'Good heavens.'
'He created a paradox, a backward church that almost mocks itself with jugglers and fire-eaters instead of holy men.'
'Stanley, there's life left in you yet,' muttered Maggie, amazed.
If he reached up he could feel the curved brick ceiling at his fingertips, but there was no break in the water above him. The tunnel was completely filled. Another jutting stone ledge scraped past Louie, and he twisted his body, mindful of the metal rod still protruding from his thigh. He was running out of breath. The trick was not to panic. He allowed his body to go limp and be carried by the buffeting current.
The tunnel swept sharply to the right and up slightly, so that he could feel the slime-covered base of the sewer rapidly passing beneath his boots. Moments later he burst from the freezing water into air, propelled to a hard landing on the far side of a large iron grid, down through which the overflow from the tunnel was rushing. A faint grey light showed from above, allowing him to make out the hexagonal shape of the broad Victorian air-shaft. He reached down to his thigh and found the steel shaft of the arrow gone, wrenched free in the vortex.
Things got better after that. Pam had been pulled loose in his fall and now appeared behind him, although he was too late to break her fall as she burst from the tunnel and landed on the drainage grid. It took all his strength to drag her free of the torrent before she could swallow any more effluent. Water also spattered his face from above. Rain was falling through the large iron pores of a rectangular drain lid. Pam was not conscious, but was at least breathing hard. He rested his head against the green-slimed wall and allowed the falling raindrops to wash the filth from his face. Then he pulled Pam against the wall at his back and began looking for the ladder that he knew would take them to the surface and safety.
It was only when he opened his jacket to squeeze some of the water out that he realised what had happened. The disk he had fought to save, Vince's final copy of the manuscript, had been sucked from his clothes and washed away, the fragile magnetic square lost in the surf of detritus thundering through its channel beneath the city.
'Interesting,' said Bryant, 'this bit here about the inquest.' They had tapped into the only report that had so far made it onto the Internet, a web-site dedicated to celebrity criminal cases. He tapped the scrolling screen with the end of his biro. Jane shifted closer on the piano stool they were awkwardly sharing. The coroner's report on Melanie Daniels suggested that there was no sign of panic in the victim. Drowners usually start to hyperventilate when they inhale water into their lungs. No cadaveric spasms, few diatoms. It's not symptomatic of drowning. I'm surprised the verdict was misadventure.'
'I'm not sure what you're looking for,' said Jane.
'I'm not sure myself, but this is all very suggestive. Daniels was relaxed when she went into the water, if not unconscious. How could that be?'
'She must have been pretty out of it.'
'Oh come on, the party was late in the year, the lake would have been freezing cold. If she was so drunk and stoned that she couldn't even feel the icy water pouring into her mouth, how did she even manage to get as far as the end of a narrow jetty in semi-darkness?'
'You think someone took her down to the lake and made it look like an accident?'
'It's a possibility, yes.'
'But wouldn't the coroner have discovered that?'
'He should have done. Tell me, is there a Debrett's Who's Who on database?'
'I should think so. Who do you want to look up?'
'Jasper Forthcairn, QC, the coroner in charge of the case.'
So. It was Covent Garden for the ninth stop.
Vince closed up the mobile phone and wearily swung his bag onto his shoulder. He stepped out of the sheltering doorway into the deadening downpour. His wet jeans were chafing the tops of his legs, but he barely registered the discomfort. He felt helpless about the fate of Louie and Pam. He was angry with himself and Sebastian, for allowing things to go this far, for involving and injuring others. When he thought of that smug, smiling face he longed to swing one good punch at it and knock a few teeth loose. Limping back to Liverpool Street, shuffling along like a sodden scarecrow, he finally managed to hail a cab and climbed in, squelching down onto the seat and turning the heater on full to try to dry himself a little.
'Forgive me for saying so, mate,' said the driver, 'but you look like something the bleedin' cat dragged in, an' you're makin' my seat wet. Here.' He passed Vince a dry towel.
'Thank you, that's very kind.' He buried his face in the warm scented nap of the cloth, then ruffled his hair dry. For the next ten minutes he felt safe and protected inside the latter-day hackney carriage, as it purred through the rainy streets. The major routes were growing busier now as the first commuters started coming into the city. He must have fallen asleep, because it seemed only moments later that the taxi had stopped and the driver was calling to him through the window.
'Here you are, tosh, this where you wanna be? You won't find anything open around here until about nine.'
'This is fine, thanks.' Vince paid him and alighted back into the rain. There was no sign of light in the sky yet. Dawn was still some way off. The market was empty, the shops in darkness, the cobbled square devoid of human life. A small funfair stood on the north side, its red and yellow roundabouts and sideshows boarded up against the weather and the night.
He headed for what he took to be the front entrance of St Paul's Church, then remembered Dr Masters' advice, that the portico in the painting was a false front, existing separately at the rear of the building. Wiping the water from his eyes, he slowly made his way across the cobbled square.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
THE POLICE constable looked around for something to wedge under the lid of the manhole cover, but it was hard to see in the rain that thundered down around them outside the little park.
'I'll tell you why,' he told his partner. 'Because it's a funny time to make a crank call and the caller didn't sound pissed or nuts, he was very well spoken in fact, so the desk sergeant thought it was worth checking out.'
'If somebody fell down there, how come the lid's back in place?' asked his partner, picking up the same length of branch Louie had used to try to open the drain. 'How about this?' When employed as a lever, the wood cracked further along its length. He tossed it aside and looked around for something else.
'Get a tyre iron from the car.'
He returned with the iron and jammed it into the rim of the drain. After a few moments of hard pressure it burst up, and the constable was able to carefully roll the lid aside. He shone his torch down into blackness. The rushing water was now only two feet below the opening.
'The sewer level must have risen in the rainstorm,' he pointed out to his colleague. 'Sudden rainstorms have been known to blow these manhole covers clean off. If anyone really had fallen in half an hour ago, they'd be long drowned by now.'
Louie pushed against the grid. Although it was nearly three feet square he found it was lighter than he had expected, and moved aside easily. He gingerly raised his head and looked out. The shaft was situated in the middle of the road in a quiet backstreet to the rear of the Peabody Trust buildings. He shoved the lid aside and went back for Pam. She was conscious now, but shaking violently with cold and barely coherent. Slipping his arm around her shoulder, he helped her to climb the eight rungs to the top of the shaft, then lifted her beneath the armpits until she was capable of dragging herself out into the roadway.