“I put in a couple of calls to Hendon, but Fraternity’s file appears to have gone missing.”
“You think there’s been some funny business?”
“Not sure,” said Longbright. “I spoke to a guy called Nicholson, who’d been one of his examiners. He says Fraternity was a good bloke, fully expected him to pass with flying colours, doesn’t know what happened.”
“A bit odd. Not like them to be evasive. Who was his supervisor?”
“That’s the funny thing – nobody could tell me. If I can find out the name of the team leader, I might get somewhere. Nicholson remembered that the regular officer had been taken sick, so they had a replacement for a few days.”
“Sounds like someone took a dislike to Fraternity and put the boot in. Keep trying, will you? It’s the least we can do for his mother.”
Longbright sipped some wine, then winced. “I heard Raymond was upset about one of the Daves uncovering another creepy painting in his room.”
“The waltzing witches?” Bryant released a hoot of laughter. “Poor old Raymondo is spooked because he thinks there was some kind of Satanic secret society operating out of this place. He says he keeps hearing strange noises at night. Doesn’t fancy being left alone on the premises.”
“Was there really a secret society here?”
“Oh, absolutely. That’s why the estate agent had trouble renting it. The Occult Society of Great Britain conducted a series of legendary experiments in this very building in the 1960s. The society was closed down after one of their rituals resulted in a death.”
“How do you know about this?”
“Maggie Armitage still has the press clippings. She never throws anything away.” Bryant’s old friend was the white witch who ran the ailing North London branch of the Coven of St James the Elder. “She reckons the occultists chose the property because it was built on one of London’s strongest ley lines, which runs from the Pentonville Mound to Sadler’s Wells, passing right through the centre of this building. Of course, John thinks I chose the premises just to torment Raymond.”
“Do you think he’s fully recovered from his operation? John seems a bit…”
“He’s fine,” said Bryant, dismissing the idea that anything might be wrong with his partner. “He’s had heart problems before. His doctor has started bleating about retirement again, but we both know where that will lead. I just finished reading John’s notes on the Mr Fox investigation, and I’m starting to think he’s right after all. The deaths can’t be connected. Perhaps it’s wrong of me to try and forge a link between them.”
“So our priority is still to find Gloria Taylor’s attacker.”
“You’d better copy Mr Fox’s updated file, the one with the new photos, get it over to Islington and Camden, and let’s hope the plods at the Met manage to pick him up on their rounds. You know how they think; if he gets rid of a few thieving junkies, it might be better to let him continue clearing the streets.”
Longbright sat back and allowed herself to relax. “I’ve reached a dead end with the witness statements. Nobody remembers who was walking behind Taylor on the stairs. If it had happened on the escalator they’d have been standing still, not concentrating on where to place their feet, and someone might have noticed who was there.”
“Maybe Giles is wrong and it was just an accident. But the man has good instincts. I keep asking myself, how could it have been murder? There are simply too many variables. First, there was the risk of being seen and blamed. Then, the chance that someone else would catch her or merely get in the way and break her fall. Even pushing an old lady down her stairs at home doesn’t guarantee that she’s going to die. It’s best to test these things out with physical experiments. I tried it once before with a pig.”
“What happened?”
“It was very upset, jumped over the banisters and landed rather heavily on our hall table. Alma was furious. I should have used a dead one, but I was minding it for a friend.”
“I notice Taylor’s death didn’t warrant a mention in the press. It’s been written off as an accident. And Janet Ramsey didn’t pick up on Mac’s vampire wound.”
“I’d probably be inclined to think it was accidental if I didn’t share John’s puzzlement over these students,” said Bryant. “If you were going to attempt to take someone’s life in such a damned awkward manner, you wouldn’t risk drawing attention to yourself by whacking a label on the victim’s back. Why leave a clue at all? And once you’ve pushed her, then what do you do? You can’t fight your way up the staircase when everyone’s coming down, so you have to carry on walking to the bottom. Too much of a risk.” Bryant wiped his lips and set down his tumbler. “It’s no good, I can’t drink any more of that. Is there really nothing else?” He tipped the remains into Crippen’s bullet- punctured litter tray.
Longbright poked about in one of the crates. “There’s half a bottle of Merlot here. You try it.” She unscrewed the top and tipped some in his glass.
The bouquet forced his eyes shut. “Well, it’s got a bit of a bite. It would probably burn quite well.” He examined the label. “Produce of Morocco. Why was it in the crate?”
“Old evidence.”
“Not the Lewisham Poisoner? Give me a top-up.”
“When you think about how crowded the tubes get, it’s amazing there aren’t more accidents.” Longbright pulled off her heels and put her feet up on Bryant’s desk, crossing her nylons at the ankle.
“The guards were telling me that drunks tend to fall down the stairs or onto the tracks further out of town, away from the West End stations, because the alcohol is kicking in just as they arrive at their destinations. There are very few deliberate assaults, though. I suppose it’s the proximity of others, the lighting and the CCTV system. No, I think we have to assume the Taylor death is a one-off. The Hillingdon disappearance is bloody odd, though. You can’t disappear on a moving tube train in the two minutes it takes to travel between stops. The boy will probably turn up with some silly-ass explanation.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“As far as I know, there’s never been a serial killer with such a random MO, even in the forties, when entire neighbourhoods slept down on the platforms during the air raids. Once you go down those stairs, it seems as if there’s a separate unwritten code of manners in place.”
“The peer pressure of the crowd,” agreed Longbright. “Everyone has a go at you if you do something wrong. It’s like all these freesheets they give out at the stations. There’s an understanding that you can leave your paper folded on the back of the seat when you leave because someone else will read it. It seems to be a form of recycling that’s acceptable.”
“And this thing with the litter bins.”
“What thing?”
“Well, there aren’t any. Not around the station anyway, because of terrorist threats. So people tuck bottles and coffee cups in every little corner of the street. They can’t be bothered to take stuff home, but they don’t want to leave the place untidy, either. What strange creatures we English are. We make up our own rules, despite the politicians trying to control us. Remember when the mayor banned booze on the tube and everyone had a huge party in the carriages the night before it came into effect? I love a bit of anarchy, so long as it doesn’t harm the undeserving.”
“Absolutely. It’s a bloody good idea to frighten Whitehall once in a while.”
“Odd about the stickers being a symbol for anarchy. The mad are often seen as free instead of prisoners.”
“I had the same logo on an old Vivienne Westwood T-shirt, back in the 1980s.” Longbright emptied the last of the bottle into their glasses. “This brings me back to the old days, when the three of us would take on lost causes, the cases no-one else believed in, like your Deptford Demon, the Oxford Street Mannequin Murderer, and that business with those glamour models, the Belles of Westminster. You should put them in your memoirs.”
“I will if I ever find the energy,” Bryant promised. “There are so many projects I’d like to embark on, I can’t imagine finishing them all. I sense a gathering darkness, Janice, not just in me but in the world outside. Perhaps it’s something everyone of my age feels. But I do wonder if anyone really cares about the same things anymore. Who honestly wants to know about the history of pubs or hidden waterways, or mysterious goings-on underneath the streets? I have no conversation about diets and celebrities or the bad habits of television personalities. Just once I’d like some bottom-feeding media slug to be caught in a criminal situation more imaginative than one involving call
