Off the Rails

∨ Off the Rails ∧

49

Charismatic

“Two arrests before six o’clock,” Raymond Land was excitedly telling Leslie Faraday over the phone. “They’ve done it! No, I’ve no idea how. Nobody ever tells me anything. Oh, really? Oh, I thought you’d be pleased.” Land found himself looking into the receiver, a dead line burring in his ear.

This time, Mr Fox found himself locked in a cell at Albany Street police headquarters, and there was no way for him to escape – not that he wanted to. On the contrary, he seemed almost relieved to be behind bars, as if somehow the memory of those painful years between his destruction of the tube station and his return to killing had finally been laid to rest.

He refused to speak to anyone, and flinched when his features were recorded, fearful that his true face might be placed on display for all to gawp at. And gawp they would, for even as he lay curled in the corner of his cell, his jacket thrown over his eyes to shield them from the overhead cell lights that were never dimmed, the Home Office was leaking the story to the press.

Having been so protective of his true identity, Jonas Ketch, alias Lloyd Lutine, alias Mr Fox and a dozen other names, would now face his greatest fear – exposure of his most horrific, shameful secret. Thinking back to the moment when he ran sobbing up the escalator with the burning match in his hand, he buried his face ever more deeply within the cloth of his jacket, savouring these last few moments of darkness, knowing that the blaze of publicity would soon obliterate him, as the braying clamour of morons began.

♦

The PCU had dragged all the members of the Mecklenburgh Square household back to the Unit’s headquarters for a final showdown, and this time batteries of police recorders and cameras were there to cover the event. Theo Fontvieille had been stitched and bandaged, and was seated with plastic ties binding his wrists. The others found chairs or spaces on the floor where they could sit. The two Daves had been sent away, despite their protestations that they hadn’t had time to repair the hole in Bryant’s floor, but everyone else was in attendance, and it was Arthur Bryant, of course, who chose to take the centre stage.

“Well, it’s been quite a week for all of us,” he said, looking around, his blue eyes shining, “but tougher for some than others. Now that we’re all together, I think we should dispense with formalities for a while and talk about what happened.”

“We should be taking separate statements from each of them, sir,” said Renfield, “to prevent corroboration.”

“No, I think the only way to put this together is to hear everyone out,” Bryant contradicted. “They’re not in the mood to provide alibis for each other anymore.” He turned to the students. “So, let’s imagine we’re playing a game. I’ll be the Bank. Although strictly speaking, Mr Nicolau, you should be the Bank, shouldn’t you?”

Nikos stared awkwardly at the others, wondering how much he should say.

“Come, come, Mr Nicolau, this is no time to be shy. I imagine you were very excited when you came up with the idea for the game, weren’t you? All those nights spent online could finally be put to some use.”

Nikos cleared his throat and edged forward in his seat, conscious of the police cameras recording him. “Yeah, it was me who came up with it, but it was never meant to end up like this. I don’t know what Theo’s been up to because I had no part – ”

“Let’s just stick to the facts for now. We’ll have plenty of time later to ascertain everyone’s levels of involvement. Why did you come up with the game? When did you first think of it?”

“It began in the Karma Bar,” he mumbled. “A bunch of us were sitting around, and we were all complaining that we were broke.”

“We were talking about our student loans, and the rent and all the bills,” said Ruby. “I was always having to lend the others – ”

“Please, let’s stick to the point,” warned Bryant. “We’ll get to you in due course, Miss Cates. Go on, Mr Nicolau.”

“I said I thought we should try to make some money with online gambling. I knew a lot about statistics and had a few ideas for beating the odds. What I didn’t know was that he – ” here Nikos pointed angrily at Theo “ – had been gambling online for quite a long time. I explained to the others that the main problem was the number of players. You’re more likely to die in a plane crash than win most lotteries, because there are too many punters participating. I said if we could just keep the number of players limited, we stood a chance of making some real money. So we tried out the game for a few weeks, just accumulating small sums. Matt – Matthew Hillingdon – was the overall winner. But we realised that in order to make any decent amount of cash, everyone would have to put a lot more in the pot.”

“Who came in on the game?” asked May.

“There were seven of us at first. But Cassie dropped out because she didn’t want anything more to do with Theo. He had started sleeping with Ruby.”

“That’s not why she dropped out,” said Theo quietly. “She couldn’t raise her share of the stake.”

“So there were six players,” Bryant prompted.

“Yeah. We each put five grand in, but it still didn’t seem like enough if we were going for one winner.”

“You were all broke, yet you managed to raise five thousand apiece,” said May. “Obviously the definition of ‘broke’ has changed a little since my day.”

“My dad’s brother owns a chain of Greek restaurants,” Nikos said. “He’s a complete idiot. On the same day of every month he takes a suitcase containing around sixty thousand pounds to his bank in Paris, all cash. He goes on the Eurostar. So on Monday morning I set up a flash mob in St Pancras station to create a diversion, and while that was happening Theo robbed him.”

“It was like taking sweets from a very stupid child,” said Theo. “He kept the bag attached to his wrist with plastic binders.” He held up his own tethered wrist: “I just cut them with kitchen scissors while he was standing there watching everyone dance.” He sniggered, looking to the others for approval.

“So then we had a decent stake to work with,” Nicolau continued. “Ninety grand in all. I wanted to find two more players to make it an even hundred thousand, but Theo wouldn’t let me. He really wanted to keep his odds of winning high.”

“Yes, this image you perpetuate of the bored rich kid isn’t quite accurate, is it?” said Bryant. “You’d run up some serious gambling debts, your last business venture – property, wasn’t it? – had failed spectacularly, your car was repossessed – not stolen – and your family had cut you off without a penny.”

“You have no idea,” said Theo. “I’d surrendered my savings, I sold my watch, my pen, everything I owned, and replaced them with fakes. You have to keep up appearances. Some thugs in Shoreditch were going to come round and break my arms if I didn’t pay them by the end of the week.”

“Tell us what happened next.”

“Well, now that we’d raised a decent stake, we started playing in earnest,” said Nicolau. “Toby had been the previous week’s winner – six players, six days of the week – we drew straws to see who would get which day.”

“And it was my turn to play again on Monday,” said Theo.

“How long had you been playing?”

“This was week three. It’s an elimination game. We decided that each player should have three lives. If you were knocked out three times, you’d lose your stake and be out of the game. And I had two strikes against me. The winner of each week got what we called living expenses, until the final overall winner was decided.”

“Of course, Toby had to flash his cash about,” Sangeeta complained.

“I think at this point you should tell us what the game involved.” Bryant was striding about with his thumbs in his waistcoat like an old-time prosecutor. The image would have been more appealing if the waistcoat had not been held together with safety pins.

“We wanted to come up with something that wasn’t just based on luck,” said Nicolau. “We thought it should require some skill, bravado even. I was talking to a guy who worked for London Underground, and he told me about a game he’d heard of, a gambling dare you could play on the tube. You pick a stranger, text the amount of your placed bet, then follow the stranger on their journey, and whatever they do scores you points.” Nicolau was warming to his subject, forgetful of the fact that the game had ended in a series of brutal murders.

“I laid down the ground rules. First, you send a photograph of the line you’re going to play on – we’d taken shots of the seat livery in all the different carriages – then you photograph your mark – the person you’ve picked to bet on. To make sure there’s no switching, you also put a sticker on their back to tag them in your pictures. Then you film the different things they do, like reading a book or listening to an iPod – all of the activities score points – and you send the results to the next player’s mobile to verify it. Then you score more points for how many stops they travel, and if they get off at the station you’ve pre-designated, you win that day’s pot.”

“We weren’t allowed to talk to outsiders about the game,” said Toby, his head in his hands. “I had to borrow the stake money from my uncle. I don’t know why I got involved.”

“And with the aid of the robbery, you were able to up the ante,” said Bryant.

“It wasn’t a robbery.” Theo was utterly dismissive of the idea. “It was taking money away from a total creep who would have only spent the profits from his shitty little restaurants on gold bath taps and plasma screens for his stupid villa in Cyprus. And it was my turn to play. I went to Bond Street tube and saw this woman in a bright red polka dot dress, and knew at once that I’d be able to track her through the system without losing her, because she looked so different from everyone else. Man, it was a total winning streak – everything I suggested she would do, she did. I sent the photos and texts to Matt’s phone – he was going to be the next player – and told him that I staked her destination as King’s Cross. I’m good at reading people. I was sure she would get off there, and she did. I followed her up the escalator to the ticket barrier, and just as she got to it, the bitch turned around and went back down.

“Well, in that one second I lost everything. Three strikes. I crashed out of the game, all because she wouldn’t take another two stupid paces through the barrier. I don’t know what happened – I just nudged her in anger, I couldn’t control myself – and I was amazed to see her fall down the stairs. She was wearing these really high heels. So I just kept going as if I hadn’t seen, as if it was nothing to do with me, and caught the first train that came in. I was in a suit and tie. Nobody looked twice at me.”

“Jesus, Theo.” Rajan and Toby were staring at him in horror. Ruby, nursing her broken finger in the corner, remained sullen and silent.

“You don’t understand how frustrating it was,” Theo told them. “It was kind of an accident.”

“Not if you pushed her!”

“Yeah, but I didn’t mean her to die.”

“Let’s move on,” coaxed Bryant. “What happened after that?”

“I thought no-one would find out, but when I got home I remembered I’d sent all my photos to Matt. That woman was all over his phone and laptop. I had some time, though, because the story didn’t get picked up and none of the others knew what had happened. I saw a way that I could still come out on top. Matt came upstairs and told me he had seen the pictures, so he knew I had been eliminated from the game. I made light of it, bluffed it out – I’m a very good poker player.”

“Yeah, he only lies when he opens his mouth,” muttered Ruby.

“On Tuesday night, I took Matt out for a drink with the intention of getting him slaughtered, although he was already half-cut when he turned up. We hit a bar in Spitalfields – there are so many around there and they’re all so crowded that I knew no-one would remember seeing us. I’d taken his asthma spray and switched it with one filled with tobacco tea. Then I gave him the spray and waited for him to get sick, but it took longer than I’d expected. Earlier that day I went around the tube station and checked the cameras, and I could see that a couple were out, but I figured it would be more luck than judgement if I got away with it, because I wouldn’t know exactly where he’d collapse. The most useful thing was that Matt trusted me.”

My God, thought May, looking into Fontvieille’s dead eyes, he really sees nothing morally wrong with what he’s done.

Theo was anxious to explain, and appeared to be enjoying himself. “It was all pretty simple stuff. I switched coats with him, then he started to pass out behind one of those great big caged fans they’ve placed in the tunnel entrance. I was pretty sure it was a blind spot and the cameras couldn’t pick him up. And I’d been careful to keep my distance from him ever since we’d left Liverpool Street. I even sat on the escalators while he stood, so I wouldn’t be seen. I heard the train approaching, so I left Matt and ran for it. I’m only an inch taller, and in Matt’s hat and rainbow coat I figured I’d look like him from behind. I jumped onto the train but shut the coat in the door – I hadn’t realised how long it was – but when the doors opened I had a better idea. I went to the other end of the carriage, got off and headed for the last Northern Line train.”

“You’d prepared a lot more than that, though, hadn’t you?” Bryant suggested.

“Yeah, I’d taken Matt’s travel card – we used regular tickets ‘cause they couldn’t be traced – and I left it in Toby’s room. And I wrote Ruby’s name in his library books, just to confuse things further. But the best part went wrong. Before I met up with Matt, I drove to the Buddha Bar with Cassie and made a big deal about leaving the Porsche outside. Everyone remembers that car because of the personalised licence plate. I wore my matching red scarf and made sure they all noticed me. I figured I’d go out, meet up with Matt and come back at the end of the evening, and everyone would be so wasted they’d tell anyone who asked that I’d been there all night. Only as I got out of the car, I locked my bloody keys inside it.

“Then I remembered an old trick. If you lock your keys in your car and you’ve got spare keys at home, all you have to do is call someone on their mobile from your mobile. You hold yours about a foot from your car door and have the other person press the ‘unlock’ button, and it opens your door. So I called the house and Ruby answered the phone. I was kind of in a panic and I think she sensed that. Didn’t you, Ruby?”

“Don’t involve me, you scumbag,” she warned. “Everything you said, everything you ever told me was a lie.”

“Hey, it’s what I do.” Theo grinned at her. Incredibly, it seemed he was comfortable making jokes.

“Go on,” said May.

“I asked Ruby to help me unlock the car, and knew I’d compromised my alibi. So I thought to hell with it, and I asked her to say she saw me come home earlier than I did. I knew she was nuts about me, so I was kind of in the clear. I got to the bar to meet Matt – he’d already had a massive head start drinking with some old mates from Nottingham – but he still wasn’t drunk when we left. I had to wait a few minutes for the booze to kick in. I got him out of breath at King’s Cross and persuaded him to use the spray, went back to collect the car and then headed home. I had the evidence from Matt’s mobile, and no-one would ever suspect a thing. Plus, it looked like the money would default to me, because the game had to be stopped if the next player couldn’t take their turn. In this case, the next player had died – or at least, gone missing – I hadn’t expected him to crawl off like that. There were two small problems I needed to deal with, though, because you guys were starting to sniff around the house.

“First, Nikos was still holding the cash, and I knew it would be found if the house was searched. So he came up with a good idea – he went to some jeweller’s in Hatton Garden and used the money to buy a ring. You know what Jews are like, they see wads of money and don’t ask questions.” He smiled ingratiatingly at everyone, making Longbright’s skin crawl. “And to keep Ruby sweet, I told her she could wear it – to prove how sincere I was, you know?

“Everything had fallen back into place. I mean, obviously we couldn’t play on with you watching us, so the game was declared over. The others were furious, but like I said, we’d put a clause in the rule book saying that in the event of a force majeure the last high score would take the pot. I could claim the ring and pay off my debts.”

“But they had no proof that you were the winner,” May pointed out.

“Yeah, they did, because by then I’d had time to make a nice little edit of the photos. I just said I didn’t know where Matt had gone. I kind of implied he’d found out about me and Ruby, and had stormed off. But Ruby didn’t believe me. And then Cassie figured it out.” Theo shook his head, irritated by the thought. “Because you went to see her about the damned stickers. She knew one had been placed on the back of a woman who’d died on the tube – you told her. And she told me she knew I was involved. That girl – it was one of the reasons we broke up – she could always see right through me. I asked her what she was going to do about it, and she said she didn’t know. She wanted to talk to an old friend of hers, a lawyer. I knew then that Cassie had to be removed. I followed her to Greenwich – I was still wearing Matt’s coat because I’d put my black leather Marc Jacobs original on him and I didn’t want to get my clothes dirty – but I didn’t find a chance to get her alone. I kept trying to think of a way to kill her, but it was really difficult coming up with something good, you know?”

“You managed it, though.”

“Oh, yeah. I stayed outside the flat, watching as the pair of them got drunk, but I couldn’t tell whether Cassie had told her about me. I couldn’t see properly from outside. I wasn’t about to kill the friend as well – I mean, where would it have stopped? But then Cassie went back to the Westcombe Park station, and there was nobody on the platform. It was too good an opportunity to waste. By this time, I could tell that your investigation was falling apart, because it was so easy to provide a vague alibi.”

“So you pushed her onto the line.”

“Well, I’d managed to kill a complete stranger just by nudging her, so I figured it should work again. I couldn’t think how to guarantee that she’d fall, but then I saw the steel frame of the waiting room door, and it was just like going to the gym.”

“And you implicated Miss Cates by leaving behind a piece of her plastic cast.”

“I thought that was a nice touch, yeah? I came up with lots of cool little touches like that, but I don’t suppose anyone even noticed. I had to deflect attention away from myself, obviously. The last thing I had to do was get the diamond ring back from Ruby – it had seemed like a good idea to have her look after it. But then the little bitch did a runner and pretended she couldn’t get it off her finger.”

“Nice, Theo,” said Ruby softly. “You really are a piece of work.”

“Who told you about the game?” Bryant asked Niko.

“I was talking to some guard at King’s Cross,” said Nicolau, “and he told me about it.”

Bryant shot his partner a meaningful look, as if to say I suspected as much.

As the students started squabbling with Fontvieille, John May turned to his partner. “All right, I give up. How did you get to him? What made you sure it was Theo?”

Bryant looked over at Fraternity DuCaine and grinned. “Once we realised it was a game, the rest was easy. You see, it was a cheat.”

“What do you mean?”

“Fraternity and I looked at the players, then took a guess at the type of game they were playing. We saw at once that if it was something that required social skills, then the game was rigged. I mean, look at them. Ruby hobbling about with a cast. Toby, a borderline stalker and a hopeless closet case, which was why he spotted Jack Renfield following him – ”

“You mean he thought I was trying to pick him up?” said Renfield, utterly horrified.

“That’s why he was so cagey about where he went at night,” said Bryant. “So, Ruby was incapacitated, Toby was crippled with shyness, Rajan was downright unpleasant – forgive me, Mr Sangeeta, but you do surely lack social skills – and Nikos was simply unprepossessing. There was only one person in the group whom strangers would truly be comfortable next to.”

“Are you telling me that was all you had to go on?”

“It made sense. Mr Fontvieille here kept mentioning his wealth, but it didn’t ring true. Look at him – he looks like he hasn’t slept for a month. So I ran a check on his car and found it had been repossessed, not stolen. We called his parents and heard about his history of getting into debt. And we checked the security footage at Bond Street tube. Lo and behold, there was Theo, following Gloria Taylor down into the station. Once we had the basic idea, it only took minutes to sort out what had happened. We followed the joker in the pack. Then, when we saw the station besieged by fans of Mr Nicolau’s website, I enlisted Dan’s help.”

“What do you mean?” asked May, puzzled.

“Well, I needed to protect our staff, didn’t I? We had two murderers both on the move in a tight, crowded space, so I asked if he could use the same technology to help us.”

“I downloaded one of Mr Bryant’s databases and sent an urgent text to everyone on it. We thought they’d be in the area.”

“What was it?”

“Friends of the British Library,” said Banbury. “They’re running a series of events just down the road.”

“Textiles and tapestries of the Middle Ages,” added Bryant.

“You mean Mr Fox was stopped by ladies from a knitting club?” said Renfield.

“They’re tough old birds,” said Bryant, patting his pockets. “I wouldn’t want to mess with them. Well, I think it’s time for a pipe. Can I leave you to finish up here? If anyone needs me, I shall be out on my verandah, contemplating the evils of the world.”

Everyone started talking at once. “All right, you lot,” shouted Raymond Land, holding up his hands. “Let’s have some peace and quiet. You might want to start thinking about your statements.” He wagged his finger at Fontvieille, who appeared suddenly exhausted. “You’re not so clever now, are you, sonny? You obviously didn’t reckon on the sheer professionalism of a crack investigation unit.”

Land took a step back and vanished down the hole in the floor.