The Water Room

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘I need some information on an artist. At least you’ve started painting again.’

  ‘Well, after Countess Dracula left I packed up the classes and stopped going out for a while, until my pupils came around one day and accused me of giving up on them. What could I do? I couldn’t mope about for ever. Besides, there’s good light in here. I can sit around all day in my underpants flicking paint at the walls if I want to. It feels like a proper home. I still teach art two days a week, but I’m selling my paintings down the Bayswater Road at weekends. Frightful rubbish, sunsets and puppies for tourists with no taste, but I’m making a living wage for once. Who are you after?’

  ‘Did you ever hear of an artist called Gilbert Kingdom?’ asked Bryant.

  Summerfield fondled his beard ruminatively. ‘Not for a very long time,’ he said finally.

  ‘So you do know of him?’

  ‘Of course. A great enigma, something of a bête noir. He was a disciple of Stanley Spencer, perhaps a more formidable talent.’

  ‘Then why have I never heard of him?’

  ‘Because he never fulfilled his potential. But he’s known to most fine-art historians worth their salt. Kingdom suffered the fate of so many geniuses. Showed great promise as a student at the Slade—Spencer went there, of course—then he underwent some kind of epiphany in much the same way as Spencer had done. Kingdom took a more pagan approach to understanding the world, dividing it into elemental spirits of fire and water. He wasn’t interested in knocking out gilt-framed portraits for punters, he was preoccupied with linking pagan rituals directly to the land. All the talent in the world can’t save a man born out of fashion. Eventually he went barking mad and died in poverty. There are hardly any books on him.’

  ‘I have one.’ Bryant removed the volume from a scuffed leather briefcase. ‘Unfortunately, the section on his work has been removed.’

  ‘Ah, I’ve got that book,’ said Summerfield with obvious pleasure. ‘I think it’s pretty much the only place where I’ve ever seen his work reprinted. Let me see if I can find it for you.’

  Bryant drank his tea and listened while the art master rooted about in his lounge.

  ‘I’m afraid the cover’s torn off, but it’s the same edition.’ His rough, paint-stained fingers ploughed through the volume until he came to the pages missing from Tate’s copy. He passed it to Bryant.

  ‘All we have is a tantalizing glimpse of the man’s brilliance, two paintings now both in California, a few studies and sketches. Just as Spencer painted Cookham, Kingdom painted London. He broke the city down into four distinct colour palettes, densities and timescales.’

  ‘How did he do that?’

  ‘Well, there’s London of the Great Fire, and later, during the industrial revolution, a city of steely flame, a man-made inferno of pumping pistons and belching boilers. Then there’s the city of swirling unhealthy fogs, mists and windswept hills, a place of mystery, disease and danger. Then the city of water, crossed by a great meandering river and a hundred tributaries, a landscape of waterwheels and mills, of rain and floods. And finally, the city of rich clay earth, wherein one could find the bones of plague victims, the soul and soil in which its residents take root like the Hydra’s teeth.’

  ‘The four elements, in fact.’

  ‘Exactly so. Such thinking was unfashionable at a time when postwar modernism was gaining so much ground. He failed to find a patron, and was eventually kicked to death in the gutter by children, somewhere around your neck of the woods.’

  Bryant examined the paintings, the half-finished outpourings of an extraordinary mind, ragged deities commanding the earth and sky while cowering acolytes toiled in tiny brick houses. The colours and detailing were extraordinary. Bryant was reminded of Victorian faerie paintings, reproduced on an epic canvas.

  ‘And this is all he painted?’

  ‘Ah, there’s the paradox. Those whose abilities set them ahead of their time are often rewarded posthumously, but failure hides them from sight. The more they forge ahead beyond the spirit of the age, the more the world is intent on burying them. It was said that Kingdom created other pieces, but all of them were destroyed. Nobody knows for sure.’

  ‘Who would do such a terrible thing as destroying a work of art?’

  ‘Dear naive fellow, every decade has its self-appointed censors. The only mercy is that time forgets them and remembers the artist. In the history of the world, no censor has ever been looked back on with respect. There were those who objected to Kingdom’s choice of subject matter. For some, his style was too close to that associated with fascist art. Nazism was on the rise, the times were uncertain, and no one wanted to see depictions of a future free from Christianity. At the Slade, it was said that Kingdom was the one artist capable of depicting the missing episodes of England’s pagan past.’

  ‘Do you think he could have destroyed his own work?’

  ‘Difficult question. One doesn’t want to believe such things, of course, but what other explanation could there be? He died a pauper, homeless and friendless, unloved and unremembered. Not for him the eager wake of adoring students. There’s so little to go on, you see. He didn’t die at a youthful age like Firbank or Beardsley. They both produced fair bodies of work in their short young lives.’

  ‘How old was Kingdom when these boys attacked him?’

  ‘I believe he was in his forties, not quite so young in those days as it is now. He drank, he starved, and looked much older. Here.’ Summerfield turned the page and pointed out a monochrome photograph depicting a gaunt, sickly man in a ragged tweed jacket. The figure standing beside him was clean-shaven and crop-headed, but as Bryant had suspected, was clearly Tate as a young man. ‘And that’s his son,’ confirmed Summerfield.

  ‘What do you know of this boy?’ asked Bryant.

  ‘His name was Emmanuel Kingdom. He was said to be devastated by the old man’s death, swore to take revenge on those who killed his father—but that was probably just a romantic notion circulated by art teachers. Of course, such a boy had no way of doing so, and I imagine the obsession eventually sent him along the same path as his father.’

  ‘Do you have any idea what happened to him?’

  ‘I believe he worked for a time as a guard at the Tate Gallery, in order to be near one of his father’s paintings. Must have devastated him when they flogged it to the Yanks. Never heard anything about him after that.’

  ‘I think I know where he is.’

  ‘You do?’ Summerfield fairly inflated with excitement. ‘If we could locate him, he may be able to throw light on his father’s life. Do you know how important this could be? Information is money, Arthur.’

  ‘I have to find him more quickly than you can imagine,’ Bryant agreed. ‘But for an entirely different reason. I fear he’s connected with terrible events.’

  ‘At any rate, it’s good to see you again,’ smiled Summerfield. ‘Did you ever catch the vandal who ruined the picture in the National Gallery?’

  ‘Yes, I think so,’ Bryant replied distractedly, pulling on his coat.

  ‘I hope they managed to repair the painting. The Waterhouse.’

  Bryant was caught with his arm in one sleeve. ‘Remind me?’

  ‘The painting was by Waterhouse, wasn’t it? The Favourites of the Emperor Honorius, if memory serves. One forgets he’d churned out all of those ghastly witchcraft paintings like The Sorceress and The Magic Circle. He’s got an occult following, would you believe.’

  ‘Waterhouse,’ Bryant repeated, dumbstruck. ‘My goodness, thank you, Peregrine.’ It was only after he had gone that Summerfield found the elderly detective’s trilby, stuck over a brush-pot on the hall table.

  44

  * * *

  TEMPEST RISING

  The stack of postcards had stopped growing.

  Kallie shuffled through them again, counting to seven. The last card Paul had sent was from Croatia. What the hell was he doing in Croatia? In the darkest part of these rainy nights, after even the
streetlamps had died, she began to feel that he was no longer part of her world.

  Just a few days ago she had imagined him lying in a clay-walled house, his head bloodily bandaged, trying to explain to kindly but uncomprehending fishermen that his passport had been stolen. Now she realized the absurdity of the fantasy. Even ancient souks housed Internet cafés. There were few places in Europe where English was not understood by someone. If anything bad had happened to Paul, he would have found a way to get in touch with her. The postcard was upbeat, distant in tone, like a child fulfilling a duty to write home.

  After a few hours’ respite, the rain had returned with a vengeance to north London. It fell with a tropical intensity, bouncing and spraying, pouring and dripping from every roof, gutter, porch and awning. The drains were overwhelmed, and the middle section of the street was flooding in earnest. She thought of getting out, catching a train to her aunt’s, where she might escape the worst of the weather. But something kept her at the house. It had become her home, and she was determined to stay. She sat at the kitchen table with the colour swatches for the bathroom and tried to concentrate on the job, but the rain proved too distracting. Knowing that it would be better to concentrate on some mindless practicality, she descended to the lower-ground floor and picked up the sledgehammer from where she had left it.

  She had decided to remove part of the bathroom chimney breast to provide some space for towel-shelves. There was little money left to hire anyone else, so she would carry out the work herself. However, after slamming the breast with seven or eight hammer blows, she realized that she could not summon enough power in her arms for the job. She had barely managed to put more than a few crescent-shaped dents in the brickwork. There was no electrical socket in the bathroom, but she had run a cable through from the kitchen for a radio, and the inane babble of the DJ drowned out the rush of running water that sounded as if it was passing right through the basement. The noise had continued unabated for so long that she barely noticed it now.

  A sickly grey damp patch had appeared just above floor level, and was spreading so quickly up the adjoining wall that she could almost see its growth. Oddly, the plaster felt dry to the touch, as if designed to absorb moisture. Perhaps it would be necessary to live with the intact chimney for now; it could be removed at a later date. She hated the bath because both taps had a tendency to stick, either jamming open or shut. The plumber wasn’t able to come for another week.

  Kallie decided to remove the row of tiles behind the washbasin. But after working at the wall for nearly half an hour, she abandoned her chisel and switched to a knife to begin cutting away the old paintwork that overlaid the surrounding plaster. It lifted easily, and work progressed with greater speed. She was sweating hard, even though the bathroom was freezing. The room defied any attempt to be heated. Didn’t they say that the temperature always dropped when spirits were present? She felt surrounded by ghosts: the doleful presence of Ruth Singh; the shadowy figures of Elliot and Jake; even Paul, his features blurred and already half-forgotten, lost to the new loyalties of strange lands.

  She watched from the steamed-over kitchen window while waiting for the kettle to boil. The street was so close to Piccadilly Circus, self-proclaimed hub of the universe, but she could have been in the heart of the English countryside. The drone of traffic usually made itself felt in low bass-notes you sensed in your bones rather than heard, but today the rain cascaded through the densely foliated branches of the ceanothus and enveloped the house in a clatter that sounded like gravel pouring down a chute. It was as though sluice gates had opened to flood the city, turning London into an inundated world of Atlantean phantoms.

  Kallie returned to the bathroom and noticed that the stain on the wall had spread during the few minutes she had been out of the room. Now it extended fully halfway up the wall in a suppurating mushroom cloud, and was wet to the touch.

  She was about to resume work with renewed vigour when the lights went out.

  ‘I really thought I had him,’ said Bimsley. ‘I might have done if I hadn’t gone arse over tit on the kerb. It’s these shoes. I’ve done my coccyx in, and the back of my jacket’s soaked.’ The detective constable wiped his eyes and pulled his baseball cap closer to his head. ‘I can’t believe this weather,’ he complained. ‘Global warming. We’re getting pissed on night and day just so mums can drop their kids off in SUVs. You all right?’

  ‘I’ve been drier,’ Meera agreed, squinting up at her colleague.

  ‘It’s going to be dark soon. Sunday evening, we should be home. I want some soup. Tate’s not going to turn up here again. Whatever he’s up to, he knows we’re on to him. Something’s tipped him off.’

  ‘How could it?’

  ‘Suppose he went back to the hostel for his books and found them gone. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out who took them. He’s scarpered.’

  Meera checked her wrist. ‘We’re not off duty for another hour.’

  ‘My watch has steamed over. Besides, the Old Man reckons nobody goes home until we’ve got him.’ People often thought of Bryant as the Old Man, even though he was only three years older than his partner.

  ‘We could do another door-to-door.’

  ‘That’d go down well, wouldn’t it? Any more interviews and it’ll constitute harassment,’ warned Bimsley. ‘Civvies either complain that they can never see police on the streets, or moan about being picked on.’

  ‘Don’t start, Colin, you’re starting to sound like the Peckham South boys. Let’s just get through the shift.’

  Bimsley stamped and splashed. ‘He’s not going to show tonight.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘The rain. It’s not going down the drains any more, which means his precious underground tunnels must be flooded, which means Tate can’t use them to get around.’ Bimsley narrowed his eyes, trying to see through the caul of mist. ‘Something’s really wrong here. I can feel it. There’s a disturbance in the force.’ He mimed wielding a light sabre. ‘I mean, what’s he going to gain by faking his own death? He already had a way of disappearing. Why didn’t he use it when he still had the chance?’

  ‘In south London you get three deaths in the same street, nobody tries to link them together. He’s just a tramp, he’s not a murderer.’

  ‘He killed one of his own, Meera. I’ve seen people like him before. There’s a solid wall between his type and us, people with homes. Why would he let one of his own kind die? There’s something missing that the Old Man hasn’t put his finger on, and he’s into extra time. I should worry, I’m off home as soon as I get the signal. Dry out, order a curry, open a beer, bung on the telly, thank you and good night.’

  ‘I thought we were a team, Colin. You wouldn’t leave poor old Bryant and May out here on their own, would you?’ asked Meera.

  ‘What’s it worth?’

  ‘I might join you for the curry.’

  In the distance, thunder scraped and tumbled with the obliterating force of the rising storm.

  ‘Can’t you put the de-mister on?’ asked May. ‘I can’t see a thing.’

  ‘I could, but it’ll burn out the contacts on my brake lights. If you turn the radio on, the interior light comes on.’

  ‘There’s something very strange about the wiring of your car.’ May fidgeted in his seat. ‘I’m sure these are stuffed with horsehair. You should get yourself a nice little runaround.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be much good in a high-speed pursuit, would it?’ snapped Bryant.

  Dear God, let’s never have another of those, thought May, remembering the last time. ‘This is a Mini Cooper.’

  ‘Not under the bonnet, it’s not.’

  ‘It’s nearly dark. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?’

  ‘No,’ said Bryant, digging in his paper bag for a cola cube. ‘It happens every night.’

  ‘I mean there are no street lights on. No interior lights in any of the houses, either. Look, over there, you can see them in Inkerman Road. Maybe the water’s got into
a sub-station. I’d better call it in.’

  ‘Where’s Longbright?’

  ‘Janice should still be in number 43, with the Wiltons. I can’t see Meera or Colin. I told them to stay within sight.’ May reached over to the back seat for a baseball cap.

  ‘Must you wear that awful thing?’ Bryant complained. ‘It’s intended for someone a quarter of your age.’

  ‘I don’t know why you have this High Tory attitude to fashion.’ May straightened the peak in his mirror. ‘You’re not exactly Calvin Klein.’

  ‘I’ve had my trilby since the War.’

  ‘I’m surprised it hasn’t fallen over your ears, considering the way you’re shrinking. Where is it, anyway?’

  ‘I think I left it at Peregrine’s, along with my stick and my gloves.’

  ‘I’m going to tie them to your jacket one day. Keep your mobile handy in case anything’s wrong. You do have that, don’t you?’

  ‘Naturally.’ Bryant dug into his coat and was amazed to find his own Nokia there; he had begun to suspect it had fallen under the exposed floorboards at the unit.

  ‘Is it on? Of course not.’ May turned it on and threw it back. ‘I won’t be a minute.’ He climbed out into the downpour.

  Kallie found a torch and some candles under the sink. Illuminated by pale spheres of radiance, the house appeared to be returning to its Victorian origins. There was something graceful about being able to carry the light from one room to another, bringing each space into focus as she passed through.

  The twilit garden was now brighter than the interior of the house. The glow of the city was reflected on low racing clouds. As she stood framed by the window, she saw that Tate was standing inside the bush once more. She recognized his crippled shape immediately. Shining the torch through the window, she picked up his startled eyes in the light, and panned the beam over his body.