The Water Room

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘Do you have a light?’

  He withdrew a slim silver Cartier and flicked it, then looked at her in puzzlement. ‘Do you have a cigarette?’

  ‘No, I don’t smoke.’

  Ubeda did not look happy about having his reverie interrupted. ‘Then what do you want?’

  ‘I’ve seen you before.’

  ‘That’s because I’m usually here.’ Now he appraised her. Longbright hoped that the softer lighting was working in her favour. ‘I’ve never seen you before.’

  ‘Well, I’ve definitely noticed you. We share something special in common. Let me buy you a drink.’ She summoned the bargirl, pointing to Ubeda’s glass. ‘Two of whatever he’s having. It looks like it has a hedge in it.’

  ‘Two Gold Mojitos.’ All the staff in here are women, Longbright noted. There was probably something like this on the same site three hundred years ago.

  ‘What’s in it?’ she asked.

  ‘Rum, mint, molasses, but you switch the soda water for champagne.’ Interesting accent, she thought. Possibly Alexandria. Dead eyes. They’d watch someone being hurt without flinching.

  ‘I do know you,’ she persisted. ‘You were at the British Museum the other day, in the Egyptian gallery.’ Another tip from Greenwood’s wife. She hoped it would work.

  ‘I wonder what made you single me out from so many visitors.’ His smile revealed matching gold eye teeth, like some Monte Carlo version of a pirate.

  ‘You stand out. Besides, it’s mostly grazing tourists. I can spot someone with a real interest in artefacts a mile off.’

  ‘I’ve been known to look in from time to time,’ he conceded. ‘What were you doing there?’

  The drinks arrived. Longbright took a sip, then another. She was a large woman, and could drink most men under the table, but reminded herself to be careful; she was dealing with a man who carried a firearm. ‘I’ve a friend who works at the museum—Gareth Greenwood,’ she said casually. ‘I was meeting him for lunch at the Court Restaurant and saw you.’

  He was watching her carefully now, choosing his words with deliberation. ‘Then it seems we do have someone in common. He is an acquaintance of mine. But I presume you already know that.’

  ‘Actually, no, I didn’t.’

  He leaned closer, then a little too close for comfort. ‘What exactly is your interest in my affairs? I wonder if—oh, I wonder . . .’

  She saw the unveiled accusation in his eyes. He knew that someone had been to his offices, and had connected her with the act of trespass.

  ‘Mr Ubeda, I’ll level with you. I know who you are because you’re a familiar face to sellers of antiquities. Your interest in Anubian statuary is common knowledge to us all.’

  He sipped his drink and smiled. ‘I know all the dealers in London, Paris, New York and Cairo. I don’t know you.’

  ‘There’s no reason why you would. It’s my job to find potential clients before they can find me.’

  His impatience with her was burning through to anger. ‘You’re saying you have something to sell. I’m not some easy mark waiting to be sold a crappy chunk of hieroglyph smuggled from the Valley of the Kings. There’s more necrobilia circulating on the black market these days than there is left in those limestone hills. I have friends working on every excavation gang, and you’re going to tell me you have something no one’s seen.’ He stopped to light a cigarette. She remained silently watchful, knowing that he would continue because he was a collector, and collectors needed to transmit their zeal to others.

  ‘The necropolis of the New Kingdom has been steadily robbed for the last three and a half thousand years,’ he told her, ‘from the interment of Tuthmosis I to the arrival of Howard Carter—sixty-two tombs and there’s nothing left. Carter was as big a liar and cheat as the rest of them. Take a look at what remains. Merneptah, Amenhotep, Siptah, Sethnakht, a few chambers filled with pretty little bas-reliefs to amuse the waddling tourists. Relics sell because everyone wants to touch the past, but the past makes no sense if you smash it up to make a quick sale. It’s robbed of all purpose and life. It will only mean something if its mythical power remains intact. There’s nothing of interest left in Thebes.’

  ‘What about KV5?’ she asked quietly. Bryant had briefed her on the most recent developments in Egyptology. In 1994, an American archaeologist named Kent Weeks had discovered the valley’s biggest tomb to date, the burial site of the fifty-two sons of Rameses II. Excavation was still continuing.

  ‘It’s been over ten years. No treasures have been discovered there.’

  ‘But thousands of artefacts have been recovered from the debris, pieces of great importance.’

  The jet eyes remained too still. ‘Now. . . I think you’re trying a little too hard.’

  She was about to shift her stool back a little, but he was too fast for her. His hand had slipped around her neck, his index finger looping beneath her gold chain. As he twisted, the chain tightened. Anyone glancing at them would think he had embraced her.

  ‘Forget Thebes, tell me about this.’

  It had been Arthur’s idea to thread the central panel of the sandalwood bracelet on to a neck-chain, in the hope that Ubeda would notice it. ‘It has a special meaning for those of us who are prepared to keep searching,’ she said, thinking I deserve an Academy Award for this.

  He let the bracelet panel fall from his fingers. ‘The seeds of regeneration springing from ancient waters. How quickly we forget our own creation myths. Look down there.’ He nodded to the gyrating dominatrices of the blue-lit stage. ‘The artificial pleasures of a civilization in decline.’

  ‘Then why do you come here?’

  ‘I own the place.’

  I should have been told that, she thought, wincing inwardly. No wonder he was so deeply in debt. How many thousand square feet did he have to maintain here?

  ‘And you want to sell me an Anubis. Do you have a genuine interest, or are you merely a vendor?’

  ‘I find the myth fascinating.’

  ‘In what way, I wonder.’

  ‘The rituals, mostly—the Opening of the Mouth, the Lake of Offerings, the Weighing of the Heart.’ She congratulated herself on remembering that protective ceremonies guided the dead to their afterlives. The Opening of the Mouth allowed for the reawakening of the senses. Anubis weighed the heart against the Feather of Truth. If it was found to be heavier, it was fed to the monster Ammut.

  ‘Well, those rituals have always been popular with a certain kind of buyer,’ he said disdainfully. ‘There are countless other rituals, less spoken of.’

  ‘Of course. I imagine many still continue, and they all require ceremonial artefacts.’ It was like prospecting for oil, testing each area and hoping for a strike, but she saw his eyes betray a faint interest. ‘People look in the wrong places. As you say, the key treasures of Thebes have all been disseminated. They could be anywhere, even here.’

  He was watching her intently now. That was the wonderful thing about collectors; there was always a way to their hearts.

  ‘Of course, they would have been carefully hidden. Beneath the city, perhaps. In the water.’ She had played her last card, and could only wait in silence while he considered her.

  ‘So,’ he said at last, ‘you know about the five rivers.’

  ‘I may know where to find what you’re looking for.’ She was stepping off the script, but the bait had been taken, the reel was turning and he was coming in nice and gently. He opened his mouth to reply, to share a confidence, then looked past her right shoulder and started to rise.

  She followed his eyeline and found herself looking at Monsieur Edouard Assaad, manager of the Upper Nile Financial Services Group. Not now, she thought. Not him. Recognition was already spreading across Assaad’s baby-smooth face as he began to speak. ‘C’est merveilleux de vous revoir, chère Madame. Je vous croyais repartie en Egypte.’ His outstretched hands came toward her.

  A glimpse of Ubeda’s face was enough to power her up from the stool, but he
was fast, and held her wrist with a lightness that surprised her.

  ‘You know M. Assaad,’ he said approvingly. ‘Your business must pay well.’

  While the two men spoke in French, Longbright realized that the manager’s appearance could provide proof of her credentials. She sat back down, and waited for a lull in the conversation.

  Fifteen minutes later she left the club, walking fast toward the exit, not daring to look back. By the time she hit the pavement outside, she had pulled her pinching heels free and was carrying them in her hand. The cab driver who drew up at her signal looked as if he had time to chat. She thought of hauling him through the passenger door and taking his place at the wheel before Ubeda could appear in the entrance behind her.

  The cab pulled out into traffic as the driver flicked off the hire sign. Balancing a pad on her knee she scribbled notes, trying to remember everything that had been said, deciphering their conversation with her schoolbook French. Behind her, the lights changed and a shoal of vehicles swarmed up around them, but her sense of panic did not begin to fade until they had lost sight of the club.

  24

  * * *

  BREAKING THE SURFACE

  Giles Kershaw caught up with Bryant as he was heading to the unit car park. ‘Ah, Mr Bryant,’ he called, hopping over puddles with long corduroy-clad legs. ‘I’m glad I caught you. I tried calling your mobile but got no response.’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t,’ agreed Bryant, fumbling with his umbrella. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘It’s about Elliot Copeland’s death. I wanted to take the cabin of his truck to pieces in order to re-create a sequence of events, but the Kentish Town constabulary moved it from the site and I haven’t been able to requisition—look, have you got a moment?’

  ‘It’s Thursday,’ Bryant explained. ‘I’m late for my evening class. Can’t you walk and talk?’

  ‘I made a scale model instead, took your advice about working with the materials at hand, and well, my theory, it was wrong. I had the whole thing pegged as an unfortunate accident. Because of the bricks inside the cabin, you see.’

  ‘No, I don’t see,’ said Bryant, fighting to get the rusted door of the Mini Cooper open. ‘Jump inside or you’ll get soaked.’

  Kershaw gratefully concertinaed himself into the tiny car and ran a hand through his blond hair, spiking it. ‘He saved the good bricks from the ditch, over thirty of them, stacking them in the cabin. He’d laid a sheet of plastic on the passenger seat to protect it from mud. But he knew he wouldn’t be able to stop the whole lot from sliding over if he braked suddenly, which he might well have had to do in the rain, so he held the bricks in place with two pieces of cut plank. He created a sort of makeshift hod. This is just the sort of thing builders do just before they have accidents. When I saw the planks on the floor, I could imagine what had happened. He’d propped the bricks in place, alighted from the cabin and gone back to work. At which point, the truck shifted in the mud, the planks became dislodged and fell forward with the full weight of the bricks behind them. The only thing they could have hit was the dashboard, punching the hydraulic starter and holding it in. I figured it was a freak misfortune, the kind that occurs on building sites all over the world. There are no normal accidents; each one is a particular confluence of circumstances.’

  ‘You’re not going to give me a lecture on chaos theory, are you?’ asked Bryant. ‘I wrote a book on that subject.’

  ‘I’m sure you know about such things, Mr Bryant—’

  ‘No, I mean I really did write a book on the subject. It’s behind my desk if you’d like to borrow it.’

  ‘But you see, my instinct was wrong,’ Kershaw admitted. ‘I built a cantilever, weighting it proportionately and angling it to match the digital shots we took on the night. Even on my reduced scale, the bricks wouldn’t have been responsible for holding in the button because the truck was already inclining backwards, toward the ditch, so I’m pretty certain that gravity would have held the load in place even if you’d taken the planks away.’

  ‘How much of a shove would it have taken to shift the load forward?’

  ‘Exactly what I asked myself. The answer, on my model, was the mere push of an index finger. It’s certainly a possibility that they were knocked forward by someone reaching into the truck cabin.’

  ‘They’d have to know the workings of the hydraulic system, wouldn’t they?’

  ‘Not as far as I can see. The engine was running, and there’s an illuminated white pictogram of the raised truck bed printed across a large red button. A child could have grasped the meaning and pressed it. In fact, it could have been local kids, looking to give him a fright. I talked with Dan—after all, he’s in charge of the crime scene, I’m rather treading on his toes with this—but he agreed with me about the likely sequence of events.’

  ‘To prove premeditation you need motive and opportunity, Mr Kershaw, and now it looks as though we have both.’

  ‘You’re including Ruth Singh’s death, then.’

  ‘I’d say it’s part of a grand plan, but “I will be the pattern of all patience; I will say nothing”—Lear.’

  ‘King—’

  ‘—Well, it would hardly be Edward. Too much theorizing, not enough evidence. Proof is needed to cement the connection.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’m with you—’

  ‘Water, dear boy, water! Rising up from the damned earth to drown the innocent!’

  Kershaw barely managed to tumble out of the car before Bryant crashed the gears and jerked away from the car park, into the teeming city night.

  Someone in the street knew more than they were telling.

  Curtains, doors and thick brick walls, blinds and shutters to exclude light and rain and other people, to keep out warmth and kindness and cold hard truth. Anything to keep lives hidden from view. Was there anything more subtly malicious than the lowland mentality of people in cool climates? England in the rain, wet gardens, chilly rooms, London dinner conversations over pudding served in xanthous light, hushed arguments behind amber supper candles, quietly spreading the poison of rationality.

  This won’t do, Kallie thought. I’ll go crazy.

  When the letterbox clapped, she picked the postcard from the mat and turned it over. A picture of Cairo at night. The photograph looked old and artificially coloured. Tall hotels reflected in a flat wide river, a sheet of dark light pierced with luminous neon streaks. She could almost have been looking at London after dark, except that there were more boats. On the back, a handful of lines, something about a change of plan. He had the nerve to add that he was missing her. Then come home, she almost said aloud, then fought down the plea.

  What was wrong with the men she knew? Paul didn’t have the guts to stay with her through the settling-in period of their relationship, presumably because it involved some responsibility. His brother barely spoke to his girlfriend unless he wanted sex. Heather’s husband was trading her in for someone younger. And the other men in the street: Mark Garrett in a state of belligerent inebriation, Randall Ayson accused by his wife of infidelity (according to Jake, who shared the party wall), Oliver communicating with his wife via their morose son, Elliot lonely and antisocial, coming to an ignominious but probably inevitable end in a mud-filled ditch. It didn’t say much for the men of the twenty-first century. Omar and Fatima next door—she didn’t know enough about them to be critical, but having seen Fatima in the street, head covered and bowed, mincing invisibly in her husband’s shadow, the urge to do so was tempting.

  The infinite dark skies made her as fractious as a school-bound child. She wished the walls that separated them all would melt away to reveal their communal lives. Brick, lathe, gypsum, plywood, plaster, paper, dissolving all along the terrace. Ten houses, at least twenty-five people by her reckoning, most interacting more with their computers and televisions than with their neighbours, because there was too little time and too much uncertainty.

  And what would others think of her? The new girl
at number 5 arrived with hardly any furniture, her boyfriend lost his job and didn’t stick around, now she watches the world splash past from her misted lounge window. This has got to stop, she told herself, throwing the postcard into the bin, knowing that she would later retrieve it. Pulling a blanket from the sofa, she wrapped herself and, opening the back door, sat on the step to watch the deluge. She had always loved the fulgent clouds, rain-circles in swirling pools, burgeoned leaves releasing droplets, roots drawing sustenance through dense weeds. In London, the ever-present water brought survival and regrowth. The sun only dried and desiccated, making pavements sweat and people uncomfortable.

  It seemed as if her trace-memories were entirely filled with water: shops with dripping canopies, passers-by with plastic macs or soaked shoulders, huddled teenagers in bus shelters peering out at the downpour, shiny black umbrellas, children stamping through puddles, buses slooshing past, fishmongers hauling in their displays of sole and plaice and mackerel in brine-filled trays, rainwater boiling across the tines of drains, split gutters with moss hanging like seaweed, the oily sheen of the canals, dripping railway arches, the high-pressure thunder of water escaping through the lock-gates in Camden, fat drops falling from the sheltering oaks in Greenwich Park, rain pummelling the opalescent surfaces of the deserted lidos at Brockwell and Parliament Hill, sheltering swans in Clissold Park; and indoors, green-grey patches of rising damp, spreading through wallpaper like cancers, wet tracksuits drying on radiators, steamed-up windows, water seeping under back doors, faint orange stains on the ceiling that marked a leaking pipe, a distant attic drip like a ticking clock.

  She looked through the rain and saw him, a hunched old man with monkey eyes, brown and watchful. According to Sergeant Longbright, the tramp’s name was Tate; that was what everyone had always called him. Now here he was again, waiting, keeping guard, willing something to happen.