Bryant & May 08; Off the Rails

rough idea fairly early on in the investigation, but it only became crystal clear to me a few minutes ago. Would you like to hear?”

May waited at his desk while Bryant picked up the cards and clumsily attempted to shuffle them. “On Tuesday night, Hillingdon boarded a train at Liverpool Street station, went west on the District & Circle Line to King’s Cross and was supposed to catch the last southbound Piccadilly Line train. It arrived on time in King’s Cross at 12:24 A.M., yes? He texted Ruby Cates from the King’s Cross interchange at 12:20, telling her he was heading for Russell Square tube, a two-minute journey. The CCTV showed him getting onto the train. The next shot we’ve got is of the train pulling out. But there was another event.”

“What?”

“Hillingdon shut his coat in the door, so they had to re-open the carriage doors. We don’t know how soon after this the driver shut them again, but it was probably no more than a few seconds. Suppose Hillingdon ducked and ran down the carriage, getting off at the other end before the train left?”

“To go where? The cameras would have picked him up.”

“If you remember, there was one more train that night, leaving from the Northern Line platform three minutes later. The tunnel connecting the two lines was being retiled, and that camera wasn’t working – Dutta told us that. So he hops onto the train, deliberately shuts his coat in the door, waits until the doors re-open, hops back off through the next set of doors, beyond sight of the working camera, and catches the northbound train.”

“Matthew Hillingdon’s body was found in King’s Cross, not at the far end of the Northern Line.”

“I didn’t say it was Matthew who caught the other train, did I? Hillingdon was sprayed with tobacco somewhere in the station and left to die. The killer switched clothes with him. He put on Hillingdon’s woolly hat and his ridiculous candy-striped overcoat, and ran for the train. The cameras picked up the hat and the coat. I mean, they could hardly miss, could they?”

“I know we only saw the figure from the back, but it looked like Hillingdon.”

“No, it moved like Hillingdon. Not a very hard motion to imitate, typical drunken student pimp-roll, feet at ten to two and arms swinging. And he was running, so the frames were blurred.”

“Then what happened to Hillingdon? If he’d been anywhere in the station, we would have seen him – Oh, my God.”

“Precisely. We did see him. He was caught by the cameras, and in the process he became his own urban myth.”

“The Night Crawler.”

“Exactly. Not the ghost of a dead man, not a giant walking bat, and not a homeless person, either. A dying student in a black leather long-coat several sizes too large for him. He was pouring with sweat, so his long black hair was plastered around his head, and he was dying – crawling along the floor in the only direction he could manage – downwards. Disoriented and confused, barely able to breathe, he falls from the unused platform and lands in the cool darkness – but he somehow manages to get the coat off and loosen his shirt collar before losing consciousness.”

“You think even that part was planned? That the black leather coat was chosen – ”

“ – by the killer to hide the victim. Probably. But what if it was somebody who actually knew about the myth of the Night Crawler?”

“That’s something only the guards gossipped about,” said May. “Isn’t it?”

“No.” Bryant offered his partner a card. “It’s in a book called Mind the Ghosts. You brought back the paperback from the house in Mecklenburgh Square. It belonged to either Ruby Cates or Toby Brooke.”

“Or both of them. No, it can’t be her. She’s in a plastic cast. She’s got a broken leg.”

“Except that Renfield never did check to see if it was really broken. Tell me which card you picked.”

May turned over the card and studied it.

“It’s the nine of clubs, yes?” said Bryant triumphantly.

“No. Mrs Bun the Baker’s Wife.”

“Bugger,” said Bryant, “I’ve mixed up the decks again.”

? Off the Rails ?

43

The Lure

DS Janice Longbright arrived at University College Hospital just as Tony McCarthy was emerging, limping through the swing doors. He waved her away as soon as he spotted her. “I just want to be left alone, okay? Don’t come near me. I don’t want no cops following me around all the time.”

“You’d rather have Mr Fox find you again?” asked Longbright, falling into step with him. “Next time he’s going to push that skewer through the soft underside of your jaw and up into your brain, assuming you have one. Is that what you want?”

“I can handle it.”

“How? Going to grow a moustache and dye your hair? Or have you got a gun at home? You’ll need it, because he’ll come after you again if you hang around his manor. Got somewhere else to go?”

“I can take care of myself.”

“You couldn’t take care of a spider-plant, Mac. Don’t you think the medical services are strained enough without them having to look after you?” She placed a strong hand on his skinny arm. “I think you and I had better go for a little talk.”

“I’ve got nothing to say to you.”

“You already admitted you know Mr Fox’s real identity.”

“No, I did not.”

Longbright looked into his bloodshot eyes. “Oh, you don’t remember, do you? Did they give you a bronchoscopy?”

McCarthy looked blankly at her.

“Did they stick a bloody great tube down your throat?”

“Yeah.”

She knew they had; she had seen the equipment being prepared on the day she visited the hospital. “It means you were dosed with a retro-amnesiac drug. You don’t remember anything, do you? You were whacked out on meds, Mac, that’s why you don’t recall shooting your mouth off about Mr Fox. Or should we call him Jonas Ketch? Thought you were being clever, did you, giving us a few clues about a prison teacher, when all the time you knew who he really was?”

That brought McCarthy to a halt. “You’re doing my head in, I don’t remember – ” he pleaded.

“I think you should be asking yourself why I’d even bother to save the life of a grubby little junkie like you.”

“I’m not using anymore – ”

“Pull the other one, Pinocchio. The worst part about being you must be waking up every morning and remembering who you are. Not that you’ll be waking up for much longer, with Ketch waiting to stick you.”

“What the hell do you want from me?” whined McCarthy, exasperated.

“Help me catch him and I’ll save your miserable, wasted little life,” answered Longbright.

¦

It was 2:14 on Saturday afternoon, a relatively busy time at the King’s Cross intersection, but today the Northern Line was seriously overloaded with passengers. Anjam Dutta set down his coffee and shifted his attention from screen to screen.

“We’ll have to shut Staircase C ahead of the rush hour,” he instructed. “And reroute the incoming Blacks across to Navy.” The safety-and-security team referred to the tube lines by their colours when they were working full-throttle. “What’s happening out there today?”

He studied the two cameras trained on the main ticket hall. “We’ve accounted for the Arsenal charity match and the Trafalgar Square rally – remind me what that’s for?”

“Something to do with global warming,” said Sandwich. “There’s an anti-fur demo in Oxford Street, but West