Wild Chamber

by Christopher Fowler

‘Oh? Why not?’

  ‘Our only remaining suspect is missing and we still have no motive. And this death is different, obviously, so we’re starting afresh.’

  ‘It’s only different because of his gender,’ argued Bryant. ‘Rosa said something about entering paradise—’

  Giles knew his detective too well to be thrown by the sudden change of subject. ‘Yes, she tends to do that a lot.’

  ‘She’s right. The killer chose to despatch his first victim in idyllic surroundings, but the others were killed for expedience.’

  ‘And what makes you think that?’

  ‘The first time he had to do it, and he wanted to. Ritchie Jackson is an afterthought. The phone call was made to confirm a suspicion that Jackson knew the truth.’

  ‘What, so Jackson goes trotting along to a deserted park after dark to meet his murderer? Why would he do that?’

  ‘Because he still didn’t think he was in any danger. An attacker of women, a strangler? Jackson’s a big lad who owns a knife. He underestimated his opponent. And I think that’s what we’ve been doing all this time.’

  ‘You sound like you’ve decided who you’re looking for, Mr Bryant.’

  ‘I’m beginning to think I have. But by the end of the day I need to prove it. I know how our killer gained access to Clement Crescent. I’ve known ever since I found out that Mrs Farrier keeps a budgerigar.’

  ‘Don’t tell me any more,’ warned Kershaw. ‘I’ve been told to stop sharing information with you.’

  ‘Really? Why?’ Bryant’s eyes widened in a display of innocence that could have been seen from the rear of the stalls.

  Kershaw looked embarrassed. ‘Because the case is technically no longer yours.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘I had the Missing Link on the blower just before you got here. Amazingly, he doesn’t buy the pack of outrageous lies your boss fed him about crashing computers and plague germs.’

  Bryant waved the idea aside. ‘I’m not worried about him. He’s not the brightest bulb in the candelabrum but he usually plays fair.’

  ‘Not this time,’ Giles warned. ‘He told me that if I saw you, I was to make sure you headed straight back to the unit as quickly as possible. He checked to see if anyone else was here. If they were, I was to tell them the same thing.’

  ‘Interesting,’ said Bryant. ‘It sounds as if he wants us all in one place. Thanks for the alert. I think I know what he’s up to. If I’m right, two can play at that game.’ He tightened his scarf. ‘One other thing. What do you know about Shakespeare’s Titania?’

  Unfazed, Kershaw went to his computer. ‘English archetype, queen of the fairies, kissed a donkey in the woods. I know someone who lectures on the subject. Shall I ping the contact to your phone?’

  ‘You can if you like. I won’t see it as I have no idea what to do if my phone pings. Try writing it on a bit of paper. That often works.’

  With the number tucked into his top pocket Bryant headed off, tramping disrespectfully over the gravestones in the churchyard.

  When he reached the corner of the Caledonian Road, he ducked behind a traffic sign and peered over at the headquarters of the PCU, where two constables were supervising a group of council workers. Beside them two men in yellow hi-vis jackets were unloading corrugated steel barriers from the back of a lorry.

  With his worst fears confirmed, Bryant turned up his collar and hastily diverted away from the unit, hoping that no one had had time to spot him.

  ‘Someone’s putting bloody huge stickers over the ground-floor windows,’ announced Meera Mangeshkar, running up the stairs to find Raymond Land. ‘Look at this.’ She slapped a red roundel that read ‘CONTAMINATION ZONE’ on to his desk. ‘And they’re heat-sealing cordons around the building.’

  She found the unit chief staring at his phone in disbelief. ‘We’ve been declared a biohazard,’ Land told her. ‘Leslie Faraday has ordered the Temple of Doom to place the building under quarantine.’

  The mission of the Francis Crick Institute was to help understand why diseases develop and to find new ways to treat them. It was housed in a spectacular new biomedical research centre of steel and glass built beside St Pancras Station, and was locally known as the Temple of Doom because it had teams of biologists working there around the clock in the middle of a residential neighbourhood. The area had long been associated with tropical disease hospitals, but nobody liked having a biohazard centre on their doorstep.

  Land and Mangeshkar went to the windows and looked down. Yellow plastic ribbons could be seen crisscrossing the brickwork. Pinholed metal panels had been erected to hide the ground floor from public view. The surrounding pavements had been blocked, and a workman was screwing a wide steel belt over the front door.

  Land pulled up the window and yelled down, ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘We need you to get back inside, mate,’ the workman shouted back up. ‘Otherwise we’ll have to seal those as well.’

  ‘You can’t do that! And I’m not your mate! I’m the head of this unit and I absolutely forbid you to shut us in like this!’ Land’s plea was met with deafening indifference. He scooted to the detectives’ office, where he found John May on the phone.

  ‘I know,’ said May, taking one look at Land’s panicked face. ‘They’re saying we have to stay here until the Crick’s health and safety officers can give us the all-clear. I’m trying to sort it out.’

  ‘Well, how long is it going to take?’

  ‘They’ll probably be over tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Of course they will. I knew something like this was going to happen. I should never have listened to you! I can’t stay here all night – I don’t have pyjamas. It’s hot in here. I can’t breathe.’ Land looked like a hypoglycaemic runner about to drop in his tracks after a marathon.

  ‘We didn’t have a choice, Raymond,’ said May. ‘We had to tell them something.’

  Land fanned himself. ‘This is Link’s doing. This is his revenge for us fighting back. He can’t simply imprison us. God knows it’s bad enough having to come here every day without locking us in overnight. He’s blocked our access to all the Met databases, too, including HOLMES. How could he even do that? I thought we had control over our own computer system. They can’t get away with this.’

  The anguished unit chief was turning a strange shade of heliotrope. ‘Take a few deep breaths,’ May suggested. ‘We fight to stay operational in order to provide safekeeping and protection to all. We’ll do that by catching all those who would undermine the process. We’ll get him, all right?’

  Land loosened his collar and sucked in air, breathing out through his nose. ‘All right.’

  ‘Good. Just to warn you, we’re not all here.’

  ‘Who’s missing?’

  ‘Arthur. He’s still outside somewhere.’

  Land threw himself down into a chair. ‘Are you saying our fate now hinges on the findings of a delusional pensioner?’

  ‘I won’t tell him you said that.’ May poured some brandy into a strong tea. ‘All we can do now is sit tight and wait.’

  ‘What is happening?’ asked Steffi Vesta, coming in. ‘I could not open the front door. When I asked to be let out a man shouted something most vulgar through the letter box.’

  ‘It’s nothing, Steffi. We’ve been locked in until tomorrow morning,’ said May.

  Vesta looked confused. ‘This is not normal procedure, I think?’

  ‘It’s not normal even for us,’ answered May. ‘We have something they need.’

  ‘And you do not wish to give this something to them?’

  ‘No, Steffi, it’s the case. If we surrender it now, we get closed down. The expense of running the investigation and then handing it over unsolved will finish us off.’

  ‘Oh. Then we must close it, yes?’

  ‘Well, it’s going to be difficult. My partner is stuck on the outside and we can’t leave the building, so I’m open to any suggestions you might hav
e.’

  Steffi set down her shoulder bag and opened it. ‘Mr Banbury found this in the sample he took from St James’s Park. It was about a metre from Mr Jackson’s body.’ She handed May a small plastic bag containing a single tiny lead ball. ‘There was only one this time, but it is identical to those found in the St Olave churchyard. You thought it was from a type of air gun designed to fire projectiles called pellets, yes? But in your country all air pistols powerful enough to cause injury require a licence. So I ran a check, and this little thing does not match any known pellet made for such a gun. And there is something else. It is pressed, not dropped, which is why it has a seam. This type is commonly used by clothing designers. I called the wholesale fashion shops behind Oxford Street and had better luck. It is used to weigh things down, like the hem of a gown or dress.’

  ‘Are you telling me we’re looking for a woman?’ asked May.

  44

  ‘IT WAS QUITE A RIDE’

  Jeremy Forester sent one final email, closed the phone and dumped it in a litter bin outside the coffee shop.

  The pain in his leg had become unbearable. He sank on to the bench in Postman’s Park, one of the few to escape being locked in London’s Square Mile, not far from where he had worked for so many years. We think we escape, he thought bitterly, but we never get far. The cutting wind had finally dropped, and the day was settling into a dismal run of rain. He watched cascades of needles falling beyond the edge of the loggia. The last time he was here was on a hot summer’s day when he still had a career. He had brought his son to read the tiled inscriptions of brave self-sacrifice, more than fifty ceramic plaques dedicated to those who had died saving the lives of others. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

  Rolling up the left leg of his jeans, he saw that blood had soaked through the dressing and around the grey plastic splint that was setting his fibula. He needed medical attention, but somewhere out there Sun Dark’s men were still looking for him. He was fairly certain that by now the police would have upgraded his status to that of prime suspect.

  How the hell did he drop, Icarus-like, from the aureole of the sun? He knew the exact moment when things started to break apart. It had begun with that damned woman in the tunnel and the death of his boy. If Charlie had lived everything would have been different. He would never have got into debt and lost his job. Perhaps the marriage would still have ended, but Helen and his boy would still be alive. And the nanny, gone as well, as if someone was erasing each phase of his life.

  Before any of this happened, he had hardly ever visited a London park. Now he kept returning to them. They calmed him and let his thoughts fly free. You only had to walk a few feet in from the hedgerows and the noise of traffic dissipated to be replaced by birdsong, even in midwinter. The birds never quite left the city any more. It was too warm here now, and there was too much for them to eat. They were better at survival than the human residents.

  He watched an old man meticulously emptying a litter bin, looking for bottles and unfinished sandwiches. Where once he would have felt a kind of pitying revulsion he now saw stubborn endurance. Where was the shame in wanting to live? He watched a woman in a black business suit pointedly looking the other way as she passed, using her umbrella to shield herself from the offending sight. Once he would have done the same thing, fearful that he might see a reflection of his own possible fate. Now he felt a strange kind of kinship.

  I’ve changed, he thought. The parks have made me change. They’ve taught me not to be afraid any more. When your worst fears come true there’s nothing beyond them except peace.

  It had taken a little less than a year for his world to collapse. He accepted that he would never get to live out his dreams in Hong Kong. By now the police would have found the note he had mailed, explaining exactly what he had done for Washbourne Hollis and why. He wished he could see the look on Larry Vance’s face when that came out. The City of London Fraud and Economic Crime Squad would have been called in, and both he and Vance would face considerable jail sentences. Even that wasn’t a problem; it was the idea of existing afterwards with a criminal record and no money, no home, no love. Right at this moment the old man at the litter bin possessed more useful survival skills.

  As Forester rose from the bench and stepped back into the rain, the old man lifted his head and their eyes met. In that brief but infinite moment, he felt that he would be more than happy to change places.

  That settled it. He reached a decision.

  Number One, Poultry was so old that it had been nicknamed the Heart of the City. It stood in the centre of the Square Mile, covering what had once been the Walbrook, the stream that had fed the ancient Roman town of Londinium, part of the ghost map that existed beneath the pavement’s surface. On its third and fourth floors, Washbourne Hollis had provided a different kind of stream, a steady flow of money that allowed properties around the world to flourish.

  Forester looked up at the rooftop, feeling the cool rain on his face.

  The building had another, less desirable reputation: the flying buttresses of its roof garden provided diving boards for anguished bankers. During the past decade at least half a dozen had hurled themselves from its terrace into the distant street.

  He had almost fulfilled his death wish once. It seemed like a trial run for this moment.

  ‘Well,’ Forester told the darkened windows, ‘it was quite a ride, and I’ve already outstayed my welcome.’

  On this Sunday morning, armed with the only card he had managed to save, the private members’ pass that allowed him access to the suicides’ launch pad, Forester rode the lift and walked past the kitchen staff, who nodded to him in vague recognition. Then he slipped into the meticulously planted garden, climbed the concrete buttress and entered London’s history as one of those who fell short of the sun.

  Steffi Vesta was puzzled. She studied the screen again and did the maths, tapping her pen against perfect white teeth. Before her was the spreadsheet detailing Jeremy Forester’s finances.

  It had been mailed to her via an apparently defunct email account from a Costa Coffee shop near St Paul’s. That meant Jeremy Forester was less than two miles away from the unit, but now there was no way they could send anyone after him.

  He had sent it to the PCU’s only public address, info@pcu.org, but why? Was he trying to turn himself in? Or was he up to something more?

  At first glance the spreadsheet made no sense. It detailed his bank withdrawals and transfers together with his flight schedule. It was a document he had created to keep track of his financial dealings, and was difficult to interpret. But Vesta had the kind of mind that instantly registered anomalies, and it didn’t take her long to spot what Forester had intended her to see.

  The only person on the outside now was Mr Bryant. Steffi called him at once, but there was no answer, so she texted.

  ‘I have something for you,’ she wrote. ‘Please call me as soon as you get this.’

  45

  ‘I’LL HAVE TO GO IT ALONE, UNLESS …’

  ‘Where the hell is he?’ Raymond Land stormed about the operations room, sending paperwork flying. ‘Bryant knows every ranting nutcase and lunatic in London. I’ve called the only ones I can find numbers for. One of them told me there was a government conspiracy behind the fact that you never get green crisps any more, then tried to sell me some herbal tea. Another one warned me that the coming apocalypse will be caused by penguins. They’re full of ideas to save the world but just when we need them to do something useful they let us down. Somebody sane must have seen him.’

  ‘Unfortunately, Arthur keeps the names and addresses of all his academic contacts in his little black book,’ said May, ‘and that’s in his jacket pocket. Why penguins?’

  ‘Oh, something to do with magnetic radiation and fish,’ said Land vaguely. ‘Do you really mean to say you can’t do anything?’ He felt like tearing his hair out, except that he was newly single and needed every strand he had left.

  May shrugged. ‘You know
the situation. We can’t leave the building. By the way, our computer system really doesn’t work. Someone’s put a pickaxe through the electrics.’

  ‘It’s him,’ raged Land. ‘He went off to borrow one from the two Daves. He did it to stop us from giving in. Call them and get this ended, can’t you?’

  ‘Link’s not answering his phone, Faraday’s number goes straight to voicemail and the council lines are shut until tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve heard from Link,’ frothed Land, still pacing about madly. ‘I swear that man has a sixth sense. He knows Bryant’s not in here with us. I lied, of course, said he was in the toilet, but he wants me to bring him to the window as proof. He’s standing outside right now. What am I going to do? Somebody must have some bright ideas. Get everyone in here right now.’

  Land charged back to his office. Somewhere in his business manual there had to be a chapter on restoring order and staying calm in the face of an enemy siege.

  ‘Do you think he might be heading for a heart attack?’ asked Janice, tilting her head to watch him go. She hadn’t seen Land this furious since the cold lasagne he’d tried to eat from the unit fridge had turned out to be a part of a sheep’s stomach on which Bryant was conducting experiments. ‘Has anybody tried the basement?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Renfield.

  ‘We’re attached to the building next door. Isn’t there supposed to be a door down there that still opens?’

  There was an instant murmur of agreement. ‘Wait, Mr Land has just called a meeting!’ Steffi cried, but the room was already emptying out as everyone headed downstairs.

  ‘I cannot believe this,’ Land muttered to himself, riffling the pages of his management manual. ‘You didn’t bother to cover failure? Don’t any of your readers ever screw up? What kind of a name is Osbert Desanex anyway?’ The author photograph showed a man in a bomber jacket and mirrored aviator glasses who looked like a Lithuanian pimp. Land searched the index – ‘bankruptcy’, ‘loss’, ‘debt’, ‘humiliation’ – nothing about quarantines or biochemical hazards.