Bryant & May 08; Off the Rails

head.”

Fraternity looked more confused than ever. “No, I’m still not getting it,” he said, shaking off the idea.

“Let me see if I can explain.” Bryant opened Professor Hoffman’s manual of card conjuring. “I’ve been trying to learn the system of finding marked cards that’s recommended in this book, but I don’t have a mathematical mind. One way of doing it is to locate imaginary points on the backs of the cards. Hoffman teaches you to superimpose patterns over seemingly random choices. If you’re careful, you can divide the back of a card up into thirty different points. I look from the diamonds and hearts on the faces to the photos taken of the tube station seat covers, and every illogical cell in my brain starts to vibrate. But what exactly am I looking at?”

“I have no idea,” Fraternity admitted. “We didn’t do anything like this at Henley.”

“What happened to you there? Do you have any idea why you failed?”

“It couldn’t have been anything that occurred during the training period. My course-work was good and I got on just great with everyone.”

“Then it must have been somewhere else. Where did they put you out in the field?”

“I did two weeks at Albany Street station. That seemed to go okay.”

“Just okay?”

“Well, until the end at least. I was reporting to some uptight dude who seemed like he’d skipped a few stages of his diversity training.”

“He had a race problem?”

“No, not that. The inner city boroughs would collapse without a heavy proportion of ethnic staff. Besides, I got the feeling that if you really have issues you can get posted to an area where you only have to deal with your white brothers.”

“So what was it?”

“I was supposed to go for a drink with the team at the end of my last day, and my ex-partner came by unannounced. I was kind of embarrassed about that.”

“Why?”

“At the time, he was one of the principal dancers in Matthew Bourne’s production of Swan Lake.”

“Ah. Yes. I can see how that would do it.”

“Look, he was between performances and wanted to wish me well. You wouldn’t know – ”

“You don’t need to explain. Officers always know. Your mentor had championed you to the others and suddenly felt he’d lost face.”

“I guess that’s a possibility.”

“And he was in charge of your field report. Why didn’t you say something?”

“It would only have made matters worse. I didn’t feel comfortable talking about it. And I had no real proof.”

“I can look into this for you. Do you remember the name of your senior officer?”

“Sure. He was a sergeant. A guy called Jack Renfield. I tried to get in touch with him one time, but they told me he’d moved on. They wouldn’t say where.”

“I won’t be able to retroactively change your report,” said Bryant, “but if we survive beyond the end of the afternoon, I may be able to recommend you for a position here.”

Fraternity’s smile was sunlight after rain. “You really think that’s a possibility?”

“It would mean confronting Renfield. He’s at the Unit, you see. I’m surprised you didn’t bump into him. Albany Street was angry about losing Renfield to us; that’s why they refused to tell you where he went. You think the two of you could discuss the matter civilly, without any bloodshed?”

“Could I hit him once, maybe?”

“All right, but first help me with the cards. What am I missing here?”

“Okay.” Fraternity narrowed his eyes at the card backs, then glanced across at Professor Hoffman’s manual. “You’re learning how to mentally mark cards so you can track them through the pack, right?”

“Right.”

“And you got these seat patterns. Why would anyone take pictures of those?”

“To track something – somebody – from line to line.”

“That’s what I see. There are twelve underground lines, right?”

“Yes.”

“But you’ve got thirteen shots. This one isn’t a line. Okay, it’s a bit out of focus but it looks like red polka dots to me.”

Bryant mentally slapped himself. “That’s a close-up of the dress Gloria Taylor was wearing when she died.”

“Man, that’s a hell of a dress. She must have been the most noticeable woman on the tube that day.”

“Of course – it made her easy to follow. She got on at Bond Street and changed at Oxford Circus. Maybe the killer was with her all the way. It’s like tracking a playing card through the deck. He chose her because of the dress.”

“A sexual obsessive?” Fraternity suggested.

“Then why not simply touch her or try to strike up a conversation? Why push her down the stairs?” Bryant realised he could answer his own question. “She almost left the station, then turned around and went back. She’d forgotten her daughter’s birthday present. And then she was pushed because someone was angry with her. Angry that she didn’t go through the barrier and leave. You track the card through the pack. But the card lets you down, and you lose your temper and knock the cards over. Everything else that has happened is because of that one moment of anger.”

“It’s a game,” said Fraternity, looking at the fallen cards. “And someone didn’t like to lose.”

“What kind of stakes could be so high in a game that you’d actually shove a stranger down a flight of stairs?” He looked back at the pack of cards, and the upturned nine of clubs. “I marked that one so I could trace it through the pack.”

“Sorry, Mr Bryant, not with you.”

“You don’t mark a card the second before you turn it over. You mark it right at the beginning, so you can keep an eye on it through the shuffle. The killer didn’t put the sticker on Gloria Taylor’s back just before he killed her. He did it so that he could prove that she was the marked card. She wasn’t hard to keep track of in the tube crowds, because of the way she was dressed. But he had to show someone else that she was the victim. Matt Hillingdon’s phone was taken because it revealed the marked card. But the killer didn’t think to check his laptop.”

“I’m still not getting a clear signal from you, Mr Bryant,” said Fraternity. Getting used to Bryant’s way of thinking sometimes took decades.

“I need to run the security camera footage from Monday evening at Bond Street tube.” Bryant indicated that Fraternity DuCaine should grab the nearest phone. “Then I’ll know who killed Gloria Taylor.”

? Off the Rails ?

47

Roll

Here we go, thought Nikos Nicolau, counting down the seconds in the corner of his screen. This is going to be so damned cool. From team player to team leader at the touch of a button. The screen counter had stopped at 11,353, but if even a fraction of that number turned up he’d have proven his point. The bait-and-switch site had worked like a dream, setting up a flash mob that would last for four minutes, the duration of the song.

He waited until exactly 3:00 P.M. then hit Play. A video of the band opened onscreen, and the first power chord sounded. The band was called Shark Monkey (feat. Aisho DC Crew) and the song ‘Practically Perfect People’ had become a club anthem two years earlier, because the band members had taught the movements of their supremely vacuous song to the inmates of a South Korean prison. Since then it had replaced Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ as being the most imitated dance song ever to hit the Web. Even tiny kids in nursery schools knew the