“Your landlady won’t be pleased. Alma always had a soft spot for you.”
“Can we get back to the subject in hand? I don’t ask you about your bedroom arrangements.” Bryant reknotted his scarf, tightening it in some agitation. “What else do you have on Smithfield?”
“I know it used to be called ‘Smoothfield,’ a flat ten-acre grass field with a horse market on Fridays. Early twelfth century, that was. Farmers added other livestock, punters went to watch tournaments and jousts, then they came for public hangings. It was all considered entertainment. Witches and heretics were roasted alive in cages. In Mary Tudor’s reign, over two hundred martyrs were burned. Duels and disorder, death and drunken debauchery, that’s Smithfield for you. Now it’s all rowdy nightclubs. Goes to show some things hardly change.”
“Perhaps it was no accident he picked these sites,” said Bryant.
“What about the other two?”
“I thought of that. The Oasis Swimming Pool is very near the site of Seven Dials’ notorious rookeries; they sheltered many a famous murderer. Which leaves Burroughs’s art gallery on the South Bank as the odd one out. That part of the Thames was hardly more than a rural riverbank until the Festival of Britain in 1951. My theory is that he had no choice in that location, because it’s where White’s art piece had already been installed.”
“A bit of a dead end there, then. You must have tons of forensic information to go on, even if you’re low on suspects. Surely the bizarre methods of death have left you with something?”
“Less than you’d think. We’re due some more results later today.”
“So what do you need me for?”
“I thought you might – oh, I don’t know, help me get a synapse jump-started or something.”
“Well, I can certainly help you with highwaymen. Come with me.” Golifer led the way to a circular iron staircase at the rear of the shop and squeezed his bulk down it. They descended into a mildewy basement filled with overloaded shelves. “They’ve always been a popular subject for prints. After all, so many of them became folk heroes. Let me see what we’ve got.” He slid out a long box from beneath one of the counters and began drawing out envelopes. “Take a look at these. We’ve got prints of around thirty highwaymen operating in England, from Captain James Hind to Jack Shrimpton and John Cottington, but of course there were hundreds of infamous highwaymen – and a few women. The trouble is that most of the illustrations are rather similar in styling.” He carefully lifted a sheet of tissue paper covering one of the prints, which bore the caption Mrs Huntingdon is much received of dissatisfaction by robbery and an offer of marriage from Mull-Sack the Murderer.
“These are all hand-tinted from books published between 1880 and 1925, when the subject came back into vogue. The main features are common to your photographs: flintlock pistol, tricorn hat, greatcoat – usually crimson, occasionally blue – gloves and high riding boots.”
“What’s that?” asked Bryant, pulling out his reading glasses to squint at an object depicted on the bottom of the sheet.
“Ah, that’s a rather more private part of the highwayman’s lore,” said Golifer, “a secret known only to London’s criminal fraternity. It’s the fabled highwayman’s key.”
Bryant found himself looking at the key left behind in the Burroughs gallery.
∨ Ten Second Staircase ∧
31
The Assonance of Myths
John May pushed his way between the moping trumpet vines draped from the railway embankment as the drainpipe-thin boy passed by no more than six feet away from him.
He had intended to talk to Luke Tripp as he exited the school, but something had held him back. The detective’s age counted against him; the boy would not confide in someone he saw as ancient and alien. He was making his way alone from St Crispin’s, and had reached the edge of the Roland Plumbe Community Estate. If the private-school pupils were wary of crossing the estate gang’s territory, their caution had not infected Luke, who kept a steady unfaltering pace as he passed into the shadow of the ground-floor columns. Aware that he was the only other figure crossing the bare open space of the estate’s grounds, May dropped back.
Tripp knew exactly where he was going. Not once did he raise his head to check his route, or hesitate before altering direction. His slender form appeared and vanished between the columns as May kept pace. He thought of something Bryant had said: Even if he doesn’t know it, the boy holds the key. What had he meant?
Luke was perhaps a hundred paces from him when he broke into a run. The little devil knows I’m here, thought May, matching his speed. What does he think he’s doing? The boy reached the concrete staircase at the end of the corridor and took the steps two, sometimes three at a time. May felt his pulse rise as he tried to keep up. He smelled the acrid stench of urine. As they passed the first-floor corridor he momentarily lost sight of his quarry but heard his shoes thumping on the steps above. Then, as if he had been lifted into the air, they simply stopped.
May halted, too, listening to the faintly falling rain above the pounding of his heart. He moved cautiously upward, keeping to the dark inner core of the stairs, until he reached the point where the boy should have been. Looking down, he saw where the wet footprints ceased. Although the staircase was open on one side, there was nothing beyond the waist-high concrete barricade but rainy air beneath low cinereous clouds; he was between the first and second floors of the block.
May’s nerve endings tingled with unease. He felt himself in the presence of the Highwayman. Foolishly, he had ventured here alone. To open his radio line now would be to give away his position on the stairs.
A time switch click-clocked above him, and the stairway was suddenly outlined in dim yellow light. Above a burnt-out sofa and a drift of beer cans, he saw the hand-painted stencils that twined and crowded each other across the concrete. Familiar gang signs of fate and luck: crowns, stars, pitchforks, hearts, horns, dice, pyramids. He peered closer at the recurring stencilled motif of black V’s, and realised he was looking at the tricorn hat and collar once again. As a familiar spasm in his back kicked in, he stood upright to ease the pain, and found himself faced with a dozen watchful shadows.
♦
“We collected a key from the floor of the gallery, beside the installation that contained Saralla White’s body,” Bryant explained. “Made of aluminium, looking exactly like the one in this picture.”
“Well, you’ve been left a pun of sorts,” said Oliver Golifer. “‘A thieves’ key, unlocked for the good of the public,’ as I believe the city marshal once called it. The key is meant to consist of three main sections: the ring, the pipe – that is, the stem – and the wards, which are the cut sections that interface with the inside of the lock. There are fourteen wards in all. The key and its parts are both literal and figurative.” He unfolded a second print of a highwayman, down the side of which was printed a list of words and phrases with the S’s and G’s joined. “The ring is made of gold, signifying the virtuous profession of highwaymen. The pipe is made of silver, and hollow, signifying the secret art of handing out bribes. The wards – well, here you are: First, boldness. Second, neatness. Third, flattery. Fourth, treachery. Fifth, diligence. And so on through obedience, lying, and cruelty – these last few words are water-stained and unreadable, but you get the idea. You’ll probably find books that go into great detail about the thieves’ key if you’re that interested, but it seems a bit arcane. I can’t imagine your average murderer would know or care much about them.”