The Water Room (10 page)

‘Raymond wasn’t happy about my involvement with Ruth Singh,’ reminded Bryant, ‘so we can hardly afford to have your lecturer—’

‘It took them just a few minutes, Arthur. Meera found something. Look.’ He flattened out the crumpled receipts. ‘Greenwood just spent several hundred pounds on climbing equipment— high-tech stuff.’

‘Perhaps he’s taken up mountaineering.’

‘Don’t be daft, he’s in his sixties and has a bronchial condition.’

‘Well, I don’t know. Is it really any business of yours?’

‘He has some specialist classified knowledge. The kind of knowledge that could be open to abuse.’

‘I thought he taught history.’

‘I was thinking of his particular field of interest. Rivers. Specifically, the underground rivers of London.’

Bryant’s interest was aroused. ‘That’s different. The culverts still run through very sensitive areas. Under Buckingham Palace, for example, and virtually under the Houses of Parliament.’

‘Really? I thought they had all dried up long ago.’

‘Not at all. The entire subject is open to misinterpretation, of course. It’s a murky area of London interest; not only are the size, geography and number of the city’s rivers up for dispute, but there is very little left to see, and no accurate way of comparing the present with the past. Consequently, one ends up tracking filthy dribbles of water between drains and across patches of waste ground.’

‘Then why bother studying them at all?’

‘Because just as the old hedgerows shaped our roads, so did the river beds. They created the form of London itself. They are the arteries from which its flesh grew.’

‘Since when were you an expert?’ asked May, surprised.

‘I was going to do an overground guide tour tracing the route of Counter’s Creek. That one’s followed by a mainline railway line all the way from Kensal Green to Olympia, Earl’s Court and the Thames. We studied quite a few, but abandoned the idea because of the difficulty of getting groups around the obstructions. The Westbourne river still surfaces as the Serpentine, you know. Many of the original river beds are mixed in with the Victorian sewer system now. There’s something undeniably magical about the unseen parts of the city, don’t you think? The roofs and sewers and sealed public buildings, the idea that a different map might emerge to chart previously unimagined landscapes.’

‘I agree up to a point. But if there’s nothing left of these rogue rivers, I don’t see why someone would pay my old rival for information about them.’

‘I didn’t say there was nothing left. Most of them were bricked in. The best-known missing river is the Fleet, which starts on Hampstead Heath, going down through Kentish Town, diverting past us to St Pancras, then to Clerkenwell and Holborn, and out to the Thames just past Bridewell. It was also known as the Holebourne, or the stream in the hollow. They used to say it was a river that turned into a brook, a ditch and finally a drain. The Smithfield butchers chucked cow carcasses into it, and it was used as a toilet and communal rubbish dump for centuries, so it kept silting up and becoming a public health hazard. I think it was finally bricked over in the mid 1800s, but that’s the point—most of the rivers ducked underground at various locations and were provided with brick tunnels, but that doesn’t mean they dried up. Look at the Tach Brook, for example. It’s still there, running underneath car parks and public buildings in Westminster. When I was a nipper, I used to climb down the viaduct and muck about beside the water that flowed out into the Thames from Millbank. Underground engineers still have to be wary of such channels, because they know their excavations could be destroyed by them.’

May pulled some papers from his drawer and threw them across the desk. ‘Monica gave me this. Apparently, Greenwood is our top underground man. He’s mapped them all out in his time, and that’s only a partial list.’

Bryant scanned the list of evocative names. The Westbourne, Parr’s Creek, the Roding, the Slade, the Tyburn, Mayes Brook, Hogsmill, the Crane, the Peck, the Ravensbourne, Hackney Brook, the Falcon, the Effra, the Neckinger, the Walbrook, the Wandle, dozens of other smaller tributaries.

‘They run from Hampstead to Acton to Bromley to Barking,’ May added.

‘What do you expect? The city’s in a basin and the water drains down.’ Bryant spelled it out as if talking to a particularly inattentive child. ‘River beds criss-cross the whole of London in a grid, around and underneath and sometimes even through some of the most sensitive buildings in the city. Some of them are connected to the sewers, which means they tap directly beneath government properties.’

‘Here’s the list of stuff Greenwood’s purchased so far. Monica found it in his jacket.’

Bryant dug out his reading glasses and examined the sheets. ‘This equipment is for climbing down, not up. Look at these items: high-powered torches, thigh-boots, pipe-clamps, hardly any ropes. This other receipt is a pharmaceutical treatment for rat bites. Looks like someone’s hired him to get into the remains of an underground river for some dubious purpose, possibly to enter private property.’

‘You think they might be planning to tunnel into the Bank of England, something like that? Wouldn’t it be rather an outmoded notion in these days of computerized security?’

‘Just because it hasn’t been attempted for a few years doesn’t mean it’s outmoded, John. Think about it; someone has searched out an expert in the field who has a blotted copybook, and is proposing a venture that involves purchasing safety harnesses and weighted boots. I’m not saying that your cuckold has any knowledge of his client’s real intentions, but he’s refusing to tell his wife because he doesn’t want to compromise her safety, which suggests he knows something.’

‘I was planning to confront him with the evidence and warn him off, you know, as a friend,’ said May.

‘You said yourself he’s not a friend, so why should he take your advice? Besides, I have a better solution.’

‘What might that be?’ asked May, dreading the answer.

‘We can find out what he’s up to, and stop him from doing it. It’s a clear security issue. Raymond would have no option but to sanction the case.’

‘Arthur, please don’t do anything that would get us into trouble. We don’t need it right now. We have to start playing by the book.’

Bryant’s rheumy blue eyes widened in innocent indignation. ‘I’m surprised at you, John. When have I ever got us into trouble?’

11

THE HEART BENEATH

Kallie sanded and undercoated the front door before applying a rich indigo gloss to the wood. She had repainted the bedroom and put up some cheap curtains, working her way down a list of chores, but felt as if she had barely scratched the surface. She hadn’t lived in a house since her parents were together. She was crouched in the hall, trying to thump the lid back on the paint tin without crescenting her palms, when Heather walked past laden with shopping bags.

‘How are you getting on?’ she asked, peering in. ‘Isn’t Paul giving you a hand?’

‘He’s been called up to Manchester,’ Kallie explained. ‘He’s still waiting to find out if he has a job. I thought I’d get this done before it started raining again. I don’t like the look of the sky.’

‘I don’t suppose he’d be much help anyway. He’s never been very practical, has he?’ Heather wore full make-up and was dressed in a smart black suit and heels, hardly shopping attire. She was never casual, or even relaxed. ‘Still, it’s very good of you, doing all this yourself. I wouldn’t know where to begin.’

‘It’s a case of having to. I used up my savings securing the house. There’s hardly anything left over for fixtures and fittings, and nothing for renovations. God knows what will happen if Paul is made redundant.’

‘It’s still better to invest in property, darling. Look at what’s happening to pensions. George lost a fortune in Lloyds, but luckily he has his own business these days. Has anybody told you about the party tomorrow night?’

‘I got a note through the letterbox yesterday from the couple who live at number 43.’ She straightened her back with a grimace. ‘They’re not holding it just for us, are they?’

‘No, it’s their son’s tenth birthday, and Tamsin thought it would be nice for you to meet the neighbours, get to know a few people.’

‘What are they like?’

‘Oh, public school and a bit dim, but friendly enough and well-meaning. They communicate almost entirely through the boy, dote on him a bit too much, really, but she can’t have any more children so he’s become very precious to them. Actually, they always take our milk in when we’re away so I can’t complain. The child’s called Brewer—an extraordinary choice, but it seems everyone has to come up with a novelty name these days.’

‘I haven’t seen George around.’

‘He’s gone on to Montreal. I hate it when he does the Canada office; he always brings me back scarf-and-jumper sets. That’s if he remembers; otherwise it’s an airport headscarf. Who wears those things? He’s back on Friday, but three days after that there’s a trade fair in New York. Never marry a successful man if you hate spending time alone. Come over for dinner if you like, I’m just doing venison sausages and grain-mustard mash with onion gravy.’

Kallie pushed back the bandanna on her forehead and left a smear of blue paint. ‘Thanks, but I want to finish washing the lounge walls tonight. We’ve still only got lights in three rooms. I need to find a decent inexpensive electrician.’

‘You’re in luck. We’ve got one in the street, at number 3, our rough diamond Elliot Copeland. Actually he’s a builder, but he’ll turn his hand to anything. He’ll probably be at Oliver and Tamsin’s tomorrow night. Pour him a couple of drinks and you’ll be able to beat a decent price out of him.’

‘I guess I have to come, then.’ Kallie rose and wrapped her paintbrushes in a cloth. ‘I just hope Paul’s back in time.’

Heather started to leave, but returned. ‘You haven’t seen Cleo in your garden, by any chance? She’s not allowed out of the front door. Her food bowl hasn’t been touched all day.’

‘No, but I’ll keep an eye out for her.’ She had seen Heather’s cat picking its way through the foliage of the back gardens.

After cleaning the brushes in the basement’s butler sink and thrashing them dry on newspaper, Kallie made some tea and decided to get clean. She had soaked the ancient copper shower-head in descaling fluid, but it had made no difference to the years of stony accretion caused by London’s infamously hard water. She stripped and padded across the cold parquet, setting the torch beam at the ceiling. The steep curve of the bath made standing up treacherous, but she had never enjoyed soaking in tepid water. Paul could lie there for hours, but she—

She could hear it again.

Not coming from the right-hand wall of the bathroom this time, but seemingly from under the floor itself. She had assumed that the foundations were solid concrete, so it had to be an acoustic trick of some kind. Copies of the house plans had still not turned up, probably because of a delay in locating the originals. Although the bathroom was below street level, there didn’t seem to be any actual damp, but the noise was worrying.

She pressed her palms against the cold plaster of the adjoining wall and tried to sense the arrhythmia of liquid life within the bricks. She could hear it clearly now, a channel of rushing water, pounding and rebounding before it was constricted within some kind of man-made sluice. She could trace its faint pulse in her cold fingertips, a vein pumping waste in freezing peristalsis from the city’s hidden heart.

Crouching lower, her eyes drew level with the underside of the bath. Although she had sprayed the dark space with disinfectant, several hairy brown bowls of spider-nests remained beneath the shadowed legs.

The tops of her feet were prickled with pimples that itched when she touched them. They had appeared when she’d discovered the spiders, and now she wondered if they were bites, or even tiny stings.

She told herself that the room would be transformed with fresh plaster and paint, and lights that worked, but resolved to keep her showers short until then.

‘Floorboards creak, pipes expand and contract—you’ve never lived in such an old house before. You have what doctors used to refer to as an overactive imagination; it comes from being too creative, and of course Paul’s away . . .’ Her mother managed to hang sentences filled with insinuations of mental instability and general uselessness in the air like embarrassing items of washing. Helen Owen loved her daughter, but not enough to stop herself from being cruel.

‘I’m coping brilliantly,’ Kallie rallied. ‘And before you say it, I know it wasn’t the best time to take on something like this, but it was a lucky opportunity. Nobody knew she was going to die so suddenly.’

‘That’s simply not true, darling. There’s a lot we can do to maximize our health and reduce stress, and I think you have to ask yourself if Paul has your interests at heart. He seems barely employable, he has trouble controlling his temper, and then he leaves you with all the stress of moving, into a house that sounds entirely unfit for habitation—’

‘I have to go, Mum. I’ll call you later.’ Kallie knew better than to talk with her mother when she was like this; Helen was alone and angry and probably drinking.

There was still much to do before going to bed. She pulled on her jeans and ventured out into the garden. The sodden bushes hung like overcooked spinach, or foliage in a drained fishtank. The steps to the small patch of grass were so overgrown that she had to cut her way through with a kitchen knife. She heard the cat’s peculiarly human cry before she got to the top. Somewhere inside the tangles of bindweed, she could see Cleo’s piebald torso flexing and twisting in an effort to free itself.

Cutting through the bindweed was slow work. When she was finally able to reach in and grab the cat, it slipped away with a whimper of pain. Her foot caught on a broken plastic drain lid, and she tipped over into a wet bed of weeds. Withdrawing her left hand, she was surprised to find her fingers covered in blood. The cat had stopped wriggling now, and was lying on its side under a bush. Even in the watery cloudlight of late afternoon, she could see that its fur had been parted by a number of short, deep cuts that looked like knife slashes.