Ten Second Staircase

by Christopher Fowler

  'Not really—the officers had turned off the light in the hall—but he'll show up in the pictures. I'm not in the business of helping to identify him, Oskar. The longer he stays active without running to ground, the better it is for the paper's campaign.'

  'You have to get the report typed up tonight,' Kasavian instructed her. 'I need to work on it over the weekend.'

  'Let me take a nap first,' said Ramsey. 'I've been on my feet all day.'

  'I thought we were going to meet up later.'

  'Are you sure you want to risk being seen with me? I thought you were taking your wife to the opera tonight. I could damage your credibility.'

  'I hardly think so, Janet. Your newspaper has no credibility, so why should it damage mine?'

  'We represent the voice of the people, darling, don't forget that. Sometimes I wonder what I see in you. I'll call you in a couple of hours.' She rang off and made her way to the bathroom, shucking her dress.

  The day had worked out well. She had an exclusive story and plenty of saleable images to work with. What she really needed now was another murder to keep the outrage of the public at its peak.

  'I don't see why we had to meet here,' May complained. He had found Bryant standing at the centre of Waterloo Bridge once more. By now the sky had become icy and inhospitable, and billowing black sheets of rain were spattering his neck.

  'I was on my way back from the Paddington lockup,' Bryant explained, pulling out a plastic bag containing several slips of waterdamaged paper. 'Several of the Vampire's victims were taught in evening classes conducted by Brilliant Kingsmere's father. I think that's how he came to stalk them in the first place. I ran a check on the father. He has a charge sheet: disturbing the peace, causing an affray, assaulting a police officer, and molestation of a minor, a young woman who failed to press charges. Unfortunately, there's not much detail in the reports. There's no answer from his current address, so you'll have to talk to his son, Brilliant.'

  'Wait a minute, you're telling me that one of my witnesses in the Highwayman case is actually your suspect? Do you realise what the odds are on the two cases being connected? It's astronomically unlikely. Are you sure you haven't made a mistake and muddled up the documentation or something?'

  'My mental faculties may be in decline, but I don't get cases mixed up,' snapped Bryant. 'You're becoming quite unpleasant as you get older. Here, I was saving you some of this.' He pulled a leaky plastic freezer bag from his pocket and handed it to May. 'Alma made a sherry trifle. I've had it on me all day. It's got a bit squashed.'

  'What am I going to do with you, Arthur?' May examined his partner's peace offering and reluctantly slipped it into his pocket. 'Today's operation was a nightmare. If you'd been there, you'd have realised that something was wrong from the outset. As unlikely as it sounds, I just don't think clearly without you. The whole fiasco has merely given Faraday more ammunition.'

  'It wasn't your fault, John. The unit was never designed to carry out such operations.' He stopped abruptly and looked out at the sluggish olive water blossoming beneath the bridge.

  'But what? Go on, you were going to say something. You know I messed up. What would you have done differently?'

  'It's just that you're looking at it from the wrong perspective. You thought you were luring him, but I think it was the other way around.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'It wasn't a trap but an opportunity. Ramsey and the Highwayman both used you to get publicity.'

  'But why would he show up at all? Why risk being captured?'

  'Because he knew he wasn't going to be. Such bravado requires the extreme level of calculation he adopts in everything he does. The Vampire's bravery stemmed from the wildness of psychological aberration, but the Highwayman's methods are more sophisticated. It happens over time. You don't suppose the two killers could be one and the same person?'

  May looked at his partner in horror. 'There's nothing to suggest that the cases are connected other than your scraps of paper, Arthur. You can't just follow some kind of psychic trail in your head that makes links where none exists.'

  'If you don't think there's a connection, go and see him. Ask Brilliant Kingsmere about his father.'

  'What can he do beyond admit that his old man taught thousands of pupils, some of whom suffered tragedies? Teachers touch so many lives, and we're talking about a very specific London neighbourhood, so it's hardly surprising their paths crossed. But the two cases together? How old would Kingsmere's father be now, and why would he be running around dressed as a highwayman? It just raises more questions than it can answer. Oh, and did I mention that the idea is utterly ridiculous? The Highwayman is an incredibly strong man, tall, athletic, not someone of your age.'

  'All right, but he still has a link with the Vampire, whom we were intended to see as Robin Hood, a real-life thief and murderer changed into a mythical champion. Kingsmere's an idealist, a reformer. He must know about the Vampire, because his father was interviewed by police at the time. Suppose it gave him the idea for a warped kind of social experiment? Kingsmere was missing when the first Highwayman murder was committed, apparently at home with food poisoning. Was he missing from school again today?' Bryant was fired with a fresh spark of enthusiasm. 'We need to get him in for questioning immediately.'

  'We can't do that without Land's permission, and he's out of town until tomorrow night.'

  'Kingsmere must have his own office at the school. We could search it.'

  'I doubt there are sufficient grounds for a warrant, Arthur, and we wouldn't get one until Monday at the earliest.'

  'Then we'll need to break in. I can get hold of Felix.'

  'Oh, no, you promised never to use him again. Not after we paid him to break into Sharon Letts's house.' Letts, a notorious London thief known as the Queen of Shoplifters, had stolen a fortune in gems from Harrods's jewellery counter. It was hard to tell how much she had looted, because Felix had stolen back the diamonds for the police, only to hide several of them in a glass of water which he had drunk before anyone could stop him. After the Met boys arrested him, they planned to wait for the stones to pass through Felix's alimentary canal, but the cat burglar managed to lock the police officers in their own squad car. Felix was later captured and sent to prison, where he discovered that Letts's family had placed a contract on him. Thinking he would be safer in solitary confinement, he picked a fight with a small ginger Irishman in his wing, only to discover that his victim was a Real IRA terrorist, whose people promptly placed a second contract on the hapless burglar. Since then he had lived in fear of his life, running discreet small-scale operations for anyone who needed his services.

  'Lend me your phone. Nobody need ever know we hired him. Besides, he owes me a favour.'

  'Give me one good reason why I should agree to this.'

  'We're about to lose the unit. What else is there left to lose?' Bryant fumbled about in his overcoat and produced two scraps of paper. 'Look, this is a photocopy of Luke Tripp's Highwayman drawing.' He unfolded the second piece. 'And this I took from the Paddington lockup. It's the only witness sketch we ever had of the Leicester Square Vampire. Apart from the tricorn hat and the mask, the outfits are almost identical. It looks like Kingsmere stole the idea for some mysterious purpose of his own.'

  'This is against my better judgement,' warned May, handing over his mobile. If their superiors discovered that the unit's most senior members had hired a cat burglar to break into a suspect's office, they would prosecute the PCU. However, having failed to make his own plan of action work, May had no choice but to trust his partner's instincts. He had reached a stage where any action was fair if it yielded results.

  'Do it,' he told Bryant. 'Get him on the phone, and God help us if we get caught.'

  42

  DESCRIBING EVIL

  Janet Ramsey checked the temperature of her bath and laid out fresh clothes. She rarely questioned the wisdom of her actions, but the events of the last few days had given her pause for thought. Sh
e was editing a tabloid with a shrinking readership and a record number of hits lodged against it with the Press Complaints Commission. She was continuing an affair with a married man despite the fact that Oskar Kasavian was never likely to leave his wife. She had a son she had hardly seen since her ex-husband had unexpectedly been granted custody.

  And she wasn't getting any younger.

  Tugging at the creases around her eyes in the bathroom mirror, she wondered how much longer she could maintain the balancing act. The real problem was that she no longer believed the stories she wrote. Once she had been able to convince herself that the public had a right to know about the mistakes made by those whose lives were lived in public. The Fourth Estate's latest periodicals made hers look positively scrupulous. Everyone had jumped onto the celebrity bandwagon until there was nothing of interest left to report. It was no longer about news but bargaining power, and she doubted her publication would be able to raise the cash for many more exclusives. But Hard News had hitched its reputation to a rising star; the Highwayman could restore their falling circulation.

  A fold in the darkness through the glass of the front door caught her eye, and she turned from the mirror. The worst part about living in a ground-floor flat off the Brompton Road was having to place steel trellises across all of the windows and a London Bolt over the main entrance. She had upset plenty of people through the newspaper, but none had ever dared to turn up at her house—the press made too powerful an enemy. She never felt unsafe here, but it was still like being shut in a cage.

  The shadow cut reflections from the glass for a moment, and she realised there was definitely someone outside. You don't go out to look, she told herself. That's how trouble starts. She calmly walked towards the lounge. Buried far behind her commercial instincts, the small spark that had once fired her desire to investigate, to put matters right, was fanned back to flame, and she approached the lounge window, through which the front door could be seen.

  He was standing outside with his back towards the house, his hands clasped together. This time he wore a spectacular dress cape with a triangle of crimson satin lining exposed, as though he had dressed for an audience with her. He was taller than she remembered. He turned and rang the doorbell with the polite apprehension of an Internet date.

  He's desperate to talk, she thought. He needs the air of publicity and wants to grant an exclusive interview. If I'm careful, it could be the scoop of the year. Her hand hovered above the bolt handle.

  She thought of calling the police and warning them first. There was a problem with that, though. The local cops hated her after she had approved the publication of an article exposing the sex lives of two female sergeants, both of whom were now being investigated. She thought of calling Toby, her ex-husband, then realised that he was still in Geneva on business.

  The Highwayman rang again. If she let him escape, she would lose the greatest journalistic chance of her career. He had never directly attacked a victim before, so he was likely to be unarmed. And he was waiting for her, trusting her.

  She withdrew the bolt and opened the door.

  Whenever she had commissioned features on the Highwayman, she had asked her writers to exaggerate his height and sinister presence. Now she saw there was no need to do so. The tip of his tricorn hat almost grazed the top of the doorway. He stepped into the hall, his face lost in shadows, took another pace towards her, and froze. There was an unnerving stillness about him, a dead heart of indifference that made him more dangerous than she had ever imagined a human being could be. She knew at once that his masked eyes had seen men die.

  She had an idea. Without removing her gaze from him, she slowly reached for her mobile and speed-dialled the number of the Peculiar Crimes Unit. The Highwayman remained motionless, studying her as if watching an alien species.

  DS Janice Longbright answered on the third ring, calling her by name; it had come up on her screen.

  'He's standing right in front of me,' Ramsey murmured, daring him to move. She had rarely been granted a chance to describe evil at such close quarters, and was determined to make the most of the opportunity. 'He's taller than I expected, around six two, broadchested and rather sexy. The outfit has been modified from ordinary motorcycle leathers. The buckled knee-boots come from a Goth store called Born in Camden. He's not wearing his gloves. The back of his left hand is badly stained with your man's indigo dye. He has dark chin stubble, but it looks like he's wearing makeup.' She found her old investigative powers returning as she studied him. 'Brown eyes, still and rather dead, pointed chin, straight black hair, the kind of pale skin that suggests Eastern European extraction. Wait, I think the hair's a wig.'

  'You must leave while you still can,' said Longbright urgently. 'He's far more dangerous than you realise.'

  'I don't imagine he's armed.' She tried to sound braver than she was. 'I think he realises I'd give him a good kicking in a fair fight.'

  'Janet, you have to stop this and get out right now. He has every reason to hurt you.' While she spoke Longbright was trying to raise the alarm on her mobile.

  'No, he doesn't want to hurt me.' She smiled at him confidently. 'He's hardly moved a muscle since he stepped into the room.' She moved a little closer. 'There's a strong intelligence working behind his eyes. I think we're just going to have a little chat, as equals. Wait a minute.' There was a brief silence. 'Well, I'm damned, it's not a man at all—'

  The handset fell to the floor with a clatter. A moment later, it was gently replaced on its base.

  Bimsley and Mangeshkar took the young Indian DC's Kawasaki 500 and took off, coasting around stalled traffic at Hyde Park Corner, hitting seventy in the deserted backstreets behind the Brompton Road. As they roared into the quiet cherry-tree-lined street off the King's Road they could see that the communal door to Janet Ramsey's apartment building was still open.

  Bimsley had no qualms about kicking in the locked front door, but Meera stopped him. 'She might be behind it,' she warned, calling to Ramsey and getting no response.

  'I'll do it gently,' Bimsley promised, but as he leaned on it, the door swung in.

  Ramsey was lying at the foot of the stairs, her cracked forehead still wet with a vivid slash of blood. Mangeshkar checked for vital signs as Bimsley reported back.

  'She's still breathing,' said Meera. 'He's not here. But he's messed up badly this time.'

  43

  THE DYNASTY

  While the staff of the PCU worked on through the rainy Saturday night, Janet Ramsey reached stable condition at the Chelsea Hospital. Her X rays revealed a single wound: a skull fracture caused by a sharp blow to the head.

  Early on Sunday morning, Banbury enlisted Kershaw to take photographs and conduct further analysis at the editor's apartment.

  'She fell from the top to the bottom,' Banbury told his colleague with certainty, clambering to his feet after examining the attack site. 'Seven stairs, enough to increase her weight-mass fatally. She's lucky to still be alive.'

  'High heels, old chap, hardly surprising she couldn't keep her balance.' Kershaw checked the screen of his digital camera, playing back shots. 'She's an old-school journo, hasn't been out of cocktail outfits since her days of attending mayor's banquets for the provincial press.' He looked around at the pastel cushions, ribbons, and flowers disapprovingly. 'Janet Ramsey has a secret—despite what she publishes in Hard News, she's a born romantic.'

  'Good for me; soft surfaces hold more fibres.' Banbury hated examining hardwood floors because fresh evidence became balled up with older detritus and gathered around the edges of the room. 'Let me see the fissure on her forehead again?' Banbury's partner turned his camera around to reveal the uploaded photographs taken by the admitting doctor. 'Can you enlarge the contusion area and lighten it a little?'

  Kershaw worked the camera controls. Together they examined the damage that had placed Ramsey in a coma. 'Three leaves,' Kershaw muttered.

  'What are you saying?'

  'You can clearly make out thre
e V-tipped indentations at the hairline of her right temple. She's got a fleur-de-lis pattern stamped into the front of her head.' He began searching around the base of the staircase.

  'Over here.' Banbury pointed to the antique ironwork railing that stood a few feet beyond the front door. After Kershaw took shots of the area, Banbury sprayed Luminol on the stairway and lifted impressions from the points of the fleur-de-lis. 'Looks like she fell headfirst down the steps and banged her forehead against the railing. The force would have been enough to dent her skull. The brain is probably bruised, and there could well be bone splinters in it, so I imagine she'll be too whacked out to be interrogated just yet.'

  'She was in the bedroom when she phoned the sergeant,' said Kershaw, thinking aloud. 'The Highwayman rings her doorbell— the second time he's done so—and this time she lets him in. She calmly fronts him out, but then he makes a move towards her, as if he's going to attack, and she jumps back—'

  'What was he going to hit her with?' asked Banbury. 'She said he wasn't armed.'