Part 18 (1/2)

'You're forgetting the Old Bell,' said May.

'Well, I don't have anything interesting on that one, other than the fact that it used to be called the Seven Bells.'

'Seven Belles,' Longbright raised her eyes from the dark liquid in her brandy gla.s.s. 'Seven women.'

'The mad see things differently,' said Bryant. 'It's just a question of interpretation.'

'You think he intended to take the lives of two more victims?'

The little group sensed the room growing colder as they considered the possibility that more lives were in danger.

36.

GREATER DARKNESS.

T.

he icy night dragged past in a knot of sweat-soaked sheets and twisted blankets. At three-thirty A.M., Bryant disentangled himself and stood at the window in his dressing gown, staring out at the iridescent garden. A strange aura of disturbance had settled over him. He sensed that things were coming to a head. Pellew's case bothered him more than he cared to admit; it was a sure sign that something was wrong when Raymond Land felt confident enough about the investigation to go running off to the Home Office.

You didn't work this long without knowing when some-thing bad had happened. Grounds were s.h.i.+fting, tides were turning against them. Perhaps it was already too late for them to save themselves.

The street outside was quiet. Frost sparkled in the lamp-light, as if the air itself was gelid and starting to crystallise. Bryant felt slow-witted and incomplete, unable to grasp the significance of the week's events. Mrs Mandeville's memory lessons were working wonders but something continued to elude him, some pa.s.sing remark that had p.r.i.c.ked his interest, only to return to the indistinct background of bar chatter that had filled the last few days.

Five years ago this is not something I'd have missed, he thought angrily. I'm becoming slow and lazy. He dug out his tobacco pouch, stuffed and lit a pipe, watching as the aromatic smoke curled against the condensation on the window. Two more womena”possibly three if you did not count the death of Jazmina Sherwina”were still at risk, but how and from what? A dead man?

A larger fear a.s.sailed Bryant, that the neat confluence of reasons driving Pellew to commit murder was deliberately misleading. Their murderer had re-created the comforts of his childhood, killed for the companions.h.i.+p that brought relief from his nightly fevers, but his psychosis wasn't the whole story. Something else had driven him, and perhaps was working still.

The nurse at the Broadhampton had insisted that her patient was of above-average intelligence. Pellew had sent his would-be captors messages, but he was no historian; he just liked pubs because he felt safe inside them. The clues he'd left behind had been simple enough to decipher. But where they led...

The embers in the pipe glowed and crackled. Bryant had al-ways felt possessed ofa”well, psychic ability was perhaps the wrong term, but a sensitivity, faint and tremulous, to the fluctuations of his waking world. That mental gauge had been shaken badly during his investigation of the Highwayman, the murderer who had courted fame in the tabloids by killing failed celebrities on London's streets. Now it was vibrating again, more violently than ever before. Some greater darkness had empowered Pellew, and made him as much a victim as a murderer.

You needed to see the complete picture, not just a corner...

Are you going to be smoking that disgusting thing for long?' asked Alma Sorrowbridge, making him jump.

'Good Lord, woman, can you not go creeping about the house in the middle of the night? Especially not looking like that.' She was standing in the doorway in a vast red-and-yellow-striped nightdress, with crimson silk ribbons knotted through her hair.

Alma placed her formidable fists on her hips. 'Like what?' she demanded to know.

'Like a marquee for a particularly disreputable travelling circus. What are you doing up, anyway? I suppose you've been at the fridge again.'

'I hear you moving about because the floorboards creak. You're thinking about work.'

'How do you know that?'

'It's all you ever think about.'

'Nonsense, I frequently have other thoughts abouta” things,' he finished lamely. 'It so happens that I'm stuck on a problem.'

'Maybe you should do what you usually do: go and see that crazy devil-woman. I can't help you with your case, but I can help you sleep. I'll make us some hot chocolate with vanilla pods and cinnamon.'

'I'm sorry, Alma.' Bryant's appreciative smile would have been more attractive with his teeth in. 'I haven't been very nice to you lately, have I?'

'I haven't noticed, you're always horrible.' Alma sniffed. 'But I know you don't mean any harm, so I never pay much mind.'

'You're very good to me, you know.'

'I know.' Unimpressed with this late display of sentiment, his landlady went off to make the chocolate.

It was early morning, and the streets were still milky with mist. He rang the doorbell again, and this time the sound of the vacuum cleaner stopped. Bryant looked around at the front garden, where a motor scooter had been carelessly parked on top of some diseased-looking begonias. There were slates falling off the roof, and a pair of front-door keys were sticking out of a hanging basket of dead snowdrops, where every thief in the neighbourhood could see them.

He waited while somebody thumped and crashed toward the front door. He usually went to the deconsecrated chapel in Prince of Wales Road, Kentish Town, to see his old friend, but this morning he had decided to catch her at home in the little terraced house on Avenell Road, Finsbury Park. Maggie Armitage, the white witch from the coven of St James the Elder, opened the door in yellow rubber gloves and a purple pinafore. Bryant wondered if she had been taking fas.h.i.+on tips from Alma.

'I'm afraid you caught me hoovering,' said Maggie, snapping off her gloves to give him a hug. She had dyed her hair bus-red and painted on the kind of lipstick that could only be removed from a collar with a nail-brush.

'I thought you preferred things dusty.' Bryant gave her a squeeze. 'You shouldn't leave your keys in the flowerpot.'

'It's all right, I put a curse on them. And I don't mind a bit of dust, but I draw the line at involuntary emissions of ectoplasm. Maureen had a visit from Captain Smollet last night and got it all over the place. It might be good for the purging of tortured souls but it's a b.u.g.g.e.r to get out of the carpet. Maureen's familiars are all military men. I'm not sure if it's because she held her first seance near the Chelsea Barracks, or if she just likes a man in a uniform. Come in and have some breakfast.'

Maggie remained the PCU's affiliated information source for all crimes involving elements of witchcraft or psychic a.n.a.lysis, but she was prepared to offer advice on any number of subjects from numerology and necromancy to pet horoscopes and the care of orchids. Her information was spiritually sound but lacking in logic and probability.

Bryant entered the hall, climbing past a bicycle and all kinds of junk, including what appeared to be an old Mr Whippy ice cream machine. Her little house was always overflowing with dead people's belongings, which made it simultaneously cosy and creepy. 'What do you know about conspiracy theory?' he asked.

'Not really my subject, lovey. You need Dame Maud Hackshaw for that.' 'Can I contact her?'

'I imagine so; she's in the kitchen straightening out my spoons. She's been practising her parapsychology on my cutlery. Come through.'

Maggie ushered her visitor through to a kitchen cluttered with Wiccan icons, headless Barbie dolls and mouldering sea-side souvenirs. Dame Maud Hackshaw, a mauve-haired, pearl-festooned Grade III witch from the coven of St James the Elder, stared at Bryant through the thickest spectacles he had ever seen.

'h.e.l.lo, ducks, how are you?' she demanded. 'We met in an army truck outside Dartmoor, remember? And this week I was introduced to your lovely lady sergeant at the Sutton Arms. She's got the gift of second sight, which is nice for her. Doesn't realise it at the moment, of course, still a bit too young. They never do until they're in their second blossom.'

'Maggie says you know a thing or two about conspiracy theories,' said Bryant, gingerly examining several teaspoons that had been twisted into silver spirals.

'They're usually supposed to involve covert alliances of the rich and powerful, brought together to deceive the general populace,' said Dame Maud, rubbing hard at a set of fish knives. 'The most common ones involve a 9/11 cover-up, Zionist global domination, Kennedy, Monroe, the Bavarian Illuminati, the moon landings, the New World Order. For some reason, they seem to be mostly American these days. They've been described as ”the exhaust fumes of democracy,” a kind of release valve for the pressures of living in an intense consumer society, but of course such theories go back to Roman times.'

'I see.' Bryant was unfazed by women like Dame Maud. He had been around them all his life.

'Europe is traditionally a.s.sociated with old-world conspiracies to do with the Vatican, the Knights Templars, the hidden meanings of the Codex Argenteusa”basically anything with Latin derivatives. It's human nature to try and make sense out of chaos, to join the dots and come up with a picture. And of course it's a guilty pleasure, as long as you don't take it all at face value.'

'What do you know about the Cato Street Conspiracy?' asked Bryant, accepting Maggie's offer of a slice of strangely heavy bread pudding.