Strange Tide (37 page)

Jamel Letheeto had been working at University College Hospital, specializing in toxicity therapies, until he was thrown out for stealing medical instruments. The hospital board was not mollified by his explanation – that he had been stockpiling them for the coming nuclear winter – and had demanded that he undergo psychiatric evaluation, which had found he was suffering from Apocalypse Syndrome. Letheeto was still a good doctor, even after the nervous collapse that had been brought on by his long hours and over-dedication to work, and with any luck he could still lay his hands on chemicals. Bryant set about finding his phone.

‘If we can get the process started straight away you'll still be able to work, if that's what you're asking me,' said Letheeto. ‘I can run chromatographic tests on the metal and tailor a specific drug cocktail to remove its particles. We'll need to get rid of the most serious symptoms before they cause permanent brain and liver damage, but I'm afraid there's a strong chance that you'll still experience disturbing side effects for the remainder of your life.'

‘The remainder of my life could be the length of time it takes to get through a box set of
Breaking Bad
, so let's do it and be damned,' Bryant pointed out. ‘Can you get me into a surgery?'

‘No need,' said Jamel. And Bryant could almost hear him grinning down the line. ‘I have everything I need in my underground bunker.'

‘Jamel, do you think there's a chance you can cure me?'

‘Mr Bryant, if I can't do this without killing you, I'll be very disappointed in myself.'

‘So will I,' said Bryant. ‘Let's do or die.'

‘What strange tides bring a man to London, where o'ervaulting ambition swiftly washes him back to earth!'

A
LEXANDER
B
ENDO
(1676)

Imagine we are in a plane above the United Kingdom, the third most populous island in the world. Great Britain is surrounded by over one thousand smaller islands with names like Arran, Jura, Benbecula, Ulva, and Bardsey, which has just four inhabitants. Looking down through clouds of charcoal, slate and pearl to its rain-grey capital, we see the jigsaw pieces of a medium-sized transverse city built around a switchback river: London in the second decade of the third millennium. Thanks to the fact that it set the world's time zones it is very rich, as Venice and Constantinople had been in earlier centuries. For London's bankers the working day is seventeen hours long, so that more money can be made. It is a very fast city that can only become faster.

Those who built London thought about their home in the long term. Westminster Hall dates from 1393 and has the largest timber roof in northern Europe. When it needed restoring in 1913 a lot of the roof had to be replaced. The original timbers came from Wadhurst in Sussex. The estate's owners must have realized that new wood would be needed in roughly five hundred years because they had planted a stand of oaks for that specific purpose. By 1913 the wood was ready to be cut and the hall was repaired. By comparison, many of the City of London's new skyscrapers are reckoned to have a shelf life of about fifteen years.

Despite its accelerating pace, the metropolis is ultimately changeless. Its people remain the same because London is a state of mind. They do not make London. London makes them.

It had certainly made Ali. He thought like a Londoner, was as selfish and curious and impatient as a Londoner, but did not behave like one. It was the secret of his success; beneath a patina of English civility was an alien grace that marked him as exotic and unpredictable.

That was how it had seemed to Cassie North until her mother had been pulled out of the Thames with dark bruises around her blanched neck. Now she began to think of him as something else entirely. What did she really know about him?

Although the company was solidly founded on Ali's charisma and Cassie's business sense, it wasn't enough. As time moved on word spread about the deaths of three women connected with the centre, and clients started to melt away. Like coconut oil, YOLO, fixed gear bikes and goji berries, booking a sampler course at Life Options threatened to become another fad that would evaporate overnight. Ali could not control the damage. Their backer sensed the storm before it hit and warned them that if the problem worsened he would be pulling out his money. Life Options attempted to carry on as normal but overnight it ceased to be a centre of calm and became fraught with tension. As nervous creditors began to reduce their payment windows, Cassie fought with Ali. It seemed that their overnight success story would quickly turn into a horror show.

With May under house arrest and Bryant confined to quarters, it was down to Janice Longbright to finally secure an official interview with the elusive Cassie North. This time she attended in uniform. The effect was deliberate and had a galvanizing effect on the staff, who hastily swept her off to a quiet meeting room overlooking the river.

‘I'm burying my mother on Monday,' said Cassie, standing behind her chair, unable to settle. ‘So you'll forgive me if I'm not in the best of moods. We've had the press sniffing around, it's been dreadful.'

‘I understand and I'm sorry for your loss,' said Longbright, ‘but you're central to this investigation now, and I will do whatever it takes to resolve this matter.'

‘Fine.' Cassie pressed her hands together. ‘I'm not sure what more I can tell you. What do you need to know?'

‘Did Lynsey Dalladay have many friends here? Lovers, enemies?'

‘I counted myself as a friend.'

‘A confidante?'

‘No. She seemed to have a complicated private life.' Cassie's eyes stayed on Longbright's. ‘I wouldn't know about lovers, and I'm not aware she had enemies. I think people found her difficult. She was very outspoken.'

‘She left Mr Cooper's house two weeks before she died. Do you have any idea where she was staying?'

‘None whatsoever,' Cassie replied emphatically. ‘She turned up on time for the courses so we mostly talked about those.'

Longbright switched tack. ‘How did you get on with your mother?'

‘Well enough to offer her a job here. We had our differences of opinion.'

‘Was Marion seeing anyone? Having problems? Did you talk about stuff like that?'

‘We had lunch,' said Cassie truthfully. ‘We talked. She wasn't seeing anyone and she wasn't planning on killing herself.'

‘What do you mean?' Longbright asked.

‘There's a rumour that you think the women who come here are indoctrinated into some kind of suicide cult.'

‘Where did you hear that?' Longbright asked, intrigued.

‘Some muckraker from
Hard News
has been adding to our problems. She's been getting information from someone at your unit. We're not Scientologists, we're not locking inmates in punishment blocks. Lynsey was here to improve herself.'

‘Perhaps she thought the only way to do that was by starting again,' Longbright countered, but now she wondered who had been leaking information to the press.

It didn't take long to find out.

In his survival bunker, a disused caretaker's basement in a council block behind the Francis Crick biomedical research institute, Jamel Letheeto tested the metal alloy that had appeared underneath the silver plating in the Tibetan skull, only to discover that it contained fourteen separate poisonous substances. Some, like iron and zinc, were easily dealt with. Others, like cadmium, proved trickier because while the patient showed negligible amounts in his system, his symptoms were consistent with the presence of such a metal. There were further substances that proved impossible to identify. Jamel wondered if they were plant extracts that had been rubbed into the bone to season it.

The doctor's chelation therapies involved an alarming series of washes and flushes not sanctioned by the British Medical Association. This was because of the skill required to perform the procedures and the risks they involved, but Bryant knew there was no time to waste. Convinced about the cause of his symptoms, he put his faith in Jamel's skills. A fibre-optic bronchoscope was used to remove the only visible particles from his chest and left him with an incredibly sore throat, but no invasive surgery was required.

The testing and flushing ran continuously. At first they left Bryant feeling feeble-brained and weak-bodied, but as the toxins left his system his strength returned with surprising speed.

‘How are you feeling, Mr Bryant?' asked Jamel, tidying away his equipment, pleased with his work.

‘Like someone's been dragging fish-hooks through my pipes,' said Bryant.

‘That's pretty much what I've been doing. You're a man of immense fortitude,' Jamel replied. ‘You know, there are thirteen thousand different ways that the human body can fail and you had to pick one of the most obscure. It's a good job you thought of calling me.'

‘I like to be different.' Bryant buttoned his shirt and accepted a hand down from the makeshift treatment couch. ‘Do you still think I'll make a full recovery?'

‘Honestly? No.' Jamel shrugged. ‘It's been more complicated than I thought. There could be some permanent brain damage.'

‘Oh, that's all right. What's a little brain damage at my age?'

‘You probably won't suffer any more aphasic episodes, but you may never fully get rid of the lucid dreams.'

‘I knew I must have come into contact with something harmful,' Bryant said. ‘I've always been selectively forgetful but the blackouts started suddenly, as if I'd reached a point of toxic overload. Then I remembered reading about the Congolese tribal elders and began to wonder about poisonous metals. I wish I'd thought of that damned skull earlier. You may wish to keep it as a souvenir. What can I do for you, Jamel?'

‘You can't help me with the one thing I really want,' said the doctor sadly. ‘I want my old job back. They're not going to give it to someone with an apocalypse complex.'

‘Is it really that debilitating?'

Jamel indicated his laptop screen. ‘Some people use the BBC as their home page. I use the Centre for Disease Control. I can't help stockpiling for the Big One. I know it's irrational, but all compulsions are. It wasn't affecting my work.'

‘Survivalists need medics,' said Bryant. ‘I think I could put you in touch with someone who would hire you on a freelance basis. The Safety in Numbers Society has branches in Texas and Virginia. You could probably handle a couple of Evangelist Rapture groups as well.'

A deal was struck over a handshake. One week after his treatment began, Bryant went home. The detective decided not to tell anyone about his return to health until he was quite sure that the treatment had worked.

In the meantime John May was confined to his apartment in Shad Thames, and although the remaining members of the PCU's staff continued to add information to the case, a resolution eluded them. May had suffered mild bouts of despondency in the past, but now a terrible new darkness fell upon him.

Raymond Land refused to allow Bryant anywhere near the PCU building, but loyally called him every night to see how he was faring. Janice Longbright co-ordinated searches and interviews, Dan Banbury stockpiled such evidence as there was, and Giles Kershaw delayed the filing of autopsy reports on the victims while Fraternity, Meera and Colin talked to potential witnesses. But somehow every one of them missed making the most obvious inquiry of all.

The infrastructure of the PCU had fractured. Without Bryant and May to head it up, the unit simply failed to hold together. Raymond Land had always relied on his detectives to tell him what to do. Without them he was utterly bereft. Unable to make even the simplest decisions, he wandered about looking like a funfair proprietor who couldn't remember if he'd tightened all the nuts on his Ferris wheel.

To make matters worse, Darren Link's internal investigations officer arrived. Barbara Biddle was a ruthlessly practical woman attempting to plot a fair course through a tough job, but with over fifty Metropolitan Police officers and nearly thirty staff members suspended for corruption in the past two years, facing allegations of drug dealing, bribery, theft, fraud, dishonesty, sexual misconduct and unauthorized information disclosure, she could not afford to make any mistakes. She had a wide body and a narrow spectrum of interests, and told everyone that she would remain apart from the staff in order to preserve her impartiality, although the real reason was that she had nothing to say to them that did not involve some form of castigation. Her visits soon became feared.

‘I think we have to reach an agreement, you and I,' she said, closing Raymond Land's office door behind her and sitting down opposite him so quickly that he clutched his pencils. She was as sturdy as a skip, with hard eyes, hard hair and eyebrows painted in great arcs that gave her a look of permanent surprise. ‘It's obvious you have a major problem here.'