Bryant buttoned the shapeless brown cardigan he had worn for the past twenty years, dragged his horribly moth-eaten Harris tweed coat over the top of it and finished the ensemble with a partially unravelled scarf in an odd shade of plasticinemauve. The February weather had been unseasonably warm, but he was taking no chances. As he left the house, he hoped the week ahead would prove to be a busy one, for although he tired more easily these days, hard work made him feel alive. Retirement was an option only suitable for people who hated their jobs. Arthur loved working with his partner John May, and revelled in the fact that they performed a service no-one else in the city could offer. No-one had their arcane depth of knowledge, or was able to use it in the cause of crime prevention. Across the decades they had continued to close the cases few could understand, let alone solve. The Peculiar Crimes Unit was less of a secret now than it had been, but few really appreciated how it operated, or even what it did. It had been founded in a spirit of invention and experimentation, along with Bletchley Park and the Cabinet War Rooms, and would hopefully survive as long as London remained confounded by impossible crimes.

He tightened his scarf around his throat and, whistling an off-kilter air from The Pirates of Penzance, set off towards the tube station.

4

PECULIARITIES

‘Mr Bryant is so old that most of his lifetime subscriptions have run out.’ Leslie Faraday, the increasingly portly liaison officer at the Home Office, poked about on his biscuit tray looking for a Custard Cream. ‘He’s only alive because it’s illegal to kill him.’ He wasn’t used to being summoned to work so early, and needed tea before he could concentrate. ‘If we made him redundant he’d not be entitled to a full pension, technically speaking, because he’s working beyond our recommended statutory age limit. How would he be expected to survive?’

‘Sentimentality can’t be allowed to stand in the way of modern policing procedures,’ replied Oskar Kasavian, peering from the window into the tiled Whitehall courtyard. Faraday took a quick peek to see if the new supervisor in charge of Internal Security cast a shadow, as his cadaverous pale form created office rumours of supernatural lineage. ‘We’re not here to provide the inefficient with a living.’

This last remark confused Faraday, who believed that this was precisely the purpose for which Whitehall had been created. ‘Quite,’ he said, ‘but surely we must take into account his long and illustrious career working with John May. One doesn’t force admirals into retirement simply because they no longer go to sea. We benefit from their experience.’