case in the apartment?”
“Nothing from the eyelash,” said Dan. “The saline had corrupted it. But there were fingerprints on the exterior of the case, and they match Janice’s ID of the victim lying in UCH.”
“She’s got an ID? Why didn’t I know this?”
“Only just happened. Tony McCarthy, aka ‘Mac’, small-time crook, recovering heroin addict, a known face in the dodgier King’s Cross pubs. McCarthy’s got an impressive string of convictions. He pulled down a couple of years in Pentonville for dealing.”
“Looks like Mr Fox slipped up,” said May.
“It’s not like him,” Bryant insisted. “He’s too careful for that.”
“If he’s addicted to changing his appearance, he probably wears coloured contacts. And Mac was a junkie. If Mr Fox invited him over and left him alone for even a minute, it’s likely Mac would go through his host’s bathroom cabinet looking for something to steal or swallow. He picked up the lens case, checked it out, put it back somewhere different, and Mr Fox failed to wipe it clean.”
“Okay, we’ve been handed McCarthy, but if there’s something in his past that connects the pair of them, Mr Fox must know we’ll find it. He’s daring me to try to stop him. Wouldn’t you want to measure your opponent’s strength? See how close he’s likely to get?”
“What kind of man thinks like that?” asked Longbright.
“It’s about power, Janice. Some men use everything as an opportunity to prove their superiority. For them, life is a perpetual dare. This is his work. Rather than shift from his location, our Fox will hide in plain sight until one of us is forced to make a move.”
“Killing people is not normal work, Arthur,” May pointed out gently. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to act as if you admire him.”
“Of course I don’t.” Bryant’s watery blue eyes rolled behind his bifocals. “I think he’s horrible. But if something wriggles under a rock, don’t you want to pick the rock up and take a look? I wouldn’t be much of a criminologist if I wasn’t intrigued.”
“Then I shall leave you to your intrigues.” May searched around for his coat. The two Daves were standing by with screwdrivers raised, listening with undisguised interest. “I’m going to try and throw some light on why an innocent woman died. Perhaps you’ll give us the benefit of your intelligence by doing the same.”
“I have my suspicions about her death,” Bryant told his partner’s retreating back, “but you’re not going to like it. You never do.”
“You’re not going to win this one by ploughing through a bunch of old books, Arthur,” May called back serenely. “It’ll come down to modern detection techniques. I’m willing to put money on it.”
“So am I,” said one of the Daves. “Twenty quid says he proves the old codger wrong.”
“Make it fifty,” said the other, “and you’ve got yourself a bet.”
? Off the Rails ?
18
Lunacy
Rain was tumbling through the office ceiling. Everyone looked up as a piece of plaster divorced itself and fell into a bucket with a plonk. They dragged their attention back to the acting head of the Unit.
“Words fail me,” Raymond Land continued, despite the fact that they clearly did no such thing. “What more am I supposed to do, for God’s sake? You get your old jobs back, we might finally be allocated a decent budget thanks to Giles Kershaw’s old-school network, our enemies at the Home Office have heard the news and are wandering around with faces like slapped arses, we even get a case that fits the Unit’s mission statement and what happens? I ask you,
Ask he might, but there was no response. The assembled staff of the PCU looked at one another in puzzlement. Outside the door, one of the Daves was hitting a pipe with the desultory air of a Victorian nanny beating a child. Land squeezed his eyes shut and waited for the workman to finish.
“Exactly. Nothing. Twenty-four hours is a bloody long time in this area, and the trail has wiped itself clean. I walk around the offices – if that’s what you can call this doss-house – hoping to see someone in the throes of a revelation, or at least bothering to fill in their paperwork, and what do I see?”
“Is this going to take very long, sir?” asked Meera.
“You’ll stay here until I’ve finished, young lady.” Land tried to take his eyes from her and failed. “What…what is all that stuff on your face?”
“Lip gloss and blusher, sir. Janice gave me some makeup tips. I had a makeover.”
“During your duty hours? What the hell is going on here?”
“Not here, at Selfridges, in the cosmetics department where Gloria Taylor worked. I got more out of her colleagues that way, catching them while they were working. Taylor took the same train home every night. She was in perfectly normal spirits when she left, looking forward to seeing her daughter because she was going to take her to the cinema for the first time, to see an old Disney film they just re-issued at the Imax,
“Oh. Well. I suppose that’s all right. But the rest of you…” His attention fell upon Colin Bimsley, who was reading a cookery book. “I assume that’s not a police manual in your hand?”
“No, sir, it’s aubergine and mozzarella parcels. I’m thinking of taking a course in Italian cuisine.” He had found the book in one of the trash bins while he was staking out Mr Fox’s apartment, and had decided it was about time to learn a new skill. John May encouraged them all to do so whenever they were inundated with paperwork, to keep their brains sharp. Besides, Longbright had tipped him off that Meera liked Italian food.
“What about the requisition forms I asked you to handle? You can’t have finished those already.”
“They’ve all gone off. John created online spreadsheets for us, so we wouldn’t have to print hard copies anymore. But I printed out some sets for you and Mr Bryant because I knew you’d prefer paper. They’re on your desk.”
Land wasn’t keen about being yoked with Bryant. “I know how to open a spreadsheet, thank you; I can do that. I do know about computers, Bimsley. You don’t have to patronise me.”
“Good, because I didn’t fix your printer utilities, so I guess I can leave you to upgrade the file manager for – ”
“Fine, fine, whatever, and I suppose the rest of you have completed your duties for the day.”
“No, sir,” answered Banbury, “obviously, we won’t have done that until we find out who was standing behind Gloria Taylor. I’ve been through every second of the CCTV footage covering the escalator, but we have no clear shots of her falling. The movement is just too fast. I’ve sent some frame grabs out for enhancement. I’m just waiting for them to come back.”
Land was starting to suspect that he had been set up. “Then where has John got to? I’m supposed to be informed whenever anyone goes out.”
“John is interviewing a student at UCL,” Longbright told him, “following up a lead on Taylor.”
“Well, somebody should have told me.” Land turned to Bryant in desperation. “What about you?” he pleaded. “What do you expect to find in that huge filthy-looking book?” He pointed at the leather-bound volume wedged under the arm of London’s most senior detective.
“This? Glad you asked. It’s a copy of the asylum records from Bedlam, after it moved to St George’s Fields, Southwark,” said Bryant, happily holding the book up for Land’s perusal.
“You can’t tell me that this has something to do with the case.”
“Actually, I can. The sticker found on Taylor’s body is a re-interpretation of a design used by the hospital. As you can see here, the patient’s arms and legs are held apart by iron rods which are then chained to the walls.” He pointed to the inked symbol within the pages. “At first I thought the drawing was taken from Leonardo da Vinci, but then I noticed the thin black bands on the wrist and the ankle, see? The illustration here is described as ‘an unspecified method of coercion for violent lunatics and proponents of unwarranted anarchy, 1826’. Gloria Taylor told everyone she was twenty-three, but she was younger. She became pregnant at the age of sixteen and suffered a
