'Waterhouse,' Bryant repeated, dumbstruck. 'My goodness, thank you, Peregrine.' It was only after he had gone that Summerfield found the elderly detective's trilby, stuck over a brush-pot on the hall table.

44

TEMPEST RISING

The stack of postcards had stopped growing.

Kallie shuffled through them again, counting to seven. The last card Paul had sent was from Croatia. What the hell was he doing in Croatia? In the darkest part of these rainy nights, after even the streetlamps had died, she began to feel that he was no longer part of her world.

Just a few days ago she had imagined him lying in a clay-walled house, his head bloodily bandaged, trying to explain to kindly but uncomprehending fishermen that his passport had been stolen. Now she realized the absurdity of the fantasy. Even ancient souks housed Internet cafes. There were few places in Europe where English was not understood by someone. If anything bad had happened to Paul, he would have found a way to get in touch with her. The postcard was upbeat, distant in tone, like a child fulfilling a duty to write home.

After a few hours' respite, the rain had returned with a vengeance to north London. It fell with a tropical intensity, bouncing and spraying, pouring and dripping from every roof, gutter, porch and awning. The drains were overwhelmed, and the middle section of the street was flooding in earnest. She thought of getting out, catching a train to her aunt's, where she might escape the worst of the weather. But something kept her at the house. It had become her home, and she was determined to stay. She sat at the kitchen table with the colour swatches for the bathroom and tried to concentrate on the job, but the rain proved too distracting. Knowing that it would be better to concentrate on some mindless practicality, she descended to the lower-ground floor and picked up the sledgehammer from where she had left it.

She had decided to remove part of the bathroom chimney breast to provide some space for towel-shelves. There was little money left to hire anyone else, so she would carry out the work herself. However, after slamming the breast with seven or eight hammer blows, she realized that she could not summon enough power in her arms for the job. She had barely managed to put more than a few crescent-shaped dents in the brickwork. There was no electrical socket in the bathroom, but she had run a cable through from the kitchen for a radio, and the inane babble of the DJ drowned out the rush of running water that sounded as if it was passing right through the basement. The noise had continued unabated for so long that she barely noticed it now.

A sickly grey damp patch had appeared just above floor level, and was spreading so quickly up the adjoining wall that she could almost see its growth. Oddly, the plaster felt dry to the touch, as if designed to absorb moisture. Perhaps it would be necessary to live with the intact chimney for now; it could be removed at a later date. She hated the bath because both taps had a tendency to stick, either jamming open or shut. The plumber wasn't able to come for another week.

Kallie decided to remove the row of tiles behind the washbasin. But after working at the wall for nearly half an hour, she abandoned her chisel and switched to a knife to begin cutting away the old paintwork that overlaid the surrounding plaster. It lifted easily, and work progressed with greater speed. She was sweating hard, even though the bathroom was freezing. The room defied any attempt to be heated. Didn't they say that the temperature always dropped when spirits were present? She felt surrounded by ghosts: the doleful presence of Ruth Singh; the shadowy figures of Elliot and Jake; even Paul, his features blurred and already half-forgotten, lost to the new loyalties of strange lands.

She watched from the steamed-over kitchen window while waiting for the kettle to boil. The street was so close to Piccadilly Circus, self-proclaimed hub of the universe, but she could have been in the heart of the English countryside. The drone of traffic usually made itself felt in low bass-notes you sensed in your bones rather than heard, but today the rain cascaded through the densely foliated branches of the ceanothus and enveloped the house in a clatter that sounded like gravel pouring down a chute. It was as though sluice gates had opened to flood the city, turning London into an inundated world of Atlantean phantoms.

Kallie returned to the bathroom and noticed that the stain on the wall had spread during the few minutes she had been out of the room. Now it extended fully halfway up the wall in a suppurating mushroom cloud, and was wet to the touch.

She was about to resume work with renewed vigour when the lights went out.

'I really thought I had him,' said Bimsley. 'I might have done if I hadn't gone arse over tit on the kerb. It's these shoes. I've done my coccyx in, and the back of my jacket's soaked.' The detective constable wiped his eyes and pulled his baseball cap closer to his head. 'I can't believe this weather,' he complained. 'Global warming. We're getting pissed on night and day just so mums can drop their kids off in SUVs. You all right?'

'I've been drier,' Meera agreed, squinting up at her colleague.

'It's going to be dark soon. Sunday evening, we should be home. I want some soup. Tate's not going to turn up here again. Whatever he's up to, he knows we're on to him. Something's tipped him off.'

'How could it?'

'Suppose he went back to the hostel for his books and found them gone. It wouldn't take a genius to figure out who took them. He's scarpered.'

Meera checked her wrist. 'We're not off duty for another hour.'

'My watch has steamed over. Besides, the Old Man reckons nobody goes home until we've got him.' People often thought of Bryant as the Old Man, even though he was only three years older than his partner.

'We could do another door-to-door.'

'That'd go down well, wouldn't it? Any more interviews and it'll constitute harassment,' warned Bimsley. 'Civvies either complain that they can never see police on the streets, or moan about being picked on.'

'Don't start, Colin, you're starting to sound like the Peckham South boys. Let's just get through the shift.'

Bimsley stamped and splashed. 'He's not going to show tonight.'

'Why not?'

'The rain. It's not going down the drains any more, which means his precious underground tunnels must be flooded, which means Tate can't use them to get around.' Bimsley narrowed his eyes, trying to see through the caul of mist. 'Something's really wrong here. I can feel it. There's a disturbance in the force.' He mimed wielding a light sabre. 'I mean, what's he going to gain by faking his own death? He already had a way of disappearing. Why didn't he use it when he still had the chance?'

'In south London you get three deaths in the same street, nobody tries to link them together. He's just a tramp, he's not a murderer.'

'He killed one of his own, Meera. I've seen people like him before. There's a solid wall between his type and us, people with homes. Why would he let one of his own kind die? There's something missing that the Old Man hasn't put his finger on, and he's into extra time. I should worry, I'm off home as soon as I get the signal. Dry out, order a curry, open a beer, bung on the telly, thank you and good night.'

'I thought we were a team, Colin. You wouldn't leave poor old Bryant and May out here on their own, would you?' asked Meera.

'What's it worth?'

'I might join you for the curry.'

In the distance, thunder scraped and tumbled with the obliterating force of the rising storm.

'Can't you put the de-mister on?' asked May. 'I can't see a thing.'

'I could, but it'll burn out the contacts on my brake lights. If you turn the radio on, the interior light comes on.'

'There's something very strange about the wiring of your car.' May fidgeted in his seat. 'I'm sure these are stuffed with horsehair. You should get yourself a nice little runaround.'

'It wouldn't be much good in a high-speed pursuit, would it?' snapped Bryant.

Dear God, let's never have another of those, thought May, remembering the last time. 'This is a Mini Cooper.' thought May, remembering the last time. 'This is a Mini Cooper.'

'Not under the bonnet, it's not.'

'It's nearly dark. Doesn't that strike you as odd?'

'No,' said Bryant, digging in his paper bag for a cola cube. 'It happens every night.'

'I mean there are no street lights on. No interior lights in any of the houses, either. Look, over there, you can see them in Inkerman Road. Maybe the water's got into a sub-station. I'd better call it in.'

'Where's Longbright?'

'Janice should still be in number 43, with the Wiltons. I can't see Meera or Colin. I told them to stay within sight.' May reached over to the back seat for a baseball cap.

'Must you wear that awful thing?' Bryant complained. 'It's intended for someone a quarter of your age.'

'I don't know why you have this High Tory attitude to fashion.' May straightened the peak in his mirror. 'You're not exactly Calvin Klein.'

'I've had my trilby since the War.'

'I'm surprised it hasn't fallen over your ears, considering the way you're shrinking. Where is it, anyway?'

'I think I left it at Peregrine's, along with my stick and my gloves.'

'I'm going to tie them to your jacket one day. Keep your mobile handy in case anything's wrong. You do have that, don't you?'

'Naturally.' Bryant dug into his coat and was amazed to find his own Nokia there; he had begun to suspect it had fallen under the exposed floorboards at the unit.

'Is it on? Of course not.' May turned it on and threw it back. 'I won't be a minute.' He climbed out into the downpour.

Kallie found a torch and some candles under the sink. Illuminated by pale spheres of radiance, the house appeared to be returning to its Victorian origins. There was something graceful about being able to carry the light from one room to another, bringing each space into focus as she passed through.

The twilit garden was now brighter than the interior of the house. The glow of the city was reflected on low racing clouds. As she stood framed by the window, she saw that Tate was standing inside the bush once more. She recognized his crippled shape immediately. Shining the torch through the window, she picked up his startled eyes in the light, and panned the beam over his body.

He was holding a carving knife in his right hand.

She flicked off the torch and made her way to the back door, checking that it was bolted top and bottom. The opaque-glass panel above the handle was wide enough for an intruder to smash and put his hand through. She dragged a chair from the kitchen and wedged it against the handle, then ran back to the window, staying low. Tate had moved closer, and was brazenly loping up the garden toward the house. A squall of rain hit the window with the force of a thrown shingle. She had forgotten to set her cordless phone back on its stand, and began searching the kitchen for it.

When she looked back into the wavering darkness, Tate had vanished once more.

45

ALL THE HOUSES

Kallie had no intention of running away.

Let the men in the street do that; it was the women who stayed and fought. This was her home, somewhere she finally belonged, and she would stay to protect it. The more logical you were, the less there was to be afraid of. She took stock of her surroundings.

It appeared that only the lights were out. The phone was still working. Forcing herself to breathe slowly and deeply, she listened for sounds beyond the river under the bathroom and the falling rain. This time, pride kept her from going for help. Tate was distracted and crippled. She was more than a match for him. She could not pretend to understand what might drive a man to act this way, but so many residents of the metropolis had become lost inside themselves that it was no longer a disease afflicting isolated communities; lunacy had spread to the city.

She kept a check from the windows; no sign of him-what kind of mad game was he playing?

Water was seeping in under the back door. Kallie rolled up a bath towel and laid it across the step. Something made her turn in her flight back through the basement hall to the bottom of the stairs; she caught the chiaroscuro of her reflection in the bathroom mirror, illuminated by a single tall candle. How different I look, How different I look, she thought. she thought. A grown woman I barely know. A grown woman I barely know. The candle flickered, and in that instant she saw something else. A young man with bare white shoulders peering back at her through the brickwork. The candle flickered, and in that instant she saw something else. A young man with bare white shoulders peering back at her through the brickwork.

John May walked back along the darkened street, trying to avoid the sputtering channels from inundated drainpipes. He counted down the houses as he passed them: number 37, the Ethiopians hardly anyone saw; number 39, where the Ayson family was riven by suspicions of infidelity; number 41, where Jake Avery had been suffocated in his sleep; number 43, where Longbright was now on guard with Tamsin and Oliver Wilton, their son impatiently roaming the upstairs rooms of the house, disturbed by the downpour; number 45, the medical students who slept through their days. The swamped waste ground where Elliot Copeland's body had been found buried in city soil, where Tate had once watched from barricades of plywood and cardboard. The builders' yard where Aaron had been tempted to betray his partner. So much energy and anger in one small street.

No sign of Bimsley or Mangeshkar, but he knew they couldn't be far away. He crossed the road and was about to start back when he spotted their matching black baseball caps. They were rounding the corner toward the alley behind the houses, where the dipped gravel path had become a tributary once more.

'Hey, where are you going?' he called.

'It's where Tate normally hangs out, sir. Thought we'd check it.'

May shone his torch on to the dark tree-lined corridor. 'There's nothing you can do back there. I want you to call on every house in this street and check that nothing is wrong. Take a side each. I don't know how, but he's tricking us.'

The two officers separated. May turned off his torch, and dropped back against the dark wall of the alley. Let's hope he heard that, Let's hope he heard that, he thought. he thought. I'm going to be here when he makes his move. I'm going to be here when he makes his move.

Kallie took a step forward and raised her candle, but the boy did not move. Locks of shining blond hair hung at either side of his face like shavings of varnished wood. She realized that she was looking back at a painting. She had been working too closely in artificial light to spot it earlier. What she had taken for water marks were muted colours.

From this distance she could clearly make out the top of the boy's body, set against twists of drowned green branches. He was floating in water, his arms drifting away from his torso, the world submerged beneath him, the victim of some apocalyptic deluge.

As she drew nearer, she studied the wall more carefully. He was imprisoned behind the thick layer of emulsion with which the wall had been covered. Taking up the scraper, she pushed its tip into the soft ochre paintwork. Three distinct layers lifted off together, and there, staring at her with unnerving clarity, was a single large eye.

Now something else made sense for the first time. In the original layout of the house, the bathroom had been considerably larger than any other room. Walls had since been removed, ceilings altered, chimneys closed; the bathroom had been repainted and demoted in importance until it had been diminished. Six large hardboard panels covered the alcoves on either side of the chimney breast. They had been painted over several times, so that the screws holding them had vanished.

In the toolbox beside the bath she found a screwdriver. Cracking the paint from the screwheads was a task of no more than a few seconds, but the threads were rusted and refused to turn. After tearing up the first two in frustrated haste, she switched to the chisel and worked at the join between boards and brick.

Tying a dishcloth around the head of a crowbar, she inserted it behind the first hardboard panel, bending back the board until it split. The mural behind it ran the entire length of the wall, presumably wrapping itself around the chimney breast. The section she could see was a view downward from a window depicting an extraordinary procession through the streets of London: sorrow, judgement, punishment, death, resurrection. An immense distortion of buildings and people that incorporated such details as gold braid and coat buttons, yet included the curvature of the earth. The top half of one winged figure disappeared behind the next panel.

Kallie began to realize that this panel would prove impossible to remove without damaging the artwork, so she followed it to the next wall, wondering if the frieze could possibly continue all the way around the room. Choosing a random spot, she gently peeled away the dampest patch of paintwork to reveal the screaming head of a young black woman.

Dragging the stepladder from the cupboard under the stairs, Kallie climbed up and shone her torch at the ceiling, scratching lightly at it to reveal what appeared to be a bursting storm cloud seen from directly underneath: fat, glistening drops of rain plunging in perspective toward the viewer. It's the entire room, It's the entire room, she thought. she thought. I have never seen anything like this in my life. I have never seen anything like this in my life.

The noise of rushing water beneath the house had grown in intensity. She tried to move the bath away from the far wall. The flexible pipes attached to its taps looked as if they would allow it to be moved as far as the centre of the room, but it was far too heavy to budge more than a few inches. Squeezing herself between the bath and the wall, she carefully scraped away another section of paint. This time the image was indecipherable: gingerish strands of weeds, flowers or possibly flames.

The emulsion flaked away from the hard varnished surface of the extraordinary mural. Feeling something at her feet, Kallie shone the torch down and saw that the spiders were back, thousands of them, tiny and brown, forced up by the rising torrent below. She stamped her boots, scattering them across the floor in rippling waves, and turned her attention back to the wall.

The red strands were soon explained: they were the floating tresses of a drowned woman, floating pale and serene beneath the green submerged city.

The doorbell rang, startling her, then rang again. She felt reluctant to leave the painting, as though it might fade away without her gaze upon it, but descended the ladder and made her way upstairs. The silhouette on the glass suggested a tall, broad-shouldered man, clearly not Tate. As she unlocked the door, he stepped inside without waiting for permission to enter. There was a palpable sense of aggression in his attitude. His face was turned away from the pale light of the street.

'What did you think you were going to do?' asked Randall Ayson.

'Where did your husband go?' Longbright asked, looking around.

'I don't know. This rain.' Tamsin Wilton barely concentrated on the question. The ferocious deluge had distracted everyone. 'I don't see why you have to be here.'

I'm not so sure myself, thought the detective sergeant. 'Mr Bryant has reason to believe that you could be at risk, that someone might try to, well, set fire to your house.' thought the detective sergeant. 'Mr Bryant has reason to believe that you could be at risk, that someone might try to, well, set fire to your house.'

'Fire? I can't imagine anything catching fire tonight. There's no power. The electricity company warned us this might happen. Look out there. It's like the end of the world. Brewer!' She shouted up from the foot of the stairs. 'Stop running about like that!'