Wild Chamber

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘I have only been with your unit for one day,’ said Steffi, eyeing her congealing eggs, ‘so it is not really possible to form an opinion—’

  ‘No, fair play to you, appreciated, but as they say, uneasy sleeps the head that wears the, um, hat.’ He waved his fingers in the vicinity of his ears. ‘I’d never quoted Shakespeare in my life until I met Mr Bryant. He has us all at it. Whenever he’s around everything sort of gets infected. I thought by now I’d be coasting towards a nice little nest egg in a dead-end department nobody cared about until he and his partner, who in many ways is just as bad if not worse because he’s an enabler – is that the right word? – invite everyone to chuck in their two bob’s worth, and suddenly we’ve got spiritualists and pyromaniacs offering us their advice on murder cases, which plays havoc with my budget because you can’t put a tarot reader down on expenses, can you? I thought it would help if I took a business management course, and in one of the exercises you have to sum up the core strengths of your team in three words, and all I could come up with were “erratic”, “irresponsible” and “potentially dangerous”, which is four words, but you get my drift.’

  Steffi looked down again at her cold plate. ‘My breakfast is’ – she sought the right word – ‘hardening.’

  ‘Yes, of course, I’m sorry.’ Land rose to leave. ‘I’m glad we could have this little chat. Please feel free to talk to me whenever you need to. My office door is always – well, if I can find it.’ He paused, seemed about to speak again, then changed his mind and headed out of the café, leaving behind an utterly mystified employee.

  ‘The Foresters lived in Primrose Hill,’ said Longbright as May set down tea mugs on her desk. ‘I spoke to the neighbour. She didn’t see much of either of them – they were often out of the country at different times, so the son was left at home with the nanny. I tracked down the car Jeremy drove – a high-end Mercedes that disappeared back in September, sold to a cash buyer in St John’s Wood, so I guess if he had any hidden assets he couldn’t access them.’

  ‘He should have traded the car in.’ May emptied sweetener into his coffee.

  ‘I think he panicked. The pair split up and the house was sold at auction. It went for a lower figure than expected.’

  ‘So they needed the money fast.’

  ‘It matches my dates for Mrs Forester, who moved into Clement Crescent in late September.’

  ‘Selling the house, starting divorce proceedings, moving – it all happened very quickly.’ May saw that Longbright had already created a detailed timeline for all those involved in the case so far. Without her organizational skills the place would fall apart. ‘Did you have any better luck with his company?’

  ‘I spoke to his boss, Larry Vance. He was very keen to stress that they’d reached a mutual decision to part in August. He refused to go into the details, said it was a corporate matter. I tried to talk to a couple of other colleagues but they weren’t happy about giving out information, either. They’ve clearly been warned not to speak to outsiders. I got the impression that Forester left under a cloud, so I did some checking with his bank, phone records and a couple of debt-collection agencies.’ She pulled out a sheaf of papers. ‘Have a look at these, then think about how much you still owe on your mortgage. You wouldn’t have wanted his money troubles, trust me.’

  May examined the figures and gave a low whistle. ‘That’s quite a string of zeroes,’ he said. ‘He told me he was in danger.’

  ‘He took out loans from several companies, at least one of which doesn’t officially exist, at least not in the EU,’ said Janice. ‘Do you think he might have been in fear of his life? He agreed to buy his wife’s flat in lieu of alimony, but didn’t even get to the starting line on that.’

  ‘Do we have no other contacts for him?’

  ‘The numbers and email addresses I got from Helen Forester’s computer don’t work.’

  ‘What about his parents? Somebody must have something.’

  ‘If he realized he couldn’t repay his loans and went on the run after losing his job, he probably cut all ties with his former life.’ Longbright turned back to her laptop. ‘Let me see what I can do.’

  As May headed back towards his office, Beauchamp chased Crippen down the corridor. The startled cat darted into Raymond Land’s room followed by the West Highland terrier. There was a yowl, a bark, a crash and a loudly yelled epithet that managed to combine vulgarity and blasphemy, so May judiciously closed his office door.

  His partner was draping an immense green scarf around his coat rack and divesting himself of several wet layers, starting with a shapeless trench coat and ending with a fisherman’s jumper that looked as though it had been partially devoured by a goat.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about our man in the park,’ Bryant said. ‘He’s on the run. The piece of paper he threw away listed safe havens. Where did he get it from? What if someone’s been giving him advice on places where he could hide? Is there even such an organization?’

  ‘It looks like we’ve reached the same conclusion,’ said May. ‘Jeremy Forester is our man in the park. That’s why he won’t come in; he knows we can place him at the crime scene. He sold his car but the house had a hefty mortgage, and he was supposed to pay for his wife’s flat as part of the deal, which by my reckoning would leave him owing …’

  ‘Over two point seven million, not counting the money he owed on his Hong Kong property and the accruing interest on his loans, which I can’t work out without knowing the terms,’ said Bryant, patting his pockets. ‘Have you seen a sausage roll anywhere?’

  May picked up a suppurating paper bag and handed it to him. ‘We need to show Ritchie Jackson a headshot. Maybe it’ll jog his memory.’

  ‘There’s something else,’ said Bryant. ‘I had another look at the dagger found in Clement Crescent. The handle has panels that at first I thought were purely decorative.’ Clearing a space on his cluttered desk, he unfolded a pair of photographs and laid them flat, then opened a leather-bound volume entitled Dynastic Seals & Motifs. ‘Here’s the top side and the reverse. You’ll see that the patterns are different. They’re known as chops, Chinese seals called xìngmíng yìn that bear the owner’s name and can have legal significance. It’s a Chinese throwing dagger, originally manufactured around 1880, very popular in its time but not the sort of thing you’d keep at your fingertips. This is a decent reproduction.’

  ‘How do you know it’s a throwing knife?’

  ‘The clue is in the enamelling,’ said Bryant. ‘The blade is high quality but the handle weighs less than you’d expect, and the finish is cheap. The thing about throwing weapons is that you don’t get them back. There are three kinds: blade-heavy, handle-heavy and balanced. Blade-heavy knives are the easiest to use. They’re show knives, mostly used in circuses. You hold the light end and throw the weight. The throw line – that’s the distance between you and the target – is short because you need a lot of power. There’s an art to it but it’s not that difficult once you’ve mastered the basics. Forester was regularly in Hong Kong and could easily have purchased one. So could one of his creditors.’

  ‘So he was going to throw a knife at her, but changed his mind at the last minute and strangled her with something else that he realized was less likely to identify him.’ May was frowning.

  ‘And then he buried the knife, switching the names of the roses,’ said Bryant blithely. ‘I know, I don’t believe it either. Colin and Meera have interviewed all the keyholders in Clement Crescent. None of the keys have been lost, even briefly. They also showed photographs of the knife. Colin says that a Mr Dasgupta might know where it came from. He made a statement. I wrote it down somewhere. Hang on.’ Pulling tobacco, sweets and what appeared to be a Victorian cistern handle from his pocket, he uncrumpled a piece of grimy-looking paper and flattened it out. ‘Oh, this appears to be a note from Brad Pitt.’

  ‘What, the Brad Pitt?’

  ‘Yes, my next-door neighbour.fn1 He says to stop playing Pirates o
f the Caribbean at three o’clock in the morning or he’ll fetch me a punch up the bracket. I think he means The Pirates of Penzance. I always put on Gilbert and Sullivan when I’m thinking. Mr Pitt’s not a music lover. Do you want to hear what Mr Dasgupta had to say or not?’

  ‘Yes, of course I do,’ said May, vaguely irritated.

  Bryant turned over the note. ‘He said he’d never seen it before.’

  ‘Then what did you mention it for?’

  ‘Because he ran it past his neighbour, Mrs Farrier, and she says the knife is hers, and that it’s been in the family ever since they were in China – her parents were in the Foreign Office – only here’s the thing: she thinks it went missing from her flat sometime last month.’

  ‘Does she have many callers? Could someone have taken it? Can she narrow down the time frame?’

  ‘Not really. Mr Dasgupta thinks the old lady is a few ducks short of a funfair – she’s getting on a bit and is always losing things. He says she’s wary of callers and never lets them in to check her gas pipes, but randomly invites strangers in for a cup of tea. Perhaps she admitted a familiar face, one of the neighbours, say, and the knife was swiped while her back was turned.’

  ‘That doesn’t make sense,’ said May. ‘Why would anyone worm their way into her home just to steal a knife they then didn’t use?’

  ‘There you have me, old bean. Kleptomania or part of some bigger plan?’ Bryant unwrapped his sausage roll and bit into it, dripping oil on his desk.

  ‘Why must you always overcomplicate things?’ May asked. ‘You hate the idea that there might be a simple, logical answer. A kid abandons a knife in the garden, and you assume it has to be part of the case.’

  ‘It’s not a bread knife, it’s a professional weapon.’ Bryant dug pastry from his dental plate. ‘Jeremy Forester didn’t murder his wife. Domestic crimes take place in the home, not in a communal garden.’

  ‘You can’t be sure of that,’ said May. ‘She let him get close; she didn’t raise her hands to fight him off. She has no bruises other than the ligature mark around her neck. You have to ask yourself about the husband: what was his state of mind? He got fired from his job due to some kind of financial irregularity, then he faked going to work so he wouldn’t lose face. When he was finally caught out by his wife she told him she was leaving him. He’d already lost his son. What else did he have holding him together? He sounded desperate on the phone. Arthur, we’re looking for a panicked fugitive. I’m sure he’s the man in the bushes, and he went to the park specifically to kill her.’

  ‘Then why would he hide from his own wife?’ Bryant asked. ‘He’d seen her two weeks earlier, he was shouting at her from the street – so now he suddenly disappears into the bushes?’

  ‘Because just as he’s about to strike he sees Ritchie Jackson watching,’ said May. ‘He could even have hired Jackson to do it because he didn’t have the guts to kill her himself.’ He threw Bryant a pack of tissues but it was too late; there were pastry flakes and oil patches all over his desk. ‘Why else do you think Forester refuses to come in and talk to us? How are we going to track him down, Arthur? He’s off the grid. His credit rating is dead, his cards have all been withdrawn, he doesn’t even have a registered Oyster card or a mobile number any more. He’s out there somewhere and up to something. And he’s trying to dictate terms to us? Who the hell does he think he is?’

  Bryant waved the thought away. ‘He’s a frightened man, John. That’s what scared people do. Before this he had a future filled with privilege and now he has nothing left. He’s not equipped for a life on the streets, going from park to park. He’ll have to come in eventually.’

  ‘Then let’s hope he does before anyone else gets hurt,’ said May. ‘I don’t appreciate being given the runaround. For God’s sake, we’re the professionals.’

  From Raymond Land’s office came more barking and what sounded like a lamp falling off a desk.

  15

  ‘THE PLAYGROUNDS OF THE RICH’

  ‘I don’t know why I have to come along,’ said John May, donning his coat. ‘This is your area, not mine.’

  ‘I thought it would be good for you.’ Bryant looked about for his homburg and found he’d been sitting on it. ‘You haven’t been joining me on my jaunts much lately. You should occasionally remind yourself how I work.’

  ‘I know how you work,’ said May. ‘You flip through your address book of academics with no social skills and poor personal hygiene, select one at random, overshare the case details with them, then sit back and listen while they rant about psychic resonance imaging or Blakean land geometry or some such deranged tosh.’

  ‘Then you might be pleasantly surprised today.’ Bryant beamed and reached out a hand. ‘Come along. We’re going to Tavistock Square. It’s only a short walk from here, and I can get a pipe in.’

  The slender parkland in Bloomsbury was young as such London spaces went, only a couple of centuries old. It was nicknamed the Peace Park because it contained a statue of Mahatma Gandhi, a cherry tree planted in memory of the victims of Hiroshima and a commemorative stone laid by conscientious objectors. A bust of Virginia Woolf also stood beneath the trees; the writer had lived across the road until her home was hit with a Blitz bomb. The park’s flowerbeds contained medicinal plants, which were appropriate as the square was home to laboratories and hospitals, even a former horse hospital, and the benches were daily filled with lab-coated doctors having a crafty smoke.

  ‘My friend works in a neurolinguistic laboratory by the old Italian Hospital,’ Bryant explained, thrashing his stick at some litter, ‘but he has several specialist side subjects. Ah, dear fellow!’ He held out his hand to one whey-faced smoker rising from a bench to greet them. Although young, their contact’s gaunt face was already permanently creased from the effort of avoiding smoke. ‘This is Walsingham Pew,’ said Bryant. ‘My partner, John May.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Pew, carelessly flicking his fag end into a rhododendron bush.

  ‘I hope I haven’t pulled you out of anything urgent,’ said Bryant.

  ‘No, not at all, I’m between lectures and was going to pop out for a cough and a drag anyway. I read through your note. I think I can help you.’ He hacked and spat into the rhododendron. ‘God, I have to give these things up.’

  ‘Why do so many people in the medical profession smoke?’ May asked.

  ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’ said Pew, shucking another cigarette into his palm. ‘We all think we’re gods.’ He pulled out a scan of Bryant’s paper scrap. ‘Your man here – and it is a man because I showed a colleague and he says the handwriting is chock-full of male signifiers – is not a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company but the Rough Sleepers Community. It’s an organization founded by the homeless to warn others of the pitfalls of rough sleeping. It finds them safe overnight havens, many in parks. Right now rough sleeping is on the rise, and nearly half of the homeless have no contact with aid teams. We see them coming in all the time. It’s such a traumatizing experience that many hide themselves at night. Guides like this help them to find places where they won’t be harassed. A lot of people feel safer outside than in, particularly if they’re in danger from someone else.’

  ‘Is there any pattern to the choice of these “safe” parks?’ Bryant wondered.

  Pew took what appeared to be a painful drag on his snout. ‘They pick the ones with sympathetic keepers and plenty of shelter on wet nights. Your fellow was simply working his way through the weekly list, which I hope will rule him out as a suspect.’

  ‘Don’t try to do our job, matey,’ said Bryant jovially. ‘It could still have been an unpremeditated attack.’

  ‘Do you mind if I have a word with my colleague for a moment?’ said May, grabbing Bryant by his collar. ‘How much have you told him?’

  ‘I always leave out names,’ Bryant replied. ‘I think. He needed something to go on.’

  Pew overheard. ‘Mr May? I’m sorry, but we live in a world where
people sleeping on the street only get attention if they’re queuing for new phones. At least they’re interviewed by film crews. Meanwhile, a quarter of all Londoners have key poverty indicators, and a great many are in inadequate housing. There’s a fifty per cent shortfall in new housing targets. That’s why people vanish. They don’t do it because they suddenly fancy a bit of fresh air. If your suspect proves to be a rough sleeper and the press gets wind of it, homeless kids will be kicked unconscious at night.’

  ‘Tell me more about the Rough Sleepers Community,’ said Bryant, calming Pew with a friendly hand on the shoulder.

  ‘It covers many parks and quite a few London squares.’ The technician dug into his lab coat and pulled out the flap of a cigarette carton. ‘I have someone who may be able to help you find your man. Her name is – well, we just know her by her code name: GPS.’

  Their next stop took them to Seething Lane Garden, below Fenchurch Street Station in the city’s Square Mile, but when they arrived the detectives found the site closed. They followed its painted wooden wall but failed to discover the means of ingress. From all around them came the noise of jack hammers and drills, the grind and screech of cut steel. The area bristled with yellow cranes. It looked as if the city was being attacked by mechanical monsters.