Bryant & May - The Burning Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

all the way from Piccadilly Circus because of these.’ Digging deep into his tweed overcoat he produced two fistfuls of wallets. ‘He was dipping tourists. I saw him duck in to the stage door and tried to stop him, but he ran up the steps into the dark.’
    ‘Weren’t me, Granddad,’ grunted the tethered felon.
    Bryant regarded his captive. ‘And they say the art of conversation is dead. Well, I’ll be on my way, then.’
    ‘Now look here,’ said the stage manager, ‘you can’t just go swanning off like that after ruining our leading lady’s opening speech—’
    ‘I’m not swanning off,’ Bryant pointed out as he reknotted his scarf. ‘I’m exiting stage left.’
    ‘Is that all you can say?’ asked the stage manager, aghast.
    ‘Well, your leading lady could try to sound her aitches,’ said Bryant, squinting back at the stage. ‘It’s Noël Coward. She’s meant to be from Westminster, not Wapping. Someone will be along to pick up Mr Chatterbox here shortly. Cheerio.’
    At the unit, Arthur Bryant had always been affectionately known as ‘the Old Man’, even though his partner John May was just three years his junior. Set beside each other, the pair might have been born two decades apart. Bryant had lost his hair in his thirties, and his short, stocky frame seemed to have been predesigned for senior status. He had never lifted anything heavier than a book, and had regarded a flight of stairs as a challenge since his mid-forties. When he spoke it was because his peculiar passions required him to impart information, as he was insensible to the etiquette of small talk. He was a mobile time capsule, insulated from the world by private obsessions. Paradoxically, it was one of the things that made him so valuable to the PCU. In a city that was rapidly forgetting the past, he was an inconvenient reminder of all that had gone before.
    Arthur Bryant
remembered
.
     
    ‘I don’t know where to begin,’ said John May, shaking his head. ‘Even after all these years, your every action remains a mystery to me. You’re a detective, you’re not meant to behave like some teenaged PC fresh out of Hendon. And why you had to follow him into a theatre of all places—’
    ‘He was a junkie doing some speed-acquisition of tourists’ wallets, John. I took one look at him and knew he would test positive for stupidity.’ Bryant threw himself down into his old leather armchair. ‘Of course I could have alerted a beat copper, but there was less chance of finding one in the area than locating the Nécessaire egg.’
    ‘The what?’
    Bryant waved a hand vaguely. ‘Oh, one of the eight Fabergé eggs that vanished from the vaults of the Kremlin Armoury. Anyway, I saved some poor spotty rookie from two days of interviews and form-filling. And besides, I’d heard good things about that particular theatrical production. Wrongly, as it turned out.’
    ‘So you cuffed him, then thought you’d have a nose around and got caught by the curtain-up.’ May checked his desk and carefully cornered off the few sheets of A4 that he found there. On Bryant’s side stood a Himalayan range of screwed-up paper. ‘Meanwhile, they’re still rioting on our patch, all over the Square Mile, are you even aware of that?’
    ‘Of course I’m aware, but there’s nothing I can do about it, is there?’
    ‘On that point I’m afraid you’re right,’ May agreed. ‘Early this morning Raymond was called to a bank in the City by a superintendent called Darren Link. Ring any bells?’
    ‘Oh, yes, ex-Whitechapel mob, fancies himself a real hard nut. To paraphrase J. B. Priestley, what he doesn’t know about policing isn’t worth knowing, but what he
does
know isn’t worth knowing either, because of the bad effect it’s had on him. We all used to call him “Missing” Link. He didn’t like that much. You know how coppers sniff out weaknesses and play on them. After we went a bit too far with the teasing, he set fire to two of our vehicles