Off the Rails

∨ Off the Rails ∧

48

Maelstrom

The scene in the station was becoming nightmarish. The crowd had started dancing but there was no space to move, and their synchronised movements had quickly fallen apart. A party of schoolchildren was disgorging from the Victoria Line escalator, but the hall was so crowded that they could not pass through the barriers, and had become trapped halfway. Children were screaming and crying. The staircases were clogged with passengers unable to move in any direction. A sense of barely controlled hysteria was breaking out in the claustrophobic hell of the ticket hall.

John May could do nothing but watch. Longbright and McCarthy were nearest the barriers, and he could still see Ruby Cates fighting her way toward the tube escalators. Had she seen Theo Fontvieille nearby? And had either of them identified Meera or Colin? We’re all in trouble here if anything bad happens, he realised. He called Bimsley.

“There’s no way of getting anyone out, Colin, so they’ll have to force people down onto the platforms and get them to board outbound trains. Try to connect with the others. I want you all on this floor. If you go to a lower level I’ll lose radio contact with you.”

“Okay, boss.”

Arthur Bryant and Fraternity DuCaine made their entrance into the station via a staff elevator that delivered them into the ticket office. Anjam Dutta was there to meet them. The security officer looked stressed but in control.

“We’ve got crowds backed around the exterior of the station,” he explained, ushering them through an unmarked door and walking them to the surveillance room. “I’m trying to clear the exits but I can’t close them, because I need to get people up first. We’ve never had a situation like this before. Usually only a tenth of the population should be travelling at one time. But we think we found the source.”

“What is it?”

“Somebody arranged the staging of a flash mob in the station, but the induction site was pulled a few minutes ago.” He got a sweetly blank look from Bryant. “It was a passing fad some while back. People click on a site that reroutes them to a different destination, and that destination sends instructions to laptops, mobiles and PDAs, telling them to meet in a certain public place and dance to music played out as MP3^s. The craze died out after companies copied it to use as sales tools. We’ve got all our staff and the LTP trying to move the crowd. In general people have lived through enough terrorist alerts not to panic, but they’re getting pretty close to the edge right now.”

“We have PCU members out there tracking suspects,” Bryant explained. “Our leads may be connected with the situation you’ve got on your hands here.”

“You’re telling me there’s a murderer crowded in there with the general public? You’re supposed to be helping us, Mr Bryant, not making matters worse.”

Bryant looked up at the staff roster of security guards. Photographs of Anjam, Rasheed, Sandwich, Marianne, Bitter and Stone were arranged in a row on corkboard, their weekly duty roster marked beneath them in black felt-tip pen. “They’re all out on the floor right now?”

“Yeah, you can see Marianne near the District & Circle tunnel, and there’s Sandwich, by the lift. Stone’s over at the barrier.”

Bryant glanced back at the ID of the man the others had nicknamed Stone. He found himself looking at an earlier incarnation of Mr Fox. “When was that taken?”

“Two weeks ago.”

Bryant checked the fine print beneath the photobooth shot. Jonas Ketch. “He sat in on my briefing session with the security staff,” said Bryant. “Inattentional blindness. You have got to be kidding. He’s been here under our noses all the time?”

“And now he’s out there,” said May, who had caught the conversation. “Come on.”

The detectives pushed themselves into the crushing chaos of the crowd. “Janice,” May called on his radio, “brown leather jacket and glasses, to your right; Mr Fox is less than three metres away from McCarthy. You have to move that boy out of there.”

“I can’t, John, we’re stuck here.”

“Then we’ll come to you.”

♦

The flash mob song had come to a rowdy, ragged end, and the disappointed crowd was looking lost, not yet ready to disperse. Loudspeaker announcements were proving ineffectual in easing the constrictions.

Anjam Dutta could see the pressure points reaching maximum density. His mobile showed an incoming call from John May.

“We have to clear the hall fast,” May told him. “Can you open all the ticket barriers and leave them up?”

“There’s an electronic override, but it’ll lose the network a fortune. I have to have authority – ”

“Someone could get killed if you don’t. Just do it, Anjam. I’ll take full responsibility.”

Dutta released the safety guards and punched in the code that released all of the barriers simultaneously. The crowd surged forward, pouring through to the Victoria, Piccadilly and Northern Line escalators. At once, the pressure in the ticket hall began to ease.

Longbright saw Mr Fox standing on the other side of Tony McCarthy, elbowing his way between tightly packed bodies. “Mac,” she called, “he’s right behind you. Run.”

McCarthy panicked, and instead of going up to street level, he fled down in the direction of the escalators. Mr Fox broke his cover and ran after him.

♦

Ruby Cates reached the barriers just as they opened. She was swept through with the crowd, but managed to pull free and head toward the southbound Victoria Line platform.

“Hey, Ruby.” Theo was on the step below her. He turned and grinned. “I thought I saw you in the ticket hall. What was that all about?”

“Someone’s idea of a joke. I’m surprised no-one was squashed flat. Where are you going?”

“Oxford Circus. I want to buy some sneakers. How about you?”

“Victoria. I’m going to Brighton.”

“Who you got down there?”

“Just some friends.”

“How long are you going for?”

“Probably just for the weekend. I need a break.”

“You didn’t say you were going.”

“I decided when I heard about Cassie. There’s so much awful stuff going on, the police are hanging around the house, everyone’s on edge. I haven’t been able to concentrate on anything.”

They stepped off the escalator together. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you were getting out. I thought you were serious about us.”

Ruby look uncomfortable. She turned the ring on her finger, studying it too intently. “I’ve been thinking. I’m not so sure I want to be with anyone just now. I need some space to think, Theo. I’ll call you from Brighton, okay?”

“What happened to spending more time together? Listen, I could come down with you just for tonight. I don’t have to go into town. I don’t really need another pair of sneakers.”

“No, that won’t work. I’m staying with these people I know – ”

“Well, it seems to me like you’re running away. Are you meeting someone down there?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then why is it I don’t believe a word you’re saying?”

The platform had become overcrowded. The guards were warning everyone to stand back from the platform edge, as there was a train approaching.

“Tell you what. As a token of trust, give me that back.” Theo pointed to the diamond ring on the third finger of her right hand.

Ruby gave an awkward laugh. “Actually I was going to leave it on your bedside table this morning but I couldn’t get the damned thing off. It’s a little too small for me. This is my train.”

“Give me the ring, Ruby.” There was menace in his voice now.

“I told you, I can’t get it off.”

When he grabbed her arm she was so surprised that she momentarily lost her balance, and was almost pulled in under the arriving train.

♦

Longbright could see Mac bobbing and shoving ahead toward the red-and-silver train that was just opening its doors. Mr Fox – she could only think of him in the identity he had used to kill – was closing in fast behind him.

♦

Mr Fox felt a strange, cold serenity descend over him, a feeling that always seized him in the moments before he killed. He saw everything at a distance; down among all those scurrying little people was the pathetic junkie Mac, desperate to escape, searching a way out like a tube rat sensing a coming inferno. Sweat was leaking from his hairline, down his sallow, diseased cheeks. He looked badly in need of a fix.

Perhaps that was the answer; perhaps the entire interchange needed to burn again, to sear itself clean in a rising tide of flame. But no, that wouldn’t work now. Steel had replaced wood, smoke sensors and cameras lined the walls. And what would another conflagration resolve? The horror of the past could not be erased with a second atrocity. The memory of that terrible day could never be burned away.

Mr Fox allowed the silver skewer to slide down into his palm. He felt its cool heft in his hand, demanding to be used. Killing would calm him.

But now the doors of the Victoria Line train stood open, and Mac was free to board. If he did, Mr Fox knew he could lose the opportunity presented by the crush of the anonymous crowd. He stamped hard on a woman’s foot and shoved her aside, moving in to commit the act that would provide him with a temporary respite from the ever-present pain of remembering.

Just as he reached toward Mac, however, a tall student stumbled into his path. The student was grabbing at his girlfriend’s hand, trying to twist a ring from her finger, and the girlfriend had turned to slap him in the face. The crowd – mostly made up of old ladies, it seemed – pushed back with force, and suddenly they seemed to have linked arms so that there was a solid barrier of them across his path. It was absurd, but he could not pass between them to reach his target. He watched, stalled, as Mac jumped to safety, moving nimbly between the closing doors of the carriage.

Now the tall student was twisting the girl’s hand and even Mr Fox heard the snap of her finger, saw her scream, knew that some other drama was unfolding before him, but all he could see was Mac escaping, getting away to some place where he could talk to the police, and then he knew he had lost, lost it all, because of the old ladies and this damned student and his stupid lovers’ tiff, and the needle-sharp point of the skewer had risen in his hand as if moving of its own accord.

He slammed it down into the student’s arm and pushed, shoved it through the artery above his wrist until the point emerged from the other side. But he couldn’t get the skewer back out, no matter how hard he pulled.

The student released the girl and collapsed with a roar of pain. The old farts before him were suddenly replaced with familiar faces, and he saw that he was surrounded by members of the Peculiar Crimes Unit.

The centre of the group slowly opened to reveal the crumpled face of Arthur Bryant, closely followed by John May. The most humiliating moment came when a woman, the big blond detective sergeant they called Longbright, twisted the silver skewer from his grip and removed it from the victim, confiscating his beloved weapon.

From the day he watched the burning match tumble down the side of the escalator, a part of him had always prayed for this moment to arrive. With delicious anticipation, he waited to hear the words that would finally seal his fate.

Instead he saw Arthur Bryant look past him and announce, “Theodore Samuel Fontvieille, I am arresting you for the murders of Gloria Taylor, Matthew Hillingdon and Cassandra Field.”