Christopher Fowler - The Water Room

‘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.

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!’