Bryant & May on the Loose by Christopher Fowler

Author:Christopher Fowler
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: For the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Published: 2008-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

24

The Two Delaneys

Rosa Lysandrou slowly opened the door of the Camley Street Coroner’s Office like Mrs Danvers beckoning a visitor into Manderley. She examined the man standing before her with a glum stare that could have brought a corpse out in a sweat.

“Is Giles in?” asked Dan Banbury, in the manner of a schoolboy asking if a friend could come out to play.

“Can I ask who is calling?”

“I’m Dan. We work together.”

“He already has one visitor. I’ll have to see.” Rosa’s grey eyes narrowed in faint disapproval. The door closed again. Banbury took a look around. Rain was mizzling lightly against the grassy banks on either side of the entrance. The only sound came from the wind in the reeds that grew beside the canal. It really was the most forlorn, depressing – the door opened again.

“Dan! Hullo! Sorry about that – Rosa is insisting on screening my callers. Come in.” Kershaw clapped a hand on the Crime Scene Manager’s broad back and drew him into the gloomy corridor. “Apparently that’s what she always did for the professor, her previous boss. He came here from the Hospital for Tropical Diseases just up the road. Have you heard, some absolute doombrain wants to make the place a containment area for unknown serious infections? The press has been speculating about what would happen if it became a terrorist target. Can you imagine the disaster scenario we’d have on our hands? At present such things are dealt with up near Mill Hill. They have PCs from Haringey and Barnet guarding the place. Anyway, the Disease Centre moved out of that weird old Gothic building you can see from the road in 1999, and the professor came here. By all accounts Rosa was dedicated to him, but there seems to be some kind of mystery about how and why he left that she won’t talk about; disgrace, a nervous breakdown, it’s all very – Ah, here we are.”

Bryant was standing in the main room, having just arrived from the church next door. He grinned. “What do you think of this, then, Dan?”

“What an extraordinary place,” Dan marvelled. He tended to admire buildings from an engineering perspective. A modern extension had added nothing of architectural interest, but the slender vaulted morgue ran deep under the road, cutting through ground that had once been filled with coffins from St Pancras Old Church. It reminded Banbury of a post-war railway station, mainly because of the row of green tin lights hanging low over the pair of dissection tables that occupied the main space in the room. The floor vibrated faintly as a subway train passed. Glassware pinged in a cabinet.

“Rather atmospheric, isn’t it?” Kershaw loved having visitors to whom he could show his new domain. “It could do with more light, but it’s surprisingly big.”

“It would have needed to be when it was built,” said Bryant. “The parish church was pretty busy, and I imagine there were plenty of violent deaths to deal with. You can blame both the reformers and the property speculators for that.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.