Strange Tide (13 page)

‘True,' Bryant agreed, ‘and the number of unexplained deaths has risen sharply in London. By “unexplained”, I mean open verdicts, unsolved cases, disappearances, people simply dropping off the grid and ceasing to exist. Now, what does that suggest to you?'

‘Poor accounting?' asked Land hopefully.

‘No,
mon petit débile
, it suggests that the nature of lawbreaking is changing. London is much more populous and transitory these days, so theoretically the crime rate per capita should have risen. I think it
has
risen, and we're misreading the figures.'

‘How would that make a difference?' Land eyed the pipe debris with disgust. ‘A person is either there to be counted or not.'

‘Not strictly true, if you believe in quantum superposition.'

Land gave him the blankest of looks.

‘Schrödinger's Cat? No?' Bryant shrugged. ‘Never mind, you were talking about motives, and forgive me but the motives you selected are the same ones that have been trotted out for the past century and a half. Motives for murders that were committed by rats.'

Land was lost. ‘What do you mean, rats?'

‘Germ-riddled squeakers that flee from the light, hungry and cowardly opportunists from what used to be called the criminal classes. What if crime rates haven't changed but criminals have? We're in a fast-evolving, fluid society that's almost impossible to track, despite the fact that you can't nip out for a Kit-Kat without triggering an electronic Post-it note. There's no nice old PC Plod popping in for a cup of tea and keeping a friendly eye on all at 999, Letsby Avenue any more.' Bryant squinted into his pipe and blew. ‘Look up “police station” for this area and you know what the interweb tells you? That there
is
one, only it doesn't seem to exist at the listed address. That's because it got closed down due to lack of use, which just leaves specialist units like us. We tackle crime after the event, we don't keep the peace. Nobody keeps the peace any more. We punish but we don't prevent. The politicians are letting society do that for us.' Bryant saw that Land was still having trouble following him. ‘Look, if someone chucks a McDonald's bag on to the pavement in front of you, you don't tell him off for fear of getting a knife in your gut, right? You keep your head down and your eyes averted, and hope that someone else does something. Fear is what's keeping the population in line nowadays.'

Land shot him a look of concern. ‘Are you feeling all right?'

‘No, of course I'm not. Victims go unnoticed because we no longer know who's preying on them, and they don't report half the things that happen for fear of having their own histories investigated. What kind of a person would tie a pregnant girl to a post and let the tide drown her? Maybe she wanted to have the child and expected this Cooper fellow to support her, so he did her in.'

‘I think he'd have tried to talk through the options before dragging her down to the river and planning an impossible crime, don't you?' said Land.

Bryant patted his pockets, looking for tobacco. ‘We don't know enough about the girl yet. The father of her child could be a married man with a lot to lose. We need to drive her family and friends mad with questions. And I want Dan to tear Cooper's house apart. I want him pushed through the hoops. I should have gone with them this afternoon. I feel like I'm under house arrest being stuck here with you. No offence.'

‘There's plenty for you to do here,' said Land. ‘You can give us moral support, and there are your books, and the phones and the internet.' He sounded like a sports teacher consoling a child who'd forgotten his kit for the big match.

‘Fine,' said Bryant, unwrapping a packet of HMS Nautilus Rough Cut Rolling Tobacco. ‘If you're going to patronize me, I shall retire to my thought-chamber and ponder the problem. But don't expect me to get very much further without being allowed out in the field. You might do me a favour, though. That so-called “public-private area” near Tower Hill Beach. Find out if it bans dogs, will you? And see if there's a bright red coach parked by the Tower called “Golden Dreams”.'

Savouring the mystified look on his colleague's face, Bryant returned to his own office and threw himself down into his old green leather armchair, taking in his half of the room, which had been filled with even more furniture while the two Daves were laying new floors.

To his left were the bowed bookcases stuffed with forgotten periodicals, lost treatises, banned tracts, esoteric catalogues and misleading textbooks. Next to them was a late-nineteenth-century Vernis Martin
bonheur du jour
writing desk with slender cabriole legs and ormolu mounts, its top inlaid with cherrywood marquetry, its value somewhat diminished by the half-litre of ‘Peach Bellini' Dulux matt emulsion Bryant had accidentally tipped over it during an experiment. The staff had trodden pink paint around the building for days. There was also an astonishingly ugly sideboard, a veritable Quasimodo of Victorian furniture that contained several hundred files, souvenirs, mementoes, gee-gaws and postcards of a distinctly dodgy nature, as well as a hundred millilitres of nitroglycerine stored in an old bottle of Dr Japp's Colonic Rejuvenator. There was a ventriloquist's dummy that had once belonged to Charles Dickens and a plaster figurine of Dame Nellie Melba minus its right leg. It was a measure of Bryant's mind that he thought such items might one day come in useful.

In amongst this old rubbish were far more serious effects, of course, including a number of documents so sensitive that they still had the power to destabilize governments. Bryant was very selective about what he kept, and everything was stored for a reason. Like Edgar Allen Poe in ‘The Purloined Letter' he believed in hiding the most important items in plain sight, which was why his black book of contacts lay open on his desk.

As a lay historian and a self-taught academic there was very little he did not know about the secret synchronicities of London, but very occasionally he drew a blank, and then the black book came into its own, for its pages contained the addresses of hundreds of men and women who shared his odd passions. He searched for names now, carefully jotting down the details of a few eccentrics and social misfits who might prove useful. Then he sat back for a quiet smoke and a think.

By the time the pipe was finished he had decided that the key was the river. It gave life to London, but could just as easily take it away. The question that hung in his mind was this: Why keep Dalladay alive until the Thames consumed her? Why not kill her and weight the body, throwing it from a bridge as so many had done before? Why tie only the left hand? And what was to be gained by taking such a risk, by doing something so utterly cruel? What kind of devious mind were they dealing with?

Bryant's bookshelves contained half a dozen esoteric histories of the Thames, but none proved to be of any help. He stuck a hand into his overcoat pocket and pulled out two leaking cheddar and chutney sandwiches, making a mental note to ask Alma to wrap them before leaving them inside the brain-pan of the carved Tibetan skull he kept beside his bed.
What kind of person are we looking for?
he asked himself as he munched.
Does he have a special association with the river? Does she? Or is it simply because that spot is dark and inaccessible and free from cameras? How did the killer get in there anyway?

So far, they didn't have enough physical evidence to answer his questions. For all of London's much-vaunted crime-prevention technology, it was amazing how often the system failed to record illegal activities. Hard drives froze, motherboards overheated, lights burned out, substations flooded, suspects blurred before camera lenses; for every major advance it seemed there was half a step back.

He needed to go and look at the site, just walk around on the foreshore and get a feel for what had happened. Janice was off paying a visit to the Cossack Club. It was already dark. Tower Hill was less than twenty minutes away. He could slip out via the fire escape and get back before John returned. No one would ever know that he had even been away.

Knotting his favourite green scarf tightly around his neck and chin, Bryant crept off down the stairs and out into the street, keeping close to the wall just in case Raymond Land was looking out of his window. It was still raining, and London in the rain had its own scent. It was the smell of weeds and wet brickwork, and in the new Square Mile it was becoming rarer with each passing day. Glass and steel were odourless.

A short walk from Tower Hill Station took him towards the banks of the Thames. Visitors were still milling about the new entrance to the Tower of London, tickets for which now included access to the Tower and the Crown Jewels, exhibitions and guided tours, historical re-enactments, activity trails and fish and chips.
It's only a matter of time before they add a roller-coaster
, Bryant decided.

He made his way down to the river's edge, where the windswept stone concourse that presented itself did indeed display a ‘No Dogs' sign. Anyone with a pet in the private apartments opposite would have to walk it farther along the embankment at night, so there was no point in searching among them for witnesses.

The Thames did not possess the romantic outlook of the Danube or the Seine. There was a harshness about it that rankled in the nostrils and blossomed in the brown-green depths like a series of submerged thunderstorms. Bryant knew that if you fell into its central channel during an ebb tide there was little chance of your body ever being recovered. Mothers no longer allowed their children to play on the shoreline. Its reaches had a gloomy, melancholy aura on even the sunniest days. Ancient weathered posts, the gangrenous remains of the wharves that had bristled all along the shore, still rose up like dinosaur bones.

Bryant considered the problem of access. To get her here, Dalladay's attacker must have carried or walked her through some of the most heavily guarded and photographed streets in the city. If he drove in from the east he would have had to pass through the security checkpoints. From the west he would have been under the gaze of numerous CCTV banks, and once at the Thames he had the impossible problem of reaching the actual beach, so why take a risk when less than a mile down the road he would have found any number of secluded tidal spots?

The river edge was a liminal space of dank corrosion, the exposed gut of the city, the source of its nourishment and the eliminator of its wastes. It seeped into the bones and spread malign thoughts. There was nothing kind or graceful about its unreflective surface, nothing but danger in its depths.

He made his way down the side of the unadorned brick house that stood beyond the Tower of London gift shop and tried the spiked steel gate, noting that although the tall bars were new the lock itself was old and rusted solid. It had clearly not been opened in years. Not impossible to climb over though, if you were determined enough. But not carrying a dead weight. He was about to take his leave of the spot when he saw something move on the river.

A wall of fog was approaching. Fascinated, he stopped to watch.

It billowed over the water in great grey-green curls, obliterating the opposite bank within seconds. Filled with a terrible sense of foreboding, Bryant remained frozen. The noise of traffic faded away and the sound of lapping water assailed him. He remembered an ancient saying: ‘When the lions drink, London will drown.'

The green bronze lion-heads held rings in their bared teeth and were set all along the Thames embankments as mooring points. It had long been thought that if the river rose above them it would flood the city's great plain and London would be lost. Any passing policeman who couldn't see the lions was to immediately report the fact so that the tube system could be shut down at once. The fog obscured them now.

Glancing down, Bryant saw that his boots were wet with coalescing droplets. The fog was completely enveloping him. He turned around. The view had vanished in every direction. He sniffed the wet air and wrinkled his nose. He could smell fish-guts spilling from the gutters of Billingsgate Market, coal dust, leather and oil, horse dung, bad meat and rotted wood, and above all the river, unclean, unhealthy, dense and dark.

The fog roiled and parted for a moment, revealing a forest of masts, tall chimneys belching black smoke and, in the distance, the sign of the White Lion Wharf. Mountainously overfilled lighters and barges were drawn up on the foreshore before Locket & Judkins, the coal merchants, its discoloured clapboard building poking out beside the ironmonger's, whose sign advertised stove ranges and castings. These were separated by rickety planked wharves and surrounded by a dozen or so small cranes. Nosing through the black waters was a hay barge, a ‘stackie', its cargo loaded to the reefed brown sails of its rigging. On the shore red-faced men in surtouts, paletots and brown waistcoats lolled about smoking clay pipes, waiting for the ‘calling foremen' to arrive with their hire-books. The purl-men, who were licensed to sell wormwood-infused ale from their casks, rang their handbells and pushed their carts, attracting thirsty ballast-heavers and coal porters.

Out in the deep channel a black-sided wooden battleship was silently gliding downriver, its rigging filled with capering sailors as it set off with its cargo of human suffering, convicts from the Fleet Prison bound for Australia.

Digging at his scarf's constricting coils, Bryant tore them away from his throat and took great gulping gasps of air that reeked of hides and horns, shit and sulphur, coal dust, cinnamon and nutmeg. He turned and saw the great tree of Queenhithe dock, which had survived from the ninth century to the late twentieth, and the great dark dome of St Paul's Cathedral, by far the tallest building in the city. The thin November daylight shaded into dusk and darkness as time itself stretched and shrank.

It was impossible, absurd – this was the pungent, chaotic Thames shoreline of the 1890s, not the bare antiseptic riverside of the twenty-first century.
This is worse than being lost
, he thought,
I'm hallucinating
.
It's ridiculous, I'm bringing to life a London I never knew. I could only have seen these images in my books.