Christopher Fowler

by Bryant; May 08 - Off the Rails (v5)

  The Daves had nailed cables along the skirting boards to provide extra juice, but the walls were rotten, and there seemed to be a real danger that the hole in the floor might suddenly expand and send them all down to the basement. The Daves were planning to lay new floorboards, but could not agree how to go about it. Everything was lopsided, as if a wartime bomb had shifted the building slightly off-kilter, jamming windows in their frames and causing doors to gouge grooves in the floorboards.

  While the workmen argued, Longbright called in the detective constables and impatiently listened to their report. ‘Tony McCarthy doesn’t know if this is the real name of the man who employed him,’ said Meera, ‘but he’s given us our first solid lead. Mr Fox taught English at Pentonville Prison two years ago. He was employed by the former head of educational services, but she died of cancer last year. Fox was registered in her files under the name of Lloyd Lutine, and McCarthy confirms this was the name he used.’

  ‘That must be an alias.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Meera, puzzled.

  ‘The Lutine Bell is in Lloyds Bank, in the city. It used to be rung once to signify bad news. Here it is.’ Longbright walked around Bryant’s cluttered desk and located a miniature brass copy of the original cracked ship’s bell. ‘A gift from a Lloyds client. Arthur used to ring it whenever a new murder case came in.’

  ‘Couldn’t the name just be a coincidence?’ asked Colin.

  ‘Come on, Lloyd and Lutine? I can’t believe he got security clearance on a moniker like that.’

  ‘He must have been confident that no-one would make the connection.’

  ‘Multiple killers have a kind of arrogance,’ said Longbright grimly, thinking momentarily of her mother’s death. ‘Don’t worry, when we get him this time, we’ll put him on the national DNA database. I’d like to see him fake his genetic code. Got anything else?’

  ‘Yeah. Fox made a friend at the prison. A history teacher. We’ve got her address.’

  ‘Go home. I’ll go and see her.’

  ‘We could do it first thing in the morning,’ Colin offered.

  ‘No, let me see if she’s up for a visit tonight. I’m not tired.’

  It didn’t take Longbright long to walk to the Finsbury address. Georgia Conroy had the evasive eyes of a gentlewoman living in humbled circumstances. Her pale, lined face was designed for disappointment. ‘Please, come in,’ she offered, drawing her dressing gown against the cold air and stepping back from the door. ‘I’m afraid the place isn’t very tidy. I was about to go to bed when you called.’ The flat was perfectly neat, but smelled of damp and loneliness. Longbright accepted an offer of tea, knowing that interviewees were more relaxed when they had something to do. Kitchens were places for confidences.

  ‘Of course, I knew the name was false the moment I heard it,’ said Georgia, rinsing a teapot. ‘Either that, or his father had been a sailor with a sense of humour. Our time at the prison overlapped by about eight months, but we were on different shifts. He took me out for a drink a couple of times, said I reminded him of his mother, not much of a compliment. I felt a bit sorry for him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He didn’t seem to have any friends.’

  ‘Did he tell you much about himself?’

  ‘Only bits and pieces. He was very guarded about his private life. Hated the job. Couldn’t wait to leave. I thought we got on quite well, but one day I came in and they told me he’d resigned. He never even came back to clear out his locker.’

  ‘Here’s my problem, Miss Conroy—’

  ‘Georgia, please.’

  ‘Georgia. Mr Fox has killed a number of times since he left his job at Pentonville, but we’re having a hard time getting any leads. If there’s anything you can remember …’

  ‘He was obsessed with graveyards,’ Georgia said, without hesitation. ‘Apart from the mother thing, that’s what put me off him. When we went for a drink it was all he talked about.’

  The information meshed with Longbright’s knowledge that Mr Fox had worked as a grave digger in St Pancras. ‘Did he ever explain why he was so interested in them?’ she asked.

  ‘Not really. But I got the feeling it was connected with his family. Some damage in the past—’ She dried the pot thoughtfully. ‘That’s it. He wanted me to go and visit his father’s grave with him, but I thought it was a weird thing to do with someone you barely knew, so I said no.’

  ‘Did he tell you where his father was buried?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Abney Park Cemetery, in Stoke Newington. I remember the family name, too, Ketch, because it made me think of Jack Ketch, the executioner employed by Charles II. I’m a history teacher,’ she added apologetically.

  ‘If Lloyd Lutine was a pseudonym, how did he explain that his father had a different name?’

  ‘He told me he was adopted. When it came to answering questions he was pretty glib, almost as if he’d rehearsed the answers.’

  It was past midnight by the time Longbright reached Stoke Newington’s neglected cemetery. The gravestones seemed incongruous in their setting, surrounded by the terraced houses of a shabby North London town. Once, Isaac Newton had sat here composing hymns. Now the graveyard was wedged between betting shops and fried chicken outlets.

  Longbright knew she shouldn’t have worn stockings and heels, but old habits died hard. The paths were muddy and half-buried in bracken. Sulphurous light fell from the distant street lamps, but did not penetrate the knotted undergrowth to any depth. I must be mad, she thought. I’m not going to find anything useful here.

  There had been one lucky break; the night caretaker had explained that only those who held plots bought before the cemetery company closed in 1978 could still be buried on the land. He directed her across the site, past the derelict non-denominational chapel that could have passed for a set in a Dracula film, to a neglected corner swamped by nettles and briars. The lights from a row of houses supplemented her torch-beam as she searched the overgrown plots.

  The small plain memorial was notable for its newness; the remainder of the headstones in the area were more than a hundred years old. She leaned closer and scraped away some kind of parasitical weed that had clamped itself to the stone. Using her mobile, she took a shot of the inscription:

  IN MEMORIAM

  ALBERT THOMAS EDWARD KETCH

  DIED 47 YEARS OF AGE:

  WE ARE BORN IN THE WILDS OF DARKNESS AND DIE

  ON THE PATHWAY TO ENLIGHTENMENT.

  The inclusion of his middle names meant that she should easily be able to track him through the electoral register.

  She was just clipping her pen to her jacket pocket when she heard a scuffling noise behind her. Turning slowly, she found Mr Fox standing motionless with his legs set wide apart in the undergrowth, his hands at his sides. He was dressed in black jeans and a black hooded sweatshirt, and was staring back at her as if trying to make sense of a particularly abstract sculpture.

  Longbright assessed her position. After dark in a secluded cemetery, less than ten feet from a killer who had shown enough arrogance to commit murder on a crowded thoroughfare. There was no point in playing dumb; they knew each other too well. Mr Fox wore a black woollen hat that possessed more character than his face; if asked to re-create his image, she knew she would literally draw a blank, but still she tried to memorise the arrangement of his features.

  There was something more worrying; she guessed he had continued to watch them all, tracking her from the Unit to the teacher’s flat to the cemetery, just as she knew that she was now in the greatest peril. Here was something he could not afford to have exposed, a piece of his past that would give them the key to his nature. He remained quite still, watching her and waiting, but a single sliver of street light flickered through the trees and caught the silver skewer as it slid gently down from the sleeve of his jacket, into his waiting fist.

  Did he think she hadn’t seen it? She had not taken her eyes from his; her peripheral vision had picked up the movement. PCU members wer
e not licenced to carry weapons, but back in the days when she had carried a handbag, Longbright had always kept a brick in it. She wished she had it with her now.

  She realised she had been forced into a narrow corner where two high walls met. It was almost as if the grave had been designed to draw her here. There was no way back, only forward through him. Absurdly, the warbling song of a thrush rose in the branches above her to end on a high, watery trill. She looked up and saw the boughs extending beyond her reach to the wall.

  In the moment she glanced away he moved, passing through the bracken without making a sound. Did he reckon she was going to jump and somehow clear him? He obviously doesn’t know how much I weigh, she thought, stepping back onto his father’s grave, raising her heel onto the headstone and lifting herself straight over the wall behind as he suddenly grabbed at her left leg.

  Too late, though—she was over, dropping into a back garden of sheds and ponds, stone swans, a heap of children’s toys in circus colours. But he followed her over as she ran for the next garden, and suddenly they were performers in a bizarre suburban steeplechase, hurdling one garden fence after the next, stumbling, falling, rising again.

  This should be the other way around, she thought, me bloody chasing him. But she had seen the damage the skewer could inflict, and had not been taught any manoeuvre that could beat its speed and dexterity.

  He was at her heels, faster, lighter, and suddenly straight ahead was a garden fence that could not be jumped because it was buried within an immense juniper bush, and there was nowhere else to run.

  She saw his arm lift and his fist arc toward her throat, and moved just enough for the skewer to stick in her padded jacket, slicing the kapok and stinging the flesh of her shoulder. But it was easily removed to use again, and as he did so she realised she was stuck, her heel wedged into the soft lawn, anchoring her to the spot. She felt sure she was about to die.

  But Mr Fox had stopped, too. Frozen, he was looking past her with surprise on his face.

  She turned to witness the same sight, a father surrounded by a rippling skirt of children, flooding out of the patio doors with murder in their eyes. And as the shout went up, ‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re playing at?’ she realised his worst fears of attention and exposure had surfaced.

  Even as she called back ‘I’m a police officer,’ she knew they would not catch him this time, because he had already spotted an escape route across the roof of a shed, into the alley beyond, and she was calling after him as she ran, the tables turned, as she transmitted to any unit in the area, Anyone come in, help.

  But he was fleet-footed and light—then gone.

  Too late, she knew, too damned late, even if someone picks up the call right now. He’s away. This won’t be over until he’s tried to spill more blood.

  She stopped and dropped her hands to her knees, fighting to regain her breath as the excited children appeared and swarmed around her.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Accidental Death

  Back in King’s Cross, underneath the closed Thameslink station, Dan Banbury was wedged inside the green plastic bin, grunting and complaining while Bryant and Hale trained their flashlights on him.

  ‘No signs of violence on the body from what I can see, not that I can see anything. They haven’t got an extension cord long enough, can you believe it? We need to get him over to Camley Street. Giles is waiting for the delivery. He wasn’t thrilled about being dragged back to work at this time of night. Don’t come any closer if you’re not suited up. I don’t want your leavings all over my site.’

  ‘Oh, stop complaining,’ grunted Bryant, flicking off his flashlight to leave Banbury floundering about in the dark. ‘What the hell did Hillingdon think he was doing, playing silly buggers down here? John, where are you?’

  ‘Over to your left,’ May called. ‘The dust’s thick and undisturbed in this part. We’ve got a single set of footprints. Looks like he was alone.’

  ‘So he boarded the last train by himself, somehow managed to pass through a number of solid walls, and wound up wandering about in a disused tunnel, whereupon he fell asleep and died for no reason.’

  ‘That’s about the size of it,’ called Banbury. ‘I’ve got his mouth open. There’s a strong trace of alcohol, and something else on his skin that I can’t place. Might be aftershave, I suppose. At least the mice haven’t been at him. The body position is suggestive. I’m wondering if he crawled in here just to stop the room from spinning. Come on, give me a hand getting out.’

  ‘What are you saying—the booze made him haemorrhage?’

  ‘There’s no blood or vomit that I can see. Perhaps he simply suffocated. Or suffered some kind of delayed allergic reaction to an ingredient in a cocktail. Anaphylactic shock. It happens. His hypostasis appears normal, which means he wasn’t moved after death. I’ll need to take samples and do the tests tonight, so I’ll be a while.’

  ‘Come on, is that all you’ve got?’ Bryant groused. ‘You’re telling me he couldn’t handle his drink? How am I supposed to fit that in with my theories?’

  ‘You know the trouble with you, Mr Bryant?’ Banbury called back.

  ‘Why does everyone want to tell me what the trouble with me is?’

  ‘You don’t communicate with other people. You develop these so-called theories and keep them all to yourself. How do I know what to look for if you don’t give me a clue about what’s going on in your head?’

  ‘I don’t wish to make suggestions about what you should be finding,’ said Bryant testily. ‘If I do that, the investigation is compromised. I want you to make deductions I can corroborate without twisting the facts to fit.’ He had been accused of forcing his theories on others in the past, and wasn’t about to make the same mistake again.

  ‘I’m just here to assess the crime scene, if that’s what it is. At the moment I’m looking at a verdict of accidental death, although maybe some decent lighting will reveal something I’m missing at the moment.’

  ‘Any money on him?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He could have been mugged earlier, suffered some kind of a stroke and lost his bearings down here.’

  ‘He’s got a few loose coins. No phone, no asthma inhaler.’ Banbury passed a wallet out to them. ‘Take a look at that, if you’re wearing gloves. It was in his jeans. No money in it, no credit cards, so maybe it was a robbery. He’s not wearing a coat. Sweat-marks on his shirt. He overheated. Probably threw off his top layers.’

  ‘See if you can find them.’

  Bryant flicked open the wallet and pulled out a handful of paper scraps, reminders to go to the bank and collect shopping, nothing of use. ‘Matthew Hillingdon is supposed to be in Russell Square, not the arse-end of King’s Cross.’

  ‘Gloves,’ Banbury reminded, ‘are you wearing them?’

  Bryant ignored him. ‘I want this lad tested for drugs. Nice middle-class boy, he’s bound to have dabbled. His medical records were clean, no fits or dizzy spells, no history of seizures, nothing. No enemies, everybody liked him. Something wrong with that, for a start.’

  ‘You’re a cynic, Mr Bryant.’

  ‘If you live long enough, you will be, too.’ Bryant pulled his scarf over his squat nose. ‘There’s a bad smell down here. Standing water. And I speak as one who knows.’

  ‘Ah, yes, your little adventure through the city sewers,’ said Banbury. ‘I’m amazed you didn’t get sick.’

  ‘I’ve built up plenty of antibodies by eating Alma’s cooking. Do you need a hand getting him out?’

  ‘No, Mr Hale and I can bag him and move him as far as the platform. Then we’ll need the med team to stretcher him. I’ll get some of these fibres off to Portishead, and bung out the dabs.’

  ‘Can we afford it?’

  ‘Only if it turns out to be murder, so we’ll have to take a gamble. They should have finished running a match on your students by now. Why don’t you go back up?’

  ‘Come on, John, let’s get out of here.�
�� Bryant pulled at his partner’s arm, but May remained in place, staring at the body that lay facedown in the bin. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘He reminds me of Alex when he was a student,’ said May quietly. ‘I’ve lost them both, haven’t I?’

  ‘I know you and your son never saw eye to eye, but Alex moved to Toronto to follow his work. Staying with him will be a healthy change for April. She isn’t taking sides against you. She’ll come back when she’s ready, you’ll see.’ Bryant was no diplomat, but he could recognise the problem from both sides. May’s granddaughter had little chance of leading a normal life while she worked at the Unit. She needed to be at peace with herself. ‘Come on, let’s see if we can find a pub that’s still open.’

  May lingered near the corpse of the student. ‘We can go for them now,’ he said at last. ‘Hillingdon’s misplaced travel card is just cause for a full property search. Let’s come down hard on those students. Get their phone records subpoenaed and their emails opened. I’ll want their laptops, phones, hard drives, PDAs, anything else they’ve got. If one of them is responsible we’ll find something that doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘If you’re dealing with someone smart,’ Banbury called back, ‘he’ll be using a Pay As You Go phone and keeping his texts and emails clean of evidence.’

  ‘They’re college students,’ May replied, nettled. ‘One of them will slip up. They won’t all manage to corroborate their stories. They’re already under stress. We need to light a fire beneath them.’

  As they walked toward the surface their phone reception returned, and they received Longbright’s message, informing them that she had encountered the sharp end of Mr Fox’s silver skewer.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Surveillance

  Early on Friday morning, London was buffeted by storm-winds from the east bringing ever darker threats of rain. Two days now remained before the Unit had to present its caseload closed and ready for official review.