The Water Room

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘I hate it when you talk in riddles,’ May complained.

  ‘I only do it because I don’t fully understand the meanings myself, but it’s there in front of me, I know that. Just as I know there will be another attempt on a life. Whoever committed these crimes is more confident now, because we’ve failed to get close enough to be a threat. You’ve seen this kind of behaviour before, John, don’t pretend you haven’t.’

  ‘Like it or not,’ May warned, ‘we need to repay Raymond’s faith in us. We have to start afresh, Arthur, and if we can’t do it, then it’s time to go. I don’t need to spell out what will happen if either of us are forced into retirement.’

  Bryant wasn’t used to being lectured. He regarded May sceptically through the cloud of illicit smoke that had transformed the office into a Limehouse opium den. ‘I suppose you’re right. Raymond has been a thorn in my side longer than I can remember, but he’s always fought for us. Perhaps we do need to change our approach. If we’d had more staff, I’d have searched the entire area door to door. As for your pal Greenwood, we should have pulled him in and put the fear of God up him, and that would have been the end of that.’

  ‘Then let’s have one last try. You find out what Greenwood’s up to. I’ll talk to the residents of Balaklava Street. And we must keep looking for Tate. Somebody has to know something.’ He caught a look of pain crossing Bryant’s face. ‘What is it?’

  ‘My greatest fear is that we’ve found something rare—a killer hidden in plain sight.’

  ‘It’s the kind of case you would once have dreamed of, Arthur.’

  ‘Not any more,’ he told May. ‘Death stands too close to me.’ Bryant felt a chill in his bones that no amount of warmth could dispel. The time was coming when he would no longer understand the way of the world, and then he would cease to have a purpose. Murders were tests, and solving them was the only way of staying alive. Explaining the murders in Balaklava Street would provide more than a stay of execution; it would extend their life spans, and give them a reason to continue. Although he was tired, Bryant set to work once more.

  26

  * * *

  NAVIGATION

  There was no other library like it in London.

  In place of the usual plaques reading ‘Romantic Fiction’, ‘Self-Help’ and ‘DIY’ were signs for Eleusinian and Orphic Studies, Rosicrucianism and Egyptian Morphology. While the books gathered under its roof were far too esoteric for general public consumption, the collection was too incomplete for scholastic study.

  Most of its contents were a bequest from Jebediah Huxley, the great-grandfather of Dorothy Huxley, the library’s present and doubtless final custodian. Under the conditions of the bequest, the collection could only be dispersed and the building sold with the approval of the last surviving family member. Dorothy had no living dependants, and was in her eighties. Greenwich Council was itching to get its hands on the small redbrick Edwardian block, tucked in permanent dank shadow beneath the concrete corner of a flyover in the south-eastern corner of the borough. Here, swirling litter and glaring skateboarders warded off all but the hardiest visitors. Rainwater sluiced from the flyover on to the roof of the building, dripping through brickwork, rotting floorboards and spreading mildew into the damp-fattened books with wet fingers of decay.

  Dorothy ran the library with her assistant, Frank, who was antisocial and unreliable, but who could afford to work for love of the printed word without being paid, because he had been left some money by an aunt. This was how unfashionable literature had been reduced to surviving: in crumbling repositories, guarded by the very last generation of book-lovers.

  ‘The five rivers of the Underworld,’ Bryant read aloud, ‘separated the land of the undead from the realm of mortals. Their presence made sure no one could enter or leave unharmed. There should be a picture here.’ He fingered the severed edge of paper.

  ‘We’ve had a problem with thieves cutting out the hand-coloured plates,’ Dorothy explained. ‘They frame and sell them in antiquarian bookshops. We have no way of making the building secure.’

  ‘I’ll try and get you an alarm.’ Bryant turned the damaged pages. ‘We’re talking about Roman mythology, obviously. My contact appears to be interested in Egyptian gods, and yet he mentioned the five rivers.’

  ‘Nothing is clear-cut in pagan mythologies, Arthur. You know that. Rivers are central to ancient-Egyptian worship because of the importance of the Nile, which continues to bring life and prosperity to the barren central plains of the country.’

  ‘Yes, but no one would blur together two entirely separate mythologies, surely.’

  ‘Certainly no one from either of those civilizations ever did,’ Dorothy agreed. ‘But then, of course, you had the Victorians.’

  ‘Why, what did they do?’

  ‘Having plundered, borrowed and stolen whatever pleased them, they drew on the parts of ancient mythologies that found most correspondence to their own beliefs. They rewrote entire histories, bowdlerizing, adapting, censoring. They weren’t the first, but they were the most confident. It wasn’t unusual to find statues of Ra and Thoth beside Diana and Venus in the well-to-do Victorian household. You were less likely to find Christian figurines, for that was the presiding active religion. All other beliefs and creation myths were treated largely as naive fairy tales, and their icons had use as decoration. Collectors weren’t averse to pairing up different creation gods.’

  Bryant came to the page he was seeking. ‘So we have five nether-rivers: Cocytus, the river of lamentation; Acheron, the river of woe; Phlegethon, the river of conflagration; Lethe, the river of forgetfulness; Styx, the river of hatred and fatality and unbreakable oaths.’

  ‘That’s right. The Styx was an offshoot of Tethys and Oceanus, and flowed nine times around Hades. Like the Lethe, its water could not be stored in any flask or jar that tried to contain it. The Styx corroded all materials, even flesh. Only horses’ hooves could survive in its waters.’

  ‘Didn’t Thetis dip her son Achilles into the Styx to make him invulnerable? Obviously didn’t burn his flesh, then.’

  ‘Mythology is filled with paradox,’ Dorothy explained. ‘Which river are you particularly interested in?’

  ‘I’m not exactly sure. I suppose the Styx is the most important one.’

  ‘It’s certainly the most written about. But the Lethe is essential because of the belief in reincarnation and the transmigration of souls. Those passing across had to drink from the Lethe to forget their former lives.’

  ‘Cocytus and Acheron sound one and the same.’

  ‘Actually they’re not, although both are associated with wailing and misery. Acheron is the river over which Charon ferried the dead to Hades, not the Styx. Corpses not properly buried were doomed to walk the banks of the Cocytus for eternity.’

  ‘I sense myself being drawn into the backwaters, Dorothy. John has warned me about it many times. I have to stick to the central problem of my investigation.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘I wonder, is there any modern correspondence of the rivers to something in this city?’

  ‘Victorians were fond of finding explanations for everything. I believe they resurrected the idea that the five rivers of the Underworld matched the five main forgotten rivers of London.’

  ‘They weren’t the first to propose the concept, then.’

  ‘Of course not. The Romans made the same suggestion during their occupation of London.’

  ‘Do you have any books on the subject other than this one?’

  ‘Sadly, no,’ Dorothy admitted, ‘but I know some people who may be able to help you. A group dedicated to rediscovering the lost rivers of the Underworld. I can give you a contact number, but I warn you, they’re rather peculiar.’

  ‘Sounds right up my street,’ said Bryant with a sly grin.

  27

  * * *

  THE MOVEMENT OF WATER

  ‘Darned shame about the weather,’ said Oliver Wilton earnestly. ‘You’v
e missed seeing the Camden Canal Junior Canoe Club in action.’

  John May waited beneath a willow tree while Oliver and his wife buttoned up their yellow plastic cagoules. A pair of tramps were arguing over a can of Special Brew on the bench behind them. Another was eating Spam out of a tin with his fingers. The canal water was studded with chunks of polystyrene, the linings from boxes of stolen stereo units. Even the birds in the trees looked as if they had cancer.

  ‘Your neighbour, Jake Avery, said I’d find you here or at the Christian Fellowship Hall.’

  ‘We like to do our bit at the weekends,’ Oliver told him, padlocking the club shelter. ‘The local kids haven’t really learned how to interact socially with one another, and we find that activities like canoeing, away from the council-estate environment, encourage teamwork.’ He looked as if he believed what he was saying.

  ‘Does Brewer enjoy canoeing?’ asked May, smiling at the morose child sitting on his ankles at the water’s edge.

  ‘God, we wouldn’t let him do it, the water’s filthy,’ Tamsin replied. ‘You can get Weil’s disease from rat urine.’ She grabbed the child’s hand protectively. May could see that one day very soon, Brewer would not allow his hand to be taken up so quickly. ‘He’s saying, “I want to go home, Daddy, I’m tired,” aren’t you, pet? We usually go to the house in Norfolk at the weekends, but Oliver likes to put something back into the community.’ The effort to smile nearly killed her. ‘I wanted Brewer to grow up in the countryside, but Oliver insisted we stay in town until it’s time to go to big school.’ She lowered her voice. ‘A nurse was raped on this towpath last month. A nurse. Shoved off her bicycle into the bushes. The police won’t come down here.’ It was difficult to miss the desperation in her eyes. She hated Oliver for imprisoning her in the city. ‘I’m from Buckinghamshire originally, and I can tell you, Mr May, this is not like home, not what I call home.’

  She turned and began leading the boy away, so that May was forced to follow. Oliver doggedly fell in behind them, in what May took to be a permanent state of disgrace with his wife. Ahead, several pigeons blocked the path, dining from a spattered pool of sick.

  ‘My work keeps me here,’ Oliver explained.

  ‘What do you do?’ asked May.

  ‘I thought you knew.’ He seemed surprised. ‘I’m a senior executive at the Thames Water Board. You have no idea how much water London wastes through leaks each week. My job is to help locate them and replace the damaged pipes. Why did you come and find us?’

  ‘I wanted to ask you about—’ He had been about to say ‘Elliot Copeland’, but something made him change—‘Mrs Singh. I know the matter is concluded, as far as the authorities are concerned, but I wondered if you had any personal thoughts.’

  ‘It’s funny you should ask. I’d been thinking of what your partner said at our party, about her drowning in her own house. It struck a distant chord, I just couldn’t put my finger on it at the time.’

  ‘Oh? In what way?’

  ‘It sounds silly, but—darling, I think Brewer’s tired, could you take him home? I’d like to take Mr May to my office and show him something.’

  The innocuous steel building on Canal Walk did not look like the headquarters of a water board. Apart from a guard reading the Sun in the reception area, the place was empty. ‘Oh no, it’s not here,’ laughed Oliver. ‘This is a temporary on-site venue, somewhere we can plug in our laptops and hold meetings. It’s a fascinating business. I can give you a potted history, although I don’t see how it will help.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ said May casually. ‘I’ve a little time to kill.’

  Oliver led the way to a bare office of maroon carpet tiles and plan chests. ‘Well, it goes back to a chap called Hugh Myddleton who created the New River, which we think was the world’s first Build-Own-Operate project, a channel carrying water from springs in Hertfordshire to Islington. It became operational at the start of the seventeenth century; it’s still partly in use today.’ He pushed over a chair. ‘Make yourself comfortable.’

  May seated himself. ‘So a London water board has been around since then?’

  ‘We were needed from the outset. The huge influx of people from rural areas increased pressure on the water supply, but we had the steam engine and cast-iron piping to improve things. Of course, there was a terrible rise in waste. Indoor plumbing was nonexistent. Chap called Harington invented the first indoor toilet in the 1590s, but it wasn’t widely adopted because there was no supply of running water to flush it. Cesspits were an advance, but they weren’t emptied very often. Now, I know it’s here somewhere.’ He pulled out a drawer and began leafing through the plans. ‘The Thames was the main source of drinking water for London, and remained pretty clean until around 1800, even supporting a decent fishing industry. You could catch lobsters and salmon in its reaches. Unfortunately, it didn’t last because not enough cesspits had been built. Residents started illegally connecting their overflows to surface drains and underground rivers flowing into the Thames. The rising tide of sewage destroyed all life in the water and it began to smell, especially in hot weather. I’m sure you’ll have heard of the Great Stink of June 1858, when the stench became so lethal that no one could work inside Parliament. The cholera epidemic killed two thousand Londoners a week until Dr John Snow discovered it was spread in water, and closed the infected pump in Golden Square. The John Snow pub in Broadwick Street is dedicated to him.’

  ‘Didn’t Bazalgette come up with a plan to build sewers?’

  ‘Yes; a pity so many people had to die before Disraeli could be convinced to implement the system. It’s an incredible piece of engineering, a series of cascades that race around the city washing everything away. After that came chlorination during the First World War, then double filtration and new steel water mains.’

  ‘What about these days? I mean, where does all the waste go?’

  ‘North London’s waste goes to Abbey Mills Pumping Station in Stratford, and an outfall sewer takes it to the treatment plant at Beckton. South London’s goes to Deptford, and from there to works at Plumstead.’

  ‘And what happened to the underground rivers?’

  ‘Some were turned into sewage outlets, but most were difficult to drain after centuries of abuse. If you block up a river, the water still collects and has to run off somewhere. Houses are getting wetter again. The water table is rising due to climate changes, and the old rivers are on the move once more. But using them became redundant in 1994, when we opened the capital’s underground ring-road, which allows water to circle the streets of London. It’s one of the secret wonders of the world.’

  ‘Is it big enough to climb inside?’

  ‘Well, it has a diameter of two and a half metres, but it’s pretty full. The Thames is now the cleanest metropolitan river on the planet, and supports 120 species of fish. We’re servicing forty-six countries across the world. It’s a damned big business. I could tell you about our sludge-incineration programme, but I fear I’d bore you.’

  You’re right there, thought May. ‘Forgive me for asking, Mr Wilton, but what has this to do with Mrs Singh?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I tend to get carried away. Tamsin doesn’t like me bringing drains to the table, so when I find a fellow enthusiast . . . Ah, I think this is it.’ He pulled open another map drawer and tugged at a vast yellow sheet covered in dense, poorly printed lettering. ‘This was made in the fifties. It’s the last remotely accurate assessment of London’s missing tributaries and outlets, produced by the LCC, but parts of it are missing, or the courses have shifted. They need to be tracked because there are so many electrical cables and tunnels under the streets. London doesn’t operate on overhead systems. How do you track something that keeps moving? The truth is, we can only measure soil humidity and hope for the best. Look at what happened in Blackheath a couple of years ago—the roads simply caved in without any warning.’ He traced his forefinger along the route of the Fleet. ‘When rivers change course, strange things happen. If yo
u don’t know there’s a river underneath, you might be inclined to start believing in ghosts.’

  ‘I’m not at all sure I’m with you.’

  ‘Well, you get sudden localized floods that appear as if from nowhere, and drain away just as quickly. There was a famous case back in the 1920s—some heavy wooden coffins were found moved from their pedestals in a sealed crypt in south London. There had been an unusually high tide that season. The water had seeped in through a tiny crack, lifted the coffins and drained back out. Water can travel fast, in very odd ways. It can be drawn up through a stone wall in dry weather, causing a damp spot ten feet from the ground. And they’re saying Mrs Singh was found drowned. When I looked at this, I began to wonder.’

  He smoothed out a section of the map centred on the streets where they stood. ‘You see this large corner site? It’s a gastropub called J.A.’s. Changed its name in the late nineties. Used to be the Jolly Anglers, built on Anglers’ Lane. The lane’s not marked on this map as a river, but we know from local history that it was a popular bathing spot. The council filled it in some time around 1890. So we draw that in.’ He took a blue pen and ran a broken dotted line through the lane. ‘The only other Fleet tributary is marked here, two roads further over. But of course it must have connected to Anglers’ Lane; the river had to be fed from somewhere. Which only leaves Balaklava Street—or rather, the ginnel running behind the back gardens on the west side of the terrace, where Mrs Singh lived. It then crosses over the road, because it has to get down to its next known point of existence, at Prince of Wales Road. Which means that it flows right underneath Mrs Singh’s house.’

  ‘But you said it had dried up.’

  ‘I said that parts of it had, and parts had been bricked up, so that the river has to find ways to re-route itself. You have to remember that the Fleet was once over sixty feet wide here in Camden Town, and flowed to a great basin which is now Ludgate Circus.’