The Water Room

12. FOLLOWING THE RIVER

‘Are you sure you can keep up?’ asked May, concerned. His partner was breathing hard and had paused to lean against the railings.

Bryant waved aside the concern for his health. ‘I’m fine, don’t worry about me. I’ve been much better since I started remembering to take my blue pills.’

‘Why, what do they do?’

‘They alleviate the side effects of my yellow pills. I don’t think he’s got this right. I expected the river Lea, something over Romford way.’

The detectives were following Gareth Greenwood down Farringdon Road, rather too closely for comfort, but at least the heavy rain was reducing their visibility. The Quality Chop House still advocated working-class catering on its steamy windows, but now most of the shops reflected a neighbourhood filled with single professionals in converted loft apartments. Ahead, where Farringdon Lane branched away, stood the slim wedge of a public house, the Betsy Trotwood. They sheltered in its lee and watched as Greenwood closed his umbrella, striding off in the direction of Clerkenwell Tube station.

‘The Fleet is still the best known of all the London rivers,’ said Bryant as they stepped back into the rain. ‘But its remains don’t go near any of the city’s financial institutions, so we can assume he’s not out to rob a bank. I’ve been doing a bit of research into the subject of lost waterways, and it’s fascinating stuff. Various tributaries fed into the Fleet as it flowed south, the largest junction comprising the two that flowed either side of Parliament Hill Fields, to meet in Camden Town. Beyond the junction, it was reported to be sixty-five feet wide when in flood. By the time it got to Holborn Viaduct it was wide enough to float boats on. He’s not carrying any equipment. You’re sure he made the appointment for this morning?’

‘That’s what he told Monica. She rang me last night as soon as he went to the pub.’

Greenwood had alighted from a bus in Rosebery Avenue, passing so close to the detectives that they were obliged to hide themselves behind their umbrellas. The academic was short and stout, with a mane of yellow-grey hair that would have allowed him to pass as a dinosaur rocker, especially as he was wearing brown boots with jeans tucked into them. He strode briskly along wet pavements, but mercifully stopped to admire something in the window of a furniture shop, which gave his pursuers the chance to gain ground.

‘There were plenty of wells bored along the valley line of the Fleet in medieval times,’ Bryant continued. ‘Holy Well, Bagnigge Wells, Clerk’s Well, St Clement’s Well-they formed spa resorts or the sites of nunneries, and some of the water sources are still active. You can buy bottled water from the Sadler’s Wells. It’s got a bit of an undertaste but it’s quite nice. Listen to this-’ He pulled a bedraggled scrap from his pocket. ‘ “Come prithee make it up, Miss, and be as lovers be, We’ll go to Bagnigge Wells, Miss, and there we’ll have some tea.” The Apprentice Song.’

‘So you’re saying that the Fleet still flows?’ asked May. ‘I thought you said it had silted up and been covered over.’

‘Yes, but apparently not all of it-the wells are there, and water always finds a way. We build dams of brick, and rivers simply flow around them. The Fleet was thirty feet under street level in places. It flowed beneath the Regent’s Canal, which is only shallow.’

‘You talk about it in the past tense.’

‘Perhaps I shouldn’t. The London water table is rising fast, you know. Gardens are becoming marshy once more. It’s inevitable that some of the old rivers will make a reappearance at such a time. They have before. The Fleet would be with us now if the butchers of Eastcheap hadn’t emptied entrails into it for centuries. They were called “pudding”, you know, animal guts. That’s what Pudding Lane-where the Great Fire started-refers to. People imagine plum cakes, but it’s reeking entrails. Can you still see Greenwood?’

‘He’s heading toward Turnmill Street.’

‘You see, “Turnmill”. There were a number of water mills here. Dickens often used this area. Saffron Hill was the home of Fagin and his lost boys.’

‘Wait, he’s stopped. He’s looking for something.’

Their quarry appeared to be consulting a piece of paper. After a moment, he folded it away and set off again.

‘You know, we’re very close to the Fleet Ditch now,’ said Bryant, stabbing his stick in the direction of the drains. ‘The Fleet was covered from Holborn Bridge to the Punch Tavern. Today it’s a sewer that you can supposedly still reach from the arched tunnel entrance past St Bride’s, but it just empties into the Thames. What can he possibly want with it at this point?’

Greenwood had stopped again. Now he stood in a curious stretch of the street between fashionable restaurants and derelict houses, looking along the pavement. The figure who stepped down from the shelter of the bookshop doorway looked familiar to May. He was tall and slender, long-necked, elegantly dressed, possibly of Ethiopian extraction. The pair spoke briefly, and when they made their move it was so fast that the detectives nearly missed them. They had passed through a door cut into the wooden frame covering an alley no wider than a man’s arm.

May reached it first, but the door had already been closed. He put his ear to the wood and listened, then deftly picked the Yale lock. The alley beyond was filled with beer crates and empty catering drums of ghee. The brick walls were green with mossy weeds. ‘Look,’ Bryant pointed, ‘river damp. You can smell it. Brackish. Old mud.’

Greenwood and his accomplice must have passed to the end of the alley; the only other door had boxes and coils of wire stacked in front of it. The corridor opened into a small dingy square with the Edwardian stone arch of a former stable, now overgrown and litter-filled, the signs of lost utility and urban misuse. Ahead was the rear of a Romanesque building, solidly built, small windows, probably a warehouse. A wide wooden door and two narrow, filthy wire-glass panes were set in the wall, but here May’s lock-picking skills defeated him, and he was unable to gain entrance. The windows were each divided into twelve small panels. Breaking them would be too noisy and time-consuming. May looked back and saw that his partner was having trouble clambering between some rusted lengths of iron. He led Bryant away.

‘Come on, Arthur, they’ve gone for now. Let’s see if we can identify our mystery man.’

‘How?’ asked Bryant, extricating his overcoat from a length of wire fencing. ‘I’m getting holes in my good astrakhan.’

‘I fired off a good half-dozen shots on my phone with a reasonably decent zoom,’ May explained. ‘They’ve already gone to my computer. I’ll tell Bimsley to download them and start enhancing the images.’

‘Dear God, it’s technology gone mad.’

‘Not if it helps us save a colleague from ruining his career,’ May replied, linking his arm with Bryant’s. ‘Let’s go back.’

Heather Allen shed a few dutiful tears and quickly composed herself, agreeing to let Kallie bury the tiny cat in her garden. She couldn’t have it buried in her own, because George had laid decking.

‘I don’t understand. Who would do such a grotesque thing to a harmless animal?’ She stood hugging her arms in a passable imitation of pet bereavement, watching as Kallie took the shovel and cleared a space in what once had been a flower-bed.

Kallie wanted to believe that Heather had been fond of the cat. Her schoolfriend had produced a credible monologue on the subject, explaining how she had rescued it from a feral existence living off scraps in Camden Parkway, how it had taken her months to gain the feline’s trust, and how she had taken it with her to the useless PR job she had managed to hold for nearly a year, nestled inside her cardigan, where it could feel the beating of her heart. But the story rang false. As far as Kallie knew, Heather had never worn anything as homely as a cardigan.

As she finished digging the hole it started to rain, a light-leeching mizzle that darkened the surrounding terrace walls and bowed the branches of neighbours’ trees. By the time she had filled the grave, they were both soaked. She could hardly have left the cat in a bin-liner until the weather improved, and could not imagine Heather with a shovel in her manicured hands. Heather loved the idea of organizing others, but hadn’t a practical bone in her body. She explained that the last time she had lost her mobile, her entire life had come to a standstill.

Kallie had just pulled the last of the bindweed from the area surrounding the little grave when she saw the creature lying beside the drain. It was jointed and cream-coloured, and looked like a large deformed lobster. ‘Jesus, what the hell is this?’ She jumped back, nearly tripping in the tangle of weed.

Heather leaned over for a look, then gave a squeal of horror. ‘It’s covered in blood. What is it?’

‘Wait, I saw some gardening gloves.’ Kallie returned with them and reached down, lifting the thing by its segmented tail. ‘I think it’s some kind of crayfish, but it looks too big.’ They stared uneasily at the creature, half expecting it to come back to life.

‘It’s typical that George should be away when there’s a problem,’ Heather angrily announced. ‘He’s never around when he’s needed. I have to do everything by myself, and now this.’

‘Heather, there’s nothing for you to do.’ Kallie tried to be gentle with her, because that was how you had to be with women like Heather. ‘Look at the size of its claws, they’re enormous. You think it had some kind of territorial battle with the cat?’

‘It looks that way,’ said Heather. ‘But what on earth was it doing here in the first place?’

‘You’re right, it is a crayfish,’ Giles Kershaw agreed. Kallie had made use of the number on the card that Longbright had left, and had been told to bring in her find.

Kershaw turned over the carcass and matched it to the images on his screen. ‘I don’t normally deal with non-humans, so bear with me. It looks like there are over a hundred species on my database, but this-’ he scrolled down, searching, ‘is probably a Turkish crayfish. They’re extremely aggressive. They live in the canals around London. Hm.’

Kallie peered over his shoulder, trying to read.

‘They’ve been forcing out the weaker British crayfish, usurping their breeding grounds. I imagine the pale pigmentation is due to lack of sunlight, toxins and a lack of nutrients in the water. It’s bigger than it should be. Unusual for one to take on a cat, I’d imagine. Perhaps it had been driven from its home.’

‘It was a very small cat, and she probably attacked first,’ Kallie explained. ‘There could have been more than one, couldn’t there? How did it get into the garden?’

‘Oh, they can cross land when they have to. Domestic turtles will do the same. They’ll foul ponds until they’re uninhabitable, then move on until they find a fresh garden with water-but I’d say you have a canal near your house. Quite a few of the tributaries to the Regent’s Canal are connected to domestic drainage systems via old sewer pipes.’

‘You’re telling me this came up out of the drain?’

‘That’s the most likely explanation.’

Kallie recalled the drain’s dislodged plastic lid. First spiders, now invertebrates, she thought. What next?

‘Glad you brought it in,’ said Kershaw breezily. ‘I can’t imagine it has any connection with the old lady’s death, but this is just the sort of oddity old Bryant and May like to stick in their investigations. They’ll probably work out that Mrs Singh was nibbled to death by lobsters. I’ll show them this as soon as they’re back. If you find any more, don’t be tempted to smother them with mayonnaise-they’re highly poisonous.’

What an odd man, she thought as she walked back from the station, puzzled by the little police department above the entrance to Mornington Crescent Tube. But then they had all seemed odd: the female police sergeant who looked like an old-time movie star, various startled and excitable juniors with slept-on hair and slept-in clothes, the spectacular disorder of the place, the back-room experiments and half-laid floors. Could the PCU really be a legitimately sanctioned branch of the law?

By the time she reached the underlit alley connecting Alma Street to Balaklava Street, she realized how comfortable and familiar her new neighbourhood was starting to appear. She was used to gangs of rowdy kids setting off alarm bells and encouraging her to cross the road, but here was nothing to be nervous of-except that the unbroken arrangement of house-backs made it impossible not to feel as if one was being scrutinized.

As she emerged from the alley, she glimpsed a man-no more than a ragged dark shape-passing on the opposite pavement, as if he had been startled into flight. She stopped for a moment to take stock: a row of terraced houses with flaking white paint, worn front steps and defunct chimney pots like orange milk churns; black spear railings; hydrangeas and bay hedges and windowsills with green plastic tubs of dead chrysanthemums; the back of the Catholic primary school; saffron lamps shining through the branches of mangy plane trees. She saw him again, standing like a statue in the recessed doorway of the end house, watching as she passed, and couldn’t bring herself to continue without stopping.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked. ‘Do you need help?’ As she spoke, he stepped forward, dropping down the steps toward her, and she glimpsed brown eyes above a filthy white beard. Then he was gone, hobbling with fast, truncated steps toward the alleyway, and she remembered Heather’s words: ‘We even have our own tramp, a proper old rambly one with a limp and a beard, not a Lithuanian with a sleeping bag.’ The idea didn’t bother her, but she wondered what went through his mind as he stood in the doorway watching the street.

‘I suppose I should feel relieved.’ Paul opened a bottle of Beck’s and sank back on the sofa to drink it. ‘At least I know where I stand.’ He had been given two months’ pay and notice to quit. The company in which he had been promised such a wonderful career was heading for liquidation.

Kallie had wanted to raise the subject of paying for the house to be rewired, but knew it was time to hold off. ‘What do you want to do?’ she asked softly.

‘What I don’t understand is this, right-they hired me to look for innovative music, and the moment things get tight they fall back on old material, repackaged compilations, safe stuff they can hawk around to advertising agencies. The superclubs are dead, the bands are crap and the industry is heading down the toilet. Everyone’s downloading, who needs to buy CDs? If we’re going to stay here, I’ll have to make a complete career change.’

‘What do you mean, if we stay here?’ she asked. ‘I’ve put every penny I have into this house. We made the decision jointly-where else can we go?’

The ensuing silence worried her more than any answer. She knew he had viewed the move as a way of giving up his old life rather than starting a new one.

The television had no aerial and reception was lousy, but Paul sat before it anyway, opening his third beer while she went downstairs and tackled the painting of the built-in cupboards. She had set up a battery-powered lamp in the bathroom now, making the room a little more cheerful, and further dousings of disinfectant beneath the bathtub had taken care of the spiders. The room still seemed abnormally large compared to the kitchen, and she disliked the fact that it was below street level, but Benjamin Singh had explained that part of the basement was once a coal cellar. Kallie tried to imagine the rumble of coal in the chute, the stone-floored scullery and outside plumbing, but the history of the house had been erased by successive owners.

She remained unbothered by the idea of Mrs Singh dying at home in unexplained circumstances. She considered herself practical, rarely given to overactive flights of imagination. And yet there was something. .

Kallie was moving the lamp when she saw the damp patch on the far wall, beneath the tiny window, a creeping sepia stain roughly the shape of Africa. Perhaps it had been there all along, but this was the first time she had noticed it. Her fingers brushed the brickwork and found it dry to the touch. Could coal dust have permeated the walls to the extent that it returned, spreading through paint and plaster like asbestos powder silently accreting within the lungs?

Perhaps she had taken on too much. Paul was unhappy and unhelpful. Later, as she lay in the cool, darkened bedroom nursing a headache, she wondered if they had really done the right thing. The property anchored them more firmly than any child. Certainly, Ruth Singh had never stirred from the house. Kallie couldn’t let it have the same effect on them.