The Water Room

32. BREATHLESS

At half past one in the morning, Camden Town was almost as busy as it had been that afternoon. Many offices around the lock ran a twenty-four-hour day, light-industrial units refitted with technology, occupied by sound engineers, TV-camera operators, studio personnel, website designers, artists, writers, traffickers using so much electronic equipment that the town was a hotspot on the grid, an area that never cooled down or turned off. Factor in the clubs, bars, pubs, restaurants and all-night stores, the crawling traffic, the trucks blasting trash from the gutters, the teens looking to buy drugs and the tourists just looking, and you had streets that no amount of rain could clear. No witches ruled here now, just neo-goths and charity-muggers, no fishermen beside rushing brooks, just dealers selling grass and pills from the sides of their mouths.

But to step from the gaudy ribbon of the road into the backstreets was to shed a hundred years, among willows fringing wrought-iron gates, dim lights tracing draped windows, angled gables and broken tiles, crooked bollards, empty pavements. The roads were filled with parked vehicles, but otherwise had not changed; they still twisted in unreliable curvature, encouraging the lost to venture just a little further. The speed humps and one-way systems added a new layer of trickery. Nascent lanes led nowhere, amputated stumps of cobbled street were sealed off by railways, canals and housing developments, dead churches and wet green gardens remained in forgotten tranches of land.

Aaron cut a diagonal path across the maze of backstreets. He had been born here, and would have known the way blindfold, guided by the distant thrum of arterial roads. As he slipped through alleys toward Balaklava Street, he thought guiltily about his situation. He knew that what he was doing was wrong, but felt powerless to end what he had begun. He had tried to think of ways of stopping, but now it was too late, and whichever course of action he chose would hurt someone he cared for.

As he passed between high walls topped with broken bottles, it started to rain again. The hottest summer on record had produced a season of statistic-shattering storms. Thunder tumbled in a distant ragnarok of temper as he approached the house. The doused lights suggested that Jake had given up waiting for him and had gone to bed. The sound of his key in the lock was hidden by fresh falls of rain. He ascended the stairs in darkness, shedding his clothes on the landing. The bedroom was silent. At least he had delayed an argument until the morning.

Aaron carefully folded back his side of the duvet and slid into bed. Jake was on the far side, a cold shoulder turned against him. The window shone rivulets of rain on to the walls, as if the room was crying. Aaron settled against the pillow, listening. He thought back over the events of the evening, feeling ashamed of himself. Shifting closer, he pressed his hand against the small of his partner’s back, but there was no response.

Disturbed by the shifting weight on the mattress, Jake’s right hand thudded against the side of the bed and his head tipped to face Aaron. Even in the dark, Aaron could see that there was something wrong with Jake’s face. It seemed to reflect the light from the streetlamp, as though it was moulded from slick plastic rather than made of flesh.

Aaron leapt back and groped for the light switch. Jake stared up at him from the bed, his mouth stretched in a shiny concave ellipse, his hair plastered to his head as if he had been swimming. As Aaron finally realized what he was seeing, he screamed long and loud.

Bryant sat on the side of his tall brass bedstead, his feet swinging above the floor like a child’s. Yawning, he scratched his unruly tonsure back into place as he listened.

‘No, of course I’m glad he called you first. It’ll stop the Met teams from taping off the entire street and posing in their paper monkey suits. You know what they’re like, one whiff of this and they’ll be phoning in live interviews and getting their pictures in the Mirror.’

‘We need to play this by the book,’ warned May. ‘It’ll go high profile now, and we’ll be able to reopen Ruth Singh’s file whether there’s a connection or not. Everyone will be watching us. We can’t afford to make a single procedural mistake. Kershaw and Banbury are on their way. I’ll pick you up in ten minutes. I’m assuming you hadn’t gone to bed.’

‘You assume wrongly,’ snapped Bryant. ‘Thought I’d have an early night for a change, read over my old case notes.’ He was writing a history of their investigations, but his old reports were out of order and handwritten, as well as being unreliable and libellous to a perverse degree. ‘The good thing is that Raymond Land will get off our backs now and leave us alone.’

‘You’d probably like to know how the poor devil who found his partner’s body is doing,’ May prompted.

‘I’m sure you and Longbright will take care of him,’ said Bryant dismissively. ‘Now kindly get off the phone. I have no intention of attending the crime scene in my Tintin pyjamas.’ Bryant showed little empathy for survivors. Survival was something he expected everyone to do as a matter of course; every life was punctuated with tests.

Less than twenty minutes later, he and May entered the little terraced house. They had hoped to arrive without fuss, but it seemed that the street’s other residents were expecting tragedy. Hall lights glowed. Some stood expectantly in their doorways, trying to understand what had happened.

Sergeant Longbright found Aaron in the kitchen with a dressing-gown pulled over his shoulders, his face hidden by his hands. ‘I don’t know why we always make tea in times of crisis, it seems so stupid,’ she said, filling the kettle. ‘Do you have any brandy in the house?’

‘I can’t go up there again,’ he told her.

‘You don’t have to. There can only be one route in and out of the crime scene, so the stairs are off limits now. Everything must be recorded.’

‘What happens next?’

‘We have to photograph and log everything as you found it. We’ll probably take some items away for analysis. Mr Bryant would like me to get a short statement from you now, though, because there are things you may forget later. The mind has a way of rewriting bad events, taking out details we don’t want to recall.’ She placed a mug of mahogany-shaded tea on the kitchen table and sat beside him. He wiped an eye with the heel of his hand and regarded her. Longbright’s maternal sexiness stood her in good stead during times of stress. She was a warm breast to lean on, an ear to confide in. Aaron felt the need to explain what had happened, and why he felt so bad.

Upstairs, Banbury was measuring distances around the bed and taking digital footage of the body. Jake Avery lay half out of bed, like Chatterton in death, a pale hand brushing the floor. His face was flattened and lined with fierce red creases, his mouth a bright oval rictus.

‘He’s drunk a fair amount,’ Kershaw said, kneeling beside the bed and triggering stills. ‘Those lines on his cheeks-the blood’s just under the surface. Smells like whisky.’

‘Where’s the murder weapon?’ asked May, looking about.

‘Here.’ Banbury raised a length of crushed clingfilm between the thumb and forefinger of his gloved right hand. ‘The boy took it off his face.’

‘You mean it was wrapped around his head?’ asked May.

‘Four or five times. He didn’t fight back. Tried to get his fingers through the film and failed. Bedclothes are hardly disturbed. Probably surprised in his sleep, caught at the base of a breath.’

‘Asphyxiation.’ May shook his head sadly.

‘Actually, no. This stuff attracts a terrible amount of static, as you’ll know if you’ve ever tried to wrap something up when you’re not in the mood. Judging by the haemorrhaging in his nasal passages, it stuck over his nose and mouth at the same moment. Make someone jump and they’ll gasp, drawing in air, so he would have found himself without a breath to take. Then quickly lift the head, wrap once, twice, again and again, he’s fighting for oxygen and finding none at all, all his concentration’s taken up with the need to breathe, his reactions are slow, he doesn’t put up much of a battle. He’s been drinking, his pulse is up, bing go the strings of his heart, a coronary thrombosis ten years too early, all over in seconds.’

‘How long do you reckon he’s been dead?’ asked Bryant, who found himself warming to the new forensics lad. He possessed a certain fervour.

‘Oh, a couple of hours before the boy found him-I did a quick rectal just before you got here, but I’ll get you something more accurate later.’

‘What kind of murderer enters his victim’s home armed with a roll of clingfilm?’ May wondered.

‘Weapon at hand,’ replied Bryant, hardly pausing to consider the question. ‘Unpremeditated.’

‘Not so. That would have entailed traipsing through the house to take the roll from the kitchen. Either way, it was planned.’

‘You think so? It smacks of improvisation to me. His face was uncovered when you got here?’

‘As you see it, Mr Bryant. Seems Mr Avery’s partner arrived home late and got into bed without turning on the light, then felt something was wrong. When he put on the bedside lamp he saw the plastic wrap covering the victim’s face and tore at it until it came off, as I’m sure you would. I’ll try to get some latents off it, but don’t hold your breath.’

‘Unfortunate choice of phrase, Mr Banbury,’ May remonstrated.

‘No disrespect intended, sir.’

‘Three,’ muttered Bryant, studying the body.

‘Sir?’

‘Three suffocations in three weeks, all in the same small street,’ he explained. ‘John, what would you say to the natural odds on such a thing occurring?’

There was an eerie glint in his partner’s eyes that May had seen before. It occurred whenever Bryant found himself faced with irrefutable proof of a highly unlikely murder.