Strange Tide

by Christopher Fowler

  May shrugged. ‘Arthur loves his work.’

  Gillespie squinted down at his notes. ‘I suppose you could say death keeps him alive. Well, there’s good news too. His weight is constant, he doesn’t have diabetes, he communicates well and says he doesn’t suffer mood changes. As far as I can tell, there’s no traditional history of Alzheimer’s or dementia in his family. He’s had a brain scan, but that didn’t reveal anything untoward. It’s almost impossible to pin down the cause of these episodes. So we’ll tackle a biopsy next.’

  ‘He won’t be happy about that.’

  ‘There’s something else. There are cycles.’ Another spasm of hacking produced more pained grimaces. ‘Sorry about this, the coughing stops if I take the brace off, but then my head falls on one side. Where was I? Most of his attacks occur at roughly the same times of the day. Now that doesn’t make any sense at all. If stress and fatigue were the only factors he’d suffer most after a tough day at work, but he doesn’t. And there’s the matter of his cognitive perceptions. Is he experiencing behavioural changes? Has he started acting inappropriately, saying whatever’s on his mind, being rude, upsetting those around him?’

  May gave the medic a long, hard look. ‘Dr Gillespie, that’s not a disease. Arthur has never been able to say anything polite or even remotely appropriate. He leaves a trail of embarrassment wherever he goes. Are you telling me he’s going to get even worse?’

  ‘Well, yes. This illness may manifest itself in some very surprising ways.’

  ‘So you think he’ll continue to deteriorate.’

  ‘I can’t see any other likelihood. The attacks are growing in severity, and the periods between them are shrinking. I see Alzheimer’s following the same growth pattern in many of my older patients, with very little deviation. I’ve just never seen anything exactly like his before.’

  ‘What can you do to manage the problem?’

  Gillespie stuck a pencil under his neck brace and gave himself a good scratch. ‘Therein lies the paradox, you see. If I sign him off work and we leave him at home, there’ll be nothing to occupy his mind and he’ll deteriorate much more quickly. If you keep him working so that his mind and body remain active, you’ll help him but you may be placing other people at risk.’

  May was stumped. ‘Then what do you suggest I do?’

  ‘There’s an old book . . .’ Gillespie tried to point to the bookcase but had such trouble turning around that he looked like a very old gun turret seeking its target. ‘Third shelf, at the end, black leather cover.’

  May searched the shelf and found a heavy volume that looked as if it had travelled the world. ‘This one?’

  ‘That’s it. May be of some help.’

  ‘Is this for Arthur?’

  ‘No, no. He gave the book to me. Apparently he’s been researching his own case.’

  May searched the cover but failed to find a title. Inside were a thousand thin pages and columns of dense type. ‘What is it, a medical casebook?’

  ‘No, it’s a history of the Belgian Congo. Your partner seems to think it contains the explanation for his condition. He was terribly excited. Mind you, after he’d gone I found he’d stolen my lunch, so I’m not too convinced he was compos mentis at the time.’

  May opened the volume and turned to the title page, unsurprised by what he read. Diseases and Treatments of Congolese Tribal Elders 1870–1914.

  Typical light reading for Arthur, he thought as he left.

  ‘I need the book,’ said Arthur Bryant aloud. ‘It must be here somewhere. Where else could I have left it?’ Grunting with the effort, he stood on tiptoe but still could not clearly read the spines on the bookcase.

  Looking around the living room he saw a small wooden set of stairs on wheels, with a carved pole to hold on to. He didn’t recall buying any library steps, but wheeled them over anyway. On the way he passed a garish orange sofa that he did not remember seeing before either. Perhaps Alma’s been spring-cleaning again, he thought, setting the steps before the bookcase. That was more like it. He could reach the top three shelves now. It had to be here somewhere. Climbing up, he searched the titles, but nothing was right: Treasure Island, Two Years Before the Mast, The Life of Lord Nelson, Hornblower in the West Indies, Master and Commander, The Battle of Trafalgar. What on earth were all these naval volumes doing here? He didn’t remember putting them up on display like this. He arranged books alphabetically, not by themes, and certainly didn’t mix fact and fiction. Could someone have given him them? Perhaps they contained inscriptions.

  Pulling down the first, The Conquest of Scurvy, he opened it and examined the contents.

  The pages were blank.

  He grabbed the next book, Rigging and Practical Seamanship, and threw it open.

  A sea of bare white pages swam up before him.

  And the next. Blank. And the next. And the next.

  In a deepening state of panic, he hurled the volumes on to the floor. The words had all vanished. What would he do without them? Where had the words gone? How would he survive? His beloved books!

  He tore at the naval library until the entire shelf was cleared, then stumbled down the steps and fell on to the sofa, no longer able to contain the sense of devastation that filled his heart.

  ‘You, what are you doing?’ barked a shiny young man in a too-tight suit, threaded eyebrows and a Germanic haircut. What he saw in front of him was something that, like the grace of God, defied rational explanation. It looked as if someone had fired a tramp out of a cannon into his prized centrepiece. ‘That’s our Royal Devonshire Buffalo-Grain Faux-Leather Autumn Collection,’ he cried. ‘It’s not for sitting on! Where do you think you are?’

  He’s got a point, thought Bryant, where on earth am I?

  ‘What seems to be the problem?’ said a middle-aged woman with too much make-up and even stranger hair.

  ‘A tramp, Morwenna,’ said the young man, flustered.

  Morwenna took charge. She came over and stood before him with her hands on her dimpled fat knees. ‘Do you know where you are?’ she asked, kindly enough, but speaking loudly as if to a child.

  ‘Of course I do, you silly woman,’ Bryant snapped. ‘I’m at number seventeen, Albion House, Harrison Street, Bloomsbury.’

  ‘No,’ she said, flourishing her palm at the rest of the view behind her, ‘you’re in the soft-furnishings department of British Home Stores, Oxford Street.’

  He looked around and took stock of the scene. Shoppers were drifting about, hypnotized by swivel chairs, standard lamps and other knick-knackery. He looked down at himself. He was wearing his oldest and most worn-out brown tweed suit. He had one torn sock and there were mud splashes all over his legs. ‘I’m most frightfully sorry,’ he said, trying to extricate himself from the sofa’s powerful gravitational pull and failing. ‘I seem to have lost my bearings for a moment.’

  ‘Here,’ said the sales lady, a look of empathy crossing her features. ‘Give me your hand.’ And reaching down she gently pulled him to his feet, patiently waiting until he had found his sea-legs.

  ‘Thank you, Morwenna,’ he said, grateful for this small gesture of kindness. ‘I’m afraid my confusion about being here is far greater than yours. I’m sorry about all the books.’

  ‘Well, I hope you find what you’re looking for,’ she said, watching him go before turning to berate her junior employee.

  Find what I’m looking for, thought Bryant as he tacked towards the exit. Fat chance of that. I’ve lost my mind. How can I ever find that again?

  As he stepped out among the blank-faced shoppers of Oxford Street, there before him at the pavement’s edge was a familiar figure. John May, resplendent in his navy Savile Row overcoat, was standing beside a waiting black cab, welcoming him towards its open door.

  7

  HIDDEN & DROWNED

  ‘What were you doing there, anyway?’ asked May as they settled back in the taxi for the short journey to King’s Cross.

  ‘I think I meant to buy somethi
ng for Alma’s birthday,’ Bryant decided. He always picked up a little gift for her, a china owl for her collection, or bedsocks (prior to his discovery that no woman in the world liked being bought bedsocks). Alma Sorrowbridge had been his landlady for decades, and had moved with him to a flat in Bloomsbury after they had foolishly mislaid their old home. Although it had been agreed that they would now share on equal terms, the devout Antiguan found herself cooking and cleaning for her former tenant, a role she adopted with an air of resignation, feeling it was God’s will that she should do so, although why this devotion should extend to peeling his corn plasters off the cooker hood – he tended to treat them like Post-it notes – was beyond her.

  ‘What, and then you confused the shop with your home?’

  ‘I suppose I must have done. I really have no idea how I got there.’

  ‘So how did you remember that it was her birthday?’

  Bryant rattled his lips. ‘Oh, that’s easy. November the eighteenth, 1686. It’s exactly three hundred and thirty years after Charles-François Félix famously operated on King Louis XIV of France’s anal fistula. In order not to incur the wrath of the king, he first practised the surgery on several peasants. Understandably, most of them died in agony. It’s also the day of the state funeral of the Duke of Wellington in 1852, the end of the Battle of the Somme in 1916, the date of the first appearance of Mickey Mouse in Steamboat Willie in 1928 and Alma’s birthday.’

  ‘So you can remember all that, but not where you live?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve always favoured abstruse facts over prosaic ones.’ Bryant removed his damp felt hat and gave it a bash on the door handle. ‘Of course, it’s more useful to remember where your keys are than to recall the details of Charles II’s exile in Holland, but that’s just the way my mind works. I can’t bear those people who only talk about arthritis and ring roads and television and mending gutters, although one does recognize the need for them, if only because they occasionally provide babies who grow up to be more interesting.’

  ‘That’s generous of you,’ said May, not without sarcasm. ‘I have a dilemma.’

  ‘Ah. What to do with me, I imagine.’

  ‘Precisely so.’

  ‘I’m not having a carer.’

  ‘No, but the problem is suddenly pressing.’

  ‘You mean a case has come in.’

  ‘You have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Thames. I really need your help but I can’t risk you wandering off again. Arthur, I’m trying to be delicate about this—’

  ‘Please don’t be. Delicacy is the curse of the Englishman.’

  ‘That morning on Waterloo Bridge.’

  ‘Ah.’ Bryant’s face scrunched into a map of wrinkles as if the thought pained him.

  ‘I thought I’d lost you. I watched you head off into the fog to say your goodbyes to London and honestly thought I’d never see you again. You can be a right sod sometimes.’

  Bryant bounced back in his seat. ‘I have the theatrical gene. And I did go to say goodbye to London. But perhaps London isn’t quite finished with me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that there are still a few things I have to do.’

  ‘Dr Gillespie doesn’t think you have much time left.’

  ‘What if I stayed at the office and didn’t take on any fieldwork, would that satisfy you?’

  ‘I’d much rather you were in the office, but it’s not up to me,’ said May, wiping condensation from the window and gazing out into the sodden November world. ‘I’m afraid it’s Raymond’s decision.’

  Bryant brushed aside the idea. ‘Oh, I can wrap him around my little finger.’

  ‘Not this time, old sock. The PCU’s performance is being monitored. Raymond’s being watched every step of the way. City of London HQ know about your doctor’s report and they don’t want you anywhere near the case. They need to see how the unit fares without your help.’

  ‘So they can take away its powers once I’m gone,’ scoffed Bryant. ‘What if nobody knew I was there?’

  ‘How would that work?’

  ‘Get me picked up and dropped off at the building in the morning, send me home by cab at night. No one from outside would need to know.’

  ‘If they found out, we’d be for the chop.’

  ‘Then they won’t find out,’ said Bryant, attempting to look innocent. ‘I promise. We must stand firm and do what we know to be right. We always knew this day was coming. You have to lie.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said May, ‘what happened to “we”?’

  The taxi had stopped a little way before the great bronze statue of Isaac Newton at the British Library. ‘The traffic’s bad,’ said Bryant. ‘Before we arrive at the unit why don’t you quickly fill me in?’

  ‘All right,’ May conceded, realizing he had agreed to do something illegal without actually saying he would. ‘A young woman was found on the Thames foreshore this morning, on the site of the old Tower Hill Beach near the Queen’s Stairs. She’d been chained to a stone post by her left wrist some time the night before and left to drown. The tide had come in and gone out, but we have some remains of footprints. Unfortunately they belong to only one person going in one direction, down to the water.’

  ‘Well, that throws up at least a dozen anomalies in itself,’ said Bryant, intrigued.

  ‘Name one.’

  ‘You say “chained”. Explain in more detail, please.’

  ‘Exactly what I said. Chained by a silver neck-chain with a crescent moon on one end.’

  ‘Hers?’

  ‘I imagine so. Dan’s working on the hallmark. Her wrist had been attached to an iron ring in the concrete.’

  ‘Why not both wrists? Why only one? Is Giles examining her?’

  ‘He should be by now.’

  ‘Then let’s go over there.’

  ‘Now wait a minute.’ May pushed his old partner back into the taxi seat. ‘You just said you’d stay hidden in the office.’

  ‘Yes, but the coroner’s office is right on the way,’ Bryant reasoned. ‘We virtually have to drive past the place. In fact we could cut out the infernal traffic that way. We just drop off the cab, look in and walk back to the PCU together afterwards. It’s right here. Couldn’t we?’

  ‘Don’t do the orphaned puppy eyes.’

  ‘Couldn’t we?’

  Against his better judgement May gave in, as he always knew he would.

  The canalside around King’s Cross in the spring did not adopt an inner-city appearance. Colonies of bluebells and forget-me-nots would come into flower around the elder bushes, thrusting through nettle, mint and rose, honeysuckle and cow parsley, while bursts of buddleia, ceanothus and horse chestnut were overhung by frothy plumes of lilac, No whit less still and lonely fair than the high cloudlets in the sky, Arthur Bryant often thought. Unfortunately it was November, and all he could see from the road today were two drunk kids kicking McDonald’s boxes into the litter-strewn water and a tramp taking a dump behind a diseased plane tree.

  The St Pancras Coroner’s Office on Camley Street was a building you might expect to find in one of Grimm’s less logical fairy tales, and certainly not in the centre of town. Yet here it still stood, at the edge of a graveyard associated with folklore and myth, beside a church that was purportedly 1,700 years old, a damp-looking red-bricked, crook-chimneyed, moss-covered miracle lost in a gleaming futuropolis of steel and concrete, where the only difference between one tower block and the next was the finish on the window frames.

  The detectives headed through the cemetery’s ornate black and gold gates, pushed past wet overgrown hedgerows and reached the front door, where Rosa Lysandrou answered their knock. Although the Greek coroner’s assistant wore her usual shapeless black smock and Birkenstocks, she was also sporting a pair of pink sparkly bunny ears.

  ‘Now I know I’m one carrot short of a casserole,’ said Bryant. ‘Rosa, what on earth have you got on your head? Have they increased your HRT?’

  ‘I’m bein
g photographed for a calendar,’ she sniffed, holding the door wide.

  ‘You’re not posing nude?’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘That’s a relief. A calendar, eh? What are you, the last day of December?’

  ‘It’s for the Co-operative Women’s Guild. It shows that we have a sense of humour.’

  ‘Nothing’s that funny. Wouldn’t you be happier holding a scythe? Is Giles in?’

  Rosa pulled her ears off, offended. ‘I don’t suppose you have an appointment.’

  ‘Good Lord, I don’t need an appointment, I used to employ him.’

  ‘Well, you don’t any more.’

  ‘No, but I still outrank him in seniority. If we were in ancient Persia, he would be a wizard but I’d be the Grand Wazir.’ Bryant shucked off his overcoat and swept past her, followed by the helplessly apologetic May. ‘That’s confused her,’ he said. ‘She’ll be telling everyone I’ve gone potty now.’

  Giles Kershaw looked up as the door opened. ‘Mr Bryant! I didn’t think I’d see you—’

  ‘Rumours of my death have been slightly exaggerated,’ said Bryant, looking for somewhere to hang his hat. ‘Why are you always so smartly attired? Look at you, with your wavy hair and your high thread-count shirt: you look like a male model.’

  ‘A side effect of the job,’ Giles said cheerfully. ‘People’s insides can get in the most frightful messes; it makes you want to put a tie on. I gather you mentioned our Jane Doe in the Thames, John?’

  ‘Of course he did,’ said Bryant irritably. ‘He’s my partner. You should hear what we say about you behind your back.’ May glared at him.

  The young pathologist pointed across the room with the metal antenna he had been given by his predecessor, a treasured heirloom he mostly used for pointing out diseased lung tissue. ‘She’s right here. I’m just finishing up.’

  ‘You’re still doing all your own prep-work?’ said May. ‘I thought you were finally getting an assistant.’