“We still have to close his case before Faraday and Kasavian can use it to shut us down,” said Bryant. “I suppose we could reexamine the physical evidence, open the bodies of his victims, and arrange for Longbright to visit his survivors – although I should think their memories will prove unhelpful after all this time.”
For once, May gleaned a practical purpose in talking to the white witch. He began to see how Bryant connected people and events, across decades and districts, through history and hardship, applying their shared tragedies to the present problem. “Fair enough,” he agreed. “We’ll divide the unit staff into two groups. You lead the cold case, I’ll take over on the Highwayman. We share the information, and if either team hits an impasse, we agree to swap investigations. Meanwhile, we stay out of Faraday’s way as much as possible. And if anything goes wrong, you do what I tell you.”
“It’s a deal,” said Bryant, eagerly shaking his partner’s hand.
“I still can’t believe you gave away my birthday present,” said May, shaking his head in wonderment.
∨ Ten Second Staircase ∧
27
English Cruelties
His real name was Alexander Garfield Paradine, and he was related to the Earl of Devonshire, but everyone called him Garfy, and thought he was the son of a taxi driver who had been discovered in a Skegness talent competition.
You needed the common touch to succeed on television; it levelled the playing field between you and the viewer. While his fans imagined that he drank at his local and ate in chip shops, he had been dining at the Groucho Club and hooking slices at Sunningdale. It was part of the pact to allow them their dreams, that they too might one day become like him.
He’d been lucky in the early years, becoming an alternative comedian without having to haul a one-man show around Edinburgh for several festivals. He’d become popular on the university circuit, garnering a strong student following, but he longed for a wider audience, and as his career shifted from late-night cult shows to Saturday evening clip-fests like You’re on Camera, the pact with his youthful fan base had become strained. His privacy was repeatedly invaded by viewers who felt they owned him. They clambered over the wall of his house in Henley-on-Thames, and followed his wife back from Waitrose, photographing her on their mobiles.
To reduce the pressure, he reinvented himself, but by the time he was cutting his teeth on dramatic soaps like Manchester Emergency, his fans had turned on him. No-one, neither critics nor audiences, was prepared to accept him as a serious actor. Taking a role in the BBC’s prestigious two-parter Dombey and Son, his mannered performance was disastrously received. His Christmas single proved popular with mums and dads, but he was derided in the West End musical Don Juan, so he began missing performances, pleading laryngitis. As a consequence, the 2.5-million-pound show ran for just seventeen performances, making enemies of his backers.
He caught sight of his profile in the glass doors, and didn’t like what he saw. At thirty-seven, his boyish looks were going; he had to face the fact that he was starting to look too used-up for romantic leads. His eyes had bagged; his jowls had sagged. He looked tired all the time. He made the tactical error of appearing in a Conservative party broadcast advocating the rights of fox hunters, and lost his remaining student fans overnight. Then came the drunk-driving ban, and the unsuccessful spell in rehab. He gained a reputation as the tabloids’ favourite drunk.
Now he hated his former fan base, never more than when they shouted “Oi, Garfy!” across busy streets, or bellowed his catchphrases as he alighted from cabs. With the grim predictability of a star on the downslope, he punched a photographer outside Stringfellow’s, and was filmed intoxicated and crying in the Met Bar. Knowing that it was a small step from here to playing villains in seaside pantomimes, he reinvented himself again. He became a bornagain Christian, went to Capetown for a face-lift, and hosted a morning cable show that picked up a surprisingly loyal following. His ghostwritten book Loving Someone Other Than Yourself became a top-ten best-seller at the expense of using up his savings. But his fickle TV fans had moved on. The younger generation, whose attention he sought and craved, now loathed him as the representative of everything their parents respected.
As he pressed the entry buzzer beside the glassed doorway in St John Street, Clerkenwell, he considered the thought of another makeover. He needed to choose a charity, one with a high profile, preferably involving children. His agent could do all the sourcing. He’d agree to sign over a percentage of royalties, attend some photoops, perhaps even adopt a Romanian orphan so that teenagers could see he was sincere. They were the audience that counted; they had the buying power that excited sponsors. Hell, at least it was a game plan.
At his back, the swollen pale green sky prepared to release expectorations of rain. He cupped his hands over the glass and tried to see inside, then checked the address on his printout. The offer of the radio voice-over had come to him directly at his home computer, bypassing his agent, the message merely specifying the time and place. He would have binned the request, but it was for a teen magazine and he couldn’t afford to pass up the chance.
He cupped his hands again – no-one in the foyer, all lights out; it felt like the wrong address, except that the number was stencilled above the door in chrome. He tried the handle, and was surprised to find the door unlocked. As he entered, hard neon fuzzed on overhead. He noted the sign pinned on the deserted steel reception desk – Sound Studio 4th Floor – and summoned the elevator.
♦
Anthony Sarne swam with the same languor he possessed out of the water, his tanned arms lifting and falling through the warm blue shadows. He was most contented like this, on his own in the calm evening gloom. Rolling onto his back, he studied the glass roof as he lazily drifted beneath it. He had swum thirty lengths of the tiled Victorian pool; now he could relax in the last few minutes before dressing and going to dinner.
The tight-fitting plastic goggles dyed his cool green world. Chlorine affected his vision adversely. More than ever he found himself wearing shaded lenses of some kind; his eyes were increasingly sensitive to light. He was forty-eight and in good shape, happy with his body, vain about his ability to maintain a flat stomach. He still had his pick of the girls, and his current mistress, an astonishingly athletic nineteen-year-old from Korea, watched him with a possessiveness that made his enemies hate him even more. His wife pretended everything was fine, of course, and rarely came up to town anymore.
At this time of the night there were usually a few lane-ploughing high-flyers left at the Oasis Swimming Pool in Holborn, but tonight they had showered and dressed, to disperse from the city, where they could hone their aggressive business techniques on their loved ones. One other swimmer remained, a boy with cropped black hair and defined musculature, seated motionless on the edge of the deep end. He leaned back, staring into the sharp mesh of light that filtered from an arabesque of glass bricks set in the side wall. Above the diving board, buttresses of bright light from the overhead neon splintered the refracting depths.
Sarne’s feet reached down and touched the sloping floor of the pool. Standing very still, he allowed the water to settle. The boy rose from the poolside and padded away to the changing rooms.
Now there was nothing to keep him in the water. Lately, to his consternation, he had begun swimming almost every other evening. It had taken him a few months to understand that he was not drawn here by the determination to get fit, but by the thought of boys in their swimming trunks. This sea change in his sexuality was unexpected and unwelcome. He was revolted by the surfacing of this secret objective, but found himself helplessly returning to the baths.