Bryant & May - London's Glory: (Short Stories) (Bryant & May Collection)

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘You refused to give your name to the officers, is that correct?’ he asked, determined not to let her undermine him a second time, which was fine until she said:

  ‘I told them I would only talk to you.’

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘Because we’ve already met.’ Her relaxed attitude astounded him.

  ‘You were seen leaving the swimming pool,’ said May, emptying out the evidence bag that had been placed before him. Inside were several photographs of the deceased that Giles Kershaw had sent over. Madden did not look like a drowning victim, more like someone who had just drifted off to sleep. He read Giles’s report. Chlorinated water in the lungs; no external markings beyond a faint red line on the left wrist. He turned his attention back to the suspect.

  ‘Do you want to tell me in your own words exactly what happened?’

  The woman sat motionless, her bag on her knees, but she allowed herself the smallest of smiles …

  Joel Madden swam with the same languor, the same sense of luxury he possessed out of the water, his tanned arms lifting and falling through the cool blue shadows.

  He was happiest at night on his own in swimming pools, during business trips to faraway hotels, or even here at the club near his office. He liked to watch the pool glazing on his exit, the last one to leave. Rolling on to his back, he studied the rivulets of rain sliding down the glass canopy as he lazily drifted beneath it. He had already swum his thirty lengths; now he could relax in these final few minutes of freedom before heading home for the weekend. The Beijing contract had been renegotiated this week, and he had led the team to a hard-won victory. It was a pity he couldn’t stay on in town and have fun, but duty called.

  The tight-fitting plastic goggles locked him into a cool green world. Chlorine affected his vision adversely. More than ever he found himself wearing shaded lenses of some kind; his eyes were becoming sensitive to the bright strip-lighting at work. He had considered buying photochromic glasses, but wondered how they would affect his appearance.

  He was forty-one and in good shape, vain about his ability to maintain a flat stomach. He felt he still had his pick of the females, and his current girlfriend, an astonishingly athletic nineteen-year-old from Poland, watched him with a possessiveness that made every one of his male colleagues feel bitter about themselves. His wife pretended everything was fine, and spent her days with the children or at her laptop, taking courses in Spanish and figure-drawing or wandering around malls looking at hideous hand-woven rugs, for which she had developed a penchant. She seemed to be happier when not having to think about him, which suited both of them. She looked after their house near the coast and he lived in an overpriced City apartment from Monday to Friday, reasonably arguing that it lessened his commute and increased his productivity. The last time he failed to turn up for her birthday party he bought her a horse by way of compensation, so everyone was happy.

  At this time of night there was usually no one else left in the swimming pool. The rest of the lane-ploughing high-flyers had showered and dressed, to disperse in every direction from the City, having burned off the aggression they would otherwise have taken out on their families. One other swimmer remained, a slender young woman with cropped blonde hair, seated motionless at the left-hand corner of the deep end. She was wearing a white bikini that was cut outrageously low. To be honest, he was surprised the club had allowed her in dressed like that. The bikini bottom slimmed to a single silver string at the sides and left very little to the imagination.

  The young woman rested her palms on the edge of the pool and leaned back, staring up into the fluttering mesh of reflected light that danced arabesques on the glass canopy.

  ‘I went for a swim,’ she told John May. ‘The club was getting ready to close. Mr Madden was the only other person in the pool. I swam for a short while and left.’

  ‘You didn’t speak to him, have anything to do with him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You didn’t touch him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What was Mr Madden doing when you left?’

  She held his gaze just long enough to make him feel foolish. ‘Swimming.’

  May checked the evidence bag again. There was no CCTV coverage in or around the pool for the sake of propriety. A private club, old school. They operated under their own rules. Madden had been found at the bottom of the deep end. There was nothing else out of the ordinary anywhere. The changing rooms had already been searched, and nothing had been found out of place except a small pair of nail scissors left in the ladies’ dressing area.

  ‘The City Sports Guild,’ he said. ‘You’re a member of this place?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then how did you get in?’

  ‘I walked in.’

  ‘And nobody stopped you?’

  ‘No.’

  He didn’t doubt her word. She had a look that could open doors, and some of the City clubs were so discreet that they always appeared to be deserted. But there was supposed to be somebody on the reception desk.

  ‘Can you give me exact timings for when you arrived and when you left?’

  ‘Of course.’

  May was starting to understand the situation he was in. If he failed to establish any link between her and the dead man, he would have to let her go. In a heavily chlorinated pool there was unlikely to be salvageable DNA evidence. There was even a possibility that she had picked the Peculiar Crimes Unit because it was not a police station; visitors weren’t filmed. There were supposed to be cameras in the ground-floor corridor, but the two Daves, the Turkish workmen who never seemed to leave the building, had yet to put them in place. Someone had done their homework very carefully.

  ‘Is there anything else you can tell me about what happened?’ May asked, puzzled.

  Madden lowered his feet, reaching down to touch the sloping floor of the pool. He stood still and allowed the water to settle. Through his green lenses the woman looked confident and attractive. It could do no harm to swim up beside her. He took his time, windmilling slowly, kicking once in a while, then gliding to the tiled edge.

  He decided not to remove his goggles because his hair dripped chlorine into his eyes, and besides, they left oval rings on his face. Resting the soles of his feet against the wall of the deep end, he gripped the edge and flexed his muscular arms, looking up at her.

  When she turned her face down, it was to look past him. Fascinated by the slivers of light that pierced the pool and descended into pale helices, she seemed determined not to look his way.

  ‘Come on in,’ he said. ‘The water’s perfect.’

  The young woman allowed a moment to pass before she turned to him. ‘I’m not a good swimmer. It’s a little too deep for me.’

  ‘It’s the best time to swim,’ he said, ‘when it’s quiet like this.’

  She glanced around. ‘Isn’t there supposed to be a lifeguard on duty?’

  ‘It’s a private club, not a municipal pool. Tucker likes a drink. He usually goes off once the bar’s open upstairs.’

  ‘Ah. I’ve never been here before. I’m using a friend’s membership.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s in the rules,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you should come in and get wet, just for appearances.’

  ‘I’m fine here. The water relaxes me. I just have to look at it. I like the reflections.’ She pointed over to the diving board, where buttresses of light danced around the ladder and dropped into the refracting depths.

  His smile broadened to reveal perfect bleached teeth. He thought it made him look boyish, but against the wavering blue it gave him the appearance of a marine predator.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

  ‘You already know it.’ Her voice was as cool as the water. ‘We’ve met before.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘We most definitely have.’

  ‘Trust me, I never forget a …’ The sentence hung unfinished. He studied her through the green lenses until she began to look unco
mfortable. He raised his goggles in order to see her a little more closely. Now he could see that she had remarkably blue irises.

  ‘You could be right,’ he told her. ‘Did we go for dinner somewhere?’

  ‘You do remember.’

  ‘It’s distracting, seeing people without their clothes on. One doesn’t tend to look at the eyes. Yes, we did, didn’t we? We went for something to eat. It was one night in the week. Did we have a date?’

  ‘Not really. But I felt like I got to know you.’

  ‘How was I?’

  ‘You were very funny.’

  ‘Was I? I wonder what put me in such high spirits.’ It was like fishing. He liked the pull on the line, the turn of the reel, the way the fish tacked back and forth behind the boat, gradually growing tired, being brought ever closer. ‘When was this?’ he asked.

  ‘Mmm.’ She thought for a moment. ‘About four years ago.’

  ‘That long?’ She didn’t look more than twenty-five. ‘Where did we go?’

  ‘A restaurant in Soho with a French name. L’Escargot, I think. The food was very nice. Expensive. You ordered a dozen green-lipped oysters.’

  ‘Really?’ That wasn’t much of a clue. He always ordered a dozen oysters when he’d just met an attractive girl. Oysters had the taste of victory. He maintained the smile, intrigued.

  ‘Yes,’ said the young woman, remembering. ‘You insisted on paying for absolutely everything.’

  ‘Now that doesn’t sound like me at all.’ He laughed. ‘What did we do after?’

  ‘We went to a club just across the road from the restaurant and drank cava at champagne prices.’

  ‘And I paid again?’

  She nodded slowly. ‘You must have done. I think I was out of work at the time. I remember your name. It’s Joel. And you can’t remember mine.’

  ‘I’m not good with names. Faces and bodies, though, I’m usually good with those.’ The amusement faded slowly to a warmth between them, but the water started to feel cold on his back and thighs. He moved a little closer to her.

  ‘So tell me,’ he coaxed, ‘where exactly did we meet?’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll remember if you put your mind to it,’ she teased. ‘You paid for all the drinks in the club as well. Do you always pay for everything?’

  ‘I consider it the gentlemanly thing to do. I like your bikini.’

  ‘Do you?’ She fingered the side-string. ‘You paid for this too. In a roundabout way.’

  ‘Now that’s impossible. I only buy presents for—’

  ‘For your wife.’

  He was growing a little uncomfortable. He liked to be in control. There was something about her that bothered him.

  ‘I told you I was married?’

  ‘You even showed me her photograph. It was in your wallet.’

  ‘You know what? I think you’re bluffing.’ He wagged his finger at her. Naughty girl. She pretended not to feel patronized. ‘You’re making all this up. Lots of men like oysters; lots of men keep photos of their wives in their wallets.’

  ‘To be fair, you were a little bit drunk when we met. You’d been celebrating a deal. Some kind of merger.’

  He shrugged, shook his head. He was growing tired of this game. But then she shifted her position at the pool edge, opening her thighs slightly. Her bikini bottom was no bigger than a cocktail napkin folded in half. He felt himself heating up.

  ‘You still don’t know who I am.’

  ‘I give up,’ he said impatiently, ‘just tell me.’

  ‘OK. Come here and I’ll let you in on a little secret.’

  She said this very slowly. If he hadn’t known better, he would have sworn she was trying to beat him at his own game. Without moving another inch she somehow managed to beckon him closer, and knew he would follow because she was young and attractive and he was intrigued.

  A sixth sense told him that something was not right. It was the kind of sense that made one halt at a kerb, take a foot off an accelerator or step back from an excited animal, but he was not a man to be intimidated by common-sense rules. Pulling his broad arms up on the pool edge, he drew himself closer still. As much as he wanted to fathom her motives, his eyes could not resist following the outline of her body. His arm was almost touching her thigh.

  Suddenly he realized what was bothering him. Why on earth would he have shown her a picture of his wife?

  Just as he paused to consider this, she brought her right hand around in a swift, practised movement and closed a white plastic tie over his wrist. He looked down in astonishment and found the tie zipped into place. It was the unbreakable kind they put on packing crates, with a small square lock that could be moved forward but not back, the kind his own factory workers had frequent cause to use.

  She looped the tie through something imbedded in the walkway. He recognized it as the grille of an oblong steel drain; they sat in recessed trays around the pool’s tiled edge.

  Knowing better than to pull on the tie, he yanked himself close and tried to grab at her leg, but she moved too quickly for him.

  ‘I remember you,’ was all he could manage. ‘You wouldn’t come home with me. Take this damned thing off.’

  May felt inside the evidence envelope on his desk to see if there was anything else at all. Giles had included a photograph of the only mark on the body, a very faint red line on Madden’s left wrist, underneath the slender silver band he wore. That bothered him. How had the band left the mark? It didn’t appear to be very tightly fixed to his arm.

  One other detail. The thumbnail on Madden’s right hand was split. He was the kind of man who had regular manicures and never undertook any manual work. So why was the nail torn almost to its base?

  He looked back at the young woman opposite, who was calmly waiting for him to finish. ‘Do you have anything at all to add to your statement?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘Do you have any further questions?’

  ‘She was a piece of work,’ he later told Bryant. ‘I’ve never dealt with anyone so calm.’ But right then he wondered what she was really thinking.

  She smiled at Madden reassuringly. ‘The tag is just there to make sure that I have your full attention. I’ll take it off once we’ve talked. You still don’t remember my name, do you?’

  ‘No,’ Madden admitted. ‘I don’t remember your name. Sophie, Emma, Kate. Names are all the same. But I remember who you are. I met you a second time. You’re the shopping woman.’

  ‘That’s right. I told you I was looking for a job, and you said your wife needed a personal shopper for when she came to town. You wrote down her number for me. But then I wouldn’t come back to your flat. You got pretty steamed up about that.’

  ‘And you still had the nerve to call my wife about the job?’

  ‘She didn’t really need someone to shop for her, she just needed someone to talk to. She was lonely and desperate to tell someone about her life.’

  He remembered their second meeting now – he had been buying a gift for his girlfriend at Harrods, and had bumped into his wife and the personal shopper. To cover his guilt he’d offered to pick up his wife’s bill. Without batting an eye she’d added a pair of amethyst earrings to it, putting a price on her pain.

  ‘I’ve heard all about you,’ said the young woman.

  ‘What, from my wife?’ he said scornfully. ‘Have you also heard about all the holidays and trinkets and parties I pay for?’

  ‘She pays for them.’

  ‘How do you work that out?’

  ‘By putting up with the insults. The cruelties. The infidelities. The little hurt looks you give her when you’re after sympathy. She knows all about your girlfriends. And other things.’

  ‘Then why doesn’t she leave?’

  ‘Because of the children. And because she’s too scared of you to do anything about her situation.’

  ‘She confides in you about all this, does she?’ he asked heatedly. ‘The personal shopper? You shouldn’t listen to anything she
tells you. She’s got her art classes and her cookery clubs and her clothing allowance, what more does she want? And anyway, what the hell has it got to do with you?’ He plucked at the plastic strap, leaving a red mark on his wrist. A second attempt to break it split his thumbnail.

  ‘You’re right, it has nothing to do with me,’ said the young woman. ‘Do you know what my job is actually about? It’s not helping my clients to choose cushions or curtain materials. It’s listening.’

  ‘Rather you than me,’ said Madden. ‘I don’t need to do that. You all sound the same. A distant background noise, chirruping away about your feelings.’

  ‘Well, it seems to me that you’re listening now.’

  ‘What do you want? Is this about money?’ He pulled at the strap but knew that he would never break it.

  ‘I’m a very good personal shopper,’ said the young woman. ‘We’ve become quite close, your wife and I.’

  ‘Well, that’s fine when it comes to cushions,’ said Madden, his voice honeyed with sarcasm. ‘I’m her husband. She listens to me.’

  ‘That’s true,’ she said. ‘Women do all the listening. I told your wife I could get her anything. That it was just about cutting the best deal. Do you know what she asked me for, what she wants most in the world?’

  Madden stopped tearing at the cable tie long enough to look at her. ‘What?’

  ‘Freedom. She wants you to die.’

  ‘You mean she wants a divorce. Well, she’s welcome to it. I’ll sign the bloody papers tomorrow.’

  She bit her lower lip. ‘No, she actually wants you to die. A divorce settlement wouldn’t be freedom, it would be a negotiation, and that’s what you do for a living, isn’t it? Always looking to increase your advantage?’

  ‘I honestly don’t understand what she expects,’ he said, hurt. ‘We’ll sit down with lawyers. I promise I’ll give her a reasonable deal.’