Christopher Fowler - The Water Room

‘It’s Tate, he’s in the garden again,’ said Kallie, holding open the front door.

‘Does he know you’ve seen him?’ asked Meera, entering.

‘I don’t know-I don’t think so. He hasn’t moved for over half an hour, even in this rain.’ The lights in the hall had been turned off. ‘I could keep an eye on him more easily in the dark,’ she explained, leading the way down to the back door. Meera stood in front of her, looking out. She was unusually short for a police officer, but could hold down a man twice her weight.

‘OK, I see him.’ A figure could be discerned inside a large elder bush. Meera ascended three steps to the small sodden lawn. It was hard to see any detail through the gloom of the overhanging ceanothus. The garden was so enclosed and dense that she could have been stepping into the green underwater murk of a pond.

‘I need to talk to you, Mr Tate,’ she said briskly, raising her hands in a gesture of friendship. ‘Please, come on out.’

His movement was so sudden that she started. The bush shook violently, spraying rainwater as he twisted about and dropped low. The last thing Meera wanted was to plough through wet undergrowth in semi-darkness, but she instinctively shoved her way in between the leaves.

Suddenly he was pushing away fast, bending and cracking the branches. She heard the thud of his boots hitting the fence, saw him scrambling over with ease, even though it was clear that he only had the use of his left arm and leg. He’d either been born with the affliction or the injury was old: his movements were practised and agile. She remembered a young heroin addict on the Peckham North estate who had lost a leg after passing out in a crouching position down the side of a club toilet, cutting off his blood supply. Afterwards, he moved as if the limb was still in place: Phantom Limb Syndrome. The mind still worked when the body failed.

Her jacket was caught on rose thorns. She yanked her sleeve free and ran for the fence, taking it easily, keeping her eye on his retreating back as he leapt the next divider, turning the back gardens into a mud-spattered steeplechase.

This time he swerved and dropped over the low brick wall at the rear, into the narrow alley that separated Balaklava Street from the road behind. She was no more than a few feet behind him, vaulting in his wake, slipping and scrambling to her feet, but the dim brown corridor of the overgrown path was deserted. There was nowhere he could have gone. She fought her way to one end, then back to the other. Nothing in either direction, not even any footprints in the muddy track.

Meera returned to the bush where the tramp had been hiding. The centre of the elder had been hollowed out and shielded with branches to form a small hideaway. The earth inside was trampled flat, and several squashed cigarette ends lay in the mud at her feet. A familiar green and gold tin lay on its side. She picked it up, shining her pocket torch across the metal surface, and saw the macabre image of a dead lion with a swarm of bees feeding from its stomach. The label read ‘Out of the Strong Came Forth Sweetness.’ An emptied can of Tate amp; Lyle Golden Syrup. At least she now knew how the old man had got his nickname.

She looked back at Kallie shivering in the doorway. Home is meant to be the one safe place, she thought. Meera had grown up in the tower blocks behind Archway, and knew what it felt like to lie awake in bed, listening for every small sound.

‘I’m in no rush,’ she said, taking Kallie’s arm and leading her back into the house. ‘My colleague’s waiting outside. He wanted me to have dinner with him. Let’s send him off for a takeaway.’

Raymond Land straightened his golf-club tie, checking his appearance in the steel plate bolted into the green tiled doorway, then swiped his security card through the slot. As he walked into the partially unveiled entrance of the PCU headquarters, he resolved to put a stop to the rumours circulating the force about his unit. It was said that Bryant and May were already up to their old tricks, that they were sending their staff off on wild-goose chases around the capital, that their bad habits were resurfacing to infect a new generation of staff. What he saw as he entered the unit gave him no cause for encouragement. Detective Sergeant Longbright was packing away an evening dress.

‘What the devil do you think you’re doing, Longbright?’ asked Land.

‘I’m still a woman, sir,’ Janice snapped. It was the first time she had taken a break since her arrival at eight that morning. She had just wanted to take one last look at the dress before it went back. Bryant had refused to cover the price, demanding that she return it. This attitude was to be expected from a man who had never paid more than ten pounds for a shirt. The black satin slipped beneath her fingers, a mockery of the wedding dress she would never wear. Her longtime partner owed more allegiance to the force than to any mere woman. Ian Hargreave thrived in the undertow of interdepartmental politics, preferring to catch up with her two evenings a week, after work, when they were both tired and irritable. Longbright would sit in his kitchen eating Chinese takeouts direct from the containers. She glared angrily at the acting head, daring him to complain.

Land hastily moved on down the corridor. Amidst the newly purchased equipment in the unit’s crime lab, he found Kershaw and Banbury tinkering with an oven tray full of wet sand and a toy truck. ‘What on earth are you two up to?’ he asked.

‘Giles is explaining the physical dynamics of accidental death,’ Banbury explained, not at all clearly. ‘My territory, really, but Giles got there first.’

‘So this is your doing.’

‘Mr Bryant gave me the idea. It’s all right, I’ve got a job number for it.’

‘Why am I not surprised?’ Land asked the wall as he passed on. At least Bimsley seemed to be doing something useful, scanning reams of figures on his computer, but Meera Mangeshkar was lying on the floor. She scrambled to her feet as Land entered. ‘Sorry, sir, spot of yoga-put my back out last night.’

‘On your own time or in the course of duty?’

‘Duty, sir. Apprehending a suspicious character.’

‘You booked him?’

‘No, sir. Vanished into thin air. Literally. Quite impossible, I know, almost as if he flew away, but there you are.’

They’re all mad, thought Land. This is Bryant’s doing. He’s tainted them with his lunacy. John’s marginally more rational. I’ll appeal to his common sense. He headed for the detectives’ room.

‘We’re running on the spot. Or in my case, walking very slowly.’ Bryant threw his files down on the desk. ‘Land wants me to fill in a unit activity report before lunchtime. If you have any bright ideas about how to take up so much blank space, I’d welcome them. God, it’s hard to work with that racket going on outside. What’s going on?’

May sauntered to the window and looked down into the street. ‘There are a pair of drink-addled skinheads throwing beer cans at each other outside the Tube station,’ he remarked off-handedly. ‘There’s a young woman with a baby, screaming at her boyfriend and slapping him around the head. A couple of men from the council are digging up the pavement with drills. The Water Board’s gouging a hole in the middle of the road. Oh, and two van-drivers are having a shouting match at the lights. To which racket were you referring?’

‘Why are the urban English so vocal nowadays?’ Bryant wondered. ‘Go to Paris, Madrid, Berlin, even Rome, you don’t get this kind of behaviour. It’s Hogarth’s picture of Gin Lane all over again.’

‘Arthur, you used to sound your age. Now you’re sounding several centuries old.’