The Water Room (40 page)

‘Let me see the map again.’ Bryant held it beneath his torch.

‘I can hear something,’ warned Bimsley, putting his ear as close as he dared to the wall. ‘It doesn’t sound good.’

They shone their torches back to see the first of the great steel plates grinding across on its arc as the Fleet redirected itself back to local channels. The group pushed on and down as the water started to deepen. ‘It’s probably refilling from the highest gate first,’ warned May. ‘I doubt any one gate could handle the full amount of water, so the switch-back will be staggered with locks, but the effect will still be like flushing a cistern. The water has to maintain a momentum in order to reach the river. We really have to find a way out of here.’

‘You can hear it coming,’ called Bimsley, an air of panic creeping into his voice.

‘The sound is probably magnified,’ said Bryant cheerfully. ‘It’s echoing down the entire length of the shaft. According to the map there’s a drainage shaft down here on the left.’

They found themselves in another dead end filled with the detritus of the past thirty years. As they pushed through the rubbish, the bloated corpse of a cat swirled by.

‘Sorry,’ Bryant apologized, squinting at the plan. ‘Now a right turn—it’s hard to read the scale of this thing. It should be right here in front of us.’

‘There’s your shaft,’ said May, reaching a halt. ‘Somehow I don’t think we’re going to make it out of here.’

‘Why do you say that?’ asked Bryant.

May shone his torch up to the roof, illuminating the chimney to the surface, more than thirty feet above their heads. ‘The ladder is missing. There’s no way of reaching the drain without it. And we can’t go back.’

Bimsley pinched his frozen nose and tried to think. ‘There were three corridors at the last junction. We know that two are dead ends, so let’s go back to the first one.’

‘Admirable idea, Bimsley.’ Bryant struck out through knee-deep scum. ‘The water’s much warmer than I thought it would be. I think it’s coming from a heated source—dishwashers and washing machines, perhaps. There’s a distinctly soapy smell now.’

‘Arthur, I think we should concentrate on the problem at hand.’ May towed his partner back until they reached the junction. They turned into the only remaining tunnel as the rumble of water rose to a roar behind them. They had gone less than a hundred yards when the corridor narrowed sharply and twisted off.

‘Fingers crossed,’ called May, wading ahead. ‘If this doesn’t lead out, we won’t be going home tonight.’

He was almost frightened to raise the torch.

‘Well?’ called Bryant.

Bimsley followed the beam across the now thigh-deep water. The tunnel appeared to open out to a much larger space beyond, but there was no way of reaching it: a matrix of scabbed iron bars blocked the way ahead. May slammed his fist against the metal as he realized the impossibility of moving it.

‘There’s a grille across the outlet,’ he called back.

‘Can you open it?’

‘I suppose there might be a handle, but it’s not on this side.’

‘Then that’s that.’ Bryant arrived beside them. ‘This is my fault. I made you come down here.’

The tunnel began to vibrate with the subway-train rush of water arriving from the upper Fleet tunnel.

May shone his torch back toward the source of the noise. They watched in horror as a great wave of water, its virescent crest touching the roof of the tunnel, swept down toward them.

48

ST PANCRAS BASIN BLUES

Bryant was the first to fall backwards because he had been pressed against the grille. Bimsley and May followed him as the bars behind them slammed up into the stone ceiling, flushing flat into the brickwork. As the water hit, the trio found themselves washed across the end of the tunnel and over a great latticework grating as the river flushed itself away into the ground.

‘What a wonderful piece of draughtsmanship,’ enthused Bryant, rolling to his feet, half-drowned. ‘A simple cantilever.’

‘Is everybody all right?’ asked May.

‘I think I swallowed something disgusting,’ coughed Bimsley.

They slowly rose and looked about. Their torches had been lost in the river’s diverted path, but now there was light from another source. They found themselves in an immense arched cathedral of smoothly varnished brown tiles.

‘My God, it looks like a mirror image of the King’s Cross and St Pancras railway arches,’ Bryant exclaimed, pulling a plastic Sainsbury’s bag from his leg and wiping himself down with it. ‘I suppose it would have been built at the same time.’ The vaulted peak of the hall was lost in Stygian gloom. ‘St Pancras Basin.’

Pigeons living in the high iron rafters dropped down through the hall, their wings fluttering like the ruffled pages of old books.

‘Doesn’t this section get filled as the system switches back?’ asked Bimsley.

‘No, it’s very clever—the bars around the edges of the floor act as a gigantic drain, so it stays dry. No wonder they picked this spot to build the Channel Tunnel terminal—half the underground work is already done for them. Ah, Mr Tate, or should I say Mr Kingdom—you are Gilbert Kingdom’s son, aren’t you? Perhaps you can explain why it was so important to lead us here.’

The others turned to find their quarry seated on a pile of sacks, eating a tuna sandwich from a Tupperware tub. He appeared to be expecting them.

‘I wanted to show you this,’ he said simply, raising his hand and indicating the basin.

Bryant realized now that what he had thought was a deserted underground hall was in fact populated. Wrapped in blankets and brown cardboard, the residents blended invisibly with the shadowed walls, but the noise of the re-channelled water had stirred them, and people were sitting up, standing, stretching, stamping the circulation back into their limbs.

‘Bloody hell,’ said Bimsley. ‘Where did they come from?’

‘Good question,’ Bryant replied. ‘More to the point, I think, is where they go from here.’

‘The basin is used by anyone seeking refuge—people who have no homes, no identities, no lives,’ said Kingdom. ‘During the War, deserters hid in the St Pancras Basin. I first came here with my father thirty years ago. It was safe and dry. This time, when the rains arrived, the walls began dripping dirty water. Bad chemicals washing in from above. The basin’s run-off drains are blocked with rubble from the terminal construction overhead. They’ve become stagnant. People are getting sick. Pneumonia, stomach bugs and worse.’

‘Why not take the risk and head above ground?’ asked Bryant.

‘The police—the other police, the ones in uniforms—are waiting for us above. Everyone said you were a good man, and would help. I wanted to ask you when we met at the hostel, but then the man in the next room—’

‘—set fire to the place,’ said Bryant, ‘and you knew we would blame you. Are you surprised? There was inflammable spirit everywhere.’

‘He started throwing it all around the floor. A crazy man who thought he was being persecuted, thought the police were out to get him. He looked out of the window and saw your constable coming in. What could I do? I seized the chance to get away. No one else could help these people.’

He watched them for a moment, thinking. ‘I remember the last time the tunnel flooded and opened a clear path straight through to the basin. I knew you were investigating the street that passed right above the river channel. The basin exit was being watched, so there was no other way for you to get here. I needed you to follow me.’

‘Look, I’m frozen and wet, I’ve been poisoned with half the toilet waste of north London, I’ve probably swallowed parts of a rancid cat, and I still don’t understand what any of this has to do with the case,’ complained Bimsley. ‘Am I completely stupid?’

‘No, Colin, not completely.’ Bryant looked at the crippled son of the Water House’s creator. ‘I think you’ll find it’s about the difference between a house and a home,’ he said finally.

49

MR BRYANT EXPLAINS IT ALL FOR YOU

Longbright insisted on driving her complaining superiors to UCH for a set of inoculations, releasing them on the condition that they went straight home to bed. They didn’t, of course; none of them did. The offices above Mornington Crescent were quiet now. Only one room was illuminated. It had just turned midnight, heading toward the Monday morning of the unit’s fresh start, and the heating had gone off. Kallie was with them, wrapped in a moth-eaten fun-fur that had belonged to Longbright’s mother.

‘If you’re going to light that thing, open a window,’ warned May.

‘I can’t, the rain has swollen the wood.’ Bryant sucked at his pipe, releasing a plume of aromatic smoke. He produced his flask and poured a measure of crimson syrup into a glass. ‘Would anyone like a cherry brandy?’

‘No wonder your teeth fell out.’ May served beers to the group. ‘I take it Heather Allen’s guilt didn’t surprise you.’

‘Well, of course not. Even when it’s the person you least suspect, you still sort of suspect them because they’re the least suspicious. Female killers are rare, but when one comes along she can be more calculating and dangerous than any man. Heather Allen has been a very angry woman for a long time. I suppose she had a lot to be angry about. I take it you understand everything now.’

‘No,’ admitted May. ‘I’m with Bimsley on that one.’

‘Then I shall endeavour to explain, now that Kallie here has provided some of the missing pieces. I’ll rather enjoy making my case report this time, because the answer came from tracing the confluence of three sources, rather like following tributaries back to a river. The gaps can be filled in with a little guesswork, but I’ll wager you won’t find the truth far different.’ He smiled, displaying his incongruous dentures.

‘To untangle this, we have to go back more than thirty years, to Gilbert Kingdom, an unappreciated artist who manages to sell just two paintings in a lifetime. The nation has survived a terrible depression, only to be plunged into another World War; now that a painfully rationed peace has been won, people find they have no taste for art, especially the kind of peculiar mythologies Kingdom likes to paint. You see, Kingdom believes that the salvation of the world lies in Christians renouncing their faith in order to become Pagans. He’s a man born out of his time. Luckily he and his son are photographed for the book in Peregrine Summerfield’s possession, otherwise we would never have identified him. So, the artist’s wife has run off, leaving him with a young boy to support. When the terrace is repaired after the bombing raids, a property developer moves in to renovate several of the houses, and Kingdom—perhaps because they’ve been friends during the War—persuades the developer to let him paint murals. He plans four, directly based upon the physiology and mythology of the area, which still has strong connections with its past.’

‘You think he saw the map?’ asked Longbright, emptying her beer into a pint mug.

‘He certainly knows of it, or discovers the area’s history in local books. He realizes that the sites fit with his personal obsessions. A House of Conflagration—a monastery that defied the Catholic Church in its thinking and was burned down for its heresies. A House of Foul Earth—a burial site for plague victims. A House of Poisoned Air—on a hill too close to a tanning mill, where people become sick. A House Cursed by Water—which sounds like a property that floods every few years, don’t you think? Gilbert Kingdom looks at the street, and chooses four houses on the approximate sites of their original histories, because each house fortuitously represents one of the four elements.’

‘So it gives him a grand artistic theme,’ said May. ‘A personal endeavour.’

‘Precisely. They are to be his crowning achievement, and, more importantly, will raise the value of the properties at a relatively small expense to the developer. It seems to be a wonderful plan; art and commerce combined. He will provide for his son, he will create permanent monuments to his beliefs, and he will reap rewards deserving of a great artist. But like so many wonderful plans, there’s a flaw.’

‘The neighbourhood fails to go up in value,’ Longbright pointed out.

‘Unfortunately its connections with its past are strong—too strong. It remains a place of lawlessness and trouble. Nobody wants to live there, let alone pay extra for having built-in artworks of an un-Christian nature. The government is busy trying to rebuild the country—no one has time for art! The developer is bankrupted, and the artist, who has been living rent-free in one of the properties and has taken four long years to finish the work, is thrown out into the street with his son, where he dies a pathetic, ignominious death at the hands of local ruffians. Life imitates art, and drowning proves a fitting end.’

‘The boy is taken into care—’ added May.

‘Exactly. He’s in and out of foster homes, but he never forgets what happened to his father. He holds down a job at the Tate Gallery for a while, just to be near one of Gilbert’s two paintings, then loses his position after causing a fuss when the paintings are sold. He has no money, and therefore no voice in the world. He is seen by all, but becomes invisible.’

‘What a sad life.’ Kallie pulled the coat tighter around herself, settling into her seat as Bryant rose and stalked the room, relishing his chance to marshal the facts.

‘Now we move on. Time passes. The area changes. The yuppies arrive. Among them is Heather Allen, the original material girl. She thinks she’s going to get everything she wants from life, but life lets her down. First her husband’s business collapses, then he leaves her for someone younger. Terrified by the thought of her failure, and concerned with outward appearances, she covers up the fact that she is now broke and alone. She does this by denying her divorce, and pretending against hope that everything is fine. I think you’ll find that the man who came to her house—the one Kallie saw from her window—wasn’t her husband at all. He’s probably an old family friend from whom she’s trying to borrow money, or her finance manager coming for a not-so-friendly chat. Heather Allen has a good brain, but even she can’t put her life right. She’s eaten up with bitterness over the way things have turned out, but she’ll make the best of it.’

‘She told me all she had left was the house, which she really hated,’ said Kallie.

‘Because it reminds her of her failed marriage.’ Bryant stabbed a forefinger in Kallie’s direction. ‘So she decides to sell it for as much as she can get. To do this, she first needs to decorate—but there’s hardly any money. So she uses the local bodger, Elliot Copeland, who comes in and starts stripping the basement. And that’s when he finds the wall.’ He paused before the misted window, looking down into the night street.

‘This is the moment when Heather makes the mistake that will destroy her life. She knows how to look the part—she’s a woman of surfaces. She knows a little about a lot of things, but not much about art, even though she’s worked in a gallery and has helped to curate an exhibition of Stanley Spencer’s work. Wrinkling her petite nose, she tells him to tear off the disgusting plaster and repaint, and poor drunk Elliot is happy to oblige his client. Bad timing, as it turns out, because just as the mural is destroyed, Heather finds the book belonging to Kingdom’s son. How does she find it? Well, of course, it’s been left out for her by the street’s guardian, Kingdom’s powerless, protective, penniless boy—Tate—who wants recognition for his father and is going about it all the wrong way. Flicking through the book that has been posted through her letterbox, she sees four illustrations, mythic, epic subjects supposedly painted by an artist of great merit, now sadly presumed lost. And, of course, she recognizes her own house, number 6 Balaklava Street, the Air House, which she has just finished renovating, thereby nullifying its value. Tate doesn’t allow her to keep the book, of course—he breaks in and takes it back, because it’s all he has left. What can Heather do? The only money she has is tied up in the property. It’s not a home to her, just bricks and mortar. She’s destroyed her only escape route, and has only herself to blame. But with a little smart thinking she can work out which are the other three houses. Could it be that their basements are still intact, and—please God—that their new occupants have no knowledge of the fortune hidden within their walls? Tate expects her to save his father’s work. Instead, he accidentally creates a monster.’

‘There’s a bit of guesswork going on here,’ said Longbright, draining her beer.

‘I think you’ll find I’m right when you confront her with this, Janice.’ Bryant hated interruptions. ‘Where was I? So, Heather borrows a map from a member of the local historical society. She asks around, even makes an effort to talk to the neighbours. And what does she find out? That the Fire House, number 43, belonging to newcomers Tamsin and Oliver Wilton, was gutted in the sixties. That the Earth House, number 41, now in the hands of another newcomer, Jake Avery, was similarly renovated a few years later. Which just leaves number 5, the Water House.

‘But this, she discovers, is the key to all four houses. It is the reason why Kingdom chose elements and elementals as the channel for his beliefs, because it is built right on top of the river Fleet. It is the original site of the House Curs’d By All Water, and he can exorcise it or, more likely, celebrate the fact in his art. According to the book, this house contains the most elaborate mural of them all, the one upon which Kingdom lavished the most time, the one that caused his patron to finally lose faith. And it belongs to an old lady who has lived there since 1949, so she is the house’s only owner since the mural has been completed.

‘Heather is a worrier, an aggressor, but also a natural planner. She suddenly becomes Ruth Singh’s new best friend. She can’t do enough for her—fetches her shopping, cuts her toenails, fixes her hair, but is careful not to let anyone else know. While she’s doing chores, she discreetly checks out the basement. Imagine her excitement when she discovers that the mural is still there, completely intact. Ruth has painted over it several times—but it’s undamaged. It will be the wonder of London, on a par with Leighton House or Debenham Hall. London is filled with extraordinary properties that become national treasures. She’ll have wealth and respect, everything she had expected from her marriage. The old dear can’t have much longer to last—how difficult can it be for Heather to worm her way into the will?’

‘Quite difficult, as it turns out,’ said May, ‘because Ruth has a brother.’

‘True, he doesn’t bother much with her, but he’s still a blood relative. Heather’s not about to give in easily, though. Soon she’s been invited to meet Benjamin Singh, who confides in her that he wishes to move to Australia, which would mean he’d sell the house when he inherits it. But not to her—he takes an instant dislike to this grabby, hysterical woman asking personal questions about his family’s property, acting like she’s Ruth’s best friend. And the old lady seems as strong as an ox. She may live to be a hundred. So Heather tries a little debilitation.’

‘You mean she leaves the racist messages.’ May topped up everyone’s drinks. ‘Dan may be able to prove it’s her voice on the tape.’

‘Still, the old lady is unfazed,’ Bryant continued. ‘Then fate takes a highly appropriate hand, in the form of a stuck tap. Heather has told Ruth, “If you’re ever in difficulty, just bang on the wall and I’ll come running.” Ruth goes to take a bath, but can’t turn the tap off. Frightened, she hammers on the wall, and Heather, ever cautious about her appearance, puts on the coat Garrett has left at her place. What was it doing there? The likeliest answer is that he had come round to give her property advice.

‘So, Ruth Singh, in her dressing-gown, lets Heather in—where she is seen by Jake Avery—and Heather goes down to the bathroom to give the tap a clout. When she sees the running water, everything suddenly becomes clear. She’s been given a sign. “Why don’t I wait here while you have your bath?” she suggests. “Then I can turn the tap on if you need more hot water.”

‘She waits, and talks, and waits, until the old lady is drowsy. Then, with a grimace of disgust, she reaches into the soapy water, picks up Ruth’s ankles and pulls. She’s as light as a feather and barely makes a sound, her heart stopping in an instant, although she gets a small contusion from the tap. But instead of leaving her in the bath and making the whole thing look like an accident, Heather is forced to drain out the water, because the police will realize that Ruth couldn’t have turned the tap off by herself. What if she’s not dead? How can you tell these things? Ruth is naked in the drained bath, her head beneath the taps, so Heather turns on the cold water and forces open her mouth, just to make sure.

‘But now something odd happens. The rains have begun, and under the street Tate is testing his conduits, opening valves and sluices. As if summoned by the Water House itself, diverted river water thunders under the bathroom. It is sucked up through fine cracks in the brickwork, blossoming in damp patches. It comes up the overflow of the bath and out of the water pipes in a blast of green scum, to be ingested by Ruth Singh. But at least there’s no doubt now that she’s dead.’

‘So Finch was right in his summation,’ said May. ‘Credit where it’s due.’

Bryant harrumphed and chewed his pipe stem. ‘Heather has seized her opportunity, but won’t be able to buy the property because she has no money. She’ll worry about that later. Meanwhile, she dries and dresses the old lady to throw the police off the scent, not realizing that her throat is still full of water. It’s like taking care of a doll. Then she climbs over the back wall into her own house.

‘But she’s seen by someone: Tate, who is emerging from the drain in the alley. Luckily he’s just a crazy old tramp. No one will ever pay attention to him. She’s quick to point that out to Kallie.’

Bryant stood behind Kallie’s chair in what he fancied was a dramatic posture. Outside, a police siren seesawed into the night.

‘Which brings us to your timely arrival, Kallie. You’re her old schoolfriend: innocent, susceptible, liked by everyone, and clearly in awe of Heather. It’s a more roundabout route, but one which should work just as well. Heather will persuade you to buy the house. Afterwards, it will be a simple matter to put you off the place, make you desperate to sell it. Heather will have sold her own property by then, and will be able to offer a reasonable price.