Wild Chamber

by Christopher Fowler

‘No idea.’

  ‘Incredible.’

  ‘I have a head for the peculiarities of history,’ Bryant admitted. ‘All London churches have these oddities attached to them, it’s just that most people don’t bother to find out. I don’t care about my phone number. What’s going on?’

  Colin Bimsley was running towards them, and yanked open the driver’s-side door.

  ‘I was too late,’ he said, nearly in tears. ‘I was too bloody late. She’s gone. Sharyn Buckland is dead.’

  28

  ‘LONDON IS FULL OF COINCIDENCES’

  A rivulet of rain weighed down a single hornbeam leaf, and a perfect drop fell on to the upturned face below.

  It was a kind face and rather ageless, as all kind faces tend to be. Her skin was pale where it was not pink, except for a single line of purple lividity at her neck. She had passed her life searching for something that had remained just beyond her grasp, so it would be tempting to say that she was finally at peace. But she was not; she had been denied a conclusion and robbed of dignity. She lay half in the bushes with her legs folded under her, her eyes wide to the sky. The raindrop had fallen into her left pupil and run down her cheek, so that she appeared to be crying. Perhaps she was.

  The two detectives sat side by side in the church of St Olave, unmoving, waiting for Dan Banbury to finish. They could see their breath condensing before them. The still chapel air smelled of polish and candle wax.

  ‘Colin will blame himself,’ said May quietly. ‘You know how he empathizes.’

  ‘We caught the Mr Punch Killer because of a single gesture,’ said Bryant. ‘The tiniest of clues, discovered at the last possible moment.’

  May turned to look at him. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘All the work we put into catching a calculating murderer who then got away from us. Jack and Colin took up the chase, do you remember?’

  ‘Why are you thinking of it now?’

  ‘If it hadn’t been for that investigation, Helen Forester’s son might still be alive.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘It was raining hard.’ Bryant gripped the back of the church pew, remembering. ‘The visibility was terrible. Nobody could see where they were going. We had to close the surrounding roads at short notice and divert all the traffic. I instructed the transport police to switch vehicles through the tunnel under London Bridge Station. I didn’t think about the consequences. The boy and his nanny were forced to change their route. What if this isn’t about Jeremy Forester losing his job, but losing his son?’

  ‘You’re saying it’s our fault?’

  ‘No – not directly.’ Bryant pulled his moulting striped scarf a little more tightly around his neck. ‘We were misled by the death of Paula Machin. That was a stupid, avoidable mistake. I should have realized earlier and found Sharyn Buckland sooner.’

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ said May. ‘You couldn’t have done any more.’

  ‘There’s a resonance …’ Bryant coasted his hand through the cold air. ‘Such a strange sensation. I’ve overlooked something. I’ve seen it, been close to it – a face, a conversation. After my illness I felt different. I came back, but things had changed. My attitude, my sensibilities – I always felt that I saw this city from the inside, but parts are starting to elude me. This city belongs to others now.’

  ‘Everybody feels that at some time or another,’ said May. ‘The world speeds up.’

  Bryant appeared not to have heard him. ‘I’ve learned certain things – we need courage and compassion in order to age well. But I see that young woman lying in the bushes and I cannot understand how anyone can be so cruel. It’s like looking back at the lives of women before they had the same rights as men – I can only pray we see this time with the same sense of heartfelt shame. Politicians can’t improve our lives; it’s up to us. We’ll survive long after policies have crumbled to dust.’

  ‘I can’t decide whether that makes you a conservative or a socialist,’ said May.

  ‘I’m a humanist,’ said Bryant, ‘but I’m not doing a very good job at the moment, and it’s going to get harder. The parks are locked. Faraday is causing insurrection. The police commissioner will blame the Home Office, and Faraday will step in with a plan. But what, exactly? He has a history of trying to privatize public spaces, so my guess is he’ll trade the provision of private park security for a stake in the property. Meanwhile, we have to find another way of catching our killer.’

  ‘We’ll do it,’ said May. ‘You can’t let this destroy us. Buckland knew something that caused her death. We’ll avenge her, I promise.’

  For once, Bryant had no response.

  Ritchie Jackson had another interview at the PCU later that day, and wasn’t happy about it. The young gardener twisted about as if tethered to his chair, waiting to discover why he had been brought back yet again.

  ‘Am I a suspect or not?’ he asked. ‘How many times can you do this to me? I already told you everything I know.’

  ‘Did you, though,’ said Bryant, closing the door behind him. ‘You failed to mention the knife you hid.’

  Jackson said nothing, waiting to see where Bryant went with the claim.

  ‘Mrs Farrier said she had lost a paper knife, and I first assumed it was the one we found in Clement Crescent. But Jeremy Forester was attacked by someone using throwing daggers. I think Forester had it with him in the gardens and you found it in the grass, where he’d dropped it. Then, when you had to call the police, you buried it in the flowerbed.’

  ‘So what?’ said Jackson. ‘It wasn’t the murder weapon.’

  ‘Then why bury it at all?’

  Jackson’s eyes were truthful. ‘I found it under one of the bushes and put it in the shed,’ he said. ‘I’d mislaid my regular penknife. I was going to use it to trim stalks. But when your mob stormed into the crescent I suddenly realized that you’d find it covered in my prints, so I stuck it under the roses and changed the name tags so I’d find it again. I didn’t want trouble. That’s why I didn’t mention it.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Bryant. ‘Now we come to the main reason why you’re here. My operations director dug a little deeper into your past on the PNC database. You were fired from your old job and lodged a formal complaint against Bermondsey Police. What happened there?’

  ‘You obviously know, or I wouldn’t be here,’ said Jackson, folding his arms.

  ‘I’d like to hear it from you.’

  ‘All right. I was a long-haul lorry driver working out of Covent Garden. Our journeys were timed, and we were fined whenever we arrived late. I already had a couple of marks against me after getting held up by traffic police one night. I was coming into London Bridge, returning from Holland. The road layout had been changed and we were diverted into a tunnel beneath London Bridge Station. It was a miserable night, visibility was bad, and in the chaos there was an accident. I missed my delivery window and my load shifted, damaging some of my cargo. I was fired, so I lodged a complaint. After the inquiry the traffic police were exonerated from any blame.’

  Bryant handed him a photograph. ‘Have you ever seen this woman before?’

  Jackson took his time. ‘I can’t be sure.’

  ‘How about this?’ He passed Jackson two further shots.

  ‘She looks like the woman at the accident, the one with the boy who died that night.’

  ‘Do you know her name?’

  ‘I’ve no idea, but I saw her arguing with the girl who had the crash. I followed the ambulance to the hospital, but there was nothing I could do.’

  ‘Her name is Sharyn Buckland. She was Helen Forester’s nanny, and now she’s dead.’

  ‘You’re joking.’ Jackson took another look at the photographs. ‘This is about that night?’

  ‘It’s starting to look that way,’ said Bryant.

  Raymond Land had always liked six o’clock. It was the golden hour, going-home time. The offices started closing, the pubs filled and a general air of jollity invaded the st
reets, even when it was raining. Steffi had expressed surprise at the way in which Londoners could stop for a chat on the pavement without even noticing that it was tipping down.

  Now, though, Land had come to dread the thought of everyone leaving. He looked out at the bedraggled pigeon on his sill, balancing on its good leg and its raw pink stump, one orange eye glaring at the raucous students hammering pints outside the pub opposite. He and the bird had more in common than he liked to think. They were both uncared-for, and neither of them had any reason to be anywhere else. The office and its accompanying windowsill were all they had left.

  He was saved from any further morbid thoughts by the return of his detectives.

  ‘Ah, Raymondo, my little klootzak, still here I see.’ Bryant had rediscovered a little of his former spirit after the success of the interview. ‘It’s after six. I assumed we’d lost you to your Thursday night Zumba class. Let me run something by you.’ He rarely sought the opinion of the unit chief because of his ability to compress the largest number of words into the smallest amount of thought. ‘Sharyn Buckland – are you remotely interested in where we’re up to?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Land. ‘For God’s sake, bring me some good news.’

  ‘She was killed in the exact same manner as the other two.’ Bryant raised his eyebrows meaningfully, a gesture that was lost on his boss. ‘What do you see here?’ He threw a magazine on to Land’s desk.

  ‘It’s a copy of Tatler,’ said Land, confused.

  ‘Flick through it.’

  The unit chief did as he was told.

  ‘What’s the first thing you notice?’

  ‘I don’t know – a bunch of over-entitled twits drinking somebody else’s champagne,’ said Land.

  ‘What you see is conformity,’ said Bryant, fishing through his pockets for boiled sweets. ‘You’ll have noticed that this precious stone set in a silvered sea has a caste system not much different from India’s.’

  Land thought of his rejection and humiliation at the hands of certain civil servants. ‘Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that.’

  ‘Each class has its own tribal style, yes? But middle-class and working-class women are often hard to tell apart these days. Why? Aspiration creates uniformity. Looks and styles are copied. We’re sheep. What unites a nanny, her employer and a drug addict? They’re all thin and blonde, have similar builds and hairstyles and, thanks to heels, are roughly the same height. It’s a type defined by its era, just like all those young men who currently sport trimmed beards and skinny jeans. Sharyn Buckland duplicated her employer’s look, and Machin was in turn mistaken for her. That suggests a predator hunting an idealized female form, yes?’ He popped a pear drop into his mouth and clattered it against his false teeth. ‘But against that we now have a strange coincidence: the way in which two men and two women are connected. Almost a year ago, Ritchie Jackson saw Sharyn Buckland on the very night that Helen Forester’s young son died. He was there at the scene and even went to the hospital with them. He didn’t volunteer that information at the interview, of course, because he didn’t know that Buckland was Forester’s nanny. So what are the odds on Ritchie Jackson and Jeremy Forester, the man Sharyn Buckland adored, both being present for Helen Forester’s death?’

  ‘Stop trying to make it sound so mysterious,’ said Land. ‘Three of them were virtually family and the fourth – OK, that’s a bit strange, but London is full of coincidences. I bumped into my ex-wife yesterday.’

  ‘Oh, where?’

  ‘She passed me on Tottenham Court Road with her new young lover. Leanne has gone blonde and lost loads of weight. I was standing in a shop doorway eating chips out of a paper bag.’ He looked forlorn. ‘She saw me and started laughing. They both did.’

  ‘Anyway, back to something more interesting,’ said Bryant. ‘In all of this there’s been no mention of Lauren Posner.’

  Land checked his notes. ‘I’ve got no one by that name. Who’s she?’

  ‘She’s the girl who swerved behind Ritchie Jackson’s truck and hit the electrical cabinet underneath London Bridge Station – the one who inadvertently caused Charlie Forester’s death after a sliver of glass entered his eye. It was a million-to-one chance. We found a CCTV shot of her and ran a match. She was in our files because two months later she killed herself. Posner was religious and badly affected by the death. I want to look into the matter.’

  ‘The last thing we need is you going off on another tangent,’ said Land. ‘Shouldn’t you be concentrating on Forester’s relationship with his wife? And Jackson, what exactly was he up to, creeping around the bushes with a camera snapping off photos of Helen Forester – was he obsessed with her?’

  ‘No, Raymond, mi pequeño pendejo, because there’s absolutely no hint of sexual impropriety.’

  ‘He could have stopped because he realized that Jeremy Forester was watching him. And why didn’t Forester do something to protect his wife? Have you carried out a reenactment yet?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Bryant. ‘You know I don’t hold with such naffery.’

  ‘I want one held first thing in the morning. Get Steffi to arrange it. Is that everything?’

  Bryant paused in the doorway. ‘Did you know that Ritchie Jackson lost his job because of us?’

  Land was taken by surprise. ‘No, I’ve heard no mention of that.’

  ‘It was the night we caught the Mr Punch Killer. Traffic had to be diverted under London Bridge Station, and nobody checked all the height clearances on the new route. Jackson got around the back of Guildable Manor Street and slammed on his brakes. The arch was tall enough to pass under, but it had a steel cable pole sticking down from the brickwork and could have torn a hole in his roof. The sudden braking caused his load to shift. He was carrying cases of handmade glassware to Covent Garden Market, and was late getting back because out of the goodness of his heart he went via the hospital. When he went to unload the truck he found that some of the cargo had smashed and he was fired on the spot. Jackson provides a direct link between the two intended victims.’

  ‘Thank God,’ said Land. ‘You can do some proper police work for a change and be a bit more realistic, instead of spending all your time rooting about in filthy old books and talking to autistic academics.’

  ‘Reality is for those who lack imagination, ma vieille limace.’

  When Bryant returned to his office, he found John May working at his laptop. ‘Oh, there you are,’ he said. ‘The pulse quickens, the sap rises, I feel the bit between the teeth once more. We have a new avenue of exploration.’

  ‘Oh?’ May sat back and gave him his attention.

  Bryant dug out his pipe and stuffed it with Old Holborn Captain’s Shag. ‘You know I am a man not in complete harmony with the normal. My thoughts tend to veer off like supermarket trolleys and my conversations with Raymondo usually prove fruitless.’

  ‘Yes.’ May wondered where this was going.

  ‘I have to admit that this time he may have a point. I’ve been burying my head in my research rather too deeply. It’s the part I enjoy most. Murder has such obvious motives, but sometimes our cases have something deeper behind them. I catch a glimpse of it, a vibration from the past, and I’m off.’

  ‘I know,’ said May indulgently. ‘And you’re often right to do so, but I think this investigation has a much more basic foundation. We’re going to find that Jeremy Forester caused his wife’s death. Dan says there are DNA traces of him—’

  ‘Of course there are,’ said Bryant. ‘He went to her flat to try to get his passport back.’

  May raised his hand. ‘Let me finish, Arthur. He may have indirectly been the cause. This chap Sun Dark has connections to Forester’s company. They built their malls on his land, deals were done, Forester owed them money. We’re going after the company records, but Dark’s lawyers have a pretty sophisticated set-up and it’ll take us a while to obtain the necessary permissions. I’ve had some further information on Ritchie Jackson. His ex-girlfriend Sof
ia called Janice while you were interviewing him. She nearly got a restraining order put on him because he was stalking her. She’s coming in tonight. There’s a lot to be done, and I could do with your full attention.’

  ‘Very well.’ Bryant lit his pipe, sending a plume of burning embers across the room. ‘I’ll put aside my history books and we’ll do it your way. I want to talk to anyone who knew Lauren Posner. C’est le temps pour fumer une pipe enchantée.’

  ‘No, not your marijuana plant,’ cried May, eyeing the diseased-looking weed in the flowerpot under his partner’s desk.

  ‘It’s for medicinal purposes,’ Bryant insisted. ‘I need to keep my strength up.’

  ‘Well, that won’t do it.’

  ‘No,’ Bryant agreed, ‘but it’ll stop me from getting depressed if we fail.’

  29

  ‘HE SAID I LOOKED LIKE AN ANGEL’

  Steffi Vesta expected to pull long shifts, but the staff of the PCU never seemed to go home. They ate, slept and showered at work. Yesterday Colin Bimsley had wandered in wearing a vest and shorts, eating a bowl of cereal. Meera sat in the evidence room watching detective shows on a confiscated television. Janice came out of the bathroom with her hair in curlers. Mr Bryant wore carpet slippers. Raymond Land did jigsaws. Some old ladies came by to bless the new roof patio. Towels were dried on radiators, socks were hung on makeshift clothes lines, milk was delivered with bottles of gin. It was like some horrible student hostel.

  Clearing her desk of half-eaten pizza slices, Steffi put on her coat and went to join Janice Longbright for her interview with Ritchie Jackson’s former girlfriend.

  As the two Daves were still painting the interview room, Longbright had taken her witness to the Ladykillers Café on the corner, hoping that the ironic Home Counties decor would put her at ease. Sofia Anzelmo fitted Bryant’s description of the killer’s type: blonde and slender, dressed in a skirt and black leggings. Her plucked eyebrows gave her a look of permanent surprise. Only her accent revealed her as Italian.