The Invisible Code (27 page)

‘I used to come up here with her,’ he said, looking down towards Westminster. ‘I never saw the beauty in it myself. I asked her, why this park? It’s so small. She told me that when she was a little girl she saw a Disney cartoon at her local cinema,
One Hundred And One Dalmatians
, and this park and the surrounding houses were in it. She liked it because it looked so neatly organized. She arrived here expecting it to look different, but it was exactly as she’d seen it in the film. That’s the difference. I looked and only ever saw the exits, the railings, the inadequate lighting, the signs and the bins. She saw what this place represented. An image of Englishness, something she craved.’

May had no response. Words of comfort would sound false, so he waited.

‘I don’t hold you responsible for what happened. I should have spotted the signs and done something about it. I should have been there for her. One gets focused on work to the exclusion of all else. It becomes very hard to live a normal life.’

‘You’ll have to sign the autopsy consent today,’ said May. ‘There’s no obvious cause of death.’

Kasavian sighed, an exhalation of air that sounded like defeat. ‘I’ll be at the office. The Belgians and the French are planning a final attempt to derail the border-control process.’

‘Nobody needs to know about your wife just yet. We’ll keep it out of the press for as long as we can.’

‘John – may I call you that? There’s no point in you continuing the investigation. My wife is dead. I’m withdrawing you from the case. I’ll make sure there’s no reflection on your abilities.’

‘It’s a murder investigation, Mr Kasavian. I’m afraid even you don’t have the power to stop it now.’

‘But your unit is under the jurisdiction of the Home Office.’

‘You have the ability to direct prosecutions and investigations, but not once a murder inquiry is under way. We have a responsibility to the public. If we call a halt it means that somebody out there is tempted to kill again. Each time we catch a criminal the desire is lessened in others. Prevention of public disorder; it’s a fundamental part of our remit.’

‘Then you must do what you have to do. I’m going ahead with the presentation of the initiative. It won’t be easy to get the work done in time, but I can’t lose this as well. I’ll need your findings before I leave. I can’t go into the chamber of representatives without knowing what happened. I have to start putting it behind me as soon as possible.’

‘Then I’ll personally provide you with the report before you set off,’ said May.

Maggie Armitage acted as a PCU contact point for crimes containing elements of mental and spiritual abnormality. In addition, she offered advice on anything from
ghostwriting to rhinoplasty. What she lacked in logic she made up for in a kind of deranged effervescence that sometimes shed light into penumbral corners.

Today Bryant had arranged to meet her at Liverpool Street Station. The white witch and self-proclaimed leader of the Coven of St James the Elder turned up in a purple woollen tea-cosy hat, a green velvet overcoat and orange leggings. Her glasses, winged and yellow-tinted, hung on a plastic daisy chain around her throat. She looked like a small seaside town celebrating a centenary.

‘The colour of vitality and endurance,’ she said, pointing to her tights. ‘I thought we might need it today, judging by the tone of your call.’

Bryant explained the case as they passed through the diaspora of commuters. ‘The remains of Bedlam were uncovered here, right beneath Liverpool Street Station in 1911,’ he explained. ‘It had been on this site since the thirteenth century. The workmen found dozens of layers of human skulls. The patients had died of sweating sickness. I thought you might pick up some useful vibrations.’

‘At the moment all I can feel is the Tube trains through my trainers, but I’m pretty insensitive until I’ve had my first cup of coffee,’ she replied, taking his arm. ‘I would have worn blue had I known – it was Bedlam’s trademark colour.’

Bryant barely heard her. ‘Madness, melancholy and distraction, that’s what they attempted to cure. The so-called “moon-sick” had a red thread tied on them. Kasavian’s wife didn’t have any red thread – Janice looked through the clothes in her wardrobe – so she scratched a red line around her wrist and died pointing to the picture of Bedlam. She was telling me that her madness held the key to this.’

‘I don’t know why you thought I’d know more about being barmy than one of your textbooks,’ said Maggie. ‘OK, I’ve lit the teapot instead of the kettle occasionally
and I once used Strangeways in a revivification ritual by mistake.’

‘How could you revive a cat by mistake?’

‘I thought he was dead but it turned out he was asleep. The ritual had a reverse effect and put him in a trance for the entire winter. I just stuck him in a box with the tortoise and he woke up in the spring. I’m not really the person to ask about madness. You’d be better off with Dame Maud Hackshaw. She’s been inside, you know. Bethlem, the real one, now in Bromley. That was back when she was still getting visits from Joan of Arc. The hospital’s still going strong, although they’ve got rid of people poking the patients with sticks for a shilling a time.’

‘Tell me anything you know about madness.’

‘I know a few bits and pieces. The hospital was called “Bethlehem”, from the Hebrew meaning “house of bread”, because its founder got lost behind enemy lines during the crusades and followed the Star of Bethlehem back to camp. Let’s see, what else? Madness is known as the English Disease. Wasn’t Hamlet sent here because it was thought his behaviour would go unnoticed? Bedlam was used to incarcerate political prisoners, which sounds apt to your case.’

‘My thinking precisely. They considered her a political danger.’

Maggie gripped his arm more tightly. ‘I’m feeling something now. Yes, a definite sensation. We must be over the site. Something’s pulling me back. I’m rooted to the spot.’

Bryant looked down. ‘You’ve trodden in chewing gum.’

‘Oh.’ She looked for somewhere to scrape it off. ‘Did you know there were once two great statues over the entrance of Bedlam,
Acute Mania
and
Dementia
? Can you imagine how that made arriving patients feel? Half of the problem with madness is its definition. Tell someone they’re crazy and they soon start acting crazy. Look at the
way they dose children up these days for merely exhibiting normal healthy high spirits. What signal does that send to them? We’ve always thought that the human body has to be balanced in order to work properly. It was said to be made up of four humours that matched the seasons and elements: yellow bile and fire for summer, black bile and earth for autumn, phlegm and water for winter, blood and air for spring. A lot of alternative therapies still conform to those rules.’

‘I’ve been trying to understand why Amy O’Connor died in St Bride’s Church,’ said Bryant. ‘It has to mean something.’

‘You know, there’s hardly a church in the whole of London that doesn’t have something unusual about it. St Bartholomew the Great in West Smithfield has the ghost of a monk who’s said to haunt the church looking for a sandal stolen from his tomb.’

‘They must have been very good quality sandals.’

‘And there are wonderful puzzles in churches. St Martin-within-Ludgate has a seventeenth-century font with a Greek palindrome inscribed on it.
Nipson anomemata me monan opsin
.
³
“Cleanse my sin and not just my face.” And I suppose you know about the devils of St Peter-upon-Cornhill? In the nineteenth century its vicar noticed that plans for the building next door extended one foot on to church territory. He bullied the architect into adding three leering devils to frighten his neighbours. You can still see them.’

They threaded their way past WH Smith and Accessorize, two senior citizens discussing esoterica in the most mundane of settings.

‘Churches have become almost invisible in London,’ Maggie said with a sigh, ‘but they hide their own secret
codes. There are compositions of hymns hidden in stonework and all sorts of runic curses, but it all comes down to man’s clumsy attempts at balancing good and evil. Madness is always seen as evil. So perhaps someone was just trying to blacken your victim’s name. Did you search the church?’

‘Yes. There was nothing,’ said Bryant. ‘Sabira’s husband is about to transform Europe’s attitude to policing its borders. But after a week of psychological torture, culminating in the death of his wife, it’s possible he won’t have the strength to succeed in pushing through our government’s demands. I think Sabira knew a hawk from a handsaw. Behaving strangely allowed her to say what she felt more easily, but that isn’t why she died.’

‘Perhaps she was taking revenge for the way she’d been treated, and went mad in the process, like Hamlet.’

‘I wish I knew. I followed the red thread and it led me to Bedlam.’

‘But madness has no logic, Arthur, and you don’t have a cause of death,’ said Maggie.

‘If anyone can find one, Giles Kershaw can,’ said Bryant. ‘And when it comes to being irrational you’re the perfect person to talk to, so keep talking.’

‘I suppose I’ll have to take that as a compliment,’ said Maggie, holding on to his arm. ‘Let’s walk a little while and go a little mad.’

³
As the Greek ‘ps’ is represented by a single letter, this is a correct palindrome.

29

CAUSE OF DEATH

BRYANT MET HIS
partner at the St Pancras Mortuary and Coroner’s Office, housed in the diseased gingerbread cottage that lurked behind the cemetery of St Pancras Old Church. He was always cheered by its connection to both Frankenstein and Dracula; in the adjoining graveyard were the tombs of Dr Polidori and Mary Wollstonecraft.

Rosa Lysandrou, Giles Kershaw’s dour housekeeper, admitted them. Rosa was a natural Greek mourner. Her features appeared to have spent at least two-thirds of their life streaked with tears. She eyed the detectives warily.

‘Is that a new perfume you’re wearing, Rosa?’ asked Bryant, sniffing the air.

‘It’s incense from the chapel,’ Rosa replied. ‘For the dead. Their spirits are all around us.’

‘That’s nice. I suppose it’s company for you. All in black again, I see. Did somebody just die?’

‘It’s a morgue,’ said Rosa. ‘Somebody has always just died.’

‘I thought perhaps you were dressed out of respect for your country’s economy. Is Giles in?’

She led them along the hall to the main autopsy room and pushed open the door.

Giles was excited to see them. ‘Just in time,’ he said, pulling off his hairnet and releasing a mop-head of glossy blond locks. An unnerving array of body-opening tools had been rolled out behind him like a car-repair kit. ‘I started as soon as Mr Kasavian emailed back his consent form, and I have a result for you. I can explain why no one else was found near her in the Soane Museum, and can probably account for the fact that Amy O’Connor died alone in St Bride’s Church.’

He was standing beside a silver Mylar sheet ominously concealing a human shape on one of the steel tables. ‘You heard the EMT thought she might have had difficulty breathing?’

‘That suggested a poison to me,’ said Bryant. ‘Nobody came near her in the building, but if she’d ingested something harmful it would have taken time to work, which means Sabira took it before reaching the museum.’

‘Exactly so. The problem was administration. She didn’t eat breakfast yesterday morning. Her stomach was empty, so how could she have ingested anything?’

‘A tablet and water,’ said May. ‘That would indicate suicide.’

‘Unless a doctored tablet was disguised as something harmless, say an aspirin,’ said Bryant.

‘Come on, who knows when they’re going to need an aspirin? Are you suggesting the killer gave her a headache first? I examined the stomach lining for residue,’ said Kershaw. ‘There was nothing. Obviously poisons have other ways of entering the body: gas, spray, liquid administered via an injection, so I looked for a break in the epidermis but found nothing. Until I looked here.’

He folded back the bottom of the sheet to reveal Sabira’s bare feet.

‘Look at the sole of the left foot. It’s easy to miss
because there’s some hard skin, but there is a very tiny puncture mark here, near the heel.’ Kershaw indicated the spot with the collapsible antenna he had inherited from the PCU’s last coroner.

‘I can’t see anything,’ said Bryant.