“Have you been following us? Who the hell do you think you are?”
“We’re a specialist investigatory unit under the control of the Home Office, and you are civilians. Trust me, you don’t want to fall into the hands of the Metropolitan Police. What did the two of you argue about?”
“We need to borrow some money to pay the rent and electricity,” said Ruby. “I asked Theo to cover the bills and he refused. I just thought he should agree to help us through a rough patch.”
“It’s a matter of principle,” said Fontvieille. “If we can’t manage our bills now, how can we be expected to construct and run entire social environments that might one day involve millions of pounds? Think it through, Ruby.”
“Anyway, I borrowed the money from Toby,” Ruby replied, coldly.
“Ah, yes, you’re quite well off at the moment, is that right?” May checked his notes.
“An aunt died and left me some money,” Toby muttered. The lie was so blatant that it hung in the air, a balloon of a falsehood waiting to be punctured.
“Well, you can give our detective sergeant all the details on that. Mr Fontvieille, I understand you used to date Cassie Field, the manager of the Karma Bar, is that true?”
“It’s common knowledge,” replied Theo airily.
“Not to me, it’s not,” Ruby snapped back.
“What does it matter? It was, like, a whole eight months ago.”
The temperature in the room was heating fast, but in this case May knew that a confrontational atmosphere could pay off; the housemates were becoming upset and dropping their guard.
“We see that two of you have had trouble with the police in the past,” May continued. “Mr Fontvieille, assault; Mr Nicolau, sexual harassment, was it?”
“I got into a fight outside a nightclub in Richmond,” said Fontvieille. “Fairly normal behaviour for a Thames Valley boy, wouldn’t you say?”
“And you, Mr Nicolau?”
“He was caught upskirting,” said Sangeeta.
“A load of us were doing it at the time,” Nicolau admitted. “Kind of embarrassing to think about now.”
“Is this a youngsters’ term I’m not familiar with?” asked Bryant, bewildered.
“It’s the rather grubby little practise of holding a camera under a girl’s skirt in public places, when she’s on a tube escalator for instance, then posting the shot on the Internet,” May translated.
“Oh, charming.” Bryant grimaced. “Is there nowhere a lady is safe these days?”
“Where did they find you two?” asked Theo. “You’re like something out of a display case at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Incredible. If this is going to take ages, do you mind if we order in pizzas?”
“You’re not taking this very seriously, are you?” There was a thread of danger in Bryant’s voice. “You don’t seem to appreciate that all five of you are under suspicion of conspiracy to murder. That is, an agreement between two or more persons to commit an illegal, wrongful act by sinister design, to use a rather archaic definition.”
The overheated room exploded into fits of bad feeling and sour temper, like a series of slightly disappointing fireworks going off. There were indignant complaints and toothless threats, declarations of rights and talk of lawsuits. It was the perfect time for Longbright, Banbury and Renfield to arrive.
Soon all doors had been flung open, all drawers emptied, cupboards cleared, computers unplugged, belongings tagged and bagged, and the fight had gone out of the five students, who watched forlornly as their lives were dissected before them. It appeared the quintet had finally realised that this was no longer a mere inconvenience, but something much darker and more devastating in its consequences.
∨ Off the Rails ∧
36
Empty-Handed
Law-abiding citizens are hard to trace. Albert Thomas Edward Ketch had existed, of that there was no doubt, but he was unknown to the police. The DVLA had a clean driving licence on record, the borough of Islington listed the name on their electoral register, Barclays Bank had a closed account, and a former address in a St Pancras council block yielded nothing but statistical proof that Mr Fox’s father had once been alive.
Longbright needed to put a face to the name. If Mr Fox’s father remained intangible, at least Camden registry office had a marriage licence on file, which presented her with a wife. Ketch had wedded one Patricia Catherine Burton, who had provided the registrar with an address in Wembley. She had moved the same year, presumably to live with her new husband, because the marriage certificate was posted to a different North London address. Her son, Jonas, had been delivered less than six months later at Hampstead’s Royal Free Hospital, and had received health checks for the first four years of his life at clinics in the area. After that, the trail went cold. Mrs Ketch had no bank details or credit cards. Some men still exerted power over their wives by controlling their finances.
“I’m running out of ideas,” Longbright told Renfield as they finished filling in evidence forms for the Mecklenburgh Square house. “I’ve got a little on the parents but nothing on the boy.”
“See if he was registered as a Young Offender under the name of Jonas Ketch,” Renfield suggested. “A tenth of all the kids in London commit a serious offence at least once. If something happened to Mr Fox in his childhood, he might have gone a bit AWOL and turned up on Islington’s books, or Camden’s.”
“Thanks, Jack. I should have thought of that. I’m tired. I haven’t been sleeping well.”
“Hardly surprising. I’m going to grab a bite. Want me to pick you up something?”
“No, I’m fine. I want to get this lot sorted out.”
“You can’t go off your grub and get all moody on me. Tell me you don’t fancy a sausage sandwich smothered in brown sauce.”
“Strangely enough, I don’t.”
Renfield headed off to the shops. Longbright watched from the window as he strutted along the wet street with nothing more than food on his mind. I should learn to be more like Jack, she thought, returning to her paperwork.
“Ah, there you are,” said Bryant, ambling into the room, “I was going to stroll back with you from Mecklenburgh Square but you’d vaporised. Those students may dress like Gap advertisements but you should have seen the inside of their fridge. Oswald Finch used to keep his cadaver drawers in a better state. Having said that, I did once leave a beetroot salad in with one of his corpses, and he mistook it for – ”
“Arthur, I’m not in the mood,” said Longbright. “I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m the one who should be sorry.” He removed his hat and dropped into the battered armchair Longbright had installed for his visits. “In my usual clumsy way I was just trying to cheer you up. Unfortunately most of my conversation involves death, ancient history or mad people. No wonder I’ve never been very popular with the ladies. What did you think of our students?”
Longbright rose and blew a newly dyed blond curl from her eye. “A pretty ordinary bunch: a health-freak, a geek, a jock, a wide boy and a nerd.”
“I love the way you categorise; it’s all so simple for you. Think they have any secrets they’re hiding from us?”
“Of course. They wouldn’t be human if they didn’t. I just think their secrets will turn out to be pretty mundane.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, crushes, alliances, jealousies, money worries.”
“Hatreds?”
“Strong word. Dislikes, perhaps. Toby Brooke isn’t too keen on Theo Fontvieille.”
“Theo needles him constantly about his background. According to John, the rich boy dated the girl from the Karma Bar, then dumped her, but he’s so thick-skinned that he takes other girls to the bar without realising that he’s upsetting her. Dear Lord, I’m sounding like a gossip columnist.”
The idea made Longbright smile. “That’s okay, they’re just like any dysfunctional alternative family.”
“I don’t believe it’s a conspiracy. These students w
ouldn’t be able to organise a tea party without getting on each other’s nerves, let alone kill someone and hide the evidence. If this was something they’d planned, they would never have left Matthew Hillingdon’s travel card in the house, where it could be found.”
“Right now that and the partial print are the only pieces of incriminating evidence we have,” Longbright reminded him glumly.
“I’m convinced that the murderer is operating alone, without the knowledge of the others. That damned sticker links Taylor to the Karma Bar and Toby Brooke. I wonder how John’s getting on with him.” Bryant watched Longbright wince as she lifted a box from the desk. “How’s your shoulder?”
“Not so bad. It didn’t even need a stitch.”
“Let Colin take over from you when he gets back. He and Dan are going to go through the impounded evidence.”
“I’m fine,” Longbright promised. “I’m much happier working.”
“Okay, then you can carry on following the Indian chap all over town, if you wouldn’t mind. I don’t like the cut of his jib. I want all five housemates tailed over the weekend. We shouldn’t let any of them out of our sight. I’m counting down the hours until the Unit is pulled from service. I can’t see us making an arrest in time, but let’s keep watching them.” Bryant tapped his fingers beneath his beady eyes. “All five, all weekend, everywhere they go.”
♦
Bimsley and Banbury arrived back at the warehouse, and spent the next three hours searching the hard drives of the five housemates’ laptops. They turned up little of interest. Only Ruby Cates kept her financial details on record, along with an online diary that confirmed her obsession with ‘The Rat’, who was easily identified by his customised Porsche. Theo had a few dodgy gambling sites bookmarked, Sangeeta had too many photographs of Ruby in his photo library, Nikos had similar photos of Cassie in the bar and an awful lot of porn, Cates had posted some cryptic remarks on Facebook and Toby had worked hard at erasing details of the sites he visited. Their computer tracks seemed unusually guarded and cautious. To Dan’s suspicious mind it was proof that the students knew they were being watched, but Colin thought they were merely being security-conscious.
All five were running extensive music libraries of bands made popular over the last few years. All five had infringed copyright laws by file-sharing movies, but that seemed to be the extent of their illegal activities.
The iPhoto files from Matt Hillingdon’s laptop yielded some odd photographs that looked like colourful knitted versions of radio interference, so Bimsley forwarded them to Bryant’s phone, hoping that he might be able to figure out what they were – once he had managed to open them.
At six P.M. John May returned to the Unit with bad news. He and Meera had just finished interviewing Toby Brooke. Unprompted, the student had shown them a sheet of altered stickers that had been left lying about the house, and had admitted to handling them. Their evidence was compromised.
It was now Friday evening, and the case had once more stuttered to a halt. Bryant was forced to admit that it was by far the most infuriating investigation he had ever undertaken.
It was time, he decided, to take more drastic steps, starting with a visit to North London’s resident white witch.
∨ Off the Rails ∧
37
Bad Air
“What more can I do?” asked Bryant. “We’re back to one piece of evidence and five less-than-ideal suspects. John has banned me from using any of my more outré routes of investigation. And I have this ragbag of notions in my head that don’t seem to connect – a red dress, some strange patterns from Hillingdon’s laptop, a missing phone, the way people move on the tube…” He paused to take a good look at his old friend Maggie Armitage. “What happened to you?”
The Grade IV White Witch and leader of North London’s Coven of St James the Elder was spattered in pink paint, not a nice pink, either, but a shade that could best be described as Tired Marshmallow. “I was preparing a philtre for Deirdre,” she explained, “because her sex life has taken a turn for the worse again. She met a Polish bus driver with a habit of calling round at three A.M., and the trouble is he’s on nights, so he’d park a bus full of passengers outside her house while he came in.”
“That must have been inconvenient.”
“Not really. His route goes past her house.”
“I meant for her.”
“Oh, yes, that was the problem. She’d wanted to meet a man with his own transport, but technically of course he doesn’t.”
“Doesn’t what?”
“Own it. So I needed fennel for the potion. And cheese-and-onion crisps.”
“You put crisps in a love potion?”
“No, I was just hungry. So I put some bacon into the eye-level grill and went to the shops.”
“Why did you do that?”
“Well, you layer crisps on either side of the bacon and it makes a wonderful sandwich.”
“No, I mean why did you leave the grill unattended?”
“You know how my concentration has been since I fell off my bike.”
“No, how?”
“It wasn’t a question. Anyway, when I came back, the kitchen was on fire. Luckily I’d left a plastic washing-up bowl full of water on the rack above the grill, and when it melted it put out the flames.”
“That was a piece of luck,” said Bryant with heavy sarcasm. “Just think, things could have turned out quite badly.” He surveyed the dripping, blackened remains of the kitchen.
“Well, they did,” said Maggie. “The Polish bus driver went back to his wife. And some of his passengers tried to sue him.”
“I don’t think you should make any more love potions.”
“Oh, it wasn’t a love potion. It was something to make him sleep so he’d go back on days. Unfortunately it worked too well. He fell asleep at the wheel and went through the window of a lap-dancing club in Liverpool Street. Which is why I’m painting the room pink. Because I can’t get the bacon smoke off.” She raised the chain of her spectacles and squinted at him through polka-dot lenses.
Talking to Maggie was like using some kind of malfunctioning space communicator. Bryant decided to get to the point and keep it simple. “I know you’ve got a memory like a sieve, but I did ask you on the phone whether you knew anything about odd happenings in underground stations. I can be more specific now. Magnetism.”
Maggie peered over the top of her paint-spattered spectacles and frowned at him. “Oh, you know about that, do you?”
“No. That’s why I’m asking you.”
“No, I asked Yu.”
“Me?”
“No, Mrs Yu. I asked her to pop round. She’s in the garden.”
Maggie’s garden was a makeshift pet cemetery with a few desperate bluebells thrusting out of cracked paving stones. The goldfish had shuffled off its mortal coil in an earth-filled chimney pot, and even the budgie had embraced the light in a coal scuttle. Bryant looked out of the kitchen window and got a fright. For a moment he thought the moon had come out. Mrs Yu had a perfectly round white face and was peering in. She looked frozen.
“Sorry, love, I didn’t realise I’d locked you out,” said Maggie, opening the door.
“It’s bloody perishing in your yard,” said Mrs Yu. Although she was very Chinese in appearance, she had a strong cockney accent. “I was chatting to your dog.”
“Her dog’s dead,” said Bryant.
“Yes, he’s buried under the fishpond. Bolivar says he’s very happy, but he’s not so happy about being so near Happy.”
“I’m sorry?” said Bryant. Things were becoming confused again.
“Happy was my cat,” Maggie explained. “She’s buried near the dog, Bolivar. Mrs Yu knows a lot about atmospheric disturbances, so I invited her over. Plus, I wanted her to return my wok.”
Mrs Yu laughed a lot. She tittered at the end of every utterance. When she wasn’t laughing she was at least chuckling, and even when the chuckles faded she was still smiling. She
plumped her big round frame down in the widest, most comfortable chair and elucidated. “So you want to know about magnetism. There was a story going around a few years ago about the tube. The guards started saying that the addition of extra metal floodgates throughout the system created some kind of supercharged atmospheric whirlpool. It was only supposed to happen when trains passed through the tunnels with great frequency, during rush hours. See, before that, electrical particles ionised the atmosphere and escaped upwards on the air currents. But the iron flood doors slowly became magnetized, creating differences in pressure that made passengers feel sick and dizzy.”
“I’m not sure I put much store in that,” said Maggie. “I mean, electrical whirlpools – it sounds a bit like those adverts for shower gel with ginseng extract to wake you up. You know, pseudo-science.”
“That’s good, coming from a woman who believes you can find water under the ground just by wandering about with a stick.”
“Dowsing is scientifically proven,” Maggie insisted. “I can always find water.”
“Of course you can,” said Bryant. “You’re a Londoner; it’s impossible to get away from the bloody stuff. So, no likelihood of someone becoming disoriented and passing out in the underground due to magnetic forces, then? Because I’ve heard there are powerful ley lines passing through King’s Cross.”
“That’s true,” said Mrs Yu, “but ley lines are just pathways between ancient sacred sites. There are other hidden powers at work under London. Wherever all four elements interact, you create conflict. King’s Cross is one of the very worst sites – ”
“What are you talking about?”
“The electric trains and power cables – fire. The underground rivers and pipelines – water. London clay – earth. The winds in the subway system – air. There are storms down there that disrupt the psychic atmosphere.”
“Meaning what exactly, you get headaches? You catch the wrong train? You start seeing dead people?”
Mrs Yu happily wagged a finger at him. “Ill humours are not such a crazy concept. The Victorians believed germs were transported through miasma – the air itself. That’s why they built Victoria Park in Mile End, as a barrier to protect the city’s rich property owners from working-class diseases. They thought the germs would float across to them on the breeze.”
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