Office. Welcome back.” John May raised his beer in salute. The two detectives had dug down into a musty sofa at the rear of the Charles I, an oaky little pub tucked away behind King’s Cross railway terminal that had a fireplace, stag heads, bookshelves and an occasional willingness to continue serving behind closed shutters. It was very late, but neither of them slept much when they were on a case. May had wanted to share his discovery about the Karma Bar logo, and had caught Bryant leaving the underground station. He studied his pensive partner. “What’s the matter?”
“I don’t like being made a fool of,” Bryant complained. “The case would have been closed by now.”
“There’s no point in dwelling on what might have been, Arthur.”
“I suppose Mr Fox picked his name because he thinks of himself as feral and adaptable. But he’s a small-time con man who accidentally became a killer. Killing has strengthened him, John, that’s the awful thing.”
“Why do you say that?”
“He leaves bodies scattered around the neighbourhood and gets us to clear up the mess. We nail him, he kills again as he escapes – he didn’t need to do that – and he immediately returns to his old stamping ground to continue. He’s humiliating us. He thinks he’s above the law, and that can’t be allowed to happen.”
“We badly need the link between the beautician and the junkie.”
“Maybe she’s a former girlfriend.”
“No. Janice interviewed Gloria Taylor’s work colleagues. They swear she was very strict about her partners, happy on her own, wasn’t currently involved with anyone. Meera spoke to her ex and he says the same thing. They were still close; she called him two or three times a week. Never mentioned anything out of the ordinary. Had her hands full just keeping her job and looking after her little girl. The junkie – well, that’s a different matter. Maybe their paths crossed on the streets around here. You can imagine Mr Fox and his victim starting out as thieves together.”
“If Mr Fox is getting rid of anyone who knows who he was,” said Bryant, “it’s because he means to go on.”
“That might explain the junkie, but not why he would shove an innocent woman down an escalator.”
“And in front of witnesses. Can they be traced?”
“We can trawl through the tags on their travel cards. If we start checking records from, say, thirty seconds before Gloria Taylor passed through the barrier, we’ll be able to get all the registered user addresses. But it’s a lengthy process tracking them all down. The fact that St Pancras is an international station means many of them could now be abroad.”
“Well, I’ll leave the gadgetry to you and Dan. You know what happens when I touch anything electronic. Although I managed to fix your toaster.”
“It’s not supposed to fire bread that far. And it took out the lights.”
“I’ve been thinking about the sticker. If that’s some new part of the MO, why not do the same to the junkie?”
“Maybe he killed the woman for the sheer pleasure of being cruel.”
“But why kill both at the same tube station?”
“It’s the most crowded crossing-point in England, so that’s not much of a surprise.”
“The station staff are a lovely bunch of people; they were telling me ghost stories about the London Underground. Apparently, the developers tore down an old theatre, the Royal Strand, to make way for the Aldwych station. Before the 1970s, there was an army of women who used to enter the system after the last train had run. They were called Fluffers, and their job was to remove all the dust balls, flakes of skin and human hair that had gathered in the tunnels. They were frightened by the spectre of an actress from the Royal Strand who had committed suicide on the spot where her old dressing room had been. After that, they refused to clean the Aldwych tracks anymore.”
“Collective hysteria.” May took a swig of his beer. “Mind you, I imagine you’d be spooked, too, if you had to walk through pitch-black tunnels every night. It must have made people very jumpy in the days before they improved the lighting.”
“Did you get to meet up with that funny little boy?”
“You mustn’t call Rufus a boy; he gets terribly upset,” May admonished. “He has the IQ of a decent Oxford lecturer, and considers it a grave misfortune to be trapped in a child’s body. The sticker with the K is the logo of a bar in Judd Street. I’ve got a lead out of it, if you can call it that. A bunch of students. I’ll go and see them tomorrow.”
Bryant gave a weary sigh. “I miss the old cases. Things were more clear-cut when we started. Generations of robbers and professional thieves – you saw the same people year in and year out, and you could always get a lead by talking to the families. All those mothers, brothers and uncles who just couldn’t keep their mouths shut. It’s not like that now. Death has become so random. Angry children attacking one another over issues of respect, such a terrible waste of life. And I can’t categorize Mr Fox; he doesn’t fit anywhere. Half a dozen people have seen and spoken to him. We’ve actually interviewed him, for God’s sake. And what have we got between us? A pencil sketch of a nondescript man, nothing more.”
“There must be someone out there who knows what he’s like. I mean, what he’s
“Janice is having trouble finding the witness in my tour group. She got hold of the Canadians, but they didn’t remember anything significant about him.”
“Wait, you’ve got
“Good to know you’re keeping up. I suppose we could have them hypnotised.”
“That’s illegal, Arthur. Let’s try and keep our noses clean this week, eh?”
But Bryant was taken with the idea. “Actually, I know someone who would do it. Old Albert Purberry – he’s legitimate now, almost, and he’d be cheap.”
“What do you mean, almost?”
“He had some problems a couple of years back; it was nothing. A trick that went wrong, that’s all.”
“What happened?”
“He was booked for a stag night and hypnotised the groom-to-be, told him he would fall in love with the first person he saw on his wedding day. Unfortunately the first person he saw the next day wasn’t his wife.”
“Who was it?”
“Barry Manilow. On the television. The groom drove to Birmingham, where Manilow was performing, broke into his dressing room and proposed, but Manilow turned him down. Then Manilow had to get a restraining order, and the wedding was called off and the fiancee’s mother burned Albert’s house down. But he’s better now. I’ll give him a call.”
“I’d hold off for a day or two,” May cautioned. “If we don’t find a link between the deaths tomorrow, we investigate them separately. Do we have a deal?”
“Do I have a choice?” complained Bryant.
¦
Janice Longbright was on all fours under her desk. There was something wrong with the electric socket on the floor that Dave and Dave, the two builders, had connected. It was crackling and popping, but as Bryant had blown up the other circuit, she needed it to work. She was tired and wanted to go home, but staying in the office stopped her from thinking about Liberty DuCaine.
“Need any help?” asked Renfield, bending low.
“There’s some kind of intermittent fault, the power keeps shorting out.” She refused his offer of a hand and clambered up. “Don’t worry, I can fix it.”
Renfield folded his thick arms and sternly regarded her. “You don’t always have to be so independent, you know.”
“It comes naturally to me.” She dusted herself down. “Was there something you wanted?”
“I’m sorry about DuCaine.” He looked awkward. “I know you and he got – close.”
“We slept together once, Jack. There’s no need to be coy about it. I’d be sorry for anyone I knew who got killed in the line of duty. So I’m sorry he died, nothing more.”
“Bit of a harsh way of looking at it.”
“Well, small cruelties are what get us through.”
