Читать книгу The Unquiet Dead - Gay Longworth - Страница 7

Jessie woke early to wash her hair. Determined to rectify the situation with DCI Moore, she dressed with her new boss in mind. She wouldn’t stretch to a skirt; not just because they made chasing criminals very hard, but because the piss-take she’d receive would be extreme. More extreme than normal. Instead, she opted for her black trouser suit, hoping it would endear her to the woman. If looking good was important to her new boss, well, this suit made Jessie look good, even if she said so herself. DCI Moore was obviously a hard nut. Fair enough, you had to be hard to succeed in this game. Jessie would dance to her tune. The line of command was more important than personality.

Clipping her hair off her face with slides, she put on enough make-up so that a woman would notice but a man wouldn’t. If Anna Maria hadn’t reappeared from wherever she was holed up, there was the possibility Jessie would be in front of the camera before the day was out. But when she saw herself in the hall mirror she nearly tore it all off. Dressing like this went against her self-imposed laws of survival. Rule number one: camouflage. You can’t attack what you can’t see.

Bill appeared from his bedroom in his boxer shorts, smiled at her sleepily and went to the bathroom. She envied him his fitness. The more she progressed in the police force, the more sedentary her life was becoming. She made a promise to herself that she would run home from work at the end of the day and went into the spare room to fetch her kit.

‘Jesus, Bill, you should think of opening a window occasionally,’ shouted Jessie. ‘It stinks in here.’

‘Sorry,’ replied a voice as the loo flushed. ‘Give me a second and I’ll buy you breakfast.’

Jessie glanced at her watch as Bill entered the room.

‘Come on, just a quick fry-up round the corner. It’s still early.’

‘Don’t you want a lie-in?’

‘This is a lie-in. I’m used to getting up at five.’

‘Well, all right – but we’d better make it quick.’

Jessie walked down the deserted hallway of the CID unit and felt very uneasy. She sat at her desk and listened to the sound of traffic from the street below. No doors opened and closed, no radios crackled, no phones rang, so she got up again and went upstairs to Jones’ recently vacated office. A group of her fellow officers were coming out of his room; perhaps she was being paranoid, but they appeared to be giving each other knowing looks.

‘What’s up, Fry?’ she asked one of the passing detective constables.

‘Best you ask the new boss,’ he muttered before shouting to another group of officers about meeting them in the canteen. When Jessie got to the office door she saw Mark sitting at the former DCI’s desk. He was looking out of the window, which offered a remarkable view across Mayfair to Hyde Park. In the evenings it filled with the rarely seen light of the setting sun. Jones had always had the blinds down, but Moore obviously had other decorating plans.

‘Hi, Mark, you been promoted after all?’

‘No,’ said a now familiar voice. DCI Moore walked into the office from the secretary’s side room.

‘Morning, ma’am. Have I missed something?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

Okay, so the woman was a hard nut and didn’t mince her words. All good qualities in a commanding officer, Jessie told herself. ‘What’s going on?’ she continued.

‘Don’t you think, given the circumstances, it would have been wise to get in early?’

It was only eight thirty, but Jessie didn’t think it ‘wise’ to argue.

‘Sorry.’

‘I’ve spoken to you twice, Driver, and twice you’ve had to apologise. Is this going to be a running theme with you?’

‘No,’ said Jessie, stiffening.

‘Good. DI Ward has made some rather interesting discoveries regarding the Klein case. Mark, although it’s a waste of your time, would you mind telling DI Driver what you told everyone this morning?’

He tried to look humble, he even tried to look sympathetic, but neither look could hide the way his body inflated slightly. The man was enjoying this more than he should. Jessie saw months of team-building slip away from her and wondered if he had really tried as hard as he claimed to track her down. Even if her mobile didn’t have any reception, she had a pager and he hadn’t called that.

‘Anna Maria Klein has form,’ said Mark.

‘At her age?’

‘At her age an official warning is as close to form as you can get,’ said Mark indignantly.

‘I’m sorry you didn’t look into this yesterday,’ said Moore sternly.

Jessie wasn’t going to apologise again. ‘What was it for?’ she asked Mark.

‘Possession.’

‘Dope?’

‘That doesn’t lessen the charge,’ said Moore. ‘Buying any kind of drug at fifteen is a serious concern.’

‘I don’t dispute that, but there are often extenuating circumstances. Buying it once to show off to your friends about how “showbiz” you are is not the same as mugging pensioners to get a crack fix.’

‘Do you know Dufour’s Place?’ asked Moore, ignoring Jessie’s observation.

‘Yes, it’s a cul-de-sac at the back of Marshall Street, it doesn’t go anywhere.’

‘It may not go anywhere, Driver, but it houses rather a historic building, as Mark has been explaining to us all this morning.’

Jessie looked to Mark for back-up and was saddened when she saw that he was busy with the papers on his knee. She waited. He didn’t look up.

‘I presume you’re referring to the Marshall Street Baths. I believe it was built in the twenties as a communal bath house, and was still in use up to the end of the nineties as a public swimming pool. Then Health and Safety closed it down. The City of Westminster has been trying to work out what to do with it ever since. It’s a listed building –’

‘Used by addicts and dealers,’ said Mark, cutting Jessie short.

‘I thought the drug unit had cleared up that problem?’

‘Drugs are a recurring problem,’ said Moore, sitting on the edge of Jones’ old desk.

‘Normally the baths are patrolled and checked by a caretaker called –’ Mark checked his pad – ‘Don Firth. But he’s been off sick for three weeks.’

‘We have reliable information that the addicts are back,’ said DCI Moore.

This was all getting a little chummy for Jessie’s liking. ‘So what are you thinking, Mark?’

‘Anna Maria makes a prearranged rendezvous with her new dealer. He doesn’t show, so she goes to Marshall Street Baths where she knows she can score.’

‘It’s all chained up,’ said Jessie disagreeing.

‘If the addicts and dealers can get in, so can anyone.’

Jessie didn’t think so, not in those heels.

‘We think something happened to her inside the building,’ said Moore.

‘I see,’ said Jessie. And she did. ‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked. Knowing the answer. It was in those knowing looks.

‘Nothing. It’s DI Ward’s case. It’s a high-profile assignment, Driver, so it’s probably better handled by Mark until last year’s debacle is forgotten about.’ Jessie tried to remain passive. ‘Aren’t you pleased? You didn’t seem very interested in it yesterday.’

She wasn’t pleased. Being uninterested and being uninvolved are two different things. She’d messed it up with Moore, she admitted, and it was her own fault, but she couldn’t understand why Mark was so happy to put the boot in. Just in case she was being paranoid, she tried a final litmus test. Principles of reason.

‘Ma’am, there was nothing in Anna Maria’s body language to indicate that she was waiting for anyone,’ said Jessie. ‘The poor creatures in Marshall Street Baths aren’t going to attack anyone. They’re there because they’ve got the money, they’ve scored, and the only thing they can think about is the fix, which once administered renders them impotent.’

‘That does not apply to the dealers,’ contradicted Mark. ‘And Anna Maria stood out like a sore thumb.’

‘Exactly. You don’t buy drugs in broad daylight in a fake-fur coat and six-inch heels.’

‘You didn’t see what she was wearing when she got busted last time,’ Moore interjected.

Jessie knew when she was outnumbered. ‘So what are you going to do?’

‘Search Marshall Street Baths,’ said Moore. ‘As soon as possible.’

‘And you really expect to find her in there?’

This question was followed by an exchange of glances between Ward and Moore. ‘We just hope it’s not too late and she’s still alive.’

They’d failed the test. She wasn’t being paranoid.

A thousand arguments and counter-arguments revolved around Jessie’s head as she returned to her office. We think something happened to her? We hope she’s still alive? We? Moore had only been in the building twenty-four hours and already they were a ‘we’. Where the hell was Jones? Surely he wouldn’t leave her like this, surely he’d have given her a heads up, some warning that DCI Moore was one of those women who pulled the ladder up behind them. Obviously Jessie wasn’t going to appreciate Moore’s legs folded provocatively over her desk, so of course Mark should get the case. It stood to reason, thought Jessie as she unconsciously pulled the slides out of her hair and let her fringe fall across her eyes. She would have been willing to dance to Moore’s tune, but not if she was the only one dancing. Jessie slumped into her chair, deflated and a little scared. Jones had made the differences between Mark and herself work. Under his guidance, Ward and Driver were quite a good balancing act. Not good cop, bad cop, but old cop, new cop. With Moore and Ward in bed together, it would turn what had been complementary back to being contrary. A horrendous thought passed through Jessie’s head. Mark and Moore in bed together, actually in bed together.

‘If that happens, I’m putting myself in for a transfer,’ she said aloud.

‘If what happens?’

Jessie looked up. Mark had pushed the door open with his foot. He was holding a box of files.

‘Gee, thanks for the support back there, Mark.’

‘What did you want me to do, climb up on the gallows next to you?’

‘No. Just act like a reasonable human being and take your nose out of Moore’s arse.’

‘Oh dear, are you a little worried because you’re not the teacher’s pet any more.’

‘Mark, listen to yourself.’

‘You’ll put yourself in for a transfer if what happens?’

She tried to defuse the tension by smiling. ‘Don’t get all excited, I’m not going anywhere.’

But Mark didn’t want it defusing. ‘If what happens?’

‘If you find Anna Maria’s body in Marshall Street Baths,’ she replied coolly.

‘Would you be willing to make that into an official wager?’

‘What is wrong with you? You’ve been bolshie for days,’ said Jessie.

‘It isn’t rocket science. If we find her body at the baths, you get your arse transferred out of here.’

‘And if you don’t?’

‘Name it,’ he said confidently.

It dawned on Jessie then what Mark was doing with the box of files. They were his files, from his office. His old office: the matching shoebox across the hall from hers.

‘I get your office.’ He looked back over his shoulder and smiled. ‘No, Mark. Your new office. Upstairs.’

‘Who told you?’

Jessie smiled sadly to herself. Was his professional opinion of her really so low? The fact she’d seen him sitting at Jones’ desk in the presence of the new DCI, the fact that he was now carrying a packing box, these giveaways were obviously not enough. ‘A white rabbit,’ she said. ‘Okay. Deal: my transfer for your office.’ Jessie stood up.

‘Are you prepared to shake on it?’ demanded Mark.

‘Is this for real, Mark?’

Mark set the box down on Jessie’s desk.

‘Yes,’ he said, putting out his hand. Somewhat dazed, Jessie shook his hand. As she did so, he laughed. ‘And by the way, Jessie, this isn’t a transfer out of CID, this is a transfer out of West End Central. That way I can get you out of my hair once and for all.’

‘Mark, you haven’t got any hair.’

Mark glared at her. It was her turn to shrug. ‘What? You started this. Remember that, won’t you?’

Mark had officers stationed around the perimeter of the building, up on the roof and on the top storey of the Poland Street car park. The drug squad had sent a team and they now joined Mark’s men outside the chained double doors of the old public baths. Everyone was wearing body armour. The handcuffs glinted against the black flak jackets, radios crackled with expectation. A SOCO team waited by their van. The street was cordoned off, which gained the attention of workers in the adjacent offices. Everyone was waiting for the whistle.

Jessie sat in the surveillance room and watched it all live via a video link. She was tuned in and ready to go. A slightly stooped man with a thick moustache inserted a key from a large selection into the padlock that held the chains in place. He turned the key and pulled; the chain slithered to the ground like a boa constrictor dropping from a tree. The team entered in twos. Jessie watched as the video camera followed them in. The first room was a foyer complete with a wood-and-glass kiosk. One of the doors hung haphazardly from its rusting hinge. The floor was laid with intricate diamond-shaped tiles worked into a graphic design, the type you see in the entrances of elegant Victorian terrace housing. Peppermint. Cobalt. Burnt sienna. Black and white. The once majestic windows were coated in grime and protected by a thick wire mesh. The camera automatically adjusted to the reduction in light. They’d gone through the portal of a time machine and entered a long-forgotten era. Victorian bath houses, where the great unwashed came to bathe en masse. The team moved further into the building. The screen went fuzzy, then a new image came into focus.

‘Jesus Christ –’ Jessie heard Fry mutter – ‘it’s a bit fucking spooky.’ Jessie saw what he was looking at. The pool was enormous, a marble-tiled gaping wound in the ground, the swimming lanes neatly delineated by black tiles. What must once have been a majestic pool was now empty except for the green sludge that filled the deepest part of the deep end. The high glass-domed ceiling was mottled with moss and grime. Lines of empty spectator benches flanked each side of the drained pool; it looked like the whole structure was sitting dormant, waiting for people to return. Waiting for life.

Men in waders began to walk a slow line along the bottom of the pool until they reached the dark green water. On the count of three, they all took a step forward. Jessie grimaced as she watched the water level rise up their boots while they poked at the water with sticks. There was a shout. Jessie’s heart leapt. The line stopped. Someone dragged up a sodden, rotting piece of cloth. It was a blanket. There was a tremor of excitement. It was well known among the police that bodies often came wrapped in blankets. The search increased in intensity but they reached the end having found nothing more. Mark ordered them to retrace their steps. Still nothing. Jessie watched as the camera followed them to the second, smaller pool. This pool was in much worse condition. Jessie could hear the trickle of water before the camera turned towards the sound. Water was falling from the ceiling to the floor along the wall on the left-hand side. The building must have been leaking for some considerable time, for the tiled wall was coated in a slick of green slime. A similar puddle of brackish water had accumulated in the deepest part of the swimming pool. The men in their waders jumped down into the empty pool and walked to the water’s edge. The search began again.

Elsewhere the drug squad must have been having some success, because people, or shapes that resembled people, were being taken, dragged or carried out. There were ambulances waiting outside, along with specialist care workers who would deal with these sorry few. The camera ran its critical eye over them, searching for Anna Maria. They were Dickensian in their ghostliness: milk-white skin flecked with scabs and sores, stretched over malnourished features. None of them were Anna Maria. Half a mile away, Jessie shuddered. If few had the strength to walk, then none had it in them to summon the enormous amount of energy required to kill.

The team moved upwards floor by floor. There was one smallish circular room with a domed glass ceiling that became a temporary focus of attention. One of the glass panels had been smashed and was letting in the rain that had steadily begun to fall. Desperation had forced the addicts over the rooftops and through the glass panel. But not Anna Maria. Jessie was sure of it. There was one long room where many of the homeless people had been huddled together. The lino floor was badly soiled with human faeces, but what the camera zoomed in on was the rat’s droppings. Jessie could only imagine the smell. Moore had been right in one respect: drug addiction was a recurring problem.

There was a sense among the search team that the raid was over. They had been to the top of the building and found it empty. None of the addicts had had the energy to mount the extra flight of stairs; they had fallen on the floor that they’d arrived at. The general level of chat increased as the team made their way back down to the lobby, but silence fell when a call summoned them to the boiler room, the beating heart of Marshall Street Baths. Jessie wasn’t out of danger yet.

When the person holding the camera walked into the engine room, Jessie’s spirits rose. It was like returning to modern times. The lighting was bright, the tanks were new and painted in shiny red Hammerite, the flumes looked like concertinaed silver foil, while the network of water pipes resembled Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. It was immediately obvious that the water tanks had not been tampered with. It was a closed-loop water system and the bolts had not been removed since installation; the original paint still covered the joins. No one had used this scalding water to make evidence broil away.

Jessie was beginning to envisage the view from her new office. A good sunset was like a religion to her. In fact it was a religion. She believed in the cosmos. In the structure of the world around her. In what she could see and feel. The sea. The air. The stars. The moon. The sun. And watching it set gave her a feeling of peace; she felt united with the vastness of their universe on one hand and infinitesimally small on the other. It was another remedy for a bad day in CID. Having the high office would mean that she’d no longer need to make detours to the elevated section of the Westway in order to get a look at a mammoth red sun drop below West London’s skyline. Now she would have it for her delectation and delight at the end of every day.

‘There is another boiler room,’ said a voice over the radio. ‘The original one, built in 1910. They stopped using it in 1953, but you can still get down there.’ Jessie snapped out of her reverie. It was the man with the moustache. The man with the bunch of keys. He must be the caretaker, thought Jessie, back from his sickbed for this sickly spectacle. ‘It’s one floor below. I don’t go down there unless I absolutely have to.’

‘Why not?’ Jessie heard Mark Ward ask, but she didn’t hear an answer. Everybody else had; they had all gone quiet. Jessie followed the camera out of the brightly lit boiler room and through a set of double doors. Suddenly the screen was plunged into darkness.

‘Hang on,’ said a voice. ‘We need the generator for this bit.’ For a few quiet, dark moments everybody waited. Then a hiss, and a faint glow that increased until a struggling light filled the gloom. The low-ceilinged corridor in which the men stood looked like a concrete trench. Their boots echoed like hammers as they proceeded along it. Jessie leant forward to get a better look. A small knot of anxiety had tightened in her stomach. At the end of the corridor was a set of steep concrete steps leading down to a rusty steel door that swung on its hinges. The man with the moustache tutted. ‘It’s supposed to be locked,’ he said. Unaware, Jessie had put her hand over her mouth. The camera shook as it went unsteadily down the steps. No one was talking now. Someone pushed the door open. It was obviously heavy, because whoever was opening it was using two hands. The interior was pitch black.

‘Just a minute,’ said the disembodied voice of the caretaker. ‘The light switch is through here.’ Jessie heard the heavy sound of rattling chains and jangling keys. It was so deliberate that she wondered whether he was doing it for effect. If he was, it was working. Still no one spoke. There was no other sound except the familiar hiss of electricity.

A murky image appeared on the screen: DO NOT ENTER. The cameraman ignored the sign and went in. Jessie found herself transported to the bottom of the Atlantic. In the pale light the ancient redundant machinery reminded her of a documentary about the Titanic. She’d been inside the engine room via a submersible eye. She was inside it again. Placed between a grid of square wooden pillars that looked like the underside of a disused pier were four huge round boilers, each covered in a thick skin of rust. She could see the breath of the men, huddled in a pack at the edge of the room. It was cold down there. Something was making the policemen wrinkle their faces and grimace. Jessie hoped it was the musty odour of age, not death.

In front of each tank was a rill. The first two disappeared into black holes; the two furthest away from the door ended at what looked like a large manhole cover. Beyond them were brick archways that led to recesses in the back wall. Above them was a series of steel girders held up by wooden beams. Rotten wooden beams.

‘Careful,’ said Jessie, but the men on the screen couldn’t hear her.

‘What are those?’ Mark asked. Jessie couldn’t see what he was pointing to.

‘Coal was used to fire ’em up.’ The caretaker patted the belly of the boiler affectionately. ‘Men would shovel it out of the coal stores to the bottom of the Archimedes screw. That way the fires were always stoked.’ Four steel posts rose up from the ground. ‘’Course, the screws have long gone. Nicked and picked at over the years, like everything else. Got no respect.’

‘Yes, but what are those?’

Jessie knew Mark was talking about the two open pits in the ground. It would have been the first place she would have looked, too. The man with the moustache hadn’t let go of the boiler, and it occurred to Jessie that he was hanging on to it.

‘The ash would fall out the bottom and be taken away by running water, along these narrow channels into the pits to cool.’ The camera pointed down into the pit.

‘Where do they go?’

‘Hell,’ said the caretaker.

‘What?’ said Mark and Jessie in unison.

‘Smell,’ he said. ‘Then tell me where you think they go?’

‘Sewers,’ replied Jessie to the electronic image. That was why all the men were pulling faces.

‘Get the torches down there!’ shouted Mark.

‘Careful, the ground isn’t stable,’ said the caretaker.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You don’t know when the ground is going to give way and swallow you up.’

Jessie felt a chill up the back of her neck. This guy was freaking her out. She watched as four police officers pointed torches into the pupil of the pit. One of them beckoned for the boat hook and a few seconds later he fished out a shoe.

‘They should all have been covered,’ said the caretaker.

The old shoe was discarded. They moved on to the next pit, wading through filth. Once again the search was fruitless.

‘What about the other two?’

‘There’s nothing down there.’

‘Get those lids up,’ shouted Mark. His voice trembled as much as the caretaker’s, whether with excitement or fear, Jessie couldn’t tell.

The elderly man was still hanging on to the boiler when the crowbar arrived. ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you,’ he said.

Jessie didn’t want to know why not.

They prised open the first lid. The camera gave her a bird’s-eye view of a dry, lead-lined pit with a grate at the bottom. It was empty. One more to go.

‘Mind your heads, boys, the ceiling gets lower.’

Jessie was out of her seat and pacing. The crowbar was inserted into the dusty ground. The men heaved with exertion. A corner came up.

She heard a voice. The caretaker’s voice: ‘We shouldn’t really be down here. They don’t like it when people come down here.’

The screen started to flicker like mad.

Jessie could make out Mark as he knelt down and stuck a torch into the gap.

The screen went fuzzy. And then nothing. Jessie hit the television screen. The radio clicked.

‘I can see someone!’ shouted Mark.

‘Alive?’

‘Can’t tell – they’re not moving!’

There was a terrible crack.

‘Move!’ shouted a voice over the rumble of falling masonry. The radio clicked again and Jessie lost contact with the boiler room.