“A future?” Land was incandescent. “What are you talking about? What future? All you have left is a past, and look at the trouble that always causes. Look at the trouble your screw-ups will cause now, at the worst possible time for all of us.”
“I say, there’s no need to be rude.” Bryant felt affronted. He glanced uncomfortably at his partner. This was the last thing either of them needed. “Do we have to go into the Leicester Square business?” he asked sheepishly.
“It’s too late; the investigation is already in motion. It’s all going to come out into the open. You need to put your house in order fast.”
“We’re making progress with the Highwayman,” pleaded Bryant. “Don’t force us to defend our position on a case that’s been rumbling on for over thirty years.”
“The debunking of phantoms and bogeymen is what you do best,” said Land. “You had a clear remit; to stop the general public from panicking, to protect the vulnerable, to remove danger from the streets. Admit it, you lost sight of your duties.”
“We had to look at the greater picture. Our job is to help keep the city in equilibrium between myth and reality.”
“I don’t hold with all that spiritual holy-water-sprinkling demonsummoning nonsense, Bryant. You’re a policeman; you can’t afford to hold eccentric views. Some kind of closure must be reached over the Leicester Square Vampire. I’m not prepared to leave this job under a cloud. Take a fresh look at the case. A nutter in a costume attacking total strangers – he might have more in common with the Highwayman than you realise. Who knows, perhaps one case will help inform the other.”
Bryant examined the idea. A pensive pout crippled his face, shifting his ears and popping his eyes into pockets of wrinkled flesh. It wasn’t an attractive sight. “You know, Raymond, sometimes you actually come up with a useful suggestion,” he told the supervisor, brightening. “Admittedly it’s not very often, and usually accidental when it does happen, but on behalf of the unit I accept your challenge.”
May felt like dropping his head in his hands. If there was one thing more dangerous than seeing his partner demoralised, it was seeing him fired with enthusiasm.
♦
DS Janice Longbright found she could hear everything that was going on in Raymond Land’s office simply by listening at the grate. The Edwardian offices were still fitted with fireplaces, although the chimneys had long ago been bricked up, and Land’s pleading wheedle droned down through the iron bars of the draught trap beneath the chimney breast, revealing his most secret plans to her.
She remembered hearing how her mother had also eavesdropped on her superiors, although in wartime the task had proven a little easier as the wall between their offices had been blown down. Still, it paid to take heed of the prevailing mood in the PCU, especially when the detectives were facing fresh censure.
Now, as she sat reapplying Jungle Fever Glamour Stick to her lips (one of several cosmetic lines favoured by Longbright despite being discontinued in the UK in 1968 but mercifully still on sale in Botswana owing to their exotic brand names), she could hear the Acting Head’s voice rise to a tremulous quaver as he sought to pass the blame for his actions.
There had been plenty of scares before, but she knew this time was serious, not just because the Leicester Square Vampire had never been caught, but because Bryant’s overconfidence had led to the most damaging moment of his career – one which had almost wrecked his friendship with John May.
Kneeling beside the fireplace, she recognised the gravity of the threats which Bryant so lightly dismissed, and knew that the Vampire case was a Pandora’s box of trouble just waiting to be opened. They were all bound to be implicated in the blaming process. After all, it was she who had recently destroyed the original documentation, burning the incriminating paper trail in the very grate where she now sat hunched in horror, listening to Bryant’s enthusiastic offer to bury himself.
Her mind flashed back to the moment she had helped to hide the evidence – was there anything she had missed? With any luck, all remaining files had been reduced to embers in the unit’s fire.
But what if something still survived? What if it had already fallen into Kasavian’s hands? The damage could only be undone if the detectives acknowledged the problem. And they would never do that, because at the very least it involved destroying John May’s tentatively renewed friendship with his granddaughter.
Longbright had warned them about mixing their personal lives with business. This time, she felt sure, the habit would ruin them all. She retreated to the evidence room at the rear of the building and quietly unlocked the door.
The only box that had survived the unit’s fire contained a single damning document about the case dating from 1992. Standing on a chair and rummaging on top of a cupboard, she pulled a manila folder free and slipped the loose page inside her jacket. Raymond Land had never seen the sheet, because it contained a drunken confession from the one person qualified to know the truth of the matter: John May himself. It had not been destroyed because there were two additional signatures at the bottom of the page belonging to the officers who had witnessed its writing. A subpoena would draw the truth from them, and unless they could be traced and coerced into refuting its contents, there was nothing to be gained by obliterating the original. May had clearly forgotten his admittance of guilt in the shadow of a greater tragedy that had unfolded that night, and Bryant’s memory was notoriously unreliable.
Longbright had never faced a situation like this; her loyalties were suddenly divided between performing her duty and honouring her mentors. Her mother had raised her to believe that no-one was above the law, especially not those who administered it. But who could vouch for the mitigating circumstances that had resulted in the escape of a murderer, and the tragic death of an innocent civilian?
The detective sergeant locked the door and returned to her office, made miserable by the dilemma that called her own personal morality into question.
∨ Ten Second Staircase ∧
24
Shadow City
As Meera Mangeshkar arrived for her shift, she heard the detectives arguing in their room opposite. She had become used to the see-saw sound of their bickering, but went over to listen.
“You may as well come in, Mangeshkar; we have no secrets here.” May rolled a chair over to her. “Ever hear of the Leicester Square Vampire?”
“Before my time, sir.”
“Accidents of birth do not excuse your ignorance,” snapped Bryant. “Caligula reigned before you were born, but you’ve heard of him, haven’t you? We were asking ourselves what the Highwayman has in common with the Leicester Square Vampire, and the answer is that they both started social panics. Look at the hysterical press reaction, and remember what Lord Macaulay said: ‘We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.’”
“You mean like the video nasties scare of the eighties?”
“Exactly. Panics occur when individuals feel threatened and mobilise themselves into vigilante groups. Mods and rockers, paedophiles, even UFO sightings have all sparked waves of hysteria. Saralla White and Danny Martell are being tarred and feathered because they represent the failures of a generation. Martell ran a show that was popular with teenagers but hated by their parents, until he lost his remaining audience. White advocated multiple partners, abortion, and drugs, but was a hypocrite. As people age, they form habits and take sides. The Highwayman is a godsend. According to the right-wing press, he’s only doing what people across the country don’t have the guts to do. The general consensus is that his victims had it coming. Journalists are so busy tracking down dubious witnesses that they’ve not stopped to consider the effect of their actions.”