The Water Room

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘So if he’s not looking to rob a bank,’ asked May, ‘what the hell is he after? Could it be something in the tunnel itself?’

  ‘Buggered if I know. Let’s go for a beer.’

  ‘I’m starving,’ May complained. ‘Couldn’t we eat?’

  ‘I’m not indulging your fetish for fried-chicken outlets. We can go to the upstairs bar of the Union Jack for a curry and some decent bitter. We’ll be able to keep an eye on Greenwood from there.’

  ‘What if Raymond Land calls?’ worried May. ‘He’ll want to know where we are.’

  ‘Oh, I can run rings round Raymond,’ Bryant assured him. ‘His father was a jellied-eel merchant from Cable Street, don’t tell me he’s sophisticated enough to see through one of my ruses.’

  ‘All right—but we drop everything if Greenwood comes back out. And if he’s carrying something he didn’t have when he went in, I’m going to arrest him.’

  ‘Absolutely, good idea,’ agreed Bryant, who knew exactly how to get his own way.

  16

  * * *

  PHANTOMS

  Someone had been in the house. Kallie was sure she had shut the door of the front room before going out. Unnerved, she waited in the shadowed hall, staring at the inch-wide gap between jamb and frame.

  ‘Hello?’

  No answer. What did she expect? That a burglar would announce himself? In the last few days a bitter smell of damp had begun to hang in the air, as though the rain-mist from the grey cobbled street had found a way to invade the house. But now it had been replaced by the odour of male sweat. She entered the other rooms one by one, and found that both the attic skylight and the basement garden door were still locked. No windows broken, no other way in or out.

  Checking the bathroom, she noticed that the strange brown patch in the wall had dried and vanished overnight. None of it made sense. She returned to the front room and gingerly pushed at the door, letting it swing wide. Inside, nothing was disturbed. The stripes left on the carpet by her vacuum cleaner were unmarred by footprints.

  She decided that a stray draught must have pulled open the internal door, but it didn’t explain the smell of sweat. New things were beginning to bother her. The turn in the basement stairs, permanently in shadow. The back window, against which the branches of a dead wisteria tree tapped and scratched like something from a children’s book of witches. Worst of all was the great bathroom that seemed impervious to warmth or light, that bred hairless brown arachnids in its moist recesses and became stained with impossible patches of mildew that spread like cancer, only to recede and disappear before she could prove to anyone that she had not imagined such a thing.

  Since the rain had begun to fall virtually without a break, the house had become wet. Sheets and blankets felt damp to the touch. The floorboards and window frames flaked varnish. Plaster felt soft and crumbly beneath the peeling wallpaper. It was quite obvious that Paul didn’t believe her, and nor did Heather, who had begun breezing in for coffee, expecting to be waited on. She had taken Heather to the basement to hear the sound of rushing water, but her neighbour had insisted she could hear nothing, and even went so far as to suggest Kallie’s mind might be playing tricks on her.

  She wanted to rent industrial dryers and paint everything white, to let in sun and heat, but they were too short of money to do anything that would make a difference. The monthly mortgage repayment would keep things tight, and according to the papers it was likely to rise soon. Perhaps she shouldn’t have taken Heather’s advice. Even at school, her friend had never been without money. She had rented her first flat in a square just off the King’s Road, and had met her future husband at a polo match, for God’s sake. She and George ate in expensive restaurants, spent their weekends in Paris and Rome, never felt the need to check their bank balances . . .

  A white towel lay crumpled in the centre of the bathroom floor. It had definitely been folded on the rack beside the bath, she was sure of it. Paul was away in Manchester again. He’d told her he was going to argue his case for compensation, but had already started spending his redundancy. She wanted to talk, but his mobile had been switched off for hours. Why, what was he doing? Whenever they spent more than three days in close company they quarrelled, but she missed his absurdly inappropriate enthusiasms, his innocent longing for the freedom of youth. The house was less forgiving without him, as if it would only seek to press its peculiar aura when his insouciance was not there to temper it.

  The bathroom tap shuddered and clanked when she twisted it. She was about to start washing her hair when the front-door knocker boomed through the house.

  Jake Avery was immediately apologetic when he saw her dressing-gown. ‘I’m always getting people out of the bath,’ he told her. ‘I should have called first, but I don’t have your phone number.’

  ‘Then I’ll give it to you,’ she promised, ushering him in. ‘I was only going to wash my hair because there’s nothing on TV. I’ll make us some tea.’

  He seated himself awkwardly on one of the mismatched kitchen stools and looked around. ‘It’s coming along nicely in here.’

  ‘Thanks. I’m doing it by myself—Paul’s hopeless with DIY.’

  ‘You should get Elliot in from number 3. He’s good as long as you keep him off the booze. He painted and rewired our place, and now he’s laying the front yard for the builders’ merchant at the end of the street. You know, the piece of waste ground old Garrett was trying to get his hands on? It’s going to be a car park.’

  ‘I don’t think Mr Copeland is interested in the job. I’d like to take a couple of walls out and stop the rooms looking quite so Victorian.’

  ‘Yeah, Paul told me your plans.’

  ‘Did he?’ I wish he’d tell me, she thought. ‘You two had a bit of a boozing session the other night.’

  ‘Yeah, we got a bit pissed. Sorry about that.’ He didn’t sound contrite. ‘I realize now that I don’t talk often enough to my neighbours. We all work so hard that we’ve no time left for social niceties when we get home. I mean, I give money in the street to professional charities I’ve never even heard of, and yet I’m too tired to bother with the people who live next door. That’s not right, is it? Paul told me how you two met. It sounded kind of romantic.’

  ‘Paul has a way of sexing up every story. You have to take him with a pinch of salt.’

  They had spent twenty minutes together inside a ghost-train car that had broken down in Blackheath funfair. She had been sitting with her girlfriend Daniella, debating whether to leave the car and risk walking through the cuprous gloom, when Paul had loomed out from a graveyard tableau and made them both scream. The happiness of that memory had been undermined by the fact that Daniella had died a month later, hit by a delivery van while riding her bike home late one night. No one had ever traced the driver. You could fill every square of the city’s map grid with the stains of hidden tragedies.

  ‘What did you guys find to talk about for so long?’

  ‘Oh, you know, men in pubs can stretch any subject until closing time.’ Jake accepted the tea. Unusual to meet a gay man who’s overweight, she thought idly. Pleasant face, obviously comfortable dealing with people in his job.

  ‘It’s just that Paul mentioned something about hang-gliding.’

  ‘Oh, that. It was nothing. I told him that Aaron and I had been hang-gliding in France, and he suggested coming along with us some time.’

  ‘How long have you two been together?’

  ‘Eleven years, believe it or not.’

  ‘That’s longer than most of my friends.’

  ‘We have a deal. I told him if he ever leaves me I’ll kill him, which pretty much sorted the whole thing out.’

  ‘So,’ she tried to sound casual, ‘what was the part about making some money?’

  ‘Oh, nothing really, not even first-hand information, just something I’d been told.’ He suddenly looked like a small boy who had been caught stealing sweets. ‘I wouldn’t demean either of us by recounting anot
her half-drunk conversation. But I did offer to lend him some money. He told me you were a bit strapped for cash right now.’

  She bridled at the idea that her finances had been discussed with a virtual stranger. ‘We’ll be fine. It’s just that there’s a lot to do here. The electrics, the plumbing, the basement needs to be damp-proofed and replastered, the roof needs repairing. And I don’t know how long I can live with this seventies wallpaper.’ She indicated the mauve paisley print behind them.

  ‘I can see what you mean. It’s unfashionable without being fabulous.’

  ‘Do you have any problems with water?’

  ‘What kind of problems?’

  ‘Surges in the plumbing.’

  ‘No, but I’ve got rising damp. I think we’re still Victorians at heart. We spend so much time trying to keep the rain out, but it always finds a way of getting in.’ Jake drained his cup and rose to leave. ‘Look, I have to get back. There’s something I need to do.’ He seemed undecided about explaining himself, but gave in after a brief moment of hesitation. ‘It’s about Ruth Singh. When the police came and did the interviews, I told a bit of a lie. I didn’t want to get anyone into trouble, but it’s started to bother me.’

  ‘What did you tell them?’ asked Kallie.

  ‘It was about Ruth’s visitor, the night before she died. I stopped to dig out my keys and saw someone ring the doorbell to number 5. Ruth definitely recognized her visitor, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I told the constable I didn’t know who it was. But there was this hat and a long black leather raincoat, not the kind of outfit you’d miss. At work I’m used to checking wardrobe continuity all the time, so I notice these things. Then I saw the coat lying in one of the bedrooms at Oliver and Tamsin’s party.’

  ‘You mean it belonged to Oliver?’

  ‘No, to one of the guests.’ He looked pained. ‘It doesn’t mean they know anything about Ruth’s death, does it?’

  ‘Who are we talking about?’

  ‘Well—Mark Garrett. The coat was odd, not the sort of thing I’d imagine him wearing, and the sleeves were empty. It looked as if it had been draped over the shoulders, you know, so you could run out into the rain.’

  ‘How do you know it was Garrett’s?’

  ‘Because I was so surprised to see it in the Wiltons’ bedroom that I checked the label. His name was sewn inside the collar—who sews their name inside their clothes any more? I suppose there could be more than one coat like that, but there was something very odd about the length of it, and the one in the bedroom was identical. I reckon the police have a right to know, even if I’m proven wrong.’

  ‘It’ll make you feel better to tell someone,’ she replied, thinking, Oh my God, Garrett was desperate to buy the house, and he went to see the owner the night before she died.

  When Longbright called on him the next day, Garrett complained indignantly, balancing in the doorway like a man interrupted during the football results. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t been running around with a raincoat over me. What are you implying?’

  ‘Perhaps you borrowed it from your girlfriend,’ the detective sergeant suggested, ‘to put the rubbish out or something. It was raining hard. Maybe you’ve forgotten—’

  ‘I’m not bloody stupid, woman. I run a very successful business—I didn’t get that way by suffering mental lapses. I know where I’ve been, and I didn’t visit Mrs Singh before she died, not for any bloody reason.’

  ‘Then perhaps you could have a look in your girlfriend’s wardrobe for us. Maybe she’s put the coat in there by mistake.’

  ‘And maybe someone wants me to take the blame for the old cow’s death.’ Garrett’s face reddened as he raised his voice, hoping somehow that the neighbours would hear. ‘People should learn to mind their own bloody business in this street. Tell me, why should I even care who she was? These damned people—Indian, Chinese, African—the liberals tell us we have to be one big community, we have to integrate, but why the hell should I? What do they do for me? Absolutely bugger all. I am English and this is my home, and it’s nothing to do with any other bastard.’

  One of them is either mistaken or lying, thought Longbright, turning away as the door was slammed in her face. She couldn’t insist on searching the house without first applying for a warrant, and knew that one was unlikely to be granted. No one remembered seeing Garrett at the party with the coat, so it was Avery’s word against the estate agent’s, and because people knew they disliked each other, it could be argued that Avery was trying to make trouble for Garrett. There’s nothing that anyone can do about it now. Let’s hope Arthur finds something more constructive to do with his time.

  She turned up her collar and began walking toward the Tube station. She adored working for the detectives, just as her mother had done before her. They had been there for her in the most difficult circumstances, but it was time to face the fact that they were getting old. She knew it was only work that kept them both from dotage, but if Raymond Land failed to get the unit assigned to high-profile cases, it would be closed down, and that would be the end of them all.

  Something will turn up soon, she thought, peering up into the scudding black world above the high-street rooftops. Something has to.

  17

  * * *

  INFIDELITIES

  She would always remember how strangely the day had begun.

  A Krakatoa dawn, intense and viridescent, had been obliterated by dim silhouettes of cloud, great grey cargo ships bearing fresh supplies of rain. By noon it had grown so dark that she had been forced to switch on the hall lights, and, not knowing what to do for the best, waited for the call.

  She had known it would be George before the second ring. They had established the pattern of communication whenever he travelled, to fit around the time differences. If he was further west, he never rang before one. Further east, and he would call just as she was having breakfast. He never grew tired of waiting in airport lounges or dining late in half-empty hotels. He seemed to have deliberately chosen work that would deny him the comforts of home life. He was meeting factory representatives in company branches around the world, but she often wondered if he could have delegated these tasks and requested an administrative position in London. Perhaps, like Kallie’s partner, it was something to do with never having taken a gap year; perhaps he too imagined that beneath the jacket and tie he was a backpacker, free to watch dawn from mountaintops and follow the contours of the shorelines. Except that his journeys took him to places no student would choose to visit. And on that day the call came at the wrong time, the pattern disrupted. He was only in Paris—no distance at all—but something was wrong.

  According to the readout on her receiver, he stayed on the line for no longer than four minutes. Barely time to boil an egg; certainly not long enough to discuss a divorce. She had been half-expecting him to raise the subject for almost a year. When she added up the days they had spent together, the total came to little more than three months in twelve, but it was still a bitter shock. He recited the guilty man’s litany: It’s me, not you . . . You’ve done nothing wrong . . . I need to rethink my life . . . I’m holding you back . . . I can’t expect you to wait for me. But it rang so false that she knew there was someone else involved, that there would be a younger version of herself, probably living in Paris, where so many trips had taken him lately. He wouldn’t rethink his life, merely repeat it with someone more naive. She resented the fact that he had reached the decision without her involvement. Let someone else deal with his intermittent sex drive now, she thought. Let someone else feel the weight of his damp flesh on top of her. I hope it’s worth it.

  From an early age, Heather had worked hard to have the life presented in style magazines; but it hadn’t turned out like that. She had hated the kind of women who hung out at sports events with an agenda for searching out the right class of man, yet she had done exactly the same, attending fixtures in the season’s calendar, frequenting the fashionable K
ensington restaurants and bars until meeting George. Her desire to establish such a specific lifestyle had separated her from Kallie, whose honesty and simplicity were quite uncalculating.

  He had promised her the London house; he would sign it over tomorrow, but there would be nothing else. She was sure he would move his base of operations to Paris and live with his younger-Heather clone, this year’s more desirable model. Heather would join the ranks of embittered divorcees who prowled the cafés of the King’s Road, sipping their lattes and stalking certain designer stores because the staff were cute, dining with women in similar situations, discussing shoes and spas and drinking a little too much wine over lunch. And the worst part about being cast into this tastefully appointed limbo was that she only had herself to blame. She had made a single, humiliating mistake that would taunt her for the rest of her life.

  ‘Come through to the studio. It’s better that you’re here while my husband’s still out. You look absurdly well.’

  Monica Greenwood led the way through the cramped apartment occupying the top half of the house in Belsize Park. Every spare inch of space had been filled with books and canvases. When shelves had overflowed, paperbacks had been stacked in precarious piles along the already narrow hallway, beside jam jars of turpentine and linseed oil. Monica looked much as he’d remembered. Although her hair was now more studiedly blond, it was still carelessly tied back, kept from her face while she worked on her paintings. Her figure was fuller, subject to the natural effects of a miraculous maturity. She looked sumptuous in jeans and an acrylic-stained sweatshirt, comfortable in this stage of her life. Too much time had passed for John May to remember if he had truly been in love with her, but he had certainly been bewitched at some point during the national miners’ strike.