The Water Room

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘Well I’m used to a proper hierarchy, teams and briefings, method stuff without too many nasty surprises. Instead, I’m on my knees searching through garbage. I’m not even sure what we’re meant to be looking for.’

  ‘You heard Mr May. One of his academic colleagues from the Museum of London has come into dodgy money. He must have reasons for thinking there’s something illegal going on. Academics are usually broke, so how come he’s dining on foie gras?’

  ‘So the bloke’s doing a bit of untaxed freelance. Workers in the grey economy don’t keep documentation. What does May think we’re going to find? Receipts?’

  Bimsley rocked on his heels and looked at her. ‘You came up from Greenwich, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve done Greenwich, New Cross, Deptford, Peckham, all over south London. Great catchment areas if you like arguing with drug squads and dealing with complicated social structures involving “respect” in all its gruesome manifestations, but not if you’re interested in anything more sophisticated than gunshot and knife wounds.’

  ‘What made you come in for the PCU position?’

  ‘I wanted to work on crimes with causes, not club stabbings where the motive is always “He gave me a funny look.” I heard some of the local lads talking about this unit, slagging it off. Thought it sounded interesting.’

  ‘Bryant and May know a lot of people. They’ve made plenty of enemies, and some loyal friends. John’s great, but Arthur can be dangerous.’

  ‘In what way?’

  Bimsley thought for a moment. ‘They spent twenty years looking for some lunatic who called himself the Leicester Square Vampire. Bryant pushed the case too hard. The story goes that he persuaded John to use his own daughter as a decoy. Something went wrong, and the daughter died.’

  ‘Christ. How come they don’t hate each other?’

  ‘I don’t know. Nobody seems to know the full story. Longbright must, but she’s not talking.’ Bimsley slapped his mitts together. ‘Come on, it looks like it’s going to rain again, let’s wrap this up.’

  They worked in silence as the night deepened and a diaphanous mist began to dampen their hair and clothes, settling on the grass like threads of silk.

  ‘Your interview result isn’t enough to keep the Ruth Singh file open after its verdict, is it?’ asked Meera. ‘No conclusive forensic evidence, no real suspects, all friends, relatives and neighbours accounted for on the night in question.’

  ‘Yeah. Bryant must be disappointed.’

  ‘Why?’

  Bimsley dug deeper, shining his torch into the bottom of the last bag. ‘Oh, he wants the answers to life’s mysteries. Why people die, what makes them evil, how corruption takes root. It’s a hiding to nothing, because you never truly find out, do you? You don’t get to the source. May doesn’t look for meanings all the time, he just accepts what he sees and deals with it.’

  ‘And which do you think is best?’ asked Meera.

  Bimsley shrugged. ‘We’re the law, aren’t we? You’ve got to accept it all on face value or it’ll drive you bleeding mad.’

  ‘Nietzsche said, “There are no facts, only interpretations.” If you believe that justice can be meted via a simple binary system, you’re cleared from any moral responsibility.’ Meera’s sharp brown eyes were steady and unforgiving.

  ‘Look, I know what’s right and wrong, but I’m not going to go around with a chip on my shoulder about it, pissed off at never getting closure.’

  ‘It’s human nature to try and understand your environment, even if it only leads to more questions. Nietzsche also said, “Every word is a prejudice.” ’

  ‘Oh really?’ Bimsley was starting to get annoyed. ‘What does Nietzsche have to say about the chances of you and I not killing each other?’

  ‘He said that for a man and a woman to stay friends they have to find each other unattractive. So we should be great pals.’

  ‘You and Bryant are going to get on like a house on fire. Sorry, bad choice of words, seeing he managed to burn the unit down.’

  ‘How did he do that?’

  ‘Long story. Be thankful they didn’t close the place permanently.’

  When Meera looked up, her face widened with an unexpected smile. ‘You think there are no answers? Here’s one.’ She dangled a sodden piece of paper before him.

  ‘You’re going to kill yourself if you don’t get down from there,’ warned Alma Sorrowbridge. The Antiguan landlady had been as plump and lush as a breadfruit in her golden days, but now appeared to be shrinking. She flattened her grey curls and folded her arms and watched in annoyance as Bryant balanced at the top of the steps, batting his stick into the back of the shelf units.

  ‘I know it’s up here,’ Bryant called. ‘You wouldn’t understand. If you had an ounce of kindness you’d help me get it back.’

  ‘I don’t do steps at my age,’ Alma told him. ‘I’m a landlady, not a trapeze artist. And I’m not your keeper any more, since you decided I’m not good enough to come with you to your fancy new apartment.’

  ‘You wouldn’t like it, Alma. It’s hardly fancy. I needed a place to think, something as bare and ascetic as a monk’s cell.’

  ‘You mean you got no ornaments?’ asked Alma, appalled. ‘What have you done with them all?’

  ‘They’re objets d’art, thank you, and I’ve taken them to my office to replace the ones that were destroyed.’

  ‘Poor John. I don’t even know what it is you’re looking for, or why you had to put it in such an awkward place.’

  ‘Agh.’ Bryant pulled down the doll and wiped it with his sleeve. ‘Help me down.’ Alma held the steps while he descended. He was carrying a miniature representative of himself, made out of cloth and accurate in detail down to the missing button on his tweed overcoat. ‘It’s my achi doll. It was made by one of my enemies and sent to me. I had to keep it up there, out of the way, to prevent anything from happening to it. It contains part of my soul, and if it gets damaged, so do I.’

  Alma made a noise of disgust. ‘You don’t really believe things like that, Mr Bryant.’

  ‘Well, of course not, but he was a nasty customer and my evidence got him convicted, so I’m not taking any chances. I’m putting this in my new office safe. If you had helped me to move, I wouldn’t have forgotten it in the first place.’

  Bryant’s ingratitude never ceased to amaze her. She had devoted a large part of her life to making him comfortable. She had even stood by as he uprooted himself from her beloved Battersea apartment, where the river sunlight wavered across her kitchen ceiling, and moved to his shabby, gloomy conversion in Chalk Farm, where, according to John May, the shadows never left the rooms and the bedroom windows were brushed by the decayed fingers of dead plane trees. It was love of a sort that had allowed her to put up with his abuse, even now. If anyone else dared to speak to her in the same way . . .

  ‘Go on, take a good look at it.’ Bryant bared his ridiculous false teeth in a rictus as he passed her the doll.

  Alma grimaced, but accepted the offering. ‘Why did he give it to you? Why didn’t he just tear its head off?’

  ‘Oh, he didn’t mean to harm me,’ Bryant explained airily. ‘He was planning to petition the medical board for parole at the earliest opportunity, and as I was the only person fully conversant with the facts of his case, he was providing himself with some insurance—these things are as much about the prevention of misfortune as the reverse.’

  ‘It’s a good job John doesn’t believe in all this rubbish.’ Alma gingerly handed back the doll.

  ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you for years.’ Bryant stepped from the ladder and stood before her. ‘Why don’t you ever call me by my Christian name? You always have done with John.’

  Alma sighed. It was a matter of respect, but she wasn’t prepared to tell him that. ‘There’s nothing Christian about you, Mr Bryant. If there was, you wouldn’t spend all your time trying to find out things that don’t concern decent people. You could come with me to chur
ch.’

  ‘Thank you, Alma, but I think it’s a little late for my redemption, don’t you?’

  ‘Our pastor says it’s never too late.’ She eyed him doubtfully. ‘Although in your case I think he would have met his match.’

  ‘You must come and visit me in Chalk Farm,’ he offered.

  ‘No, thank you.’ She refolded her arms, determined not to show her true feelings. ‘I’m just getting used to not seeing you.’

  He sat down on the brow of Primrose Hill, between the globe lights that illuminated pools of glittering emerald grass, and faced the conjurings of his mind. ‘Something is rising to the surface,’ he told May, hunching his shoulders and burying his mittens deep in his pockets. ‘Unhealthy vapours. You know how I get these feelings. Death is so powerful that its presence can be felt whenever someone sensitive is in close proximity.’

  ‘You’re a miserable sod. Birth is powerful, too—why don’t you feel babies being born? Always the morbid mind. These presentiments—you must know by now that they don’t always mean harm will fall. We can stop things happening.’

  ‘Not this time, John,’ said Bryant, pulling his ratty russet raincoat a little tighter.

  ‘Well, thanks for that warning from Doom Central. What’s prompted this?’

  ‘I’m not sure. The weather forecast, perhaps. There are storms on the way. Traditionally, harmful events in London are associated with prolonged bouts of low pressure and high moisture content in the air.’

  ‘You’re making that up.’

  ‘I promise you I’m not.’

  ‘Then it’s time to stop believing in evil omens,’ May decided, climbing to his feet. ‘Come on, I’ll buy you a pint of bitter at the Queen’s Head and Artichoke. Perhaps, just this once, there will be nothing bad for you to enjoy.’

  9

  * * *

  RUNNING WATER

  Nothing in London ever lies in the direction that you expect it to be. The Thames constantly appears to turn the wrong way. The London Eye seems to move around on its own accord. The tower at Canary Wharf wavers laterally like the point of a compass. Buildings north of the river suddenly appear to the south, and vice versa. Walking the streets, London shakes and rearranges itself like an amoeba. Kallie was thrilled at finally being able to get her bearings. She felt like placing a pin on a map. Balanced in the V of the roof, she studied the horizon. ‘The house faces east–west,’ she called down.

  ‘Is that good?’ Paul was framed in the window of the narrow attic, struggling into a sweater.

  ‘It means the front gets the morning sun, and the rear bedroom gets the sunset.’

  ‘How are the slates?’

  She looked around her feet. ‘A few are broken. And there’s a busted gutter.’

  ‘It looks as though the rain comes in. She couldn’t have done anything to the place in thirty years. We could have had a survey done if you hadn’t been in such a rush.’

  ‘We’ll put it right bit by bit.’ She had a hard time explaining why the house meant so much to her. Paul had fantasized so often about being free to travel, it seemed odd that her instinct now was to put down roots. ‘We’re all packed in so closely together.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You can see rows and rows of Victorian terraces from up here. You’d think we would know more about each other. How do we all manage to live such separate lives?’

  ‘Come on down, the van’s here.’

  Paul’s brother had brought over their clothes. Kallie had been shocked to see how easily her world could be packed into a few boxes. She suspected that Paul thought it was rather cool. He didn’t like the idea of becoming encumbered by belongings. She had agreed at the time, but being here changed everything. There was something about the house that made you want to draw the curtains and never go out.

  She loved being up on the roof, feeling the first spackles of evening rain on her face, looking down at the ten gardens, five from the houses on her side of Balaklava Street, five more from the road beyond, grouped together like a densely cultivated park, divided by strips of fence and low brick walls. She counted rowans, wild cherry trees, a small-leafed lime, holly, crab apples, London plane trees, hornbeams, several ponds, sheds, clothes lines, a conspiracy of gnomes. The gardens harboured the interior life of the neighbourhood. Kids didn’t play on the streets any more, but the gardens were still safe, protected by terraced fortresses. She knew she would come up here often on summer nights, the way a cat climbs a tree to better survey its territory.

  ‘It smells damp,’ Neil sniffed. ‘Needs a lot of work.’ He picked at a corner of wallpaper in the hall and lifted it, running his finger across the powdery grey plaster. ‘All this will have to come off.’

  ‘It’s fine for now,’ Kallie told him, protectively smoothing the paper back in place. Neil worked for a mobile-phone company in the city, and wanted to be twenty-five for ever, even though he was in his early thirties. He treated his girlfriends like his cars, replacing them with more roadworthy models whenever they showed signs of mileage.

  ‘That’s the last box out,’ he told her. ‘There wasn’t much to unload. How are you going to fill the rooms?’

  ‘Self-assembly stuff, until we can afford something better.’

  ‘It’ll have to be flatpack to go down this hall.’ Neil had a warehouse apartment with porterage, but the open-plan design had made it virtually impossible for anyone to stay without being in the way.

  Paul went off with his brother to buy him a thank-you beer, so Kallie spent her first evening in the house alone. The carpets were filthy. She vacuumed them as best as she could, then set about washing out the kitchen cupboards. Plastic buckets filled with hot soapy water and disinfectant began to make the place more inhabitable. The old lady hadn’t intentionally kept a dirty house, but she had clearly been unable to manage by herself. At least the electricity was back on, although it didn’t extend to all parts of the house; the ancient wiring needed replacing.

  There were odd noises outside: a ceanothus rattling with fresh rain in the garden, dead laburnum leaves dropping on to the yellowed roof of the leaking lean-to conservatory. Inside, too, the pilot light of the central-heating system flared up with a pop that made her jump, pipes ticked as steadily as grandfather clocks, floorboards creaked like the decks of a galleon. The basement light switches didn’t work, and it wasn’t worth trying to clean by torchlight.

  A dead woman’s house—worn cups and saucers, a drawer full of odd items of cutlery, another filled with string, bags, three-pin plugs and out-of-date discount vouchers, perished rubber teatowel holders from the seventies. Alien smells in the cupboards—packets of cardamom, juniper, custard powder, spills that were bitter and blackly sticky. Brown L-shaped marks on old linoleum where something heavy and ferrous had once stood and overflowed.

  At ten-thirty she sat down in the ground-floor lounge to unpack linen and the handful of chipped china ornaments that had belonged to her grandmother. The street was preternaturally quiet, but now she could hear something. Setting down an armful of sheets, she rose and listened.

  The sound of running water.

  A steady susurration of rain, cataracts rushing through gutters, swirling into zinc funnels, precipitating through plastic pipes, racing across the bars of a drain. The crepitation was steadily rising to a crescendo.

  She climbed the stairs to the floor above and walked into the second bedroom: no light bulb in here. The damp wood of the window frame had swollen so much that she couldn’t budge it. The sound was softer beneath the roof, so it couldn’t be loose guttering. Collecting her torch from the hall, she clicked it on and ventured into the basement. They would take out the non-supporting walls, she decided, repair the conservatory and bring more light in from the raised garden. The bathroom was absurdly large for the house. She supposed a parlour had been converted, yet it seemed odd to have had a parlour with only a single tiny window, high and crossed with bars, little more than a skylight looking out at street level.<
br />
  Now she heard the sound quite clearly, running—no, rushing water. It seemed to be coming from the right-hand adjoining wall. She hadn’t met the people on that side. Heather had told her that their names were Omar and Fatima. What could they be doing that would make such a noise? It wasn’t a tap, more like a set of them, all turned on at once. The sound had volume and depth. Coupled with the noise of the heavily falling rain, the sense of precipitation seemed to enclose the house entirely.

  She shone the torch around the bathroom, and wished she hadn’t. The fittings were cheap, a bilious shade of avocado that had been popular in the seventies. Only the bath was white enamel, and there was a good chance that it had feet, those French ball-and-claws that could look nice if they were cleaned up. Unfortunately, the whole thing had been boxed in with corrugated hardboard. She thought of her parents’ house and remembered the craze for boarding over bannisters, sinks, door panels, any decoration that smacked of Victoriana. The house had probably had a dozen makeovers, each according to the prevailing taste of the times, each leaving a residue of personality in a crust of paint.

  The Swiss army knife she had used on the packing cases was still in her back pocket. Cross-legged on the cold parquet floor, she unscrewed the six chrome-topped pins holding the bath’s front hardboard panel, then dug the tip of the blade under its base. The board groaned as she flexed it, then split and came loose. She bent back the sheet until it lifted free, and was horrified to find that she had released hundreds of tiny brown spiders from their penumbral home. They scattered in every direction, over her legs, across the floor, up the walls, fleeing the torchlight. She leapt to her feet and shook out her hands in revulsion, dusting them from her clothes, feeling the tickle of legs everywhere, imagining more than she could see.

  Jumping out of her jeans was the best idea, but scattering the spiders with bright light would have been better. She headed for the safety of the bare bulbs in the hall, leaving behind the churning noise of water. This, she thought, is what owning a house is all about. It’s going to take some getting used to.