Wild Chamber

by Christopher Fowler

‘Apparently not.’

  ‘Not a nice thought, is it?’ mused Bryant. ‘Some chap creeping about the bushes in London parks with a hand-tailored foot-long blade, waiting for lone women to pass through the shadows.’

  ‘And yet he strangled her. It doesn’t make sense. Either he targeted Mrs Forester and it’ll prove to be an isolated incident—’

  ‘No, no, no,’ Bryant protested. ‘You don’t carry a specialist knife and hide in parks to attack just once. He’ll do it again. Giles feels there’s a sexual element to the attack, which I find mystifying. Forester showed no signs of sexual assault.’

  ‘There are other components in the psychology of sadism that may not include sexual assault,’ said May. ‘It could be someone who has abnormal sexual responses.’

  ‘Please don’t tell me this case is going to be all about relationships.’ Bryant led the way into the park’s great tunnel of lime, chestnut and plane trees. ‘I don’t do relationships. Domestic crimes are for the Met to sort out, not us.’

  ‘Why do you always say that?’

  ‘My dear fellow, because they’re simple; the victim and killer are known to each other, and they’re normally to be found at the location where the crime occurred. Murder is an assault that goes one step further than it meant to, that’s all, and all the plods have to do is bang it through to the Crown Prosecution Service as quickly as possible without traumatizing everyone involved.’ Bryant turned to look his partner in the eye. ‘We were appointed for a higher purpose, John – to deal with the kind of criminal activity that has public consequences, not to lock up thugs who’ve accidentally buried their wives for incorrectly folding the tea towels once too often.’

  ‘No wonder you’ve turned down every dinner offer from my sister,’ said May. ‘She’d have nothing to say that wouldn’t bore you, and you’d have nothing to say that wouldn’t upset her.’

  ‘I never learned how to be good at relationships,’ Bryant admitted. ‘I used to watch my father knock my mother around and thought it was what all married couples did, until the day I had to fetch a policeman. It got even more confusing when I arrived back home with him in tow. My mother accused me of bringing shame to the house. “What will people think of us?” she said, hiding her black eye. How could I begin to comprehend that? I can teach myself everything I need from books except how to understand other people.’

  ‘No, Arthur, you understand them perfectly well, you just don’t like what you find,’ corrected May. ‘Which makes it all the more amazing that you chose to become a detective.’

  ‘Well I didn’t, not really.’ Bryant kicked at a dead branch. ‘The unit wasn’t set up to solve crimes so much as to locate them and report on their circumstances in order to create predictive patterns. It was a scientific and academic unit. The job changed around me and I ended up where I never expected to be. It was a lucky thing you stayed on.’

  ‘I’ve learned a lot from you,’ said May.

  ‘Oh, in what way?’ asked Bryant, shamelessly fishing for compliments.

  ‘About seeing the bigger picture, for a start. Damn, it’s starting to rain. Tell me why we’re in Green Park?’

  ‘Because the code said GP, not CC, which means he diverted from Green Park to Clement Crescent. I admit it’s a long shot. I suppose GP could also stand for Gladstone, Gillespie, Grovelands, Gunnersbury and Greenwich Parks. But this is the only central London one, and therefore the most likely.’

  ‘I don’t know how we can be expected to find a man we can’t identify from the gardener’s sole photograph. It’s too big an area for us to cover even with Jack, Colin and Meera helping.’

  ‘Forty-seven acres,’ Bryant interjected, ‘actually the smallest of the royal parks. It was a swamp once, a burial ground for lepers. Charles the Second formalized it so that he could walk from Hyde Park to St James’s without leaving royal soil. They say it doesn’t have any flowerbeds because his missus, Catherine of Braganza, caught Charlie-boy picking the flowers to give to another woman. Cath had every single bed dug up and banned all flowers from the park in perpetuity. It’s a nice story, but probably not true.’

  ‘Arthur, I work in a police unit, not a florist’s.’ May looked about. ‘Where are the others, anyway?’

  ‘They started off by the RAF Bomber Command Memorial and are supposed to be making their way over towards us. I’m not expecting anyone to spot our suspect, I’m just hoping we might find some evidence of his presence.’

  May gave a snort of disapproval. ‘That’s a bit vague, isn’t it? He’s been following this pattern of parks and dates for weeks, we don’t know why or what for, and you expect something to just drop into our laps?’

  Bryant wasn’t answering. Instead he was pointing further down the tree-lined avenue into the grey murk.

  ‘What?’ said May. ‘I can’t see anything.’

  ‘Presbyopia,’ Bryant informed him. ‘Thank God for age-related longsightedness. Here they come.’

  Emerging from the evening rain mist towards them were Officers Renfield, Bimsley and Mangeshkar. In Meera’s right fist was a tartan leash, on the other end of which was a white West Highland terrier.

  ‘It’s Beauchamp,’ she told them. ‘He’s got his name on his collar. We found him tied to a tree branch over there, all tangled up in the bushes.’ She pointed into a fenced-off patch of woodland. ‘It’s where the gardeners incinerate the leaves.’

  ‘We’ve roped the area off,’ said Jack Renfield. ‘He doesn’t seem to have been there very long – he wasn’t in any distress. He didn’t even bark, did you, boy?’ He ruffled the dog’s fur. The Westie ignored him.

  ‘So our suspect brought him here, tied him up and left?’ said May. ‘That doesn’t make sense. Any marks on the ground?’

  ‘We had a good look in the grass and the surrounding area but couldn’t see anything,’ said Colin. ‘It’s all loose bracken and foliage. Dan’s on his way here now. We asked the park-keepers if they’d seen anyone. One said he saw a lanky black bloke with tied-back dreads, late twenties, hanging around earlier.’

  ‘Did you show him Ritchie Jackson’s photograph?’

  ‘After he gave us the description, yes. He thinks it might have been him but can’t be sure.’

  ‘That’s it, then,’ said May. ‘We have to bring Jackson back in.’

  ‘What, the gardener did it?’ said Bryant, feigning incredulity. ‘Just like that?’

  ‘He fits the description, Arthur, he admits seeing the victim alive in Clement Crescent, he knew the dog and he could get in and out of the garden.’

  ‘So you’re dismissing the hiding figure in Jackson’s photograph?’

  ‘Jackson took the picture himself,’ Renfield reminded them. ‘He could have set the whole thing up. He knew what time the Forester woman was due in the garden. He planted something in the bushes—’

  ‘Like what, pray tell?’

  ‘I don’t know, a photographic blow-up of a man’s face. And then he made the boot print himself. You know, to put us off the scent.’

  ‘Oh, well, that’s genius!’ Bryant leaned his fists on his walking stick and looked heavenward. ‘He set up an alternative suspect, then left a written clue that would lead us here, where he’d tethered the victim’s dog in order to incriminate himself.’

  ‘Jack’s got a point,’ said Colin. ‘You don’t know what his reasons might be. Maybe he wants to get caught. Like, to stop himself before he strikes again.’

  ‘Am I surrounded by blithering imbeciles?’ Bryant asked a rowan bush. ‘That’s like saying if a fish wanted to be caught in a net it would leave a series of clues along the riverbank for the fisherman.’

  ‘I don’t think that analogy holds up, Mr Bryant,’ said Colin, raising a tentative digit. ‘If a fish murdered a lady fish and then swam off, erm, taking the lady fish’s dog—’

  ‘Colin, stop trying to use unopened parts of your brain. If Jackson wanted to be caught he could turn himself in or just not deny that he did it.’

 
; ‘Jackson’s a big man, maybe he doesn’t know his own strength,’ said Renfield. ‘Suppose he thought he was in with a chance and tried to pick her up, she turned him down and he lost it?’

  ‘So he had a knife on him but decided to strangle her instead?’ Bryant shook his head. ‘The knife wasn’t his – it just doesn’t fit. We haven’t found the actual murder weapon yet. And why leave the dog here?’

  ‘A killer can hurt a woman and be kind to a dog.’ Renfield crouched beside the West Highland terrier, scuffing his ears. ‘He could still be in the park. If he decided to take his own life he might tie the dog up somewhere first, mightn’t he?’

  They began a search of the meadowlands. It was now crepuscular, silent and nebulous, as if the park had started to fade from the memory of a dying man. Visibility had fallen with the night, so that the trees loomed before them as if emerging from rainclouds. A flurry of emerald-headed ducks made Meera jump.

  ‘Do you know exactly where this chap was seen?’ asked May as he reluctantly followed the others, risking his handmade shoes by stepping from the path into the former sheep pasture.

  ‘The park-keepers couldn’t agree about that,’ said Meera. ‘What if he changes his mind and goes back for the dog? Maybe someone should stay by the tree.’ Beauchamp sensed he was being talked about and raised his ears, looking eagerly from one face to the next. Finally they fanned out, into the deep cover of the trees, with the senior detectives following behind.

  ‘I have to say that this feels like a very disorganized way to conduct a murder hunt,’ said May, ‘a handful of officers wandering about in long grass on the off-chance of bumping into him.’

  ‘You don’t complain when we send our staff off to climb about inside bonfires and graveyards, so I don’t see why a park should bother you.’ Bryant sniffed. ‘This is the way we work. It’s the Churchillian spirit of lateral thinking. Originality is a great British strength. We come up with the brilliantly imaginative ideas that drive the world, then give them away for virtually nothing in order to retain our position as a second-rate nation run with the economic vision of an Armenian pastry shop.’

  ‘So you’re feeling better then,’ said May drily. ‘Stay here.’ He headed off to catch up with Renfield.

  Redwing, starling and fieldfare batted about in the branches overhead, sending down showers of raindrops. Rising breezes brought the leaves to susurrant life. The park was almost deserted now. Overhead, the green canopy flexed and eddied like seaweed in a rock pool.

  It felt as if time had folded back on itself; Bryant wearily lowered himself on to a damp wooden bench and waited for the others to report back. He saw the soft yellow glow of the grand mansions that lined the eastern edge of the park, heard only the rustle of legs striding through grass, a call and response, then silence. The damp chill bit into his bones.

  This is what it must have been like during the Civil War, he thought, the Parliamentarians and the King’s Men stumbling across each other in straggling groups, chasing through the sward. A musket shot, a whinnying horse, voices carried on the wind. I must not drift, he told himself. I can’t afford to be whisked away to 1650 right now. No more hallucinations – I need to concentrate on the investigation at hand.

  The voices he heard became clearer. One, he realized, belonged to Colin Bimsley. ‘I’ve got him, Mr Bryant!’

  Heaving himself to his feet, Bryant set off in the direction of the yell as the others converged on the same spot. They found their youngest officer sitting astride a tall middle-aged black man in a dark overcoat, his face obscured by a thick woollen scarf. Bimsley turned over his protesting suspect and pulled out his wallet, tossing it to Renfield.

  ‘Let him up, Colin,’ said Renfield. ‘He’s not our gardener. He’s a Nigerian bishop.’

  Profuse apologies followed as the nonplussed clergyman was uprighted and dusted down. The bishop pulled himself free from their embarrassed attentions, swore spectacularly and went on his way.

  The rain increased, soaking and weighing down the landscape. As it appeared to be setting in for the evening, May called off the search until first light. By that time he felt sure that any clue – if any there had been – would have dissolved into the dark soil of the surrounding grassland. It was as if their murderer had found the perfect place to hide in plain sight, within London’s wintry wild chambers.

  THE SECOND DAY

  14

  ‘WE’RE THE PROFESSIONALS’

  Leslie Faraday, the epicene Home Office liaison officer and budget overseer of London’s specialist police units, plucked the glossy invitation from his desk and examined it carefully. The Tate Modern was hosting a charity auction tonight, selling powerful images taken by war photographers in order to raise awareness of the plight of orphaned children in the Sudan. Just what I need, Faraday thought. This is perfect. He folded the invitation in half, then in quarters, and slid it under the leg of his wobbly desk.

  Everybody underestimated Faraday. When they looked at him they saw a fat idiot. It was an opinion that was confirmed if they bothered to study his track record: conducting a fact-finding tour by visiting the poorest towns in Wales in his Bentley, failing to recall the capital of Germany during a European debate, charging his pet falcon’s knee operation to expenses. But he had the feral instincts of a survivor, honed by a lifetime spent in the civil service. Charged with keeping the Peculiar Crimes Unit in line and thus decreasing the likelihood of them embarrassing the government yet again, he could be trusted to find a way of doing so while simultaneously promoting government agendas, and as he received word of the PCU’s latest investigation, an idea struck him.

  London’s public spaces had never been systematically mapped, but it was taken for granted that the freedom to share and enjoy open greenery was a basic right. However, it was a right that was currently under threat.

  In his previous positions Faraday had vociferously advocated the expansion of POPS – privately owned public spaces. These were areas that looked public but were not, wherein the rights of users were decided by corporations. He had endorsed and encouraged the creation of PSPOs, public space protection orders, which bestowed broad powers to criminalize behaviour which was not usually considered criminal. Hackney Council had already attempted to make sleeping rough an offence within designated areas, but dropped its plans after local groups served the council with a petition signed by eighty thousand residents.

  If orders could be introduced into the parks, Faraday knew he could tender private security firms to police such spaces. If he could temporarily close a number of gardens and squares, he would be able to gauge public reaction and start the ball rolling. What he needed was a way of alarming the general public enough to make them welcome state interference. And here was news of a brutal murder in a London park …

  This could be just the beginning; after employing private security firms his colleagues would be able to sell adventure courses, tree walks, minigolf, cafés, skate areas, climbing walls, parkour training, yoga classes, open-air gyms and advertising space, all priced accordingly. For an average family, the cost of visiting a London attraction was currently around a hundred pounds. There were already plans to place levies on small businesses that had the benefit of being near parks, giving them the right to hold corporate events in return. The next logical step would be to place offices inside parks, as they’d tried in Hackney.

  This time the business model would be better. Parks were in the middle of a funding crisis that would allow the commercial world to step in and take over. The days of going for a stroll in pastoral splendour without paying through the nose for it were finally coming to an end. The more snouts he could get into the trough, the better his chances of promotion became.

  He wondered how long it would take to get a blanket closure order in place. The royal parks might prove a problem but the rest could be dealt with through allies in councils. By the end of the week he could have a lock on every gate, and the blame would ultimately be laid on the doorstep of th
e Peculiar Crimes Unit. With a frisson of excitement he saw that the PCU could be got rid of in under a week, so long as they failed to make an arrest.

  He began to sketch out his plan on a notepad. The closing of the parks would cause outrage across the capital, and such relief when they reopened that no one would stop to analyse the proposed new measures. Picking up the phone, he speed-dialled the one person who could be relied upon to unwittingly feed him information: Raymond Land.

  The investigation was now one day old. Much had been achieved, but the first mistakes had already been made. Early on Tuesday morning, Land went to the Ladykillers Café for his usual bacon roll and found Steffi Vesta seated alone, pensively hovering a fork above a plate of fried eggs. Removing the woollen cap he had lately taken to wearing in an attempt to hide his bald patch, he pointed to the opposite chair. ‘Mind if I join you?’

  ‘Please,’ said Steffi. ‘They have no rösti. I like rösti with my eggs.’

  ‘Never mind, have some brown sauce,’ Land suggested. ‘How are you getting on?’

  ‘Well, I—’

  ‘Because I must say it’s good to see a fresh face at the unit, someone who isn’t touched by all the’ – he windmilled his hand vaguely – ‘well, it’s been a bit of a year, as I’m sure they’ve told you, what with my detectives arresting respected public figures in Claridge’s of all places and getting locked in a vault under the Ministry of Defence, then ruining a Thames pageant and being charged with murder and, well, the whole lot of us getting caught up in the banking riots and my top female officer almost burned alive. The last thing I needed was poor old Bryant going insane – he got better, but that’s not the point; it takes a toll on us as a unit, and every time we upset people by blowing something up or burning something down it reflects badly on me. And naturally I have no one to talk to about it, because of course the buck stops at my door, or where my door would be if it wasn’t still missing. It didn’t help that my retirement application got turned down or that my wife went off with a Welsh flamenco instructor, not that I could ever really talk to her, and now I have this internal investigations officer sexually harassing me – I mean, nothing’s actually happened but the implication is that she’ll drop the charges against us if I, that is if we, well, you know’ – Land rolled his eyes knowingly – ‘so I had to move to a bedsit in Shepherd’s Bush and it was difficult to concentrate at work with kittens everywhere – I mean everywhere, because Crippen turned out to be a girl – and now there’s this corpse in the basement. So no, things haven’t been easy, and I can’t help wondering whether it’s nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take another kick in the nuts.’