Christopher Fowler

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

  Meera stood outside the Tottenham Court Road coffee shop and watched as, on the other side of the glass, Nikos Nicolau consumed yet another breakfast, this time a toasted cheese and tomato sandwich. So far he had searched three locations for discount computer software, purchased a new cell phone and stopped at three different coffee shops. While he ate, he fired up the new phone and discarded its packaging on the floor. He seemed to shed litter wherever he moved. At least he was totally absorbed by his tasks and took no notice of his surroundings. That made him easier to follow.

  Meera was bored and cold. Usually she could find a way to enjoy surveillance, but Nicolau was an uninteresting subject, and she had not dressed warmly enough. In between snacks, the student wandered mesmerised around the software shelves. He seemed in no hurry to get to class, or anywhere else for that matter. The only other stop he’d made was at the Karma Bar, where he cupped his hands over the window and peered inside, looking for someone.

  She huddled down in the doorway next to the Mac World store, and waited for him to finish stuffing himself. Nikos did not look like he was capable of murdering anyone, but he was certainly on some kind of mission. Every now and again he extracted a pen from his top pocket and scribbled urgent notes on a scrap of paper. He had screwed up the first pages and shoved them in his jacket pocket.

  Nicolau wiped his mouth and rose to leave, stepping out of the detritus he had created as if shucking off an old skin. Meera raised her collar and dropped back into the shadows as he passed. Boring and obnoxious, she decided, but not a killer. Even so, the intense look she caught on his face as he passed disturbed her.

  Further up the road, Rajan Sangeeta threaded himself quickly and nervously through the morning crowds. He had attended an early lecture on ‘Light-Density Retail Building; Creating Urban Downtowns,’ before heading for the British Library. But he had then stopped dead in the middle of the deserted library square to take a phone call. Colin Bimsley, who had been following a few paces behind him, was brought up short and had to hastily divert behind a tree; being inconspicuous had never been his strong point. He tried to listen as he passed, but caught only a few words: ‘It just feels wrong … more careful in future.’ Taken out of context, the phrases sounded sinister. He strained to hear, but a garbage truck was drawing up outside the library gates and drowned out the rest of the conversation.

  Sangeeta headed for the library coffee shop and worked on his laptop, but there were flickers of anger within him. At one point he suddenly shut his eyes and pressed a palm across them, as if to try and relieve a pain he knew he could not control. Bimsley ordered a coffee and settled himself, knowing he was in for a long wait.

  Longbright’s shoulder was sore, but the dense padding of her jacket had prevented the skewer from penetrating more than a couple of centimetres. She had cleansed and swabbed the small wound, and was now staking out Theo Fontvieille. He, too, had attended the ‘Urban Downtowns’ lecture—Longbright had spotted Bimsley outside the college—but he had left early and was standing on the corner of Gower Street and Torrington Place, obviously waiting to meet someone.

  She wasn’t surprised when Ruby Cates turned up. After all, the pair were sharing a house. But the lingering kiss that followed changed the nature of their relationship, and sent Longbright’s thoughts in a new direction. Everyone assumed that the killer was a man, but suppose Ruby had told Matthew Hillingdon she was breaking up with him? What if he had taken it badly and threatened her? What if she had needed to get rid of his attentions?

  Theo was smiling, holding her eyes with his. Ruby didn’t exactly seem to be in mourning for her missing lover. They talked, and as Longbright watched from the doorway of the Japanese restaurant opposite, she sensed something else, an anxiety that darted across Theo’s face. It seemed he had said something Ruby felt strongly about, because now they were sniping at each other, and this quickly turned into a full-blown argument.

  Suddenly, Ruby Cates didn’t seem so friendly and helpful. She looked downright lethal.

  It was raining hard, but neither of them seemed to notice. Ruby stabbed her finger at Theo, who tried to laugh off her anger, and now he was asking her to please come back as she stormed off along the pavement with damp shoulders and furiously dark eyes.

  Longbright was about to go after Theo when she saw Dan Banbury in the next doorway, from where he had been watching Ruby Cates. ‘What was all that about?’ he asked, coming over.

  ‘I’ve no idea. Has she been dating both of them? Quick, go after her, you’ll lose her.’

  Banbury chased after Ruby Cates, and Longbright headed off into Bloomsbury behind Theo Fontvieille.

  Meanwhile, Sergeant Jack Renfield was running surveillance on Toby Brooke. The problem was that Toby knew he was being followed. Renfield had no idea how he knew. He’d been careful, keeping well back as Brooke headed to the UCL canteen, drank tea, exited and searched the Gower Street Waterstone’s bookshop, emerging with a textbook in a plastic bag. But Brooke knew he was there all right. He caught sight of the sergeant in several store windows, and even seemed to be waiting for him.

  When the rain started falling harder, Toby unfurled a rainbow-coloured golfing umbrella and continued on in the direction of the house in Mecklenburgh Square. But when the traffic lights changed between them and Renfield briefly lost him, Brooke waited for the sergeant to catch up. At the gates of Bloomsbury Square he seemed to be toying with the idea of actually coming back to talk.

  I’ll make it easier for him, thought Renfield, cutting off the corner of the square and beating Brooke to the fountain at the centre of the park. He stopped in Toby’s path, bringing them both to a halt.

  ‘Hi,’ said Toby awkwardly. ‘You’ve been following me for over an hour. Aren’t you soaked?’

  ‘Part of the job,’ replied Renfield. ‘How did you know I was behind you?’

  ‘I just had a feeling. So, what happens now?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s a bit of a problem, my cover being blown,’ Renfield admitted. ‘I used to be better when I was still on the beat. Desk copper, y’see, you lose the practise.’

  ‘Matthew,’ said Toby suddenly, his face changing oddly.

  ‘Mr Hillingdon, yes.’ Renfield knew the detectives had found the boy’s body beneath the Thameslink station, but was aware that the other students had not yet been told. He wondered if he should raise the subject. Better to let Toby speak first; he looked as if he had something to get off his chest. Renfield waited. The rain lashed at them both. Toby finally broke.

  ‘I’m not—safe.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  The young man looked up into the dark sky, and for a moment Renfield was sure he was fighting back tears. ‘I’ve had to hide things. I can’t control myself. I know it’s nobody’s fault but my own. I’ll deal with it, okay—but it has nothing to do with any of you.’

  He turned and ran off, dashing through the puddles on the path. Moments later he had turned a corner and there were only wet trees and veils of falling rain.

  How the rain fell.

  Looking out across the garden square, the dripping plane trees, the buckling plumes of the wind-battered fountain, the few passers-by fighting to control their umbrellas, it was easy to think I hate this city and everything it’s driven me to. The fear had begun as a small but insistent pain, gnawing and nagging like an ulcer, but it had grown each day and now consumed every waking hour.

  They’re watching us, and if anything else breaks now the game will be up. I have to be stronger than I’ve ever been before. This will soon be over.

  It was like a cracked pipe that was leaking under pressure, and the more the crack grew, the more attention it drew to itself. You had to treat it like any other emergency, seal it off, mend it quietly and invisibly, then get as far away as possible. There was still a chance to do that, wasn’t there?

  The nightmare that had begun on Monday afternoon seemed as if it would never end. It made you want to screw up your eyes and scream with the p
ain of it all. How much could you age in a single week?

  The cliché is true: Money really is the root of all evil. If I hadn’t been so broke and desperate for cash, if I hadn’t needed status and respect so badly, none of this would ever have happened. It’s my own fault, all of it, and now I have to grow some balls and see it through.

  The thought of more violence to come was sickening, but it was too late to turn back.

  One more day should do it. I can still get out of this in one piece. Stupid of me to give the game away like that. Sometimes I don’t think clearly—that’s when I behave like an idiot. I can cover the damage, but I have to stay ahead of the others and keep my nerve.

  Some children splashed past on the path, shrieking and howling, without a care in the world. This time next week I’ll be like that, said the voice inside. I’ll be laughing about what a nightmare it all seemed. I just have to get through the next twenty-four hours.

  Even though it means killing again.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Conspiracy to Murder

  Kershaw welcomed Bryant and May into his autopsy room as if ushering mistresses into a box at the Royal Opera House. It was obvious that Giles was going the way of the Unit’s previous incumbent, who had begun as a normal medical student only to become a social outcast, reeking of body fluids and avoided by women. Enthusiasm for the job was all well and good, but too much enthusiasm gave people the creeps. Kershaw was virtually dancing around them in excitement, and that was when Bryant realised the pathologist knew how Matthew Hillingdon had died.

  ‘Come on, then, out with it,’ he said wearily. ‘I’m old and tired. I could die at any minute. I don’t have time for pleasantries. If you know what killed him, just say so.’

  ‘I might have an idea,’ Kershaw teased. ‘And it’s all thanks to you and your filthy habits.’

  When Bryant frowned, his forehead wrinkled alarmingly. Right now he frowned so hard that it looked like his face might fall off. ‘I don’t have any filthy habits. Everyone else makes too big a fuss about cleanliness. We need a few germs to keep us healthy. Wipe that grin off your face, and show some respect for the dead while you’re at it.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Rosa keeps warning me about that. I examined the boy, Matthew Hillingdon. Do you want to see?’

  ‘Not particularly.’ TV coroners always seemed to have bodies lying about on tables, slit open from sternum to pelvic bone. In reality, Bryant found that their real-life counterparts kept death filed away under lock and key, to be drawn out only in the most pressing circumstances.

  ‘Oh, very well.’ Kershaw sounded disappointed at being denied a chance to poke about with his retractable antenna. ‘He’s an asthma sufferer, dodgy lungs, liver’s a little enlarged, otherwise in good health. There were no unusual external marks on the body, so my first thought was alcohol poisoning.’

  ‘That was Dan’s prognosis.’

  ‘Yes, I spoke to Dan. It seems the boy was alone in the underground station. There were no other tracks, except where you managed to walk all over the crime scene, of course. The obvious conclusion is that he went down there in a state of confusion, perhaps thinking he was heading toward the surface. That fits with alcohol poisoning, as the breath-rate drops and dizziness sets in. Hypoglycemia leads to seizures, stupor turns to coma, blue skin colour, irregular heartbeat. Victims choke on their own vomit or their hearts simply stop. Binge drinkers can ingest a fatal dose before the effects catch up with them. I wondered if that was the case here.’

  ‘According to the girlfriend, he usually texted her only when he was too drunk to speak, so we can assume he’d been hammering the booze that night.’

  ‘I was thinking perhaps he had knocked back a bottle and thrown it aside somewhere in the station, but Dan didn’t turn up anything. Still, the thought was planted, you know? So I made a list of other kinds of poisons that could have had the same effect.’

  ‘I can’t wait to hear how I fit into this,’ muttered Bryant.

  ‘Simple. I could smell something else on the boy apart from alcohol, and remembered your horrible old pipe. Tobacco. Nicotiana tabacum. Simple, but incredibly effective. Hillingdon has all the signs: excess saliva, muscular paralysis, diaphoresis—’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked May.

  ‘Excessive sweating. His shirt was creased across his back as if it had been ironed into place.’

  ‘Only one thing wrong with your diagnosis. Hillingdon wasn’t a smoker.’

  ‘He didn’t need to be. The stuff used to be readily available as an insecticide until its lethal properties were recognised. It’s easy to make a tea out of rolling tobacco. There are plenty of recipes for it on the Internet because dope growers use it to kill mites on marijuana plants. He’d have suffered dizzy spells, confusion, tachycardia, low blood pressure, with worsening symptoms leading to coma and death. The stuff’s all over his face and the collar of his shirt. I think it’s possible that somebody sprayed him with it. You could empty out a perfume sampler, like the ones they give you in department stores, and fill it up.’

  ‘Gloria Taylor sprayed perfume samples on customers at Selfridges.’

  ‘Then I’d say you might have found your link.’

  ‘Are you definite about the cause of death?’

  ‘One hundred percent.’

  ‘Well, you reached a solution without having to show me the inside of his colon, for which I thank you,’ said Bryant. ‘Although I’m not sure this brings us any closer to finding a culprit. How easy is it to transfer?’

  ‘Liquid tobacco? Pretty easy, but it also washes off. The smell’s harder to get rid of. Do you have any suspects in mind?’

  ‘That’s the trouble,’ said Bryant glumly. ‘We have half a dozen of ’em. Nikos Nicolau is apparently studying biochemistry, but he also suffers from claustrophobia. Every suspect also has a reason not to be a suspect. I think this time I might need to employ modern crime detection techniques.’

  ‘A victory for the scientific community,’ Kershaw said with a laugh. ‘John, you should be pleased.’

  ‘I’m relieved,’ May replied. ‘I’ve banned Arthur from trying to wrap up the investigation by using esoteric means.’

  ‘Did you mean that?’ asked Bryant after they had thanked Kershaw and taken their leave. ‘You really want me to play it by the book this time?’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ said May with determination. ‘And I don’t mean the book of witchcraft, or the ancient myths of England, I mean the Police Operational Handbook, 784 pages of sound, solid common sense. You want the Unit to survive, don’t you? Well, that’s how we’ll do it.’

  It was time to return to the house in Mecklenburgh Square, where they could break the news of Matthew Hillingdon’s death and commence the property search. That was when Banbury’s call came in.

  ‘The partial from the sticker,’ he said, ‘we’ve got a match. It’s Toby Brooke.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t tell me no. I’ve got the results on the screen in front of me. As I said, it’s a partial, but enough to bring him in.’

  All the housemates were advised of their rights, and were ordered to be present on the premises. If they hadn’t taken the detectives seriously before, they would have to now.

  Bryant was thinking about the tobacco in the ashtray, and Ruby Cates admitting that she was the only smoker.

  ‘You know those old Agatha Christie whodunnits where you get the butler, the chorus girl, the aunt and the lord into the library, then Poirot goes through their motives before accusing one of them?’ he said to May as they walked. ‘I feel like him, except for one small detail. I’m certain it’s not Toby.’

  ‘You just don’t want to believe it’s him because you feel a kinship with working-class kids,’ said May.

  ‘It probably is his thumbprint; I just don’t think he’s the type to commit murder. He seems scared of his own shadow. If the sticker was on one of the bags or had been picked up from the bar and left lying about the house, any of the ot
hers could have touched it. The trouble is, I haven’t the faintest idea how they could have murdered Hillingdon. Out of the five, only Theo Fontvieille has an alibi that clearly checks out. Meera found at least eight witnesses who saw him at the Buddha Bar, and at the end of the evening his Porsche was still outside the club with the keys locked inside it. Of course, Ruby Cates has her leg in a cast, which pretty much rules her out. There’s no way she could have fled from the scene of a crime. Have you seen how long it takes her to get up a flight of stairs?’

  ‘What about the others?’

  ‘Renfield tracked down the callers who spoke to Nikos Nicolau via video link, and they’re willing to swear that it looked as if he was calling from his bedroom. They could see his bed and posters in the background. Plus, we have the log showing the exact time he made the calls. The waitress at Wagamama doesn’t remember serving Rajan Sangeeta, so his movements remain unsubstantiated, and Toby Brooke’s account of his whereabouts is particularly dubious, but that sort of rules in his favour. He’s a bright lad; I’m sure he could come up with a decent alibi if he wanted to.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t it be a woman?’ May wondered. ‘Neither of the deaths required any strength or dexterity—just a shove and a spray. Suppose Ruby Cates’s leg has healed and she can take her cast off? We know that she’s strong.’

  ‘I was thinking more about visibility. She could have kept the thing on, but someone would have recalled a pretty girl with her leg in a cast.’

  ‘And perhaps it’s time to add Cassie Field to our list of suspects.’

  ‘Why? Good heavens, we’ve enough already.’

  ‘It turns out that Ms Field has a history of secret anarchy. She’s the girl who threw yellow paint over the Minister for Agriculture last year. Janice received a call from Leslie Faraday at the Home Office. He knows we interviewed her. Cassie’s got a very impressive arrest file. That’s why she came up with the anarchists’ symbol for the bar. She used to meet there with her urban warrior pals.’