Christopher Fowler - The Water Room

The flames stuck to treated wood and inflammable wall coverings until they combusted. Bimsley smelt it at once: Tate’s room, and indeed the entire corridor, had been splashed with white spirit. A plastic gallon drum was buckling and melding to the sisal hall carpet. The electrics popped as the circuits burned out. Oily smoke rolled across the floor in a poisonous tide.

Seven men from the second floor were able to make their way to the fire escape; but there were eight rooms, eight occupants. Bimsley kicked the doors wide and shouted out, but the fumes filled his lungs and drove him back, eyes streaming, chest on fire.

The detective constable acquitted himself bravely, and was taken to University College Hospital suffering from smoke inhalation and minor burns. The clerk and the fire brigade counted heads. The hose-drenched rooms were empty now.

The blackened eighth occupant, the only man not to leave the building alive, was covered and removed before bystanders could gain an understanding of what had happened.

‘You’re probably wondering why there are no cable-network vans parked in Balaklava Street,’ said Raymond Land with sinister cheerfulness, ‘no breaking news items on London Tonight, no journalists doorstepping the few residents who are still in the land of the living. Two reasons: most of the investigative reporters in the capital are busy trying to find links between footballers and underage call girls, and have so far failed to connect what appears to be a series of random deaths in a north London backstreet; and DCS Stanley Marsden, whom you may recall has the unenviable task of being your HMCO liaison officer, believes that such tragedies are the result of underpolicing by the People’s Republic of Camden, and that by leaving them to accumulate to epidemic proportions, he will be provided with ammunition for having certain thorn-in-the-side councillors removed and posted to even less salubrious areas.’

‘Why can’t he talk normally?’ whispered Bryant, who was doodling in an exercise book like a bored schoolboy. ‘Your chastened cuckold’s going to be all right, by the way. He’ll be in hospital for a while, but his secret’s safe. The shame will leave a bigger scar than the flying bricks.’

Longbright shot him a silencing look. Land spent his days justifying the unit’s expenditure in long, boring documents, and lived for the chance to belittle anyone who treated paperwork with disdain. No one was more disdainful than Bryant, who had once provided a report written in ink that rendered itself invisible when placed in the higher temperature of Land’s office.

‘I can’t hear a word you’re saying, I’ve gone deaf,’ said Bryant loudly. ‘I’ve been injured in the course of duty.’

‘Yes, I heard you got blown up again,’ snapped Land. ‘I trust you’re not going to make a habit of it. Do you want to see Doctor Peltz?’

‘No I don’t, thank you. He gets cramp writing out my prescriptions as it is. But I do think it would help speed things up if we had more resources at our disposal.’

‘You’re in no position to request a larger budget. Whatever else happens in this case, it will only ever be an irritating pimple on the nose of the face that is London’s crime problem. Right now the ground forces are out there trying to cope with the serious gunsters. Do you, in your rarefied little world up here, have any notion of the shit that’s been happening around you in the last three years? Do you have any idea how many armed gangs the Met are coping with right now? I have a partial list here for your edification, Mr Bryant. Our boys are currently tackling the Lock City Crew and the Much Love Crew in Harlesden-six deaths and around a hundred non-fatal shootings so far this year-the Holy Smokes, Tooti Nung, Bhatts and Kanaks over in Southall, the Drummond Street Boys are looking to expand in Camden, the Snakeheads, 14K and Wo Shing Wo are chopping each other up in Soho, you’ve got Spanglers and Fireblades in Tottenham, Brick Lane Massive, A-Team up in Islington, Stepney and Hackney Posses, Bengal Tigers, Kingsland Crew, Ghetto Boys, East Boys, Firehouse Posse and Cartel Crew in Brixton, maybe two dozen other named-that is, official-gangs. For every ethnic group that’s 99 per cent decent and just wants a quiet life, we have 1 per cent that’s pure bleeding evil. Kurds and Turks in Green Lanes smuggling heroin, Jamaicans doing the same in Ladbroke Grove, King’s Cross Albanians running 80 per cent of the city’s prostitutes, the Hunts nicking posh cars in Canning Town, the Brindels and Arifs shooting each other up in Bermondsey, Peckham Boys facing off against their own junior arm in Lewisham, and you can’t just let ’em sort each other out because innocent people get caught in the crossfire. So let’s keep your situation in perspective, shall we? I’m right in thinking, am I not, that you’ve made no advance in the single case you are supposed to be sorting out before Monday?’

‘You only just agreed that there is a case,’ May complained, chastened.

‘That’s because no one had bothered to point out the connection between their deaths.’

‘What connection?’ asked Bryant.

‘Four instances of suffocation, of course,’ Land all but shouted. ‘A common repeat method. Stone me, it’s not rocket science.’

‘Hardly a repeat method.’ Bryant waved the idea aside. ‘I mean, all the deaths have involved blockage of the lungs, but that’s not unusual. Life-traumas have to affect either the lungs, brain or heart. A drowning, a burial, an asphyxiation and now arson, it’s more a matter-Oh, Raymond, Raymond, you’re a genius!’ Bryant’s eyes widened excitedly. ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’

‘Think of what?’ asked Land, mystified.

‘Not now, there’s a chap-come back later once we’ve had a chance to go over this.’ Bryant waved him from the room. ‘I’m sorry we’re not getting into machine-gun battles with your posses, but perhaps we can make an advancement here after all. Go on, off you go.’

‘I will not be shooed out of my own unit,’ warned Land lamely.

‘Don’t be ridiculous, it’s not your unit, any more than Number Ten Downing Street belongs to the Prime Minister. I swear to you this will be sorted out in the next twenty-four hours, in time for your new Monday caseload. Now do us all a favour and bugger off.’

‘You’re really going too far, Arthur.’ Land trudged away as Bryant booted the door shut.

‘I’m getting senile, John, my synaptic responses aren’t what they used to be. I should have spotted this earlier.’

‘What?’

‘It’s blindingly obvious now. The four methods of death correspond to the four elements. Ruth Singh-water. Elliot Copeland-earth. Jake Avery-air. Tate-fire.’

‘Now wait a minute, Arthur, don’t go running off-’

‘Are we dealing with something pagan and elemental? London has always had strong connections with the four elements, you know. Look at the Ministry of Defence on Horseguards Avenue, framed by the elements: two stone naked ladies, symbols of earth and water. There were going to be two more statues, but fire and air were lost in spending cutbacks. More alarmingly, does that mean it’s now at an end? If the killer has successfully concluded his business, how will we ever discover the truth? Successful murderers know when to stop, John. Suppose he’s achieved his aim without us ever getting on the right track? We need some confirmation from old miseryguts. We have to go and see Finch.’

‘The only good thing about still having to work with you, Arthur,’ said Oswald Finch, carefully folding away something that looked like a body part in tin foil, but was in fact a liver-and-onion sandwich, ‘is that you’re now so fantastically old, you no longer have the energy to play disgusting practical jokes on me.’ Finch had been the butt of Bryant’s amusing cruelties for nearly half a century, and had thought-wrongly, as it turned out-that semi-retirement would protect him. Only last month, a whoopee cushion attached to a cadaver drawer had nearly given him a heart attack.