Bryant & May on the Loose: A Peculiar Crimes Unit Mystery Page 0,40
been associated with poverty and crime.’
‘Wait, so which of these are we investigating?’ asked Renfield, confused.
‘Both,’ said Bryant.
‘The gang slaying,’ said May, glancing over at his partner. ‘Arthur will have to take care of the other matter by himself.’
‘But if any of you would care to give me a hand, I’d be grateful.’ Bryant summoned up his pitifully helpless look, even though it had long since stopped being effective.
‘I suppose we’re working round the clock until we get something,’ said Meera.
‘You’re not officially working at all,’ May pointed out. ‘If you need money we may be able to give you a small cash advance, depending on how much Raymond can draw out on his ATM card.’ He looked at Bryant and gave a grim smile. ‘Just catch us a murderer before the King’s Cross project crashes. That’s not so much to ask, is it?’
1 armed back-up
17
THE HORNED ONE
What did you mean by that?’ asked Bryant angrily as soon as the meeting had dispersed. ‘You tricked me into coming back here by telling me about the stag-man, and now you try to prevent anyone from helping me find him.’
‘I didn’t trick you,’ said May. ‘If you remember, Meera volunteered the information quite by chance and you seized upon it. We only have a short time to solve an extremely nasty murder, and we’re not equipped to do the job. I can’t have you directing the others to go gallivanting off in search of someone who’s obsessed with stag nights.’
‘A girl may have been abducted.’
‘We don’t have proof of that. This witness, Izabella what’s-her-name—her boyfriend wouldn’t back her up so we only have her opinion about what she saw, and no-one has reported a missing girl. I’m not saying you can’t investigate it, just that you can’t use the others until we get a grip on the case we’ve been hired to crack. This is another chance, Arthur—no, another last chance. Have you got your mobile?’
‘Of course, and it’s charged up, although I miss my old Storno, don’t you? Fine piece of equipment, never went wrong.’
‘Well, we’re in the twenty-first century now, and stop changing the subject.’
‘All right, I can see I’m going to have to explain why I’m so interested in our antlered abductor. Come to my office.’
‘You haven’t got an office. None of us has.’
‘Don’t be pedantic. Come back to the space which I plan to turn into our centre of operations.’
They walked together into a dingy, cobwebbed front room overlooking the Caledonian Road. ‘Pull up a crate,’ said Bryant magnanimously. He seated himself in his cracked leather chair and lifted a yellowed scroll of paper from the floor, wiping dust from it. ‘Right, this is King’s Cross during Mesolithic times.’
‘Dear Lord, do we have to go back that far?’ asked May, fearing the meeting would be a long one. He knew that the disturbing myths and mysteries of old London were Bryant’s obsession. Besides, it was getting toward lunchtime and he’d had no breakfast.
‘Now, we know there was a Mesolithic settlement just up the road from here, on Hampstead Heath, but most pre-Christian tribal activity was in the district we now call King’s Cross, near the Battlebridge Basin. The area was still unspoilt countryside a couple of centuries ago, filled with meadows, streams and wells. Water drained from Hampstead Heath down to King’s Cross, which was then the Bagnigge Wells, then to Sadler’s Wells and Clerkenwell—all wells, you see, and very healthful because they contained so much sodium, iron and magnesium sulphate, although they can’t have tasted very nice.’
‘I get the idea. You’ve told me all this before.’
‘Just checking that you were paying attention.’ He threw open a filthy, dog-eared book and stabbed at a lithograph. ‘In the Middle Ages, the area of St Pancras was part of the great forest of Middlesex. The last remaining piece of that is Caenwood—what we now call Kenwood—in Hampstead. Where you get water, you get villages, crops—and fertility rites. Now, around 1550 a fable resurfaced about the Pindar of Wakefield. The pindar warns that no-one may trespass upon his land, is challenged, and acquits himself by winning a sword fight. He appears in folk songs and his story forms the basis for part of the Robin Hood legend, where he becomes a man named George-a-Green, and his challenger is Little John.’
‘I really don’t see what on earth this has to do with a bloke abducting girls outside a nightclub.’ May was exasperated. ‘What is a pindar, anyway?’