Bryant & May - The Burning Man (34 page)

It was too exposed here; there were no columns to hide behind. All she could do was keep moving out of the way and pray that Bimsley got to her soon.

Finding any officer support in the area proved to be a joke; police services in the new financial district had been almost entirely withdrawn. Without a bus or cab in sight, the detective constable realized it would be faster to run. He knew his way through some of the back roads, and stayed on Southwark Street, heading towards the river. Parts had changed out of all recognition since he was a nipper, transformed into a canyon of blank-glass office blocks. He no longer knew which cross-streets could be taken as shortcuts. Immense advertising billboards flashed past, consumerist memes that promised blue skies, clean air, fresh starts. At the great blue bridge he swung off and headed across the road, slaloming between the vehicles.

‘Can you see him, Joanna?’ he asked his mobile.

‘Yes, he’s just come up on to the platform at Blackfriars station. He’s heading towards me.’

‘Is there anyone around you?’

‘No, no one, I think a train’s just been through.’

‘Then you have to get off the platform and put a door between him and you. Look around: there must be some kind of access back down to the Thames walkway.’ He tried to listen as he skirted the vehicles, but it was hard to hear her above the noise of traffic and the motionless helicopter overhead.

‘There’s something that looks like the door to the roof. It doesn’t seem to have—’ The connection suddenly broke.

Colin swore and speed-dialled back, but his call failed. Pocketing the phone, he ran faster.

Joanna had cut off the call. She was sure she could be heard across the empty platform. A narrow grey steel door had been propped slightly ajar with a packet of cigarettes. Inside was a short, steep staircase rising to the great solar panels that spanned the entire station roof. Somebody working on the station came here to smoke.

The bitter wind snatched her breath away. She found herself on top of the station bridge with only a single low handrail and a slender walkway between herself and the blossoming brown water. The angled panels of the station’s energy system were tall enough to hide her. She looked over the side. Far below, the tide was heading out.

Moving as fast as she dared, she reached the centre of the bridge and ducked into the shelter of the great glass cells. She had no way of knowing if he had seen her use the door and followed her up, and could not raise her head for fear of attracting him, so she crouched there, hoping that Bimsley could find her signal from his GPS.

Colin reached the station platform and saw only three commuters – a bad sign. He hadn’t passed her on the walkway, so she must have taken another exit. He was about to head back down when he noticed a shadow passing against the glass roof.

He found an access door easily enough, but it was shut from the inside. When he threw his bulk against it, some kind of obstruction grated against the concrete floor. There had to be a matching door on the other platform. Quickly checking in each direction, he dropped down on to the line and ran across the tracks. The matching door was there all right, propped open. It led directly to the roof, but if anyone was up here they had to be standing between the solar panels, and there were hundreds of them stretching like shiny oversized playing cards in either direction, connecting both sides of the river.

Before he could reach the centre of the bridge there was a terrible cry from the south side. He ran towards the sound, but something dark launched from further along the walkway, falling out into the air.

He got himself to the side in time to see the splash, and knew that Papis had been shoved over. Even if she survived the fall, she would not remain alive for long. The water was bitingly cold and the outgoing current flowed several times faster than anyone could possibly swim. Last year he had been called to Waterloo Bridge after two drunk students had dived over the side for a bet on a sunny, calm day when the tide was at a low ebb. Their bodies were eventually found thirteen miles out on one of the lowest reaches of the estuary.

He had no choice; without thinking twice he pulled off his rubberized jacket and threw himself from the side of the roof, aiming for the spot where she had hit the water.

As he dropped under the girders of the bridge, the wind punched through the arches and hammered at his body, twisting him. Colin had two advantages: he knew how to fall, and he had a good idea where the tide would take him. He had studied flow maps of the Thames as part of his training for secondment to the River Police. He had even swum the river once for a bet.

The water was viscous and opaque, instantly blinding him. He knew not to fight against the direction of the flow, but it was essential to break the surface as quickly as possible. As he did so he saw that he was being swept towards Bankside Pier, which meant that she would be, too. The water’s turbulence was astonishing. It dragged at his clothes like a living thing. A length of wood as large as a railway sleeper caught his chest, spinning him around. He followed the hazy light from above, righting himself.

The foreshores had been cleared of debris, but the river’s deeper central channel held all manner of knife-sharp dangers. He could not lift his body far enough from the grip of the tide to spot Joanna, and was drawn down, beneath the moored barges at Bankside.

It took all of his remaining strength to fight his way back up and strike out for the embankment. He forced his limbs to move until there was mud beneath his boots, then began walking.

There was no sign of anyone else. He knew he had made a judgement based on emotional response, not logic. He should have stayed on the bridge and gone after her attacker.

As he climbed out on to the rock-studded shore, spitting foetid water, he looked across at the pier and saw that something white and red had beached against its lower struts. The flowers of Joanna’s dress were pulled back and forth by the treacherous tides. Her head and shoulders were raised above the waterline, but pale hair obscured her features. She lay in a bower of algae, a shattered Ophelia washed up near the banks of the Globe Theatre.

‘Oi, Frodo – I want a word with you.’ Bryant was sitting on a tyre swing eating jelly babies, and threw one at Augustine Cornell as he passed.

The boy appeared even smaller in his cap and blue school jacket with yellow piping, like a tiny naval cadet. He picked the candy out of his shirt collar and looked around, spotting the detective. ‘What’s the problem, Rip Van Tinkle, do you need to find the toilet urgently?’

‘No, but I took one of my brown pills earlier so I haven’t got long. Where’s your old man?’

‘Not around. Can you not harsh my style by turning up at school? It’s embarrassing.’

‘You haven’t seen me be embarrassing yet,’ Bryant warned, nonchalantly pushing back on the swing.

‘Mr Cornell is at an investors’ meeting,’ said a tall black man in a trim dark suit and a very white starched shirt. ‘Can I help you?’

Bryant twisted back and saw the gleaming black Mercedes limo parked outside the school gates. ‘You the dogsbody?’

‘I’m Bratling, the chauffeur. I’m here to pick up the boy. You’re making him late. Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to talk to kids outside schools?’

‘I don’t make a habit of it unless I’m thinking of arresting them.’ He flicked open his badge case and waved it under the chauffeur’s nose. ‘Go on, hop it.’

‘I’ll be beside the car, Mr Cornell,’ said the mindful Bratling, who did not want trouble.

‘Your dad’s flat is only five minutes up the road. Why do you need a car?’ Bryant asked the boy. ‘You should get some walking in occasionally; you’re already a bit porky.’

‘I’m nine,’ said Augustine. ‘I don’t need to start exercising until long after you’re dead.’

‘Oh, a smart-mouth, eh? I’ll cut a deal with you, Mr Big Brain. We’ll take a short walk together. Bratling can follow behind us if he wants. And you can answer some questions for me.’

‘What do I get out of it?’

‘What do you get out of it? Nasty bruising consistent with a fall down the stairs if you give me grief. Spill the beans and I might decide not to lock you up. That’s how being in the police works.’

‘That’s not fair.’

‘I know. Fun, isn’t it?’ He reached out his fingers. ‘Here, pull me out of this bloody thing.’

‘No, I’m not touching you.’

Bryant remained motionless on the swing with his arm outstretched. Augustine looked around. His friends would be coming out of class any second now. Gritting his teeth, he grabbed Bryant’s hand and tugged until the old man was upright. The tyre released him with a rubbery squawk.

Augustine looked horrified. ‘Did you just fart?’

‘No, you’ll know when I do, believe me.’ He beckoned to the chauffeur. ‘Follow behind us, Bratling, I need to chat to Mr Cornell’s son for a few minutes. You can run him home after; God forbid he should use his legs.’

‘Why do you have a stick?’ Augustine hopped along beside Bryant, who was moving too slowly for him.

‘It’s for beating children with.’

‘How old are you?’

‘A hundred and seventy. Give or take a month or two.’

‘No, really.’

Bryant sighed irritably. ‘I’m old enough to see, with some bitterness, that you will have a life filled with all the wonderful things I never had. Although you probably won’t have as much fun.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because your dad is filthy rich and you’re going to a school for the children of deposed dictators. You’ll have everything you don’t even know you want yet. And nobody should have all that, certainly not at an early age.’

‘I haven’t got everything I want. I’m not allowed to do loads of stuff other kids can do.’

‘Like what?’

‘I can’t watch TV until I’ve done my homework.’

‘Oh, poor you. How you must have suffered. If you’re doing homework, why aren’t you carrying any exercise books?’

Augustine gave him a hopeless look. ‘What are
exercise books
?’

‘Books for your homework.’

‘We use online Dropboxes.’

‘Oh.’

‘You don’t know what they are, do you?’

‘Do you read any actual books?’

‘What, paper ones? No, they’re covered in germs. And they’re boring.’ They turned the corner with the Mercedes crawling behind.

‘Of course. I was foolish to ask. What about London?’

‘What about it?’

Bryant rolled his eyes heavenwards. ‘Dear God, it’s like pulling teeth. London: do you like it?’

‘Yes, I like M&M’s World and the Hard Rock Café.’

‘That’s not London, idiot child.
That
is London.’ He pointed away from the school, across Charterhouse Street to Smithfield Market. ‘Do you know what it is?’

‘Some crappy old market.’

‘It was once a big field of horses, and a cattle market. And there was a huge fair there, the Bartholomew Fair.’

‘How long ago?’

‘The twelfth century, when I was just a lad. You know what else happened there? Horrible, gruesome, grisly murders.’

For once the boy was stumped for a comeback.

Bryant pointed. ‘Right on that very spot you see in front of you – yes, right there – they hanged at least sixty thousand people, some of them your age. They roasted them alive in iron cages, and put them in pots and slowly boiled them, and bored holes through their tongues with red-hot pokers, and attached horses’ ropes to their arms and legs and dragged them apart, and stood heavy weights on them to crush their ribs and branded letters into their flesh and cut bits off their ears and slit their noses and nailed them to bits of wood and whipped them, but mostly they hanged them. And sometimes the prisoners’ necks didn’t break so their relatives paid extra to be allowed to hold on to their legs and
pull
them to death so it was quicker and they wouldn’t suffer for so long. And sometimes the prisoners climbed the hanging scaffold in their pyjamas because the hangman was allowed to keep the clothes they died in, and they wanted to cheat him.’

Augustine pulled a face, and suddenly looked like a normal schoolboy. ‘That’s gross. Why were they hanged?’

‘Oh, they’d broken the law,’ said Bryant airily.

‘How?’

‘They might have stolen a handkerchief or a watch, or simply told a policeman a lie.’ He let the thought settle. ‘So you live with your mum?’

‘Yes, but I visit my dad a lot.’

‘You must like him.’

‘He takes me to football matches and the zoo. I don’t like Richard.’

‘That’s your new stepfather, I assume. You know what you can say to him when he annoys you? “Sod off, Richard, you’re not my real dad, I don’t have to do anything you say.” Try that next time; it always works. Would you help out your real dad if he was in a jam?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ve been staying with him quite a lot, haven’t you? This Wednesday, for example.’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re sure about that? How did you get there?’

‘Bratling collected me.’

‘There was no one else?’

‘Just my IT tutor.’

‘Maybe I should sit in on your lessons. I could learn how to open files without destroying them.’