Bryant & May 02; The Water Room by Christopher Fowler

Author:Christopher Fowler [Fowler, C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: [2011.04.11]
Publisher: [Côte d’Azur]
Published: 2004-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

∨ The Water Room ∧

24

Breaking the surface

Giles Kershaw caught up with Bryant as he was heading to the unit car park. “Ah, Mr Bryant,” he called, hopping over puddles with long corduroy-clad legs. “I’m glad I caught you. I tried calling your mobile but got no response.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” agreed Bryant, fumbling with his umbrella. “What do you want?”

“It’s about Elliot Copeland’s death. I wanted to take the cabin of his truck to pieces in order to recreate a sequence of events, but the Kentish Town constabulary moved it from the site and I haven’t been able to requisition – look, have you got a moment?”

“It’s Thursday,” Bryant explained. “I’m late for my evening class. Can’t you walk and talk?”

“I made a scale model instead, took your advice about working with the materials at hand, and well, my theory, it was wrong. I had the whole thing pegged as an unfortunate accident. Because of the bricks inside the cabin, you see.”

“No, I don’t see,” said Bryant, fighting to get the rusted door of the Mini Cooper open. “Jump inside or you’ll get soaked.”

Kershaw gratefully concertinaed himself into the tiny car and ran a hand through his blond hair, spiking it. “He saved the good bricks from the ditch, over thirty of them, stacking them in the cabin. He’d laid a sheet of plastic on the passenger seat to protect it from mud. But he knew he wouldn’t be able to stop the whole lot from sliding over if he braked suddenly, which he might well have had to do in the rain, so he held the bricks in place with two pieces of cut plank. He created a sort of makeshift hod. This is just the sort of thing builders do just before they have accidents. When I saw the planks on the floor, I could imagine what had happened. He’d propped the bricks in place, alighted from the cabin and gone back to work. At which point, the truck shifted in the mud, the planks became dislodged and fell forward with the full weight of the bricks behind them. The only thing they could have hit was the dashboard, punching the hydraulic starter and holding it in. I figured it was a freak misfortune, the kind that occurs on building sites all over the world. There are no normal accidents; each one is a particular confluence of circumstances.”

“You’re not going to give me a lecture on chaos theory, are you?” asked Bryant. “I wrote a book on that subject.”

“I’m sure you know about such things, Mr Bryant – ”

“No, I mean I really did write a book on the subject. It’s behind my desk if you’d like to borrow it.”

“But you see, my instinct was wrong,” Kershaw admitted. “I built a cantilever, weighting it proportionately and angling it to match the digital shots we took on the night. Even on my reduced scale, the bricks wouldn’t have been responsible for holding in the button because the truck was already

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