Free Full Dark House by Christopher Fowler Page A

them.’ Bryant produced a pair of red rubber gloves and slipped them on. He lifted the feet from the pan of the chestnut stall. ‘Mercifully not scorched. Our vendor here had the good sense to leave everything just as he found it. He should really be taken in for questioning, but he hardly speaks any English. I think he’s an Ottoman, and rather frightened of losing his work permit, if indeed he has one. I should make a friend of him. I’ve always wanted to sail up the Bosphorus.’
    Bryant produced a cloth bag from his pocket with all the flair of a magician, opened the zip that ran along one side and dropped the feet in. He offered May another chance to study its contents.
    ‘So what’s this chap’s routine?’ asked May. ‘I imagine the vendors store their braziers in a lock-up overnight.’
    ‘Just off Soho Square near the Henry Heath hat factory. They don’t bother to clean them out very often, although they’re supposed to, they just lock the lids. He hasn’t let the brazier out of his sight since he wheeled it from the lock-up this morning. The holding bay was shut by the last man to leave, and remained sealed until this morning.’
    ‘So the feet must have already been in the brazier last night. How could he not have noticed?’
    ‘He was in a very nervous state when he closed up. The air raid, remember?’
    ‘Did he leave the stand unattended at any time?’
    ‘He went for a wee in Moor Street earlier, but didn’t want me to know. I spoke to a couple of the other sellers before you got here. It’s a sackable offence, leaving your stall unattended. They’re meant to get another stall runner to cover for them but obviously they can’t during the raids. He’d just got back when the sirens started up, so he had to leave the cart and head for a shelter. That time, he was gone for about an hour.’
    ‘Do you need someone to translate for him?’
    ‘He’s proved to be a pretty good mime so far. I think he’s told us all he knows. Besides, we can’t get any decent translators. They’re all working for the War Office.’
    ‘I wonder if the rest of the body will turn up. Let’s see if anything’s been reported overnight, and check with the river police.’
    ‘God, it’s cold,’ complained Bryant, who had hands like ice even in midsummer. ‘Good idea. There’s a box in Charing Cross Road, save us going back to the unit. Take this chap’s name and address.’
    ‘Aren’t you worried he might do a bunk?’
    ‘I’m not going to drag him back to Bow Street for questioning. The bully Carfax will simply frighten the life out of him, and then he’ll tell them nothing.’
    The pair made their way along Charing Cross Road, past bookshops that stacked salvaged paperbacks on tables outside their shops, and chemists advertising a peculiarly furtive mixture of products for gentlemen: trusses, contraceptives and nudist health magazines. They passed the old match-seller who stood on the corner of Newport Street, his blindness and missing leg testifying to an earlier conflict. Finally they reached the blue police box, and Bryant used his key to unlock it. He talked to a woman on the switchboard, and after a few minutes she called him back.
    ‘Seems they’ve already got the rest of her,’ he told May cheerfully. ‘At least, they’ve found a body without feet. They’re waiting for formal confirmation, but she’s already been identified informally. A dancer named—hang on, I’ve got to write this down somewhere—Tanya Capistrania. Rather exotic. Being taken out of the Palace Theatre right now,
sans pieds
. The cleaners found her with her legs wedged into the trellis of the goods lift. Suggestive, isn’t it, when you consider that the chestnut man left his stall in Moor Street, which runs alongside the theatre? Come on, let’s go over and take a look. There’s a woman who works in the box office who’s waiting to show us around. Smile nicely and she might give us the kind of tidbits she