Bryant & May - London's Glory: (Short Stories) (Bryant & May Collection) (5 page)

‘So it’s fair to say you have the school uniform racket stitched up,’ said Bryant, laughing at his own joke. Miss Prentice shot him a look that could have dented a frying pan.

He placed the plastic bag on her counter and shook the scrap of material out of it. ‘I presume you’ve seen one of these before?’

Miss Prentice pushed back her iron-grey hair and peered closely. ‘That’s one of ours. It’s the manufacturer’s tag from the school tie. It’s been cut off. They can’t be torn. And it’s not more than eighteen months old.’

‘How can you tell?’ Bryant asked.

‘We briefly flirted with nylon thread but switched back to our own blend after complaints. This is from the new stock.’

‘Can you provide us with a list of all the customers who have bought a tie like this?’ asked May.

Miss Prentice pursed her lips alarmingly. ‘I’d rather not divulge our client details.’

‘Good Lord, you’re not a doctor, you’re flogging togs to nippers,’ said Bryant, exasperated. ‘Everybody’s a big shot. I want a list of all the parents who bought this tie, right now, please.’

‘There are one hundred and sixty boys in Covent Garden day school and four hundred and twenty in the main boarding school in Sussex.’ Miss Prentice was suddenly agreeable. She had been stood up to, and respected that.

‘Is there any way of narrowing that number down?’ asked May.

‘Let me see. Actually, yes. There are three ties, first year, junior and sixth form. They’re all slightly different in length and colour. This label is from the first-year size.’

‘We only need you to check the boarding school,’ said Bryant.

May was puzzled. ‘Why?’

‘This boy’s family lives in Lewes. He and his mother had come up to town for the Christmas lights. He was in the first year so the tag is likely to be from someone of the same age.’ He turned to Miss Prentice. ‘St Crispin’s. I’m sure it provides a wonderful education but I vaguely remember it being in the news.’

‘I – heard something …’ Miss Prentice began tentatively. ‘There was a culture of bullying among the new boys. Of course, you tend to get these things in boarding schools but this one was particularly unfortunate.’

‘Unfortunate in what way?’

‘I think a boy died.’

‘How long ago?’

‘About a year, right around this time.’

May had already found a report of the case on his phone. ‘Andrew Gormley, aged eleven,’ he said. ‘Hanged himself in the school dorm. An independent investigation carried out by the board of governors found a culture of persistent bullying existed among the first-year students.’

‘I remember Andrew.’ Miss Prentice suddenly softened, and Bryant saw kindness in her grey eyes. ‘He was a sweet little boy. I remember fearing for him.’

‘What do you mean?’ Bryant asked.

‘He didn’t want to board,’ she said. ‘He was a very gentle, rather fragile-looking child. You worry about the ones who can’t stand up for themselves.’ Her steeliness returned. ‘But it’s important that they learn to do so. It’s a training course for later life. The world is a cruel place, Mr Bryant, as I’m sure you know all too well.’

Mr Gormley lived in Redington Road, one of those twisting Hampstead backstreets that had once been filled with gruff artists and lady novelists but was now entirely the province of international bankers. Bryant preferred to catch those he interviewed by surprise, but as Gormley was liable to be out he phoned first to arrange a meeting. That evening the detectives walked down the road from the tube, and found themselves inside a Christmas card. The thick snow had rendered the winding hillside road more picturesque than ever. The laden trees and holly bushes, the terracotta chimneypots beneath lowering yellow skies, the odd red robin on a gatepost … there were only a few tyre tracks to mar the perfect scene.

‘I’m sorry, gentlemen, I’ve only just got back. I may have to take some calls,’ said Edward Gormley, shaking their hands. ‘We’ve got a wildly fluctuating exchange rate on our hands tonight. It’s all about finding the most favourable rate for our clients. Can I get you anything?’

‘We just have a few simple questions, then we’ll get out of your hair,’ said May. Gormley was completely and prematurely grey. He looked as if he hadn’t taken a day off work since his son died. The detectives were shown into a sterile, elegant front room with charcoal walls, filled with scenic sketches and watercolours. There were odd spaces, Bryant noted, as if someone had removed a number of items. He could smell an acrimonious divorce a mile away.

‘It’s about your son,’ said May. ‘We understand there was an investigation into his school’s culture of bullying.’

‘Yes, but as it was conducted by the school’s own board of governors nothing happened as a result of it,’ said the financier. ‘They were scared of putting parents off. Why, has there been a development?’

‘It’s an ongoing investigation,’ May explained. ‘I know it’s a matter of record now, but we’d like to hear what happened to your son, if you wouldn’t mind.’

‘Andrew hated it at St Crispin’s and wanted to come home,’ Gormley explained. ‘I was persuaded that this was the initial reaction of many children away from home for the first time, and told him he had to stay. I later found out that he tried to run away on several occasions.’

‘Did you ever find out who was bullying him, or why?’

‘Not really. There had been some cruel things posted online, but Andrew never named anyone in particular.’

‘So the name Sebastian Carroll-Williams doesn’t ring any bells?’

‘I think he might have been in Andrew’s class. Why?’

‘He’s dead,’ said Bryant.

‘How? What happened?’

‘He ran out into the road after being frightened by someone.’

The financier remained motionless, simply staring back at them. All that could be heard was the mantelpiece clock ticking loudly. The phone rang suddenly. ‘Excuse me,’ he apologized, ‘I have to take this.’ He left the room.

‘What just happened?’ asked May.

‘Something interesting.’ Bryant rose and walked to the window overlooking the back garden. At the other end of the lawn was a bird table. A single set of tracks led out to it and back, through the otherwise pristine snow. Bryant frowned.

May knew that look all too well. ‘What are you thinking?’ he asked.

‘Hang on a minute.’ Bryant left the room, heading towards the rear of the house. He was gone for less than a minute, scooting back just in time to reseat himself before the financier returned.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Gormley. ‘Where were we?’

‘Winter’s tough on the birds, isn’t it?’ said Bryant. ‘It’s nice to see you’ve been feeding them.’

‘Oh.’ Gormley turned around to look out of the window. ‘It’s very calming, having them around.’

‘The wellingtons,’ said Bryant.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘By the back door, still wet. I thought you’d only just made it back. It’s not normally the first thing you’d do when you come in, is it? Feed the birds?’

Gormley checked his watch. ‘Well, I may have been in a little longer.’

‘An unusual colour for wellington boots,’ said Bryant. His partner shot him a where-are-you-going-with-this look. ‘Red, I mean. What did you do with the rest of the outfit?’

Gormley held his eyes again with the same unnerving stare. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘I think you do, Father Christmas.’

This time the stare could not hold. The boots were hard evidence. ‘They don’t supply the outfits,’ he said, his voice thinning in pain. ‘You have to buy your own.’

‘Didn’t they think it was strange, someone like you applying for a temporary job as a department store Santa?’

‘You’d be surprised who takes a job as a Santa. People you’d never expect.’

‘And you didn’t know that the boy went under a bus.’ Bryant took out the tie tag and placed it on the coffee table between them. ‘I made a mistake,’ he admitted, ‘thinking this tie label belonged to your son. It didn’t, did it?’

‘No,’ said Gormley softly.

‘Tell me how it worked,’ said Bryant.

‘I never had the chance to go to a good school,’ Gormley said. ‘Our divorce was tough on Andrew. He was a bit of a cry-baby about the whole thing. I could afford to give him a decent education. I thought it would toughen him up. Instead he got picked on. They called him “Gormless” – not much of an imaginative leap there. It only takes one boy to poison the rest.’

‘And that boy was Sebastian Carroll-Williams.’

‘I complained about him, but my complaints were ignored. “It’s what happens,” they told me. “It’ll pass. Strong metal must be forged in flames.” But it didn’t pass. The bullying got worse. I take it you know about the ties.’

‘Why don’t you tell us?’ said May.

‘The only time they ever come off is when you go to bed. They’re a mark of respect and honour. Schools like St Crispin’s have strange old customs. If someone cuts the tag off your tie, your life at the school is over. You lose any respect you might have won. You become an object of ridicule. Sebastian cut off Andrew’s tag while he was in the showers, so after that it wasn’t a case of my son being picked on by one kid; they all did it. They sent him to Coventry, took away his pocket money, ate his lunches, tore up his schoolwork, defaced his books. And there was nothing I could do to stop it.’

A look of devastation crossed Gormley’s face. ‘I was busy trying to sort out the end of my marriage and keep the business afloat. I should have done something about it earlier. After Andrew died, I kept an eye on that little thug. I talked to some of the other parents and found out that his mother was bringing him up to London to do some Christmas shopping. One parent told me that Mrs Carroll-Williams had a tradition of forcing her child to visit Santa, to have his picture taken. It was the perfect opportunity. I paid one of the Santas to get lost for the afternoon and took his place. You can’t tell who’s who behind those beards. As Sebastian was struggling to get into his polar-bear outfit I moved his tie over his shoulder so that he could get the suit on. I cut off the tag and slipped it into a gift box. I wanted him to suffer the same punishment my son suffered. I guess when he realized what had happened he fled.’ He looked even more haunted now. ‘I didn’t kill him, I just made him feel the same way Andrew felt. There’s nothing you can arrest me for, except perhaps impersonating Father Christmas.’

‘If you hadn’t panicked the child he’d be alive today,’ said May. ‘The prosecution will play on that.’

‘I lost my wife and son, and I’m losing my business,’ said Gormley. ‘For God’s sake, isn’t that enough?’

‘You created another grieving parent,’ said May angrily. ‘No one should lose their child, at Christmas or at any other time.’

It was a conclusion that satisfied no one. As they trudged back up the hill in the snow, Bryant was silent and thoughtful. Finally, just before the pair reached Hampstead Heath, he spoke. ‘You think about them a lot, don’t you?’

May looked up. ‘Who, my son and granddaughter? Of course I do. He won’t speak to me, and she’s so terrified of turning into her mother that she had to leave the country to feel at peace. Of course I think of them, especially around this time of the year.’

‘Christmas is hard on people like us,’ said Bryant, poking at a frozen pigeon with his walking stick.

‘One tends to think of what might have been,’ said May sadly.

‘Well, you’ve always got me,’ said Bryant. ‘Come on, I’ll buy you a pint in the Flask.’

They made their way past an amateur theatrical group in Victorian dress loudly performing
A Christmas Carol
outside a supermarket. It was a very Hampstead scene.

‘I suppose Christmas serves its purpose, if only in reviving memories of happy times,’ Bryant conceded as he eyed the declaiming theatricals. ‘But if that Tiny Tim comes anywhere near me with his collection bucket I’ll break his other leg.’

It’s hard to explain the genesis of some of these stories without giving away too much. This one had its roots in a trip I took and a story I read in my local newspaper, one of those lazily written rags filled with baking contests and arguments about parking. Often stories arrive from two conflicting pieces of information. Also, I’m a huge lover of locked-room mysteries, and have learned that they don’t simply have to take place in a room. John Dickson Carr was the master of this form and wrote variations that increased in ornate complexity. He wasn’t remotely interested in offering his readers realism or relevance, and instead provided instances involving witchcraft, automata, snowstorms, impossible footprints, corpses that walked through walls, and in one case a victim who dived into a swimming pool and vanished. I’ll never beat him but I can try …

‘Remember that parachutist who was alive when he jumped out of his plane but was found to have been strangled when he landed in a field? Well, you’re going to love this one, trust me.’ John May took the car keys away from his partner and threw him an overcoat. ‘Come on, I’ll drive. You’ll need that, and your filthy old scarf. It’s cold where we’re going.’

‘I’m not stepping outside of Zone One,’ Arthur Bryant warned tetchily. ‘I remember the last time we left London. There were trees everywhere. It was awful.’

‘It’ll do you good to get some fresh air. You shouldn’t spend all your time cooped up in here.’

The offices of the Peculiar Crimes Unit occupied a particularly unappealing corner of North London’s Caledonian Road. Most of the building’s doors stuck and hardly any of its windows opened. Renovations had been halted pending a budget review, which had left several of the unheated rooms with asbestos tiles, fizzing electrics, missing floorboards and what could only be described as ‘a funny smell’. Bryant felt thoroughly at home in this musty deathtrap, and had to be prised out with offers of murder investigations. It was particularly hard to prise him out today as his cardigan had got stuck to the wet varnish on his office door lintel. ‘All right,’ he said grudgingly, ‘if I have to go. But this had better be good.’

As the elderly detectives made their way down to the car park, May handed his partner a photograph. ‘She looks as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, but don’t be deceived. The Met has had its collective eye on her for a couple of years now. Marsha Kastopolis. Her husband owns a lot of the flats and shops along the Caledonian Road. He’s been putting her name on property documents as some kind of tax dodge. The council reckons it’s been trying to pin health-and-safety violations on them, but no action has ever succeeded against her or her husband. I think it’s likely they bought someone on the committee.’