resolved to keep her showers short until then.
‘Floorboards creak, pipes expand and contract-you’ve never lived in such an old house before. You have what doctors used to refer to as an overactive imagination; it comes from being too creative, and of course Paul’s away. .’ Her mother managed to hang sentences filled with insinuations of mental instability and general uselessness in the air like embarrassing items of washing. Helen Owen loved her daughter, but not enough to stop herself from being cruel.
‘I’m coping brilliantly,’ Kallie rallied. ‘And before you say it, I know it wasn’t the best time to take on something like this, but it was a lucky opportunity. Nobody knew she was going to die so suddenly.’
‘That’s simply not true, darling. There’s a lot we can do to maximize our health and reduce stress, and I think you have to ask yourself if Paul has your interests at heart. He seems barely employable, he has trouble controlling his temper, and then he leaves you with all the stress of moving, into a house that sounds entirely unfit for habitation-’
‘I have to go, Mum. I’ll call you later.’ Kallie knew better than to talk with her mother when she was like this; Helen was alone and angry and probably drinking.
There was still much to do before going to bed. She pulled on her jeans and ventured out into the garden. The sodden bushes hung like overcooked spinach, or foliage in a drained fishtank. The steps to the small patch of grass were so overgrown that she had to cut her way through with a kitchen knife. She heard the cat’s peculiarly human cry before she got to the top. Somewhere inside the tangles of bindweed, she could see Cleo’s piebald torso flexing and twisting in an effort to free itself.
Cutting through the bindweed was slow work. When she was finally able to reach in and grab the cat, it slipped away with a whimper of pain. Her foot caught on a broken plastic drain lid, and she tipped over into a wet bed of weeds. Withdrawing her left hand, she was surprised to find her fingers covered in blood. The cat had stopped wriggling now, and was lying on its side under a bush. Even in the watery cloudlight of late afternoon, she could see that its fur had been parted by a number of short, deep cuts that looked like knife slashes.
‘Come on, baby, let me help you.’ Kallie reached out her hands and gently lifted it up. As the cat feebly batted her with its paws, she could see that its back left leg had been almost severed. Torn sinews gleamed with pearlized whiteness. There were more cuts across the creature’s face.
As she sought to regain a foothold in the dark snarls of weed, she knew that the poor thing was dying. She wondered if foxes could do something like this. They had been drawn into the city to scavenge on junk food, but did they also prey on cats? Cleo was covered in mud and blood. It was as if something had clawed its way up through the moist earth to attack her.
By the time she was able to gently lift it free, the cat was dead. Kallie glanced back at the little terraced house, its interior darkened, its brickwork retreating from sight under cover of rainfall, as if the property was disassociating itself from her palpable distress.
12. FOLLOWING THE RIVER
‘Are you sure you can keep up?’ asked May, concerned. His partner was breathing hard and had paused to lean against the railings.
Bryant waved aside the concern for his health. ‘I’m fine, don’t worry about me. I’ve been much better since I started remembering to take my blue pills.’
‘Why, what do they do?’
‘They alleviate the side effects of my yellow pills. I don’t think he’s got this right. I expected the river Lea, something over Romford way.’
The detectives were following Gareth Greenwood down Farringdon Road, rather too closely for comfort, but at least the heavy rain was reducing their visibility. The Quality Chop House still advocated working-class catering on its steamy windows, but now most of the shops reflected a neighbourhood filled with single professionals in converted loft apartments. Ahead, where Farringdon Lane branched away, stood the slim wedge of a public house, the Betsy Trotwood. They sheltered in its lee and watched as Greenwood closed his umbrella, striding off in the direction of Clerkenwell Tube station.
‘The Fleet is still the best known of all the London rivers,’ said Bryant as they stepped back into the rain. ‘But its remains don’t go near any of the city’s financial institutions, so we can assume he’s not out to rob a bank. I’ve been doing a bit of research into the subject of lost waterways, and it’s fascinating stuff. Various tributaries fed into the Fleet as it flowed south, the largest junction comprising the two that flowed either side of Parliament Hill Fields, to meet in Camden Town. Beyond the junction, it was reported to be sixty-five feet wide when in flood. By the time it got to Holborn Viaduct it was wide enough to float boats on. He’s not carrying any equipment. You’re sure he made the appointment for this morning?’
‘That’s what he told Monica. She rang me last night as soon as he went to the pub.’
Greenwood had alighted from a bus in Rosebery Avenue, passing so close to the detectives that they were obliged to hide themselves behind their umbrellas. The academic was short and stout, with a mane of yellow-grey hair that would have allowed him to pass as a dinosaur rocker, especially as he was wearing brown boots with jeans tucked into them. He strode briskly along wet pavements, but mercifully stopped to admire something in the window of a furniture shop, which gave his pursuers the chance to gain ground.
‘There were plenty of wells bored along the valley line of the Fleet in medieval times,’ Bryant continued. ‘Holy Well, Bagnigge Wells, Clerk’s Well, St Clement’s Well-they formed spa resorts or the sites of nunneries, and some of the water sources are still active. You can buy bottled water from the Sadler’s Wells. It’s got a bit of an undertaste but it’s quite nice. Listen to this-’ He pulled a bedraggled scrap from his pocket. ‘ “Come prithee make it up, Miss, and be as lovers be, We’ll go to Bagnigge Wells, Miss, and there we’ll have some tea.”
‘So you’re saying that the Fleet still flows?’ asked May. ‘I thought you said it had silted up and been covered over.’
‘Yes, but apparently not all of it-the wells are there, and water always finds a way. We build dams of brick, and rivers simply flow around them. The Fleet was thirty feet under street level in places. It flowed beneath the Regent’s Canal, which is only shallow.’
‘You talk about it in the past tense.’
‘Perhaps I shouldn’t. The London water table is rising fast, you know. Gardens are becoming marshy once more. It’s inevitable that some of the old rivers will make a reappearance at such a time. They have before. The Fleet would be with us now if the butchers of Eastcheap hadn’t emptied entrails into it for centuries. They were called “pudding”, you know, animal guts. That’s what Pudding Lane-where the Great Fire started-refers to. People imagine plum cakes, but it’s reeking entrails. Can you still see Greenwood?’
‘He’s heading toward Turnmill Street.’
‘You see, “Turnmill”. There were a number of water mills here. Dickens often used this area. Saffron Hill was the home of Fagin and his lost boys.’
‘Wait, he’s stopped. He’s looking for something.’
Their quarry appeared to be consulting a piece of paper. After a moment, he folded it away and set off again.
‘You know, we’re very close to the Fleet Ditch now,’ said Bryant, stabbing his stick in the direction of the drains. ‘The Fleet was covered from Holborn Bridge to the Punch Tavern. Today it’s a sewer that you can supposedly still reach from the arched tunnel entrance past St Bride’s, but it just empties into the Thames. What can he possibly want with it at this point?’
Greenwood had stopped again. Now he stood in a curious stretch of the street between fashionable restaurants and derelict houses, looking along the pavement. The figure who stepped down from the shelter of the bookshop doorway looked familiar to May. He was tall and slender, long-necked, elegantly dressed, possibly of Ethiopian extraction. The pair spoke briefly, and when they made their move it was so fast that the detectives nearly missed them. They had passed through a door cut into the wooden frame covering an alley no wider than a man’s arm.
May reached it first, but the door had already been closed. He put his ear to the wood and listened, then
