The Water Room

forever telling people how he could reach Norfolk in two hours on a Friday night.

‘Everyone seems to be having a go at Mr Garrett,’ Bryant observed, hoping to stir things up further.

‘I think he has a chip on his shoulder about being uneducated,’ said Tamsin waspishly, something she would never have done if she hadn’t drunk quite so many glasses of nerve-steadying Lambrusco before the party started.

Bryant was not famous for his socializing skills, but recognized when a woman was dying to talk. He tried to imagine what May would say in order to encourage her. ‘I suppose you’ve got the dirt on everyone here,’ he said clumsily.

‘It’s a very cosmopolitan area,’ Tamsin replied, giving no indication of having heard him. ‘We’ve Elliot the builder at number 3-he’s divorced, drinks rather too heavily, you can always find him in the George around the corner-and there’s Barbara and Charlie, they used to live at number 37, which is now Ethiopians. He drives a van and has been inside-for bigamy, if you please. She’s a nurse at the Royal Free. They moved out to Edgware, but we couldn’t not invite them because she looked after Brewer when he had pneumonia-’

‘You really do know everyone,’ Bryant goaded.

Tamsin ticked the houses off on her hand. ‘Oh yes, there’s the squat at number 45-that’s full of medical students. They’re very polite and keep to themselves, and they can juggle, which is nice, although we do have to talk to them about their music sometimes, not so much the volume as the lyrics, and everyone else is an English professional or foreign, which is always so much harder to gauge, I find. There are mixed blessings at number 4, Omar and Fatima; she’s terribly sweet, he’s-well, taciturn is too kind a word. The Ethiopians at 37 seem pleasant enough but never talk to anyone; the women wear headscarves and produce unusual cooking smells in the summer. The Aysons are at number 39, but they don’t talk to their neighbours, Jake and Aaron, because they’re devout Christians and don’t approve of the boys’ lifestyle. Kallie and Paul are our new arrivals, then there’s Heather Allen, over there in the Chanel suit, but we don’t see much of George, her husband, because he’s often away on business. Apparently she cries a lot when he’s abroad- Lauren can hear her through the grate in the party wall-they’re very much in love, but heaven knows what he gets up to in Ottawa or wherever it is. She used to be in PR but got fired for taking a backhander, thinks nobody knows.’

‘Was anyone friendly with Ruth Singh?’ asked Bryant.

‘Nobody saw anything of her because she never went out. I suppose we’re all a little to blame.’ Mrs Wilton adjusted her frills and looked suddenly tired. ‘I do want everyone to mix,’ she confided, ‘but Jake and Elliot have been huddled in the corner discussing something for the last twenty minutes, which is odd because they normally can’t stand each other. Jake won’t speak to Mark Garrett because the estate agent apparently made some derogatory remarks about gay people to his girlfriend, who promptly told Aaron, because they go to the same gym. Omar sold us our kitchen, but the drawers stick and Oliver can’t bring himself to complain because they’re friends. My husband doesn’t like to make a fuss. Mark Garrett bought Omar’s family store, and promised he’d be careful who he sold it to, but he allowed a betting shop to take over the lease. We already have four bookmakers and two saunas in the high street and there’s still no patisserie, so I had to invest in a bread-maker. It’s all so difficult. I need a drink.’

Brewer wandered in clutching a Gameboy, the headphones still in his ears. Oliver attempted to remove the device as guests made soothing sounds around them.

‘Fat, ginger and private school,’ said Garrett behind his back, ‘poor little bugger.’

‘You must be Kallie and Paul,’ Tamsin smiled. ‘That’s Brewer, and he says he’s very pleased to meet you.’

Let the kid speak for himself, thought Paul. He’s ten today.

‘I hope you’re settling into our little street. Oliver tells me you have your work cut out, getting the house back in order.’

‘He’s right,’ Kallie agreed. ‘We just don’t have the finances to do it for a while.’

Tamsin tried not to flinch at the mention of impecuniosity. ‘Ah well, these things take time,’ she offered vaguely in retreat. ‘Do try the brioches, they’re Oliver’s favourite. We had to go miles to get them.’

‘How quickly they all appear when there’s drink on the table,’ said Benjamin Singh. ‘Incredible, isn’t it, Arthur? There was no one around when my sister needed help. Ruth rarely saw her next-door neighbours, that’s why she didn’t talk to them. The Allen woman was overbearing, the Egyptian lady was all but invisible. People in this country complain about how wrong it is for a caste system still to exist in India, but they should look at their own behaviour.’

Bryant regarded the assembly, squashed into the lounge pretending to enjoy themselves, with a misanthropic eye. How little they have in common, he thought, except the desire for upward mobility, an eagerness to turn their little corner of the city into some kind of urban village. They’re waiting for delicatessens and designer opticians, praying for the local tyre factory to be turned into lofts. Then they’ll know the corner has been turned, and won’t be ashamed of their postal address any more. Fifty years ago the streets were filled with smog and working men wasted away from chest diseases. People dismiss their good fortune and instead become more restless than ever. .

The rivers of conversation ebbing back and forth across the room were filled with dark undercurrents, the swirl of old rivalries, the scent of bad feelings. Benjamin was right; none of the conversation seemed to involve Ruth Singh. It was as if she had never existed.

Perhaps you’ve made too much of the matter, Bryant told himself. This is the last time you’re going to see Ben. He’s leaving it all behind. It’s time you did as well.

14. EGYPTIANS

What bothered John May more than anything was the location of the building.

As a teenager he had been warned away from the soot-coated pubs and rough-houses crammed into the roads off the embankment. The area between the river and the railways was traditionally fringed with the poorest homes; here had lived the workers who built the tunnels and arches and laid the tracks, the Thames lightermen, the coalboys and dockers, their women in laundries and sweatshops. Too much poverty, too many people crammed together to survive a Saturday night without drunken fighting. The poor lived in lowlands, the rich on hills; a rule that applied to so many of the world’s major cities. London sloped up from the Thames, to Shooter’s Hill and Crystal Palace in the south, to Hampstead Heath and Alexandra Palace in the north. Crime drifted down to the base, gravity-drawn like the cloacal water sucked into London’s lost rivers.

He nearly called the whole thing off after Bimsley fell over his second dustbin. The boy was a hard-working officer, but had clearly inherited his father’s strange lack of coordination. The PCU had a long history of apprenticeship: Janice Longbright’s mother had worked there, as had Bimsley Senior. When there were fewer rules to follow, you had to work with people you could trust.

May’s trick with the Yale lock failed in the jaundiced gloom that passed for London night, and they were forced to climb over the wall, an exercise for which May showed surprising aptitude. Although it was after ten there were still plenty of people on the streets, but no one seemed interested in what they were doing. The light pollution reflecting from the low cloud-base enabled them to see as they picked their way through the rubbish.

At the end of the passage, they crossed the small square and edged down between a mulberry-tiled gap in the buildings, coming out on to a brick-strewn floor inside the two remaining walls of a warehouse.

‘That answers Arthur’s question,’ said May. ‘He told me that every foot of the Fleet had been mapped and explored, that there was nothing left to see. But according to his maps, the buildings around here are at least a hundred and fifty years old. If they’re demolishing this one, they’re clearing a path back to the Fleet that hasn’t been accessible for at least that long.’

‘So what are we looking for?’ asked Bimsley, backing around a stack of bricks from which a rat had just dashed.

‘I don’t know. Maybe we should listen out for the sound of running water.’

‘All I can hear is the traffic in Farringdon Road.’