Christopher Fowler - The Water Room

‘Let’s suppose he has a way of getting into the remaining Fleet tunnel,’ May suggested. ‘You said it doesn’t pass beneath any important buildings on its way to the river, but you may be wrong. There’s a discreet bank behind Ludgate Circus, a new one with smoked-glass windows and ram-raid-prevention bars, that deals with fund transfers from the Upper Nile. I think your first idea wasn’t so barmy after all, Arthur. Jackson Ubeda was born in Tennessee, but according to his file he’s of Egyptian extraction.’

‘You think he’s about to drop in on an old friend?’

‘Or an enemy.’ He helped Bryant gather up the maps. ‘There’s not a jot of evidence, of course, which means we’ll have to hope that Greenwood decides to go spelunking while we can still afford to keep an eye on him.’

‘I have a better idea,’ said Bryant. ‘Janice, would you step in here a moment?’

‘You won’t be able to bellow at me when they finally put a door on your office,’ Longbright warned. ‘What do you want?’

‘Tell me, do you own any valuable jewellery?’

‘On my salary? Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘Well, could we perhaps borrow some for a couple of hours?’

‘You nearly got me fired the last time we raided the evidence room. Why?’

‘I want you to become a wealthy Egyptian woman for about half an hour.’

Sergeant Longbright straightened her skirt and wondered if she had overdone the eye make-up. She knew that older married women in Cairo sported the look one saw all around the Mediterranean, gold sunglasses and bright boxy jackets, but she felt like a cross between Cleopatra and Dalida. She was wearing an ostentatious emerald necklace which Bryant had borrowed from a sealed evidence bag, much to Kershaw’s horror. The waiting room of the Upper Nile Financial Services Group was a cool marble sarcophagus. Longbright seated herself between arrangements of dried flowers on plinths, like a bereaved relative waiting to view a corpse.

She had booked an appointment with the manager, Monsieur Edouard Assaad, explaining that she wished to transfer money from a town near the Sudanese border to an account in London, trusting that he would prefer to speak English rather than French or Arabic. To enter the building, she had been required to pass through a metal detector and have her bag examined, in line with the requirements of banking in Cairo. May specifically wanted to know about the building’s vault, and she was considering how to angle the conversation when M. Assaad arrived.

He had agreed to meet with Longbright to reassure her that Upper Nile FSG was the secure and sensible choice for a woman of means. Small and almost absurdly neat, from his waxed black tonsure to his freshly polished Oxford toecaps, he shook her hand warmly and ushered her to a side-room lined with crimson tapestries and low cushions.

‘I may also wish to deposit a number of valuable items with you,’ Longbright explained as a small silver tray of mint tea arrived. ‘Would that be possible?’

‘It can certainly be arranged,’ promised M. Assaad, supervising the ritual of pouring.

‘I was given to understand that you have a vault here on the premises.’

‘I’m afraid you have been misinformed, Madam. We primarily deal with electronic transactions, but if you wish, we will contact an affiliated company where space in a secure vault may be set aside for you.’

‘Thank you.’ She wondered if she had failed to observe the rules of formal hospitality, moving too quickly into the discussion of business. Like Bryant, Longbright had never been adept at small talk. ‘I was recommended to you by an old friend of mine, Mr Jackson Ubeda. I assume he is a client of yours?’

‘I am sure you would be the first to appreciate that we are unable to divulge the identities of our clients.’ M. Assaad’s gracious demeanour shifted slightly. Longbright could tell that she had made him suspicious. Or perhaps the mention of Ubeda’s name had bothered him.

She decided to press on. ‘Surely you do have some kind of underground storage facilities?’

‘Alas, no. The lower-ground floors were filled in many years ago. There were apparently some problems with damp undermining the building.’

‘That’s right, an old river runs near your property.’

‘So I have been told.’ M. Assaad was clearly losing patience. ‘Perhaps you would care to see our chief clerk, who will supply you with the appropriate documentation for your account.’ He punched out a number, covering the mouthpiece while he waited for a reply. ‘We have a great many friends and clients in Aswan-I am sure you will find our services invaluable.’

Well, that was bloody embarrassing, she thought as she waited for a bus in Farringdon Street. I know he saw right through me. More problematic was the idea that the bank had no basement. It meant that Bryant’s line of inquiry was misdirected, and as the matter was not an officially sanctioned case for the unit, it could not go much further. As soon as the Met’s claim on the unit had ended, Raymond Land would be waiting to approve a number of new investigations for them, so there would be no more time to spend on pet projects.

First Ruth Singh and now this, she thought. The pair of them have only been back at work for a couple of weeks and they’ve already managed to set everyone’s teeth on edge. She would defend Bryant and May against anyone, of course; that was what you did with old friends, no matter how annoying they became across the years. Still, she wondered how long they could continue to follow their own meandering path at the unit without being held accountable. The Home Office demanded results, and they would all have to face the consequences of failure.

Kallie was growing quite used to it now.

As she turned off the hot tap, the sound of running water continued, gurgling and churning somewhere under the floor. She tried to work out if it ran from the back of the house to the front, but there was no telling if what she could hear was a metre away, or ten. She had tackled Elliot Copeland at the party, telling him about her problems with the basement wiring. He had offered to take a look for her, but had so far failed to make good on the offer, forcing her to make do with the battery lamp. Paul had gone to the pub with Jake Avery, the TV producer from across the road, hoping to find out about job opportunities, while she had been left to do the laundry in Ruth Singh’s decrepit washer-dryer.

And the house was starting to bother her.

The omnipresent sound of water, the damp patch growing in the wall and the return of the seemingly invincible spiders were minor causes for concern. She could manage without electricity until someone reliable could be found to repair the system. Even having to bury Heather’s cat in her back garden had not fazed her-there was something far less tangible at work within these bricks. The attic echoed with rain, the pipes ticked and tapped with the passage of water, the floorboards stretched and bowed like the deck of a ship. Window frames, dry for so long, now expanded in the wet weather and refused to open or close.

Sometimes it felt as if a stranger’s eyes were at her back, watching in silence as she moved about the basement. The sensation didn’t occur in the front room or the bedrooms, even though they were the only ones which were overlooked. Something felt wrong inside the building: dead air displaced, events rearranged. It was nothing more than a vague sensation, but she had learned not to overlook such presentiments. She couldn’t explain the feeling to herself, or articulate it to Paul, who had a habit of dismissing such ideas with an impatient wave of his hand. According to him she was simply not used to owning a house. More insultingly, he implied that using a room in which a woman had recently died would always be the source of some kind of female hysteria.