“When did you last see her?”
“I didn’t. I mean, I broke all contact after hearing about the photographs.”
“Why didn’t you take any legal action?”
“Damage limitation. The more you defend yourself, the guiltier you look. My clients started cancelling contracts, so I got out before the company folded on me. I came from an entertainment PR background, and needed to build a client base.”
“So you started low by picking someone with an image problem,” Bryant surmised.
“Martell came with such a bad reputation that nobody else wanted to touch him. I figured if I could make this a success, other offers would come. I thought that after Sarah I could handle anyone, but Martell was a nightmare. Insecurity is a tough trait to deal with. There were rumours about his private life. The tabloids were suspicious, and went fishing for stories about how he spent his evenings, but he was dumb and vain enough to keep taking the bait. This latest escapade has broken within hours of his death, so everyone will think he killed himself. Martell was convinced he’d lose his TV deal. He’d used up all of his friends. He was still popular with the public, but his ratings were starting to slip. He caused offence on ITV1’s breakfast show the week before – he’d been caught on camera making sarcastic comments about his fans – and was getting hate mail as a consequence. If you’re going to start manipulating public opinion, you need a clever game plan, and Martell wasn’t exactly the brightest bulb in the billboard.”
“Tell us about your argument with him,” May suggested.
“Martell rang me at four yesterday afternoon and asked to meet me in the café in Russell Square in an hour’s time. He admitted that he’d gone to a lap-dancing club on Monday night, where he’d met a couple of girls who took him back to the Great Russell Hotel for champagne, drugs, and a little fooling around – the usual tired old story. Except that the girls told him they were Russian fifteen-year-olds who had come here illegally on a vegetable lorry through the Channel Tunnel. You’d think he would have smelled a rat by now, but instead he went with them. So they’re back in the hotel room, and every time the girls break off to take calls on their mobiles, they’re actually shooting digital footage of Martell and sending it over the Internet to Hard News. Turns out they were a couple of twenty-something journalists working for the Blue Dragon herself.”
“Who’s that?” asked Bryant.
“Janet Ramsey is a smart Tory bitch who’s obsessed with illegal immigrants, and happens to be the new editor of Hard News. I couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid. It was the kind of story the red tops fantasise about in bed at night. I was just getting somewhere with him, and he had ruined our deal. Martell had a family audience. I told him I had no magic formula to rehabilitate him in the public’s eyes, especially with the current social panic about paedophilia still raging. Things got pretty heated between us. I was annoyed that his agent hadn’t informed me immediately. It didn’t help that Martell had been drinking. I told him I wasn’t prepared to represent him any longer; he told me I was useless. He tried to hit me, but fell over a chair. Finally he stormed out.”
“What time was this?”
“About a quarter to six. You can check with the staff in the café. They’re bound to remember – we made enough noise.”
“What did you do then?”
“I paid the bill and walked off towards Kingsway, trying to clear my head. I had something to eat at a French place near Lincoln’s Inn Fields, I can’t remember the name, but it would be easy to find. Then I caught a taxi home.”
♦
“Do you believe him?” asked Bryant as the detectives drove back towards Mornington Crescent.
“He had a fight in a public place; he couldn’t lie about that,” said May. “But do I believe him? I think so. He had a reason to take revenge against Sarah White, and Martell was about to ruin his new career, but it’s hardly enough to make you dress up as a highwayman and construct something so insanely baroque – and that’s what we’re talking about here, a form of insanity. Carey doesn’t seem mentally troubled. Everyone in business operates on the kind of personal agenda that might look odd to an outsider. It doesn’t make them a killer. If the only suspects we have are perfectly rational men and women, I don’t see how we’ll find someone who’s insane. We can’t employ any kind of deductive reasoning.”
“Then we must apply the science of irrationality,” Bryant replied. “You know what I think we need? Some experts in the field of orchestrated mayhem. I’ll draw up a list. I may be required to meet with – unusual people.”
May knew what that meant; his partner would be phoning everyone from chaos theorists to necromancers. “No, Arthur,” he warned his partner. “I don’t want any of your fringe-dwellers involved, not this time.”
Bryant was shocked. “But I’ve found a new spirit medium who produces electronic ectoplasm that can be charted on a computer – ”
“No, Arthur, not the Camden Town Coven or the Southwark Supernaturals or that creepy biochemist who impersonates his dead wife, or anyone else who could be mistaken for a mental patient. Our every move is being watched, and now is not the time to start behaving strangely. We do this my way or not at all, do you understand?”
Bryant’s pout of disapproval said it all. “You just admitted that we can’t follow the usual routes of deductive reasoning. What are we supposed to do?”
“I don’t know.” May sighed, turning away from the ebbing river. “But we have to think of something fast, before we find ourselves locked out of our own investigation.”
“We can’t do it by ourselves,” Bryant admitted. “We need other talents.”
“Then let’s use the PCU staff. There may not be much budget, but we have access to renegade minds.”
“I like your thinking. That’s Battle of Hastings spirit.”
“We lost the Battle of Hastings, Arthur.”
“So we did.” Bryant bit off the last of his fireman’s hose. “But this time we’ll win.”
The detectives returned to work in a mood of doubtful optimism.
∨ Ten Second Staircase ∧
18
Something of the Night
Raymond Land was utterly exhausted.
The years of chasing after devils and phantoms had taken their toll. He couldn’t believe he was still stranded here at the unit, like a Japanese soldier guarding a forgotten Pacific atoll decades after the war had ended.
Because the war had ended. The kind of crimes the PCU had been set up to investigate no longer existed. If anything, it was easier to recognise the kind of cases the unit didn’t get. They didn’t get ones with identifiable characteristics, criminal associations, reliable witnesses, usual suspects, or even much actual evidence, whether in the form of CCTV footage, DNA, or fingerprints. Those under investigation rarely had previous convictions. The PCU prided itself on tackling original, unrepeatable crimes, but such tragedies were in decline. Despite its recent high-profile successes, the unit was an anachronism. Strong young men and women were needed to combat social disorder and the pervasive influence of drugs across the capital. Scarface-quality cocaine was selling in Florida at thirty-five dollars a gram, and was heading towards London in the form of addictive new compounds. The Met had five areas each the size of a complete force elsewhere in the country, and it still couldn’t cope. Prostitution, murder, burglary, and vandalism were all on the increase – right now, a team of Ukrainian gangsters were running around North London attacking people with blowtorches – and here he was, playing nursemaid to a group of addled academics who read science fiction comics and attended poetry readings in their spare time.