told him. ‘My great-grandfather knew of its whereabouts. Everything indicated that it had been washed to the end of a tributary. They were sealing off the rivers, putting in walls and grilles. He said that was where I would find it.’
‘An alabaster pot older than Christ? You think it survived intact? How would that be possible?’
Ubeda opened his eyes and raised himself on one arm. ‘No, of course not. Do you think I’m a complete idiot? Anubis carried the sorrows from one vessel to another. Why else do you think the society existed for so many years?’
Bryant recalled the broken Anubis statues in Ubeda’s attic. ‘I don’t understand what you mean,’ he admitted.
‘Then you never will.’ Ubeda rose in pain and limped away toward the shadow of the next canal arch, daring Bryant to stop him.
By the time Meera arrived with reinforcements, the waters beneath the arcade had smoothed to green glass, and Bryant stood alone at the water’s edge.
37
* * *
HOME FIRE
DC Bimsley was frozen to the bone.
He stamped his boots on the pavement to bring feeling back to his feet, and tried wriggling his toes inside his cold wet socks, but nothing worked. Even his nipples had gone numb. Chilled rainwater bounced off his shaved head and dripped through the tiny gap between his neck and his collar. On the other side of the river, above a pub in Vauxhall, his pals were at a party hosted by Russian flight attendants, who would be introducing them to girls with cool grey eyes and unpronounceable names. They would be getting themselves into an advanced state of refreshment, slamming vodka mixes and copping off while he paced the street like a common constable.
Behind him, the blaring light of the hostel seemed as inviting as a country hotel in midwinter. He couldn’t see the point of keeping guard on such a night. In the past two hours, a handful of melancholic men had drifted to the scratched glass of the reception window to collect an overnight pass for one of the overspill hostels in Camden. Two of them, having qualified as ‘being in a condition of dire need’, had been admitted to the overnight dormitory. Depressing as his own situation was, it could not equal the plight of these helpless and possibly unhelpable men. He wondered if Bryant was punishing him for some transgression by giving him such a menial task, and tried to recall whether he had filled in all his paperwork for last week.
In order to get a quick heat-fix from the convector over the entrance, he kept popping in to say ‘All right?’ to the bored little man at the reception desk; but no amount of foot stamping or arm flapping brought an offer of tea. He tried another tack. ‘Busy tonight?’
‘Not too bad,’ managed the clerk.
‘You been here long?’ asked Bimsley, desperate to prolong his time under the heater.
‘I used to be on nights up the Whiston Road Refugee Centre in Hackney. All Cambodians and Vietnamese, used to living in big families back home and putting all their money in one big pot. Then they come here and the first thing that happens is their kids take off. The families get split up, can’t pay the rent and get kicked out.’
‘It must make your job harder, trying to keep track of them all.’
‘Everyone’s all over the place, how can you keep track? Kurds in Finsbury, Albanians in King’s Cross, Jamaicans in Harlesden, Colombians down the Elephant and Castle, Ethiopians in Highbury and Tufnell Park—the paperwork’s a nightmare, I can tell you.’
‘Forgive me for asking, mate, but why work here at all if you don’t like it?’
‘My old man was a right old racist, see, and that was when there were just Caribbeans here—neat little schoolkids, husbands on the buses, wives down the Baptist church on Sundays. He never understood that people are just looking for a place to call home. I suppose if I can learn to make sense of the changes, I’ll never get to be like him.’
Bimsley had to admit the approach was a fair one. He realized he was propping open the door to let in the rain, and reluctantly bowed back out.
On the street he drifted back into a fugue state, watching the building without seeing. A wavering light still flickered in Tate’s bedroom: Bimsley supposed that the old man was smoking against the rules, staring at the rain patterns reflected on the ceiling, or perhaps reading by torchlight after curfew, for it