The Water Room (3 page)

When he tried to remove his hand, he was forced to raise the body, but the cushion slipped and Ruth rolled sideways.
Next time I’ll leave this to a medic,
he thought, trying to upright her, but before he had a chance to do so, she spat on him. Or rather, a significant quantity of water emptied from her mouth on to his overcoat.

Bryant wiped himself down, then gently prised her lips apart. Two gold teeth, no dental plate and a healthy tongue, but her throat appeared to be filled with a brownish liquid. As he moved his hand, it ran from the corner of her lower lip. He had assumed that the wetness of the rug had been caused by the incontinence of dying. Her clothes were dry. He checked on either side of the chair, then under it. There was no sign of a dropped glass, or any external water source. Passing to the bathroom cabinet, he found a toothbrush mug and placed it beneath her chin, collecting as much of the liquid as he could. He studied her mouth and nostrils for tell-tale marks left by fine pale foam, usually created by the mixture of water, air and mucus churned in a suffocating victim’s air passages. The wavering light made it hard to see clearly.

‘You’re going mad,’ he muttered to himself. ‘She dresses, she drowns, she sits down and dies, all in the comfort of her own home.’ He rose unsteadily to his feet, dreading the thought of having to warn Benjamin about a post-mortem.

Standing in the centre of the front room, he tried to see into Ruth Singh’s life. No conspicuous wealth, only simple comforts. A maroon Axminster rug, a cabinet of small brass ornaments, two lurid reproductions of Indian landscapes, some chintzy machine-coloured photographs of its imperial past, a bad Constable reproduction, a set of Wedgwood china that had never been used, pottery clowns, Princess Diana gift plates—a magpie collection of items from two cultures. Bryant vaguely recalled Benjamin telling him that his family had never been to India. Ruth Singh was two or three years older; perhaps she kept a trace-memory of her birth country alive through the pictures. It was important to feel settled at home. How had that comfort been disrupted?
Not a violent death,
he told himself,
but an unnatural one, all the same
.

Outside, summer died quickly, and the rising wind bore a dark fleet of rainclouds.

3

BUSINESS AS USUAL

By Monday afternoon it was as if the hiatus of the last month had never occurred. Ten crates unloading, nine boxes opened, eight phones ringing, seven staff complaining, six desks in various states of assembly, five damaged chairs, four cases pending, three workmen hammering, two computers crashing and a cat locked in a filing cabinet with no key. Arthur Bryant was sitting back at his desk, beaming amidst the chaos, looking for all the world as if he had never left.

‘It’s very simple, Janice,’ he explained to the confused and exasperated sergeant. ‘At the base of the unit’s new structure I’ve appointed two detective constables, an enormous, accident-prone innocent with a positively Homeric attitude to groundwork named Colin Bimsley, and I’ve found him a partner, DC Meera Mangeshkar, whose experiences in various south London hell-holes have apparently equipped her with the twin rapid-response mechanisms of cynicism and sarcasm. Blame John, he gave me their CVs. They’ll be occupying the room next door.’

‘Right, got that.’ Longbright was having to make notes with a blue eyeliner pencil because she was unable to locate any pens.

‘Now, above these two are another new pair, a vulpine young officer named Dan Banbury, who’s joining us as a hyphenate crime-scene manager and IT expert, and the nervous twit Giles Kershaw, with whom I’ve already had an argument this morning, who has been forced upon us as a replacement for our ancient coroner, Oswald Finch. He’ll be, I quote, our “forensic pathologist slash Social Sciences Liaison Officer”, whatever that means, although I shall insist on using Oswald for certain specialized duties. I can’t believe John still hasn’t turned up yet. He sat in on the interviews with me, he knows all about this.’

‘He’ll be here, don’t worry.’

‘The unit’s fifth member is of course your good self, supposedly retired but now freelance, whom I have agreed to take back on a renewable three-month contract which will allow you to continue working with your oldest and dearest friends, viz John and myself, the sixth and seventh members of the unit.’

‘Thank you, much appreciated,’ said Longbright with just a hint of sarcasm.

‘Naturally, you will continue to enjoy our inexcusable favouritism, not just because you remind us of Ava Gardner or because you make a proper cabbie’s mug of tea, but because you’re the only one capable of keeping this place in a semblance of order. The eighth and final member of this workforce will continue to be the terminally indecisive Raymond Land, our acid-stomached acting head, who has been forced to return for another season until he can effect a transfer to traffic control or a small-crimes division, preferably on a Caribbean island where the pressures will be fewer and the weather warmer. I make that six men and two women, employed to tackle the cases that no one else in London wants to touch with a stick. Not much of a team, I know, but we can draw on outside forces if necessary.’

Longbright knew what that meant: a motley collection of disbarred academics, crackpot historians, alternative therapists, necromancers, anarchists, spirit healers, nightclub doormen, psychics, clairvoyants and street mountebanks, many of whom consorted with known criminals, drafted in on a promise of cash in hand. They were unreliable, expensive and occasionally indispensable.

Kershaw stuck his head around the unpainted door-jamb. ‘The remains of two bodies were taken to Bayham Street Mortuary while you were out,’ he explained in a high, plummy voice that Bryant had grown to hate in less than an hour. ‘One non-caucasian male approximately forty-five to fifty years old, multiple stab wounds to the stomach, the other a caucasian pre-operative transsexual, male to female, approximately nineteen years of age, throat contusions indicative of strangulation, quite chatty in the ambulance but DOA at A&E. Camden Met wants nothing to do with them.’

‘They’re not our cases, surely?’ John May picked up on the conversation as he sauntered in with a folded newspaper under his arm.

‘Where on earth have you been?’ Bryant demanded to know.

Kershaw shrugged. ‘Right here.’

‘Not you. Him.’ Bryant pointed at his partner, who was unfolding the paper and scanning the arts pages as he slipped behind his desk.

‘Anyway, you’re supposed to knock before entering,’ Bryant told Kershaw testily.

‘Not possible, old chap, you haven’t got a door. Do you want to hear about this or not?’

‘I suppose so, and I’m Mr Bryant to you, chum. John, you remember Giles Kershaw, the forensic wallah you promoted for candidature in our happy circle? Does no one introduce themselves properly any more? The French permit themselves the extravagance of kissing one another, surely a simple English handshake is common decency. Where
have
you been?’

‘Personal business, tell you later,’ smiled May, which meant he had stayed over with a woman, a habit Bryant felt was ridiculous and probably dangerous at his age.

‘They were picked up at around five o’clock this morning in Camden Town, according to the duty sheet,’ explained Kershaw. ‘D’you ever wonder why there are so many murder cases involving transsexuals?’

‘No, why?’ asked Bryant, pulling out desk drawers and rummaging through them noisily.

‘Oh, I don’t know, I just wondered if you’d wondered.’

‘Visible victim status encourages domination and attracts sexual sadists, read your Krafft-Ebing, it’s not brain surgery. These ones were most likely victims of a drunken fight. North London Met is overloaded so they couldn’t wait for a chance to start palming us off with the extra, even though they’re no longer entitled to do so. I’m not working on common fatal assaults, it’s degrading. The key must be around here somewhere.’

‘What have you lost?’ May asked Longbright.

‘Mr Bryant’s rescued another cat.’ She rolled her thickly painted eyes. ‘He was taking it to the vet.’

‘We’ve got to get him free before he runs out of air.’ Bryant turned a drawer over the desk, cascading rubbish everywhere. ‘I’ve christened him Crippen, because we had that ginger tom named Lucan who disappeared after killing a bird.’

‘You’re not good with animals, Arthur. Look what happened to your parrot. That poor carpet-layer was distraught, hammering it flat in the underlay after you told him you couldn’t find your tobacco pouch. How on earth did the cat get shut in a filing cabinet?’

‘I thought he’d be safe there while I went out. I didn’t know the drawer was self-locking.’

‘Raymond’s still in the next room.’ Longbright pointed at the door. Raymond Land was allergic to cats. He had also tripped over Crippen’s litter tray and nearly fallen down the stairs, and had now begun to suspect that the others were hiding something.

‘If he starts sneezing I’ll tell him it’s the fresh paint,’ Bryant promised. He had discovered the tiny black and white stray dumped inside a bin-bag on Camden’s Chalcot Road at the weekend, and had brought it to work inside his jacket with the intention of overcoming its apprehensions about the cruelty of humans. Unfortunately, Crippen’s worst fears had now been confirmed. To add to the confusion, two men had arrived with a photocopier, and had started unpacking it in the middle of the floor, trapping everyone at the edges of the room, and now they were all getting wet paint on their clothes. From inside Bryant’s filing cabinet came a high feline whine.

‘Any tea going?’ asked John May, throwing his overcoat into a corner. ‘Did your doctor give you the all-clear after that crack on the nut?’

Bryant had sustained a head injury during the unit’s last investigation. ‘He made me read a couple of eye charts. I passed with flying colours.’

‘Really? You can’t usually see a hole in a ladder.’

‘I had crib sheets. See.’ Bryant held up miniature copies of the charts.

‘And you got away with it?’

‘No, he saw me looking up my sleeve and prescribed new reading glasses. Look.’ He donned the spectacles, his eyes swimming up like great blue moons.

‘My God, they make you look like Reginald Christie. Is that who I mean, the murderer who gassed his victims? Except you’re older, of course. Why is it so cold in here? What happened to summer? It’s going to pelt down any minute.’

‘We haven’t got any heaters yet, we can’t shut the windows because of the smell, and until this year summer in London only existed as a tentative concept. You should know, you’ve lived here for about a hundred years yourself.’ Bryant accepted a hot mug from Longbright, stirred it with the end of a paper-knife and passed it to his partner. ‘I’m afraid it’s bags until we can buy some decent stuff. The toilet doesn’t appear to have a door, we’re missing a couple of desks and part of a ceiling. Oh, and the electrics keep shorting out. It wasn’t me; I haven’t touched anything. It’s nearly half past three. Were you really all this time with a woman? You could have got so much done.’

‘Actually, I had a medical at lunchtime and was sent for a chest X-ray. Had to wait for ages. I tried calling you when I got out, but your mobile wasn’t answering.’

‘No, it wouldn’t. It got wet, so I tried to dry it out in Janice’s sandwich toaster. The toaster and the phone sort of—
melded
—into a single appliance, scientifically interesting as a new mechanical life-form but utterly useless for communication. Kershaw, you can bugger off now, there’s a chap, we’ll be fine.’

‘What do I tell Bayham Street?’ asked Kershaw with a faint air of desperation.

‘Tell them you’ll take a wander over with Mr Banbury after you’ve visited the crime scene, give them the kind of report they love—yards of statistics, no opinions. Not that you’ll find anything at the site after Camden’s gormless plods have trampled around in their size tens. And be careful near Finch, he bites.’

May looked up from his newspaper. ‘Do you know that’s the third mobile you’ve destroyed this year, not counting the one you lost when the unit blew up?’

‘Surely not. I quite fancy one of those video-phones. I’m surprised no one’s created a collective noun for them yet, or even any decent short-form generic terminology. I thought we were supposed to be an ingenious race, but I fear America has the edge on us when it comes to branding. Have we got any biscuits, Janice? Not Hobnobs, they get under my plate.’

The streets around Mornington Crescent station were quiet for a Monday afternoon. If you had been walking past, and had looked up at the arched first-floor windows above the Tube entrance, rebuilt in their original maroon tiles, you would have seen Arthur Bryant and John May in silhouette against the opaque grey glass beneath the station logo, Bryant seated under an ‘N’, May tilting his chair below the ‘S’, as sharply delineated as Balinese puppets.

‘Tell John about your old lady,’ Longbright suggested.

‘What old lady?’ asked May. ‘Have I missed something interesting?’

‘Do you remember a fellow called Benjamin Singh? Ah.’ Bryant found the keys and released a traumatized Crippen from his cabinet. A less appropriately named kitten was hard to visualize. ‘Expert on English occult literature and pagan mythology. I used him as a consultant a few times in the eighties. His sister died this morning, and he came here.’

There was a bang as DC Bimsley nearly went through the window with a box of stackable files. Everyone flinched except Bryant, whose deafness was highly selective.

‘He wanted her to be seen by someone he trusted, so I went round there and took a look.’ Bryant patted his pockets for a match. ‘She was in her late seventies. Body was in the basement on a very hard upright chair, and there was water in her throat. I’ve given Banbury the sample, and I’m waiting for a quick confirmation from the child Kershaw, but it would appear to have been a dry drowning.’

‘What’s a dry drowning?’ asked DC Bimsley, listening in.

‘No water in the lungs, death as a result of laryngospasm—constriction of the windpipe. Quite rare, but not unheard-of,’ May explained without thinking.