The Water Room (21 page)

‘Well, thanks for your time,’ said May. ‘I’ll call again if I need your help.’ He stopped in the doorway. ‘Have you met anyone else in the street?’

The brothers conferred as jets of steam blasted around them. ‘The Caribbean bloke in the sharp suits,’ Bondini One decided. ‘He’s been coming around a fair bit.’

‘What for?’

‘He’s been buying wood, doing some shelves. And he had some glass cut.’

‘Can you remember when he last came around?’

‘Day before yesterday, wannit?’ More fraternal conferring took place. ‘Yeah, Tuesday.’

‘Anyone else apart from that?’ May breathed the scent of freshly sawn timber. It reminded him of the garden shed where his father had worked before the War.

The brothers exchanged glances, each waiting for the other to speak first. ‘There’s a bloke called Aaron—Jewish boy,’ said Bondini Two finally. ‘He lives down the street.’

Jake Avery’s partner,
May recalled. ‘Is he buying wood as well?’

‘Nah.’

‘Then what?’ There was something here that May wasn’t picking up on. He looked back at the machine shop and suddenly realized. ‘He’s got a friend here?’

‘Yeah, he comes round to see Marshall sometimes. Oi, Marshall.’ Bondini Two clearly did not approve.

May studied the muscular young man who looked up at the mention of his name.
So,
he thought,
the water gets a little murkier.
His mobile rang.

‘John, I think you should come back as soon as possible,’ said Bryant. ‘Your friend Mr Greenwood’s on the move again.’

22

DREAMS OF DROWNING

‘I hate getting into this vehicle with you,’ admitted May, eyeing the rusted yellow Mini Cooper with alarm. ‘I don’t know why you had to get rid of your old Rover.’

‘It was starting to steer itself,’ said Bryant mysteriously. ‘The man in the garage said he’d never had a car fail every single item on its MOT before. He was quite excited. I had to go back to Victor here.’ The Mini had been purchased at the height of flower power, and still bore a painted chain of vermilion daisies around its roof. Its noxious colour-scheme was enough to make it stand out from the other vehicles in the police car park at Mornington Crescent. Bryant unwedged the driver’s door with the pronged end of a cheese-knife, which he kept about him for the purpose.

‘That’s an offensive weapon, you know.’

‘What am I going to do with it?’ asked Bryant. ‘Threaten someone with a slice of dolcelatte?’ He held open the car door. ‘Come on, it’s quite safe.’

‘No thanks. You nearly killed us the other day, going around Vauxhall roundabout.’

‘They’d changed the one-way system without telling anyone.’

‘I seem to recall that you were on the pavement.’

‘Sometimes it’s hard to tell where the pavement begins these days.’

‘It’s usually the bit with the shoppers on. No, Arthur. Today we’re taking my car.’ May bipped his graphite-sleek BMW.

‘Wonderful, now we’ll look like Camden drug-dealers. I didn’t think you ever used your car.’

‘Well, I am today. And you’re not smoking that inside my vehicle.’ He pulled the unlit pipe from Bryant’s mouth and reinserted it into his jacket. ‘Where are we going this time?’

‘Beverly Brook.’ Bryant made a theatrical fuss about getting himself settled in the passenger seat.

‘Wasn’t she a forties singer?’

‘It’s another underground river. Runs from Cheam and Richmond to Barnes, goes through Raynes Park and around the edge of Wimbledon Common.’

‘That’s miles away.’

‘Spoken like a true townie.’

The detectives hardly ever left London. May’s under-furnished modern flat in St John’s Wood had the melancholy air of an airport at midnight. Only his computer room showed signs of habitation. In this respect, he lived like a teenager.

After the tumult of the city, Raynes Park seemed not so much depopulated as derelict. The neighbourhood appeared to have been stunned into silence, as if someone had thrown a bucket of dirty water over it. There were only becalmed avenues of redbrick houses, graffiti-covered shops and mangy green verges.

They hadn’t intended to drive out this far, but Bryant had misread the road signs. ‘Someone’s been busy with their lawn-mower,’ he observed. ‘Look at these gardens. There aren’t any neat box hedges like this near me. All we have are scabby old plane trees with plastic bags in their upper branches and front yards full of McDonald’s containers.’

‘You’ve never owned a garden.’

‘My mother had one in Bethnal Green. We used to keep chickens in the Anderson shelter. We had nasturtiums and a tortoise. That was a proper garden, a place where your dad could take his motorbike to bits. This is different.’

Bryant was right. Even the air felt thinner; for a start, it wasn’t vibrating with fluorocarbons. At Wimbledon they found themselves surrounded by jeeps, 4x4s and truck-sized people-carriers, vehicles taken on school runs by high-income nesting families who never travelled further than Tesco or a Devonshire bolthole. Neighbourhood Watch stickers in front windows, no street life away from the superstore, nothing but the odd dog-walker, invariably an elderly lady in a Liquorice-Allsort hat and matching gloves.

‘Longbright says people who spend their whole lives in the suburbs have no social graces because they never talk to strangers,’ Bryant pointed out.

‘That’s a bit harsh.’

‘I don’t know. The Balaklava Street residents clearly have trouble talking to me.’

‘Arthur,
everyone
has trouble talking to you. You scare them.’

‘Rubbish. I’m much more charming these days. I hardly ever get annoyed with the officers Stanley assigns to us, even slack-jawed drooling neanderthals like Bimsley.’

Detective Chief Superintendent Stanley Marsden acted as a liaison officer between the detectives and the government. He was meant to operate with impartiality, but the Home Office paid his salary. He was known to play billiards with Raymond Land, but he also attended Arsenal matches with Sergeant Carfax, an astonishingly unpleasant Met officer who had been passed over for promotion four times, and who had decided to blame Bryant for his failure to rise through the ranks. There was still some bad feeling about the special status accorded to the PCU, but most situations were calmed by May’s tact and inexhaustible patience. Even his enemies liked him. Bryant, on the other hand, had only to raise a telephone receiver to upset everyone within hearing distance.

Bryant map-read under sufferance because he said it hurt his eyes, and they had to keep stopping while May checked their coordinates.

‘I’ve been rewriting your notes.’ Bryant dug out a small book bound in orange Venetian leather and passed it to his partner. ‘I thought if we have to submit something to Raymond, it should at least be entertaining.’

May waited until they reached red traffic lights, then examined the pages with impatience. ‘You can’t rewrite these. They’re witness statements, not tone poems.’ He shot Bryant a look of irritation.

‘I just added a few impressions.’

‘We’ve all seen your impressions, thank you.’

‘I was just thinking about Balaklava Street. First the old lady drowns, then a man is buried alive. There’s an assonance, isn’t there?’

‘There may be assonance, Arthur, but there’s no motive. Nothing was stolen from either victim. There are unmotivated deaths in every borough, but when two occur in the same street within the same month, I’m tempted to find a causal link. There’s a lot of drug-related street crime in the area, but nothing like this. I’d be willing to swallow accidental deaths if I could understand how they happened. What do we really have? In the case of Elliot Copeland we’ve a witness and a suspect, but neither are much use beyond placing Randall Ayson at the site. I think the Allen woman actually saw Copeland die but didn’t do anything to help, and she’s too ashamed to admit so. It was left to her friend to discover the body a few minutes later, when she turned back into the street.’

‘Perhaps you should talk to the neighbours again. I can’t help thinking you’ve missed something.’

‘Where are we now, Arthur?’

‘Barnes Common. Nearly there.’

‘Why did we go all the way out to Raynes Park?’

‘Don’t ask me. You’re driving.’

‘But you’re map-reading. Give me that.’ May took the A-Z. ‘This was printed in 1958. You don’t have to keep everything for ever, you know.’

‘It’s nice to own old things. Better than living in an apartment that looks like a car showroom.’ They barely realized they were bickering, but at least the habit provided a form of natural evolution for their opinions.

The BMW purred to a stop beside the river. On the page, May’s finger traced the outlet of the brook to the river’s edge. He looked out of the window. A low concrete flood-wall had been installed along the river road. ‘Well, this looks like the spot, but where’s Greenwood?’

‘Over there.’ Bryant pointed toward the black Jaguar parked beside a low house with boarded-over windows. ‘That’s Jackson Ubeda’s car.’ The building was a light industrial unit, an unadorned Victorian box of the type that existed in swathes across the city.

They did not have long to wait. After fifteen minutes, Ubeda appeared in the doorway of the building, followed by Greenwood. Inside the entrance, May could just make out some kind of pumping equipment. Fat flexible pipes lolled across the floor. ‘What on earth are they up to?’ he wondered aloud.

‘Perhaps they’re trying to drain the brook,’ suggested Bryant.

‘But this is the fourth underground river they’ve visited. They can’t be trying to drain the entire system. What do we do?’

‘You go and attach your electronic gizmo, and we wait.’ Bryant pushed himself down in the passenger seat, his hat sliding forward to meet his collar, so that he seemed almost to disappear. ‘I know it’s foolish, but I had this image of Ruth’s basement flooding, drowning her and suddenly emptying out again. Of course, nothing was wet when we got there, but the idea still troubles me. Images of water are the images of dreams. To dream of a lake is suggestive of a mind at peace with itself. To dream of a rough sea, or drowning, indicates psychological disturbance. According to her brother, Ruth had been disturbed by racist messages, all of which he destroyed. Suppose she discovered a bizarre way to take her own life?’

Bryant often did this, connecting ideas that took him beyond rational thought. For him, past and present, fact and fantasy were melded together in unfathomable ways, but occasionally connections could be found by following overgrown paths. May was used to dealing with his partner’s disordered synaptic responses, but to other detectives it was a little like discovering that witchcraft was still in use.

May relied on his own form of sorcery, in the form of devices passed on to him by a Met R&D team who allowed him to trial-test their technology before it was approved for official use. Nothing in his arsenal could prevent the academic from succumbing to temptation, but a tiny Bluetooth receiver attached to their quarry’s vehicle would at least pick up some passing conversation. May waited until the pair had re-entered the factory, then made his way over to the car while his partner kept watch. Half an hour later, they began to pick up dialogue.

‘I think it’s time for a talk with Mr Ubeda,’ said Bryant shortly.

‘You think we should go and see him?’

‘No, I think Longbright should. A middle-aged man driving a Jaguar will respond more willingly to an attractive woman. Hello, Janice, is that you?’ Bryant had a habit of shouting when he used a mobile. ‘You don’t mind dolling yourself up and pumping someone for information, do you? Well, tonight if possible, because we know where he’s going to be. Just get a chap drunk and flirt a bit, could you do that?’

‘It’s sexism,’ Longbright complained, ‘and probably counts as entrapment.’

‘Rubbish, you never mention sexism when a man takes you out for dinner, do you? You go on about empowerment, but when the bill arrives you suddenly discover your femininity.’

‘I very much resent that. I’ve never been in favour of equal opportunities.’

‘No?’

‘Of course not. I’ve always thought women should be in charge.’

‘So you’ll do it?’

There was a deep sigh on the line. ‘Do I get a clothing allowance?’

‘All right, but don’t go mad.’

‘Where’s he going to be?’

Bryant checked his notes. ‘A lap-dancing club in Tottenham Court Road.’

The first postcard had arrived, franked in Amsterdam. Inevitably, it pictured a hump-backed bridge above a toad-green canal. On the back: ‘First stop Holland, heading to Istanbul at the end of the week. I’m doing this for both our sakes. I hope you’ll be there when I come back. You can reach me via my hotmail address. Love, Paul.’ It felt oddly impersonal, not his style at all. Even the handwriting looked different. She checked that the paint was dry on the mantelpiece, and placed the card there, wondering how many would accrue, how far apart the spaces between them would grow, how long it would be before he stopped writing altogether.

The street was ethereal with rain again. According to the TV weathergirl it was shaping up to be the wettest autumn on record. The Thames barrier had been operated a record number of times in the past week. At least Kallie was working—a press shoot for mobile phones, another for floor cleaner. She noticed that her image was shifting from ‘girl-next-door’ types to more maternal roles, and decided to have her hair cut. It wasn’t hard keeping herself busy between jobs. The house demanded attention. She was teaching herself electrical repair, plumbing and decoration, but knew she would have to call someone in about the split roof tiles. The first and ground floors were now half-painted in cheerful colours that drew light into the rooms, but the basement and rear had yet to be started. Under the stairs she had found a cardboard box filled with items belonging to Ruth Singh, but now that her brother had moved, there was no one to send them to.

Kallie went down to the kitchen and filled a kettle.

Heather had become even more distracted and tense since the night of Elliot Copeland’s death. Her failure to act was clearly a source of discomfort; could she have discovered a conscience? Kallie wanted to tell her not to worry, that it shouldn’t stand in the way of their friendship. The sight of the buried man had not disturbed her sleep. She was not given to imagination, and had seen death before: her father, a car accident, a dying friend. Heather was more highly strung, and responded to the darkening atmosphere around her. George’s decision to leave had made matters much worse. Heather was keen to find parallels in the behaviour of both their partners, but Kallie wasn’t ready for the kind of sisterhood session that involved sitting around complaining about male hormones. Perhaps it would be best to allow some space between them for a while.