Bryant & May - The Burning Man (25 page)

‘The fire! Yes, the fire! My husband needs me, just as it was foretold! Come with me.’ She led the way across the muddied dump to the darkness of the railway arches, where a simulacrum of a room had been laid out under the dripping brickwork.

‘Everyone needs a place where the soul can find tranquisity,’ announced Esmeralda, bracing herself and issuing a sound like someone gently lowering a toecap on to a set of bagpipes. ‘Excuse me. Sprouts.’

Land looked about. There was a lumpy red Axminster rug, an eviscerated brown leather armchair, its stuffing spewing through burst seams, a broken yellow standard lamp with a torch taped around its top, a Primus stove, a kitchen table with three legs and several half-collapsed bookcases packed with mildewed volumes of Hungarian history and back issues of
Vogue
.

‘Please remember to wipe your sleet,’ said Esmeralda, adopting a comedy-toff voice. ‘Ay’d make you a drink but it’s the maid’s day orf.’

Land made a show of thrashing his shoes clean and waited while his hostess rooted about among the twisted bookshelves.
OK
, he thought,
this is a test. Arthur wants to see if I can come back with something.

‘So, fire, eh?’ she called back over a hunched shoulder. ‘You know, there are places where fire reveals the future. Oh, yes. The shape of cinders leaping from the hearth foretells births and deaths, or the arrival of an important visitor. And of course the flames themselves transmute into tableaux that only the wise can interpret. Fire-reading was always practised by the oldest woman in our village.’

‘What village was that?’ Land asked.

‘Hampstead Village. The hearth mother protected the fire and prevented it from burning out. The Devil, too. When a fire won’t draw, it’s because the Devil is nearby. You must never throw bread crusts into the fireplace because it will drag Satan down your chimney. Oh, yes. Fire is resurrection. Think of the phoenix, reborn in flame. Fire is Purgatory. It cleanses and purifies.’

‘But fire kills people,’ said Land, feeling he should say something that made sense.

‘We must all die in order to be reborn. The myth of Osiris, not reborn into normal life but into a higher plane of consciousness. “I shall not decay,” says Osiris in
The Book of the Dead
, “I shall not rot, nor putrefy, I shall have my being, I shall live.” Osiris the god of the afterlife, with green skin and leaves for hair, from which we gain the English myth of Jack-in-the-Green, the god of natural regeneration.’ Esmeralda spun around and rolled her eyes at him meaningfully. Something fell out of her nose. ‘Eternal life is the eternal dream, a fever-dream of spermatozoa, the
prima materia
which explodes with the birthing-heat of the universe, the driving force of the world. Oh, yes. But balancing Osiris is his sister Nephthys, the goddess of mourning, of rivers and night and the Fall. Mary Magdalene is Nephthys embodied, a symbol that proves our world has fallen.’ She pointed down at the mildewed carpet. ‘Before we can rise again we must touch the lowest point, battle our demons, journey through madness. Fire is our only way out of darkness. It is the tool of revolution, the weapon of the rebel cutting the bonds of imperialism, a sword for one who has already fallen.’

‘Who
are
you?’ asked Land, staying downwind but intrigued nevertheless.

‘Who
was
I,’ she corrected, dragging down books, glancing inside them and casting them aside. ‘I was a scholar, an iconoclast, an academic, an epidemic of torrential genius. With knowledge comes opinion, and opinions are not wanted in the grand halls of knowledge. In short, I was chucked out of Oxford by a bunch of wankers. Oh, yes. For teaching insurrection. Of course I was; it’s my specialist subject. Ah, here it is.’ She raised a damp-fattened book and cracked it open on what Land assumed was her knee. ‘Do you know what distinguishes those who seek to harness the iconoclastic properties of fire? Most revolutionaries are not afraid to die, but the fire-wielder
expects
to perish. Everything must burn.
Everything
. Otherwise there can be no rebirth. This is the pure heart of the cosmic riddle; for goodness and purity to rise, all must first be lost.’

‘And that’s in there, is it?’ asked Land, pointing to the book.

‘This?’ Esmeralda looked surprised. ‘No, I’m deciding what to have for dinner.’ She raised the cover so that he could read the title:
Nigella’s Favourite Pasta Recipes
. ‘Stay if you like; I have a spare plate somewhere. You investigate things, don’t you? So do I. I could take you under my wing and show you a few new wrinkles.’

‘That’s kind of you, but no thanks,’ said Land, backing away.

‘Never mind. It’s been lovely. We must do this again!’ called Esmeralda as he retreated. ‘Are you married?’

‘No,’ he replied, thinking about his newly implemented divorce.

‘Well, you are now!’ she shouted, rubbing her filthy fingers at him, and he stumbled off for the safety of the high street.

It was time, once more, for someone to die.

The mixture wasn’t very hard to make. A blend of saltpetre, charcoal and sulphur, one to oxidize, two to provide the propellant. The main problem was its slow decomposition rate, which meant that unless it was placed under pressure, or in some kind of tube or box, it would simply burn out.

It was granulated, but sensitive to changes in the weather, so the timings were hard to predict. He wasn’t a scientist but had been able to find everything he needed online, and the instructions were simple. He liked using different methods of dispatch; it kept everyone on their toes.

He had allowed for a mere handful of deaths, nothing in the grand scheme of things. Hell, seven cyclists had been killed in the last two weeks on London’s roads, and the world had not stopped turning. But worlds might be transformed by removing the right people.

At the outset of his plan, the riots were simply fortuitous. Now he saw that the deaths could propel events. They could really count for something. So far the press had been silent. Well, he would change all that.

He let himself into the boarding house. The hall was poorly lit and smelled of vegetable stew. The landlady heard him on the stair and popped out of her room as if on a spring, something she did with the regularity of a Bavarian barometer. ‘So you’re back, Mr Flannery. Because I wondered when you’d be in. I didn’t see you yesterday.’

‘Well, I was out looking for work, Mrs Demitriou,’ he explained.

‘Only I did ask for the rent in advance, and there are my other tenants to think of.’

He failed to see how his non-payment of the rent affected anyone else who lived in the house. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘it’s very hard finding a job right now, but I’m hoping something will happen by the weekend.’

‘Very well.’ She spoke with an air of exhausted patience. ‘Only if you can’t pay by Sunday, I’m going to have to ask for my keys back. And you know that if I find any damage to the room, you’ll have to pay for repair or replacement.’

The old bitch was clearly counting on that. She had seen around the edge of his door and noted the charts and clippings he had pinned up everywhere. Not that she had a hope in hell of finding another lodger to take the room, because there was a palpable smell of damp, the boiler didn’t work properly, the sink leaked and there was a great brown stain spreading over the ceiling like a shadow on a smoker’s lung.

‘Oh, there’s a package for you. Mr Demitriou took it in but he can’t be the concierge, not with his back. So just this once, then, yes?’ She indicated a brown cardboard box on the floor.

‘Thank you.’ He collected the box, which was surprisingly heavy, and headed for his room.

He had no money left for food now. He raided the Demitrious’ kitchen when they were watching TV and ate out-of-date sandwiches he found in shop bins. There were always plenty to be found behind the takeaways in the Square Mile. He was used to being hungry. It didn’t bother him. But the stomach cramps were getting worse, and he knew he needed a stronger antacid. He cursed himself for not searching through Jonathan De Vere’s bathroom cabinet properly.

And there was another problem, some kind of police unit that had been appointed to investigate. He’d seen several of them in King’s Cross wearing matching black jackets that weren’t standard police issue. And there were two men who seemed to be in charge, one in a huge overcoat who looked incredibly old, the other a little younger and smartly suited. There was also an Amazonian woman with dyed blonde hair who resembled some forgotten movie star. They weren’t regular Met officers. He couldn’t imagine how they had been assigned, or why, but he needed a contingency plan to take care of them. He knew that if he deviated too far from the original idea and started extemporizing, he increased the risk of being caught.

Locking the door behind him, he set the box on the kitchen table and cut it open. Inside was the final item he needed. Everything else was in place.

He had decided against gunpowder because of the problems of placing it under pressure, and settled instead for fulminate of mercury, a primary explosive that was very sensitive to friction and was used mainly for blasting caps. The crazy thing was that they kept it in the science labs of most secondary schools, and it was absurdly easy to get hold of because it wasn’t considered part of a terrorist’s arsenal. The equipment in the box ensured that he would be able to move it freely. All he had left to do was pack it correctly and prepare its installation.

He caught sight of himself in the spotted mirror above the sink. He looked unwell. ‘It’s showtime,’ he told the cadaverous face, smiling so hard that he immediately started to cry.

Like Raymond Land, Fraternity DuCaine had also been following Bryant’s instructions, waiting in the shadow of the grey iron bridge until the Findersbury Bank opened on Thursday morning.

The Square Mile had become a no-go zone for almost everyone except the protestors and the police. The morning papers had been filled with photographs of jammed motorways and packed trains as residents fled the city. DuCaine was reminded of old photographs of evacuees leaving stations at the start of the Blitz.

Crutched Friars had now been completely sealed off at either end, so that the demonstrators could only get as close as the next street, while the few remaining employees continued to use the side entrance accessed from the alleyway.

The PCU had been denied a warrant for the premises as they had no grounds for conducting a search. Ironically, the request had been refused by one of their own, Darren Link, because the Serious Fraud Squad was conducting its own investigation on the premises, and needed to ensure that there was no contamination of evidence by other teams.

This created a fresh problem for DuCaine, who was planning to gain access by using one of the swipe cards Bryant had filched from Dexter Cornell’s house. Banbury had printed DuCaine a fake staff card, but he would have to pass a battery of bank employees and Fraud Squad officers, any one of whom could get him into serious trouble if he was caught. Knowing that DuCaine was a naturally natty dresser, Bryant had suggested that he should pass himself off as a low-level bank employee in a suit and tie, but DuCaine was starting to doubt that the subterfuge would work. Everyone would be watching their colleagues’ backs, knowing that someone was leaking information to the press. So far, news of the three murders had been successfully sidelined, but Cornell’s life was being autopsied daily in the national headlines.

On the other side of the bridge an argument had broken out. DuCaine went over to see what was happening.

‘I can’t deliver down there, they won’t let me in today,’ complained a young Polish man on a bicycle. In his wicker basket stood a stack of lunch packs bearing ‘Cheapside Bakery’ labels.

‘I’ll get them in for you,’ said DuCaine, flipping out his ID. ‘Give me the basket and your jacket. I’ll bring them back.’

The delivery man’s reluctance faded on sight of the police badge, and he helped DuCaine load up with lunch packs. The brown linen bakery jacket was a bad fit, but he pushed up the sleeves so that it looked passable.

As he could not risk ringing the bell for entrance, DuCaine tried the swipe cards and found that the third one worked. Taking the lunch packs with him, he slipped through the door and into the hall. Inside, the ground floor was in virtual darkness because of the chipboard that had been nailed over the windows.

He passed a pair of harassed-looking assistants on the stairs. For once DuCaine’s colour gave him an advantage; in an old-world bank like this it unfortunately appeared that a black man in a service industry uniform was less likely to stand out than one in a suit.

On the second floor, when a secretary came out of her office as he passed and asked him for a sandwich, DuCaine realized he had no idea how much to charge her, so he suggested £2.50.

The secretary peered at the contents of the sandwich box. ‘You’ve dropped your prices,’ she said. ‘I’ll take another one.’

He used the fire stairs to get to the fourth floor. The glass offices on either side of the main corridor were filled with employees anxiously tapping at their terminal keyboards, and if they noticed him they soon looked away again. He found the boardroom – the only room with frosted windows – at the end of the hall, but the door was shut. One of the other swipe cards opened it, but as they were all blank it was tricky keeping them separate.