The Invisible Code (40 page)

‘Are you certain we’ve got cause for arrest, John?’ Longbright was still uncomfortable with their line of inquiry. Hell, it hung on a web of slender threads including a bizarrely encrypted note from an unstable wife and some research carried out by a supposed suicide who believed in witchcraft. It wasn’t anywhere near enough.

‘No, I’m not,’ May admitted.

Giles Kershaw was still waiting for the St Pancras Biomedical Centre’s verdict on the contents of Sabira Kasavian’s stomach, and Dan Banbury had found nothing of a chemically hazardous nature in her room at the Cedar Tree Centre. Without evidence of poisoning it would prove impossible to link Kasavian to his wife’s demise.

No further evidence had come from May’s wrecked BMW. Nothing more had come to light from Waters’s flat. The delivery man’s mobile phone had been found by the kids on the Walthamstow rooftop, but apart from that there was nothing. A sense of demoralization flooded over the melancholy group.

‘We have enough to make Kasavian miss his train, but that’s about all,’ May replied. ‘If we pick him up before he boards, we undermine his career and derail the initiative, he calls his lawyer and the burden of proof returns to us. I’ve never done anything like this before. It doesn’t look like it will end well for anyone.’

‘If we don’t do anything and he gets his promotion, I imagine he’ll become pretty much untouchable under European jurisdiction,’ said Banbury. ‘Did Mr Bryant say what he was going to do or how long he’d be?’

‘He just said he was going out.’ May checked his watch again. ‘Why does he always have to cut it so fine? He was exactly the same in his early twenties, running for trains just as they were pulling out of stations.’

‘I don’t know where he’s gone,’ said Longbright. ‘He just said he was going to follow up an idea. He wasn’t in his office when I left, and his phone is going straight to voicemail.’

‘Right.’ May wiped rain from his face and headed towards the only spare staff car, a battered blue Fiat that Land kept for his exclusive use. Longbright had filched the keys. ‘I guess we just have to pray he comes through with something in time. Dan and I will handle the actual arrest. You stay in the car. We make it as discreet as possible, call him down to the foyer and request that he accompanies us. He’s going to go crazy but we have to hold our nerve.’

‘Let’s do it,’ said Longbright, getting behind the wheel of the Fiat. ‘I hope Arthur’s really concentrating on getting us out of this.’

‘Of course, one of the most common themes in early Christian writings was female subservience to men,’ said Maggie Armitage, riding the escalator to the first floor. ‘You’d expect it from the patriarchy of the Church. If any group chose not to conform to Christian teachings, they were immediately attacked. You know I’m doing this under protest, don’t you?’

‘I appreciate that,’ said Bryant, stepping off the escalator and taking Maggie’s hand as they made their way around the raised concrete circle. On either side, stone sections of the original London Wall thrust up between glass office buildings, preserved to remind the City’s inheritors of their debt to the past. ‘Go on.’

‘There’s nothing shared between the genders in traditional Christianity. Religious and financial power always returns to the hands of males, even now. You haven’t met Mr Merry before, have you?’

‘No,’ said Bryant, ‘I’ve only heard you speak of him.’

‘He is my nemesis. It could be argued that we are of equal power, and therefore cancel each other out, but I believe he thinks he is stronger, which I can only pray is mere arrogance. He’s certainly very bright. He teaches at the museum. Many years ago we trained together, but we took different paths. My studies took me to the light and his led him towards darkness.’

Bryant studied his old friend with great affection. Maggie had donned legwarmers of different lengths and colours, one pinned with an ankh, the other with a Star of David. It was easy to get distracted by her wayward wardrobe choices. ‘Are you saying he’s a Satanist?’

‘That’s such a slippery word. Mr Merry believes he is Ipsissimus, an equal of the gods. He uses his abilities for personal profit and the cruellest of pleasures, whereas I cannot take a penny from clients, and I never venture towards that borderland of pernicious and
sinister influence wherein he operates. He believes in something called Paradox Philosophy, a psychological system that involves freeing yourself from so-called “old impediments”: right and wrong, true and false. I wouldn’t be taking you to see him if I thought there was any other way, believe me. There’ll be a price to pay.’

In his desperation to break the deadlock of his stymied thinking, Bryant had called his old friend to ask for advice. After some considerable soul-searching, Maggie agreed to lead the detective to Mr Merry.

‘We’ll be safe here,’ she said, pulling Bryant ahead, ‘he won’t be able to hurt us, not in a public place. Listen to me, Arthur, I must give you some rules to follow. Under no circumstances should you shake his hand. At no time must you come into contact with his person. If he reaches out to touch you, step out of his way. If he tries to get you to take anything, you must politely refuse. If he drops anything, do not pick it up. If he looks you in the eye, break contact. If he asks you a question, reveal nothing of yourself. It would be better if you didn’t speak and let me do the talking. At least I know how to handle him.’

‘OK, I’ll keep my distance. That sounds easy enough.’

‘It sounds easy but it won’t be.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you have to tell him everything about the case, just as you told it to me. You must do so honestly, or he’ll know you’re lying, and you can leave nothing out because he’ll sense that, too. As you talk together, he’ll start to lower his voice until it seems barely audible to you, and you’ll find yourself moving in closer, straining to hear. You must not do this, because he’ll be trying to plant subconscious commands in your mind. He is extremely manipulative.’

‘You’re making him sound like some kind of monster,’ said Bryant as they reached the entrance to the Museum of
London. ‘As a rationalist, I can’t afford to start believing that such people have supernatural powers.’

‘He certainly has a magnetic effect on people,’ said Maggie. ‘The majority of believers in Satanism are also avid readers of the Bible. Insecure people are drawn in by such readings as they look for something to believe in, and Mr Merry knows exactly how to exploit them. It’s free admission: go around the ticket counter to the right and follow the stairs to the lower ground floor.’

The Museum of London does not merely hide its light under a bushel. It extinguishes the light, and then buries the bushel inside a series of unrelentingly grim walkways, making the building entirely invisible from its exterior. Even those who know of its whereabouts venture there by following other lost visitors.

‘What makes you so sure Mr Merry can help us?’ asked Bryant.

‘I’m not,’ Maggie replied. ‘But he has a strange way of getting to the root of things.’

They reached the bottom of the staircase and pushed open glass doors into a dimly lit exhibition space. Taking up the entire wall facing them, millions of plague rats scampered in a moving carpet down a flight of stone steps. The video projections were designed to disgust, and the sight was met with appropriate noises of horror from a party of schoolchildren.

‘The Great Plague of 1665 was caused by the fleas that infested the Dutch cotton bales, then travelled on rats and jumped on to humans,’ intoned a deep, mellifluous voice. ‘They bit into the flesh and spread the disease by sucking in and spitting out blood. The fleas lived on the rats, and the rats lived on the ships, and the ships arrived at the London Docks, in the poorest part of the city.’

Bryant looked around but could not see anyone speaking.

‘They hopped and jumped across filthy floors and
dirty beds, into babies’ cots and on to sleeping mothers, burrowing into unwashed hair and wriggling into sweaty clothes, and they bit and drank and spread their poison. The houses of the poor were close together, so the infection spread. The authorities ordered all the cats and dogs of London to be killed, and by doing that they destroyed the only creatures that could catch the rats. So then they told everyone to smoke, and to burn pepper and hops and frankincense, to kill the evil humours in the air. By now one-fifth of all the people in London had died. Then something happened that ended the plague – can you tell me what it was?’

‘Fire!’ shouted a few of the children.

‘That’s right, fire,’ said the voice. ‘The sparks leaped across the narrow lanes and the inferno roared through the city, gutting the grandest churches and the lowest slums, destroying ninety per cent of the houses it reached. And so one great evil cancelled out the other. So perhaps we could say that this second evil was a good one.’

From the centre of the schoolchildren rose an extraordinary figure, dressed as a pirate. Mr Merry was as round as a pudding. His barrel chest was covered by a gold-braided coat with turned-back sleeves. His great black bushy beard was sewn with coloured beads. He had smiling kohl-lined eyes and thick black eyebrows, possibly dyed. His large head was topped with a black felt tricorn hat, from which protruded a thick beaded ponytail. In his right fist he held a rat. The children screamed in delighted horror, but as many reached out to touch the stuffed rodent as fell back.

Before Maggie Armitage could stop him, Bryant had stepped forward to the edge of the children’s circle. ‘The Great Fire of London didn’t end the plague,’ he said cheerfully. ‘The disease was already dying out before the fire started.’

Mr Merry slowly turned to look at him. The eyes missed
nothing. He smiled faintly, and the smile grew, and then he laughed, patting children on the head and shooing them away. ‘To your drawing pads, you homunculi,’ he boomed. ‘I want to see works of genius, or I’ll send all your souls to the Devil.’

As the children dispersed he turned his attention to the small wrinkled old man wrapped in an olive-green scarf who stood blinking at him, waiting for an answer.

‘Who’s to say if the flames really burned away the germs?’ he replied. ‘We were none of us there to witness the events of that terrible year. You are Arthur Bryant, I take it?’ He held out a welcoming hand.

Bryant ignored the proffered palm. ‘I don’t think we’ve ever met.’

‘No, but your reputation precedes you.’ Mr Merry dropped his hand and smiled again. ‘I imagine you’ve come to talk to me about your problematic case.’

As Mr Merry took a step forward towards him, Bryant took one back. ‘I don’t believe I’ve discussed it with anyone.’

‘Of course you haven’t. Perhaps Oskar mentioned it to me. We’re very old friends, after all. But you mustn’t let that deter you. I value an open mind above all else. Tell me the facts of the case, and I’ll see if I can offer you some advice.’ He looked around at the children. ‘Oh, don’t mind them. I’ve blocked their hearing. Your words will sound in their ears as meaningless gibberish.’

Despite Maggie’s warnings, Bryant felt himself becoming unsettled. Whether or not Mr Merry actually possessed paranormal powers was beside the point. It was clear that, if nothing else, he was a devious psychologist.

Bryant glanced at Maggie, wondering how to begin. He could feel Mr Merry’s black eyes fixed upon him, and sensed the importance of keeping the warlock within his peripheral vision, as one would an unshackled crocodile.

‘Come, sit next to me.’ Mr Merry dropped himself on to a leather bench and patted the space beside him.

Bryant felt the warning in Maggie’s glance. ‘I’ll stand, if it’s all the same to you,’ he said. ‘But I’ll tell you what I know.’

Mr Merry crossed pale beringed fingers with black painted nails over his tight waistcoat while, behind him, his acolytes crawled on the floor with pens and paper. ‘Please,’ he said expansively, ‘enlighten me.’

48

FINAL CALL

THE FOYER OF
the Home Office was as quiet as a fish tank. A cleaner was slowly wiping a rubber plant. The receptionist sat entranced by her desk monitor. She looked up at John May. ‘It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes ago,’ she said. ‘His car was early.’

‘Who did he go with?’

The receptionist checked her screen again. She had very little neck and needed new glasses, so that craning forward to read it was an effort. ‘Mr Almon, Mr Hereward, Mr Lang and a team of lawyers. He’s not due back in the office until the middle of next week.’