Christopher Fowler - The Water Room

‘I like to take my kite on Parliament Hill,’ said David. ‘You can feel the wind going round you.’

‘There you are.’ Maggie ruffled the boy’s hair. ‘When bureaucrats radically transform an area they remove its markers, damaging scale and ignoring the natural historical landscape. Such an area will quickly become a “no-go” zone, unsafe and disliked by everyone, because we no longer have ways of forming attachments to such a place. When the rivers were covered, we lost something of ourselves. Dreams of lakes and rivers are dreams of calm. No wonder lost rivers hold such mystique. We need to believe that they are still beneath us somewhere, the distant conduits of a forgotten inner peace.’

‘She’s been getting like this a lot lately,’ Kirkpatrick warned. ‘Ever since she started her hormone-replacement pills. The rivers are still there, you silly woman, they just built storm drains over the original tunnels. The idea was that the lids could be removed in times of flooding, and water drawn off to prevent it from invading the basements of local houses. I imagine they’re all asphalted over now.’

‘No,’ said David. ‘I know where there’s one. You can still get the lid off.’

‘Would you like to show me?’ asked Bryant.

‘It’s a secret.’

‘May I remind you that you’re working for the police now?’ warned Bryant. The boy’s mobile rang. ‘It’s my mother,’ he warned.

‘Give her to me.’ Bryant waggled his fingers and took the call. ‘He’s absolutely fine, Mrs Wilton, thoroughly enjoying himself. No, of course not.’ He placed his hand over the phone. ‘You’re not wet, are you?’ Then back to the phone; ‘No, dry as a bone, I’ll have him home in just a few minutes.’ He cut her off before she could continue. ‘Now, David, let’s go and have a look at your storm drain.’

‘We’re coming with you,’ Maggie told him. ‘Don’t tell us we’re not allowed.’ She knew what Bryant was like. If they were going to poke around sewers, someone needed to keep an eye on them.

The four finished their tea and set off. ‘You don’t need a dowsing rod to find tell-tale signs of the river’s route,’ said Maggie. ‘Remember how dry it was before this rain started? All the pavement weeds died, but look along here.’ She pointed to a ragged row of spindly plants pushing up through the paving stones beside the main road. ‘Epiphytes, these are weeds that grow on other plants and live on trapped rainwater. But there wasn’t any accumulated water until a few days ago, and where are the plants they grow on? Give me a hand, David, would you?’

Stopping beside a ditch dug out for the Electricity Board, they managed to pull up a loose paving stone. ‘Look at that.’ The underside of the slab was covered in dark, slippery moss. ‘It’s a very primitive plant form that feeds on moisture. Something under the street didn’t dry out during the drought. All we have to do is follow the weeds. We have a guide to the river right here at our feet. They say you can plot the course of the London rivers by following the paths of diseases, too. Makes sense, when you think about it. Respiratory troubles are brought on by damp air. You get plenty of that around sewers. Ghost sightings, too. There are more of them near water because of high infant mortality, early deaths and drownings.’

‘Sorbus Aucuparia,’ said Kirkpatrick, pointing to the trees that guarded the entrance to the alleyway behind Balaklava Street. ‘One usually finds Tilia Platyphyllos or Platanus Hispanica . But those are a pair of Rowans.’

‘Good London trees,’ Maggie agreed. ‘They are able to withstand high levels of pollution and lousy soil, and birds love their berries. They’re strongly associated with witchcraft, of course. Very unlucky to cut one down. There are terrible stories. .’

‘Don’t fill the boy’s head with-’ began Kirkpatrick.

‘There’s one ghost story in particular that centres on your street,’ she interrupted. ‘A real ghost story that happened right where you live now.’ Maggie’s natural flair for the dramatic ensured that the boy’s attention was held. ‘This would have been long before you were born, in the early 1950s. It seems there was a penniless young man, a student, who lived in a flat somewhere around here. He was in love with a local girl who worked in a bakery behind the high street. Although neither of them had much money, they were very much in love and were soon engaged to be married. The boy was a talented watercolour artist, and told her they would marry as soon as he could sell some pictures. But he painted subjects that were too morbid. No one wanted to buy drawings of ghouls and graveyards. So he was forced to delay his wedding. The third time he did so, his girlfriend gave up on him and married someone else. The student’s heart was broken. It was said that he went down to the canal, filled his pockets with rocks and sank into the mud. But his body was never found.

‘Some time later, the people in your street started seeing him whenever it rained. He would materialize through the downpour, and walk with his dripping mud-covered head bowed low, mourning his lost love. This continued for some years, until the flood of 1959, when the underground river burst from its tunnel and swamped the street. What do you think happened?’

David shook his head, mesmerized.

‘The boy’s corpse surfaced through the water. It had been washed up from the canal due to the unusual currents caused by the terrible winter storms. Once his body was properly laid to rest, his ghost was at peace, and it was never seen again.’

‘I’m not sure you should be telling the boy this sort of thing,’ said Kirkpatrick in some alarm.

‘Perhaps we could get back to facts.’ Bryant rapped his walking stick on the pavement irritably. ‘Where’s this drain of yours, lad?’

David stopped in the middle of the alley and kicked at the mud with the heel of his boot. ‘It’s around here. The rain’s washed a lot of earth loose.’

Bryant peered out from under his hat to get his bearings. They were standing at the back of Kallie’s garden wall. David was crouching beside an oblong indented iron plate. ‘I don’t know how it opens.’

‘I do,’ said Bryant. ‘It needs a special instrument, shaped like a T, with a hook at one end.’ He thought back to Meera’s report about the disappearance of Tate. She had assured him that the tramp had too much difficulty walking to have run the length of the overgrown ginnel. He was small enough to hide inside a bush. Suppose he had hidden inside the drain until the coast was clear? It would mean that the device he’d used to open it must be hidden somewhere in the alley.

The misted rain, drifting in the half-light of the afternoon, obscured the interiors of the brambles that bordered the rear gardens. He pulled out his pocket torch and shone it around their feet. ‘David, I wonder if you might reach in there for me and take out that metal rod.’

The boy crouched low and pulled the rusted shaft free. Inserting it into the lid of the drain was a simple matter. One hard push levered the top off. Bryant’s torch illuminated a larger hole within, at least four feet square, accessible by an iron-rung ladder set into the wall. One side appeared to lead off to a tunnel.

‘I can get down there,’ said David. ‘Easy.’

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ Maggie warned. ‘I’m getting uncomfortable vibrations.’

‘What does that mean, exactly?’ asked Kirkpatrick. ‘You get vibrations every time a bus goes past.’

Maggie cocked her head on one side and thought for a moment. Rainwater ran in rivulets down her plastic hood. ‘I sense nothing evil, just sadness and loss. A great melancholy.’