The Fountain in the Forest Read online

  The first of these was puzzling, but Rex had been loudly relieved when it became apparent that at least it wasn’t Hobbs’s body they had found the previous day. The missing friend still hadn’t returned Rex’s call, but, knowing Terry as he did, Rex had told Eddie that he was as confident as a bent bookie at Newmarket that Hobbs couldn’t have done it, that he’d be willing to bet a year’s salary that there would be no forensic evidence – not a single finger-print – to link Tel to whoever it was that had been killed in the Royal Palace Theatre paint frame.

  The second? Rex was less worried about the outcome of any inspection than about the rigours and the burden of the SiC itself. Like he didn’t already have enough to do, without having to accommodate a bunch of apparatchiks with clipboards crawling all over everything. He knew that he had kept a tight ship on SD, so it was just a matter of putting his head down and submitting to the forthcoming process, speaking when spoken to, framing every response within the relevant regulation, and not obstructing them in any way. Easier said than done, but not impossible.

  That just left Tennyson.

  Rex felt his forehead tighten. Later he would tell Lollo that he felt almost as indignant as he had in the run-up to the trial. Why would someone want to drag all that up again? It sometimes felt as if there was a part of the population that was at war with the police. Yes, Trevor Tennyson had died on Rex’s watch. The otherwise fit thirty-year-old postman had asphyxiated while being restrained following a scuffle as he was escorted to the custody suite, having been booked for throwing an egg at some minor-league banker during the Occupy protests. The incident had been complicated by a gap in the CCTV record, but the reason for this was well documented – power cables in Richbell Place had been severed by BT engineers looking for a junction box, and half the building was dark – and Fuck Me’s evidence and the toxicology test results had demonstrated beyond doubt that Tennyson’s asthma had made this an accident that was waiting to happen.

  As the station lead on SD, Rex had given evidence on chain-of-command and booking procedures, and both Gnat’s Piss and his own paperwork had backed up the medical evidence. It was a matter of record that no asthma inhaler had been found among Tennyson’s effects. Medical records confirmed that Tennyson had a repeat prescription for both a long-acting reliever and the more familiar short-acting relief inhaler, the type that is usually colour-coded blue. Traces of tiotropium bromide in tissue samples were consistent with daily use of the long-acting reliever, but, as the defence had pointed out, this should have been supplemented by the shorter-acting drug as and when needed. But no trace of albuterol sulfate, a.k.a. Ventolin, had been found in the samples, giving a degree of certainty that this had not been used within the previous however-many hours.

  According to Gnat’s Piss, asthma had not been mentioned by Tennyson during booking, even though the system contained fields for entering known medical conditions, and the booking-procedure script included verbal prompts on medical history and current prescribed medications. If this information had been offered, or if an inhaler had been found among his personal effects during the booking process, a less kinetic approach might have been adopted once things had got out of hand.

  The judge’s summing-up had reinforced the defence case by strongly suggesting that if – and only if – Trevor Tennyson had had a short-acting reliever inhaler in his possession when he left the house that morning, the balance of probabilities was that he had lost it while travelling to, or in the excitement of, the protest. Alternatively, or perhaps additionally, with his symptoms largely controlled by daily use of the long-acting reliever, there was a persuasive suggestion that Tennyson might even have become blasé about keeping his short-acting Ventolin inhaler to hand, a complacent attitude that was only reinforced by his not mentioning the condition when prompted during his arrest. This carelessness seemed to have been confirmed by a Post Office colleague, a character witness who, while giving evidence, had been forced to admit that he had seen Tennyson borrowing a friend’s inhaler at work on at least one occasion. In other words, Tennyson hadn’t always carried his own inhaler with him as he was supposed to do.

  Rex knew from experience that, when you are watching a trial, whether as a participant of some kind or from the public gallery, you can sometimes recognise the moment when the case is won or lost. This had been that moment. The witness, Tennyson’s colleague, had known it too, judging by the expression of dismay on his face.

  That had been enough. The four officers who had been escorting Trevor Tennyson to the custody suite at the time of his death were all acquitted.

  ‘Bacon on white toast?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Rex took a bite, savouring the crunch of toast and the crisp, salty bacon, the vinegar trace of the tomato ketchup. As he ate, he continued to roll these three things around in his mind: the current investigation, the impending SiC, and Tennyson. Rex had a fairly good idea of how these conflicting imperatives would be prioritised by Lollo and upwards, and even though Rex himself was firmly implicated within all three, he retained sufficient detachment to have a professional interest in whether his theory would be proved correct.

  Of course, given the choice, King would have dropped everything for his mate. Who wouldn’t? He would run the case to ground and not stop until he could put Terry one hundred per cent in the clear, but since when had a DS had any choice? Let alone one who was only ‘attached’ to an investigation.

  Knowing Lollo, Rex figured that Tennyson would dominate the day. Where some might see a renewed focus on such a controversial UFO – ‘Use of Force’ incident – as a bad thing, especially when it was one of the few deaths in custody in the country to have gone to trial, Lollo would probably already be talking about using it as a springboard to demonstrate best practice and transparency. That way, the borough would have a positive and public-facing benchmark in place that could be part of the Met’s story when the Safety in Custody inspection started, not to mention be used as part of a counter-narrative if the inspection turned up any negatives. Rex also knew that Lollo could be unsentimental at the best of times – ruthless, even. So if any bodies had to be sacrificed in the telling of whatever story needed to be told in order to set the scene, so be it.

  Although Tennyson had happened on Rex’s watch, he thought – hoped – that he had been too far away from any real action on this one to be in the firing line, but he knew that he would still have to watch his back. Rex had managed to keep a lowish profile during the trial, using ‘bureaucrat mode’, as he called it – calmly describing the various relevant procedures – to deflect attention, offering those basic procedural truths to cover the much larger lie, so he didn’t want to undo all that and become the focus of too much attention now. He certainly didn’t want to become ‘the face of the case’, as sometimes happened. You were fucked then.

  He wondered how long it might be this morning before he’d get the call to go upstairs, whether the lawyers would be there from the get-go. He could guess. It was frustrating, to say the least. For a start, Rex wanted to go back to Covent Garden and have a closer look at that writing on the back of the paint frame door: Trudi B. But if Tennyson dominated the day as he thought it would do, there was no way he’d be able to get to whatever investigation-team meetings Webster might have lined up, let alone go back to the scene. He’d have no choice but to simply email Webster about the photo again, and hope for the best.

  Right now, as he relished the last mouthful of bacon sandwich and drained his cup, Rex had a sudden flash: he knew this feeling. The moment when you recognise that you might be enjoying yourself too much, that your world might be about to change. That all this was too good to last. There was no such thing as a simple pleasure in this game. It was always an illusion, or at best the calm before a storm. Well, it wouldn’t be the first storm of his career, he thought to himself. Bring it on. And at least he could see this one coming. Not like when Helen had blindsided him with Webster.

  Walking down Lamb’s Cond
uit Street towards the station, Rex knew that the legal teams at New Scotland Yard, and at every newspaper in the country, would already have spent hours poring over whatever Tennyson material it was that had been leaked. Both sides would be doing the same thing, which was looking for something nobody had noticed before. A new angle or something concrete that might have been overlooked last time around. A reason why this had been leaked. They’d be conducting a fine-grained analysis – a ‘fingertip search’ – for anything that might qualify as new evidence, while also getting updates and steers from their respective libel lawyers about what, if anything, in all of this might actually be printable. Rex knew he would find out soon enough what they had each decided, but then, as he turned down towards the staff entrance on Richbell Place, it struck him: Trudi B.

  What was the name of the cleaner at the Royal Palace Theatre who had reported it in the first place?

  Gertrude?

  Could Trudi be a nickname?

  3: CHÈVRE (GOAT)

  When he got up to the office, Rex sat down and logged in, but not for long. Lollo had evidently been keeping an ear out for him. ‘Alright, Kingsy?’

  ‘Morning, sir.’

  ‘Bloody Tennyson!’

  ‘So I hear. How bad is it, do we know?’

  ‘Not sure, Rex. Only just got here myself, so I’m just getting on top of it now, mate. Upstairs were going to try and schedule a meeting for ten. Lawyers are a-kip at the moment. Why don’t you give Webbo a couple of hours till then, eh? Help him find your mate.’

  ‘Is he in?’

  ‘No, he phoned five minutes ago. M11’s fucked, in’t it, so he’s stuck on North Circular.’

  ‘Be a while yet, then,’ Rex laughed. ‘I need to go and check something out at the scene. See you at ten, sir.’

  ‘Don’t be late.’

  Enjoying this unexpected reprieve, Rex went back outside. As he stepped through the main doors, he was confronted by the sight of a man in a tweed jacket and plus fours wheeling a penny-farthing bicycle up the ramp into the disability access lift, but he didn’t give it a second glance. He made a mental note – as he always did – to cancel his membership to the gym opposite. He’d been giving them about a thousand a year in direct debits for the past too-many years, but never even had the induction. If he was relatively fit right now – and he was – it was nothing to do with his gym membership, but because of a casual decision to always use the stairs in this place instead of the sodding lift. He had stuck to it too. And when you’re up and down a twelve-storey building most days, that’s a lot of stairs.

  Ten minutes later he was at the Royal Palace’s stage door, showing his badge. ‘I’d like to have a quick word with one of your cleaners,’ he said. ‘Gertrude Bisika? Can you point me in the right direction, please.’

  ‘Sorry, she’s not in today,’ said the stage door keeper, a pleasant, bohemian-looking woman with lots of rings on both hands. She was holding one hand over the telephone mouthpiece. ‘Hang on, pet, let me just finish this call.’ She sounded bunged up. ‘Sorry, no, love. You can’t just come and work here – you have to send a CV. Send us your CV with a covering letter saying why you want to work here, and someone will get back to you. Alright, poppet. Thanks for calling.’

  While she spoke, Rex looked around. In the cramped, cubicle-style office, rows of keys jostled for space with an old-fashioned telephone switchboard, a first aid box, CCTV monitors and filing cabinets, a bottle of sherry with a glittery gift tag tied around the neck, a multi-gang plug adapter crowded with phone chargers … You name it. The jumble of office equipment, fire blankets, wire in-and out-trays and pigeonholes looked as if it had been here for years, as did she. How could she bear to work in such a tiny space, he wondered, but he knew the answer: the bonhomie, the relationships, and knowing this place inside out. Theatre folk were good, tolerant people on the whole. It would be rewarding work, and one of those jobs that you’d get better at the longer you did it.

  ‘Ah, bless!’ she said. ‘Must think it’s the early bird that catches the worm.’

  ‘When in fact it’s the early bird with a CV?’ said Rex.

  ‘Well, exactly. Excuse me—’ She blew her nose, threw the tissue in the bin.

  ‘Nasty cold,’ said Rex.

  ‘Ah, I wish. No: sinus,’ she said. ‘It’s about yesterday, right?’

  Rex nodded and smiled.

  She took a ring binder from the shelf, flipped through, ran her finger down a list. ‘Ah, no. That’s it. She’s got a hospital appointment this morning. Physiotherapy up at UCH. But you’ll probably catch her if you go round there now.’

  ‘UCH?’

  ‘No. She lives around the corner, in the Peabody flats over the road. Tell her I sent you. Jane.’

  ‘Okay, will do. Thank you.’ Rex decided that he would have to come back another time to examine the paint frame door. ‘Have you got the number?’

  As he knocked on the door, Rex could smell curry goat cooking down the hall. ‘Mrs Bisika?’ he asked. ‘DS King from Holborn Police. Jane on the stage door said to tell you sorry, but she thought you wouldn’t mind. It’s about yesterday. I know you’re in a rush, but have you got five minutes, please?’

  ‘Yes, Jane just telephoned me. I was expecting you. Please come in.’

  It was a neat flat, with patterned rugs on the floor and antimacassars on the backs of the chairs. Family photos of weddings and children were arranged along the mantelpiece. A larger framed photo of a handsome, grey-haired man was set on top of the TV, and next to it a tulip in a small china vase that sat on a coaster-sized lace doily. He could see from clothing and architecture that some pictures had not been taken in London. He thought he recognised Gertrude Bisika in one of the photos: a young, slim woman, smartly dressed in a beige skirt and cream blouse, squinting in the bright light, but looking quizzically beyond the photographer as if trying to discern something outside the frame of the photograph. ‘Is that you?’ he asked, pointing at the photo. ‘You were a looker, weren’t you? If you don’t mind me saying.’

  ‘Well, my late husband seemed to think so,’ she said. ‘He took that photo. In 1979. I had just graduated from university in Lilongwe—’

  ‘…’

  ‘That’s Malawi, where I’m from.’

  ‘What did you study?’ Rex asked, genuinely interested.

  ‘Organic chemistry,’ Gertrude said. ‘I wanted to work in the oil industry.’ She must have noticed some giveaway in Rex’s expression. ‘Excuse me? Do you think I wanted to be a drudge?’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Rex. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Listen,’ she said, ‘I’m not complaining – that place has been like a family to me – but when we arrived here in eighty-three I had practically never seen a skyscraper. I grew up in the north of Malawi and my father was a newspaper editor in Mzuzu. I met my husband at university in Lilongwe. He was a journalist and a party worker. He wanted to be an MP at home, serving our country, not a postman in London! Believe me, I tried to get work in the petrochemical industry, work that I was more than qualified to do, but it turns out that, in Great Britain, international qualifications are subjective things. Or they were in those days. At least, if you didn’t have white skin. That was the most important qualification of all. Anyway’ – she glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece – ‘how can I help you? I’m sorry to rush you, but I am afraid that I will have to leave in a few minutes.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I’m sorry. Physiotherapy for your …’

  ‘My shoulder,’ she said. ‘Whatever you might think, women’s bodies were not built for buckets and brooms.’

  He asked her to run through the events of the previous morning, which were pretty much as he had already heard: the smell, getting the keys, calling 999.

  ‘So you’ll know Terry?’ he asked. ‘Who usually works in there.’

  ‘Mr Hobbs? Of course! Everyone knows everyone in that place. Mr Hobbs always starts work early when he is busy, and he always says hello to us ladies. A
very egalitarian gentleman. Not like some.’

  Sounds like Terry, Rex thought. ‘Can you remember when you last saw Mr Hobbs?’

  ‘That is difficult to say.’ She frowned, and something in her expression reminded Rex of that photo, the promising young graduate. ‘Perhaps a month or two. He said he was sorry to hear about Benedick.’ She looked at the photo on the TV. ‘That was my husband. God rest his soul. Mr Hobbs offered his condolences. Very sweet. So that would have been the beginning of March, when I went back to work.’

  So she had been widowed very recently. ‘Forgive me,’ Rex said. ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’ He paused for a second or two. ‘Just one more thing.’ He showed her the photo on his phone. ‘I just saw this and wondered if Trudi B was you? Do they call you Trudi? Do you have to tick it off once you’ve cleaned the room or something?’

  ‘Trudi with an “i”? No,’ she said, and laughed. ‘Everyone has always called me Gertrude, or Gertie for short, even my husband. That or Mrs Bisika.’

  ‘And the tick?’

  ‘Well, as I say, I have no idea about that,’ she said. ‘We never clean the paint frame because it’s always been sublet to Mr Hobbs for as long as I’ve known it. And you’ve seen the place. It’s a mess! Where would you start?’ She laughed again. ‘Yes, we do have to sign off, but we do that on a time sheet that is hung up by the stage door. Anyway’ – she looked again at the phone – ‘are you sure that’s a “B”? It looks like the number thirteen to me.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Bisika,’ said Rex, reciting the script and reaching for the wallet in his back pocket, wondering if she didn’t have a point. ‘You’ve been very helpful. Here’s my card. Do feel free to call me if you remember something unusual, or if anything else comes to mind.’