witchcraft paintings like The Sorceress and The Magic Circle. He’s got an occult following, would you believe.’
‘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 cafés. 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