‘King’s Cross Executioner’ chap, thank you for acting so quickly on the matter, although it’s a pity he subsequently managed to give you the slip. I had a bit of trouble opening your report because, frankly, computers have never been my strong point, but the new girl in our office seems to understand these things and printed out a copy for me.
Following the judicial review we decided to scrap the idea of holding a press conference, but we’re speaking to our key contacts today, so we’ll have some idea of the headlines likely to run in tomorrow’s papers. Always talk to the press, I say, even when you’ve got nothing to tell them. We’re hoping that a bit of publicity might flush him out. I’m trying to discourage sensational references to his nickname, without much luck, I’m sorry to say, but when a little boy finds a human head while fishing for eels in a canal, you can expect the press to react strongly.
I have passed your conclusions on to my superior and other concerned department heads, and will return with their reactions in due course. I also have to acknowledge the receipt of an additional report on this case from one of your senior detectives, Arthur Bryant, although I must admit I was only able to read portions of this document as Bryant’s handwriting was extremely small and barely legible, and pages 23 through 31 had some kind of curry sauce spilled over them. Furthermore his account is opinionated and anecdotal in the extreme, and on several occasions, positively offensive. Could you have a word with him about this?
Naturally we are all sorry to hear about what happened. It is always with great sadness that one hears of a police officer’s demise in the course of his duty, especially in this case, when the officer in question was so highly regarded, and had such a bright future ahead of him.
Although the tribunal was reasonably satisfied that no member of the Peculiar Crimes Unit could be held responsible for the unforeseen events occurring on your premises, we do not feel that full autonomy can be returned to the Unit until a series of regulatory safeguards have been put in place to ensure that the impossibility of such an incident –
“Oh, for God’s sake get on with it!” Arthur Bryant complained at the page, balling it up and disdainfully throwing it over his shoulder as he skipped to the final sheet. He had filched the report from Raymond Land’s mailbox and was vetting it before the acting chief arrived for work. “Let’s see – ‘inadequate safeguards’
With increasing age, the grace notes of temperance, balance, harmony and gentility are supposed to appear in the human heart. This was not entirely true, however, in Arthur Bryant’s case. He remained acidulous, stubborn, insensitive and opinionated. In addition, he was getting ruder by the day, as the byzantine workings of the British Home Office sucked away his enthusiasm for collaring killers.
Bryant started to crumple up the rest of the memo, then remembered he wasn’t supposed to have seen it, and flattened it out imperfectly. He fished the other pages out of the bin, but now they were smeared with the remains of last night’s fish and chips.
“I don’t know why you get so het up, Arthur. What did you honestly expect?” John May carefully pinched his smart pin-striped trousers at the knee and bent to give him a hand picking up the pages. “A man kills three times, is arrested by us, breaks out of a locked cell, stabs a police officer in the neck and vanishes. We were hardly going to be rewarded for our efforts.”
“What about the innocent people we protected? The deaths we prevented?” Bryant demanded, appalled.
“I think they’re happier counting the millions of pounds we saved them.” May rose, twisted his chair and flopped down, stretching himself into a six-foot line. “Just think of all the companies that would have pulled out if we hadn’t been able to secure the area.”
“What a case for my memoirs,” Bryant muttered. “Three mutilated bodies found on the mean streets of King’s Cross. Murders committed solely for financial gain by a slippery, adaptable thief who’s grown up in the area around the terminus, a small-time crook propelled to the status of murderer when a robbery went wrong. You know what’s happened, don’t you? For the first time in his life this Mr Fox has been made to feel important. The escalation of his criminal status, from burglar to hired killer, has increased his determination to stay free.”
There was a darkness at the heart of this chameleon-like killer that the members of the Peculiar Crimes Unit had underestimated. For a while it had felt as if gang war was breaking out in the area, but by getting to the root of the crimes, the detectives had managed to soothe public fears and reassure investors that the newly developing region was still open for business. In the process, however, they had lost an officer, and had been unable to stop their quarry from escaping back into the faceless crowds.
Bryant pottered over to the sooty, rain-streaked window and tapped it. “He’s still out there somewhere,” he warned, “and now he’ll do one of two things. Having had his fingers badly burned, he’ll either vanish completely, never to be seen again, or he’ll returneth like a dog to vomit, just to taunt me further. Proverbs chapter twenty-six, verse eleven.”
“I don’t understand,” said May. “Why are you taking this so personally?”
“Because I’m the one he’s after. DuCaine just got in the way.” Bryant had never exhibited much empathy with his co-workers, but this struck May as callous even by his standards.
“Liberty DuCaine’s parents have just lost a son, Arthur, so perhaps you could keep such thoughts to yourself. Don’t turn this into a private feud. It concerns all of us.” May rose and left the room in annoyance.
Bryant was sorry that the lad had died – of course he was upset – but nothing could bring DuCaine back now, and the only way they could truly restore order was by catching the man responsible for his murder. With a sigh he popped open his tobacco tin and stuffed a pipe with ‘Old Arabia’ Navy Rough-Cut Aromatic Shag. His gut told him that Mr Fox would quickly resurface, not because the killer had any romantic longing to be stopped, but because his rage would make him careless. His sense of respect had been compromised, and he was determined to make the police pay for cornering him.
Unfortunately, Bryant tried to avoid reminding himself, it would need to happen this week.
? Off the Rails ?
2
Choreography
DC Colin Bimsley and DC Meera Mangeshkar were watching the train station. They had no idea what their suspect might look like, or any reason to assume he would appear suddenly before them on the concourse. But Mr Fox knew his terrain well and rarely left it, so there was a chance that even now he might be wandering through the Monday morning commuters. And as the St Pancras International surveillance team was more concerned with watching for terrorist suspects after a weekend of worrying intelligence, it fell to the two detective constables to keep an eye out for their man. At least it was warm and dry under the great glass canopy.
Each circuit of the huge double-tiered terminus took half an hour. Bimsley and Mangeshkar wore jeans and
