Wild Chamber

by Christopher Fowler

  It wasn’t far to the end of the tunnel, and she recalled there was a cab rank in a bay around the corner. The box beneath her arm contained a heavy toy truck. It was an encumbrance but Charlie had been given it at the show, an elaborate interactive event with pirates and prizes, and it was too big for him to carry. He’d won it by using his brains and solving a puzzle when all of the other children had merely made guesses. He was an astonishingly smart boy. His father was already making plans to have him accelerated in school. She imagined the pair of them raising Charlie themselves, Jeremy coming home after board meetings to play with the boy, the three of them living in the country, sharing a hug in a sunlit garden. She saw herself on the boards of charities, coming home to Charlie and Jeremy – and perhaps their own little girl, a new sister for the lonely child …

  She had to release his hand to avoid dropping the package, and of course just then her mobile rang. Digging it from her bag, she saw that Mr Forester was calling, probably from the arrivals lounge at Heathrow. ‘Hang on – Charlie, stay here …’ she called, wedging the phone under her ear as the toy truck started to slide out of the end of the box.

  The truck driver swung his wheel and turned into Shand Street, checking the clearance meter on his cabin ceiling. It told him that the tunnel’s sloping roof was less than six inches above, because he was coming in at an angle. Straightening up, he watched as the meter dropped back to a foot, and knew he would be able to keep it there. He just had to watch out for protrusions; some of these tunnels had cable bars hanging down from their roofs. There was a lot of traffic in the tunnel, and visibility was poor.

  The vehicles suddenly shunted forward. He reached out a hand and cleared the condensation forming on his windscreen. He didn’t enjoy truck-driving; the work was monotonous and his foreman at Medusa Holdings was constantly pressuring him to improve on his delivery times. He had a degree but couldn’t find a way to make it pay, so for now he was stuck with long-haul deliveries—

  Damn. The car in front had slammed on its brakes and he nearly rear-ended it. The trucker turned up his radio. There had just been a warning about road closures to the south of London Bridge but he had missed it. Perhaps it would come on again.

  As he tried to find another news station he saw a movement from the corner of his eye. One of the homeless men in the tunnel had lurched to his feet on the left-hand pavement and was about to step out. He swung the wheel to avoid him. The clearance meter started beeping urgently.

  Swinging back, the truck’s front nearside tyre mounted the low kerb with a thump. Wary of shifting his load, he checked his mirror and smoothly slowed down as the homeless man wandered clear. A moment later he saw a smartly dressed woman in a black raincoat standing in front of him, squinting in his headlights, and through the fumes he sensed something else – that there was a child just below the level of his windscreen.

  He was an instinctive driver. Swinging the wheel sharply, he managed to avoid the boy without shifting his load, but the vehicle behind was caught out by his brake lights. It was getting too close, and meandering in its lane as if its driver was drunk.

  Looking in his rear-view mirror, the trucker could see that the car was about to hit the grey metal electrical cabinet that jutted from the tunnel wall. Those damned things were barely visible; he’d often come close to clipping them. He heard a low scrape and a thump and, sure enough, caught a glimpse of the car rocking to a sudden stop, right up against the brickwork. Been there, done that, he thought, but suddenly the smartly dressed woman on the pavement was yelling and he thought she was reacting to the shock of nearly being run over, but as the driver behind got out he realized that something bad might have happened. The girl was pretty but very thin, dressed in tight blue jeans and a green Superdry sweatshirt. She looked alarmed, confused. As she came around the car’s driver-side headlight she reached out a steadying hand.

  The trucker kept his eyes focused on the rear-view mirror. The toy lorry that lay in the gutter looked like a miniature version of his own vehicle. He watched as the girl knelt down before it, drawn by the same ominous sight, then saw the shocked little blond-haired boy standing just ahead of her car. He was holding a hand to his cheek, but he couldn’t possibly have been hit. Man, that could have been nasty, the driver thought. These bloody short-notice detours are going to kill someone one day. Satisfied that the boy was OK, he was about to drive on, hoping to meet his deadline at Covent Garden’s tourist market, but when he looked in his rear-view mirror again he saw there was something wrong.

  It wasn’t in his nature to walk away from a problem. With a sigh he looked for a spot to pull over, and prepared to miss his allocated time slot.

  ‘Are you hurt, Charlie?’ Sharyn asked, holding the boy’s thin shoulders. ‘Show me your face.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Charlie, pulling free. ‘My eye’s sore.’

  ‘Don’t rub it. Let me see.’ She gently removed his hand from his left eye and peered into his face. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong. ‘It’s probably a bit of grit from the road.’

  ‘Is he OK?’ asked the thin girl in the Superdry sweatshirt. She glanced back nervously at the car. ‘Are we all right here?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Sharyn turned the boy to the light. She could see a tiny red mark in the corner of Charlie’s left eye. ‘It looks like a little speck of blood.’

  ‘I’m OK,’ Charlie repeated.

  Sharyn looked down at the pavement, which she now saw was covered in tiny pieces of broken glass. ‘Is that from your wing mirror?’

  The girl turned and looked. She seemed dazed and unable to take in what had happened. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I think there was like an empty bottle on top of the cabinet or something. It must have smashed.’ They looked back at the gutter, where a wine label lay with shards of green glass still stuck to its back.

  Suddenly Charlie Forester wavered as if he was about to faint. He fell forward, but slowly, so that Sharyn was able to catch him and keep him upright.

  The girl dropped back in a state of panic. ‘Oh God, what’s wrong with him? I didn’t do anything.’ She turned and staggered towards the car.

  ‘Wait,’ called Sharyn, ‘where are you going?’

  ‘It’s just shock, he looks fine, I have to go,’ said the girl over her shoulder.

  ‘You can’t leave; it was still an accident. Don’t you have to stay here until we’ve reported it?’ Sharyn wanted to run after her but couldn’t abandon Charlie.

  ‘I can’t, I’m sorry,’ said the girl. She climbed back into the car and then it was reversing, lurching back and forward again, freeing itself and bouncing out into the traffic gap before it had a chance to close up, leaving Sharyn and Charlie on the pavement.

  Sharyn turned her attention back to Charlie. Her only concern was for the boy. He was heavy in her arms. His eye was definitely weeping. Then someone in uniform was running towards them. Sergeant Kemp-Bird was out of breath by the time he reached her side. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I’m not sure – I think he’s fainted.’

  ‘Get back to the wall, away from the traffic,’ Kemp-Bird instructed. ‘I’ll call someone.’ The truck driver was walking towards them now, a look of concern on his face.

  She went with Charlie in the ambulance but wasn’t allowed to sit with him in the back. The EMTs did what they could, but the boy grew deathly white and lay motionless on the trolley. The supervising technician shone the beam of his penlight into his left pupil. Sliding back the window, he asked Sharyn whether she saw anything enter the boy’s eye.

  ‘I think it was probably dust from the tunnel,’ Sharyn answered. ‘The lady in the car that hit the wall said she saw a bottle break. There was glass all over the pavement. There was a wine bottle, probably from one of the homeless men. Why are they allowed to be there?’ She looked back at the boy and grew even more alarmed. ‘Why isn’t he responding?’

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ the technician admitted as the ambulance edged through the traffic,
but he had seen something like this happen before and had a strong suspicion about what was occurring. He could see something reflecting in the left caruncle, the corner of the eye. If it was a sliver of glass from the road it could be coated in all kinds of chemicals and bacteria. It could work its way around to do serious damage, perhaps even sever the optic nerve. He’d known a sliver of glass to enter an eye, blind it and leave a patient’s body one week later from under a fingernail. People who worked with glass all said the same thing: that it was a pernicious and potentially lethal material.

  His worst fears were confirmed when it became obvious that the foreign particle had gone much deeper and was causing a clot. ‘We need to get there faster,’ he warned the driver.

  Charlie Forester died on the operating table twenty-seven minutes later, and through her tears Sharyn saw another tragedy approaching. She realized she would have to confront his father about the events that had occurred on that rain-beaten night in the tunnel underneath London Bridge Station.

  It was the moment when she saw all her plans, her ambitions, every expectation and dream she had for her future wiped out in a single stroke.

  3

  ‘THE COMPANY WILL OUTLAST ITS EMPLOYEES’

  Six months after his son died in the emergency unit at St Thomas’, Jeremy Forester arrived at his office just before 8 a.m., parking his black Mercedes-AMG S 65, a vehicle worth more than his first house had cost, in his space beneath the sign saying ‘Washbourne Hollis Employees Only’. As he killed the engine, he gathered his presentation materials and tried to get his wife off the phone.

  ‘Helen, I agreed to the meeting in principle but we’re going to be really busy here. We’ve a heap of contract renewals to handle. Someone has to oversee the renovations on the house, and I’ve got to deal with the Hong Kong flat. I let you choose the counsellor but I’ve never even met this woman. How do I know she’s not just going to automatically take your side?’

  ‘Oh, we have sides now?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’ He closed his case, bipped the car door and headed for the lifts.

  ‘I have no other time. I’m choosing fabrics for the gallery. Surely you haven’t forgotten? At this point we have to be seen to be spending money.’

  ‘Do we? I’m more concerned about closing Hong Kong. I’ve just arrived at work. We’ll talk later.’

  Jeremy knew he had lost the battle. Helen’s appalling friends would encourage her to spend while he stayed in London trying to close his contracts and project-manage the house renovation at the same time, and the relationship counsellor would charge them a fortune for a series of broken appointments. If Helen’s gallery failed to open on time, the house wasn’t finished or the Hong Kong flat was delayed, she would blame him, and even if everything did work out she would still not be happy, because she never was these days. Nothing had been the same since they’d lost their son in a bizarre accident no one could adequately explain. Charlie’s death had opened fissures in their marriage that were impossible to close.

  Washbourne Hollis was housed in Number One, Poultry, a prestigious building at the epicentre of London that had arisen during the city’s birth, and had remained in one form or another for two thousand years. The lift took Jeremy to his office. A message from his assistant Melissa warned him that Larry Vance, the head of finance, had called an urgent meeting. As he diverted there, Jeremy wondered if the month’s figures had finally set him on track to become a partner. Vance needed him. It would mean that the deal’s accompanying shares would pay for the house, the gallery and Hong Kong, which was good timing as he had just finished signing the paperwork.

  Vance was too short and inconsequential-looking to be sitting behind an acre of Indonesian teak; it made him look like a fearful schoolboy waiting to see the headmaster. Even so, Jeremy knew at once that something was wrong. Instead of the usual tentative smile from the financial chief there was a downcast fidget, a failure of acknowledgement from the man who had mentored him for six long years.

  Placing his manicured fingers on the blotter and spreading them wide, Vance finally looked up into his employee’s eyes. ‘Don’t get too comfortable, Jeremy. I think it’s better for both of us if I keep this short. I’m afraid I’m the bearer of bad news. You know I made a lot of allowances for you after Charlie died. But I simply can’t any longer.’

  Jeremy tried to swallow but his mouth was dry. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘There’s no other way to say this. I’m afraid you’re relieved of your duties here. In compliance with company policy, I have to insist that you immediately clear your desk.’ Vance turned away, actually turned away, unable to hold his gaze. ‘Don’t take any files with you. You can leave your security keys with the concierge.’

  Jeremy glanced about the room. Was this some kind of grotesque joke? Were his colleagues about to jump out? ‘You’re not serious, are you? I thought this was about making me a partner.’

  ‘Until a week ago, so did I,’ said Vance. ‘I really need you off the premises as quickly as possible, Jeremy.’

  Pain prickled behind his eyes. ‘After all the money I made for you in the last two years? Are you insane?’

  ‘This is not about your skills as a negotiator,’ said Vance, ‘it’s about your choices. We’ve been over the books.’

  Jeremy’s face froze. What was he talking about? There were no actual illegalities, just a few carefully bent rules. A decision pivoted before him: Deny their existence or come clean. ‘I never did anything for personal gain. Everything I did was for the company.’

  ‘I believe you, Jeremy, but it doesn’t alter the fact that what you’ve been doing completely contravenes fiscal policy,’ replied Vance. ‘If any of this gets reported we’ll have the Fraud Squad on our backs in a heartbeat. You saw what happened with the Panama Papers. There has to be total accountability.’

  ‘It’s not exactly in the same league, Larry. We’re talking about methods in common usage in the international business community.’ He was starting to speak too quickly; he knew that. ‘I needed to make our investments more profitable. What, you think that just happens by itself?’

  ‘Let me ask you – what do you think will happen if the City Companies Commission gets wind of this?’ He stopped his employee from framing a reply. ‘Are there any other records I don’t know about? Is there anything kept off-site, on your home laptop, in cloud storage?’

  ‘No, it’s only here in the office in secure e-vault files. I would never take it outside, you know that.’

  ‘I’m prepared to accept your word for now, until there’s a full internal investigation. This kind of – blindness – is something we keep a constant watch for. It’s lucky for you that I noticed before anyone else did. We’ll clean house as fast as we can, but I’m afraid part of that process is getting you off the premises before 9 a.m.’

  Jeremy felt sweat dripping between his shoulder blades. There was a terrible sense of things falling away. ‘What’s my severance package? The terms are complex, it’ll take a while to go through everything with the lawyers—’

  Vance looked amazed. ‘What are you talking about? There is no severance package, Jeremy. What you get is me keeping you out of jail, in the short term at least. That’s the only deal we’re looking at here, the one you should be thanking me for. Look, I know it was a rough year for you, losing your son, and I know you and Helen are going through a difficult patch, but this is an extremely serious matter.’

  ‘It isn’t what you think,’ he replied, starting to feel sick. ‘Did you stop to wonder whether the profitability levels on those contracts were sustainable? Where did you suppose the money came from, for God’s sake?’

  Vance picked up a thick envelope and plucked it open. ‘Yours is the only name on any of the transactions, for which I suppose I must thank you. I just need you to sign this.’ He unfolded the pages and smoothed them out before his employee.

  Jeremy looked down at the sheets containing details of his transactions a
nd subsequent resignation. ‘Please, Larry, I have debts,’ he said. ‘I owe money, I’ve a million pounds’ worth of house renovations going on here and I just purchased the Hong Kong flat so that I could be there to handle clients more easily. There are substantial outstanding loans – everything was based on the assumption of me being made a partner.’ He rattled the page, his fingers leaving sweat-marks. ‘What if I don’t sign this?’

  ‘Then I’ll have to call security and they will call the police. This was your project, nobody else’s.’

  ‘Don’t do this to me,’ he begged as quietly and reasonably as he could. ‘I have nothing saved. I took personal risks. My own investments didn’t work out. I had to borrow from all sorts of – hell, I haven’t even finished paying for the gallery, so you can imagine what my wife—’

  ‘I wouldn’t wish your wife on a dog,’ interrupted Vance, relishing the opportunity to be brutally honest. ‘You bought her to make yourself look good. Get rid of her. Women have always been your weakness, Jeremy. Don’t say you did this for us – admit that you did it for her. You know I’m sorry you lost your son, but I can’t afford to be sentimental about this. I need you to sign the document and then vacate the building.’

  ‘Let me keep the car,’ he pleaded. His pen hand was shaking violently. ‘Just the car.’

  Vance considered the point. The car was nothing. Forester’s replacement would want a new one anyway. He could concede that. And as far as his accountants could tell, Jeremy had operated alone without authority, indicting only himself. Perhaps it was the gentlemanly thing to do. ‘All right,’ he conceded. ‘Out of respect for your work here, you can keep the car.’

  The page wavered before Jeremy’s eyes as he signed his career away. For one horrible moment he thought he felt tears swelling. ‘I’ve served Washbourne Hollis well. I put its profits before everything else.’

  Vance thought about this and grunted assent. ‘The company will outlast its employees. But you, Jeremy – let me give you a word of advice. You need to develop a survival strategy. You’re too loyal. To the company, to your wife. We’ll both be fine without you. Look after yourself. Settle your debts, find a way to reconnect, but do it alone, on your own terms. Your job here will be filled within days. People will be climbing over corpses for it.’