The Water Room(45)

He could hear it trying to breach the space again, barking frantically, maddened by its imprisonment, as he stumbled over the chinking bricks toward the alley and the exit.

Back on the street, Bimsley examined the damage to his jacket. ‘Bloody dog—must be another way in.’ He poked the torn material back in place, then remembered the bracelet. ‘Here, this qualify me for an advance?’

‘I don’t know—let me see.’ May raised it to the light and gingerly sniffed. Sandalwood, he thought, santalum album, a popular item of cheap jewellery for those on the hippie trail; the cloying smell stayed for years. A flat bone medallion hung in the centre, an intricate design he couldn’t decipher without his reading glasses, which were back at the unit. He slipped the bracelet into his pocket as Bimsley limped along behind him before departing for the West End, still complaining about his ruined clothes.



‘He was shaken, but fine,’ May told his partner the following morning. ‘The dog’s teeth just grazed his skin, but I sent him for a tetanus shot all the same, and he’s going to charge us for the jacket. You think Greenwood put the dog in there? I can get the RSPCA down now.’

‘No, don’t do that.’ Bryant was sitting on a pile of encyclopedias, taping together a set of surveyor’s maps. ‘I don’t want anything to alert him. Look at this.’ He waved the tape roll over the far side of the map. ‘That blue line I’ve marked out is the Fleet. It discharges into the river via a bricked tunnel beneath Blackfriars Bridge, at the very point where Roberto Calvi’s body was found on 17 June 1982. He was a senior banker, if you recall, a member of the Italian Masonic lodge P-2. He was discovered hanging there, just about the most unlikely suicide London has ever seen. He’d lost a fortune as the chairman of the Banco Ambrosiano, owing something like 1.2 billion dollars. The money had been siphoned off and hidden from the IOR, the Vatican bank. Blackfriars Bridge has historic connections with the Freemasons, and it looked as though his assassins were deliberately leaving a warning to others, although the official verdict was still suicide. After continuing pressure to reopen the case, the body was exhumed in ‘92 and was found to exhibit clear evidence of murder. Five years later, prosecutors in Rome indicted four Mafia members. They belonged to the Banda della Magliana, not the kind of people you want to mess around with. The inference that the Vatican hired hitmen to punish their embezzler is unthinkable to the devout, but not beyond the realms of possibility to the rest of us.’

‘You amaze me,’ May marvelled. ‘Considering you can’t remember your PIN number or where you’ve left your glasses.’

‘This is work,’ Bryant retorted, adjusting his spectacles. ‘Oh, and I’ve read up some more on underground rivers. Did you know that in 1909 the Hippodrome Music Hall in Charing Cross Road staged a water spectacle called “The Arctic”? They built icebergs and placed fifteen polar bears in a giant tank. Guess where they got the water for the display? The Cranbourne, the ancient river that runs right underneath the building. And of course we know that there’s an artesian well beneath the Palace Theatre, because you nearly fell down it once. It seems there are entrances and exits to rivers all over London. Listen to this.’ He raised a leatherbound book and adjusted his reading glasses. ‘ “Until 1960, the garden of 20, Queen Square, Bloomsbury, WC1 contained a trapdoor and steps leading to the stone tunnels of a stream known as the Devil’s Conduit.” And there are dozens of other examples. No wonder Ubeda needs to employ an expert like Greenwood as a tracker.’

‘I have something to show you.’ May rummaged in his pocket and produced the broken sandalwood bracelet. ‘Bimsley found it. I thought you’d like to see.’

Bryant wrinkled his nose and held it away. ‘Probably came from Camden Market. Where did you get it?’

‘Our intrepid DC found it inside the sewer inlet, just before the dog attacked him. There’s another way in, but we couldn’t find it. I took your advice and let Bimsley handle the dangerous part.’

‘Good. You know you’re not supposed to do anything too strenuous,’ Bryant admonished. ‘Sooner or later you’ll have to start acting your age.’

‘If I did that, I’d never get out of a chair again. It may be nothing, but I thought I might send it to Banbury, see what he can get out of it.’

‘Let me take a good look first.’ Bryant’s desk-lamp revealed a little more information about the panel on the bracelet, but he needed a spotlight to see it properly. Dragging an illuminated magnifying stand from beneath his desk, he set the bracelet underneath and studied it through the distorting glass.