Strange Tide
Authors: Christopher Fowler
The river Thames is London's most important yet neglected artery. And now it is giving up its secrets . . .
When the body of a young woman is found chained to a post at low tide, no one can understand how she came to be there â Arthur Bryant, John May and the Peculiar Crimes Unit find themselves confronting an impossible crime committed in a very public place.
It's an investigation that seems to extend from the coast of Libya to the nightclubs of North London, and proves as sinuous and sinister as the river itself. That's only part of the problem: Bryant's rapidly deteriorating state of health confines him to home, while May makes a fatal error of judgement that knocks him out of action and places everyone at risk.
With the PCU staff as baffled by their own detectives as by the case itself, the only people who can help now are the battery of eccentrics Bryant keeps listed in his diary. But will their arcane knowledge save the day or make matters even worse?
Soon there's a clear suspect in everyone's sights â the only thing that's missing is any scrap of evidence. And to find that, the whole team must get involved in some serious messing about on the river . . .
Contents
  6. Remembering & Forgetting
For Peter Chapman
GOING AWAY
I walk till the stars of London wane
And dawn creeps up the Shadwell Stair.
But when the growing syrens blare
I with another ghost am lain.
W
ILFRED
O
WEN
The Thames is too dark to lack a god.
C
ARRIE
E
TTER
Nothing gave Arthur Bryant greater satisfaction than making his first blotch on a fresh white page. The scratch of the nib as it scarred the paper always sent a tingle through his fingertips.
âI've decided to write up that business of the Clapham Common Casanova,' he announced, turning to the new notebook on his desk and opening it with a theatrical flourish. Uncapping his fountain pen, he made a grand downward stroke.
Nothing came out.
He shook the pen violently. Ink spots flew all over the office. Crippen had been happily sleeping beside his desk and sprinted from the room.
âI thought Raymond didn't want you circulating any more of your dodgy memoirs,' said John May. âYou make our investigations sound like terrible old paperback murder mysteries.' He swiped irritably at his smartphone. âWhy won't this thing sync properly?'
âNothing modern works properly,' Bryant cheerfully replied. âEverything is over-complicated. The office teabags are sentient, apparently. They have a Twitter account. It says so on the box. Dan Banbury bought me electronic bathroom scales for my birthday. They told everyone on Facebook how much I weigh. I don't need inanimate objects slagging me off.'
âBut you still use them?' asked May.
âNo, tragically they fell under the wheels of my car. Your phone is probably working fine, you're just losing the ability to keep up with it. You're deteriorating, like everything else around here.
âThings fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned. â Yeats.
âNo amount of colouring your hair and sucking in your gut will change that.' Pleased with himself, he sat back and took a sip from his tea mug.
It is said that the hallmark of a gentleman is that he is only ever rude intentionally. Arthur Bryant was no gentleman. His rudeness came from an inability to cloak his opinions in even the most cursory civility. He believed in good manners at the meal table and bad manners almost everywhere else.
âYou're a very unpleasant old man,' May replied, returning to his phone.
âWhat's the point in consensual opinion?' Bryant asked, exasperated. âIf you only discuss matters of interest with like-minded individuals you never learn anything new. Why would I want a peer group on Twitter? They're just going to agree with me.'
âNobody ever agrees with you, and besides you're not even supposed to be here. You'reâ'
âYes, I know what I am, thank you, but I'm feeling a lot better this morning so can we not talk about it until we absolutely have to?'
âVery well.' May peered across the desks at his partner's open notebook. âIf you're planning to set down those cases in chronological order, the Bride in the Tide should be next.'
Bryant raised the fingers of his right hand. âThree â no, two things. One, please don't call it by the name a tabloid reporter coined after a five-bottle lunch, and B, it's the only case I won't ever be able to write up in my superbly erudite and illuminating chronicles.'
May gave up with his phone and set it aside. âWhy not?'
âBecause,' Bryant pointed out, âit's one of the only times we nailed the culprit and were given the slip. My public wants to read about the successes, not the failures.' He rose and walked over to the window, to jingle the change in his pockets and survey his kingdom.
âYour public?' asked May. âYou haven't got a public. You were complaining about your phone not ringing the other day. There's nothing wrong with it; you've never given anyone your number. Anyway, the case wasn't an entire failure. Your suspicions turned out to be justified.'
âIt still didn't end up with a spell in the pokey for â I forget the name of the malefactor now. It was on the tip of my tongue, began with a B. Boadicea.'
May looked up. âI'm sorry?'
Bryant was still looking down into the street. The houses on the other side were ochreish and meanly windowed. âQueen Boadicea. She's over the road, just past the fried-chicken shop. How very odd.'
âTake one of your yellow pills,' said May, allowing his fingers to creep back towards his phone.
Boadicea, the great warrior queen, was sitting on a garden wall opposite, dangling her silver sandals over its edge, her coarse-woven purple robe gathered about her waist, her golden breastplate glinting in the cold morning sunlight. The breeze ruffled the dyed red leveret fur on her bronze helmet. She was contemplatively licking the side of a 99.
âI don't know how you can eat that,' said the Roman centurion next to her. âIt's bloody freezing.'
âI'm the Queen of the Iceni,' said Boadicea. âI don't feel the cold.'
The centurion pointed to her ice cream. âWhy is it that the flakes in those things never taste as good as the Cadbury's Flakes you buy in the yellow wrappers?'
âI can't comment,' said Boadicea. âChocolate hasn't been invented yet.'
âYou don't have to stay in character all the time.'
âWhen I was a kid we spelled it B-O-A-D-I-C-E-A. That was how everybody spelled it. Then all of a sudden it was B-O-U-D-I-C-C-A. Where did that come from?'
âYou were a Victorian misprint.'
âI've got my own statue on Westminster Bridge. You'd think they could sort out my name.'
âIt's B-U-D-D-U-G in Welsh,' said the centurion, who was Welsh.
âThey don't even know where I died! It was either Watling Street, East Anglia or over there, under platform nine.' She pointed to the great arched glass roof of King's Cross Station in the distance.
âYou're thinking of Harry Potter,' said the centurion.
âDid you even bother to do any research before you took this part?' Boadicea asked, gnawing the end off her cone.
âIt was hardly worth it,' said the centurion. âI just come on, shout a bit and get a spear shoved through me.' In the gardens behind him, the second assistant director called everyone back to their places. âLooks like they're going for another take,' he said. âAre you in this scene?'
âNo, I've finished for the day.' She crunched up the last of her wafer and wiped her fingers on a dock leaf. âI'm going to get out of this clobber. I thought it would be a bit of a novelty doing location work instead of green-screening everything down at Pinewood, but I've spent most of my time staring out at King's Cross, watching plain-clothes coppers going in and out of that building on the corner.' She pointed up at the headquarters of the Peculiar Crimes Unit on Caledonian Road.
âHow do you know they're coppers if they're in plain clothes?' the centurion asked.
âThey have big feet and matching jackets and they're always carrying takeaways,' said Boadicea. âWhat else could they be? I wonder what they do in there all day.'
The centurion shrugged. âWhat do you care? You've been dead for nearly two thousand years.'
âYou don't understand,' said the warrior queen. âI'm an
actor
. I observe humanity.'
âYou're an extra, love,' said the centurion. âAnd what could you possibly learn from watching a bunch of plain-clothes plods?'