Wild Chamber

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘If this had gone to the CID, they’d have a hefty team going through every blade of grass looking for evidence,’ said Renfield. ‘Just because we fall under the City of London we have to use our own staff for searches. You’d think they’d want to hang on to a case like this.’

  ‘You’re joking,’ said Banbury. ‘Only half of the officers in the CID are fully trained. Expertise shortage. As soon as they get qualified they bugger off for better jobs abroad. With our success record they’re more than happy to let us take over. I was talking to one of the beat cops about the homeless. He says they were pretty harmless. Most of ’em just wanted to get some sleep. Messy buggers, though. Upset the neighbours. They attached their cardboard boxes to the railings with cable ties. The ligature marks on Helen Forester’s neck had ridges, so it’s worth checking out.’

  So far about 60 per cent of the garden had been marked off into squares, each of which was tagged once it was examined. Outside, the dull roar of buses made the pair aware of passing time; it was now 11.45 a.m. and raining lightly.

  They had checked the railing spears and found all but two solidly welded into place. Even with the loose ones removed there wasn’t enough of a gap for anyone to squeeze through. Renfield squelched about, looking for anything else that might have made its way into the garden. So far they had only found junk-food boxes, plastic bottles and old newspapers.

  ‘I guess when the council repaired the exterior they decided to fix the railings,’ said Banbury, climbing off his knees and giving them a stretch. ‘Anyway, there have to be easier ways to get into the garden than by dismantling them. Don’t get me wrong, I’m loyal to old Bryant and I’m glad he’s back on form, but you have to take his theories with a massive pinch of salt. Sometimes his imagination gets the better of him.’

  ‘I never have any idea what he’s on about,’ Renfield admitted.

  ‘You came back, though.’ Banbury folded away his equipment box.

  ‘Yeah, well, the Met was pretty boring after this. Funnily enough, they don’t like being lumbered with serious investigations. They prefer quick in-and-out stuff.’

  The crime scene manager tried to sound casual. ‘How’s Janice?’

  ‘What, you mean how is she after I walked out on her? I didn’t break her heart and she didn’t push me down the stairs, so I think we’ll be OK. Was she upset about me going?’

  ‘She stapled your socks to a tree and gave everything else to a homeless bloke.’

  ‘Why didn’t she give him the socks as well?’

  The CSM packed his bag and zipped it shut. ‘She said she wouldn’t wish those on anyone.’

  Renfield toed the flowerbed and kicked something unsavoury into the bushes. ‘I couldn’t help it, Dan. The two of us were getting under each other’s feet, and the shambolic way the investigation was being run got to me. The Met wasn’t a picnic, either. I settled straight back into my old ways, drinking after shifts and heading home with a kebab, and I realized I’d changed. The unit changed me. Believe it or not, life was less interesting without you lot.’

  ‘You’re lucky Raymond took you back,’ said Banbury. ‘He’s normally not so forgiving.’ He knelt by a cleared space in the bushes and set down his laptop. ‘This is the spot where our suspect was crouching. The soil’s still soaked.’

  ‘So, prints.’ Renfield leaned forward with his fists on his thighs. ‘Can you get a good cast from his shoes?’

  ‘We don’t do that any more, mate. We construct three-dimensional CAD shots from the photography. It’s more accurate and better for wet surfaces. You can see definite trainer prints here.’ A chart began to unscroll on his screen. ‘There you go, Adidas ZX Flux Originals, one of the most popular shoes in the country, size forty-two.’

  ‘Hang on, you’ve got something else there,’ said Renfield.

  Banbury studied his screen but could not spot anything unusual. ‘Where?’

  ‘Not on the screen. Try your eyes.’ Renfield indicated that he should look beyond his laptop at the actual soil behind it. Reaching in through the branches, he carefully lifted a scrap of wet brown cardboard with the blade of a spatula. ‘It’s underneath where he was crouching. Might have already been there, or maybe he dropped it while he was waiting for her. Can you unfold it?’

  ‘I’ll have to conduct an examination under lab conditions, otherwise it won’t be admissible.’

  Renfield wiped mud off his trousers. ‘I thought the PCU didn’t obey the rules.’

  ‘Mr Bryant always tells us to follow the broad intention of the law, not its letter, but I think we’d better wait for this one,’ said Banbury. ‘I checked the drains for discards and got nothing beyond a few cigarette ends. I take the point about the attacker coming into the area from outside, but to gain access he still needed a key, and that limits us to the keyholders.’

  Renfield peered along the neat repetition of pillared entrances. ‘There are twenty-four houses subdivided into flats. That’s about 144 keys.’

  ‘Probably not that many. The garden keys have to be assigned after approval. The agent says a lot of tenants don’t bother to collect them. She reckons she can work out exactly how many keys are in current use.’

  ‘So when do we start checking?’

  Banbury nodded in the direction of the houses. ‘Colin and Meera are on it right now.’

  Colin Bimsley sat down on the step and pulled the lid off his coffee. ‘Have you got any Category Twos so far?’

  He and Meera had created a list containing the details of every householder in the crescent, and had divided it into those who occasionally visited the garden and those who never used it at all. They then subdivided the former category into people who had entered it in the last two weeks. Nobody had lent their key to a third party; with the formidable Mrs Farrier around they probably didn’t dare.

  ‘Not a single bloody one.’ Meera climbed down beside him to check the pages. ‘Maybe someone’s lying. How likely would you be to admit you lent your key to someone else? The old busybody, Farrier, hardly ever goes out and reckons she knows everyone who uses the place. She told me she goes in there and counts the flowers after anyone’s been in, just to make sure none have been stolen. According to her there are only four or five regular users.’

  ‘What about Helen Forester’s own key? There’s no way of knowing if anyone else got hold of it and made a copy.’

  ‘It’s on the same ring as her house keys. Why would she lend it out?’

  ‘Maybe she had another one cut for a boyfriend or something.’

  ‘What, so that when he’s up for a booty call he could go for a stroll round the tulips instead?’

  Colin took a sip of his coffee and balanced one boot on top of the other. ‘This is a waste of time. I reckon he just followed her in and slipped into the bushes. If she was watching the dog she might not have noticed.’

  ‘Then how did he get out? She still had the key on her.’

  ‘Maybe he climbed one of those bloody great trees and shinned along a branch until he was on the other side of the railings, then dropped on to the roof of a parked van.’

  ‘Except that the trees only run along the flat side of the crescent facing the main arterial road, and that bit’s covered by CCTV. And there’s a row of shops on the other side. Not exactly discreet.’

  They sat back and looked over at the crescent, the black railings with dense verdant perennials behind them, the towering plane trees and the immaculate emerald lawn beyond. ‘Creepy, isn’t it?’ said Meera. ‘I don’t trust trees. We never had a garden. My mum can’t even keep the window box alive. You don’t think it’s a class thing, do you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Someone with a chip on their shoulder bashing the rich bitch in the private park.’

  ‘A bit extreme, isn’t it? She wasn’t doing anybody any harm.’

  ‘Maybe she was,’ Meera wondered. ‘What about a dognapper?’

  ‘Nah, 101 Dalmatians was set in Primrose Hill, not Hol
land Park.’ Colin pulled Meera to her feet. ‘Come on, let’s do the last four houses. I like having a good nose around people’s hallways. I just saw one lined with antique Chinese vases. No crack houses here, eh?’

  ‘Not so many offers of tea, either. I suppose it’s all lapsang souchong. I couldn’t live here. It’s all too up itself for me. I like my scruffy flat.’

  ‘At least you’re sharing a nice new operations room with me.’

  ‘I’m glad old Bryant didn’t move in with us,’ said Meera. ‘He leaves cups of tea everywhere. How can anyone smoke and eat at the same time? He’s always covered in mud or ink or food. And what’s with the insects in boxes? I can tell whenever he’s been past because there’s usually something broken or faulty left behind, and sweets everywhere. He’s like …’ She tried to come up with a comparison. ‘… a tornado hitting a toyshop.’

  ‘You can come and visit my flat sometime if you want to see tidy,’ said Colin. ‘I’m a very neat person.’

  ‘Yeah, you’re not bad,’ Meera conceded, cradling her coffee.

  ‘So would you? Come and visit?’ His eyes were honest and hopeful. Colin worked on the assumption that if he asked Meera 110 times, she’d say no 109 times and then slip up on the 110th.

  ‘Yeah, I might,’ she replied, tossing her cardboard cup into a recycling bin.

  In order to prevent the pause that followed from becoming pregnant with meaning, they set off to finish the interviews.

  Meanwhile, high above Piccadilly Circus, directly behind the blinding LED Coca-Cola sign that turned the road below blood red, Arthur Bryant seated himself in a gloomy waiting room filled with African masks, brocaded pelmets, tassels and net curtains. He didn’t like being kept waiting. He turned over a pot to see who had made it and the lid fell off.

  ‘I know you’re out there, Mr Bryant,’ called Dr Gillespie. ‘For heaven’s sake, come in. It’s like being haunted.’

  The doctor’s office only had one window, and that was blocked by the Dilly’s garish signage. ‘So, no after-effects?’ he asked, peering over the top of his glasses at his patient’s notes. ‘Anything you want to tell me?’

  ‘Physician, I healed myself,’ said Bryant, seating himself and looking about for an ashtray.

  ‘There isn’t one,’ Gillespie told him. ‘Put your pipe back in your pocket. Better still, throw it in the bin. I looked into your treatment. I still don’t quite see how you did it.’

  ‘That’s because it wasn’t entirely legal.’ Bryant reluctantly pocketed the pipe. ‘Some of the drugs I had to take still aren’t approved. I’ve had no side effects apart from a dicky bladder, and I can deal with that by avoiding opera and rollercoasters. I’m fully recovered. Better than ever in fact.’

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that.’ Gillespie tried to add a note to Bryant’s file but he was wearing a finger splint and couldn’t hold the pen upright.

  ‘What have you done now?’ Bryant asked.

  ‘This?’ Gillespie raised his prophylactic digit as if noticing it for the first time. ‘Shut it in the freezer door.’

  ‘That was clumsy of you.’

  ‘Not me, my wife. I was trying to get my tortoise out. She’s got a mean streak.’

  ‘Your tortoise?’

  ‘My wife. Have you not met her? She can be very—’

  ‘Opinionated?’

  ‘Homicidal. Do you think you’ve been suffering from hallucinations?’

  ‘Only when I open your bill,’ said Bryant.

  ‘Because Mr Land told me you had’ – he groped for the appropriate word – ‘lapses.’

  Why can’t Raymond ever keep his big mouth shut? Bryant thought irritably. ‘No, nothing. I feel healthier than you. I imagine everyone does.’

  ‘I’m supposed to put you through your OPRM. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Remind me?’

  ‘Your objective performance-related medical, Mr Bryant. I take it you want me to sign you off and get this document back to the CoL and the Home Office?’

  ‘… Yes.’

  ‘You didn’t hesitate there?’

  ‘This isn’t a quiz show,’ snapped Bryant. ‘If you sign it I’ll go back to work and I won’t have to bother you again.’

  ‘Unless you make a mistake in the course of your duty, and I’m investigated for giving you the all-clear. You see my point?’

  Bryant exhaled theatrically. ‘You’re a bit of a tappen, you know that? What do I have to do to get the all-clear?’

  Gillespie slid over his notes and turned them around. ‘Just sign at the side here. It’s an extra condition to say that you take full responsibility for any problems that might arise from your self-treatment.’

  ‘Take responsibility,’ Bryant repeated. ‘That’s not something anyone seems prepared to do any more in this brave new world, is it? Very well, if that’s what you require.’ He snatched up the doctor’s pen and scrawled across the page. ‘There, now you have nothing to worry about.’

  ‘And again on the last page,’ said Gillespie doggedly.

  Bryant obeyed.

  ‘And at the bottom.’

  Bryant fairly stabbed at the paper.

  ‘And initial it.’

  Bryant banged at the page and rose. ‘In return I expect total patient confidentiality from you. Do you think you’ll be able to manage that for once?’

  Gillespie didn’t look too sure. ‘I’ll act in your best interests,’ he said finally.

  Bryant shook the doctor’s hand. Gillespie flinched sharply. ‘You just gave me an electric shock,’ he complained.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Bryant, happy to have inflicted damage. ‘I’m emitting static. A side effect of my treatment. I seem to be disrupting phone signals as well. The mysteries of human science, eh? You could take a look at my feet while I’m here. It’s all the walking. I’m starting to move like an old elephant.’

  ‘That’s not part of the deal,’ said Dr Gillespie, closing the detective’s file and savouring this one small victory. ‘Go and see a chiropodist.’

  Bryant headed out into Piccadilly, where the lunchtime office crowds had appeared and were weaving around each other in their manic hunt for sustenance. I wasn’t going to tell him about a few ridiculous lucid dreams, he thought. If I can work out what brings them on and learn to control them, he’ll never need to know. The one benefit of maturity is discovering just how crafty you can be.

  He located his phone and called the unit, shouting over the noise of a road drill, several police sirens, a howling electric guitar and a man selling Jesus through a megaphone. ‘Janice, have you had any luck with the background check on Mrs Forester?’

  ‘Bits and pieces, nothing useful yet,’ she replied. ‘Dan’s back, though, and he’s got something he wants you and John to see. Where are you?’

  Bryant was a man who was rarely willing to answer a direct question. ‘I’ll be there in twenty minutes,’ he promised. ‘Put the kettle on, I’m desiccated.’

  At that moment, Dr Gillespie was already breaking patient confidence by putting a call through to the PCU’s chief.

  ‘I’m not sure he’s ready for duty at all,’ he complained to Raymond Land. ‘Perhaps you should put him on gardening leave.’

  ‘Are you saying that my most senior detective is not fit for his job?’ Land asked, leaning back in his chair to keep an eye on his pigeon.

  ‘No, it’s just that he’s become extremely insulting.’

  ‘Become?’ Land had never thought of Bryant as anything else.

  ‘He called me a “tappen”. I don’t know what it is but I’m sure it’s rude.’

  ‘Yes, he’s taken to employing arcane words lately. Hang on, I’m looking it up.’ Gillespie heard the tap of a keyboard, then a suppressed cough of laughter. ‘It’s a rectal plug. “An obstruction or indigestible mass found in the intestines of bears during hibernation. A tappen prevents bears from defecating while asleep. Also used to refer to someone who wilfully holds up business and stops a system fro
m working efficiently.” I think he’s got your number, old man.’

  Land found himself talking to a dead line.

  11

  ‘A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE CIRCUMSTANCES’

  Dan Banbury had dried and flattened the two-inch slip of cardboard from Clement Crescent, and pinned it to the light box in the operations room. ‘There’s no reason to assume it’s his. Except that it was underneath his foot. But you have to admit it’s intriguing.’

  The detectives took turns to examine the page.

  ‘It’s not very clear,’ said May.

  ‘I’m used to looking at this sort of thing,’ said Banbury. ‘He used a biro so I went from the pressure rather than the ink. I typed it out for you.’

  The page read: ‘RSC: FHG26 FP28 CCG29 CSNP2 APC4 GTNR8 EHP10 GP11.’

  ‘RSC? What’s that, the Royal Shakespeare Company?’ asked May.

  ‘Can’t be,’ Banbury replied. ‘Unless those are Shakespeare text references.’

  ‘Trust me, they’re not,’ said Bryant. ‘For example, Henry the Fifth’s St Crispin’s Day speech would be Act Four, Scene Three, lines eighteen to sixty-seven, so there are too many numerals.’

  ‘Could they be map references?’ asked May.

  ‘What, two letters, three letters, four letters?’ Bryant shook his head. ‘The numbers progress largely in pairs.’

  ‘To make it even more intriguing, there was something on the other side of the card – a set of twelve numbers so randomly arranged that I didn’t even bother copying them out,’ said Banbury.

  ‘Hm. I may have a book for this.’ Bryant headed off to his room with May following. He aimed for a low shelf containing a number of dust-caked volumes, quickly sorting through the titles.

  ‘These are in my rarely read section,’ Bryant said. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got. Rum, Sodomy & the Lash: My Nights at Tory Party Conferences, The Little Book of Swiss War Heroes, Britain’s Most Embarrassing Diplomatic Incidents (Vol. 7: E–F) and Is That Mine Floating or Is That a Floating Mine? Wartime Coastal Humour. Ah, here we are. Tompkin’s Standard Guide to London Postal & Telephone Codes 1860–1951. I knew it would come in handy one day.’