Bryant & May off the Rails

by Christopher Fowler

  The atmosphere in the room had changed. Bryant’s questions were forcing the residents to justify their actions. He wondered how he could push them further. ‘Which just leaves Miss Cates and Mr Brooke.’

  Ruby spoke first. ‘I went for a quick drink at the Karma Bar with two girlfriends. You can talk to them if you want; they’ll vouch for my whereabouts.’

  ‘You didn’t see Mr Nicolau?’

  ‘Maybe we were there after him. We didn’t get there until nine, about the same time Cassie arrived.’

  ‘And after that, Miss Cates?’

  ‘I came back here for a while, then went off to meet Matt. As you know.’

  Toby cleared his throat. ‘I, uh, went to see a film in Leicester Square.’

  ‘Which film?’

  ‘A horror movie, Buried Alive.’

  ‘Oh, how was that?’ asked Nikos, perking up.

  ‘It was pretty rubbish. I fell asleep, don’t even remember what it was about.’

  ‘The film would have finished at, what, ten-fifteen, ten-thirty? What did you do then?’

  ‘Ten-fifteen or thereabouts. I just came back here.’

  ‘Toby, you didn’t get here until just before two,’ said Theo. ‘I heard you come in.’

  ‘What did you do in the meantime?’ Bryant asked.

  Toby shifted uncomfortably. ‘It wasn’t that late.’

  ‘I wouldn’t swear to it, mate, but I think you’ll find it was,’ said Nikos.

  ‘I went for a beer, then walked back here. I wasn’t in any rush.’

  ‘Where did you go for a beer?’

  ‘A pub on the way. I don’t remember.’

  ‘Nobody really hears who comes in when we’ve got our doors shut,’ explained Ruby, in an effort to ease the tension. ‘Not unless someone’s really drunk and noisy.’ She shot Theo a look. ‘Why don’t we show you Matt’s room?’

  Bryant climbed the stairs to the second-floor landing. Ruby went ahead and pushed open the door in front of him. ‘I haven’t touched anything.’

  ‘Give me a minute. I just need to look.’

  ‘Sure.’ Ruby looked uncertain, and remained on the landing, chewing a nail. Bryant wished he had brought his Crime Scene Manager, Dan Banbury, with him. He saw a mess of a bedroom, towers of books on an unmade bed, three pizza boxes, old newspapers, clothes strewn across the floor. It was impossible to know where to start. In order to arrange a meeting with his mysterious friends, Hillingdon could have used his phone, which he probably still had on him, his laptop, which was here, or half a dozen other food- and beer-stained communication devices. Then again, he might simply have bumped into an acquaintance at college. London may be the surveillance capital of the world, thought Bryant, but running a trace can be just as tricky as it’s always been. He had a good rummage in Hillingdon’s bedside table, then poked through the clothes in his closet.

  This year’s student fashions appeared to involve tiny grey cardigans and checked shirts that made the wearer look like a premature grandfather. Perhaps my clothes are finally fashionable, he thought without much conviction. There was nothing illegal or even vaguely interesting to be found here. He considered impounding the laptop, but needed to get Hillingdon officially registered as a missing person first. Disappointed, he was about to leave when he saw the Post-it note stuck on the back of a book entitled Future Paths: Urban Development and Public Transport. It read ‘PAY TOBY BACK.’

  ‘Is this Mr Hillingdon’s handwriting?’ asked Bryant. Ruby came in and checked the note.

  ‘I think so.’

  They descended to the front room, where the group was breaking up. ‘Just a moment,’ cautioned Bryant. ‘Mr Brooke, why did Matthew Hillingdon owe you money?’

  Toby Brooke could not have looked more guilty if he’d been caught drowning a sack of puppies. ‘I lent him some,’ he answered lamely.

  ‘How much exactly?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘Try to haphazard a wild guess.’

  ‘Seventy-five quid.’

  ‘Did he say what he needed it for?’

  Brooke would not meet his eye. ‘No.’

  ‘Go on, then, bugger off,’ snapped Bryant. ‘But I know you’re lying, and I’ll be watching you.’

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Observations

  You did what?’ asked May, incredulous.

  ‘I fingerprinted them,’ said Bryant, pleased with himself.

  ‘Why would you do that? They’re not even suspects.’

  ‘A student vanishes from the underground system—more specifically, he vanishes in the same station where we suspect that a psychotic killer may be hiding out—and those closest to him can’t come up with a single reason why this could have happened. Mr Fox doesn’t select victims at random. I haven’t been able to find any link between Gloria Taylor and Matthew Hillingdon, but if either of them had a connection with Mr Fox and was unfortunate enough to run into him in the tube, we’d have cause and effect. And perhaps those students hold the key to his disappearance. Plus, we might get lucky from the partial. Dan’s running it right now.’

  ‘Hm.’ May was far from satisfied. ‘How did they react to you?’

  ‘Oh, the usual bluster, deflection, sarcasm and showing off. Underneath the displays of bravado they’re just your average annoying college students. Their alibis aren’t exactly watertight, either. Fontvieille’s the only one I’ll be able to verify. Sangeeta ate alone, Brooke was at the movies, Nicolau swears he was in his room and Cates was waiting by herself at Russell Square station. Oh, and I saw another book similar to the one you showed me, called Haunted Underground. It was lying on the table by the window, but nobody seemed to know who it belonged to. The girl Ruby didn’t recall seeing it before, but it has her name written on the flyleaf. There was something else, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on … an atmosphere of tension. It felt as if somebody in that room was keen on keeping certain bits of information hidden from me.’

  ‘Are you sure it wasn’t just your natural suspicion of the young?’

  ‘I delight in the young folk, as you well know.’

  May tried not to show his amusement. Bryant would have more easily been able to describe and date the architectural details of their house than recall anything about the five students he had just spent an hour with.

  ‘Well, come on, then. I don’t suppose you did any better. What did you spot that I missed?’

  ‘Specifically? Okay, here are some of the notes I made. It’s just the group’s emotional background.’ May produced the little black leather notebook Bryant had given him for Christmas and opened it. ‘Ruby Cates may well be dating Matt Hillingdon, but she’s in love with the rich boy, Theo Fontvieille. Her pupils dilate every time she looks at him. She knows more than she’s telling. Then, as you say, there are the highly suggestive books.

  ‘There are other undercurrents; Rajan Sangeeta feels the same way about Ruby. She’s the only one he’s not defensive with, and he always backs her up. Perhaps he made his feelings known and she rebuffed him; it might explain his spiky attitude. The rich boy is also worshipped from another quarter; Toby Brooke lowers his eyes whenever he speaks to Theo, and meekly accepts his criticism. This is probably a class issue, because Toby is constantly being reminded that he’s the only working-class member of the household, and looks up to Theo even when he’s being insulted. He has a chip on his shoulder almost as large as Sangeeta’s. Theo doesn’t care about breaking hearts. He looks after number one, Theo Fontvieille. Theo used to date Cassie Field but now they’re just friends. He still meets the others at the bar, which hurts her.’

  ‘Well, that very impressive—’ Bryant began.

  ‘I haven’t finished yet. Nikos Nicolau is obviously besotted with Cassie Field, but she’s repulsed by him. By the way, according to Nikos, Ruby is so competitive with the other flatmates that it’s making her bulimic. She gives herself away by making elaborate excuses for her disappearances after mealtimes. The household is
in debt, because there’s a stack of unpaid final bills in the kitchen. Presumably Theo could help everyone out and lend them some cash, but he chooses not to, so everyone borrows from Toby, who appears to have suddenly come into money in the last few days. He’s entirely dressed in new clothes, the price tags for which are in the kitchen wastepaper basket. He’s also sporting a brand-new laptop that only went on sale at the Apple Store at the beginning of this week.’

  ‘You got all that from one fifteen-minute visit to their flat?’ Bryant was staggered.

  ‘They interested me,’ said May, simply.

  ‘Hm,’ harrumphed Bryant.

  ‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’

  ‘No. I suppose you were very thorough, in your own way.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Nothing. You’re like some kind of gossip columnist. I don’t pick up stuff like that. And you missed an extremely interesting piece of evidence.’ Bryant enjoyed knowing something no-one else had noticed.

  ‘All right,’ May said, sighing, ‘out with it.’

  ‘Well, there’s the business of the Oyster cards. Travel passes are oddly personal things. If you’re a student and keeping an eye on your money, I imagine you know exactly how much you have left on your card. I took a look around Matt’s bedroom. In a household where there are students sharing the same kitchen, you might have your own shelf in the fridge, but you keep the important stuff somewhere close to your bed.’

  ‘I can see that. What’s your point?’

  ‘Matthew Hillingdon was travelling back from Spitalfields to meet Ruby. So why was his Oyster card in Toby Brooke’s bedroom?’

  ‘How do you know it was his?’

  ‘He’d written his initials, MSH, across the top in felt-tip.’

  ‘I hope you didn’t take it.’

  Bryant opened his hand to reveal the card. ‘Of course I did. Let’s find out where he went.’

  TWENTY-NINE

  Night Crawler

  They seemed to be spending more and more time below-ground, as if the labyrinthine network of Victorian tunnels was sucking them down from the surface, away from cold natural light, into musty foetal warmth.

  The detectives found themselves back in King’s Cross station, in the dimly lit guards’ staff room with Rasheed, Sandwich, Marianne, Bitter and Stone. The station was between rush hours, but to the untrained eye the concourse traffic seemed just as populous. Sandwich had taken a reading from Matthew Hillingdon’s travel card and was now checking the codes. ‘Here you go, he used it on Tuesday night at 6:25 to go from Euston Square to Old Street,’ he told the detectives.

  ‘He’d been researching at the UCL library, so his nearest tube would have been Euston,’ Bryant told his partner.

  ‘The card was used again at Liverpool Street, 11:57 P.M., but it wasn’t swiped out.’

  ‘He changed at King’s Cross—that’s where he texted Cates—and should have used the card again to exit from Russell Square. He has to be in the tube system somewhere.’

  ‘I told you, the night shift covered every foot of the tunnel between here and Russell Square, but found nothing.’

  ‘What about the terminus? Did someone examine the train at Uxbridge?’

  ‘It was a Heathrow train, so it stopped at all five terminals. It’ll be an expensive business checking all the logs.’

  ‘We know he got on board, and disappeared sometime before its next stop.’

  ‘But it’s imposs—’

  ‘Don’t.’ Bryant squeezed his eyes shut and held up a warning forefinger. ‘Just don’t say that.’

  ‘Hillingdon went drinking in the East End with someone,’ May reminded them. ‘We could search the station footage at Old Street and Liverpool Street, see who he was with.’

  ‘There’s no reason to assume he was accompanied on the train journey,’ objected Bryant. ‘He came over to King’s Cross, changed platforms and went down to the Piccadilly Line to go to Bloomsbury.’

  ‘Then how did his travel card mysteriously reappear in his house? We’ve got enough to bring in Toby Brooke for questioning. You said yourself Brooke’s alibi doesn’t hang together. Suppose they went drinking, had a fight and Hillingdon got concussed, woke up with amnesia somewhere? Brooke could have stolen his pal’s card to prevent his exit from the tube system being registered.’

  ‘Surely he would have thrown it away rather than hang on to incriminating evidence?’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t know something was going to happen to his friend. Maybe Hillingdon went off with another girl and Brooke was helping him to hide the indiscretion from Ruby Cates.’

  ‘Matthew Hillingdon texted his girlfriend moments before running for the train!’ Bryant all but shouted.

  Anjam Dutta attempted to defuse the situation. ‘I sent Rasheed here to go over the footage again,’ he said, ‘and the platforms were all empty within moments of the last train going. But there’s something—’

  ‘Me and Marianne, we told you about the man in the tunnels who looks like a crawling leathery bat,’ Rasheed gabbled, ‘and I know it was just a story an’ that, ’cause there’s no such thing as giant bats in the tube system …’

  ‘Are you all right?’ said Bryant, almost concerned. ‘Perhaps you should eat less sugar.’

  ‘It was a silly story about something the guards said they’d seen in the tunnels, Mr Bryant,’ Marianne reminded him.

  ‘Yeah, we got something that looks like proof now, from two nights ago, the night your bloke went missing.’

  ‘Wherever there’s darkness there are ghost stories,’ Bryant conceded. ‘So what are you saying, that you’ve actually seen this creature for yourself?’

  ‘Better than that,’ Rasheed told him. ‘We have footage. Mr Dutta was going through the hard drive checking it again and he found this.’ Rasheed searched beneath the burger wrappers on the desk. ‘Where did you put it, Sandwich?’

  ‘Sorry, mate, I was using it as a coaster.’ Sandwich pulled the disc box out from beneath his tea mug. Rasheed wiped it down and inserted the disc in the optical drive beside his desk.

  ‘The footage is very dark because half of the lights are out,’ he apologised. ‘When the old Thameslink station shut down and moved over to St Pancras, they left the tunnels open because the maintenance crews still need access to the trunking at night. Most of the CCTVs have been decommissioned because there’s no-one down there anymore. A couple of cameras are still used for fire prevention, but they’re pretty dirty and have no burned-in time code. We know this footage was shot late on Tuesday night, though, because the cameras are still programmed to record at set times, and there’s an electronic log. Here we go.’

  Rasheed hit Play, and they all watched the screen. At first it was difficult to make out what they were seeing. ‘That’s the tunnel wall, on the right.’ Rasheed tapped the screen. ‘Now watch the floor.’

  On the monitor, a white flap tumbled and fluttered. ‘That’s just a sheet of newspaper. You feel the wind in the tunnels more at night.’ In the murky brown corner of the screen, something appeared to be crawling slowly along the floor.

  ‘See it?’ asked Rasheed. ‘It’s too big to be a dog or anything like that.’

  A tingle ran across Bryant’s skin. The thing was scuttling like a crab, trying to claw its way up the wall, only to fall back. It had a shiny black carapace like an enormous wrinkled beetle, but there was no way of making out any details. ‘What on earth could it be?’ he asked, leaning forward.

  Bitter suddenly spoke up. She opened her mouth so rarely and spoke so softly that everyone found themselves listening intently. ‘It’s the Night Crawler,’ she told them. ‘People say it’s the ghost of a dead man, but it’s not.’

  ‘Then what do you think it is?’ asked May.

  ‘A vagrant. When we turned off the electrical supply to the tunnels, we created an ideal hiding place for outcasts. There are people living down there, but you’ll never find them. Not without a guide. We can’t cap of
f the tunnels, see.’

  ‘It makes no sense,’ Bryant insisted. ‘Why would a bright, successful student with a great future ahead of him stage a disappearing act to live in an unlit network of tunnels with a bunch of homeless people?’

  ‘If that’s what he did, he must have been very frightened of something,’ said May. His finger traced the crawling creature on the screen as it twisted and evaporated. The pixels split into rainbow prisms and the screen crackled into darkness once more.

  THIRTY

  Lost Tribe

  The asymmetrical complex of towers, gables, dormers, chimneys, spires and angled arches that comprised the old redbrick Cruciform Building had been abutted by the vast white façade of the University College Hospital. Together, the two medical centres, one Victorian, one millennial, dominated the streets around Euston. Meera Mangeshkar and Colin Bimsley arrived on the hectic third floor at the hospital just before five P.M. Naimh Connor, the duty nurse, took them to Tony McCarthy’s bed.

  ‘How’s your arm, Meera?’ asked Connor. ‘Fully healed? You didn’t come back to get signed off.’

  ‘I took the sutures out myself,’ said Mangeshkar. She had recently received a minor injury in the course of duty, and regarded anything less than twenty stitches as something not worth mentioning. ‘How’s he doing?’

  ‘He’s on heavy medication for pain management. I’d be in favour of keeping him that way, to be honest. He’s nothing but trouble when he comes off his methadone program.’

  ‘You’ve had him in before?’

  ‘He’s turned up on my emergency room shift a few times.’

  ‘Is he ever with anyone?’

  ‘Gentlemen with anger management issues like Mr McCarthy here don’t have too many friends,’ answered Connor. ‘No-one’s tried to see him. You can have a word. Hope you get more out of him than I do.’

  Mac was propped on a stack of pillows with a white plastic OxyMask fixed to his face. His right wrist was strapped to the bed-rail to prevent him from pulling out his saline drip. He yanked down the mask when he saw the officers. ‘I need to get to a private room,’ he told them. ‘One with a door.’