Three
A sickly sweet smell filled the air, which James Talbot recognised as burned flesh.
It was a smell not easily forgotten.
Six years earlier, when he’d been a Detective Sergeant, he’d attended a fire at a house in Bermondsey. Some old guy had fallen asleep and allowed his chip-pan to catch fire. The whole house had gone up in less than twenty minutes, and the old boy had been incinerated along with the contents.
Talbot remembered that smell.
Acrid, cloying. It caught in your nostrils and refused to leave.
The chip-pan fire had been an elaborate ruse to cover up a burglary. Two kids, no more than seventeen, had stolen what little there was of value in the house, then battered the old man unconscious and ignited the chip-pan to make it look like an accident.
Simple?
Except that they’d left fingerprints on the hammer they’d used to smash his skull.
Silly boys.
Both were doing a nine stretch in Wormwood Scrubs now.
It was that case which had secured Talbot’s promotion to the rank he now held.
The Detective Inspector walked slowly up the platform at Euston, which was clear but for a number of uniformed men: London Transport employees, police and ambulance men.
One of the Underground workers was standing on the track with two ambulance men and two constables, staring down at a blackened shape which looked more like a spent match than a man.
The train was gone. The line was closed. The power off.
Talbot could imagine the annoyance of other travellers delayed because of the incident.
Inconsiderate bastard. Throwing himself on the track. Didn’t he know people had homes to go to?
Talbot saw blood on the edge of the platform close to the tunnel exit. Large crimson splashes of it, congealing beneath the cold white lights of the station. There was more on the track itself. A large red slick had even spattered one of the advertising posters on the far side of the track.
The faces of a male and female model smiling out from a poster of Corsica looked as if they’d been smeared with red paint.
‘Discover the beauty’ screamed the shoutline.
A little further along, also lying on the track, was a briefcase, its contents scattered for several yards. Papers, typewritten sheets, pens. A Knickerbox bag.
Talbot stopped at the chocolate machine on the platform and fed some change into it. He punched the
button for a WholeNut but nothing happened. He hit it again.
Still nothing.
‘Shit.’ murmured the DI.
‘His name was Peter Hyde,’ a voice beside him said.
Talbot nodded but seemed more intent on wresting the chocolate from the machine.
He struck the button a little harder.
‘All that about the King’s Cross fire being started by a match’ said Talbot.
‘That’s crap.’ He eyed the machine irritably. ‘It was someone trying to get a bar of chocolate out of one of these fucking things.’
He slammed his hand against the machine.
The WholeNut dropped into the slot at the bottom and Talbot smiled, retrieved it, and held it up like a trophy.
‘See, that’s all they understand. Violence.’ He looked at Detective Sergeant William Rafferty and nodded triumphantly, breaking off a square of chocolate and pushing it into his mouth.
‘What else?’ the DI wanted to know, pacing slowly up the platform with his companion.
‘He worked for a firm of accountants in the City’ Rafferty told him. ‘Good salary. Married. No kids. Almost thirty-one.’
Talbot offered him a piece of chocolate but the DS declined.
‘I’d rather have a fag.’ he said, gruffly.
‘Smoking’s bad for you.’
‘Yeah, and so is eating ten bars of chocolate a day. You’ve been worse since you gave up smoking.’
‘Fatter but healthier,’ said Talbot smugly, patting the beginnings of a belly which was pushing rather too
insistently against his shirt. ‘Anyway, a bit of exercise will get rid of that.’
‘You’ll be like a bloody house-side before you’re forty’ Rafferty told him, smiling.
‘Four years to go, Bill’ Talbot murmured, pushing another square of chocolate into his mouth. ‘Thanks for reminding me, you bastard.’
They continued their leisurely stroll up the platform. ‘Why did the Transport Police call us in?’ Talbot wanted to know. ‘They don’t usually for a suicide.’
‘They’re not sure it was a suicide.’ ‘How come? Did someone see him pushed?’
Rafferty shook his head. ‘They just think-‘ Talbot cut him short. ‘It’s a suicide, Bill, take it from me’ the DI said, stopping and motioning behind him. ‘The bloodstains on the platform and track are right near the tunnel mouth. He wanted to make sure that if the live rail didn’t fry him then the impact of the train would kill him. Some of the dickheads who try and kill themselves down here jump from the middle of the platform. That gives the driver plenty of time to see them so he hits the brake and, nine times out of ten, the train doesn’t even hit them. Runs over them maybe. They might lose an arm or leg, get some nasty burns from the live rail, but that’s it. They jump from the middle because they’re not sure.’ He shrugged. ‘Same as the ones who cut their wrists, you know that. If they cut across the veins of the wrist they bleed slower. They want someone to find them. The ones that do it from elbow to wrist, now they’re not fucking about. They’re sure. So was Hyde, that’s why he went off near the tunnel mouth.’
‘We couldn’t get much out of the driver, poor sod’s still in shock,’ said the DS.
‘I’m not surprised. What about the other witnesses?’
‘We’re taking statements upstairs now.
Talbot nodded.
‘Even money he topped himself,’ the DI said, looking down at the group of uniformed men gathered around the body. They moved aside.
‘Shit’ muttered Rafferty, staring at the corpse.
The stench of burned flesh was almost overpowering now.
‘Where’s his right leg?’ Talbot wanted to know.
‘The train took it off at the hip, we found it ten yards further down the track.’ Rafferty replied.
‘I want a full autopsy report as soon as possible,’ the DI said. ‘And one other thing, Bill.’ Talbot pushed another piece of chocolate into his mouth, ‘someone had better tell his wife.’
Four
Catherine Reed felt sweat beading on her top lip. She tasted the salty fluid as she licked her tongue across it, her breath coming in gasps now.
Her long dark hair was plastered across her face and neck, the flesh there also covered in a sheen of perspiration.
She tried to swallow but her throat was dry, she could only manage a deep moan of satisfaction as the sensations grew stronger. She lifted her feet, wrapping her slender legs around the form above her.
Phillip Cross had his eyes closed, his own body and face covered in sweat as he kept up a steady rhythm, supporting his weight on his fists as he drove swiftly, deeply, into Cath.
‘Oh Jesus!’ she murmured, her legs gripping him tighter, her fingers now clawing at his back and buttocks as if to pull him deeper. ‘Go on. Go on.’
He opened his eyes and looked down at her pleasure-contorted face, an expression of joy etched on his own
