The Water Room (7 page)

She looked beautiful tonight, seated with the shining water at her back, her dark-blond hair bobbed to the jawline above pale bare shoulders. ‘I don’t get it,’ said Paul, guiltily taking his seat at the table. ‘We never come to restaurants like this.’ The great glass wall of the Oxo Tower revealed a segment of the restless river. Beyond its bank, sharp pinpoints of blue-white light scratched and sparked as welders worked late into the night. A new city of steel and glass was rising.

‘We do when we can afford it,’ she told him, ‘and when we’ve got things to celebrate.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Things? You have a list?’

She ticked her fingers. ‘First, you saw off the wicked, moustache-twirling property barons, and now they’ve officially renounced interest in the house.’

‘How do you know this?’

‘Mr Singh called me this afternoon. He had an argument with either Garrett or Moss, I forget which. They appear to have decided that it’s too much trouble, and are washing their hands of the whole business. Second . . .’

‘What, they gave up just like that?’

‘Maybe you made them feel guilty. Maybe they’ve found another sick old lady sitting on a goldmine nearer the terminus. More importantly, I’ve got the money and I’m buying the house for us.’

‘How can you do that?’

‘Ah, this is one of those little things we’ve never actually talked about.’ Kallie sat back with a secret smile as the waiter poured wine. ‘I don’t often say it, but thank God for having a stage mother. I was going on shoots for baby clothes before I could even walk. I carried on with catalogue work right through school. My mother called it rainy-day money. I think it’s raining now, don’t you?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘It’s finally time to use it for something useful. Can you believe old Hoppit and Toad wanted to flatten the place and squeeze not two but
four
flats on to the site? Apparently they were talking about bunging some councillors to let them build another floor, but they only wanted to pay Mr Singh once the planning permission came through. Obviously, he doesn’t intend to wait for months while they screw around with architects and builders. He just wants to see his daughter and his grandchildren. Besides, he has another reason for wanting to divest himself of the house. It hurts him to have it, Paul, his sister died there. He says she received hate mail, racist stuff, and it upset her badly. He doesn’t ever want to set foot inside the place again. Can you blame him? I can deal with his solicitor, and that way he can go as soon as he likes. I’ve got enough ready cash for the deposit and I can just about raise the mortgage on my own, but I’ll need you to kick in with money for the work that needs doing. We can do it, Paul.’

‘I haven’t even seen the place. And my job’s risky at the moment. I could be out of work any day now—’

‘It’s got a spare room and a garden.’

He misunderstood her. ‘You’re right, we’ll need somewhere for the baby.’ He raised his glass. ‘That’s another reason to celebrate, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, that’s a reason to celebrate.’

‘Then let’s have a toast.’ He studied her carefully. ‘To the baby.’

‘The baby.’ Kallie raised her glass, and tried not to catch his eye.

‘You’re not pregnant, are you?’

Her eyes held his. ‘No.’

‘Why did you tell me you were?’

He didn’t seem angry, and she found herself resenting his obvious relief. ‘I don’t—I wasn’t trying to—’ The words dried in her mouth.

‘It doesn’t matter.’ He reached across the table and cupped her hands in his. He seemed to have finally made up his mind about something. ‘Do you understand? It doesn’t matter.’

‘Paul—’

The waiter had arrived with the starter, but discreetly stood to one side. The other diners watched them kiss, but being British, pretended not to notice. Outside, the first heavy squalls of rain prickled the river.

7

HOME AND DRY

‘You don’t understand what it’s like, and I have no way of explaining to you,’ said April. Hands trembling faintly, she relit her cigarette. Her purloined Michelin ashtray had filled with Silk Cut in the last half-hour. It was the only untidied thing in a room filled with carefully arranged mementoes from a happier life. ‘I know Arthur meant well, but I just can’t do it.’

‘I’m trying to understand,’ said John May. ‘Please, let me help you.’

She shook out her hair as though the idea was preposterous. ‘How? What can you do? You have no idea.’ Her pale fringe fell forward, hiding her face. She appeared healthier than he had expected, but the off-kilter body language that had so long hinted at some unspecified disquiet had become habit, so that she appeared hunched. She had been living in the shadow of the past for so long that it seemed any emergence into daylight might melt her away.

‘April, I’ve been in the police force all my life, I’ve dealt with every kind of situation imaginable. In my experience—’

‘That’s the problem, this isn’t in your experience. It’s not something that can be cured by making an arrest.’ Her voice was as thin and cracked as spring ice. ‘You’ve had a lifetime of good health, you think you’re invincible, you come from a generation that doesn’t understand why people can’t just pull themselves together, but it’s not that simple.’

‘I know it’s been tough for you—’

‘Why do you talk as if it’s in the past? It’s still tough for me. I want to work. I want to stand outside, beneath a vast blue sky. I want to be able to pass a stranger in the street without feeling terrified. But I open the front door and the world comes in like a tidal wave.’ She hid her eyes behind her hand. He recalled the fierce methylene blue of her irises as a child. It seemed that the colour had faded from them since.

Agoraphobia was the latest spectre to haunt April in her battle to cope with her mother’s death. John May’s granddaughter had grown ill soon after Elizabeth died. Years of therapy had made little difference to her. John loved her with the desperation of someone who had seen too many others fall, but saw a damaging blankness inside her heart that no one could fill. Lost siblings, dead parents, the whispered cruelties of children drawn too close—May’s family had been so unlucky that it was hard not to believe that some dark star trailed them, bringing harm and hardship in its wake.

Three months earlier, following signs of improvement and a positive report from her doctor, Arthur Bryant had put April forward as a candidate for a new law-enforcement training initiative. The Chief Association of Police Officers had invited non-professionals to train alongside detectives in an exercise designed to bridge the widening gulf between police and public. It had seemed an ideal opportunity to protect April while allowing her to rediscover some independence, but now she had suffered a relapse, retreating further back into the shadows of her bleakly pristine flat.

‘You know none of us like you living here by yourself, April.’ The Holloway Road was a railed-off corridor of run-down pubs and short-lease shops selling a curious mixture of plastic bins and mobile-phone covers, an area where too many lives were lived at discount rates.

‘I’m not earning, Granddad—I can’t afford to move anywhere else.’

‘You need a place you can call home, somewhere safe and light. I told you I’d help you financially—and could you not call me that?’

‘You think you’re going to stay young for ever, just because Arthur is three years older and acts his age. You have such
conviction
. You always knew who you wanted to be. I never had the faintest idea.’ She stubbed out the cigarette and thought for a moment. ‘I’m starting to wonder if I exist beyond the walls of this flat. I could go out into the open air and vanish.’

Observation is a habit officers find hard to turn off. May could see how the apartment reflected April’s state of mind, with its numbingly neat compositions of disinfected crockery and cutlery, forks all set in the same direction in their drying rack. Here, she could control her environment. Outside was only the stomach-churning panic of disorder. May’s granddaughter was twenty-three, but already the damage ran so deep that he feared she might never find a way to restore her spirit. As a child she had been untamed and tomboyish, a noisy, messy, natural force. Looking at the polished shelves of paperbacks coordinated by their spines, the towels and rugs stiff with overwashing, he could find no trace of the wild girl he’d loved. The problem was exacerbated by the fact that it could never be discussed. Her mother’s death was a sealed subject; to speak of it would require an acknowledgement of guilt that would destroy the little faith April had left in him. Perhaps there would come a time when an honest exploration of the past would prove healing. Until then, they would have to step warily around the events of the terrible night that lay between them like an open mineshaft.

‘Arthur reckons you’d be a good liaison officer with the unit. He thinks you’re a very perceptive young woman. He believes there are skills that can’t be taught. He wouldn’t have proposed you if he thought you couldn’t handle it.’

She raised her eyes as if seeing him for the first time, and for a moment it seemed he might win her over. ‘Uncle Arthur.’ The hint of a smile appeared. ‘I remember the smell of his pipe. Everything was scented with eucalyptus for days after he’d visited. He used to leave sweets under my pillow.’

Bryant had always believed in her, even during her darkest moments. He had insisted on taking April to visit one of his oldest friends, Maggie Armitage, leader of the Coven of St James the Elder, who was as much a student of human nature as she was of white witchcraft. Maggie had pressed her hands over April’s and told him that her subject feared loss of control, that she quickly needed to regain her sense of identity. When people lose confidence in themselves, Maggie had warned, they can be overwhelmed by powerful forces, possibly satanic in origin. Maggie had at least hit the button psychologically, so the detectives conspired to bring their favourite granddaughter back into the embrace of the world.

‘Will you at least consider it? We could take things slowly. Some part-time work, then if things pan out, you could join us on a more permanent basis. You’d start making new friends.’

‘Let’s talk about something else.’ She tapped out another cigarette. ‘Janice told me you have a murder case.’

May was relieved by the change of subject. ‘It may not be murder, that’s the trouble. Arthur took the job to help out an old pal, and I wish he hadn’t. We’ve no motive, no cause of death, no leads, no prints, nothing.’

April’s interest was piqued. ‘You’ve always told me that every murderer leaves something behind.’

‘Yes, but unfortunately the house is thick with dust. I was hoping we could collate microfibres from a laser-scan of the floor, but the chance of finding anything has to be weighed against the expense of running tests. If Raymond Land discovers what Arthur is up to, doing favours for friends, he’ll blow a gasket. At least it’s good to be back in our own building.’

April smiled. ‘Perhaps you’re a little agoraphobic, too. It’s a very English habit, the preference for familiar surroundings. The victim lived in Kentish Town, yes? Did you know it now has an official gangsta name, K-Town? Because kids are shooting tickets in the high street. The dealers are selling wraps of powdered ketamine folded inside lottery tickets. Kids can snort it straight from the palm of the hand without being noticed. It’s referred to locally as Cat Valium.’

‘How do you know that? You never go out.’

‘No, but I have friends who do.’

‘You see how good you’d be at the job? Arthur and I are completely out of touch. He still uses his network of street misfits and fringe-dwellers, but I don’t think someone who reads psychic auras from bins and paving stones is a very reliable informant. Just think about the job, April, that’s all we’re asking.’

‘I understand that. And I’ll try, I promise.’ Her eye had been taken by some white silk roses on the window ledge. She was unable to resist realigning them until they stood as regimented as pencils in a box, and barely acknowledged her grandfather’s silent departure.

‘She’s right, it
is
a very English habit, not going out much,’ said Bryant, hanging his Bangkok spirit-beater behind his half-buried desk. ‘My father wore his unadventurous spirit like a badge.
“Take your jacket off, you won’t feel the benefit when you go back out.” “I could never live in a country where you can’t buy Marmite.” “Looks like rain, we’d better not chance it.”
If it hadn’t been for the War, he’d never have met people from other countries, although of course he had to kill them. Before 1940, the average English family had travelled less than nine miles from their home. Many never got beyond the end of their street. Now look at us—we can’t stay in one place for more than two minutes. April will come around in her own time, you’ll see. You can’t force these things.’

He pulled an old Sharp’s toffee hammer from his drawer and nailed an effigy of a Tasmanian dog-demon beside his knotted whaler’s rope made from human hair. On the mantelpiece he had placed the silver-chased Tibetan skull, with moonstones for eyeballs that looked like drum-polished cataracts. Beside it were several leatherbound copies of
The East Anglian Book Of Civil Magicke,
the collected essays of G. K. Chesterton and a privately circulated volume entitled
Gardening Secrets of Curates’ Wives
. His office was brand spanking new, but had already begun to look like some kind of esoteric rural museum.

‘A nation of shopkeepers.’ Bryant dragged a letter off his desk with a derisive snort. ‘Greedy little proprietors.’

‘What now?’ May looked up from his computer screen, only mildly interested. Bryant’s background monologues formed the soundtrack of his office life.

‘Those property bods, Garrett and Moss. They’re at it again. They moved in for a quick kill in Balaklava Street, and now they’re hounding some poor old dear in the next road. In the absence of any other suspects in the Singh case, I ran a quick check into their past history. Lots of local complaints, a couple of lawsuits that even reached the courts, but no actual prosecutions.’