Bryant & May on the Loose: A Peculiar Crimes Unit Mystery Page 0,28

not allowed.’

‘You mean we’re persona au gratin?’

‘Yes. Perhaps now you could go and see your pals at the Home Office and try to pull a few strings for us.’

‘Indeed. I exerted a great influence over the last Senior Commissioner. He still owes me a huge favour because I saved his son’s reputation.’

‘How?’

‘Well, you know the sauna on the corner of Camden Road—’

‘No, I mean how did you exert influence over him?’

‘Oh, well, basically I told him what to do. Except I can’t anymore.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, for a start he’s dead. Coronary embolism, about two months ago. A damned nuisance. I never liked him much, but I felt sorry for the passengers in his car.’

‘Now what do we do?’

‘I suppose we’ll have to break the law again. I mean, there’s something wrong here and the Met won’t be able to do anything, so it’s down to us. Meanwhile, strong tea, lots of it. There’s a café on York Way that does bacon sandwiches you’ll be pulling out of your teeth for days. I won’t be, of course, because I take mine out and give them a rinse. If you can’t get hold of Dan, put in a call to Jack Renfield and tell him to meet us there; we’re going to need his help. But first let’s get out of this mud.’

As they headed toward the café, the trio tried to stamp the dark earth from their shoes but it remained stuck fast, as if the very ground was determined to leave its mark upon them.

12

REFORMATION

The Café Montmartre (Open 24hrs For Hot Snacks) was the second most inappropriately named restaurant ever to appear in Central London (the first was the Beverly Hills Nail Salon, Whitechapel). The owner, a former nightclub promoter called Alfie Frommidge, had changed the name from Alf’s Cafe in order to attract a new upmarket clientele, but all he had succeeded in doing was annoying the builders who had been using the place for cheap lunches, and who did not take kindly to paying double for the same menu just because it had been rewritten in bad French. Alfie’s plan had been to appeal to Parisians arriving on the Eurostar, but they never ventured this far along the road, and if they did, one look at the first item on the menu—‘Saucisses et frites avec un oeuf et Baked Beans’—would have seen them off.

DS Jack Renfield found the three ex-members of the Peculiar Crimes Unit seated in a row behind a wall of dusty plastic ferns. Alfie dropped an absurdly elaborate menu in front of him and continued to address Arthur Bryant.

‘Since we got an alcohol licence we get your so-called professionals in the evenings now,’ the restaurant owner explained, ‘all the staff from the new offices next door, the branding company for the new King’s Cross. A million quid for a logo that’s a coloured squiggle my old gran could have knocked out in ten minutes, and she’s only got one eye.’

‘I know,’ said Bryant. ‘I’ve seen them in here, braying halfwits and drunk PR girls shrieking like demented chickens. I think I preferred the place when it was a dump with empty scallop shells on the tables for ashtrays.’

‘Me too, but you can’t halt progress, Mr Bryant. People want something classier.’ Alfie wiped his hands on his apron and headed back to the kitchen to throw a fistful of parmesan shavings onto his instant mash.

‘Ah, Renfield.’ Bryant turned to his former detective sergeant. ‘You’ve got good pals in the Met. Most of my influential friends are either dead or not feeling very well. I’ve put a couple of calls out, but no-one’s come back to me yet. Anyone at Islington nick who could smuggle one of us into the mortuary?’

‘If you’re talking about Bimsley’s corpse, Islington reckons the south side of the Caledonian Road falls under Camden Council, so they’ve now taken it to the coroner’s office at Camley Street, just round the corner.’

‘You don’t know anyone there, do you?’

‘I used to go out with a really weird Greek bird called Rosa Lysandrou who worked there as a receptionist. This was a few years back, but I think she’s still there. I could give her a call.’

‘Kindly do so, would you? Have we heard from Dan yet? And where’s Longbright?’

‘Wait a minute,’ May interrupted, ‘you can’t just go assembling the old crowd again. This isn’t The Blues Brothers, we’re not getting the band back together.’

‘Whyever not?’ asked Bryant, genuinely puzzled. ‘Even Kasavian will see the financial sense