Disturbia

by Christopher Fowler

  He gave Masters his new number and rang off. With a hiss of exasperation, he stepped back into the drenching downpour.

  —

  Louie could feel something cold and wet pressing against him in the icy rushing torrent, something with the heaviness of flesh and bone. It thumped against his burning thigh as the water pounded around him, dragging at his limbs. He reached down into the freezing stream and grabbed a human arm, pulling it nearer. Pam was the worse for wear but still very much alive, and began coughing violently as soon as he raised her head. There seemed to be a stone slab set halfway across the shaft, about two feet down in the water. They were safe so long as they managed to stay on it, as she had; to step off would mean being swept away along the tunnel to who knew where. Forcing one arm around Pam’s waist, he used the other to cling to the iron rungs, but had no strength to pull the pair of them free from the churning river.

  ‘Hit my head,’ yelled Pam miserably. Louie was so surprised he nearly dropped her. ‘Someone let the lid fall on my head. Can’t we get out?’

  ‘No, the cover’s been put back in place,’ he explained. ‘Are you strong enough to hold on to something?’

  ‘I think so.’

  He gently pushed her through the water to the side wall and wrapped her fingers around the rungs. ‘Now hold tight. I’ll see if I can get the lid off. Don’t let go, whatever you do.’

  Slowly, painfully, he climbed the rungs one at a time until his head was level with the top of the shaft. With his free hand he attempted to push the lid free, but there was not even a quarter-inch of movement. His right thigh, where the crossbow dart had entered, felt as though it was on fire. God only knew how many inoculations he would need if they ever got out of here alive.

  He stepped down a rung to try and get a better grip, and the aluminium shaft of the dart caught inside one of the ladder struts, causing him to yell out in pain. His fingers closed on air as the rung eluded his grasp, and he fell back. For a moment he lay across the shaft breathing hard, his shoulder against the slime-covered wall opposite. Then as Pam screamed his name he slipped again and fell feet first, bypassing the ledge, into the storm-driven cloacal rage below.

  Chapter 43

  Night and Day

  ‘But Arthur, we need your knowledge down here,’ pleaded Maggie Armitage. ‘You still remember all the old, esoteric stuff even I’ve forgotten.’

  ‘I’m not sure I take that as a compliment,’ replied the elderly detective. ‘Anyway, there are too many cooks in this room. You need to go over those paintings inch by inch, preferably with a magnifying glass. Someone should be working out what the League of Prometheus is up to.’

  ‘Surely we know that already.’

  ‘No,’ said Bryant emphatically, ‘that is precisely what we don’t know, beyond the fact that Vincent Reynolds is being used. Could their meeting have been prearranged right from the outset, d’you suppose?’

  ‘I don’t see how,’ answered Masters. ‘Vincent says he found Sebastian’s name in a magazine.’

  ‘Hmm. Harold, may I borrow your wife?’ He extended his hand. ‘Jane, you have a lively mind. I know it’s late, but you wouldn’t mind helping me for a few minutes, would you?’

  ‘Not at all,’ replied Jane, flattered. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘I’m not a fan of the Internet, as you know. It seems to me rather like the stack of magazines one always finds in dentists’ waiting rooms. They cover all the subjects you have no interest in reading about, and the only pages you’d like to read are partially missing. Still, it could be useful in this situation. Harold was telling me that you use it at the museum, and that you have a connection set up here. Can you show me how to locate those page-things?’

  ‘Web-sites, yes, of course. I’ll show you where the terminal is.’ She led the way upstairs. Unlike his partner John May, who was in the thrall of all things cybernetic, Bryant had no love or understanding of technology. Its usefulness in locating information, however, could not be denied. He needed to probe deeper into the newspaper files for reports of the drowning of Melanie Daniels, and knew that he could probably access all the archival material he needed through the Internet. At the back of his mind was the suspicion that Sebastian had somehow been responsible for the girl’s death. Either it was an accident that he had unwittingly caused, or he had actually murdered her in a fit of anger. Suppose Sir Nicholas had discovered the truth, and had refused to help his boy out of the situation? Surely that was reason enough for father and son to become estranged?

  And yet this alone was not enough to explain the League’s mobilisation in the last few hours. It seemed unlikely that an accident occurring over seven years ago had any bearing on the drama now being played out, but what else did they have to go on? As he seated himself before the console and Jane switched on the modem for him, he realised how little time there was left before the dawn would start shedding its unwelcome light on the events of the night.

  —

  ‘Let’s have a good look at these pictures,’ said Masters. He adjusted his bifocals and scanned the page. ‘We’ll take the clues in the order that they were written down. The night of September 3rd and the passing of Proserpine.’ He opened a heavy, battered copy of The Works of William Hogarth, bound in brown leather, and located the Times of the Day engravings. The sequence of four ended with Night. ‘Well, Proserpine is Persephone, the wife of Hades, the goddess of the underworld…’

  ‘I know a fair amount about these pictures,’ said Maggie keenly. ‘Hogarth is often cited by our coven members because of his reliance on symbolism and myth. The members like that sort of thing. Look, here, at the Night picture.’ She tapped it with a crimson nail. ‘It’s apparently set in Hartshorn Lane, Charing Cross. The road is long gone, of course. The oak boughs on the sign and the oak leaves in the freemason’s hat suggest the date—May 29th, the anniversary of Charles the Second’s restoration. There’s a crashed coach in the bottom right-hand corner. I think it’s meant as a sort of nasty parody of Persephone bringing on the night. Most of Hogarth’s jests have a sadistic edge created by his love of paradox. There’s another joke in the surrounding scene—rather than preparing for bed, everyone is getting ready to go out.’

  ‘That’s what Vince has done, isn’t it?’ said Purbrick. ‘He’s been forced to swap night for day, going out when everyone else has gone to bed.’

  Maggie turned the page back and pointed to a reproduction of Evening. ‘Diana and her cuckold Actaeon. We know this is who the painting is meant to represent because the characters are painted on the fan held by the central character. The spirit of Diana hangs over the picture, but in a sort of perverse parody. Actaeon was changed into a stag for looking upon Artemis while she was bathing, but here he’s been turned into a cuckold. He’s standing in front of a bull.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ asked Purbrick.

  ‘It looks like he has horns. Putting horns on a man is the traditional manner of showing that his wife is unfaithful, Stanley, surely you know that.’

  ‘I don’t see how it helps us,’ Purbrick complained.

  ‘According to these notes it’s supposed to be five in the afternoon because there’s a milkmaid milking a cow in the background, and we’re at Sadler’s Wells. Those are the hills of Highgate in the distance.’

  ‘Not much help. Turn to the next one.’

  ‘Noon,’ said Maggie, holding up the third reproduction. ‘Ruled by Apollo, associated with the sun, and Venus, whose love is inverted here to be symbolised by a vulgar marriage and various earthy lusts, lots of sloppy feasting and debauchery.’

  ‘I like this one,’ said Purbrick. ‘It’s a bit saucy. Where the good woman is silent. Who is the good woman, then?’

  ‘She’s on the sign outside the inn.’

  ‘But she’s got no head.’

  ‘That’s what makes her good; she can’t nag.’

  ‘Hmm. What about the last picture?’

  ‘Morning. The church dial says fi
ve to eight. An old maid crossing Covent Garden Square. She’s dressed in yellow, the colour of the dawn sun, like the goddess Aurora—’

  ‘Like the fire that Prometheus himself carries,’ added Purbrick.

  ‘That’s right. She’s on her way to church, but this is another inversion, another cruel paradox. She’s peppered with black spots, venereal marks, and dressed less for religious service than personal vanity, hence less pious than she appears. She looks more like she’s been out all night and is going to church to repent her carnal sins.’

  ‘Well, the symbolism of the paintings is obvious, then, isn’t it?’ said Purbrick. ‘He’s commenting on Vincent.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ asked Maggie.

  ‘The four goddesses, they all represent some aspect of what Sebastian perceives to be Vincent’s world tonight. Persephone runs into the night and into the underworld, Diana the huntress takes on a challenge, Venus the lover turns the love into sin, and Aurora is the dawn-bringer, carrier of fire. Vincent befriended Sebastian, but the friendship soured under false pretences, that’s Venus—’

  ‘It’s a bit different to love, though, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not in the classical sense, not at all. Friendship between males is seen in terms quite as strong as love, and governed by exactly the same rules of loyalty and duty. Next, Vincent ran into the night at Sebastian’s instruction, he accepted the challenge and hunted through the fields for him—’

  ‘Fields, Stanley?’ Maggie raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Indeed, for what will you find beneath the concrete of the city? Fields, Margaret, fields and the bones of Londoners. But according to these pictures, there’s one thing Vincent hasn’t done yet.’

  ‘He hasn’t brought in the dawn.’

  ‘Right. That’s where he has to go, where the character in the fourth painting is going, to Covent Garden, to the portico of St Paul’s Church, featured in the picture. At least, that’s what we’re meant to think. But it’s another trick, you see.’

  ‘You mean because the painting is actually back to front. Hogarth always drew in a mirror.’

  ‘No, no, it’s to do with the church. I used to attend there when I was younger, so I know this is true,’ said Purbrick proudly. ‘Inigo Jones outraged the clerics when he completed St Paul’s in 1633, because he placed the altar at the west instead of the east end. It was something quite unheard of. He wanted his grand portico to face east into the new piazza, but in the face of so much ecclesiastical protest he re-sited the altar without changing the church’s overall design. By doing so, he turned the church back-to-front, transforming the grand portico into a fake doorway, reducing it to a mere stage, where street entertainers now perform to the crowds.’

  ‘Good heavens.’

  ‘He created a paradox, a backward church that almost mocks itself with jugglers and fire-eaters instead of holy men.’

  ‘Stanley, there’s life left in you yet,’ muttered Maggie, amazed.

  —

  If he reached up he could feel the curved brick ceiling at his fingertips, but there was no break in the water above him. The tunnel was completely filled. Another jutting stone ledge scraped past Louie, and he twisted his body, mindful of the metal rod still protruding from his thigh. He was running out of breath. The trick was not to panic. He allowed his body to go limp and be carried by the buffeting current.

  The tunnel swept sharply to the right and up slightly, so that he could feel the slime-covered base of the sewer rapidly passing beneath his boots. Moments later he burst from the freezing water into air, propelled to a hard landing on the far side of a large iron grid, down through which the overflow from the tunnel was rushing. A faint grey light showed from above, allowing him to make out the hexagonal shape of the broad Victorian air-shaft. He reached down to his thigh and found the steel shaft of the arrow gone, wrenched free in the vortex.

  Things got better after that. Pam had been pulled loose in his fall and now appeared behind him, although he was too late to break her fall as she burst from the tunnel and landed on the drainage grid. It took all his strength to drag her free of the torrent before she could swallow any more effluent. Water also spattered his face from above. Rain was falling through the large iron pores of a rectangular drain lid. Pam was not conscious, but was at least breathing hard. He rested his head against the green-slimed wall and allowed the falling raindrops to wash the filth from his face. Then he pulled Pam against the wall at his back and began looking for the ladder that he knew would take them to the surface and safety.

  It was only when he opened his jacket to squeeze some of the water out that he realised what had happened. The disk he had fought to save, Vince’s final copy of the manuscript, had been sucked from his clothes and washed away, the fragile magnetic square lost in the surf of detritus thundering through its channel beneath the city.

  —

  ‘Interesting,’ said Bryant, ‘this bit here about the inquest.’ They had tapped into the only report that had so far made it onto the Internet, a web-site dedicated to celebrity criminal cases. He tapped the scrolling screen with the end of his biro. Jane shifted closer on the piano stool they were awkwardly sharing. ‘The coroner’s report on Melanie Daniels suggested that there was no sign of panic in the victim. Drowners usually start to hyperventilate when they inhale water into their lungs. No cadaveric spasms, few diatoms. It’s not symptomatic of drowning. I’m surprised the verdict was misadventure.’

  ‘I’m not sure what you’re looking for,’ said Jane.

  ‘I’m not sure myself, but this is all very suggestive. Daniels was relaxed when she went into the water, if not unconscious. How could that be?’

  ‘She must have been pretty out of it.’

  ‘Oh, come on, the party was late in the year, the lake would have been freezing cold. If she was so drunk and stoned that she couldn’t even feel the icy water pouring into her mouth, how did she even manage to get as far as the end of a narrow jetty in semi-darkness?’

  ‘You think someone took her down to the lake and made it look like an accident?’

  ‘It’s a possibility, yes.’

  ‘But wouldn’t the coroner have discovered that?’

  ‘He should have done. Tell me, is there a Debrett’s Who’s Who on database?’

  ‘I should think so. Who do you want to look up?’

  ‘Jasper Forthcairn, QC, the coroner in charge of the case.’

  —

  So. It was Covent Garden for the ninth stop.

  Vince closed up the mobile phone and wearily swung his bag onto his shoulder. He stepped out of the sheltering doorway into the deadening downpour. His wet jeans were chafing the tops of his legs, but he barely registered the discomfort. He felt helpless about the fate of Louie and Pam. He was angry with himself and Sebastian, for allowing things to go this far, for involving and injuring others. When he thought of that smug, smiling face he longed to swing one good punch at it and knock a few teeth loose. Limping back to Liverpool Street, shuffling along like a sodden scarecrow, he finally managed to hail a cab and climbed in, squelching down onto the seat and turning the heater on full to try to dry himself a little.

  ‘Forgive me for saying so, mate,’ said the driver, ‘but you look like something the bleedin’ cat dragged in, an’ you’re makin’ my seat wet. Here.’ He passed Vince a dry towel.

  ‘Thank you, that’s very kind.’ He buried his face in the warm scented nap of the cloth, then ruffled his hair dry. For the next ten minutes he felt safe and protected inside the latter-day hackney carriage, as it purred through the rainy streets. The major routes were growing busier now as the first commuters started coming into the city. He must have fallen asleep, because it seemed only moments later that the taxi had stopped and the driver was calling to him through the window.

  ‘Here you are, tosh, this where you wanna be? You won’t find anything open around here until about nine.’

  ‘This is fine, thanks.’ Vince paid him and alighted back into the rai
n. There was no sign of light in the sky yet. Dawn was still some way off. The market was empty, the shops in darkness, the cobbled square devoid of human life. A small funfair stood on the north side, its red and yellow roundabouts and sideshows boarded up against the weather and the night.

  He headed for what he took to be the front entrance of St Paul’s Church, then remembered Dr Masters’s advice, that the portico in the painting was a false front, existing separately at the rear of the building. Wiping the water from his eyes, he slowly made his way across the cobbled square.

  Chapter 44

  The Trickster

  The police constable looked around for something to wedge under the lid of the manhole cover, but it was hard to see in the rain that thundered down around them outside the little park.

  ‘I’ll tell you why,’ he told his partner. ‘Because it’s a funny time to make a crank call and the caller didn’t sound pissed or nuts, he was very well spoken, in fact, so the desk sergeant thought it was worth checking out.’

  ‘If somebody fell down there, how come the lid’s back in place?’ asked his partner, picking up the same length of branch Louie had used to try to open the drain. ‘How about this?’ When employed as a lever, the wood cracked further along its length. He tossed it aside and looked around for something else.

  ‘Get a tyre iron from the car.’

  He returned with the iron and jammed it into the rim of the drain. After a few moments of hard pressure it burst up, and the constable was able to carefully roll the lid aside. He shone his torch down into blackness. The rushing water was now only two feet below the opening.

  ‘The sewer level must have risen in the rainstorm,’ he pointed out to his colleague. ‘Sudden rainstorms have been known to blow these manhole covers clean off. If anyone really had fallen in half an hour ago, they’d be long drowned by now.’

  —

  Louie pushed against the grid. Although it was nearly three feet square he found it was lighter than he had expected, and moved aside easily. He gingerly raised his head and looked out. The shaft was situated in the middle of the road in a quiet backstreet to the rear of the Peabody Trust buildings. He shoved the lid aside and went back for Pam. She was conscious now, but shaking violently with cold and barely coherent. Slipping his arm around her shoulder, he helped her to climb the eight rungs to the top of the shaft, then lifted her beneath the armpits until she was capable of dragging herself out into the roadway.