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Bryant & May in the Field

‘Remember that parachutist who was alive when he jumped out of his plane but was found to have been strangled when he landed in a field? Well, you’re going to love this one, trust me.’ John May took the car keys away from his partner and threw him an overcoat. ‘Come on, I’ll drive. You’ll need that, and your filthy old scarf. It’s cold where we’re going.’

‘I’m not stepping outside of Zone One,’ Arthur Bryant warned tetchily. ‘I remember the last time we left London. There were trees everywhere. It was awful.’

‘It’ll do you good to get some fresh air. You shouldn’t spend all your time cooped up in here.’

The offices of the Peculiar Crimes Unit occupied a particularly unappealing corner of North London’s Caledonian Road. Most of the building’s doors stuck and hardly any of its windows opened. Renovations had been halted pending a budget review, which had left several of the unheated rooms with asbestos tiles, fizzing electrics, missing floorboards and what could only be described as ‘a funny smell.’ Bryant felt thoroughly at home in this musty deathtrap, and had to be prised out with offers of murder investigations. It was particularly hard to prise him out today as his cardigan had got stuck to the wet varnish on his office door lintel. ‘All right,’ he said grudgingly, ‘if I have to go. But this had better be good.’

As the elderly detectives made their way down to the car park, May handed his partner a photograph. ‘She looks as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, but don’t be deceived. The Met has had its collective eye on her for a couple of years now. Marsha Kastopolis. Her husband owns a lot of the flats and shops along the Caledonian Road. He’s been putting her name on property documents as some kind of tax dodge. The council reckons it’s been trying to pin health-and-safety violations on them, but no action has ever succeeded against her or her husband. I think it’s likely they bought someone on the committee.’

‘Yes, yes. I take it she’s dead,’ said Bryant impatiently.

‘Very.’

‘That doesn’t explain why we have to drive somewhere godforsaken.’

‘It’s not godforsaken, just a bit windswept. The body’s been left in situ.’

‘Why?’

‘There’s something very unusual about the circumstances. Yes, look at the smile on your podgy little face now; you’re suddenly interested, aren’t you?’

‘We’ll see, won’t we?’ Bryant knotted his scarf more tightly than ever and climbed into the passenger seat of Victor, his rusting yellow Mini.

‘Have you got around to insuring this thing yet?’ asked May, crunching the gears.

‘It’s on my bucket list, along with climbing Machu Picchu, visiting the Hungarian Museum of Telephones and learning the ocarina. Where are we going?’

‘We need to climb Primrose Hill.’

Bryant perked up. ‘Greenberry Hill.’

‘Greenberry?’

‘That’s what it was once called. After the 1679 executions of Messrs Green, Berry and Hill, who were wanted for the murder of one Edmund Godfrey. Although nobody really knows for sure if the legend is true.’

‘Incredible,’ May muttered, swinging out into Euston Road. ‘All this from a man who can’t remember how to open his email.’

The night before it had snowed heavily again. Now the afternoon air was crisp and frosty, and the rimes of snow that formed tidemarks around King’s Cross Station had turned black with traffic pollution. The Mini slushed its way past the grim bookies and pound stores of lower Camden Town, up and over the bridge still garlanded with Christmas lights and into the wealthier environs of those who paid highly for living a few more feet above sea level. It finally came to a stop at the foot of the fenced-off park, a great white mound surrounded by the expansive, expensive Edwardian town houses of Primrose Hill.

‘Local officers have sealed the area,’ said May, ‘but the council wants the body removed before nightfall. The hill is a focal point for well-heeled families, and as the shops in Queen’s Crescent are all staying open late over Christmas they’re worried about the negative impact on local spending.’

Bryant wiped his glasses with the end of his scarf and peered across the bleached expanse, its edges blurred by a lowering silver sky. Halfway up, a green nylon box had been erected. ‘You can tell them they’ll get it cleared when we’re good and ready to do so,’ he said, setting off towards the body.

‘Wait, you can’t do that, Mr Bryant.’ Dan Banbury, the PCU’s crime scene manager, was sliding through the pavement slush towards them.

‘Can’t do what?’

‘Just go off like that. I’ve established an approach path.’ He pointed to a corridor of orange plastic sticks leading up the hill. ‘You have to head in that way.’

‘I’m a copper, not a plane,’ said Bryant, waving him aside.

‘There are already enough tracks out there. I don’t want to have to eliminate any more.’

Making a sound like a displeased tapir, Bryant diverted to the narrow trodden channel, and the detectives made their way up the snow-covered slope to the tent, with Banbury anxiously darting ahead. ‘She was found just after six-twenty a.m. by a man out walking his dog,’ he told them.

‘Why did it take so long to get to us?’ asked May. ‘It’s after two.’

‘There was a bit of a dispute about jurisdiction. They were going to handle it locally but all fatal incidents in Central North get flagged, and we put in a claim that was challenged.’

‘Meanwhile the victim’s been lying there like an ice lolly,’ said Bryant. ‘So much for the dignity of death. Show me what you’ve got.’

They reached the tent and Banbury went in ahead of them. The woman lay on her back on the frozen ground, her beige overcoat dusted with snow. From the alabaster sheen of her skin she might have been a marble church effigy reclining on a bier. A single battery lamp illuminated the wound on her upper throat. Blood had coagulated around the parted flesh and had formed a hard black puddle beneath her left shoulder. Her eyes were still open but had lost their lustre as they froze.

‘You’ve moved her,’ said Bryant, noting the snow on the front of her clothes.

‘That was the dog-walker,’ said Banbury. ‘All he could see as he got closer was a woman’s body lying in the middle of the common. There was a bit of a mist earlier. He thought maybe she had collapsed until he turned her over and saw she’d been stabbed.’

‘Looks like a very sharp kitchen knife or a cutthroat razor,’ said May. ‘The wound’s very clean, straight across the carotid artery. A real vicious sweep.’ He checked her palms and fingers and found them maroon. ‘No defence marks. Maybe she raised her hands to the wound and tried to stem the bleeding. Any other cuts to the body?’

‘Not that I can see, but bodies aren’t my field of expertise,’ Banbury admitted. ‘I’m more interested in where she fell.’

‘Why?’ May asked.

‘She’s in the exact centre of the common, for one thing, about a hundred and fifty metres in every direction. The dog-walker was met by a DS from Hampstead who called in his team. We took a full statement from him. I picked up the initial report and established the corridor to the site.’

‘Why did you do that before anything else?’

‘Because there are no footprints,’ Bryant cut in, waving his gloved hand across the virgin expanse of the hill.

‘That’s right, Mr Bryant. We’ve got hers, out to the middle but not back, the dog and his owner’s, also there and back, and the DS’s. Nothing else at all. Six is a bit early for the Primrose Hill crowd. Victim was last seen around eleven p.m. last night by one of her tenants. She was coming out of a restaurant. No more snow fell after about five a.m. According to the dog-walker, there were just her footprints leading out to the middle of the hill slope and nothing else. Not a mark in any direction that he could see.’

‘He must have been mistaken.’

Banbury blew on his hands. ‘Nope—he’s adamant, reckons he’s got twenty-twenty vision and there were no other prints at all.’

‘Then it’s simple—she must have taken her own life.’

‘What with? There’s no weapon.’

‘You haven’t had her clothes off yet; you can’t be sure of that,’ Bryant said. ‘Can we take the body or do we have to use the local resource?’

‘They’re happy for her to go to St Pancras if you sign it off.’

Bryant didn’t answer. He was peering at the victim, trying to conjure her last moments.

‘Could someone have swept away their footprints?’ asked May.

Bryant pulled a sour face. ‘Look at this snow—it’s crusted solid. Besides, why would anybody try to do such a thing? This is an urban neighbourhood, not Miss Marple country. There has to be a more obvious explanation. Got her mobile, have you?’

‘She received a call from a nearby phone box just after six this morning.’

‘A phone box,’ said May.

‘Yes, you might want to check last night’s— No!’ Banbury snatched the plastic bag back from Bryant, who had begun to open it. ‘Can you not take it out until I’ve finished with it?’

‘Just send us the call list, then.’ May was always keen to keep the peace. His partner was like a baby, reaching out to grab the things he wanted without thinking. Except that he was always thinking. ‘Come on, Arthur,’ he said, ‘we’ve enough to be getting on with.’

‘Where did she live?’ Bryant asked as he was being led away. Below him the skyline of London formed an elaborate ice sculpture that shone pink and silver in the gelid afternoon air.

‘Canonbury, I believe,’ Banbury said.

‘What was she doing over here so early on a Tuesday morning? Get those lads on it.’ He indicated the members of the Hampstead constabulary who were standing around in the car park. ‘She might have stayed somewhere nearby; maybe she has family here. Have them check taxis running from Canonbury to Chalk Farm early this morning.’

‘Why Chalk Farm?’ asked May.

‘To get here from there you either have to drop off your fare by the footbridge near Chalk Farm Station or go all the way around,’ Bryant explained. ‘This place is a peninsula that’s a pain in the arse to reach because of the railway lines. That’s why the rich love it. They don’t have to rub shoulders with us plebs. Get someone to walk all the way around the perimeter, check for any kind of break in the snow. There must be something.’