Ten Second Staircase by Christopher Fowler Read Free Book Online

pulled from the reeking Thames mud had disrupted the construction on the South Bank of the river. The monumental edifice of County Hall eventually housed the wrangling assembly of London, and appropriately enough, took over half a century to complete. It was grimly inevitable that the council should then be abolished and replaced with a more controversial body, which decided to move to a different spot altogether, beside Tower Bridge, in a modern building finished in brown glass and shaped like a giant toe.
    Poor County Hall, ignored when it should have been admired, then reviled for the plan Prime Minister Thatcher unveiled to turn it into a Japanese hotel. When this future also disintegrated it became an aquarium, sleek grey sharks gliding through waters where earnest councillors had once fought to divide the boroughs of London between themselves.
    Here also were housed Salvador Dalí's melting clocks and arid landscapes in permanent exhibition; his great elephant sculpture is placed on the embankment, teetering on attenuated giraffe legs, where it appears to stride over Parliament itself, surely a vision that would once have brought a charge of treason. In the front of the building (for the river faces its back) the former Charles Saatchi collection of modern British art, now the County Hall Gallery, awaits visitors, who balk and complain at the idea of paying to see ideas made flesh, especially when there's nothing traditional on display.
    A home for artistic visions, then (for perhaps we can include its cool blue panoramas of drifting iridescent angelfish), and also a suitable place for a murder, a great wood-panelled beehive of tunnels and passages. Through the shadowed oak corridors, across the sepia parquet blocks, into the main domed chamber like an immense wooden hammam, where half a dozen gargantuan artworks stand in white plaster alcoves, their purpose to stimulate and disturb; an immense angry head, its glaring silver eyes staring down accusingly, office furniture submerged in a water-filled white box, a bizarre steel machine knotted with ropes and leather straps, perhaps designed to torture some alien species, and six foetuses tethered in a twelve-foot tank, their arrangement guaranteed to horrify and infuriate those more used to gentler forms of art.
    But something was wrong here; the liquid in the tank had overflowed, slopping onto the surrounding floor, and the foetuses had been joined by a larger form.
    'It was only unveiled last Monday, now it's buggered.' The young guard was uniformed but uncapped. He absently touched his bristled ginger hair, wondering if he would somehow be made to take the blame. DCs Colin Bimsley and Meera Mangeshkar had cordoned off the area and were taking rudimentary notes, but could do little until the specialists arrived.
    'You're not the regular police, then,' asked the guard, eyeing the slim silver panels on their black padded jackets. 'PCU—what does that stand for?'
    'No, we're not . . . Simon.' Bimsley checked the guard's badge and ignored his question. 'How long have you been on this morning?'
    'Since nine A.M.'
    'Everything was normal at that time. Otherwise you'd have noticed, wouldn't you?' Bimsley stabbed his ballpoint in the direction of the tank. 'Body floating facedown in there, water everywhere, it stands to reason.'
    'Not water, mate. Formaldehyde. You know, to preserve the babies. That's what the smell is.'
    'I read about this artwork. It's been causing quite a fuss.' Mangeshkar approached the tank. 'Isn't the liquid supposed to be clearer than this?'
    Simon the guard turned around to see. 'Something must have gone wrong. It started turning cloudy at the end of last week. The gallery chiefs are supposed to be meeting to discuss the problem.'
    'It's eleven A.M. now. The call was logged in twenty minutes ago—'
    'No, longer ago than that. I rang the police as soon as I saw it.'
    The Met checked it out before passing the case to us, thought Bimsley. 'How many rounds