∨ Ten Second Staircase ∧
9
Phantom in the Noose
All police units are underfunded, but the PCU had been so broke for so long that the sudden budget increase they had experienced after the successful resolution of their last case had merely confused the staff. John May had upgraded the computers, Sergeant Longbright had bought a coffee machine, and Arthur Bryant had purchased a set of highly inappropriate Aubrey Beardsley prints. Still, the improvement in the Mornington Crescent offices was noticeable. There was upgraded computer software. There was a reception area. There was a sofa. There was a nasty smell in the bathroom, but as it stemmed from Bryant’s abortive experiment to determine the burning point of horsehair, nobody knew how to get rid of it.
Late on Monday afternoon, Janice Longbright caught up with her boss as he was about to enter the unit’s interview room.
“Where have you been?” asked May. “I’ve been phoning you for the last half hour.”
“Sorry, chief, my flat was burgled at lunchtime. Some little sod kicked the door in and stole my telly. I was waiting for the K-Town cop shop to send someone around.”
“Can you not refer to Kentish Town by its gangsta name? And why on earth didn’t you get Banbury to come over?” asked May, amazed.
“Wouldn’t like to pull rank, sir. Not fair on other people.” Longbright tucked a lacquered curl back into place and thrust out her formidable chest. “Hope I’m not too late.”
“No, they just arrived, come in.”
May and Longbright seated themselves beside Luke Tripp and his tailored mother. It was intended that the sergeant would gently coax the boy into providing a more detailed description, but one look at Mrs Tripp’s face forced them to change tactics. May ran through the legal ramifications of the statement, then let Longbright defuse the unhappy parent.
“Your son is the only witness to this crime,” she explained. “Nobody else saw the man he described anywhere in the vicinity of the building. That’s why we need him to provide exact details of the event.”
“You’re suggesting he’s a liar.” Hannah Tripp turned to her son. “Luke darling, you don’t have to tell them anything if you don’t want to. They’re not real policemen.”
“It’s true we’re not bound by the rules of the Metropolitan Police Force, Mrs Tripp, but we have other powers granted by the Home Office that you may find quite draconian if we choose to enforce them. I think it’s easier for everyone if Luke just tells us, in his own words, exactly what he saw.”
“Is that a threat?” asked Mrs Tripp. “My husband’s in a senior management position at Sotheby’s salesroom. He’d have something to say about this.”
“That’s fine, Mrs Tripp. We’ll be happy to accept his advice if we need a Ming vase valued, but as far as your son is concerned, we need to get to the truth.”
“I don’t care for sarcasm.” Mrs Tripp smoothed her son’s hair. “Luke is an only child. He’s highly sensitive. When he was little, all his friends wanted to be pilots and firefighters. Not my boy. His big dream is to star in his own play at the Royal Court Theatre. He paints, he sings, he loves listening to Donizetti. He only looks young, you see; he’s nearly fourteen. An experience like this could seriously affect his school performance. The man he saw was a murderer.”
“That’s why Sergeant Longbright is here,” May explained. “She’s trained to deal with precisely this kind of delicate situation.”
“Then the sergeant alone should talk to my son.”
This was precisely what May had wanted. “Fine. I’ll be outside if you need me,” he said quietly, rising to leave.
Longbright left a respectful pause until after the door had closed. “Perhaps we could go back to the moment when your class first arrived at the gallery, Luke,” she suggested.
♦
Arthur Bryant’s office was starting to look like a collision between a greenhouse, a secondhand bookshop, and a crypto-zoological museum. Shoving aside the dead cactus Raymond Land had angrily returned (Bryant had placed it in the Acting Head’s office as a gift, but it had germinated poisonous seeds that left purple stains everywhere until, in desperation, Land had sprayed it with lighter fluid), he adjusted his spectacles and studied the numbers on the aluminium key again: 21.9.17.05.
“Well, obviously, it’s a date,” he said finally. “The twenty-first of September, 1705. I have a book of historical dates somewhere.” Seated at his green leather desk beneath a pool of amber light, he appeared to have regained some of his former confidence. He rattled an aniseed ball against his false teeth as he took down a gilt-edged volume of British history and began leafing through it.
“Hmm, work began on Blenheim Palace, War of the Spanish Succession, the queen of Prussia died, nothing very relevant there. Queen Anne would have been on the throne, but we need something more localised, something…” A smile crept across his face. “I think we need to schedule a staff meeting,” he told Kershaw.
At four P.M., all members of the PCU staff were summoned to its freshly painted briefing room. April sat nervously at the rear, until coaxed to a forward seat by her grandfather. She had no idea what to expect from her new job, except that its daily operations would prove unorthodox. The senior detectives preferred to conduct discussion groups before assigning work to their colleagues. According to Bryant, creativity was the key to criminal investigation, not data control. Most Met officers found his theories ludicrous, and argued that his effectiveness was the result of blind luck.
April looked expectantly around the room, wondering what would be demanded of her. Crippen threaded his way between her legs, looking for affection. The moulting feline belonged to Maggie Armitage, the unit’s affiliated information source for all crimes involving elements of witchcraft or psychic analysis, but she had loaned Crippen to Bryant indefinitely because he had given her accordionist fleas during madrigals.
“Our first officially recorded briefing session,” Bryant began, dragging a polychromatic scarf from the rack and knotting it around his throat. “It marks the start of a new level of efficiency and professionalism here at the PCU. Would anyone like a sherbet lemon? There are flying saucers and licorice all-sorts as well.” He shook the box of childhood confectionary and dumped it out on the table before him. While Longbright was serving tea, Bimsley tipped his chair too far back and fell off it. Meera tapped her pen impatiently and shot him a filthy look.
“I hope you’ve all had a chance to access the initial report?” May’s question cued paper-rustling and murmurs. “I just talked to Raymond Land, and he informs me that the White murder has been given Signal Crime status.” Signal crimes were criminal acts that garnered a disproportionate amount of publicity, sending out disturbing signals to the public about the unsafe state of society. They were required to be dealt with quickly and quietly, before faith in the national policing system sustained damage. “Given its high profile, we’ll need to clear the decks here for at least forty-eight hours, so Janice will help re-prioritise your outstanding casework. White’s death has already made the news, and there’ll be plenty more to come, especially if we fail to find leads. I’ve appointed Dan Banbury to act as press liaison officer.”
The stocky, crop-headed crime scene manager turned to the rest of the group. “Before we start running through witnesses and suspects, a bit of media news. As you know, the unit can’t afford bad publicity after receiving increased funding. We’ll have Shadow Cabinet MPs screaming like stuck pigs. We’ve not scheduled an official press conference yet, but they’ll be doorstepping White’s family and friends for opinions as I speak.