Part 16 (1/2)

'Do you ever watch television, Mr Bryant?' she asked, walking to the window. 'I always enjoy the historical adaptations, all those happy street urchins and ladies in bustle skirts worrying about their suitors. The reality was down there.' She tapped a nail against the double-glazing. 'It's hard to imagine how tough urban life used to be. These buildings were blackened with soot and filled with laundresses who were too old and ill to work by their mid-thirties. A woman of twenty-five looked fifty.'

'At least you were able to save some of the original buildings,' said Bryant, dropping onto the nearest seat.

'These factories were left over from the bad old days. Their staff worked with mercury, lead and a.r.s.enic. The dyes rotted their nails, and mercuric vapour burned out their bronchial tubes. They suffered from anaemia, blood poisoning, cardiovascular disease, dermat.i.tis, kidney damage. The employment laws favoured management, of course. The rates of pay were whatever you could get away with. Now the offices are air-conditioned, and have natural light. We've improved the environment beyond all imagining.'

'I agree that our standards are different now, but the gap between rich and poor remains. It's not your fault. Most of the office workers we interview hate their jobs and are only doing it to pay their bills. They binge-drink and take drugs and go mad with frustration and boredom.'

'You're right. It isn't my job to rebalance the whole of society, Mr Bryant.' Her mood changed as soon as she realised he would not be easily led. 'Why are you here?'

'A rather esoteric subject for an investigation unit, I'm afraid. Land purchases. You made over two hundred and sixty of them in order to secure this land, and it took thirty years. Any problems there?'

'What kind of problems?'

'Well, what do you do about the ones who don't want to sell?'

'You mean do we trick property owners into signing away their homes?'

'Oh, I imagine all the guidelines are carefully followed. At least on paper,' Bryant replied lightly.

'More than that. We have government backing every step of the way, at both local and national levels.'

'So you can't really fail, can you?'

'If you're implying something, Detective, it might be better to just come out and say it.'

'Well, you must admit you're having a fairly unusual month. Body parts turning up on your site, some lunatic stalking the workers in fancy dress. At first I thought someone was out to stop you from finis.h.i.+ng the project. Silly, of course; an international juggernaut derailed by a worker with a grudge. Then I thought, what if he's just trying to draw attention to the company and its work practices? You don't have a high public profile. You get on with your work and keep your heads down. Suppose someone started to s.h.i.+ne a spotlight on you? So, first the culprit dresses as a local hero and marauds around your site, making a mockery of your security system. Perhaps he still has friends inside the company who'll arrange to leave doors unlocked and lights deactivated. And when that has no effect he gets desperate, stepping up his activity until it results in a murder which has to be hidden, which then turns up a second corpse. And he dresses it all up in the myths of local history, just to keep everyone interested. That's why you need to search through your employment records and see if there's someone on your books who's capable of such a thing.'

'We don't have time to do that. We have deadlines to meet.'

'Then we'll do it for you, starting this afternoon.'

'This is a privately owned company, but it's sanctioned by the government,' Waters warned.

'It's publicly accountable. You'd better make sure you have nothing nasty to hide, Miss Waters, because if you do I will find it and I will bring you down to earth.'

'If we wanted to hide something, Mr Bryant, I can guarantee you'd never find it.'

Bryant left in a fury. No-one was telling the truth. Everyone had something to conceal. And an ordinary, decent man had been killed in impossible circ.u.mstances. Another working day was almost over; there was an ever greater danger that the Met would regain control of the investigation, and the truth remained just beyond his grasp.

Worst of all, he could not shake the strange feeling that he was being watched.

30

PREDATOR

Bryant sat in the Costa coffee shop opposite the station entrance, staring into the falling rain. He was thinking about the Sioux star of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. Chief Long Wolf made it all the way here in 1892 Chief Long Wolf made it all the way here in 1892, he thought, only to die of pneumonia in London's dreadful weather. That says it all. Look at it only to die of pneumonia in London's dreadful weather. That says it all. Look at it.

He had sounded confident in the meeting with Waters but knew that the case was falling apart around his ears. The first victim was bothering him. At least the head had now been found, and was undergoing tests. Why had it turned up on the same site? If the killer had really wanted to keep his victim's provenance hidden, he would have taken the head far away, or simply weighted it and thrown it into the fast-flowing tide of the Thames. The invention of the garbage bag had been a boon to murderers everywhere. If the murderer was that much of a professional, it didn't make sense to bury the head in rubble at the back of the store.

Which meant that their killer was not a hit man at all, but an ordinary fallible human being. No professional would have left the parts where they would be found.

But if there was no hit man, where did this leave the investigation? They had no-one. A face in the crowd. An invisible man. Ordinary people left spoors, and Banbury had turned up nothing, not a hair, not a thread, not a flake of skin. That in itself was rare enough to suggest they were dealing with someone extraordinary.

The ghosts of Battlebridge obliterated those who would desecrate their land. Veles came storming through the dark green forest to take his revenge. A supernatural killer had risen out of the torn soil, from an age so long gone that civilisation did not even have a trace-memory of it. Time fragmented the past into bright moments, tumbling diurnally until they finally faded from view. The pagan G.o.d of all things wild, of woodlands and beasts and storms and rus.h.i.+ng rivers, had come back into a world being re-created in concrete, back just in time to restore it to a natural state where faith in the rising sun and the blossoming of plants could reign once more. And he was removing the heads of his victims in rituals of pagan sacrifice.

Preposterous.

If anyone was to be sacrificed, surely it should be Marianne Waters, or the council members who had approved the desecration of the site, not a workman who never hurt anyone.

I'm going mad, thought Bryant. Well, maybe I've always been a little mad. My father warned me about that, G.o.d bless his beer-sodden soul. We have to close the investigation fast or I get to go back to my fireside and watch the rain running down the windows until the end of my time. We haven't got the staff to go through all of ADAPT's employment records. We're not being thorough; it feels like we're missing something blindingly obvious. There must be a simple answer to all this, something that's right in front of me. Come on, Arthur, use that brain of yours Well, maybe I've always been a little mad. My father warned me about that, G.o.d bless his beer-sodden soul. We have to close the investigation fast or I get to go back to my fireside and watch the rain running down the windows until the end of my time. We haven't got the staff to go through all of ADAPT's employment records. We're not being thorough; it feels like we're missing something blindingly obvious. There must be a simple answer to all this, something that's right in front of me. Come on, Arthur, use that brain of yours.

He realised he was doing what he always did. John May endlessly accused him of failing to make a stand on the side of rationality. He's right He's right, thought Bryant. I'm always drawn to the other side, the spiritual, the instinctive. If we're to survive this, I need to do something practical and useful. I think I need to see a witch I'm always drawn to the other side, the spiritual, the instinctive. If we're to survive this, I need to do something practical and useful. I think I need to see a witch.

It was dark and still raining. Janice Longbright and Liberty DuCaine sat on the brick wall that crossed the ca.n.a.l, although Liberty's legs were so long that they touched the pavement. Longbright dipped into a white paper bag, sharing DuCaine's chips. Blowing on one, she licked tomato ketchup from her fingertips.

'I'm glad John asked you to come and give us a hand,' she said. 'We need all the help we can get.'

'He heard I was taking a sabbatical,' DuCaine replied. 'I needed a break. I was getting burned out.' PC DuCaine was currently on leave from Camden constabulary, but always enjoyed working with the PCU.

'I love eating hot chips in the rain,' said Longbright. 'It reminds me of being a teenager.'

'I bet you were a terror.'

'I was horrible, running around the streets, charging after the night bus with my mates when the pubs shut. Mum was on nights at the PCU a lot of the time, so I was always on the loose in London. I used to resent her for not spending more time with me. We never went anywhere outside London; none of us had any money. I wish I'd travelled a bit.'

'Yeah, me, too,' said DuCaine. 'I'm third-generation Caribbean, from Tobago, but I've never been back. My gran always wants me to go.' The constable had been angling for full-time work at the unit for several months before its closure, and had volunteered to help with the investigation. Tonight, this meant patrolling King's Cross on the lookout for the stag-man.

Longbright watched DuCaine as he neatly rolled up the empty chip bag and folded it into his pocket. He was the kind of man who never went through a door first, and always carried a handkerchief. The huge, muscular young officer often gravitated toward her. At first she thought he might be attracted to her, despite the difference in their ages, but he had never made a move.

'Liberty, seeing as we'll be spending the rest of the investigation together, can I ask you something?'

'Ask away.'

'Don't be offended. It's just that-well, you dress nicely, you're over-attentive to women...'

'Yes...'

'... And every time I see you my Gaydar goes off.'

DuCaine's laugh was so deep it might have been mistaken for a pa.s.sing subway train. 'Yeah, I get that a lot. You're thinking of my brother, Fraternity. I guess it's a genetic thing.'

'I hope you didn't mind me saying.'

'My mother's a control freak, my dad was an old hippie, my brother's gay, my sister Equality is a wild child. We're Caribbean but not at all old school. Anyway, it's about time someone was over-attentive to you. I know how hard you work.'