hammer films. There were hardly any other visitors.

  ‘Now what?’ asked May, slapping his gloves together.

  Outside the tower an ancient woman with a face like a dried apple handed Charlie Kemp and Alexandra Constantin a set of keys on a huge iron ring.

  ‘Oh, the locals are helpful when you run out of gas, kind even,’ Alexandra told him as the guard let them through. ‘In the time I’ve been here I’ve got to know a handful of them very well. They don’t open up to strangers. There’s too much terrible history here.
It’s hard to comprehend what many of them have been through.’

  ‘You’re going to tell me they hang out garlic and crucifixes at night,’ Charlie joked, then wished he hadn’t as they passed a seven-foot-high painted Jesus with staring eyes. The narrow corridor had a domed roof and led around the edge of the castle.

  ‘There are no vampires,’ said Alexandra with a straight face, ‘but the local people believe in Vlad Dracul. He casts a long shadow. That’s why you still find paintings in bars and cafés that show him gorily impaling his victims. It’s his memory they honour. The book is just a useful means to an end, a way to hook tourists into visiting now that the economy airlines are coming in. This is a deeply religious country, so they’re very ambivalent about the whole thing. It’s a pity the area’s solely associated with the vampire trade.’

  Charlie wasn’t interested in the country’s problems. He examined the spines of a few tattered history books on the shelves. ‘So if this is the tourist junk, where’s the rest of the library? What happened to it?’

  ‘What happened to anything here under the Communists?’ Alexandra gave a shrug. ‘It disappeared along with everything and everyone else that genocidal maniac Ceauşescu came into contact with. The one thing he couldn’t take from these people was their belief system.’

  Charlie could think of one thing he could take from them.

  A curving chalk-white wall opened on to a tall room with windows overlooking the valley, rocks tapering down to red clay rooftops.

  ‘There’s some more stuff up here in the tower,’ said Alexandra, unlocking the door. ‘I gave a guard a fistful of lei to let us in for half an hour.’

  He couldn’t stop himself from asking the question uppermost in his mind. ‘Why are you doing this, Alexandra?’

  She gave him one of her assessing looks. ‘I always fall for the bad ones. Maybe I want to believe there’s still some good in you.’

  They climbed the plank staircase to the top of the chapel tower, past dusty looms and farm implements. In a single bookcase at the end of the top floor Charlie glimpsed a handful of leather- and cloth-bound volumes. He headed for the book cupboard and opened the glass case.