Free Bryant & May - London's Glory: (Short Stories) (Bryant & May Collection) by Christopher Fowler Page B

partner, laboriously unwrapping a rhubarb and custard boiled sweet. ‘Living in the Barbican, hardly the most rural spot in London, although I suppose it does have a lake. Why farming?’
    ‘They think he died of anthrax. He had mouth ulcers, had complained of stomach cramps and feeling sick. Anthrax is a virus that’s more likely to be used for bioterrorist attacks.’
    ‘I remember. In 2001 it was sent through the American Postal Service and infected more than twenty people. Turned out to have been mailed by a US government scientist with a grudge, didn’t it? Maybe the same thing happened here.’ The boiled sweet rattled against Bryant’s ill-fitting false teeth as he turned the problem over. ‘What do we know about him?’
    ‘William Warren, forty-seven, part-time musician, played with a jazz band in pubs, ran a stall in Camden Market, no known affiliations with any political organization, moved here after he broke up with his wife last year. It seems an amicable enough split. He was still seeing his kids at the weekends. Nothing much else to go on.’
    Bryant lifted a corner of the plastic seal, raised a piano lid and gave an impromptu, unrecognizable rendition of ‘Chopsticks’.
    ‘Don’t do that – the room hasn’t been dusted for dabs yet.’
    ‘Not my fault you have a tin ear. “Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast.”’
    ‘It’s too early in the morning to start quoting Shakespeare.’
    ‘It’s not Shakespeare, it’s William Congreve, the first line of his play
The Mourning Bride
. It’s there.’ He pointed to the wall, where the phrase had been neatly painted in gold script. ‘He must have loved his music.’ Bryant put the piano lid back down. ‘I suppose you checked his mailbox.’
    ‘The landlady says there was nothing out of the ordinary. She always opened his stuff for him.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘He had a habit of avoiding his bills. Didn’t like paying “the man”. Bit of an old hippie, didn’t approve of financing fat cats.’
    ‘Bet he didn’t mind supporting the black economy, though.’ Bryant picked up a macramé mandala and grimaced. ‘Pub jazz sessions and market stalls: I don’t suppose he got around to paying tax on his earnings. Do we know his movements over Christmas?’
    ‘Same as always, apparently. He saw his kids, played his gigs, ran his stall, went drinking with his mates.’
    ‘Cherchez la femme?
’
    ‘Well, I think there’s something going on with the landlady. She’s a bit of an ex-rock chick.’
    ‘He doesn’t sound like the sort of person who gets targeted by an international terrorist gang. Selling anything dodgy on the side?’ Bryant loosened his moulting pea-green scarf and sniffed the air. ‘Doesn’t smell very fresh in here.’
    ‘Not that I know of. All we have to go on is what’s in this apartment.’ May carefully stepped over a pile of dirty laundry and surveyed the cluttered room. Some partially repaired musical instruments were arranged in one corner. The sofa and two armchairs were piled with sheet music, volumes of poetry, bits of home-made pottery, hand-woven woolly hats, a flute, bongo drums and various hand-painted ethnic bits of wood.
    ‘You can tell a lot about someone by looking at his home,’ said Bryant, raising an empty plastic pudding pot and peering into it. ‘It’s all a bit knit-your-own-muesli. I bet he was a vegetarian. Probably poisoned by a rogue sprout. The thing is’ – Bryant gingerly replaced the tub on the windowsill – ‘people like Mr Warren are colourful and vaguely tiresome but they don’t usually have any enemies. Why do you think he was murdered?’
    ‘Anthrax is hard to catch,’ said May. ‘You can get it from tainted meat, except, as you rightly surmise, he was a vegetarian. It’s one of the diseases that comes flagged with a red alert on the system because of its terrorist connotations, so we were asked to check it out.’
    Bryant wasn’t listening. He had twisted himself under