May had insisted on reattaching himself to the Vampire investigation. Bryant knew that his own erratic methods could drag them both down, as well as stranding some of the country’s best minds without hope of employment.
You have to give up this behaviour once and for all, Arthur, he thought as he walked to the corner in the rain and tried to remember where he parked the car.
As he passed the murky trash-filled alleyway behind the library, the Highwayman was close enough to reach out and touch his scarfwrapped neck. Instead, the leather-clad wraith shifted back into the darkness until only the dull gleam of his eyes remained.
∨ Ten Second Staircase ∧
34
Elaborate Acts
“Let’s go, Peculiar!”
Dan Banbury raised a hand on either side of him. The rest of the group stood in a ragged circle, joined at their fists. Only Meera Mangeshkar looked sceptical, mainly because she was having to hold Colin Bimsley’s hand.
“Come on, you lot, put your backs into it this time,” said Banbury, attempting to sound hearty.
“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go, Peculiar!” echoed the group, lifting their arms high. They stopped in mid-chant and turned towards the door.
Arthur Bryant was watching them with his mouth open. “What on earth is going on here?” he asked finally. “What are you all doing in my office?”
“Team-building, sir.” Banbury began confidently, but his voice broke. “Stimulates the brain and releases stress-inhibiting hormones. Only way to keep our spirits up.”
“Well, could you kindly not,” snapped Bryant. “I don’t want this place infected with happiness. Nothing will be achieved unless you’re all dead miserable.”
“I thought in the light of Mr Kasavian’s announcement this morning, it might prove beneficial.”
“Well, you thought – What announcement?”
“About closing down the unit on Monday, sir.”
Thunderheads rolled into Bryant’s eyes. “Whatever you’ve heard is wrong, and whoever told you is a lying hound. Besides, if that had been the case, Raymond Land would have been creeping around here by now, visiting his particular form of spiritual ebola on us.”
“Come on, there’s no need to cushion us; we all received the memo, old bean,” said Kershaw nonchalantly.
“I’m not cushioning you, you upper-class nincompoop. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“There’s to be an internal investigation of the whole Leicester Square Vampire business. Your comment about him possessing eternal life made the papers this morning.”
“Eternal life?” repeated John May, stepping in from the corridor. “Tell me you didn’t say that, Arthur.”
“I’ve been misquoted. I said he was an example of an eternal myth,” Bryant barked. “I was just answering a question posted on the unit Web site.”
“And you didn’t realise it was from a journalist?”
“I stand by my remark. The Leicester Square Vampire’s physical appearance is a universal archetype, a perverse spirit of old England, if you will. Take a look at the evidence in engravings and photographs; every few years the same kind of creature appears. Ultimately he eludes capture, because question marks hang over the guilt of the condemned culprit. Look at the mythology surrounding the Vampire – he ran through alleys, launching himself at strangers, drawing symbolic blood before soaring aloft, untouchable and unstoppable, before vanishing through brick walls. He didn’t, of course; they were merely illusions caused by our unwillingness to accept more mundane truths. We want to believe in divine retribution, even when it appears to be directed at innocents. We never checked back far enough. All the evidence was there. When the first crime occurred, we studied only the recent files. Nobody thought of going back through the centuries.”
“I wonder why,” said May bitterly. “Arthur, I gave you licence to be unorthodox, but this mental meandering has to stop.”
“Even you noticed the similarities between the Highwayman and the Vampire,” Bryant reminded him. “The same ideals connect them spiritually and ideologically, if not physically. They share a common root, and it goes right back to Robin Hood. The idea that a murderer can somehow be rehabilitated in the public mind as a hero, a people’s champion, has enduring appeal and goes back hundreds of years. The Vampire knew it, and so does the Highwayman. And the reason why I’m performing this ‘meandering,’ as you put it, is to get the Vampire’s case closed before Faraday uses it against us.”
“Then you’re too late. You should have concentrated on the factual evidence, because that’s all the Home Office is prepared to recognise.”
“We still have time to give them the kind of report they’re expecting.” Bryant slapped the engravings he had pinned behind his desk. “There’s a split between appearance and meaning. If we only read the surface signs, we’ll always get it wrong. Has it ever occurred to you that the time period between fear and acceptance has become radically truncated in the modern age? The Vampire attempted to strike fear into people’s hearts, but compared to most modern criminals, he seems quaint and rather absurd. Two weeks ago a man was kicked to death by fourteen-year-olds and thrown off Hungerford Bridge ‘for a laugh.’ How would the Vampire’s antics have struck them? Would they have shown the respect he craved? The Highwayman is merely the externalisation of a centuries-old inadequacy, except that now his actions are accelerated to suit faster, darker times. We have found our motive.”
“What we need is the identity, Arthur. This is about capture and punishment, not apportioning blame to society. Right from the start, this unit should have been dealing in tangibles. You’ve had your chance and wasted another day. No more poking about in archives or consulting with psychics. Oskar Kasavian is not a man to be trifled with. He’s taking us down because we’ve failed to make connections.”
“The victims have no links, John! Don’t you think I’ve looked? They never appeared on the same TV show or were interviewed in the same article; they never met one another; they shared no mutual mourners, no common age, race, or class. The only common factor between any of them is this man Leo Carey, the publicist who was married to White and worked for Danny Martell.”
“There’s one other,” said May. “Elliot Mason. The relief teacher once taught Paradine’s son.”
“I hate to make matters worse,” Banbury interrupted, “but I got the results of the footprints back this morning. It seems we have two radically different sizes of the same boot. The first print, taken from the floor of the Burroughs gallery, is a size eleven. The second, lifted from the roof of the Oasis pool, is a size eight. We know from the height of the gallery tank that he would have to be abnormally tall – and extraordinarily strong – to lift White over the edge. However, we should be able to get another height estimate from the picture taken by the girls on the Roland Plumbe Community Estate.”
“According to Jack Renfield, the picture wasn’t taken there at all,” said May.
“Doesn’t have an effect on the result,” said Banbury, tapping open the photograph on May’s computer. He expanded the background brickwork behind the blurred shot of the Highwayman. “These are half-bond yellow brick balustrades, so by factoring in the standard sizes of brickwork we can calculate their distance from the foreground figure, and work out his approximate height. Either he’s bending his knees, or he’s become shorter.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re telling me our Highwayman is capable of changing size.”