‘Do you know what the most popular murder weapon is in Britain? A screwdriver. Have you
Bryant looked around at the depressing green walls of the Bayham Street Mortuary. The fierce overhead strip-lighting buzzed like the faint memory of a head injury. The police building had been converted from a Victorian school, and had so far defied all attempts at modernization. Rumbling steel extractor ducts had been set into the ceiling to alleviate the emetic smell of chemicals, but it still looked like a place where Death would choose to sit and read a paper. Finch’s countenance, peering over a plastic sheet at him like a doleful hatchet, added an extra layer of gloom to the proceedings.
‘Which river did it come from?’ asked Bryant. ‘When will the sample be back?’
‘It’s already back. Your lad Kershaw brought it over a few minutes ago. I rather like him. He seems to know what he’s doing, which makes a pleasant change in your place.’
‘That’s odd, you never like anyone. Have you noticed how fruit gums don’t have any taste since they stopped putting artificial flavours in them?’ Bryant proffered the tube. ‘I shouldn’t eat them, they stick to my plate. I don’t see the old lady anywhere.’
‘I’ve put Mrs Singh away. She’s to be spared the indignity of any further exposure in this room. Look at the lights they’ve put in, it’s like McDonald’s.’
‘Smells like it as well. Have you been cooking meat?’
‘I caught my assistant eating a doner kebab in here last night. I warned him that his dietary habits could legally invalidate us. This is supposed to be a sterile zone, although I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve found your cough drops in a body bag. My toxicology database makes no provision for boiled sweets. Ah, here’s your Mr Kershaw now.’
Bryant was amazed. Oswald Finch was clearly taken with the new recruit. Perhaps he knew about Kershaw’s powerful political connections, although at his advanced age he couldn’t be hoping for promotion. Kershaw was wide-eyed, bespectacled, blond and unironed, with a cowlick of gravity-defying hair, as tall and thin as a sparkler, a later edition of Finch. He tapped at a plastic-coated analysis data-sheet and grinned, reminding Bryant of himself in his early twenties. ‘Well, it’s not actually a poison,’ he told them, ‘but there’s enough muck in it to have given her a nasty stomach ache, if it had managed to travel that far. Traces of mercury and lead, various harmful nitrates and plenty of interesting bacteria, the kind of cryptosporidia that lurks about in dead water, only prevented from proliferation by low temperatures. I think we’ve got ourselves some Monster Soup.’ He slipped the page to Finch, who read the bar graphs.
‘What do you mean?’ Finch asked over the top of his glasses.
Bryant smiled knowingly. ‘I think Mr Kershaw is referring to the title of a famous satirical print published in 1828, dedicated to the London water companies. It shows a horrified woman dropping her tea as she examines a drop of London water and finds it full of disgusting creatures. People drank from the Thames, which was incredibly polluted by faeces and rotting animal carcasses.’
‘Just so,’ Kershaw agreed, nodding vigorously.
‘You’re saying this is Thames water?’ asked Finch.
‘Exactly.’ Bryant found himself concurring with the new boy.
‘The kind of bacteria you find in dead water?’
‘That’s right.’
‘But the Thames isn’t dead. Far from it.’
‘Sorry, perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. It’s Thames water, all right, but extremely stagnated.’
‘Does it taste bad?’
‘Really,’ Finch complained, ‘how would he know a thing like that?’
‘Oh, absolutely vile,’ said Kershaw, happy to answer the question. He turned to Finch. ‘Naturally I did a taste test to see if she could possibly have ingested it by mistake, but I think it’s highly unlikely.’ He shoved his glasses back up his nose. ‘I checked with Mr Banbury about the contents of her kettle-I had an odd thought she might somehow have filled it from an unclean source, but no, pure London ring-main water from her kitchen tap, fewer trace elements than many bottled designer waters.’
‘Then I can’t imagine what it was doing in her mouth.’ Bryant offered Kershaw a fruit gum.
‘That’s your job to find out, isn’t it?’ snapped Finch, annoyed by the shifting loyalties around him. ‘Meanwhile, I can tell you we’re heading for an open verdict.’
‘Why, what’s the cause of death?’
‘Heart stopped beating.’
‘Yes, I know that-’ Bryant began.
‘No, I mean it just stopped beating. No reason.’
‘There has to be a reason.’
‘No, there doesn’t,’ Finch replied stubbornly. ‘Sudden death can happen to anyone at any time, although one is more vulnerable at particular ages, especially in infancy and dotage.’ The pathologist narrowed his eyes at Bryant. ‘So you’d better watch out.’
‘She was in some kind of stressful situation,’ said Bryant, chewing ruminatively. ‘She must have been, with the water in her mouth. It would be easy for us to make the biggest mistake of all.’
‘What’s that?’ asked Kershaw.
‘Insist on a logical explanation.’ Bryant jammed his shapeless hat back over his ears. ‘She might simply have lost her wits. We only have hearsay on her mental health. The Royal Free appears to have mislaid her hospital notes.’
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
