Of course, the national police force now operates under a regime of openness and transparency, but Mr Bryant prefers to keep his superiors in the dark because, he says, “it is simpler for them to understand nothing.”
As you know, my own background is in forensic sciences. When I sought promotion to a more senior decision-making role, I was brought into this unit as Acting Temporary Head. As the title implies, I did not expect to remain in the position for more than three months.
That was in 1973. I am still here, still awaiting a transfer. By the time I joined, the Peculiar Crimes Unit had become very peculiar indeed. It could be likened to a doctors’ surgery that had abandoned traditional pharmaceutical treatments for alternative therapies. Over time, these therapies have become more extreme; we have reached a point when it seems quite normal for Mr Bryant to ignore empirical data in favour of hiring a clairvoyant in the search for a missing person. Mr May is not much better; his investigation into pagan elementals a few months ago did result in the capture of a wanted criminal, but he still destroyed a section of the Regent Canal in the process, and the case appears to have involved a mass breakout of illegal immigrants from King’s Cross, whom both he and his partner aided and abetted.
The bizarre behaviour of these geriatric detectives seems to infect those working around them, so that I am made to seem the ‘odd man out’. I am openly ridiculed and humiliated. Mr Bryant’s experiments, conducted without any safety precautions, are both questionable and dangerous. My instructions are disobeyed, my reputation has been irreversibly damaged, and my office wallpaper has been ruined.
Both Mr Bryant and Mr May are beyond statutory retirement age and show no inclination to leave. No-one seems to know quite how old they are, as their files were apparently lost in the fire that destroyed their old offices, but I am reliably informed that Mr Bryant is three years older than his counterpart. Mr May is certainly the more amenable of the pair, possessing a more youthful outlook. He is at least partially familiar with technological advances in the field of crime detection, but Mr Bryant is quite impossible to deal with. In the last eighteen months he has destroyed or lost 17 mobile phones and several laptop computers. How he managed to reprogram the unit’s main police transmitter frequency so that it could receive only selections from The Pirates of Penzance is a mystery we have yet to solve.
Speaking frankly, he is offensive, awkward, argumentative, and unhygienic. He flatly refuses to follow procedural guidelines, and constantly leaves the unit open to legal prosecution. He insists on employing the services of non-professionals, including disgraced experts, discredited psychics, registered felons, unstable extremists, tree-huggers, witches, children, itinerants, actors, practitioners of quasi-religions, and various ‘creative’ types.
Mr Bryant’s informants include those on the wrong side of the law, outpatients, migrants, fringe dwellers not recognised as reliable witnesses in a British court of law, and, on at least one occasion, a convicted murderer. He refuses to document his investigations in accordance with official guidelines; his office is little more than a rubbish dump; his personal habits are disgusting and, I suspect, illegal. He smokes and drinks on duty, abuses official property, requisitions police vehicles for personal use, falsifies reports, and is said to have on one occasion borrowed clothes awaiting DNA tests from the Evidence Room in order to attend a fancy dress party. He has an infested Tibetan human skull on his desk, and has been known to keep animal parts in the unit’s refrigerator for experiments.
Unfortunately, these transgressions cannot be dealt with through the usual disciplinary channels because, technically speaking, the unit is no longer part of the Metropolitan Police, and now falls under your jurisdiction. However, I am informed (by Mr Bryant himself) that you have no power over staff employed before the revised Official Security Act of 1962.
My work at the unit is personally humiliating. Whenever I attempt to exert some kind of control over him, Mr Bryant plays practical jokes on me. He once convinced me that my wife had taken a French lover, an act which had a disastrous effect on my marriage. Heaven knows, I like a joke as much as the next man, but in this case the next man happened to be my counterpart at the Sûreté, and did not take kindly to being accused of adultery. In short, Mr Bryant acts as if the serious business of solving crime is some kind of children’s game. Lately I have begun to wonder if he has developed some form of senility. Mr May frequently takes his partner’s side against me. I know they are laughing behind my back. They practise nepotism, favouritism, and, in Mr Bryant’s case, occasional witchcraft. The mother of their detective sergeant was formerly in their employ, and now it appears that Mr May’s granddaughter, a girl with a history of psychological problems, is to join the unit. Mr Bryant and Mr May are not just representatives of the law; they are old people, and it is time for them to move on.
Which is why I would like to recommend a psychiatric evaluation report on the pair of them. If their incompetence can be officially proven (something I very much suspect to be the case), then I will finally be able to replace them with younger, more technologically literate unit supervisors. Mr Bryant’s and Mr May’s consistent refusal of promotion is a ruse that has allowed them to operate ‘hands on’ as detectives through most of their cases. An evaluation could perhaps recommend they be transferred to positions of parttime consultancy, where they would not come into direct contact with criminal investigations, and would only have powers in a reduced advisory capacity. Mr Bryant refers to himself as a ‘cradle-to-grave’ law officer; in short, I think it is time he headed for his grave.
For some unearthly reason, both Mr Bryant and Mr May command an almost fanatical loyalty among the rest of the PCU staff. Therefore, I am sure you appreciate the need for absolute discretion in this matter.
I remain,
Yours sincerely,
Raymond Land
Acting Temporary Head of the Peculiar Crimes Unit
(1973 – present day)
∨ Ten Second Staircase ∧
2
Small Provocations
“I hope you’re not going to be rude and upset everyone again.”
Detective Sergeant Janice Longbright examined her boss for signs of disarray. She scraped some egg from his creased green tie with a crimson nail, and grudgingly granted her approval.
Arthur Bryant took a deep breath and folded his notes back into his jacket. “I see nothing wrong with speaking my mind. After all, it is a special occasion.” He fixed his DS with a beady, unforgiving eye. “I rarely get invited to make speeches. People always think I’m going to be insulting. I’ve never upset anyone before.”
“Perhaps I could remind you of the mayor’s banquet at Mansion House? You told the assembly he had herpes.”
“I said he had a hair-piece. It was a misquote.”
“Well, just remember how overwrought you can get at these events. Did you remember to take your blue pills?” Longbright suspected he had forgotten them because the tablet box was still poking out of his top pocket. “The doctor warned you it would be easy to muddle them up – ”