The Water Room (18 page)

‘Hang on.’ His partner had paused on the landing to regain his breath.
This is embarrassing,
Bryant thought, fighting to catch the air that seared in his chest.
An investigation called off because the poor old bugger can’t handle five floors without resting on every landing.
He gripped the bannister once more and followed May up the next flight. He wasn’t about to admit defeat.

Because his mind was so active, May sometimes forgot that his partner’s body was failing. Arthur’s heart attack had occurred eight years ago, in the middle of an exhausting investigation. His doctor had warned him to cut back on his office hours, but he seemed to be spending more time than ever at work. The truth was, he hated the lack of structure that came with being alone. Having toiled with no holiday longer than a fortnight since he was eighteen, he found it impossible to break the habit of putting in punishing shifts.

‘Don’t worry, there’s no need for both of us to go up,’ said May gently. ‘If there’s anything special you want me to look for—’

‘Don’t patronize me, I just need a minute.’ They waited together, listening to the crackling rain. Something scurried on tiny feet across the floor above.

‘Wonderful, rats as well. I wouldn’t let you go up there alone, John.’ Bryant reached the top of the steps as the unhealthy warmth spread from his sternum to his shoulder. Sam Peltz, the unit’s doctor, had tried to put him on a treadmill once a week, but had given up with him after Bryant dropped pipe tobacco into the mechanism, jamming it.

Pressing a palm over his ribs, Bryant detected the muscles of his heart flexing with considerable violence. Strangely, the problem only occurred in overheated rooms. Placed in a cold wet environment, he developed the stamina of a salmon in a stream. The irony of it was that he always felt cold, and, being forced to wrap up, risked further health problems. The elderly, he decided, thought too much about illness. Weak health accompanied seniority, and debilitated further by being dwelt upon. Still, he was glad when the floor levelled out before them into a short corridor.

There were just two doors, neither locked. The first opened into a cluttered office that appeared, with the exception of an elderly computer, not to have been modernized since the 1950s.

‘Looks like Mr Ubeda is bankrupt,’ said May, shining his torch into the top drawer of a grey filing cabinet. ‘These are all unpaid bills, threatening letters, legal warnings. He’s just shoved them into folders, as if he doesn’t care.’

‘He’s relying on the outcome of his venture with Greenwood to bail him out.’

‘What’s in the other room?’

‘It’s just the toilet,’ called Bryant. ‘How do we get up to the shed?’

‘Hang on.’ May checked the landing ceiling. ‘It’s a pull-down ladder. There should be a pole around somewhere.’ He found it leaning in a corner, and hooked the end through the brass ring in the trapdoor above him. The hatch opened, and a set of steel steps telescoped down.

‘I won’t be following you up there with my legs, I’m afraid,’ said Bryant.

‘All right, I’ll report back.’

May climbed up and vanished. ‘My God,’ he called down. ‘You won’t believe this.’ Then an uncomfortable moment of silence.

‘What is it?’ asked Bryant impatiently.

‘Some kind of shrine. There are statues everywhere—all the same figure, but all different sizes. I wish you’d come up.’

‘I wouldn’t get back down.’

‘You’d make more of this than me. I recognize the image.’

‘Can you show me one?’

‘Here.’ May reappeared in the hole, smothered in chalk dust. He shifted the torchbeam on a foot-high plaster figure, broken at the neck. In his other hand he held the head of a jackal.

‘Well, that’s Anubis,’ said Bryant. ‘Ancient Egyptian god of the underworld, protector of the dead and the embalmers, guardian of the necropolis.’

‘There must be thirty or forty identical statues up here. They’re all broken, every single one of them.’

‘Let me see that one in your hand.’

May passed it down to his partner.

Bryant ran a finger across the figure’s snout and around its long pointed ears. ‘It’s a cheap replica of a genuine artefact,’ he sniffed dismissively. ‘The paintwork is far too vivid. Very few of the real article still have this kind of dense black colouring. What a pity. And they’re all broken? It’s easy to find replicas in one piece. How odd.’ He handed it back. ‘The Egyptians gave their god the head of a jackal because so many of the animals wandered about their graveyards. Priests would wear jackal masks during the mummification process. He’s inspired all kinds of worshippers. Perhaps our Mr Ubeda belongs to some kind of a cult.’

‘This is giving me the creeps,’ said May. ‘I don’t like dealing with obsessives, they’re unpredictable and dangerous. These things are on the floor, on shelves, everywhere. There are some on the walls, too, painted on papyruses. There’s even what looks like a mummified dog up here. Its head is severed from its body as well. What’s the point of collecting this sort of stuff if it’s damaged and worthless?’

Bryant had walked back into the office, and was trying the cupboard doors. ‘I think we’d better go before he returns,’ he called.

‘Why?’ asked May. ‘Is there a problem?’

‘Let’s just say I agree with you about obsessives.’ Bryant was looking at the gun on the cupboard shelf.

19

FEET OF CLAY

It had taken Elliot Copeland all day to get the front yard of the builders’ merchant broken up and loaded on to his truck. Beneath the concrete slabs, the earth was as wet and heavy as a Christmas pudding. He had found fragments of horse bone buried deep in the brown London clay, remnants from the time when the Green Street Races were held in Kentish Town. Dozens of delicately curved white pipes poked out of the mud like bird ribs; each lay discarded where it had been smoked. The soil held more secrets than anyone could know. The roads traced the jigsaw patterns of ancient settlements, following their hedgerows and tributaries, titled after their landlords and hunting grounds, their mistresses and battles. Nothing was as arbitrary as it appeared. Even the public houses were still imprisoned by their nomenclature, despite numerous name-changes and makeovers.

His arms and back ached. He badly needed another drink, but had finished the quart of scotch he kept in the cab. At least the men in the builders’ machine shop were decent local types, not like the street’s new arrivals, who were incapable of painting a wall without calling for help. Somewhere along the line he had got the reputation of being cheap, and now it had proven impossible to raise his prices without them all complaining. He could have done with a work-mate today, but couldn’t afford to pay one. Was this, he wondered, what his life had boiled down to? He’d left art college with big ideas, but unfortunately so had everyone else. After the time of the Hornsey riots, everyone had wanted to be a rebellious art student, but what all that rebellion and popularity meant was that there were no jobs at the other end.

He was forty-six, the divorced father of a child he was no longer allowed to visit, because his inarticulate anger arose in drunkenness. And all people saw when they looked at him was an overweight loser with a screwdriver and a paintbrush. He had thought this was all life could offer now, loss and disappointment—but you never knew what fate held in store, and a short while ago he had been given his chance. The trick was knowing when to act upon his knowledge—but soon, he was sure, people would look at him with new-found respect. He shouldn’t have talked to Jake Avery at the party, though. It didn’t pay for too many people to be involved. The drink always made him gabby. He backed the truck up to the muddy pit and clambered down from the cab, thinking about what to do.

Before he went to the police, he would have some fun with the yuppie scum. He was the longest-remaining resident in the street, had lived here when kids still played in the road and mothers sat in deckchairs on their front steps, when there had still been a corner pub and a shellfish stall, long before all the estate-agent boards had appeared and the dry-as-dust middle-class couples had transformed the street’s loud, crowded family rooms into havens of hushed elegance. Now the road was lined with pristine cars and the houses were inhabited by invisible people who came home late and sat in their gardens drinking wine in the summer, hankering for a kind of village life that only existed in their collective imagination, because community spirit, the real spirit of the streets, meant brawling and shouting and getting your hands dirty.

He’d been invited to their party out of politeness; no one had intended him to take the invitation seriously and actually turn up. But he had a secret that would surprise them all, and perhaps it was time to do something with it.

Kallie closed the windows in the front bedroom because the rain was soaking the carpet. It seemed impossible to keep water out of the house. She could hardly believe that Paul had gone. The drawers in his side of the flimsy flatpack wardrobe were empty. This morning at dawn he had thrown some pants and T-shirts into a brand-new nylon backpack, and had taken off. It did not matter who he had slept with in Manchester, only that he had done it at all. The thought allowed her to release him. If he was ever to go, let it be now.

He had tried to write her a note; she found several unfinished attempts in the kitchen bin. It struck her as odd that in order for a man to find himself, he first had to shake off the attentions of those who truly cared for him. She sat on the bed and listened to the rain in the gullies, wondering whether she had smothered too much, pushing him too quickly into setting up house. He had craved spontaneity and she had acted accordingly, but apparently it had been the wrong type of spontaneity.

She shopped and bought a paper, leaving the dripping umbrella to form a puddle on the bare boards in the hall. She painted a dresser pale-blue, and attempted to strip some of the maroon lincrusta wallpaper in the lounge, but cut her hand on the scraper. Finally, she went to see Heather.

Kallie had not been looking for a shoulder to cry on. Compassion ill-suited her neighbour. Heather was far too self-interested to express concern for anyone else’s misfortune. However, when she opened the door, she was an alarming sight. Heather was seething with misplaced energy; Kallie could almost see sparks arcing in aberrant neural connections.
What’s wrong with her?
she thought.
Is she ill?
She had expected to be faced with Heather’s patented brand of nervy bravado. Instead she found a borderline hysteric, as distracted as any Ophelia. Heather had flung back the door and walked away into the kitchen, where she paced beside the counter.

‘He’s planning to divorce me,’ she explained, ‘taking everything and giving it all to her. What is it about Paris that makes middle-aged men do this?’

‘Wait, back up,’ begged Kallie. ‘George is having an affair?’

‘He’s screwing some dark-eyed child in the City of Light, and he’ll spend all his money on her, the money that should be coming to me because
I’m
the one that sits and waits, the one who gets older waiting for him to come home, while she’s bought bracelets and dinners in discreet hotels.’

It was hardly earth-shattering news. George had never put his feet on the ground for fear of taking root in this dank city, and Heather clearly did not have the kind of attitude that could encourage him to stay.

‘He’ll leave me with nothing.’ Her pacing and turning seemed overwrought and theatrical.

‘But you’ll keep the house?’

‘Oh, the
house,
yes. This place, that’s just great, wonderful, a terrace of redbrick that comes with rising damp and a resale value slightly lower than we paid. I can’t wait to see how the rest of my life pans out based on this.’

Kallie cleared her throat. ‘Well, we seem to be in the same boat,’ she admitted. ‘Paul’s gone.’

Heather stopped in her tracks. For a moment, Kallie thought she might break into a smile. The misfortunes of friends had always cheered her up. ‘What do you mean, he’s gone?’

‘You know how he’s been since he lost his job. He never had the chance to travel. He started work the day after he left school. He wants to see the world, and I can’t go because I’ve bought this place and I’m still working.’

‘Is that how he convinced you? Christ, Kallie, how gullible can you be? That’s what men say when they feel the noose tightening. Thank God you didn’t marry him. How do you know he’s really gone travelling? For all you know he might have met someone else. It could be just a pack of lies.’

Kallie thought of the purple crescent on the back of Paul’s neck. It was so fresh that he probably hadn’t even spotted it himself. ‘No,’ she heard herself lie, ‘he needed a break. Actually, I encouraged him to go. He works hard and he’s never had any time to himself. We both thought it was a good idea.’

‘You’re lying.’ It was amazing how quickly her old friend had brightened. Suddenly she was almost enjoying herself. ‘Aren’t we a pair? Dumped in our prime, although I’m older, so you haven’t even reached yours. God, we need a drink.’ She yanked open the kitchen cupboards and slammed them. ‘There’s nothing here because his bloody wine club didn’t deliver. Now that he knows he’s going, I don’t suppose he’ll pay any of the bills.’

‘I have a bottle of gin,’ Kallie offered.

‘God no, mother’s ruin, we’ll end up sobbing on each other’s shoulders. This calls for some decent vodka. I’ll go to the offie.’ She strode through to the front room and yanked up the roller blind. ‘Christ, it’s coming down stair-rods out there.’

Kallie joined her and peered out. The other side of the street was half-hidden behind a canescent veil, and yet there was someone standing near the corner, working on the waste ground in front of the builders’ yard. ‘Who is that?’ she asked.

‘My glasses are upstairs, but it must be Elliot—that’s his truck.’ She watched for a minute in silence, suddenly subdued. ‘Wait, there’s a man with him. It looks like—’

Kallie wiped her palm through the condensation. She saw a figure, faint and dark, hunched behind the builder, covertly watching as he worked. ‘I have no idea who that is. Look, I can go to the off-licence. I’ve got an umbrella, it’ll only take me a few minutes.’