There were ninety-seven people on the roof of the Montparnasse Tower. The seventeen people looking in his direction when he lifted Rhoda over his head moved quickly through stage one to stage two. Their reaction spread to others on the rooftop. By the time the Boy had begun his run-up, thirty-four people were watching. No one moved. The usual, predictable reactions were exacerbated by how unusual the situation was. Rhoda's lack of resistance added a surreal extra element. Most faces had adopted an open-mouthed, wide-eyed look of horror, but a significant minority looked on with something more akin to idle curiosity. Perhaps they thought they were watching a reality tv show. The camera on Rhoda's phone was recording everything, but the intended audience of the video was one man.
Six paces. He accelerated from a standing start, twisting his body to hoist Rhoda like a human javelin. And, in keeping with appearances, Bedlam Boy drew the woman back in readiness for the throw. The glass barrier—ten feet high—was there to discourage any tourism-unfriendly suicide attempts. No one had considered the possibility of a very large, very strong man, throwing a small woman off the tower. It was quite an oversight by the architects.
Rhoda didn't scream. She fell in silence, lending another layer of surreality to the already unlikely scene.
In the pregnant seconds of awed shock that followed, the Boy retrieved the phone and walked to the stairs, shrugging off his jacket as he did so.
Chapter Twenty
Bedlam Boy had planned his exit, allowing an extra minute for unexpected contingencies. Happily, he couldn't have asked for a more accommodating group of onlookers. They moved aside as if choreographed.
With Rhoda's phone in his pocket, he walked to the central stairwell that led to the lifts and fifty-nine floors of stairs. He took off the hard hat, hanging it on a door handle as he passed, his scalp hidden under a blue bandana.
The first scream came as he opened the emergency staircase door with André's four-digit security code. André had also supplied the hard hat, and an excellent escape route. Bedlam Boy was very fond of André.
The stairs zig-zagged from the top of Montparnasse Tower to the bottom, twenty-four steps per floor, fifty-nine floors, fourteen hundred and sixteen steps in total. The Boy was fit, strong, and motivated. He averaged seven seconds per floor. Even that was too slow: six minutes total. Enough time for a lockdown until the police arrived. In that situation, Bedlam Boy's natural advantages - his height, bulk, strength, and intelligence, would be of little use to him. He would be identified and arrested. He needed a less predictable escape route.
The Boy sprinted down twenty-eight floors. Three minutes. No sirens yet. In the next few minutes, the security staff would run emergency protocols, dispatching a guard to locate what was left of Rhoda. The Boy had identified four locations where a body would be hard to spot from the street. Rhoda should have landed behind a display board advertising a Van Gogh exhibition.
They would find the body within five minutes, but the police would be on their way sooner.
As he climbed out of the window on the thirty-first floor, Bedlam Boy heard the first sirens. The wind whipped around his face as he jumped.
André managed a muffled scream as the Boy's weight caused the window-cleaning cradle to rock violently, a hundred metres above the concrete.
"Sorry. Were you sleeping? I tried to be as quick as I could."
This prompted another muffled sound from the blindfolded, tied and gagged man at his feet. The Boy picked up the coiled mountaineering rope and dropped it over the side.
He stripped off the grey boiler suit, revealing a dirt-encrusted sweatshirt of indeterminate colour beneath. The jeans he wore were equally filthy. He stepped into the harness he'd left, then clipped the carabiner to the descender, looping the rope through the metal device.
He put a small, tatty rucksack on his back and bent down to give André a friendly pat on the shoulder.
"Sorry about tying you up. They'll find you soon. I'm glad your English was better than my French. It's so hard to threaten someone in a foreign language. Oh, and thank you for the security code."
The trussed-up window cleaner replied with a series of incoherent grunts.
"True," smiled the Boy as if he understood perfectly. "But it might be better if you exaggerate when the police ask. Say I held a big, sharp knife to your throat. No one could blame you then. And I do have a big, sharp knife."
André squeaked.
"Au revoir to you too." He climbed over the side of the cradle, leaped into space, and rappelled the remaining distance to the ground in seventeen seconds.
Bedlam Boy unclipped the rope and ran to the street, ducking behind a shut-up news kiosk. He opened the rucksack, taking out a long, matted wig, dirt-brown streaked with grey. The bandana went around his neck, and he peeled away the non-stick side of the tape on his scalp before manoeuvring the wig into position. He rubbed his hands in the gutter and spread dirt over his face and neck. The final touch was the half-litre of gin in the rucksack. The Boy dabbed it on his neck like aftershave, then gargled a mouthful, before spitting it into his crotch.
Police cars and ambulances strobed coloured lights across the tower's entrance as tourists and locals honed in, desperate for information. The few people moving away from, instead of towards, the tower stood out. Bedlam Boy knew police officers would watch those few, ready to act.
He waited behind the kiosk until a cluster of old women hurried past. He tagged along behind them to the front of the tower where two gendarmes discouraged the growing crowd from getting closer and refused to answer questions.
Four police cars and one ambulance blocked the entrance. Inside the building, confused tourists with tickets for the roof, huddled in small groups, exchanging whatever morsels of information they had gleaned.
The Boy waited a few minutes until he could see the young gendarmes' patience turning to irritation. Two more police cars arrived, and the gendarmes shouted at the crowd to let them through. As the growing number of bodies closed back in behind the vehicles, the Boy pushed to the front, turned his back to the tower, the flashing lights, and the gendarmes, and began begging. He held out his grimy hands, cupping them together and muttering, "S'il vous plaît," over and over. When he reached the end of the line, he reversed, asking the same people a second time. A few complied, dropping coins into his palm, but most ignored him, wrinkling their noses in disgust at the smell. The gin combined with the dog shit the Boy had mopped up with the jumper produced a unique perfume.
The youngest gendarme acted just as the Boy had hoped. A third pass of the crowd, and a gloved hand landed on his shoulder.
"Monsieur! Vous cherchez quoi, exactement? Passez! C'est une scène de crime."
The Boy, his shoulders slumped, and affecting a limp, turned to the officer and gave him the full benefit of his gin-soaked breath, enjoying the flinch that resulted.
"S'il vous plaît?"
The gendarme pushed him away, wiping his hand on his trouser leg. Bedlam Boy disappeared into the crowd, which let him through more readily than they had the emergency vehicles. After counting to thirty, he pushed back to the front and repeated the procedure, working along the line towards the same gendarme.
The unwitting gendarme played his part perfectly, marching the Boy away from the tower, accompanying the brief journey with a stream of rapid French. The Boy's limited grasp of the language didn't prevent him from accurately interpreting the gendarme's meaning. He was to go away and not return. Should he return, he would be arrested. The Boy thought he was being described as a 'tantalising squirrel', but conceded that was probably a translation error on his part.
A last sharp shove in the direction of the Seine, and the young gendarme turned back to rejoin his colleagues at the tower, shuddering at having been so close to the stinking, incoherent beggar.
Bedlam Boy shuffled along the streets, smiling. In a skip alongside a scaffolded building, he retrieved the duffel bag he'd left under a layer of plaster and rubble. Five minutes l
ater, a tall, pony-tailed man emerged from the public toilets near Notre Dame. He wore olive chinos, a white shirt, and a corduroy jacket with leather patches on the elbows. Bedlam Boy checked his reflection in a shop window, wondering if the round John Lennon glasses were overkill. He looked like a geography teacher who'd mislaid his class. He laughed at his own reflection.
Back in his hotel, the Boy packed his few belongings and booked a ticket on the first train to London in the morning. He connected Rhoda's phone to the hotel Wi-Fi, scrolled down to Winter's name in her contacts, and sent the video he'd recorded on top of the Montparnasse Tower. Then he turned off the lights and pressed record again.
Chapter Twenty-One
Suvinder pushed his brush along the middle of the platform, flicking the dirt and debris of the afternoon and evening into a pile. Then he tilted the metal dustpan to open it, swept the rubbish inside, and deposited the result in the sack he dragged behind him. He took pride in keeping his end of St Pancras International station tidy, but that wasn't his current objective. He wanted to take another look at the frozen man.
Suvinder's earbuds were in place, but no self-improvement podcasts offered inspiration to his receptive mind. No music played. He wanted to hear if the frozen man said anything. So far, there seemed little danger of that. He hadn't moved a muscle in the last four hours.
The cleaner pushed his broom a little closer. Not too close, though. The frozen man scared him. He was huge, for one thing. And he carried his own, clearly delineated, atmosphere around him. The platform often got crowded as trains arrived, and passengers had occasionally headed for the far end of the station where the silent, immobile figure waited. But everyone who got within ten yards of the man experienced a sudden change of heart, avoided his bench, and allowed him to maintain his solitude.
Suvinder had come closer than most before succumbing to the same urge to divert. Close enough to experience the physical presence of the man. Also close enough to see the intelligent eyes staring straight ahead, unseeing, tears wetting his cheeks. For a moment, Suvinder had considered approaching the stranger. He believed it was important to show compassion to all. He was also, by nature, very curious. Another half step and the invisible energy coming from the frozen man increased threefold. He stopped. Compassion was all very well, but the famously curious cat had come to a sticky end which he'd rather avoid.
He had been struck by the agony on the man's face. Whatever might have led to this personal tragedy, Suvinder pitied this poor man. He had a noble quality, like a hero from an ancient myth.
With the crowds gone, and the station quiet, the silent figure became more eerie. It was getting cold. Surely the frozen man must have somewhere to go? He had luggage, a big rucksack on the bench beside him. Was someone supposed to meet him? Suvinder wondered if he were witnessing the end of a doomed relationship. An epic, operatic, doomed relationship.
He brushed some imaginary dirt over the lip of the platform onto the track, then swept his way back towards the bench. Apart from his size, nothing about the frozen man drew attention to him. He dressed in loose, grey tracksuit bottoms, and a hoodie. Old trainers on his feet, a black wool cap pulled over his head. Suvinder recognised the outfit, as he'd worn the same many times. Some people dressed that way to go jogging, or to lounge around the house. If you dressed like it every day, you were likely one of London's manual workers. Zero-hour contracts, long hours, low pay.
The invisible energy field wasn't there. Suvinder stopped short, far enough away to avoid any violent reaction should there be an unfortunate misunderstanding. The frozen man's bench stood between two overhead lamps, and their light didn't stretch to illuminating the heavy face.
Another step forward. The man's eyes were closed now, the broad chest swelling and falling with sleep. Good. A kind of peace, even if it could only be attained through exhaustion. The beginning of healing, perhaps.
The big head moved, dipping forward, then the body sagged like a discarded puppet. Suvinder jumped in shock. He wished the illumination was clearer, as, incredible as it appeared, he believed the frozen man was changing shape. Gone were the noble features, the agonised intelligence, the sense of danger. This was no apex predator to avoid. This was someone else. Someone broken; diminished. Someone Suvinder wasn't afraid to help.
"Sir?"
The man's eyes opened, looking around him in slow bewilderment before settling on the friendly, open countenance in front of him. He reached up to adjust his bandana. For half a second, Suvinder glimpsed a hard mass of scars on the shaved head.
"You were asleep, yes? Perhaps you missed your train. Can I help you?"
"Mm." A shake of the head. Then the man looked across at the station name board on the opposite platform, frowning.
"S-," he sounded out. "P - Pancras?"
"Yes, sir. St Pancras International station. That's right." Suvinder couldn't work out what had happened. He looked up and down the platform, as if to identify the frozen man's whereabouts. Because this couldn't be him.
When the man stood up, Suvinder took an involuntary step back. The lost look remained on the man's features as he moved, stretching out his legs, bringing some flexibility back to his numbed muscles. He reached into his pocket and pulled out some Euro notes, looking at them blankly. Then he tried another pocket and found a credit card holder. He produced an Oyster card.
"Tube."
"Yes. Let me show you. Don't forget your bag. Where do you want to go?"
"Mm. Mm. Soho, Soho."
"No problem. It's a five-minute walk to King's Cross. Take the Jubilee line to Oxford Circus. This way, sir."
Suvinder set off down the platform, checking to confirm that the man was following. The big man carried the heavy-looking rucksack as easily as if it were stuffed with bubble wrap. They followed the King's Cross Underground signs, stopping at the main glass doors.
Suvinder put a hand on the man's shoulder. He wouldn't have dared do the same twenty minutes ago. "Do you need help getting there? Are you okay?"
"Okay. Mm. Yes. Mm… thank you."
A shy smile, then he pushed the door open and headed out onto the street. Suvinder watched until he rounded the corner. He knew he'd just met someone extraordinary, but his emotional response—which one of his self-improvement podcasts had encouraged him to monitor—remained all over the shop.
Part of him wanted to hurry after the frozen man, make sure he was all right, as he seemed vulnerable and confused.
The other part of Suvinder, the part that won the silent argument at the ticket barrier, wanted to be far away from the individual who had sat on the bench for the past four hours. Because there was something compelling and terrifying about the frozen man. Something fundamentally wrong. Something that bypassed the frontal cortex, finding the most ancient part of Suvinder's brain and issuing a clear warning: keep away.
At a dinner party in Shoreditch, Winter excused himself, taking his phone outside. He hadn't been expecting to hear from Rhoda again, especially from this number. She'd used a burner when she'd called him last.
Her message had come in last night, but he hadn’t opened it straight away. Having to wait for his response might remind her exactly how far down the food chain she was.
He downloaded the message and pressed play on the video, which was sixteen seconds long. When it had finished, he played it again, paying special attention to the man who'd lifted Rhoda over his head like she was a sack of potatoes. After throwing her from the building, her killer walked directly past the camera before turning it off, holding his hand to shield his face.
Winter stayed where he was for a few minutes, his expression unreadable. He was a methodical man, and his response to what he'd seen would be measured and well-planned.
There were two more messages from Rhoda’s phone. The first was text only.
I have an audio recording that would interest you. I'm not in it, but you are.
So Rhoda hadn't been bluffing. That complicated things.
&nbs
p; The second message was another video, too dark to make anything out. Winter increased the brightness. Someone spoke. He started the video again, holding the phone's speaker to his ear. The voice wasn't speaking; it was singing.
Spirits white as lightning, shall on my travels guide me
The moon would quake and the stars would shake, when' ere they espied me
When the singing stopped, Winter took the phone away from his ear. Twenty-two seconds remained. He listened again. Silence, then a sound that lifted the hairs on his spine. A low chuckle. Then the voice of a dead man.
"Poor mad Tom. Poor, poor Tom."
Silence. The voice came closer. Like he was whispering in Winter's ear.
"See you soon."
Author’s Note
Thanks for reading. You’ll find the next episode of Bedlam Boy here: Bedlam Boy 2
For the occasional email about my books, news on Season Two, and an exclusive, free, Bedlam Boy story, visit The Las Vegas Driving Lesson
Thanks for supporting independent writers - I appreciate it.
Ian
Books by Ian W. Sainsbury
Thriller
The Forger & the Traitor Page 9