Bryant & May - The Burning Man by Christopher Fowler Read Free Book Online Page B

‘I already paid my deposit, I’ve bought an easel, and now I have to cancel.’
    ‘You can still go to the Isle of Wight,’ said Bryant, cheerfully picking the shell off a boiled egg. ‘Go on, hop it, you deserve a break. So they’ve given us the case – once Dan and Giles have nailed their ID it doesn’t look like there’ll be much more to do. We can manage perfectly well without you here.’
    ‘Thank you, I remember what happened the last time I left you alone,’ Land replied. ‘You filled my office with Tibetan monks and gave the Bishop of Southwark a black eye. Do you understand how important this case is? The government is going to use it as an excuse to change the civil-liberty laws.’
    ‘I see the problem,’ said May. ‘Remove the masks and soon you’ll be preventing the wearing of burqas.’
    ‘No, it’s not that. I’m worried about the publicity. We’re not very good at operating as a covert unit. No,’ Land decided, ‘my conscience won’t allow me to go away now. At least I might still be able to get a refund on the caravan.’
    ‘Don’t worry about a thing,
vieille saucisse
,’ Bryant agreed serenely. ‘Dan’s about to get his leg-bone reading and the rest of the team will be trawling through footage, tracing his attacker. We’ll have this put to bed before you get back to your cold, empty house.’

9

MURDEROUS
     
    As it turned out, Bryant and Longbright nailed the victim an hour before the full official identification came in. Late on Monday afternoon, a member of staff at Bloomsbury’s Sustainable Market remembered the lad with the damaged foot who had worked there for five months. Judith Merrill was one of the managers, and as she was shown into the interview room at the PCU, she carefully skirted the hole in the floorboards filled with uprooted plumbing, seating herself behind the rickety desk Longbright had salvaged from the school over the road.
    ‘His name was Freddie Weeks, but everybody called him Lucky,’ she said. ‘I mean, they meant it sarcastically. He left the store back at the end of June. He was a very private person, didn’t make friends easily. I think he had a lot of problems.’
    ‘What kind of problems?’ asked Longbright.
    ‘You know, money difficulties, getting chucked out of his flat. He used to miss shifts all the time. He came in with the most terrible hangovers and seemed angry or frustrated or something. He was very moody. I wondered if there were drugs involved. Sorry, I’m not sure if this is very helpful.’
    ‘Do you know if there was anyone close to him, a girlfriend or best friend?’ asked Longbright.
    Judith thought for a moment and shook her head. ‘No. He was a bit of a loner. Don’t get me wrong, he was friendly enough but only in a distant way. I think he’d had some trouble in the past. I remember there was something on his employment record but we don’t seem to have stored his CV. We’re a bit disorganized on that front. Mostly people just fill in the forms we keep in the shop. Maybe he had trouble with the police?’
    ‘Did he have a place to sleep when he was working at the store?’
    ‘He always wore the same clothes, and I have a feeling he was staying on someone’s sofa. But I don’t think he ever stopped in one place for long. He kept himself very neat and tidy.’
    ‘Do you know what happened to his right foot?’
    ‘He smashed the bone in a skateboarding accident three years ago. He had some kind of operation to replace the damaged part with an implant. He limped a bit and said it bothered him in cold weather.’
    It seemed clear to Longbright that the manager had a soft spot for her old employee. She thanked her for coming in and promised to be in touch if she discovered anything of further interest. The Criminal Records Database turned up a couple of minor run-ins for Weeks, one disturbance of the peace, one drunk and disorderly. A few minutes later, Giles Kershaw came back with a match for the serial number