Gay Longworth - The Unquiet Dead

Jessie sat in the surveillance room and watched it all live via a video link. She was tuned in and ready to go. A slightly stooped man with a thick moustache inserted a key from a large selection into the padlock that held the chains in place. He turned the key and pulled; the chain slithered to the ground like a boa constrictor dropping from a tree. The team entered in twos. Jessie watched as the video camera followed them in. The first room was a foyer complete with a wood-and-glass kiosk. One of the doors hung haphazardly from its rusting hinge. The floor was laid with intricate diamond-shaped tiles worked into a graphic design, the type you see in the entrances of elegant Victorian terrace housing. Peppermint. Cobalt. Burnt sienna. Black and white. The once majestic windows were coated in grime and protected by a thick wire mesh. The camera automatically adjusted to the reduction in light. They’d gone through the portal of a time machine and entered a long-forgotten era. Victorian bath houses, where the great unwashed came to bathe en masse. The team moved further into the building. The screen went fuzzy, then a new image came into focus.

‘Jesus Christ –’ Jessie heard Fry mutter – ‘it’s a bit fucking spooky.’ Jessie saw what he was looking at. The pool was enormous, a marble-tiled gaping wound in the ground, the swimming lanes neatly delineated by black tiles. What must once have been a majestic pool was now empty except for the green sludge that filled the deepest part of the deep end. The high glass-domed ceiling was mottled with moss and grime. Lines of empty spectator benches flanked each side of the drained pool; it looked like the whole structure was sitting dormant, waiting for people to return. Waiting for life.

Men in waders began to walk a slow line along the bottom of the pool until they reached the dark green water. On the count of three, they all took a step forward. Jessie grimaced as she watched the water level rise up their boots while they poked at the water with sticks. There was a shout. Jessie’s heart leapt. The line stopped. Someone dragged up a sodden, rotting piece of cloth. It was a blanket. There was a tremor of excitement. It was well known among the police that bodies often came wrapped in blankets. The search increased in intensity but they reached the end having found nothing more. Mark ordered them to retrace their steps. Still nothing. Jessie watched as the camera followed them to the second, smaller pool. This pool was in much worse condition. Jessie could hear the trickle of water before the camera turned towards the sound. Water was falling from the ceiling to the floor along the wall on the left-hand side. The building must have been leaking for some considerable time, for the tiled wall was coated in a slick of green slime. A similar puddle of brackish water had accumulated in the deepest part of the swimming pool. The men in their waders jumped down into the empty pool and walked to the water’s edge. The search began again.

Elsewhere the drug squad must have been having some success, because people, or shapes that resembled people, were being taken, dragged or carried out. There were ambulances waiting outside, along with specialist care workers who would deal with these sorry few. The camera ran its critical eye over them, searching for Anna Maria. They were Dickensian in their ghostliness: milk-white skin flecked with scabs and sores, stretched over malnourished features. None of them were Anna Maria. Half a mile away, Jessie shuddered. If few had the strength to walk, then none had it in them to summon the enormous amount of energy required to kill.

The team moved upwards floor by floor. There was one smallish circular room with a domed glass ceiling that became a temporary focus of attention. One of the glass panels had been smashed and was letting in the rain that had steadily begun to fall. Desperation had forced the addicts over the rooftops and through the glass panel. But not Anna Maria. Jessie was sure of it. There was one long room where many of the homeless people had been huddled together. The lino floor was badly soiled with human faeces, but what the camera zoomed in on was the rat’s droppings. Jessie could only imagine the smell. Moore had been right in one respect: drug addiction was a recurring problem.

There was a sense among the search team that the raid was over. They had been to the top of the building and found it empty. None of the addicts had had the energy to mount the extra flight of stairs; they had fallen on the floor that they’d arrived at. The general level of chat increased as the team made their way back down to the lobby, but silence fell when a call summoned them to the boiler room, the beating heart of Marshall Street Baths. Jessie wasn’t out of danger yet.

When the person holding the camera walked into the engine room, Jessie’s spirits rose. It was like returning to modern times. The lighting was bright, the tanks were new and painted in shiny red Hammerite, the flumes looked like concertinaed silver foil, while the network of water pipes resembled Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. It was immediately obvious that the water tanks had not been tampered with. It was a closed-loop water system and the bolts had not been removed since installation; the original paint still covered the joins. No one had used this scalding water to make evidence broil away.

Jessie was beginning to envisage the view from her new office. A good sunset was like a religion to her. In fact it was a religion. She believed in the cosmos. In the structure of the world around her. In what she could see and feel. The sea. The air. The stars. The moon. The sun. And watching it set gave her a feeling of peace; she felt united with the vastness of their universe on one hand and infinitesimally small on the other. It was another remedy for a bad day in CID. Having the high office would mean that she’d no longer need to make detours to the elevated section of the Westway in order to get a look at a mammoth red sun drop below West London’s skyline. Now she would have it for her delectation and delight at the end of every day.

‘There is another boiler room,’ said a voice over the radio. ‘The original one, built in 1910. They stopped using it in 1953, but you can still get down there.’ Jessie snapped out of her reverie. It was the man with the moustache. The man with the bunch of keys. He must be the caretaker, thought Jessie, back from his sickbed for this sickly spectacle. ‘It’s one floor below. I don’t go down there unless I absolutely have to.’

‘Why not?’ Jessie heard Mark Ward ask, but she didn’t hear an answer. Everybody else had; they had all gone quiet. Jessie followed the camera out of the brightly lit boiler room and through a set of double doors. Suddenly the screen was plunged into darkness.

‘Hang on,’ said a voice. ‘We need the generator for this bit.’ For a few quiet, dark moments everybody waited. Then a hiss, and a faint glow that increased until a struggling light filled the gloom. The low-ceilinged corridor in which the men stood looked like a concrete trench. Their boots echoed like hammers as they proceeded along it. Jessie leant forward to get a better look. A small knot of anxiety had tightened in her stomach. At the end of the corridor was a set of steep concrete steps leading down to a rusty steel door that swung on its hinges. The man with the moustache tutted. ‘It’s supposed to be locked,’ he said. Unaware, Jessie had put her hand over her mouth. The camera shook as it went unsteadily down the steps. No one was talking now. Someone pushed the door open. It was obviously heavy, because whoever was opening it was using two hands. The interior was pitch black.

‘Just a minute,’ said the disembodied voice of the caretaker. ‘The light switch is through here.’ Jessie heard the heavy sound of rattling chains and jangling keys. It was so deliberate that she wondered whether he was doing it for effect. If he was, it was working. Still no one spoke. There was no other sound except the familiar hiss of electricity.