The Water Room Read Online Free PDF Page A

it flat in the underlay after you told him you couldn’t find your tobacco pouch. How on earth did the cat get shut in a filing cabinet?’
    ‘I thought he’d be safe there while I went out. I didn’t know the drawer was self-locking.’
    ‘Raymond’s still in the next room.’ Longbright pointed at the door. Raymond Land was allergic to cats. He had also tripped over Crippen’s litter tray and nearly fallen down the stairs, and had now begun to suspect that the others were hiding something.
    ‘If he starts sneezing I’ll tell him it’s the fresh paint,’ Bryant promised. He had discovered the tiny black and white stray dumped inside a bin-bag on Camden’s Chalcot Road at the weekend, and had brought it to work inside his jacket with the intention of overcoming its apprehensions about the cruelty of humans. Unfortunately, Crippen’s worst fears had now been confirmed. To add to the confusion, two men had arrived with a photocopier, and had started unpacking it in the middle of the floor, trapping everyone at the edges of the room, and now they were all getting wet paint on their clothes. From inside Bryant’s filing cabinet came a high feline whine.
    ‘Any tea going?’ asked John May, throwing his overcoat into a corner. ‘Did your doctor give you the all-clear after that crack on the nut?’
    Bryant had sustained a head injury during the unit’s last investigation. ‘He made me read a couple of eye charts. I passed with flying colours.’
    ‘Really? You can’t usually see a hole in a ladder.’
    ‘I had crib sheets. See.’ Bryant held up miniature copies of the charts.
    ‘And you got away with it?’
    ‘No, he saw me looking up my sleeve and prescribed new reading glasses. Look.’ He donned the spectacles, his eyes swimming up like great blue moons.
    ‘My God, they make you look like Reginald Christie. Is that who I mean, the murderer who gassed his victims? Except you’re older, of course. Why is it so cold in here? What happened to summer? It’s going to pelt down any minute.’
    ‘We haven’t got any heaters yet, we can’t shut the windows because of the smell, and until this year summer in London only existed as a tentative concept. You should know, you’ve lived here for about a hundred years yourself.’ Bryant accepted a hot mug from Longbright, stirred it with the end of a paper-knife and passed it to his partner. ‘I’m afraid it’s bags until we can buy some decent stuff. The toilet doesn’t appear to have a door, we’re missing a couple of desks and part of a ceiling. Oh, and the electrics keep shorting out. It wasn’t me; I haven’t touched anything. It’s nearly half past three. Were you really all this time with a woman? You could have got so much done.’
    ‘Actually, I had a medical at lunchtime and was sent for a chest X-ray. Had to wait for ages. I tried calling you when I got out, but your mobile wasn’t answering.’
    ‘No, it wouldn’t. It got wet, so I tried to dry it out in Janice’s sandwich toaster. The toaster and the phone sort of—
melded
—into a single appliance, scientifically interesting as a new mechanical life-form but utterly useless for communication. Kershaw, you can bugger off now, there’s a chap, we’ll be fine.’
    ‘What do I tell Bayham Street?’ asked Kershaw with a faint air of desperation.
    ‘Tell them you’ll take a wander over with Mr Banbury after you’ve visited the crime scene, give them the kind of report they love—yards of statistics, no opinions. Not that you’ll find anything at the site after Camden’s gormless plods have trampled around in their size tens. And be careful near Finch, he bites.’
    May looked up from his newspaper. ‘Do you know that’s the third mobile you’ve destroyed this year, not counting the one you lost when the unit blew up?’
    ‘Surely not. I quite fancy one of those video-phones. I’m surprised no one’s created a collective noun for them yet, or even any decent short-form