tarot cards. “These are my special ‘Black Ace’ Russian Tarots. I keep them locked up because they’re dangerous in the wrong hands.” Maggie shuffled and Mrs Yu snickered.
“I hope they’re more accurate than your attempt to read tea bags,” said Bryant.
“Take a card.” She offered him the pack.
Bryant withdrew one and looked at it. “Oh, for God’s sake, that’s the nine of clubs,” he exclaimed in annoyance. “I can never find it in a normal deck.”
“Oh, that shouldn’t be there.” Maggie snatched back the card. “Deirdre and I were playing poker last night. Choose five more and turn them over.”
He set down the five lurid pictures: a man being struck by lightning, a baby being bitten on the face by a cobra, a pair of Siamese twins being sawn in half, some lepers burying a screaming man alive and a skeleton on a drip. “Oh, charming,” said Bryant. “I take it my future well-being is under question.”
“You mustn’t take them literally,” said Maggie. “They’re filled with codes and symbols. I’ll tell you what I see. Six suspects, three deaths, and a desperate flight through tunnels of darkness. Do you want a piece of cake?”
“No,” snapped Bryant, “give me a brandy. Listen, there’s something I wanted to show you, but I can’t get it to work.” He emptied the contents of his overcoat pocket onto the kitchen table, pulled a Liquorice Allsort off his phone and passed the handset to Mrs Yu. “Can you get it to the section with photos?”
Mrs Yu flicked open the photo file with practised ease and examined the contents. Maggie peered over her shoulder. The screen showed a series of brightly coloured patterns, mostly diamonds and zigzags, like the backs of playing cards. Mrs Yu shrugged and snickered. “You want to know what these are?”
“Yes, one of our detective constables forwarded them to me from the dead man’s laptop. What are they?”
“You should know; you see them all the time.”
“Well?” It irritated Bryant when others took pleasure in knowing more than he did.
“They’re tube train seats,” said Mrs Yu, chortling away. “Different livery patterns in different colour combinations. Different pictures for the different London lines.”
Bryant grimaced in annoyance. “Why would anyone want to take pictures of seat patterns?”
“You’re the detective,” said Mrs Yu, as her giggles erupted into bubbling laughter.
? Off the Rails ?
38
On the Line
It was now 11:15 on Friday night, and the surveillance teams were still working across London, hoping to break the case.
To keep things fresh, they had swapped their subjects. Longbright had followed Nikos Nicolau to the Prince Charles cinema, where the young student sat through a double bill of lesbian vampire movies before returning home. Banbury kept tabs on Rajan Sangeeta, but lost him in between two nightclubs in Greenwich. Bimsley was close by Toby Brooke, who was now drinking alone in a crowded bar on Brick Lane. Mangeshkar took Theo Fontvieille because she could pace him on her motorcycle, and he had now pulled up in Mecklenburgh Square. Renfield was covering Ruby Cates, first at the college, then at the Karma Bar, and finally back to the house. For the most part, the PCU staff had managed to stick to their targets like shadows.
But there was a flaw in the plan. Nobody was running surveillance on Cassie Field. And Cassie was alone, on a deserted, rainswept railway station in South London.
¦
“I just don’t bloody believe it,” Theo shouted, hammering up the stairs of the house. “Look out the window!”
“What’s the matter?” Ruby swung her grey cast to one side and rose from the table, where she was making notes on the rubbishy laptop that had been supplied by Dan Banbury.
“Take a look, damnit. Down there in the street.”
Ruby thumped her way to the front window and opened the curtains. “What? I don’t see anything.”
“Exactly. Someone’s stolen my bloody car! I only left it a minute ago.”
“All right, calm down. Could it have been towed away?”
“What, at eleven o’clock at night? I’m outside of the restriction hours, and anyway, I have a parking permit.”
“You know how Camden traffic wardens are.”
“No, it’s been stolen. I knew it. You can’t keep anything nice in this city without some dickhead resenting you. I’m going to kill someone.” He stormed up and down in a rage.
“Okay, the first thing to do is to ring the Jamestown Road car pound, just to make sure it hasn’t been towed.”
Theo was pulled up short. “How do you know where the car pound is?”
“I can drive, I just can’t afford a car at the moment. Then call the police, or better still, get over to the station and fill in the necessary forms. If it has been stolen, you won’t be able to claim on your insurance without a case number. You didn’t leave the keys in the ignition again, did you?”
“No, of course not, I only – ” He patted his pockets. “Oh, no. I don’t understand. Someone must have been watching the house and waiting for me to return, standing there in the bloody rain – I only
“And you did it again. You should never have had the car customised. Come on, then,” she stuck her hands on her hips defiantly, “do something about it instead of just standing there feeling sorry for yourself.”
¦
Bimsley had lost him. Only minutes ago, he had watched Toby Brooke heading back to the packed Brick Lane bar, where he had ordered himself a Kingfisher, but then the student had simply vanished. Bimsley tried the toilet but it was empty. The bar had been constructed on the ground floor of an old carpet warehouse, and, he now discovered, had a rear exit along a corridor on the far side of the building. Brooke had given him the slip. Furious with himself for having made such a fundamental error, he called Longbright and explained what had happened.
“I’ll tell the others,” said Longbright. “We need to know that the rest are all accounted for.”
“I’m sorry, Janice. It was my own stupid fault.”
“Don’t beat yourself up. You could try the tube station.”
“No good. We’re halfway between Aldgate East and Liverpool Street.”
“Then you’ve got a fifty-fifty chance of finding him. Put in a call to the house and see if he’s gone back there.”
¦
Banbury was having similar trouble keeping tabs on Rajan Sangeeta.
Minutes ago the Indian student had received a call on his phone, and had immediately conducted a search of the bar where he was drinking. Someone had clearly tipped him off that the housemates were being followed. If a warning had gone out, it meant that the others were attempting to slip off the radar, too. Sangeeta waited until the bar had become severely congested, then pushed away through the crowd, leaving Banbury trailing far behind. Only two members of the PCU – Longbright and the late Liberty DuCaine – had received surveillance training, so when the student made his move, Banbury found himself in trouble. Longbright had told him to fix the height of his target in his mind, but the room was being strafed with rotating rainbow lights, and Sangeeta had already slipped out through the throng.
Banbury was furious at being tricked. He called Longbright. “Has anyone else made a run for it?”
“Toby Brooke’s done a bunk; the others all seem to be accounted for,” the DS replied. “There aren’t enough of us to go around the clock. Go home, Dan. Get some sleep. Nothing’s going to change tonight. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Banbury took one last walk around the pulsating bar, then wearily abandoned his search.
¦
Cassie Field was waiting for her train on Westcombe Park station. She shivered and stared at the truculent
