Christopher Fowler - The Water Room

‘You’ve never owned a garden.’

‘My mother had one in Bethnal Green. We used to keep chickens in the Anderson shelter. We had nasturtiums and a tortoise. That was a proper garden, a place where your dad could take his motorbike to bits. This is different.’

Bryant was right. Even the air felt thinner; for a start, it wasn’t vibrating with fluorocarbons. At Wimbledon they found themselves surrounded by jeeps, 4x4s and truck-sized people-carriers, vehicles taken on school runs by high-income nesting families who never travelled further than Tesco or a Devonshire bolthole. Neighbourhood Watch stickers in front windows, no street life away from the superstore, nothing but the odd dog-walker, invariably an elderly lady in a Liquorice-Allsort hat and matching gloves.

‘Longbright says people who spend their whole lives in the suburbs have no social graces because they never talk to strangers,’ Bryant pointed out.

‘That’s a bit harsh.’

‘I don’t know. The Balaklava Street residents clearly have trouble talking to me.’

‘Arthur, everyone has trouble talking to you. You scare them.’

‘Rubbish. I’m much more charming these days. I hardly ever get annoyed with the officers Stanley assigns to us, even slack-jawed drooling neanderthals like Bimsley.’

Detective Chief Superintendent Stanley Marsden acted as a liaison officer between the detectives and the government. He was meant to operate with impartiality, but the Home Office paid his salary. He was known to play billiards with Raymond Land, but he also attended Arsenal matches with Sergeant Carfax, an astonishingly unpleasant Met officer who had been passed over for promotion four times, and who had decided to blame Bryant for his failure to rise through the ranks. There was still some bad feeling about the special status accorded to the PCU, but most situations were calmed by May’s tact and inexhaustible patience. Even his enemies liked him. Bryant, on the other hand, had only to raise a telephone receiver to upset everyone within hearing distance.

Bryant map-read under sufferance because he said it hurt his eyes, and they had to keep stopping while May checked their coordinates.

‘I’ve been rewriting your notes.’ Bryant dug out a small book bound in orange Venetian leather and passed it to his partner. ‘I thought if we have to submit something to Raymond, it should at least be entertaining.’

May waited until they reached red traffic lights, then examined the pages with impatience. ‘You can’t rewrite these. They’re witness statements, not tone poems.’ He shot Bryant a look of irritation.

‘I just added a few impressions.’

‘We’ve all seen your impressions, thank you.’

‘I was just thinking about Balaklava Street. First the old lady drowns, then a man is buried alive. There’s an assonance, isn’t there?’

‘There may be assonance, Arthur, but there’s no motive. Nothing was stolen from either victim. There are unmotivated deaths in every borough, but when two occur in the same street within the same month, I’m tempted to find a causal link. There’s a lot of drug-related street crime in the area, but nothing like this. I’d be willing to swallow accidental deaths if I could understand how they happened. What do we really have? In the case of Elliot Copeland we’ve a witness and a suspect, but neither are much use beyond placing Randall Ayson at the site. I think the Allen woman actually saw Copeland die but didn’t do anything to help, and she’s too ashamed to admit so. It was left to her friend to discover the body a few minutes later, when she turned back into the street.’

‘Perhaps you should talk to the neighbours again. I can’t help thinking you’ve missed something.’

‘Where are we now, Arthur?’

‘Barnes Common. Nearly there.’

‘Why did we go all the way out to Raynes Park?’

‘Don’t ask me. You’re driving.’

‘But you’re map-reading. Give me that.’ May took the A-Z. ‘This was printed in 1958. You don’t have to keep everything for ever, you know.’

‘It’s nice to own old things. Better than living in an apartment that looks like a car showroom.’ They barely realized they were bickering, but at least the habit provided a form of natural evolution for their opinions.

The BMW purred to a stop beside the river. On the page, May’s finger traced the outlet of the brook to the river’s edge. He looked out of the window. A low concrete flood-wall had been installed along the river road. ‘Well, this looks like the spot, but where’s Greenwood?’

‘Over there.’ Bryant pointed toward the black Jaguar parked beside a low house with boarded-over windows. ‘That’s Jackson Ubeda’s car.’ The building was a light industrial unit, an unadorned Victorian box of the type that existed in swathes across the city.

They did not have long to wait. After fifteen minutes, Ubeda appeared in the doorway of the building, followed by Greenwood. Inside the entrance, May could just make out some kind of pumping equipment. Fat flexible pipes lolled across the floor. ‘What on earth are they up to?’ he wondered aloud.

‘Perhaps they’re trying to drain the brook,’ suggested Bryant.

‘But this is the fourth underground river they’ve visited. They can’t be trying to drain the entire system. What do we do?’

‘You go and attach your electronic gizmo, and we wait.’ Bryant pushed himself down in the passenger seat, his hat sliding forward to meet his collar, so that he seemed almost to disappear. ‘I know it’s foolish, but I had this image of Ruth’s basement flooding, drowning her and suddenly emptying out again. Of course, nothing was wet when we got there, but the idea still troubles me. Images of water are the images of dreams. To dream of a lake is suggestive of a mind at peace with itself. To dream of a rough sea, or drowning, indicates psychological disturbance. According to her brother, Ruth had been disturbed by racist messages, all of which he destroyed. Suppose she discovered a bizarre way to take her own life?’

Bryant often did this, connecting ideas that took him beyond rational thought. For him, past and present, fact and fantasy were melded together in unfathomable ways, but occasionally connections could be found by following overgrown paths. May was used to dealing with his partner’s disordered synaptic responses, but to other detectives it was a little like discovering that witchcraft was still in use.

May relied on his own form of sorcery, in the form of devices passed on to him by a Met R amp;D team who allowed him to trial-test their technology before it was approved for official use. Nothing in his arsenal could prevent the academic from succumbing to temptation, but a tiny Bluetooth receiver attached to their quarry’s vehicle would at least pick up some passing conversation. May waited until the pair had re-entered the factory, then made his way over to the car while his partner kept watch. Half an hour later, they began to pick up dialogue.

‘I think it’s time for a talk with Mr Ubeda,’ said Bryant shortly.

‘You think we should go and see him?’

‘No, I think Longbright should. A middle-aged man driving a Jaguar will respond more willingly to an attractive woman. Hello, Janice, is that you?’ Bryant had a habit of shouting when he used a mobile. ‘You don’t mind dolling yourself up and pumping someone for information, do you? Well, tonight if possible, because we know where he’s going to be. Just get a chap drunk and flirt a bit, could you do that?’

‘It’s sexism,’ Longbright complained, ‘and probably counts as entrapment.’

‘Rubbish, you never mention sexism when a man takes you out for dinner, do you? You go on about empowerment, but when the bill arrives you suddenly discover your femininity.’