On the Loose

by Christopher Fowler

  He plotted a route through the great vaulted station of St Pancras, instinctively looking out for the lost ones. Ridges and furrows of glass rose above him in a matrix of pale blue ironwork, allowing an immensity of light to fall across the concourse. It was the end of April, and Mr Fox was one day away from becoming a murderer.

  As he insinuated himself through the crowds, he imagined his appearance as witnesses might remember it, unfocussed, silvery and opaque, a blur on a photograph. He was feral, instinctive, always on the move, always wary of being cornered. If his image could be captured (and it certainly could, given that there were over four million cameras watching London, an astonishing proportion of which were hidden in its stations) he made sure it would only appear as lost pixels on a screen, a time-lapsed smudge without a face. True subversives, he knew, were unnoticeable. Fake subversives (suburban kids and people in dull jobs) dressed to stand out from the crowd. Mr Fox was like the King’s Cross lighthouse, the strange tumbledown Victorian monument above the street that went unnoticed because it was always somewhere in the background.

  In and out of the stores and bars that occupied the glassed-in areas behind the exposed-brick arches—Foyles bookshop, Neal’s Yard, Le Pain Quotidien, Marks & Spencer—he searched for the lonely and the weak. He was drawn toward the lame straggler, the vulnerable visitor, the indecisive commuter. He could not afford to take long because too many watchful lenses were assembled in clusters on the surrounding arches. One pass through the main concourse of St Pancras was usually enough. The beauty of operating in a place like this was the sheer number of potential victims.

  There were plenty of police strolling about, but the location gave them a disadvantage. So many civilians approached with questions in the course of a shift that their differences were dissolved by sheer weight of numbers. The officers were like keepers in charge of an ever-expanding anthill.

  Mr Fox never made contact inside the railway station. He followed his targets at a distance, out to the cab ranks and crammed pavements where they waited to cross the road, distracted by their coats, bags and maps, disoriented by their unfamiliar surroundings. He had been born and raised in these grim streets, knew every alley and shadowed corner, but had not known their tangled history until recently. He listened and learned from others, knowing it would all prove useful to him one day. When he lacked knowledge, he befriended people who had it, absorbing everything he needed before discarding them and moving on.

  Knowledge was not the only thing he stole.

  Sometimes he would look his prey right in the eye, knowing that after they had discovered their loss they would think back without remembering him. He had the kind of face no-one could ever recall. In the legitimate business world it would have been a curse, but for him it was a blessing.

  He watched and heard and remembered everything. He soaked up even the most irrelevant information and stored it away, every newspaper headline, every station announcement, every passing scrap of conversation. As yet his territory was small, no more than a few roads, but he was still young, and there was time to grow.

  He was filled with a terrible, restless energy.

  Mr Fox trusted no-one because he knew that trust would make him weak, and he already had one flaw—a temper that could make him forget who he was or what he was doing. There was a fire within him that had to be tamped down, for fear that it would flare up and incinerate the world.

  He stood behind a beautiful Spanish girl with the latest Apple laptop sticking out of her rucksack, then waited beside a Chinese man who carelessly returned his wallet to an open pocket in his raincoat. Today he had no need of such easy pickings. That kind of thing was beneath him now, small-time stuff. He was looking for a dupe, a penniless rat-boy with the loyalty of a dog for its master, someone he could use and string along, someone he could blame and dump. He did not have to look hard, because the dupe found him. Mr Fox could not believe it; the little runt was about to try to pick his pocket! He turned sharply, catching the boy with his arm poised.

  ‘Hey, I know you!’ said the boy, suddenly unfreezing from his guilty pose in a tumble of awkward angles. ‘Your name’s—hang on—it’ll come to me.’ He wagged his finger. His face was as pale as neon, bony and spotty with drug abuse. Mr Fox mapped out his life in an instant. An illustrious career that went from stealing on demand to hawking drugs and selling himself. The area’s old clubbers had their ugly pasts and their doomed futures etched upon their faces, the nights and fights filled with trash-talk, bravado and petty cruelties.

  ‘You’re local, innit, I seen you around here loads of times.’

  ‘I’m Mr Fox.’

  ‘Nah, that’s not it. Not Fox, another name, unless you changed it.’

  ‘I think you’re mistaken, Mr—’

  ‘Just call me Mac, everyone does. Nah, it’s definitely you.’ The boy gurgled and slapped at his shaved head as if trying to knock sense into himself. ‘I always seen you around, all my life. You was in Camley Street Park one time. I was with my mates havin’ a smoke an’ that. You was—Ah.’ Mac suddenly remembered, and even he knew it was better to quickly forget what he had seen.

  ‘What do you do, Mac?’ asked Mr Fox, walking with him, leading him from the station.

  ‘This an’ that. I make ends meet, shift a bit of stuff here and there. The usual, you know.’

  Mr Fox knew all too well. He moved the boy aside as a pair of armed police constables in acid-yellow jackets walked past. King’s Cross had radically changed since becoming the target of terrorist attacks. He checked their epaulettes for area codes and saw that they were locals.

  ‘How long have you been out of Pentonville?’

  ‘How d’you know I was inside?’ The boy looked amazed.

  Mr Fox had spotted the tattoos that edged out beyond Mac’s sleeves. The inmates at Pentonville prison were fond of inking themselves with fake Russian gang symbols, most of them poorly copied and misspelled. The one on Mac’s right forearm was actually a produce stamp for a Soviet state farm. If the boy knew he was advertising turnips instead of hanging tough, it might be the end of their association before it began.

  ‘Wait a minute, that’s where I seen you,’ said Mac. ‘You was my English teacher, you used to come and teach at Pentonville.’

  Mr Fox studied his prey, deciding whether to let the identification stand.

  ‘One day you just stopped coming. What did you give it up for?’

  ‘The doors,’ he admitted.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The seventeen security doors I had to pass through every morning and evening. They added an hour and a half on my journey.’ He did not mention the lockdowns, those days when the alarm rang and no-one was allowed in or out. Six or seven hours at a time spent doing nothing, shut in a stale blank room like one of the inmates. He didn’t mention the smell that got into your clothes and made you dread each working day. Mr Fox was determined to stay out of prison because he had witnessed its horrors from close quarters.

  ‘How would you like to earn some easy money?’ he asked.

  Mac’s eyes shone, then dimmed. You could see exactly what he was thinking. ‘I don’t do queer stuff no more. I mean, no offence an’ that.’

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s just some simple errands. To meet someone, relay some messages. Maybe deliver something back to them.’

  ‘It ain’t drugs, is it, ’cause I’m on probation.’

  ‘Nothing like that. It’s completely legitimate, I assure you. Just a local job. I need someone trustworthy.’

  ‘I don’t let people down.’

  ‘I’ll need you to be around here tomorrow evening. Give me your address and mobile number. I have to be able to get in touch with you easily. Tell me, do you drive?’

  ‘I got a van.’

  ‘Unmarked, is it?’

  ‘Well, it’s white.’

  ‘We may need to use it at some point. If you do well with this, there could be more work for you.’

  ‘Yeah,
then, I reckon I could do something like that. You know, for the right price.’

  The right price, thought Mr Fox. You were going to steal my wallet a few moments ago, you little tapeworm. But he saw the desperation in the boy’s eyes and knew he had found a born victim, and that was all he needed.

  As soon as Mr Fox had received the phone call, he had realised he was about to move into the big time. All he needed to do now was remember his own rules: Never leave a trace of yourself behind, and if things go wrong make sure someone else takes the blame. Always remember, we do not live in a meritocracy. Nobody gets ahead because they’re good. The spoils go to those who build the strongest networks. Everything that happens, happens not because of what you can do, but because of who you know. The whole world is corrupt, and only those who acknowledge its corruption find their true place in it.

  Mr Fox felt sure that, despite his age and background, he was moving up, destined to operate in grander circles.

  He did not know it, but within twenty-four hours he would be wiping a dead man’s blood from his hands.

  3

  SHUTDOWN

  From the Police Review:

  END OF THE LINE FOR

  LONDON’S OLDEST SPECIALIST UNIT

  After many threats on its life, London’s most notorious and controversial crime unit has finally been shut down.

  From this month, the main goal of the National Policing Improvement Agency will be to modernise the British police service, taking on some Home Office and ACPO functions, including officer training, national IT infrastructure, forensics and information sharing. As part of the drive to eliminate duplication, the Home Office has closed London’s longstanding Peculiar Crimes Unit, returning its ongoing investigations to the capital’s homicide and major enquiry teams.

  The PCU was created to handle specialised cases and crimes (mostly homicides) which could be considered a risk to public order and confidence if left unresolved. The unit survived through the second half of the twentieth century, but found itself increasingly mired in controversy after being placed under the control of the Home Office, who accused its management team of becoming politically partisan and failing to follow accepted procedural guidelines.

  Although the PCU’s two most senior detectives were never formally charged with misconduct, their reputations were irreparably tarnished by behaviour which many in government circles considered to be anti-establishment and subversive. Police chiefs had long been concerned about the unit’s repeated failure to conform to government guidelines. It is understood that the Home Office is considering pursuing a number of allegations against Arthur Bryant and John May, including:

  * The unauthorised release of fourteen illegal immigrants, who subsequently evaded detention and deportation from the UK.

  * The destruction of government property, including the PCU’s own offices in Mornington Crescent.

  * The contamination and misuse of evidence in criminal investigations.

  * Illegal hiring practices, including the commissioning of freelancers specialising in ‘alternative’ practices such as psychic investigation, dowsing and (on more than one occasion) witchcraft.

  * Blackmailing an unnamed senior employee at the Home Office.

  * Interfering with a member of the royal family.

  * The premeditated release of potentially hazardous chemicals inside a Ministry of Defence outsource agency, in order to discredit it.

  Both senior detectives are to face a disciplinary panel. Meanwhile, the remaining members of the PCU staff have been placed on permanent gardening leave, and their old offices at Mornington Crescent have been turned over to the government’s newly formed Electronic Fraud Agency.

  ‘The Home Office seems determined that our unit should not be rehoused,’ says the temporary acting chief of the PCU, Raymond Land. ‘I have asked for the matter to be urgently resolved, but it seems that no-one is willing to discuss the possibility with me, or can even be bothered to return my phone calls.’

  When asked to comment on the charge, the HO’s Security Supervisor Oskar Kasavian explained, ‘The Peculiar Crimes Unit proved useful during its post-war heyday but now it is largely redundant to modern policing needs, which are performance-and data-driven and no longer built on public hearsay and personal opinion. The PCU clearly considers itself to be above the law, and has consistently refused to meet our targets. I hope this sends out a clear message to some of the other divisions which are currently underperforming in the league tables.’

  But the message is far from clear. Is the PCU officially disbanded or not? HO officials appear unwilling to admit outright that they have closed the unit permanently, but have been accused of enforcing a hidden agenda. Mr Kasavian clashed with the PCU on several occasions, most notably when the unit revealed that his personal relationship with Janet Ramsey, the editor of the daily magazine Hard News, constituted a conflict of interest during an ongoing investigation.

  Home Office Police Liaison Officer Leslie Faraday concurred with his department’s findings. He told us, ‘The PCU was a great British achievement of which we should all be justly proud. It’s high time we closed it down.’

  Despite their unorthodox methods, the Peculiar Crimes Unit enjoyed an unusually high success rate on murder cases originating in the Greater London area. Many of their investigations encouraged the press to create colourful personas for the killers they sought, including

  * The Leicester Square Vampire

  * The Shoreditch Strangler

  * The Water Room Killer

  * The Highwayman

  * The Deptford Demon

  * The Belles of Westminster

  * The Palace Theatre Phantom

  Arthur Bryant and John May, the capital’s most highly experienced detective team, helmed the PCU through its most productive decades, but both are now beyond the official retirement age. Neither was available for comment.

  Detective Sergeant Janice Longbright confirmed that the unit was closed down effective immediately after the staff resigned in solidarity with Mr Bryant and Mr May, who may have their pensions revoked pending investigation into issues of alleged misconduct. Despite the fact that a record number of retired detectives posted messages of support for the PCU and have set up a legal fund, the Home Office today issued a statement suggesting that the unit would not be reopened under any circumstances.

  As the officers of the Peculiar Crimes Unit now search for new jobs in the private security sector, it seems that a piece of London police history has been lost forever.

  4

  MOVING ON

  The alarm clock’s mechanism pinged inside its tin case. He listened to the spring slowly unwinding, waiting for the catch to be released and the bell to ring. He was always awake before the clock went off. There was a pause, a dull click and the ticking continued as before. There was no jarring call to force him from his bed.

  Of course. He had unscrewed the clapper and thrown it out of the window.

  He settled his weight more deeply into the mattress, sinking into the feather pillows, pulling the eiderdown over his cold ears, ready to return to his dreams. Except that now his brain was awake and he hated just lying here, because memories would rise in his unclouding mind like road markers appearing out of fog, guiding his way back to vivid moments of triumph and regret. Back to times when he wished he had done things differently.

  It was better to get up than to lie here remembering. There was nothing in the past that could be put right from the confines of a bed. Still, there was no reason now to rise. Better to let tepid sleep fold itself over you, he thought, a little more each day, like calibrations of death. He turned over, fidgeted, tried to settle, but finally pulled back the covers and slowly forced his aged, aching bones to an upright position.

  Catching sight of himself in the dressing table mirror, he was repelled by the scrofulous old hermit he found staring back. If I get any wrinklier I’ll be mistaken for a shar-pei, he thought. His eyes were red on the outside, worse
on the inside. His white tonsure stuck up around his ears. He looked like a frightened monk.

  He peered out at the rough planked floor, the dust meandering in beams of watery sunlight, a petal divorcing itself from the dehydrated roses on the wonky little bedside table. The bare grey day stretched ahead with nothing to mark it from the ones before or after. Inertia drifted onto his numb shoulders like a gathering weight of snow.

  There really was nothing to get up for.

  ‘Oh, sod it.’ Surrendering to his body’s apathy, Arthur Bryant allowed himself to fall back into the enveloping warmth of his bed.

  The morning was so sharp with winter sun that the yellow streets were striped with black shadows that looked as if they had been painted into place. Light like this belonged in Paris, not London, John May decided. The masts to Chelsea harbour glittered and rattled, pretending they were in Monaco, but no amount of money could replace sluggish brown Thames water with the raunchy azure of the Mediterranean. The old wharf that had once housed coal for the railway industry had been redeveloped into lofts for the conspicuously wealthy, clinquant shops and blind-eyed offices. On weekends there was more life on the surface of the moon.

  May walked through the dock with his granddaughter. April was so translucently pale that she always looked cold. The winds that ruffled the surface of the river caught at their coats as if anxious to detain them. This stroll was a test of April’s agoraphobia; it had shown signs of returning in the weeks that had passed since the unit was disbanded. The spaces between walls pressed a sense of panic upon her that she fought to ignore.