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‘Go on now, bugger off,’ said Bryant, reaching for his pipe as the others started to file out. ‘Mr May and I have a lot to discuss. Someone has to explain what’s expected of him.’

  Forthright went to her WVS meeting. Biddle sullenly reappeared with mugs of tea just as they were leaving the cell. Back in the unit, the young detectives settled themselves in chairs opposite one another. Bryant opened a window and tamped down his pipe.

  ‘Shall we risk it?’ he asked May. ‘The sun’s come out. I bet they’re copping it out in Essex.’ He cleared a small patch of his desk. ‘Everything gets so dusty.’ He held up a brochure. ‘Now this,’ he pointed to the title page, ‘is your bible. Davenport wrote it, so of course it’s gibberish, but I can give you the gen. The unit was originally planned years ago as part of something called the Central London Specialist Crimes Squad, but they received unhealthy publicity after they failed to solve the Paddington trunk murder of nineteen thirty-five. The squad never really flourished, and was finally disbanded three years later.

  ‘The following year our superintendent persuaded West End Central and the City of London police that their more troublesome cases should be siphoned off to a renegade group. Davenport’s no diplomat, and he upset them right from the outset. Whenever we’re criticized I send a letter to the HO reminding them that we handle only the files no one else knows how to tackle. I’ve been granted powers to develop my own specialist team, the brief being to deal with fringe problems, but in reality this means becoming a clearing house for everyone else’s rubbish. The unit was defined by the Home Secretary as London’s last resort for sensitive cases, but it’s becoming a home for dubious and abnormal crimes. It’s also acting as a resource for officers seeking to close long-term unsolved murders. London’s regular forces have their hands full with looting, not to mention the assaults and robberies they’re getting in the blackout, although of course we’re not allowed to talk about those.’

  Bryant sucked hard at his pipe, made a face and relit it. ‘We’ve been given autonomy, but the problem lies in the types of witnesses and materials I attempt to have included in our cases. The lawyers kick up a fuss about admission of evidence. They’re not open to new ideas.’ He decided to spare his new partner the details of how the testimony of a spiritualist proved the last straw for a Holborn judge, who refused to hear any more from the unit’s witnesses until Bryant could assure him that they were all technically alive and in human form.

  The PCU worked on unaided, unappreciated and unloved in rooms above Montague Carlucci, the bespoke tailor’s next to Bow Street station, holding the front line against all that was malevolent and profane, until war broke out and their casebooks suddenly filled, at which point Davenport saw a chance to please the Home Office. The unit had started to draw crazy people like moths to a flame. It was the war, everyone said; the war was to blame for everything that could not be explained.

  For the time being at least, it suited the purposes of those in power to use the unit as a clearing house for unclassifiable misdemeanours. London faced an accelerated crime rate. It was to be expected in a place where everyone thought that each day was to be their last. Nobody wanted the city to get a reputation as a centre for spies, crime syndicates or murderers. It was important now, more than ever, to show the world that Britain could cope. Privately, though, Bryant wondered how long the line would hold.

  ‘We had a lot of fuss about a man who was frightening the wife of the Greek ambassador. She said he appeared in their garden walking strangely, and that it looked as though his head was on back to front. Naturally it turned out to be an Italian, putting some kind of curse on the poor woman by wearing his coat the wrong way around. Silly, you’d think, but dangerous too. Given the current situation between Greece and Italy, we had to be very careful. The Eyetie eventually led us to a man who supplied Mussolini with cheese, and the War Office immediately started developing plans to poison him. They’re working on something similar with Hitler and watermelons. Or was it bananas?’

  As the afternoon waned, Bryant described his favourite case histories, even acting some of them out, and revealed the nonconformist methods he was keen to introduce into standard investigative procedures. He left the barmier-sounding ones for May to discover in his own time. For Bryant, the important thing was to make sure that he had an ally against the cuckoo, Biddle, whom he suspected of making mental notes against him.

  By the time John May left the alleyway in Bow Street it was night and the traffic had virtually ceased, leaving him alone once more in the disconcerting darkness of a city under siege. As he groped his way home, the case file of a murdered dancer was making its circuitous way towards the unit.

  10

  COLD FEET AND ROASTED CHESTNUTS

  ‘Can’t you tell him I’ve already left, John?’ It was early on Tuesday morning, and Arthur Bryant had just been informed that Farley Davenport was on the telephone for him.

  ‘He knows you’re here. He says he can hear you in the room even when you’re not saying anything.’

  ‘For someone who appears to be deaf most of the time, he has very acute hearing when he needs it.’ Bryant searched his jacket pockets, looking for his pipe. He was forever losing it, especially when it was lit, and had a habit of setting fire to things. ‘Is he still holding on?’

  May gingerly returned the heavy Bakelite receiver to his ear, then covered the mouthpiece. ‘I can hear him breathing.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake give it here.’ He held out his hand so that May could pass him the telephone before busying himself on the far side of the office. ‘What can I do for you, Davenport? I was just on my way out.’

  ‘Alvar Lidell mentioned that business with the Leicester Square Vampire on the wireless this morning, Mr Bryant.’

  ‘I know. I found his report fanciful in the extreme. He’s in danger of developing a sense of humour. One can’t help feeling it would be detrimental to the war effort.’

  ‘Be that as it may, I believe I had expressly instructed you not to attract any publicity to the matter. We shall have to issue denials.’

  ‘Someone from the Daily Sketch came creeping around asking questions. I told him the absolute bare minimum. I didn’t think for a moment that he’d pass the information on to anyone else. I can’t for the life of me imagine how the BBC got hold of it.’

  May waved his hand at Bryant, requesting the receiver. ‘Ah, our Mr May would like a quick word with you.’ He threw it as though it was burning his fingers.

  ‘Mr Davenport? That account was treated as a jocular endpiece to the news. It couldn’t possibly be taken seriously, provided no further information is released. To refute the report now would only validate it.’

  There was a pause on the line. ‘I didn’t realize you were an expert on the subject, Mr May.’

  ‘I’m not, sir, but a fire can’t burn without oxygen to feed it.’

  Another pause. ‘Perhaps you’re right. Let me have another word with your colleague.’ May hastily passed the telephone back.

  ‘I’ll let the matter lie there, Mr Bryant, provided there are no further security breaches of this sort,’ warned Davenport. ‘These are the kind of propaganda victories Goebbels is praying for.’

  ‘Fair enough, point taken,’ said Bryant. ‘I’m in receipt of your new boy, by the way.’

  ‘Ah, Mr Biddle,’ said Davenport cagily. ‘Thought you could use an extra hand.’

  ‘I now have the perspicacious Mr May, for whom I thank you. Biddle is rather over-egging the pudding, don’t you think?’

  ‘Don’t push your luck, Mr Bryant. He’s there to keep an eye on things.’

  ‘I’ll make sure he spells our names correctly in the reports he prepares for you.’

  There was a small, deathly silence on the other end of the line. ‘As long as you’re spending government money, you must be made accountable to the public.’

  ‘I wonder that they don’t have a right to know at least some of the things that go on.’ Bryant winked at Ma
y across the cluttered desks.

  ‘The news must be managed correctly if it is to have the right effect on the morale of the nation,’ barked Davenport. ‘You will not let this happen again.’

  ‘Righty-ho, message received and understood.’

  There was a pop and the line went dead.

  ‘I say, thanks for getting me off the hook,’ said Bryant, replacing the receiver.

  ‘What’s Davenport like?’

  ‘He can be a bit of a stick. He’s incredibly old, of course, and I’ve seen a happier face on a pilchard. I hope I never get to be like that when I’m past forty. He’s utterly convinced that Goebbels is watching our every move.’

  ‘They say Goebbels has a cloven hoof,’ said May, ‘did you know?’

  ‘Oh, that, it’s a club foot. He was exempted from fighting because of it.’

  ‘It’s a strange feeling, not being involved in the physical battle when so many others are.’

  ‘I know what you mean. We saw an internal memo about the number of dead. Fourteen thousand civilians have been killed in the last two months, with another twenty thousand seriously wounded, and four-fifths of them are Londoners. They’re keeping that quiet.’

  ‘One looks at the sheer scale of the suffering and feels so useless. I would like to have taken part in Dunkirk.’

  ‘You’re here to use your brains, John. The government knows how to put its good minds to work. The boffins will win the war in other ways. You’ll see.’ He grinned mischievously. ‘Something rather odd has just come in, as a matter of fact. Come and join me in about an hour, will you? I’ll be—let’s see,’ he checked the address he had scribbled down, ‘at the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue and Cambridge Circus, opposite Marks and Co. You’ll have to go the other way round from here, cut over to Long Acre and work your way up. They’ve closed the top of Bow Street for bomb clearance.’

  ‘Well, what do you make of this?’ asked Bryant, glancing at the chestnut stall parked at the edge of the road. They were standing outside Marks and Co., the bookshop later recognized by its address, 84 Charing Cross Road. ‘The gentleman here found something unusual on his chestnut stand last night, and called the police. They had a look and passed it on to us.’

  May looked at the nervous young man of Mediterranean descent who stood beside his brazier. There was a sharp chill in the morning air, and very little traffic. Frost glittered on the rooftops of the houses in Shaftesbury Avenue, silvering the tiled turrets.

  ‘This chap started heating up his brazier and noticed something that shouldn’t be there among the chestnuts. Two somethings, to be precise. A pair of women’s feet, very small. Heavily calloused, toes quite deformed.’

  ‘Good Lord.’

  ‘I always think anyone who eats pavement food deserves an upset stomach, but this is beyond the pale. There were a few raids reported after dark last night but they soon stopped, and no enemy aircraft managed to reach this far into the city, so I don’t think we’re looking at body parts from an explosive device. Besides, take a good squint at them.’ He poked at the discoloured feet with the end of an HB pencil, carefully turning them over.

  ‘Do I have to?’ asked May squeamishly.

  ‘Oh, you’ll get used to sights like this. See here, the flesh at the edge of each ankle is neatly torn. Bombs leave limbs and appendages ragged. The skin’s quite dry and hard to the touch. No blood. Look at that, clean bone. So we’re looking at death earlier than discovery, perhaps twenty-four hours before. Do you want a boiled sweet?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  Bryant rustled the bag. ‘Warm you up,’ he said, ‘Bassett’s Winter Mixture. I’ve mislaid my pipe.’

  ‘I’m fine, thanks.’ May blew on his hands and briskly stamped his feet.

  ‘You must get yourself a decent winter overcoat. There’s a lot of standing around in this job, and that suit isn’t warm enough. If you’re short of cash or coupons I can sort something out for you.’

  ‘I’m sure I can find something,’ May promised, eyeing his partner’s eccentric choice of apparel. Today Bryant was dressed in a suit of large green checks, over which he had thrown a fawn cashmere coat clearly manufactured in the nineteen twenties for someone much larger. He had topped off the ensemble with another unravelling hand-knitted scarf of indeterminate length, shape and colour.

  ‘Now that you’ve had a look at the feet in situ, I suppose we should pop them into a bag and offload them.’ Bryant produced a pair of red rubber gloves and slipped them on. He lifted the feet from the pan of the chestnut stall. ‘Mercifully not scorched. Our vendor here had the good sense to leave everything just as he found it. He should really be taken in for questioning, but he hardly speaks any English. I think he’s an Ottoman, and rather frightened of losing his work permit, if indeed he has one. I should make a friend of him. I’ve always wanted to sail up the Bosphorus.’

  Bryant produced a cloth bag from his pocket with all the flair of a magician, opened the zip that ran along one side and dropped the feet in. He offered May another chance to study its contents.

  ‘So what’s this chap’s routine?’ asked May. ‘I imagine the vendors store their braziers in a lock-up overnight.’

  ‘Just off Soho Square near the Henry Heath hat factory. They don’t bother to clean them out very often, although they’re supposed to, they just lock the lids. He hasn’t let the brazier out of his sight since he wheeled it from the lock-up this morning. The holding bay was shut by the last man to leave, and remained sealed until this morning.’

  ‘So the feet must have already been in the brazier last night. How could he not have noticed?’

  ‘He was in a very nervous state when he closed up. The air raid, remember?’

  ‘Did he leave the stand unattended at any time?’

  ‘He went for a wee in Moor Street earlier, but didn’t want me to know. I spoke to a couple of the other sellers before you got here. It’s a sackable offence, leaving your stall unattended. They’re meant to get another stall runner to cover for them but obviously they can’t during the raids. He’d just got back when the sirens started up, so he had to leave the cart and head for a shelter. That time, he was gone for about an hour.’

  ‘Do you need someone to translate for him?’

  ‘He’s proved to be a pretty good mime so far. I think he’s told us all he knows. Besides, we can’t get any decent translators. They’re all working for the War Office.’

  ‘I wonder if the rest of the body will turn up. Let’s see if anything’s been reported overnight, and check with the river police.’

  ‘God, it’s cold,’ complained Bryant, who had hands like ice even in midsummer. ‘Good idea. There’s a box in Charing Cross Road, save us going back to the unit. Take this chap’s name and address.’

  ‘Aren’t you worried he might do a bunk?’

  ‘I’m not going to drag him back to Bow Street for questioning. The bully Carfax will simply frighten the life out of him, and then he’ll tell them nothing.’

  The pair made their way along Charing Cross Road, past bookshops that stacked salvaged paperbacks on tables outside their shops, and chemists advertising a peculiarly furtive mixture of products for gentlemen: trusses, contraceptives and nudist health magazines. They passed the old match-seller who stood on the corner of Newport Street, his blindness and missing leg testifying to an earlier conflict. Finally they reached the blue police box, and Bryant used his key to unlock it. He talked to a woman on the switchboard, and after a few minutes she called him back.

  ‘Seems they’ve already got the rest of her,’ he told May cheerfully. ‘At least, they’ve found a body without feet. They’re waiting for formal confirmation, but she’s already been identified informally. A dancer named—hang on, I’ve got to write this down somewhere—Tanya Capistrania. Rather exotic. Being taken out of the Palace Theatre right now, sans pieds. The cleaners found her with her legs wedged into the trellis of the goods lift. Suggestive, isn’t it, when you consider that the chestn
ut man left his stall in Moor Street, which runs alongside the theatre? Come on, let’s go over and take a look. There’s a woman who works in the box office who’s waiting to show us around. Smile nicely and she might give us the kind of tidbits she wouldn’t divulge to some ox in a police uniform.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we see where that chap left his chestnut stand first?’

  ‘Good idea.’ Bryant was still dangling the cloth bag containing the pair of feet. ‘I wouldn’t mind getting rid of these as soon as possible. I don’t want anyone thinking I’ve nobbled a couple of black market pig’s trotters.’

  They slipped back through the early morning traffic, crossing Cambridge Circus, and passed under the side canopy of the Palace Theatre. May bent down and checked the gutter. He touched his index finger to the cobbles. ‘Look at this. Someone has tipped coals out. I’m surprised they haven’t been nicked. There’s quite a bit of dust around. No footprints, which is odd.’

  ‘The coals could have come from any one of the houses over there.’

  ‘You’re right.’ He rose, brushing his hand on his coat. ‘But this is where the Turk must have parked while he went for a Jimmy. It’s a very short street.’

  Bryant cricked his knees to take a closer look at the coal dust in the gutter. ‘It’s like hunting in reverse, isn’t it?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Finding the spoor from an act of cruelty, and trying to perceive the fading traces that lead away from it, following the dispersal of the participants rather than their convergence.’ He thought for a moment, then leaned on May’s shoulder to raise himself up. ‘There’s something out of joint here. What’s that German word? Unheimlich?’ He pulled his scarf protectively about his protuberant red ears. ‘A cold wind. And a rather forbidding building. Definitely sinister.’

  They stepped back into the road and looked up at the theatre. The exterior of the Palace was one of the most impressive examples of late Victorian architecture left in London. Standing alone on the west side of Cambridge Circus, finished in soft orange brick with peach-coloured stone trims, it sported four domed pinnacles, matching sets of stone cherubs, complex frescoes and decorative panels, with a peaked central pediment topped by the delicately carved figure of a god (miraculously intact, given the bombing that had taken place in Shaftesbury Avenue), and below it, nearly fifty arched front windows, currently boarded up to protect its patrons against flying glass.