short corridor and then a fire door out into the station proper. We reckoned he’d hear our boots if we ran up behind him. So we walked up, having a casual conversation in the hope we’d sound like weary clubbers. In the course of the first two flights I learnt that Special Agent Kimberley Reynolds was from Enid, Oklahoma and had gone to university at Stillwater and thence to Quantico.
Sergeant Kumar turned out to be from Hounslow and had studied Engineering at Sussex University but had fallen into policing. ‘I’d have been a terrible engineer,’ he said. ‘No patience.’
I had a jazz anecdote about my father all ready to go when we very clearly heard the sound of a door slamming shut up ahead – at which point we legged it.
It was an ordinary fire door, heavily spring-loaded, presumably so Olympia and Chelsea’s friends could leave without letting the commuter traffic leak back in. We went through it slowly and quietly and found ourselves in an alcove tucked away near the stations lifts. Our suspect wasn’t amongst the passengers waiting to go up in the lift and, according to them, they’d been waiting at least a couple of minutes, which was too long for him to have gone up earlier.
‘Stairs or platforms?’ asked Kumar.
‘He likes to stay underground,’ I said. ‘Platforms first.’
We caught a break when I spotted him through the grilled windows where the corridor cut across the top of the eastbound platform. We ran as quietly as we could down the next flight of stairs and piled up like cartoon characters at the entrance to the platform. I was just nerving myself to have a look around the corner when Kumar pointed at the convex mirror at head height opposite. This was a holdover from the days before CCTV when station staff and BTP had to scope out stations with the mark one eyeball.
I spotted him, small and oddly shaped in the mirror, at the far end of the platform.
‘If he’s still armed,’ said Kumar. ‘We’ll never get close.’
I felt a puff of air on my face and the rails began to sing. It was too late – a train was coming.
21
Oxford Circus
Sergeant Kumar was very clear about one thing – you don’t do shit when the train is in motion.
‘Someone pulls the emergency stop between stations you can lose a passenger to a heart attack there and then,’ he said. ‘And you do not want to be evacuating members of the public down a live track – trust me on this.’
You certainly didn’t want to be leaping out on a possibly armed suspect in something shaped exactly like a firing range – especially if you’re going to be the target at the far end.
And the carriages were packed, which took me by surprise, and not with your normal commuters either. Lots of parents with kids, clusters of chattering teenagers, older people in good coats clutching cloth bags or towing shopping trolleys. Last full shopping day before Christmas, I realised, Kumar was right – we really didn’t want to be kicking off anything we couldn’t contain.
It’s a sad fact, but policing would be so much easier if you didn’t have to worry about members of the public getting under your feet.
Kumar had Agent Reynolds, the only one of us who didn’t look like they were remaking
There’s no connecting tunnel on a tube train, you open the door and step across the gap to the next carriage. For a moment I was caught in a rush of air and darkness. I swear I heard it then, the whisper, behind the clatter of the wheels and the smell of dust and ozone. Not that I recognised it for what it was – not that I’m sure I know what it was even now.
The Central Line runs what is imaginatively called 1992 Tube Stock consisting of eight carriages. Our suspect was near the front and we were near the back so it took us twelve minutes and five stops to work our way forward. As the train pulled into Oxford Circus we had our suspect, unknown to him, bottled up in the front carriage. So that, of course, is where he chose to get off.
Reynolds spotted him first, signalled back to us and – as he walked past the open doorway where we were standing – we jumped him.
It was as sweet a take-down as anyone could wish for. I got his left arm, Kumar got his right, I slipped my knee behind his, hooked and down he went. We flipped him over on his face and got his arms behind his back.
He wriggled, as sinuously as a fish. It was difficult to keep him pinned. All the while he was completely silent except for a weird hissing sound like a really pissed off cat.
I heard someone in the crowd ask what the fuck was going on.
‘Police,’ said Kumar. ‘Give us some room.’
‘Which one of you has cuffs?’ asked Reynolds.
I looked at Kumar and he looked at me.
‘Shit,’ said Kumar.
‘We don’t have any,’ I said.
Wriggling boy subsided under our hands. Beneath the thin fabric of his hoodie he seemed much skinnier than I expected him to be, but the muscles in his arms were like steel cables.
‘I can’t believe you didn’t bring handcuffs,’ said Reynolds.
‘
‘It’s not my jurisdiction,’ said Reynolds.
‘It’s not my jurisdiction,’ I said.
We both looked at Kumar. ‘Evidence,’ he said. ‘You said we were looking for evidence, not suspects.’
Our suspect had started shaking and making snorting noises.
‘And you can stop laughing,’ I told him. ‘This is really unprofessional.’
Kumar asked if we could hold him down on our own and I said I thought we could, so he loped off down the platform in search of a Help Point where he could contact the station manager.
‘I don’t think you want to be here when help arrives,’ I said to Reynolds. ‘Not while you’re tooled up.’
She nodded. It was just as well she hadn’t pulled it out in front of a CCTV camera. I glanced down the platform to where Kumar was talking into the Help Point and I must have loosened my grip or something – because that’s when the bastard tried to throw me off. In my defence, I don’t think the normal human arm is supposed to bend that way, certainly not twist up in some weird angle and smash its elbow in my chin.
My head cracked back and I lost my hold on his right arm.
I heard a woman scream and Reynolds yell, ‘Freeze!’
A glance told me that, despite everything, she’d stepped back and drawn her pistol.
Training, I learnt later, specifies that you never let your weapon get close enough to the perp to get snatched. I was also informed that the biggest fear an American law Enforcement Officer lives with is the prospect of dying with their weapon still in its holster.
The guy underneath me didn’t seem impressed. He reared up and then slapped the ground with the palm of his free hand. I got a flash of fresh loam and ozone and the cement floor of the platform cratered under his hand with a loud bang. I actually saw the start of the concussion wave in the dust around the crater and then it knocked me, Reynolds and half a dozen members of the public sprawling. We were lucky the train was still in the station or somebody would have gone onto the tracks.
Not me, though, because I still had a grip on the fucker’s arm. Because that’s how I’m trained. I pulled on it hard to try and keep him off balance and drag myself up to my feet. But he dug his fingers into the ground and twisted.
A crack the width of a finger shot across the platform and up the nearest wall. Ceramic tiles splintered with a noise like teeth breaking and then the floor lurched and dipped as if a giant had put his foot on one side and pressed down. The cement cracked open and I felt my stomach jump as the ground I was lying on dropped a good metre. And me with it. I saw a dark void under the platform and had just enough time to think – fuck me he’s an Earthbender – before falling into the black.
