The Water Room (41 page)

‘And this time it all goes according to plan. You and Paul move in, and duly grow disillusioned. There are strange noises, and even stranger occurrences as the river rises and falls. Now Heather starts to get nervous. What if the rain doesn’t stop? The forecast is bad. The area is prone to flooding; what if the basement is soaked and the art is ruined? She must act quickly. The best way to do this is to get rid of Paul, who already has itchy feet and is looking for an excuse to escape his responsibilities. Heather drips poison in his ears, telling him that you deliberately tried to get pregnant in order to keep him, and the tactic pays off. Paul leaves in order to “get his head together”—and not before time, because Jake Avery has been seen talking to him in the local pub. Jake, who saw Heather on the doorstep of number 5 the night before Ruth Singh died. Without Paul you’re alone and more vulnerable than ever. Heather manipulates you shamelessly.

‘She also realizes that the consequences of her one big mistake are still with her, because she sees drunk old Elliot Copeland the builder—the only other person apart from Tate who saw the mural in the Air House, talking to Jake at the Wiltons’ party. For all she knows, Jake could have told Paul when they went out drinking together. Men talk too much when they’ve had a few, and even now Elliot might be telling everyone how he’s noticed something strange about the houses in the street.

‘Heather has to do something. If she leaves things as they are, the truth about the Water House will surface. She’s a woman prone to subterfuge—she already took Garrett’s old coat to the Wiltons’ party rather than her own—it’s always a good idea to spread blame and confusion around, as she knows when she later phones Kayla Ayson, posing as you, to suggest that her husband is having an affair. Meanwhile, there are two dangers in her mind. Anyone?’

Kallie raised a hand. ‘She’s frightened I’ll discover the wall for myself.’

‘Absolutely. You’re doing up the property, although it’s more of a struggle with Paul gone. Two, suppose Elliot mentions the wall in Heather’s house, the one she made him destroy? She can’t prevent the first, but she can sure as hell fix the latter. She’s done it once before; she can do it again. She waits and watches for an opportunity, and weirdly, just as the stuck tap represented a chance, so does Elliot’s work on the waste ground opposite. She throws you off the scent by claiming to see someone else from the window—or perhaps she has really seen Tate lurking in the bushes—and sends you on a pointless errand to buy booze, before heading over in the obscuring rain to see if there’s anything she can do. And there, perilously close to the half-cut Elliot, is his truck. She looks in the cab, spots the button that empties the flatbed, and allows the bricks to tip forward. Then she runs home, and is careful to be seen at the window by you as you return.’

‘That’s why there was a puddle of water on the carpet,’ May realized.

‘Heather’s out of danger. Everyone knew Elliot was a drunk. The rain will obliterate the crime scene. All she has to do now is wait for the Water House to fall into her lap.’

‘It’s true I was very depressed,’ said Kallie. ‘Maybe I did start to think about moving on, and could have been persuaded to sell to Heather. I should have seen the signs. God, when I think about our conversations together, the number of mistakes she made. She even referred to her cat as “a legacy from George” and I didn’t pick up on it. How did I fail to notice?’

‘Everyone makes mistakes when they’re improvising,’ said Bryant.

‘Maybe Jake did say something to Paul about making money from the house, but they got drunk together, and the next morning he’d forgotten their conversation.’ Kallie accepted another beer from Longbright. ‘I’ll never take him back now. Sorry, Mr Bryant, please go on.’

‘Well—I think it’s safe to assume that, by this time, Heather Allen is no longer thinking rationally. The scheme obsesses her. And that’s when the domino effect really kicks in. Jake Avery comes calling to tell her about something Elliot told him. He’s suspicious of Heather, but can’t decide what to do. He’ll sleep on it before going to the police. She starts to panic now. She’s so close to her goal, but all her efforts will go to waste if Jake talks. I’m guessing this part, but I think we’ll find out it’s true: Heather has seen Aaron and Marshall together. She goes to the workshop and talks to Marshall, and here she finds out something to her advantage. Jake’s always having a go at Aaron about little things, like leaving the back door open. Extemporizing wildly, she uses Tate’s fence-panels to climb into Jake’s back garden, entering his house. Passing through the kitchen, she sees the roll of clingfilm—why, when there’s a rack full of knives? Maybe she’s squeamish—she’s managed to avoid any real bloodshed, after all. She finds Jake asleep and reeking of booze. Smothering him takes virtually no effort at all on her part.’

Bryant dropped down into the seat behind his desk. ‘This should be the end of the chain. No one else knows the truth, and no one will ever know. Whether by coincidence or malicious design, she has murdered three people in accordance with three of the four elements. It’s fate’s grand scheme. Even the land is working with her. She feels invincible. Nothing else can possibly go wrong.

‘Which is exactly when the other weak spot in her plan is breached. Kallie here discovers the mural. To Heather, it seems as if the river is rising up to protect the house and defeat her. How appropriate, then, that she should bring events full circle and drown Kallie, turning her into one of the mural’s subjects. But of course, Tate is watching both houses—Kallie’s and, more importantly, Heather’s. He’s determined to protect Kallie and save his father’s work. But each time he comes running to help her, we chase him away. Still, he returns. At least now his hard work has finally paid off, and the mural—albeit a little frayed and wet around the edges—will be restored and preserved for posterity.’

‘She should have killed Tate,’ said Longbright. ‘That could have protected her.’

‘Well, you have reason to feel very pleased with yourself, Arthur,’ declared May.

‘I would only feel that if we had been able to save the lives of her victims,’ Bryant admitted. ‘But there is still something left to do tonight.’ He rose and began pulling on Longbright’s spare overcoat, which was far too large for him. ‘Janice, you can take Kallie home, can’t you?’

‘Where are you going?’ asked May.

‘I have to return to St Pancras Basin, and you’re coming with me. Don’t worry, this time we won’t be getting wet, and at least we can put something right.’

50

DIASPORA

They used the river map to locate the entrance, a dank drainage shaft behind a bathroom-accessory warehouse at the back of King’s Cross. But gaining access proved impossible, because the iron hatch covering the shaft had been sealed under new tarmac. Night construction workers covered the area, so the detectives drove to the only other location they had listed, in nearby York Way.

This proved an altogether easier affair, consisting of a concrete stairway straight down into the basin. Unfortunately, the exit was in the centre of a secure construction compound, to which the detectives could only gain access by showing their police authorization.

‘The construction company must know about this,’ said Bryant as they descended the undamaged drain ladder. ‘It’s right on their site.’

‘Perhaps they haven’t been granted access yet. You know how long this sort of insurance documentation takes to approve.’

The great cavern of the basin lay before them. As John May crossed the dripping tiled hall, a distant susurration of alarm suggested that its inhabitants had heard the arrival of a stranger. ‘You know we could get into serious trouble,’ whispered May.

‘When you’re old, you can afford to take risks,’ Bryant whispered back. ‘It seems perverse to become more safety-conscious just when you have less to lose.’

They stopped before a row of slumped bodies. A young East European in a hooded sweatshirt and jeans rested on his haunches, keeping guard for the others.

‘Does anyone here speak English?’ May asked him.

‘David Beckham,’ smiled the youth. ‘Posh Spice. Lovely Jubbly.’

‘I blame tourism,’ sighed Bryant. ‘Those are the three phrases Egyptian boys use when trying to sell themselves as guides at the pyramids. I don’t suppose he knows any more English than that.’

The boy was put out. ‘I am Amir. I watch television, I speak English good, more words than many English people. I see English television.
Absolutely Fabulous
.’

‘Which means you don’t know how to get through passport control, but you know who Joanna Lumley is,’ moaned Bryant. ‘What a world.’

‘What he say?’ the boy asked May.

‘He’s being rude, take no notice. How many of you?’ May pointed at the others.

‘Maybe fourteen now.’

‘Are there any children?’

‘No, the children have gone with their mothers. Only men left. The youngest man is ten years.’

‘Arthur, I need a word with you.’ May pulled him to one side. ‘We have to tell the immigration authorities. They’ll take care of the boy. I don’t suppose they’re carrying any papers or passports. They’re economic migrants, not political refugees. Apart from anything else, they could be harbouring diseases.’

‘Please, John, you’re sounding like one of the more hysterical tabloids. Look at them. If we turn them over, they’ll be sent back or thrown into detention centres. We’ll have betrayed them. What have they had to go through, what have they risked just to get here, living in a sewer?’

‘How
did
you get here?’ May asked the men sitting up in their makeshift beds, watching the conversation in defeated silence.

‘Some by truck, some in private boats,’ Amir explained. ‘Police watch Dover but there are fishermen in Folkestone. We come here to meet another man who says he will help us, but he does not come.’

‘They’re tearing down all the arches and tunnels around King’s Cross, building the Eurostar terminal, and accidentally opened up the access to the St Pancras Basin from above,’ Bryant explained. ‘Obviously someone tipped off the police, so now they’re watching all the streets, and these people can’t use the way they came in.’

‘What about the drain behind Balaklava Street?’

‘It would have been too steep to climb back up all the way from here, and now it’s flooded again. You can use the local drainage network between the three streets in Kentish Town, or leave the basin via York Way. But there’s no way of bringing over a dozen people up on to a fenced-off construction site guarded by a copper. Soon the company will start demolishing the tunnels and sinking concrete shafts. It’s probably only the rain that’s been delaying them. These are people who need our help.’

‘We could lose everything over this,’ May warned.

‘But we could get them out.’

‘I don’t suppose it would be difficult. We’d just have to call the security officer to another location for a few minutes. That’s not the question, Arthur. It’s whether we have a moral obligation to do so. We work for the State. Suppose we let them go free, and the first thing they do is rob someone? How would you justify that?’

‘I wouldn’t,’ Bryant agreed. ‘But if you hang around in King’s Cross long enough you’re going to get mugged anyway, and besides, they’d be stupid to stay here where the police are watching out for them. They’d have to split up and head off into other parts of the country.’

May looked nervously at the expectant group. ‘You’re sure there’s no other way?’

‘Of course there are other ways, but they’d result in more human misery. If you want a moral obligation, consider that our imperative to protect life should override all regulations set in place by passing politicians. Everyone needs a place they can call home. It should be as fundamental a right as freedom of speech.’

‘You cannot act against the law, Arthur.’

‘You can when the law is an ass. Time will prove us right.
Qui vivra verra.
’

‘Do you honestly believe that?’ asked May.

‘I have to believe it.’

May sighed. ‘Then let’s do it.’

They used a couple of Indian lads from the Drummond Street gang who sometimes acted as informants for the unit. Creating the diversion was easy enough, but the detectives had to be sure that the site security guard could be cajoled into lending a hand in what appeared to be a gang confrontation. Amir insisted that they could get everyone out within five minutes, but would need extra time to disperse from the torn-up backstreets of the Cross.

May watched as they gathered up plastic-wrapped bundles of belongings containing their only possessions—photographs, religious artefacts, a few items of clothing—and milled around the fractured iron staircase at the far end of the basin. The need to hold out hope made them trusting; for all they knew, unscrupulous traffickers could have been rounding them up for mass execution. Amir spoke to each man as he passed, explaining something about the detectives. Several came over and grabbed their hands, murmuring thanks. May shot his partner a disapproving look.

One old man was wrapped in yards of chequered scarfing. He looked like an Arabic version of Bryant. Shuffling to a stop before them, he held out a Sainsbury’s shopping bag in his arms.

‘He says you are kind men,’ Amir translated. ‘He wishes to give you a gift.’

The old man grinned back, revealing thin pink gums. The boy by his side could have been a son or a grandson; denied a healthy diet, he had already lost the immunity of youth. Bryant could only accept the bag and bow his head in thanks. He watched as they filed to the ladder, patiently awaiting their turn to reach the surface, and saw why such people accepted their fate: they were too weary to do anything else.

‘Wait,’ Bryant called, summoning Amir. He held out a small blue card. ‘I almost forgot. Tell your friends to call this number when they reach Birmingham.’ The card read:
Division of St James the Elder: Birmingham Coven—Prop. Betty Wagstaff.
‘She’s the daughter of a very old friend. She can get you medical help if you need it.’

The detectives watched as the last of the immigrants climbed toward the patch of liverish light that was the sky above King’s Cross.