Bryant & May 08; Off the Rails b&m-8

by Christopher Fowler

  “And then you ran into Ketch again at St Pancras station.”

  “That’s right, and he didn’t even recognise me, ‘cause it was two years later and I’d lost a lot of weight, being off prison food and on the smack, and he gave me a couple of jobs to do, just pocket-money stuff, and I couldn’t tell him that I’d still got the letter, and that night I went home and read it again. And it freaked me out.”

  “Why did it freak you out?” Longbright asked as their food arrived.

  “Because by this time I’d worked out the date, hadn’t I? I mean, I’m not likely to forget it, ever. His father died on the day of the King’s Cross fire, just like my old man, only my dad was in the station and burned to death, and his died under a train in the morning. And that’s when I knew, see. That’s when I knew who started the fire. He didn’t have to say nothing, I just knew. I could see it in his eyes. Kind of horrified he’d done it, and kind of arrogant as well. Trapped by something caused by his anger, something so terrible he’d never be able to leave the area until he’d come to terms with it. But that’s not possible, is it? I mean, something on that scale. I watched on the news as they carried the bodies out. Even the survivors were completely black. The effect those scenes had on me – I guess that’s when I started falling apart, you know?”

  He started to cry, and the trickle of a tear became a flood, so that he was forced to blow his nose on his napkin and turn away from her, nuzzling the heel of his hand against his forehead. The gaudy red Indian restaurant had become a confessional. Longbright suddenly felt sorry for him.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” she said, drawing his eyes to hers. “He’ll know you’re out of the hospital now. He’s around here somewhere. He’ll follow you home and try to finish the job he started. But you have a chance of staying alive. I’ll stay close by you, and keep my team on alert. When he shows his hand and moves in, we’ll get him.”

  “Is that it? You really think I’m going to survive that?” McCarthy was rubbing his red eyes, a terrified child. “He’ll stab me, and he’ll give you lot the slip again.”

  “You want to end this, don’t you?”

  “I know what you’re up to. You just want to get the arrest; you don’t care about me.”

  “I’ll bring him in, Tony, I swear. And I won’t let you die. We need to get him somewhere that’s enclosed, with escape routes we can monitor. Somewhere that’s always being watched.”

  “Where?”

  “The station. You’re going to perform that stupid wide-boy walk of yours, shout at the guards and passengers, generally make a bloody great nuisance of yourself and draw him back to the spot where it all began.”

  “People could get hurt. You’re crazy.”

  “You have no idea how crazy,” warned Longbright.

  ∨ Off the Rails ∧

  44

  Remote Control

  Arthur Bryant found Sergeant Jack Renfield in the filthy junk-filled anteroom that passed for the Unit’s reception area. “What are you still doing here?” he asked in obvious irritation.

  “Dan’s been trying out his new radios,” said Renfield. “But don’t worry, I’m on it.”

  “What radios?”

  “We’re short-handed,” Renfield explained, “so he’s been developing these close-range radio mikes.” He held up something that looked like a pen refill, curved at one end. “He’s been dying to try them out. They’re like the security headsets bouncers use, but they’ve got a better range. During surveillance we can stay in contact with each other, and we can track everyone’s movements on the laptops.” He turned his screen around and pointed to a number of red dots pulsing on a Google map of London.

  “Do they work underground?”

  “I don’t know,” Renfield admitted.

  “We’re after a killer who operates in the tube network, you flybrain. This is not the right time to start testing out Dan’s toys. I asked Janice to get you to cover Tony McCarthy as he came out of hospital. Didn’t she come and talk to you?”

  “No. I saw her go out a while back. She didn’t say where she was going.”

  “Stubborn bloody woman! Has she got one of those things?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then see if you can raise her. And get after whoever it is you’re supposed to be following.”

  “Nikos Nicolau. He’s been sitting on his fat arse in an Internet café in Tottenham Court Road for the past two hours.”

  “And what if he suddenly disappears? Where have the others gone?”

  “Dan’s gone after the stroppy Indian fella, Sangeeta; Colin’s got Toby Brooke; Meera’s got the rich one, Fontvieille; John’s covering Ruby Cates. Raymond’s in his room having a massive row with someone from the Home Office.”

  “And I know exactly what Janice is up to,” added Bryant. “Find someone to cover Nicolau – use Raymond if you have to; he’ll kick up a fuss but we need everyone we can lay our hands on. Find out where Janice is, and bloody go after her. If it turns out that Mr Fox is following them, she’ll need all the backup she can get. This has the potential to blow up in our faces. We’re close now, so I don’t want anything to go wrong.”

  “We’re close?” Renfield was surprised. “That’s news to me. Hang on, I’ve got Dan on the line.” He talked with the CSM for a moment, then covered the phone. “He just spoke to Janice. She’s on the Euston Road with McCarthy in tow, heading east.”

  “I know what she’s up to. She’s taking him back to the station, where it all began. Your bug won’t be any use there if they go down onto the platforms. Get to her first. Stay as close as you can, and keep in contact.”

  “How can I if she goes underground?”

  “I don’t know, run up the stairs and call me as soon as you get a signal. You’ll have to figure it out. I’ll stay here. Someone has to keep an eye on you all.”

  “You know me,” said Renfield, heading out, “I’ll have a go at anyone, but we could do with some more backup than this.”

  Moments later, Fraternity DuCaine appeared in the doorway.

  “Good God, you’re not dead,” said Bryant, clutching theatrically at his heart.

  “Yeah, I get that a lot. I’m his brother,” said Fraternity. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you jump. You don’t know how long the DS will be, do you?”

  “You could give us a hand while you’re waiting,” said Bryant.

  DuCaine shrugged amiably. “Sure, no problem.”

  “Good.” Bryant unleashed a gruesome smile. “What do you know about card tricks?”

  ♦

  Anjam Dutta badly wanted a cigarette. He couldn’t drink any more coffee. His nerves were on fire. Something very big and very bad was happening at his station. He had called his bosses, but all they could suggest was closing the entire interchange down. Dutta’s eyes flicked from screen to screen, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. “We’ve got a camera out on the District & Circle, Sandwich. Did you call Maintenance?”

  “Twenty minutes ago,” Sandwich told him. “They’re having trouble getting to their equipment.”

  “I’m not surprised.” Dutta could see the problem; a knot of passengers blocking the path to one of the supply stores. Usually he could register travel patterns just by glancing at the screens. Football days were the easiest because supporters were helpfully dressed in their team colours. Other groups offered subtler clues. Rush hour commuters knew their way around the system, and rarely strayed from their routes. They didn’t queue at the ticket windows because they all had travel cards. Tourists stood in line for tickets and clustered around the two main maps. Schoolchildren, students, hen night parties, clubbers aiming to arrive in in time for cheap admissions, concert-goers – they were all easy enough to spot.

  But this one had him puzzled. There was no pattern – just a massive increase in traffic, right across the station. Passengers of all types and ages were pouring in from every entrance, despite the fact that access had already been restricted. He checke
d the arrival times of the Eurostar trains and found no correlation there. The wall clock read 1434. It was as if rush hour had decided to start three hours early.

  “What the hell is going on? I think we’ll have to shut the East Gate completely.”

  “We’ve never done that before,” objected Sandwich. “The BTP will be pissed off if you back passengers up onto the street.”

  “The British Transport Police should be telling us about this, not the other way around. The Northern Line southbound platform is overloaded. They’re virtually falling onto the rails.”

  The system worked so long as the law of averages operated normally and only a fraction of those who held travel cards decided to travel at the same time. Today, though, it seemed as if the law of averages was on hold.

  “So long as the trains keep coming in on time we should be all right, but if one of them gets a signal delay, we’re screwed. Where are all these people going? You’d better get everyone in here.”

  ♦

  Nikos Nicolau sat by the window in Costa Coffee, monitoring the messages on his laptop. They were climbing fast now. A few minutes ago they had stuck at 3,700, but suddenly they were hitting 7,000 and rising. There was a gullibility factor in people that you had to target by appealing to their vanity, he decided, as he posted another instruction. He figured the PCU had probably sent one of their drones to keep an eye on him, but what would they see? An overweight geek sitting alone at his laptop in a coffee shop. He played on the cliché, because he knew it would blind them to his real nature.

  Time for another post. He typed THIRTY-TWO MINUTES TO REACH KING’S CROSS. Skipping through the messages, he felt like a chef adding flavours to a stew. It needs something more, he thought, a fresh ingredient. Looking at the original post, he had a brainwave. He recoloured the words in Day-Glo greens, blues and yellows, then changed the font setting to ‘Balloony’, a script kids loved. Next, he dropped the message onto RadLife, a new social networking site targeted at tweens. Damn, he thought, this is going to be so cool.

  He wanted to be there, but it was smarter and safer to handle the event remotely. This way he could keep it going right up until the last minute. Nikos wiped a patch of condensation from the window and peered out into the afternoon rain. Watch me and learn, you losers, he thought, hitting Send.

  ∨ Off the Rails ∧

  45

  Kill Proximity

  Ruby Cates had unclipped the plastic cast on her leg and dropped it off at the University College Hospital outpatients’ department. She emerged from the entrance a few hundred yards behind Tony McCarthy.

  Now she was heading along the rain-battered pavements of the Euston Road toward King’s Cross station. Her mind was racing. The police were suspicious. She had seen various members of the PCU lurking about outside the house, and for all she knew one could be following her right now. That could work in my favour, she thought, hopping between stalled taxis. Things are seriously getting out of control.

  In the past week, it seemed as if the world had turned upside down. Matt gone, Cassie dead. Everything that had seemed exciting a week ago had been wrecked or tainted. The true horror of what she had done was only now starting to sink in. Get to King’s Cross, she told herself. Put an end to it and get the hell out.

  ♦

  Toby Brooke could see the man with no neck watching him in the reflection of the furniture store window. He was wearing a black padded jacket and jeans, but couldn’t stop himself from looking like a copper. He thumped miserably from one boot to the other and wiped the rain from his shaved head, but seemed sort of content, just standing there in the downpour like a dumb animal.

  Brooke wanted to get away, but was running out of options. Everything had gone wrong, and he had a bad feeling about the way it would end. He thought about slipping into the store and exiting through the rear door, but knew it would not be so easy to shake off the man who was following him. The sight of a taxi with its ‘For Hire’ light glimmering through the sheeting rain forced his hand, and he hailed it, jumping inside before his shadower was able to react.

  “King’s Cross,” Toby told the driver, and sat back, turning to see if the policeman was managing to follow.

  ♦

  Meera Mangeshkar was five metres behind Theo Fontvieille, who was looking very unhappy indeed. Rich kid, she thought. He’s more upset about having his car nicked than he is about his so-called mate being killed. But where’s he going? Fontvieille had cut up from the house in Bloomsbury and was heading toward King’s Cross station. Tucked beneath his elegant Smith & Son umbrella, he was immaculately attired in a handmade suit and matching black overcoat. Must be a bit of a shock for him, having to board public transport, she thought. Probably going to visit Mummy and Daddy’s country estate. Meera frowned, looking again. Ruby Cates had appeared behind Theo, near the overcrowded entrance to the tube station.

  The top of her spine tingled in alarm. Something was not right – all these people in the afternoon – what were they doing here? Crowds of them milling around, waiting to get through the station entrances. It just looked – dangerous. Cates was closing in behind Fontvieille, but had they even seen each other? From here it was hard to tell. Meera tried to get nearer, but the crowds pressed in.

  ♦

  Dan Banbury sat watching Rajan Sangeeta eat a salad in the UCL caféteria. The student was idly twirling an alfalfa sprout between his forefinger and thumb as he scanned a paperback copy of Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf. I’ve really drawn the short straw here, thought Banbury. This one’s far too boring and studenty to be involved in anything dubious. He sat back on the uncomfortable plastic banquette and waited for something interesting to happen.

  ♦

  “Keep going,” said Longbright, giving Mac a shove in the back. “What’s the matter?”

  “This is his territory.” Mac was frightened now. They had stopped by the clogged underground entrance and were swiftly hemmed in by new arrivals.

  “If you try to give me the slip, I’ll leave you somewhere he can get at you and withdraw police presence, do you understand?”

  “He knows I’m here. He always knows when I’m in the station.”

  “He can’t be everywhere at once, Mac.”

  “This is his home.”

  The crowd was still moving. After waiting a minute, they slowly descended the staircase into the ticket hall. So many people were milling around that the makeshift queue barriers for the ticket office had all been pushed back. They weren’t descending to the platforms or using the tunnels, they were just standing there, as if waiting to be told what to do next. A cluster of BTP officers stood off at one side of the crowd near the security control centre, but they seemed uncertain how to act.

  “Now what?” asked Mac, panicked. “He could be anyone; I don’t know what to watch for. He could be creeping up beside us right now.”

  “You’re going to start making me nervous if you don’t shut up,” Longbright warned. “I want you somewhere with maximum visibility.” She pointed to the guards waiting to feed passengers through the unused ticket barriers. “Go over there and start an argument with one of them. Tell him your travel card doesn’t work and you want a refund. Tell him he looks like a warthog, tell him anything. Make it loud and be bloody-minded – I’m sure that’ll come naturally. Wait.” Her earpiece crackled into life. She listened to Renfield and nodded. “Go!”

  There were at least three other members of PCU staff in the station, but things had a habit of going wrong where Mr Fox was involved. Watching Mac thread his way toward the guards, the memory of Liberty DuCaine suddenly filled Longbright’s head, and she turned around in alarm, half expecting to find a killer standing behind her.

  ∨ Off the Rails ∧

  46

  Joker in the Pack

  According to the reports reaching John May, three of the five housemates were making their way separately to King’s Cross station, along with Longbright, Renfield and Tony McCarthy. Only Sangeeta and N
icolau were away from the site. Did that remove them from suspicion, or implicate them further? And why were the others all heading to the one place where the PCU was most likely to catch Mr Fox? You’re being paranoid, thought May as he tacked through the stalled traffic. Arthur’s done it to you again, forever trying to join the dots where no links exist. It’s a massive terminus, it’s the weekend, and students are more likely to use public transport, that’s all.

  The rain pockmarked the pooled tarmac into shadows of clouds. May darted under the station awning and joined a line waiting to enter the station, several rows back from Ruby Cates, who was no longer sporting her cast.

  What am I doing here? he asked himself angrily. I swear, this really is the most chaotic investigation of my career. When I look at our methodology through the eyes of Home Office officials I can honestly see why they’re so keen to retire us. The Unit’s working methods confuse its own staff, so God knows what they do to outsiders. Arthur put his faith in me to close this quickly, but I’m damned if I can see how to do it. There’s something missing that I’m simply not equipped to spot. And now he’s back at the Unit with his jigsaws and his playing cards, letting me slowly hang myself. It’s as if he no longer cares what happens to the Unit or to any of us.

  He angrily pushed his way down the steps into the ticket hall, where he was spotted by Longbright. She shook her head at him. No sign of Mr Fox. But there was McCarthy, having some kind of arm-waving argument with a baffled barrier guard.

  Looks like everyone’s decided to travel today, thought May. He checked his watch: 3:39 P.M. Not a very satisfying end to our careers, a dead officer and two unsolved cases.