14
RATS
And so it was that late on Saturday afternoon, the Peculiar Crimes Unit made arrangements for an invisible return to the streets of London. Bryant frightened the life out of a local estate agent by threatening to requisition property on behalf of the government, and instantly acquired the keys to a partially furnished building that had been sitting empty on their books for almost a year. The gimlet-eyed agent, Mr Hawker, a man who would have sold his grandmother’s bed with her in it if he thought he could turn a profit, had been unable to shift the property because prospective tenants complained that there was something unsavoury and bothersome about the maze of interconnected dust-grey rooms, and indeed, Hawker possessed a secret file on the building that he was careful to hide from his new client. His desperation to offload this millstone was almost as urgent as Bryant’s desire to occupy it, and so a deal was struck to the immediate satisfaction of both parties.
In this latest incarnation of the PCU, much had changed. Instead of decently equipped offices in Mornington Crescent, they found themselves on the first and second floors of an unrenovated warehouse on the corner of Balfe Street and the Caledonian Road, a property standing on the boundary between respectability and knife fights. On one side were green-footprint restaurants, cappuccino bars and glass cliffs of offices packed with time-strapped executives. On the other were run-down pubs, sex shops and gangs of dazed drunks in soccer shirts.
Arthur Bryant did not see it like that, of course. He stood on the roof sucking Licorice Allsorts with his trilby pulled over his ears and his scarf knotted tightly around his neck, and watched the dying sunlight whiten the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral. Life is a very beautiful dream, he thought. I’m so glad I chose not to wake up from it just yet. He had almost forgotten how lovely the city could appear to the right eye at the end of the day, when the shining yellow buildings of every shape, age and size radiated light beneath a panorama of blue-grey cumulus.
Below him was the most connected part of the city. It operated like a gigantic wall socket overloaded with too many crackling plugs. Above, behind and underneath the roads ran the railways: GNER, First Capital Connect, Kent, Midland, East Coast, Hull, Grand Central, Virgin, Silverlink and Scotrail. Beneath these were the underground routes, the Northern, the Victoria, the Piccadilly, the Metropolitan, the Circle, the Hammersmith & City, and across them all ran a dozen bewildering bus lines.
Most of the time the thousands of men, women and children who rushed past each other to their transport links managed to do so without ever colliding or uttering a sentence longer than ‘Sorry’ or ‘Excuse me,’ but occasionally the system momentarily fractured and something terrible happened. Here, in 1987, a fire in the tube station had killed thirty-one people. In 2005, terrorists had murdered fifty-six. Yet this was merely the most recent twist in the area’s knotted history, for the scruffy, unassuming site had reflected the rise and fall of empires.
It was perhaps appropriate, then, that the Peculiar Crimes Unit should find its spiritual home here, among the debris of the past and the construction of the future. Early on Monday morning, Raymond Land placed Crippen in a box and reluctantly left his pleasant house in Putney to trudge his way across London. In truth, he was happy to be getting out from under his wife’s feet. Leanne found him more annoying than ever since he had been at home, which was odd because she was hardly ever at home herself. She was forever disappearing for one-on-one tuition with fitness trainers, makeover artists, yoga gurus and dance instructors, all of whom seemed to be suntanned males half her age. The fact that she needed to have her hair done before attending a pottery class mystified Land.
The acting temporary head of the PCU had been wooed with a promise of promotion; if this case was resolved quickly and quietly, he would finally be bumped up to Superintendent, a job title he would have been granted long ago if Bryant and May had not upset so many important people. Still, the thought of coming back to work was undignified. It was like making tearful farewells at a leaving party, only to have to come back and collect your scarf. Perhaps the investigation would fail and he would once more be released. Perhaps he could borrow some of Bryant’s little blue pills to get him through the week. So on Monday morning, Land stood before the black-painted door of Number 231 Caledonian Road, drew in a great lungful of traffic fumes, then rang the bell.
Janice Longbright dragged chairs along the warped corridors of the musty warehouse, trying to ignore the smell of old oysters, cloves and candlewax. She had spent Sunday arranging empty packing crates into makeshift desks, and trying to find places for everyone to sit. At least the electricity had been left on; the building had little natural light, and the agent had no desire to be sued by anyone taking a tumble in the gloom. April had already prepared a briefing room, and had arranged for some secondhand computers to be delivered from Mornington Crescent later in the day, but the place was still a shambles. Bryant had demanded that the office be ready for immediate operation after the weekend, but there was too much to do.
‘What’s this I hear about you going on a date with Jack Ren-field?’ April asked Longbright as they shook open dust-crusted curtains to allow dirty sunlight into the room. ‘I thought nobody liked him.’
‘Nobody did, and I still don’t like the way he behaves, but I think working at the PCU is changing him for the better. Anyway, it wasn’t a proper date. We just went up Brick Lane for a Ruby.1 He’s still got a bloody great chip on his shoulder, but I can deal with that.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought he was your type.’
‘These days my type is any type who still likes my type,’ said Longbright, slamming down the chairs. ‘It’s been a while since I even bothered to look at a man. Jack hasn’t got a clue how to treat women. He hasn’t got an ounce of imagination. He’s more like an Alsatian than a human being.’
‘Then his ears have probably pricked up,’ said April, ‘because you’re talking about him enough.’
‘God, I am, aren’t I? I must be getting desperate.’
‘If you don’t mind me asking, how old are you?’ asked April, who thought she was young enough to get away with asking such things.
‘I’m old enough to have to memorise a date before which I’m not supposed to be able to remember anything. Let’s get on before I change my mind about coming back. You’ve got your grandfather’s cheek.’ She glanced around the chaotic room. ‘We should give this space to John and Mr Bryant. It would be a good idea to have them working in the same room again. I wonder where Jack is. He’s supposed to be here giving us a hand this morning.’
‘There are rat droppings everywhere. And what is that revolting smell?’ April sniffed the stale air.
‘I dread to think,’ replied Longbright. ‘Something’s probably dead in here. I’m going to risk opening some windows. It feels like the place has been sealed for years.’
They set about making the warehouse fit for human habitation.
Leslie Faraday always looked forward to the end of his working week. By lunchtime on Saturday he had expected to have an empty In box and a desk swept clean of paperwork. Then his superior had called with instructions for handling the newly risen PCU, and the happy harmony of his weekend had collapsed abruptly. Now he found himself wrangling an alarming number of expenditure requests from the very detectives he thought he would never have to deal with again. Plus, Renfield was proving obstreperous.
‘You’re trained in surveillance,’ Faraday told the telephone wearily. ‘Surveillance is the continual observation of a person or a group. Spying is the gathering of clandestine intelligence. So don’t think of it as spying; think of it as surveillance.’
‘I know the difference between them, Mr Faraday. I’m not an idiot.’
From what he had heard about the detective sergeant, Faraday thought he would have jumped at the chance, but Jack Renfield was audibly uncomfortable with his proposition. ‘All I’m asking you to do is keep a diary for the duration of the investigation, Sergeant Renfield. At the end of each day, starting today, you will call me on this line, which is direct and secure, and inform me of anything out of the ordinary. This way, we can call a halt to any unauthorised procedures before they get out of hand.’
‘You’re asking me to rat on my colleagues.’
‘That’s a rather old-fashioned way of thinking. We’re all being monitored these days. If I wanted to, I could have CCTV cameras installed in the PCU’s offices.’ But you’re cheaper, Faraday thought.
There was a time when Jack Renfield would have been happy to obey the instructions of the Home Office to the letter, but he had recently undergone a change of heart. He had only just gained the trust of the others in the unit. Now he would be risking his new career to please this porcine paper-shuffler. Renfield could be an obstinate man when he chose, and he chose to be so now.
‘What if I tell you I’m not prepared to do it?’ he asked, already sensing the answer.
‘Then we will have to question your suitability for the PCU, and return you to the Met.’
‘You know I can’t go back there. I guess you’re also aware that the CID turned me down.’
‘Yes, I heard you rather burned your bridges when you joined the Peculiar Crimes Unit. So I take it you’ll accept this task?’
‘You’re not leaving me much choice,’ snapped Renfield, hanging up. But I’ll do it in my own way, he decided, astonished by his new allegiance to the unit.
1 Ruby Murray=curry.