He saw how appropriate his behaviour had been to date. Was it accidental, or the subconscious act of a sensitive? No matter; the more he kept to the same methodology, the more it placed Toth under suspicion.”
“He told you all this?” Banbury asked.
“For a multiple killer, he seems anxious to get everything off his chest,” said May.
Bryant glared. He hated interruptions. “When he discovered that Richard Standover had been told that his rival was dead, Fox went after the remaining man who had hired him, before Standover decided to talk to anyone else. Which brings us to Toth. Mr Fox’s relationship with Xander is a rather interesting one. Not only did he use Toth’s detailed knowledge of the area, he was encouraged and inspired by him. But it still didn’t stop him from making Toth a scapegoat. He planted fur from Toth’s outfit on Cavendish’s body, and all the while, continued to be his friend. Fox kept a mental note of the wasteland near the railway; it was an ideal place to leave a body. He persuaded Toth to continue dressing as the stag-man – not that I suppose he took much persuading – thinking it would keep workmen away from the site. Instead, Toth, ever the showman, attracted unwelcome attention, and finally had to be dealt with.”
“Why did he bother to take him to the temple? Why not just kill him?”
“As we were interviewing Mr Fox, I wondered if he might have come to trust in the power of the area’s protective mythology. He had beheaded his victims in the time-honoured fashion. He had acted in accordance with the traditions of the region. And he had seen the figure of Saint Helena on the wall of the temple. Saint Helena, the British equivalent of the Roman goddess Diana, the huntress, upon whose temple St Paul’s itself now stands. But she was more than this. She was a symbol of the river Fleet, from whence came the Bagnigge well beneath the church. Mr Fox even lived above the site of the original spring. How could he not have felt the hand of destiny pressing heavily upon him? It seemed entirely appropriate to bring matters to an end by sacrificing Toth to Saint Helena. By returning Toth’s spirit to the well, Fox would close this chain of bizarre and disastrous events. It makes me think of the Stockholm Syndrome, only in reverse; the felon came to believe his victim.”
“Bloody hell.” Renfield drained the rest of his tea in one gulp. If he had not believed in Bryant’s powers before, he did now. “What set you off in the right direction?”
“One question John had asked kept buzzing around inside my head. If Mr Fox had gone to the trouble of cutting off the heads, why would he then allow the first two to turn up? There had to be a purpose to such extravagant executions, and it could only be to misdirect us away from the commonplace issue of identification. But once he’d started following the pattern of the past, he couldn’t stop. The third death had to be similar to the others in order to implicate Xander Toth. There was only one way to bring the cycle to an end: sacrifice the man who had accidentally encouraged him to initiate it. Such acts are rare but not uncommon.
“I must confess Mr Fox fascinates me. I’ve never encountered such a mentality before. He’s psychotic, brazen, and in his own way, supremely rational. The thing I want to concentrate on in our next interrogation session is his real identity. On that subject he has so far refused to be forthcoming.”
“I have a question.” April timidly raised her hand. “If Mr Fox found nothing in Delaney’s flat, who has the deed to Camley Lane?”
“Come on,” said Bryant, pleased with himself. “You can work this last part out for yourselves.”
Everyone looked at each other blankly.
“Delaney liked studying historical records at Camden Council. So naturally, he sent the deed to the one man who could trace its rightful owner – Ed Tremble, Camden’s land purchase advisor. I spoke to him a few minutes ago. Thanks to our rubbish postal service the delivery was only made last night, but it’s still in time to be registered in Ellen Porter’s name. Now she can decide whether to sell it or not.”
“So you set out to catch a stag and ended up with a fox,” said Banbury lamely. Nobody laughed. “What happens now?”
“After we’ve formally charged Mr Fox, it will fall upon me to make Mr Faraday’s life a living hell. I’ll demand a full reinstatement of our powers, our equipment and, most importantly of all, our salaries.”
“Did you torture Fox?” asked Longbright. “I mean, how come he volunteered so much information? Why would he do that unless he knew he could get off?”
“Or get out,” said April suddenly. “You said he studied with a locksmith. Who’s guarding him?”
“Liberty,” Longbright found herself calling out. The back of her neck prickled with ice.
They all ran for the stairs, Longbright leading. The holding room was on the third floor. As Longbright climbed, the sense of dread deepened within her. They entered the dim corridor. She saw the dark, prostrate bulk and her stomach turned.
Liberty DuCaine was lying on his side across the hall floor. The boards were bisected by a single spray of arterial blood, as thin as a line of red ink from a fountain pen. DuCaine’s right hand was cupped below his left ear. He had tried to staunch the flow from the puncture wound, but the skewer had been pushed deep in one thrust before being swiftly removed.
“No,” said Longbright, reaching out for the wall, “not him.” She dropped down beside DuCaine and felt his neck for a carotid pulse, then began to massage his heart, but experience had taught her that it was already too late.
She tried to follow the path of the wound. Could the skewer have pierced his brain? Mr Fox had received some form of medical training, hadn’t Bryant told them that? A single centimetre would mean the difference between death and survival. The attack had been so sudden that DuCaine had fallen before he could call out for help.
She continued to press his chest, to ensure there was pressure to take the blood to his heart.
“I’ve got an ambulance coming,” May said. “Leave him, Janice. He did a pretty good job of blocking the blood flow. Don’t move him. Any extra movement now could disrupt the clotting.”
“I’ll go with him,” said Longbright, numbly brushing her hair from her face. There was nothing more to be done, but she found it impossible to look away. As the medics arrived and took over, she rocked back on her heels, watching DuCaine’s immobile face. She willed him to see her one more time, to register her presence before he was removed and placed out of her reach within the system, but there was no flicker of sentience.
May checked the holding room and found the door wide open. The lock was undamaged. It had been firmly closed, but Mr Fox had managed to spring it. He had jumped DuCaine as he left the room. May didn’t understand; they had carefully searched their suspect for weapons upon arrival at the PCU. They had taken his shoes and most of his clothes, and checked his underwear; he had nothing on him. What the hell had they done wrong? What had they overlooked?
“My God.” With difficulty, Bryant knelt and held Longbright tight. “I’m so sorry, Janice. This should not have been possible. We thought he’d be safe there. I’ll never forgive myself – ”
“You have to get that bastard,” whispered Longbright, pulling away and looking at Bryant with a ferocity he had never seen before. “I don’t care what you have to do. If you don’t catch him, Arthur, I swear to you I will.”
¦
Mr Fox slipped between the backpacking Italian students pouring out of King’s Cross tube station. He had perfected a way of insinuating himself through the tightest crowds without ever touching anyone. He paid cash for a ticket so that it would leave no record, and avoided the searching gaze of each hidden camera with ease.
He was glad his little trick had come in useful; it had been incredibly difficult to master. He had secreted the silver skewer in his throat by attaching a piece of fishing nylon to a tooth, an old trick used by drug smugglers to sneak their personal stash through customs. He was surprised he had been able to hold it there for so long without gagging while they removed his clothing. Transferring it back into his armpit without anyone noticing had been the easy part.
He was disappointed with Bryant and May. He had expected to outwit them, but thought they would at least be able to discern his purpose in taking Xander Toth through the tunnel to the church and dressing in the mask. He had been about to place the Fox’s head on Toth when the detectives arrived.
The hunted had knelt before the huntress to take his own life. At least, that was how it would have looked. And who for a moment would have disbelieved the notion that Toth had become even more unbalanced, finally choosing to kill himself in accordance with the mythology he had so tirelessly promoted? The circle would have been perfectly closed upon itself…
Mr Fox looked different now. He kept emergency supplies hidden in alley binbags around King’s Cross, and
