Christopher Fowler - The Water Room

Kershaw carefully unzipped the clear plastic bag on his bench. ‘Dan Banbury’s sorting out some anomalies in the crime-scene log, so he passed me Tate’s belongings. Nothing in the room survived, but from the look of it there wasn’t much beyond a few syrup tins. I nipped over to the hostel for a quick rummage, and found the lockers on the ground floor intact. I called to get permission to open them, but some health-and-safety jobsworth refused to give me the go-ahead without Dan present, so I got one of the firemen to accidentally drop his crowbar on it.’

‘Oh, I think Arthur is soon going to like you,’ smiled May. ‘His sense of civic responsibility is tempered with a similar impatience.’

‘Then I think he might be pleased with this.’ Kershaw pulled out a set of small cloth-bound books. ‘Tate’s sole possessions, according to the clerk. Very particular about them, his “special” books, he had an arrangement to leave them permanently in his locker-said he was worried that the water would get at them. He liked to check that they were safe every time he stayed over.’

‘Have you looked at them yet?’

‘I’ve only done an external examination. I should tell Dan-after all, he’s the crime-scene manager.’

‘Don’t worry, we don’t stand on formalities around here. May I?’

The first three blue cloth-bound volumes matched, and made up a somewhat random history of English painting. The edition had been published in 1978. ‘The printing is cheap,’ May told Kershaw. ‘Poor-quality paper, and half of the colour plates are out of register.’

At the back of each volume he found a photograph of the author, presumably in his late thirties, prematurely haggard in the way of so many young men who were children during wartime. The fourth book was a volume on the life and works of Stanley Spencer, published in 1987. ‘I need to show these to Arthur,’ he explained. ‘One of his regular contacts is an art teacher. I’ll bring them back.’

‘Think this stuff might be useful?’

‘It just makes me wonder; we assumed Tate got his nickname from the syrup tins. What if he didn’t? What if it was something to do with the Tate Gallery?’

‘So what?’ Kershaw packed away the rest of the material. ‘Forgive me, I’m still getting to grips with how you chaps work. You all seem to avoid the obvious routes. I mean, most killers are known to their victims. Shouldn’t you be out there interviewing friends and relatives, asking for witnesses?’

‘The interviews and witness appeals have been covered by Mangeshkar and Bimsley,’ May explained. ‘I think we’re far beyond pedestrian procedures now. You and Banbury have turned up nothing useful at any of the sites.’

‘Yes, sorry about that. I was sure we’d get something from Jake Avery. I mean, a man murdered in his own bedroom. According to Dan, it’s the room that generates more static than any other in a house because it’s occupied for half of every twenty-four-hour period, lots of different fibre-attracting surfaces and fabrics. But that’s part of the problem: there’s a surfeit of material from different sources. The wardrobe’s in the bedroom, so every item of clothing in the building has passed through it. I’m not saying that somewhere in amongst all that fibre residue there isn’t an alien skin flake, but we haven’t found it yet. Edmund Locard, the French forensic scientist, said that every contact leaves a trace. That may be, but reading them is the problem. We’ve got partial bootprints on the downstairs floor that don’t match any footwear found in the house, and that’s about it. We did a vacuum sweep from the carpet at the edge of the bed, but there was nothing of any size there. I’m trying to get a fibre selection from the bedroom on to a light microscope-no chance of getting body particles from Avery’s face near an SEM, as the only one in the area is in for repairs and there’s a horrendous waiting list. I’ve done the doors and window-ledges, and drawn a blank. What bothers me most, I think, is that Balaklava Street has become a blighted spot, what with murders, fires, missing bodies and drownings all within the space of a month, while you and Mr Bryant drift off down the investigation’s most obscure side-alleys at the slightest provocation.’

‘Is that how it looks to you?’ May asked.

‘It’s just that-well, people outside the unit keep asking me questions. They make fun of me. They don’t see what we’re hoping to achieve.’

‘You’ll get used to that,’ May promised. ‘Outsiders never understand how we work. They’re too busy following guidelines and checking results tables. Balaklava Street is far from being an especially blighted spot. There are now over a dozen Murder Miles in London.’

‘How does one qualify for status as a Murder Mile?’

‘You need six murders in the same road over a six-month period. Hackney, Kentish Town, Peckham and Brixton have qualified many times over. Arthur remembers Hackney as a town of wide empty streets and neat family houses bordered by marshlands. Now people throw rubbish from the balconies of tower blocks into crack alleys, and overdosed corpses lie in their apartments undiscovered until the council comes to redecorate. But. .’ May tapped his pen on the streetmap before him. ‘The events in Balaklava Street have a rarer quality: they’re premeditated. We think that whatever happened there began as an accident, then became a plan, and is now in a state of improvisation. When plans become extemporized, people make mistakes. But we can’t afford to wait for an error when lives are at risk.’

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘Arthur and I have been investigating this from separate angles. I think the only way we’ll find the answer now is to combine our strengths.’

‘You’ll have to be quick. Land’s bringing in something new tomorrow, and reckons he’s taking every other file out of the building. That means he’ll turn your findings over to the Met, and you’ll never get the case back.’

‘Believe me, I’m aware of that.’ May threw the last of the witness statements into a box and sealed it. ‘It’s not all that’s at stake. Arthur’s going through one of his periodic lapses of self-confidence. He says if he can’t sort this out in time, he doesn’t deserve to remain at the unit. This will be his final case.’

‘Come in, come in, mind the violins.’

A short fiftyish woman with a pageboy haircut and heavy breasts squeezed into a dusty black sweater beckoned Arthur Bryant into the narrow hall, every foot of which was lined with musical instruments. ‘My son repairs them. Since his workshop was sold and turned into apartments he’s had to carry on the business here. I’ll put the kettle on. It’s less crowded in the kitchen. That’s my territory.’

Bryant removed his trilby and looked for somewhere to hang it. He caught a glimpse of a frenetically wallpapered lounge filled with violas, cellos, catgut, rolls of plyboard and blocks of yellow resin.

Mrs Quinten pulled out a chair and cleared a space at the bleached oak table. This may have been her territory, but she had chosen to clutter it as much as every other part of the house. Over a dozen Victorian milk jugs filled with dried flowers added dust to the already asthma-inducing air. ‘We have goat’s milk. I hope that’s all right.’

‘Absolutely fine,’ said Bryant, already warming to his host. ‘My God, you keep an untidy house. You’re nearly as bad as me. I bet you know where everything is.’

‘Of course-please, call me Jackie-what’s the point of having a home where you don’t use every inch of space? You’re simply depriving others of room to live. I grow so many vegetables in my little garden that I’m able to take bagfuls down to the Holmes Road hostel during the summer. I understand they had a fire.’