Bryant & May 08; Off the Rails b&m-8

by Christopher Fowler

  “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 s
eemed 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.

  ∨ Off the Rails ∧

  50

  The Way Ahead

  The detectives were standing in the only magic shop actually situated in the London Underground system. Davenports Magic Emporium had existed for decades opposite the British Museum, but had now moved to one of the dead-end tunnels beneath Charing Cross Station. Few commuters know of its existence – why would they? – but its crimson curtains hid a world of misdirection, deception and amazement.

  Realising that card tricks were not his forte, Arthur Bryant was shopping for something bigger.

  “What are you looking for?” asked May.

  “I’m not sure,” Bryant replied, looking around. “Perhaps I could saw a girl in half, produce doves from unlikely places or explode my landlady.” Alma was hosting a charity lunch for the women from her church, and he was keen to provide her with a magic act, whether she wanted one or not.

  Daphne, formerly Radiant Lotus Blossom, assistant to the Immortal Mysterioso (available for weddings, bar mitzvahs and children’s parties) came over to demonstrate an illusion. “How are you with rabbits, Mr Bryant?” she asked. “I had to give up the old act because I put on a bit of weight and got stuck in the Cabinet of Swords a few times,” she confided, dropping a startled bunny into a glittery tube and running a sabre through it. “You can do this with a small child, providing they’re not easily moved to tears.”

  “I don’t think he should practise on anything living,” said May. “They might not stay living for long.”

  “And then of course the Immortal Mysterioso turned out not to be immortal after all. Bowel cancer. So I put away my spangly tights and came to work here.” Daphne held up the gold canister to prove that nothing had actually penetrated the rabbit. “It works on cats, too. Especially if you don’t like them. Could I interest you in X-ray goggles?” She pulled out what appeared to be a diving helmet with rotating spirals over the eye-holes. “Very popular for mind-reading acts.”

  “You always accuse me of being a bad judge of character,” said Bryant, poking May in the ribs, “but Theo Fontvieille bothered me from the moment I met him. He was too gaunt, too energetic. He made light of everything, acting as if nothing in the world ever touched him, but behind the banter there was a terrified child, screaming in the dark.”

  “That’s true, the first time I laid eyes on him he left me feeling uneasy,” May agreed. “But he kept his nerve, bluffed his way through and almost got away with it.”

  Bryant shook his head sadly. “I thought I’d finished my learning, but apparently not. Human nature is like an iceberg, mostly hidden from view. Imagine the terror of waking up every morning and remembering who you are, wondering how on earth you’re going to get through the day.”

  “You could say that of Mr Fox,” added May. “Or even of Mac. All of them were haunted.”

  “Well, those two were damaged by irreversible childhood traumas. Mr Fox couldn’t resist sending me a note, even though he knew it might bring us a step closer. Theo, though – he’s the most interesting. I honestly think he suffers more than any of them. Every time he wakes, he realises afresh that he has no soul, nothing inside that really cares for anyone or anything. You meet people like him all the time, the desperate players trying to cut one final deal that will make them rich and allow them to keep their kids in private schools.”

  “Perhaps I could just intervene?” said Daphne, trying to break up what sounded to her like a very depressing conversation. “We’ve got something new in involving a blowtorch and half a dozen squirrels that will make your eyes stand out like chapel hat-pegs.” She ran its instructions seductively up her arm.

  “Self-preservation is a very strong instinct,” May told Bryant. “Theo was quite happy to murder his friends if it meant he would survive. It’s almost as if he thought they wouldn’t mind giving up their lives for his.”

  “That’s just arrogance,” Bryant replied. “He genuinely thinks he’s worth more than the others. But at night the truth must surely rise to the surface and terrify him.”

  “Put your finger in here,” urged Daphne with a faint air of desperation. It had been a slow morning. Bryant did so distractedly, and she slammed down the guillotine on two carrots and the detective’s digit.

  “I’m not so sure Theo has quite that level of self-realisation. He’s the kind of man
who’ll go to jail and write endless newspaper articles about the experience afterwards. I wonder if that’s better – choosing never to wake from the dream.”

  “Life is all a dream,” said Bryant, smiling gently. “A wonderful, wonderful dream. The object is to make everyone else who shares it with you as happy as possible.” He slowly opened his hand. In his palm was the sparkling diamond ring.

  “An admirable sentiment,” May agreed, smiling back at his old friend. “Make sure you drop that into the evidence room. Come on, the weather’s supposed to clear up this afternoon. Let’s get out into the sunshine while we can.” He turned back to the disappointed magic assistant. “Thanks for the demonstration, Daphne. I think my colleague is going to try a different act. Perhaps he’ll take up tap dancing.”

  They left the magic shop arm in arm, laughing.

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