Wild Chamber

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘Over here,’ called a girl’s voice. ‘Push against the picture of the cheese.’

  The detectives found themselves looking at a print of a large round Parmesan. Shoving against it, they watched as the wood parted and a roughly cut door swung inward.

  The girl was short and slender, with unnaturally black hair sticking out from her red knitted cap and the kind of flushed urchin face that could be discerned in the backgrounds of old Cruikshank sketches. She might have been one of Fagin’s crew. She wore black dungarees and work boots – a smart move, as the inside of the site was thick with mud. ‘Follow me,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘It’s drier over the other side.’

  The detectives made their way to a low corrugated metal shelter and stepped in. Unexpectedly, they found themselves in what looked like an old naval headquarters, with boxes of supplies covering the floor, timetables and charts pinned on the walls. They made their introductions, although GPS offered nothing more than her nickname.

  ‘I’m sorry, it’s a bit cramped in here.’ She pushed back some cartons to make room. ‘We keep on the move and this became available at short notice. The workmen were taken off the site last night so we’re making the most of it.’

  ‘Where are we?’ asked May, looking about.

  ‘The old Navy Office stood here back in 1656,’ GPS explained. ‘The story is that Samuel Pepys buried his wine and Parmesan cheese for safekeeping on this spot during the Great Fire. That’s why there’s a bust of Pepys at one end of the garden and a picture of a cheese on the wall outside. We cut our way in with a specially adapted hacksaw, so yes, we bend a few laws. I hope that isn’t going to be a problem.’

  ‘I don’t think that falls under our remit,’ said May.

  ‘Why is the garden closed?’ asked Bryant.

  ‘They’re building an extension to a hotel underneath it at the moment. There’s room for some of our female sleepers while the site’s unoccupied, but only for a few nights; they’re installing security spotlights at the end of the week. It’s important that they put back the old rose gardens.’

  ‘Why?’ May asked.

  GPS pointed. ‘On either side of the gate were beds of red roses commemorating the date in 1381 when Sir Robert Knollys was allowed to construct a bridge across Seething Lane. The City charged him a rent of one red rose annually. There’s still a ceremony of roses organized by the Thames lightermen. Another of those peculiarly pointless London habits.’ She wiped a smear of mud from her wrist. ‘Well, they’ll soon have their nice gardens back and we’ll have one less place to recommend. Perhaps they’ll even remember to plant the roses. So many nice historical gestures vanish between the brochure and the building.’

  ‘Why are you putting people in squares and gardens, though?’ asked Bryant. ‘Why not in empty houses?’

  ‘The councils are working with private companies to keep properties locked,’ she explained. ‘Every last square inch has been monetized, and empty buildings are patrolled. The number of squatters in London has dropped dramatically. I suppose it’s probably a good thing. In this day and age you can’t be expected to live without heat and water.’

  ‘Parks were always sanctuaries for dissidents and rebels.’ Bryant had to raise his voice above the beep of a reversing digger.

  ‘I think in some sense they still are,’ GPS agreed. ‘There’s another London you lot never see. Go down the Hyde Park underpass at night and watch the traffickers dropping off Africans, Romanians, Bolivians, all sorts. Seventy per cent of the illegals stay out of sight, and they don’t hang around in the centre. They’re in Edmonton, Walthamstow, Peckham, Beckton, Plaistow, not around here. They work because they have to, and right now we need them. They often have support networks created from their own ethnicity, but the truly vulnerable kids fall through the cracks. The homeless are treated like germs in the city’s body. In the late 1980s the young around here had money leaking out of every orifice. Now they’re poor and powerless. Bad timing, tough luck.’ She looked from one to the other. ‘So, how can I help you?’

  ‘We’re looking for a man called Jeremy Forester, although he may be hiding his identity,’ said Bryant, handing over a photograph. ‘He was using one of your lists. How would he have got hold of it?’

  GPS examined the photograph. ‘We’re not exactly undercover. We have a website and a Facebook page, and there are other organizations that connect the homeless with us. Their lawyers offer us covert advice, and we even get help from within the Metropolitan Police. With all the building plans being pushed through, we never know what’s going to become available next. The playgrounds of the rich get built on plague pits.’ She tapped the picture. ‘I’ve seen this guy a couple of times. Hang on.’ She called to a young man with a shaved head who was packing a crate of sandwiches just outside the door. They conferred for a moment.

  ‘He was in one of the churchyards near St Paul’s, maybe at St Mary Aldermanbury,’ GPS confirmed. ‘We saw him wandering around and I asked him about his situation.’

  ‘How did you know he was a rough sleeper?’ May asked.

  ‘Trust me, anyone who sleeps outside more than three nights in a row gets an unmistakeable look, even in an expensive suit.’

  ‘He was wearing a suit?’

  GPS pushed back her cap, trying to recall the meeting. ‘There was something about him that didn’t add up. He said he’d lost a high-powered job in the City and he couldn’t tell his wife, only she found out and left him. After he sold his house he tried to find somewhere to crash, but no one would help.’

  ‘So what didn’t add up?’

  ‘A man like that – he obviously knew people. Living in parks is something you only do when you’re out of options.’

  ‘When was this?’ asked May.

  ‘I’m not sure, maybe a month ago, a bit more? Someone told him about us and he started using our open-air guides to find shelter. But he’d clearly had money – I mean, he had a phone for a start. That’s quite unusual. The people we deal with don’t have basics like sanitary towels and toilet paper. We deliver the absolute essentials for survival and still have to put up with a lot of abuse.’

  ‘Why do you think no one would help Mr Forester?’ asked Bryant.

  ‘I asked him if he had friends he could stay with. He said something about not being able to take the risk. I told him we might be able to place him on a more permanent basis in return for putting in a few hours here each week. We’re involved in the foraging movement: we collect the food supermarkets throw out and distribute it to parks. We clean up after ourselves wherever we go. It’s not just civic-mindedness – we can’t leave a trail. The police would stop turning a blind eye if we made any trouble. But your guy turned us down. He seemed to think he’d be OK soon.’

  May folded away the photograph. ‘Did he say why, or where he was going next?’

  She shook her head. ‘I got the feeling he was waiting for someone or something. He said he was angry with his wife, that she’d let him down. It’s not unusual to hear that. People look for reasons why their circumstances have changed. Often it happens very quickly.’

  ‘If you do hear from him again—’ May began.

  ‘I know the drill. If you’ll excuse me, we’ve a lot to get finished here.’ She went to help her workmates unload crates.

  ‘So there you have it,’ said May as the two detectives walked back along Pepys Street. ‘When Helen Forester found out her husband had been lying to her she moved to Clement Crescent. He followed, told her he wouldn’t be able to pay for the flat and asked her to bail him out. She already knew he’d been unfaithful with his assistant, so I imagine she said no. And he killed her.’

  ‘I must admit it looks that way,’ replied Bryant, digging out his rolling tobacco.

  ‘But what?’ said May.

  Bryant’s blue eyes widened. ‘I didn’t say there was a but.’

  ‘But there is, isn’t there? I can always tell with you.’

  ‘Very well. Why wouldn’t he
have killed her in the flat?’

  ‘Maybe he thought he’d disturb the neighbours and get caught. Maybe he called there and she wouldn’t talk to him, so he waited until she was out in public.’ May raised his shoulders. ‘Hey, it happens. Many years ago I fell in love with a stripper who worked at the Doll’s House in Carlisle Street. I followed her home, rang her doorbell and asked if I could take her out. I called several times but after a while she wouldn’t open the door to me.’

  ‘I don’t blame her,’ said Bryant, shuddering at the thought.

  ‘So I waited for her in the street. I knew which bus stop she used.’

  ‘I can’t vouch for the young lady in question, but wasn’t that an incredibly creepy thing to do?’

  ‘First I was lovestruck,’ said May. ‘Then I was actually struck. Her boyfriend emptied a crate of rancid crabs over me. He worked as a porter at Billingsgate Fish Market.’

  ‘What an incredibly poignant story of love’s young bloom,’ said Bryant.

  ‘I was thirty-four,’ May replied.

  Bryant shot his partner a look of wrinkled disgust. ‘Let us leave behind these sordid tales of your amorous stalkings and concentrate on our suspect,’ he suggested. ‘You do understand now why I asked you to come along, don’t you?’

  May thought for a moment and came up blank. ‘No.’

  ‘You witnessed my incisive interview technique.’

  ‘Only insofar as I saw that you don’t have one.’

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ said Bryant vehemently. ‘I extracted all the information I needed. Now all we have to do is find out one simple thing that will help you to decide about Jeremy Forester.’

  ‘I’ll bite,’ said May. ‘What do we need to find out?’

  Bryant looked at him as if the answer was obvious. ‘How many steps lead up to Helen Forester’s flat,’ he replied.

  They headed for Tower Hill Station.

  16

  ‘WHY ARE THE SIMPLEST CASES THE HARDEST TO CRACK?’

  Steffi Vesta quickly discovered that her fortnight at the PCU was to be very different from her two years spent in Cologne’s Bundeskriminalamt specialist forensic unit.

  For a start, the unit was piled with all kinds of esoteric rubbish, from a stuffed Abyssinian cat to a wax fortune teller in a glass cabinet. Apparently most of it belonged to Arthur Bryant, who provided a vague but unsatisfactory explanation about cataloguing memorabilia. In the meantime Steffi set up her laptop and tried to understand what she had taken on.

  In attempting this feat, she quickly realized that all rational efforts to define the unit’s operating procedure were doomed to failure. She had always found the English to be entirely paradoxical. They refused to be guided by hard data and relied instead on a combination of common sense, goodwill, humour and wishful thinking. This made them flexible and forgiving, but indiscriminate and fatally shortsighted. Nothing operated on a common standard. Weights and measures, health and safety, law and order, everything was negotiable; there was no consistent norm and even less at the PCU, which exhibited all of these national symptoms in extremis.

  So when Janice Longbright asked her to head down to Clement Crescent to interview Mrs Farrier, as everyone else was busy, Steffi agreed to do it even though she had never interviewed anyone in her life. It was only later, after the case had been closed in the most bizarre and surprising manner, that she looked back on her first week and realized just how much she had learned by being propelled from her orderly desk job into the rampant pandemonium of the outside world.

  Her first lesson in understanding how the unit muddled its way through investigations came upon her return, when she found Longbright on her knees in the building’s attic, shifting damp-stained boxes.

  ‘I’m looking for interview forms,’ she explained. ‘Did you get any answers to Mr Bryant’s questions?’

  ‘I believe so,’ Steffi replied. ‘Wouldn’t it be easier to print new ones?’

  Janice blew a lock of bleached blonde hair from her eyes. ‘It would be if I hadn’t spilled nail varnish inside the copier. Don’t worry, I’m used to this. How was Mrs Farrier?’

  ‘She recognized Mr Forester when I showed her his photograph.’

  ‘Does she remember him calling on his wife?’

  ‘He visited but did not enter the building. She saw him in the street outside on two separate occasions – of that she is quite certain. She never spoke to him herself.’

  ‘So he had no way of taking the knife.’

  ‘I think not,’ said Steffi. ‘She showed me where it had been, on her mantelpiece. She said it had belonged to her father, who split firewood with it, but she used it to open letters.’

  ‘And she doesn’t know when it disappeared?’

  ‘No, she only remembers it being there two weeks ago.’

  Janice dragged the last of the boxes back in place and sat on her heels. ‘If Forester didn’t get into his wife’s flat or Mrs Farrier’s, how did he get hold of a key to the gardens?’

  ‘You did not ask me to find this out,’ said Steffi reasonably.

  ‘No, but presumably you had a nose around.’

  ‘No, I did not have a nose around, I did as I was asked.’

  ‘Steffi, that’s not really how we operate. We tend not to wait for warrants. So there was nothing worth borrowing?’

  ‘What do you mean, “borrowing”?’

  ‘Virtually all evidence is admissible here, outside of opinion and hearsay.’

  ‘I did not know this.’ Steffi looked at the mess that surrounded them. ‘You seem to do everything. Does no one else help?’

  Janice pulled an old paint-tin lid from the knee of her jeans. ‘I ended up looking after the incident and operations rooms because no one else knew how to run them. I take care of the action book, but I’m also part of the inquiry team. I’d prefer it if we only ran online searches, but Raymond and Mr Bryant won’t read them. They like using pens and bits of paper.’

  ‘But this is all most inefficient.’

  ‘Not if it keeps everyone up to speed.’ Janice caught sight of herself in the old mirror that leaned against the wall. Who was she to talk about efficiency when she looked such a mess? The fresh-faced young German made her feel sloppy and slow-witted. She rose and tried to swipe off some of the dust.

  ‘I find your investigation system very …’ Steffi groped for the appropriate terminology.

  ‘Unstructured?’

  ‘… ridiculous. Is this the right word? Also illegal. I noticed Mr Banbury did not have a cordon log at the murder site. How is it possible to ensure that there is no loss of evidence?’

  ‘He’ll remember, Steffi.’ Longbright tapped the side of her head.

  ‘In Cologne we would have thirty people on the murder team. You can manage with a staff of ten?’

  ‘There are twelve if you count the two Daves.’

  ‘But they are workmen. Are they not repairing the basement floor?’

  ‘Yeah, but sometimes we let them man the phones.’ She was aware of how awful that sounded.

  Steffi’s unblemished brow produced a furrow. ‘I think I will need to study this further. It is unlike any system I have experienced before.’

  ‘Everyone says that.’ Janice tried not to catch sight of herself in the mirror again. The wall behind her had been painted white but was already stained with damp. ‘You’ll either get used to it or walk out in tears.’

  Steffi nodded. ‘Very well. I may leave.’

  Longbright watched her go, and all but collapsed. She had spent her entire career justifying the unit’s actions to non-believers, and the sensation of possibly being wrong overwhelmed her.

  Returning to the operations room, she tried to fix her hair and searched for her bottle of Leopard Girl Jungle Gloss. Her nails were chipped.

  ‘You OK?’ Jack Renfield set down a white plastic bag filled with foil containers.

  ‘Just tired,’ she said. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Chicken jalf
rezi. I know it’s early for lunch but I didn’t see you eat breakfast.’

  ‘I forgot.’ Janice lifted a corner of the top lid and smelled chillis, cardamom, turmeric and limes. ‘Did you cook it yourself?’

  ‘Curry in a Hurry on the Cally Road, £4.99, free poppadom and a sauce that can stain teak.’ He planted a heavy thigh on the corner of her desk. ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘I have a feeling that if Steffi lasts the week, I won’t.’

  He broke off a piece of poppadom and munched it. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Forget it.’ She shook the thought away. ‘Two suspects, one missing, no forward strategy.’

  ‘Hey, less than forty-eight hours, we’re still in the hot zone.’

  ‘Only just. The boys tell me they’re on it.’

  ‘You’re the only one who calls them boys.’ Jack handed her a container. ‘The oldest cops in London.’ He shook his great square head in wonder. ‘Somebody must be looking out for them.’

  ‘Who’s eating Indian?’ Arthur Bryant stuck his head around the door looking like an old glove puppet. ‘I hope you brought enough for all of us. John just walked me past a dozen cafés and wouldn’t let me stop anywhere.’

  ‘Arthur – where have you been?’ Janice dug a spork from her desk and handed Bryant the container. He helped himself to a spoonful of glutinous meat and wiped orange sauce from his lapel. Jack felt vaguely jealous.

  ‘Eliminating suspects from our inquiries,’ he answered, ‘if I could find them. Jeremy Forester’s still in hiding, and the only thing that’s stopping me from issuing a warrant for his arrest is the suspicion that we won’t get anything from him if I do. He must have tried to borrow money from his wife. She’d stopped taking his calls so he went to her flat, not daring to be seen at the front door. Why? Because there are eight steps up to the porch. He would have had to wait under a bright light in full view of the main road and the houses on either side while he pleaded with her on the intercom. He couldn’t risk such exposure, which was why he planned to hijack her in the park.’