The Water Room

by Christopher Fowler

  By Monday afternoon it was as if the hiatus of the last month had never occurred. Ten crates unloading, nine boxes opened, eight phones ringing, seven staff complaining, six desks in various states of assembly, five damaged chairs, four cases pending, three workmen hammering, two computers crashing and a cat locked in a filing cabinet with no key. Arthur Bryant was sitting back at his desk, beaming amidst the chaos, looking for all the world as if he had never left.

  ‘It’s very simple, Janice,’ he explained to the confused and exasperated sergeant. ‘At the base of the unit’s new structure I’ve appointed two detective constables, an enormous, accident-prone innocent with a positively Homeric attitude to groundwork named Colin Bimsley, and I’ve found him a partner, DC Meera Mangeshkar, whose experiences in various south London hell-holes have apparently equipped her with the twin rapid-response mechanisms of cynicism and sarcasm. Blame John, he gave me their CVs. They’ll be occupying the room next door.’

  ‘Right, got that.’ Longbright was having to make notes with a blue eyeliner pencil because she was unable to locate any pens.

  ‘Now, above these two are another new pair, a vulpine young officer named Dan Banbury, who’s joining us as a hyphenate crime-scene manager and IT expert, and the nervous twit Giles Kershaw, with whom I’ve already had an argument this morning, who has been forced upon us as a replacement for our ancient coroner, Oswald Finch. He’ll be, I quote, our “forensic pathologist slash Social Sciences Liaison Officer”, whatever that means, although I shall insist on using Oswald for certain specialized duties. I can’t believe John still hasn’t turned up yet. He sat in on the interviews with me, he knows all about this.’

  ‘He’ll be here, don’t worry.’

  ‘The unit’s fifth member is of course your good self, supposedly retired but now freelance, whom I have agreed to take back on a renewable three-month contract which will allow you to continue working with your oldest and dearest friends, viz John and myself, the sixth and seventh members of the unit.’

  ‘Thank you, much appreciated,’ said Longbright with just a hint of sarcasm.

  ‘Naturally, you will continue to enjoy our inexcusable favouritism, not just because you remind us of Ava Gardner or because you make a proper cabbie’s mug of tea, but because you’re the only one capable of keeping this place in a semblance of order. The eighth and final member of this workforce will continue to be the terminally indecisive Raymond Land, our acid-stomached acting head, who has been forced to return for another season until he can effect a transfer to traffic control or a small-crimes division, preferably on a Caribbean island where the pressures will be fewer and the weather warmer. I make that six men and two women, employed to tackle the cases that no one else in London wants to touch with a stick. Not much of a team, I know, but we can draw on outside forces if necessary.’

  Longbright knew what that meant: a motley collection of disbarred academics, crackpot historians, alternative therapists, necromancers, anarchists, spirit healers, nightclub doormen, psychics, clairvoyants and street mountebanks, many of whom consorted with known criminals, drafted in on a promise of cash in hand. They were unreliable, expensive and occasionally indispensable.

  Kershaw stuck his head around the unpainted door-jamb. ‘The remains of two bodies were taken to Bayham Street Mortuary while you were out,’ he explained in a high, plummy voice that Bryant had grown to hate in less than an hour. ‘One non-caucasian male approximately forty-five to fifty years old, multiple stab wounds to the stomach, the other a caucasian pre-operative transsexual, male to female, approximately nineteen years of age, throat contusions indicative of strangulation, quite chatty in the ambulance but DOA at A&E. Camden Met wants nothing to do with them.’

  ‘They’re not our cases, surely?’ John May picked up on the conversation as he sauntered in with a folded newspaper under his arm.

  ‘Where on earth have you been?’ Bryant demanded to know.

  Kershaw shrugged. ‘Right here.’

  ‘Not you. Him.’ Bryant pointed at his partner, who was unfolding the paper and scanning the arts pages as he slipped behind his desk.

  ‘Anyway, you’re supposed to knock before entering,’ Bryant told Kershaw testily.

  ‘Not possible, old chap, you haven’t got a door. Do you want to hear about this or not?’

  ‘I suppose so, and I’m Mr Bryant to you, chum. John, you remember Giles Kershaw, the forensic wallah you promoted for candidature in our happy circle? Does no one introduce themselves properly any more? The French permit themselves the extravagance of kissing one another, surely a simple English handshake is common decency. Where have you been?’

  ‘Personal business, tell you later,’ smiled May, which meant he had stayed over with a woman, a habit Bryant felt was ridiculous and probably dangerous at his age.

  ‘They were picked up at around five o’clock this morning in Camden Town, according to the duty sheet,’ explained Kershaw. ‘D’you ever wonder why there are so many murder cases involving transsexuals?’

  ‘No, why?’ asked Bryant, pulling out desk drawers and rummaging through them noisily.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, I just wondered if you’d wondered.’

  ‘Visible victim status encourages domination and attracts sexual sadists, read your Krafft-Ebing, it’s not brain surgery. These ones were most likely victims of a drunken fight. North London Met is overloaded so they couldn’t wait for a chance to start palming us off with the extra, even though they’re no longer entitled to do so. I’m not working on common fatal assaults, it’s degrading. The key must be around here somewhere.’

  ‘What have you lost?’ May asked Longbright.

  ‘Mr Bryant’s rescued another cat.’ She rolled her thickly painted eyes. ‘He was taking it to the vet.’

  ‘We’ve got to get him free before he runs out of air.’ Bryant turned a drawer over the desk, cascading rubbish everywhere. ‘I’ve christened him Crippen, because we had that ginger tom named Lucan who disappeared after killing a bird.’

  ‘You’re not good with animals, Arthur. Look what happened to your parrot. That poor carpet-layer was distraught, hammering it flat in the underlay after you told him you couldn’t find your tobacco pouch. How on earth did the cat get shut in a filing cabinet?’

  ‘I thought he’d be safe there while I went out. I didn’t know the drawer was self-locking.’

  ‘Raymond’s still in the next room.’ Longbright pointed at the door. Raymond Land was allergic to cats. He had also tripped over Crippen’s litter tray and nearly fallen down the stairs, and had now begun to suspect that the others were hiding something.

  ‘If he starts sneezing I’ll tell him it’s the fresh paint,’ Bryant promised. He had discovered the tiny black and white stray dumped inside a bin-bag on Camden’s Chalcot Road at the weekend, and had brought it to work inside his jacket with the intention of overcoming its apprehensions about the cruelty of humans. Unfortunately, Crippen’s worst fears had now been confirmed. To add to the confusion, two men had arrived with a photocopier, and had started unpacking it in the middle of the floor, trapping everyone at the edges of the room, and now they were all getting wet paint on their clothes. From inside Bryant’s filing cabinet came a high feline whine.

  ‘Any tea going?’ asked John May, throwing his overcoat into a corner. ‘Did your doctor give you the all-clear after that crack on the nut?’

  Bryant had sustained a head injury during the unit’s last investigation. ‘He made me read a couple of eye charts. I passed with flying colours.’

  ‘Really? You can’t usually see a hole in a ladder.’

  ‘I had crib sheets. See.’ Bryant held up miniature copies of the charts.

  ‘And you got away with it?’

  ‘No, he saw me looking up my sleeve and prescribed new reading glasses. Look.’ He donned the spectacles, his eyes swimming up like great blue moons.

  ‘My God, they make you look like Reginald Christie. Is that who I mean, the murderer who gass
ed his victims? Except you’re older, of course. Why is it so cold in here? What happened to summer? It’s going to pelt down any minute.’

  ‘We haven’t got any heaters yet, we can’t shut the windows because of the smell, and until this year summer in London only existed as a tentative concept. You should know, you’ve lived here for about a hundred years yourself.’ Bryant accepted a hot mug from Longbright, stirred it with the end of a paper-knife and passed it to his partner. ‘I’m afraid it’s bags until we can buy some decent stuff. The toilet doesn’t appear to have a door, we’re missing a couple of desks and part of a ceiling. Oh, and the electrics keep shorting out. It wasn’t me; I haven’t touched anything. It’s nearly half past three. Were you really all this time with a woman? You could have got so much done.’

  ‘Actually, I had a medical at lunchtime and was sent for a chest X-ray. Had to wait for ages. I tried calling you when I got out, but your mobile wasn’t answering.’

  ‘No, it wouldn’t. It got wet, so I tried to dry it out in Janice’s sandwich toaster. The toaster and the phone sort of—melded—into a single appliance, scientifically interesting as a new mechanical life-form but utterly useless for communication. Kershaw, you can bugger off now, there’s a chap, we’ll be fine.’

  ‘What do I tell Bayham Street?’ asked Kershaw with a faint air of desperation.

  ‘Tell them you’ll take a wander over with Mr Banbury after you’ve visited the crime scene, give them the kind of report they love—yards of statistics, no opinions. Not that you’ll find anything at the site after Camden’s gormless plods have trampled around in their size tens. And be careful near Finch, he bites.’

  May looked up from his newspaper. ‘Do you know that’s the third mobile you’ve destroyed this year, not counting the one you lost when the unit blew up?’

  ‘Surely not. I quite fancy one of those video-phones. I’m surprised no one’s created a collective noun for them yet, or even any decent short-form generic terminology. I thought we were supposed to be an ingenious race, but I fear America has the edge on us when it comes to branding. Have we got any biscuits, Janice? Not Hobnobs, they get under my plate.’

  The streets around Mornington Crescent station were quiet for a Monday afternoon. If you had been walking past, and had looked up at the arched first-floor windows above the Tube entrance, rebuilt in their original maroon tiles, you would have seen Arthur Bryant and John May in silhouette against the opaque grey glass beneath the station logo, Bryant seated under an ‘N’, May tilting his chair below the ‘S’, as sharply delineated as Balinese puppets.

  ‘Tell John about your old lady,’ Longbright suggested.

  ‘What old lady?’ asked May. ‘Have I missed something interesting?’

  ‘Do you remember a fellow called Benjamin Singh? Ah.’ Bryant found the keys and released a traumatized Crippen from his cabinet. A less appropriately named kitten was hard to visualize. ‘Expert on English occult literature and pagan mythology. I used him as a consultant a few times in the eighties. His sister died this morning, and he came here.’

  There was a bang as DC Bimsley nearly went through the window with a box of stackable files. Everyone flinched except Bryant, whose deafness was highly selective.

  ‘He wanted her to be seen by someone he trusted, so I went round there and took a look.’ Bryant patted his pockets for a match. ‘She was in her late seventies. Body was in the basement on a very hard upright chair, and there was water in her throat. I’ve given Banbury the sample, and I’m waiting for a quick confirmation from the child Kershaw, but it would appear to have been a dry drowning.’

  ‘What’s a dry drowning?’ asked DC Bimsley, listening in.

  ‘No water in the lungs, death as a result of laryngospasm—constriction of the windpipe. Quite rare, but not unheard-of,’ May explained without thinking.

  ‘The problem is, it’s an unprovable method of death. Most drownings are accidental, often because the victim is pissed. A deep breath is taken in shock, and the lungs inflate like balloons. There was a small contusion on the back of her head, might have been an old mark but I’m inclined not to think so.’ Bryant, ignoring the newly installed No Smoking signs, poked about in his coat and produced his pipe. He started to light it but Longbright snatched it out of his mouth with a tut. ‘I got Oswald in to take a quick look at her.’

  ‘No wonder Kershaw’s upset with you,’ said May. ‘Oswald Finch is retired, you can’t just call him in over the new boy’s head.’

  ‘I can do what I like,’ Bryant reminded him. ‘I don’t trust someone whose surname sounds like a sneeze. I was going to use him, but Finch is an expert on drowning. You know how instinctive he is about such deaths. He reckons there’s no mucus in her air passages, nothing agitated by an attempt to breathe, no real distension in the lungs, no broken blood vessels in the nostrils. He’s opening her up tonight but doesn’t think he’ll find diatomic particles in the heart ventricles because she went into spasm almost at once.’

  ‘Could she have drowned at her sink?’

  ‘It’s possible, except that we found her bone-dry and fully dressed for going out, seated in a chair. She could have drowned in half an inch of water if she’d been unable to get up, but not in a chair.’

  ‘Did she have swollen ankles, bare feet?’ asked May suddenly.

  ‘Not bare—old-lady bootees, the non-slip kind—but swollen.’

  ‘I was thinking footbath. You know what old ladies are like. Was the floor wet?’

  ‘Yes, a little. There’s a rug over parquet.’

  ‘You didn’t ask the brother if he’d moved anything?’

  ‘I’m losing my touch, John, forgive me, I’ll call him right now.’ He turned to Longbright. ‘Why is everyone else’s phone connected except mine?’

  ‘Forgive me for pointing this out,’ said Longbright, ‘but Mrs Singh’s case hardly falls within our official jurisdiction.’

  ‘I do recall the tenet under which this unit was set up, Janice. “Taking pressure off the Metropolitan service by dealing with those cases deemed too problematic or sensitive for traditional channels”—they’ll hardly have time to give something like this more than a cursory glance, will they? Besides, I have no other work at the present time. I don’t count eviscerated drunks.’

  Bryant had an offensive way of dismissing what he called ‘ordinary crime’. He looked from one face to the other with such an air of childish enthusiasm that both Longbright and May wanted to slap him, even though they realized that he was simply happy to be back. Today he was alive with a restless excitement. For decades, he and his partner had divided their workload along the lines of their personalities. May followed the ingrained rules of Metropolitan Police detection, handling the groundwork, chasing up the most obvious and logical leads, interviewing family members, appealing for witnesses, covering tracks, proud of being thorough. His skills were technical because he enjoyed working with new technology, and observational because he liked people. Arthur had never exhibited sociability. He preferred to be left alone, taking off at tangents, following lateral hunches and sensations, enjoying the jolt of unlikely synaptic responses. Bryant did the heavy thinking, May did the heavy lifting. ‘Come on,’ he nudged. ‘Aren’t you even a little curious?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ May admitted. ‘But it can’t take precedence over the caseload Raymond’s handing us.’

  Bryant knew he had won. ‘Fine. I thought I might work late tonight. My new kitchen’s not connected up and the plumber’s behaving like the last of the Romanovs, refusing to visit until Wednesday. You’re the only one with a dependent, Janice, you should go home. There’s nothing more you can do until tomorrow.’ Most of the new computers had yet to have their software installed, and the only items to survive the blast undamaged were still packed in boxes.

  ‘Ian’s going to leave me if I go back on regular shifts,’ the detective sergeant agreed. ‘But I should make myself useful. Now that you’re both here, perhaps I’ll stay a little while
longer, just to get things shipshape.’ She looked around the partially painted room. ‘I must say it’s good to be back.’

  ‘Excellent, you can give me a hand unpacking my reference books. I don’t do manual work with my back.’ Bryant slapped his hands on the desk. ‘Lend me your phone. I won’t break it.’

  ‘Yes you will. I thought you lost all your books.’ Longbright examined the flyleaf of Witchcraft through the Ages. ‘You’ve stolen these from the library.’

  ‘Incoming email marked urgent,’ warned Meera Mangeshkar, getting wet paint down her sleeve as she looked in. ‘Do you know anything about a Christian Right minister from Alabama whose legs were found in a bin-bag behind Camden Stables?’

  ‘Is his name Butterworth?’ asked Bryant.

  Mangeshkar ducked back and checked her screen. ‘No, Henderson.’

  ‘Wait, I’m thinking of a Baptist, torso in a bin-bag behind Sainsbury’s.’

  ‘Home Office wants a unit representative to go up there this evening. Angry Republicans placing phone calls to Westminster, doesn’t look good.’

  ‘Ah, Arthur, John.’ Raymond Land squeezed past Mangeshkar and hailed them with patently false bonhomie, which faded as he tried to climb around the partially assembled photocopier. ‘I’m glad you’re both here. The Home Secretary would like to see you for a brief chat tomorrow. He’s very upset that you’ve been rude to his brother-in-law.’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ Bryant told him. ‘Who the hell is his brother-in-law?’

  ‘Your new chap, Giles Kershaw. Apparently you’re refusing to use him.’

  ‘His brother-in-law? You’re joking. What a total Quisling. I didn’t like the cut of his jib the moment I saw him. Quel crapaud.’

  ‘Well, no doubt you’ll use your legendary diplomatic skills to sort the whole mess out,’ Land smirked. ‘I mustn’t keep you, I’m sure you have plenty of work to do.’ He turned to leave, and stood on the cat’s tail. One of the workmen putting a partition across the office dropped his circular saw. It shot across the floor, making everyone scream.