Christ. The concourse at King’s Cross underground was minuscule compared to the one at St Pancras. A sinking sickness invaded Nikos’s stomach. He had instructed 11,353 people to meet there. Maybe some of them had figured it out and had made their way to the right meeting point, but what if the rest were trying to cram themselves into the small underground ticket hall beneath the main station? The result could be a massacre, like the ones that occurred at Mecca or the Heisel football stadium; people could be crushed to death in the ensuing chaos.
Sweating violently now, he killed the video and wiped his trail, removing the online instructions, shutting down the website, clearing the computer’s history. He was using his backup laptop, the one he had stored in his UCH locker, the one the police didn’t know existed. If there was any comeback, at least he had bought himself some time—until someone ran a trace from the host.
He knew that he would have to go and see for himself. It would be like rubbernecking at a traffic accident, but he had to make sure that his conscience was clear. Slipping the laptop into his rucksack, he zipped up his jacket and ran out into the rain.
1. Named after the singer Rick Astley, whose fans turned up at stations to perform his greatest hit.
FORTY-EIGHT
Maelstrom
The scene in the station was becoming nightmarish. The crowd had started dancing but there was no space to move, and their synchronised movements had quickly fallen apart. A party of schoolchildren was disgorging from the Victoria Line escalator, but the hall was so crowded that they could not pass through the barriers, and had become trapped halfway. Children were screaming and crying. The staircases were clogged with passengers unable to move in any direction. A sense of barely controlled hysteria was breaking out in the claustrophobic hell of the ticket hall.
John May could do nothing but watch. Longbright and McCarthy were nearest the barriers, and he could still see Ruby Cates fighting her way toward the tube escalators. Had she seen Theo Fontvieille nearby? And had either of them identified Meera or Colin? We’re all in trouble here if anything bad happens, he realised. He called Bimsley.
‘There’s no way of getting anyone out, Colin, so they’ll have to force people down onto the platforms and get them to board outbound trains. Try to connect with the others. I want you all on this floor. If you go to a lower level I’ll lose radio contact with you.’
‘Okay, boss.’
Arthur Bryant and Fraternity DuCaine made their entrance into the station via a staff elevator that delivered them into the ticket office. Anjam Dutta was there to meet them. The security officer looked stressed but in control.
‘We’ve got crowds backed around the exterior of the station,’ he explained, ushering them through an unmarked door and walking them to the surveillance room. ‘I’m trying to clear the exits but I can’t close them, because I need to get people up first. We’ve never had a situation like this before. Usually only a tenth of the population should be travelling at one time. But we think we found the source.’
‘What is it?’
‘Somebody arranged the staging of a flash mob in the station, but the induction site was pulled a few minutes ago.’ He got a sweetly blank look from Bryant. ‘It was a passing fad some while back. People click on a site that reroutes them to a different destination, and that destination sends instructions to laptops, mobiles and PDAs, telling them to meet in a certain public place and dance to music played out as MP3s. The craze died out after companies copied it to use as sales tools. We’ve got all our staff and the LTP trying to move the crowd. In general people have lived through enough terrorist alerts not to panic, but they’re getting pretty close to the edge right now.’
‘We have PCU members out there tracking suspects,’ Bryant explained. ‘Our leads may be connected with the situation you’ve got on your hands here.’
‘You’re telling me there’s a murderer crowded in there with the general public? You’re supposed to be helping us, Mr Bryant, not making matters worse.’
Bryant looked up at the staff roster of security guards. Photographs of Anjam, Rasheed, Sandwich, Marianne, Bitter and Stone were arranged in a row on corkboard, their weekly duty roster marked beneath them in black felt-tip pen. ‘They’re all out on the floor right now?’
‘Yeah, you can see Marianne near the District & Circle tunnel, and there’s Sandwich, by the lift. Stone’s over at the barrier.’
Bryant glanced back at the ID of the man the others had nicknamed Stone. He found himself looking at an earlier incarnation of Mr Fox. ‘When was that taken?’
‘Two weeks ago.’
Bryant checked the fine print beneath the photobooth shot. Jonas Ketch. ‘He sat in on my briefing session with the security staff,’ said Bryant. ‘Inattentional blindness. You have got to be kidding. He’s been here under our noses all the time?’
‘And now he’s out there,’ said May, who had caught the conversation. ‘Come on.’
The detectives pushed themselves into the crushing chaos of the crowd. ‘Janice,’ May called on his radio, ‘brown leather jacket and glasses, to your right; Mr Fox is less than three metres away from McCarthy. You have to move that boy out of there.’
‘I can’t, John, we’re stuck here.’
‘Then we’ll come to you.’
The flash mob song had come to a rowdy, ragged end, and the disappointed crowd was looking lost, not yet ready to disperse. Loudspeaker announcements were proving ineffectual in easing the constrictions.
Anjam Dutta could see the pressure points reaching maximum density. His mobile showed an incoming call from John May.
‘We have to clear the hall fast,’ May told him. ‘Can you open all the ticket barriers and leave them up?’
‘There’s an electronic override, but it’ll lose the network a fortune. I have to have authority—’
‘Someone could get killed if you don’t. Just do it, Anjam. I’ll take full responsibility.’
Dutta released the safety guards and punched in the code that released all of the barriers simultaneously. The crowd surged forward, pouring through to the Victoria, Piccadilly and Northern Line escalators. At once, the pressure in the ticket hall began to ease.
Longbright saw Mr Fox standing on the other side of Tony McCarthy, elbowing his way between tightly packed bodies. ‘Mac,’ she called, ‘he’s right behind you. Run.’
McCarthy panicked, and instead of going up to street level, he fled down in the direction of the escalators. Mr Fox broke his cover and ran after him.
Ruby Cates reached the barriers just as they opened. She was swept through with the crowd, but managed to pull free and head toward the southbound Victoria Line platform.
‘Hey, Ruby.’ Theo was on the step below her. He turned and grinned. ‘I thought I saw you in the ticket hall. What was that all about?’
‘Someone’s idea of a joke. I’m surprised no-one was squashed flat. Where are you going?’
‘Oxford Circus. I want to buy some sneakers. How about you?’
‘Victoria. I’m going to Brighton.’
‘Who you got down there?’
‘Just some friends.’
‘How long are you going for?’
‘Probably just for the weekend. I need a break.’
‘You didn’t say you were going.’
‘I decided when I heard about Cassie. There’s so much awful stuff going on, the police are hanging around the house, everyone’s on edge. I haven’t been able to concentrate on anything.’
They stepped off the escalator together. ‘I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you were getting out. I thought you were serious about us.’
Ruby look uncomfortable. She turned the ring on her finger, studying it too intently. ‘I’ve been thinking. I’m not so sure I want to be with anyone just now. I need some space to think, Theo. I’ll call you from Brighton, okay?’
‘What happened to spending more time together? Listen, I could come down with you just for tonight. I don’t have t
o go into town. I don’t really need another pair of sneakers.’
‘No, that won’t work. I’m staying with these people I know—’
‘Well, it seems to me like you’re running away. Are you meeting someone down there?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Then why is it I don’t believe a word you’re saying?’
The platform had become overcrowded. The guards were warning everyone to stand back from the platform edge, as there was a train approaching.
‘Tell you what. As a token of trust, give me that back.’ Theo pointed to the diamond ring on the third finger of her right hand.
Ruby gave an awkward laugh. ‘Actually I was going to leave it on your bedside table this morning but I couldn’t get the damned thing off. It’s a little too small for me. This is my train.’
‘Give me the ring, Ruby.’ There was menace in his voice now.
‘I told you, I can’t get it off.’
When he grabbed her arm she was so surprised that she momentarily lost her balance, and was almost pulled in under the arriving train.
Longbright could see Mac bobbing and shoving ahead toward the red-and-silver train that was just opening its doors. Mr Fox—she could only think of him in the identity he had used to kill—was closing in fast behind him.
Mr Fox felt a strange, cold serenity descend over him, a feeling that always seized him in the moments before he killed. He saw everything at a distance; down among all those scurrying little people was the pathetic junkie Mac, desperate to escape, searching a way out like a tube rat sensing a coming inferno. Sweat was leaking from his hairline, down his sallow, diseased cheeks. He looked badly in need of a fix.
Perhaps that was the answer; perhaps the entire interchange needed to burn again, to sear itself clean in a rising tide of flame. But no, that wouldn’t work now. Steel had replaced wood, smoke sensors and cameras lined the walls. And what would another conflagration resolve? The horror of the past could not be erased with a second atrocity. The memory of that terrible day could never be burned away.
Mr Fox allowed the silver skewer to slide down into his palm. He felt its cool heft in his hand, demanding to be used. Killing would calm him.
But now the doors of the Victoria Line train stood open, and Mac was free to board. If he did, Mr Fox knew he could lose the opportunity presented by the crush of the anonymous crowd. He stamped hard on a woman’s foot and shoved her aside, moving in to commit the act that would provide him with a temporary respite from the ever-present pain of remembering.
Just as he reached toward Mac, however, a tall student stumbled into his path. The student was grabbing at his girlfriend’s hand, trying to twist a ring from her finger, and the girlfriend had turned to slap him in the face. The crowd—mostly made up of old ladies, it seemed—pushed back with force, and suddenly they seemed to have linked arms so that there was a solid barrier of them across his path. It was absurd, but he could not pass between them to reach his target. He watched, stalled, as Mac jumped to safety, moving nimbly between the closing doors of the carriage.
Now the tall student was twisting the girl’s hand and even Mr Fox heard the snap of her finger, saw her scream, knew that some other drama was unfolding before him, but all he could see was Mac escaping, getting away to some place where he could talk to the police, and then he knew he had lost, lost it all, because of the old ladies and this damned student and his stupid lovers’ tiff, and the needle-sharp point of the skewer had risen in his hand as if moving of its own accord.
He slammed it down into the student’s arm and pushed, shoved it through the artery above his wrist until the point emerged from the other side. But he couldn’t get the skewer back out, no matter how hard he pulled.
The student released the girl and collapsed with a roar of pain. The old farts before him were suddenly replaced with familiar faces, and he saw that he was surrounded by members of the Peculiar Crimes Unit.
The centre of the group slowly opened to reveal the crumpled face of Arthur Bryant, closely followed by John May. The most humiliating moment came when a woman, the big blond detective sergeant they called Longbright, twisted the silver skewer from his grip and removed it from the victim, confiscating his beloved weapon.
From the day he watched the burning match tumble down the side of the escalator, a part of him had always prayed for this moment to arrive. With delicious anticipation, he waited to hear the words that would finally seal his fate.
Instead he saw Arthur Bryant look past him and announce, ‘Theodore Samuel Fontvieille, I am arresting you for the murders of Gloria Taylor, Matthew Hillingdon and Cassandra Field.’
FORTY-NINE
Charismatic
Two arrests before six o’clock,’ Raymond Land was excitedly telling Leslie Faraday over the phone. ‘They’ve done it! No, I’ve no idea how. Nobody ever tells me anything. Oh, really? Oh, I thought you’d be pleased.’ Land found himself looking into the receiver, a dead line burring in his ear.
This time, Mr Fox found himself locked in a cell at Albany Street police headquarters, and there was no way for him to escape—not that he wanted to. On the contrary, he seemed almost relieved to be behind bars, as if somehow the memory of those painful years between his destruction of the tube station and his return to killing had finally been laid to rest.
He refused to speak to anyone, and flinched when his features were recorded, fearful that his true face might be placed on display for all to gawp at. And gawp they would, for even as he lay curled in the corner of his cell, his jacket thrown over his eyes to shield them from the overhead cell lights that were never dimmed, the Home Office was leaking the story to the press.
Having been so protective of his true identity, Jonas Ketch, alias Lloyd Lutine, alias Mr Fox and a dozen other names, would now face his greatest fear—exposure of his most horrific, shameful secret. Thinking back to the moment when he ran sobbing up the escalator with the burning match in his hand, he buried his face ever more deeply within the cloth of his jacket, savouring these last few moments of darkness, knowing that the blaze of publicity would soon obliterate him, as the braying clamour of morons began.
The PCU had dragged all the members of the Mecklenburgh Square household back to the Unit’s headquarters for a final showdown, and this time batteries of police recorders and cameras were there to cover the event. Theo Fontvieille had been stitched and bandaged, and was seated with plastic ties binding his wrists. The others found chairs or spaces on the floor where they could sit. The two Daves had been sent away, despite their protestations that they hadn’t had time to repair the hole in Bryant’s floor, but everyone else was in attendance, and it was Arthur Bryant, of course, who chose to take the centre stage.
‘Well, it’s been quite a week for all of us,’ he said, looking around, his blue eyes shining, ‘but tougher for some than others. Now that we’re all together, I think we should dispense with formalities for a while and talk about what happened.’
‘We should be taking separate statements from each of them, sir,’ said Renfield, ‘to prevent corroboration.’
‘No, I think the only way to put this together is to hear everyone out,’ Bryant contradicted. ‘They’re not in the mood to provide alibis for each other anymore.’ He turned to the students. ‘So, let’s imagine we’re playing a game. I’ll be the Bank. Although strictly speaking, Mr Nicolau, you should be the Bank, shouldn’t you?’
Nikos stared awkwardly at the others, wondering how much he should say.
‘Come, come, Mr Nicolau, this is no time to be shy. I imagine you were very excited when you came up with the idea for the game, weren’t you? All those nights spent online could finally be put to some use.’
Nikos cleared his throat and edged forward in his seat, conscious of the police cameras recording him. ‘Yeah, it was me who came up with it, but it was never meant to end up like this. I don’t know what Theo’s been up to because I had no part—’
‘Let’s just stick
to the facts for now. We’ll have plenty of time later to ascertain everyone’s levels of involvement. Why did you come up with the game? When did you first think of it?’
‘It began in the Karma Bar,’ he mumbled. ‘A bunch of us were sitting around, and we were all complaining that we were broke.’
‘We were talking about our student loans, and the rent and all the bills,’ said Ruby. ‘I was always having to lend the others—’
‘Please, let’s stick to the point,’ warned Bryant. ‘We’ll get to you in due course, Miss Cates. Go on, Mr Nicolau.’
‘I said I thought we should try to make some money with online gambling. I knew a lot about statistics and had a few ideas for beating the odds. What I didn’t know was that he—’ here Nikos pointed angrily at Theo ‘—had been gambling online for quite a long time. I explained to the others that the main problem was the number of players. You’re more likely to die in a plane crash than win most lotteries, because there are too many punters participating. I said if we could just keep the number of players limited, we stood a chance of making some real money. So we tried out the game for a few weeks, just accumulating small sums. Matt—Matthew Hillingdon—was the overall winner. But we realised that in order to make any decent amount of cash, everyone would have to put a lot more in the pot.’
‘Who came in on the game?’ asked May.
‘There were seven of us at first. But Cassie dropped out because she didn’t want anything more to do with Theo. He had started sleeping with Ruby.’
‘That’s not why she dropped out,’ said Theo quietly. ‘She couldn’t raise her share of the stake.’
‘So there were six players,’ Bryant prompted.
‘Yeah. We each put five grand in, but it still didn’t seem like enough if we were going for one winner.’
Christopher Fowler Page 28
