Off the Rails (26 page)

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 were 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.

B
ack 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.

E
arly 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.

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.