London Falling

by Paul Cornell

  They’re sure we’re looking for a mole. And Lofthouse has bloody kept us here on the Hill to do it. When he’d stopped Lofthouse on the way out of that insane meeting, she’d firmly told him there was nothing further to discuss. And that tone in her voice was one he’d learned to pay attention to.

  Ross entered and nodded to him, still wearing that face of hers that looked like it might one day end up on a wanted poster or a stamp. Understandable. The only change for her was that now her anonymous building had slightly more people in it. He made tea as first one car and then another stopped outside, and first Sefton, then Costain, entered, having both taken the shortest possible route from vehicle to door. At least Lofthouse had realized how neither of those two would be eager to show his warrant card at the gate of Gipsy Hill, especially since now there was a strong possibility that someone might write down the name on it, so that a visit to friends and family could be arranged. Not that they weren’t still vulnerable out here. Not just politically but physically.

  ‘So,’ he said to his unlikely unit now it had been assembled, ‘what have we got?’

  ‘A nagging fear that this is all bollocks, Jimmy,’ replied Costain.

  They went over every detail. Quill then called the pathologist to hear it for himself, but it was open and shut. No known toxin. No known medical condition. An impossibility.

  There were only a few avenues of investigation that he could even think of as places to begin with. He next set his team to the task of checking out the records of everyone who’d been in and out of Gipsy Hill on the day Toshack died.

  ‘Okay,’ said Sefton, but with an enormous internal sigh written on his face. And this was just the first day.

  ‘This,’ said Costain, ‘is why we became UCs: to share a computer in a Portakabin, processing data.’

  ‘Well,’ said Quill, limiting himself to a knowing look at Costain, ‘just think – it could have been so much worse.’

  And that was the first week, with the sound of the rain pounding on the roof of the Portakabin, and the slow sensation of false trail after false trail coming to an end. Since the time frame to be checked was the early hours of New Year’s Day until the following morning, no civilians had visited, except Toshack’s brief. ‘So it’s either a copper or he “ingested the poison” before he arrived at Gipsy Hill,’ said Costain.

  ‘You reckon that’s likely?’ asked Quill.

  ‘No,’ said Costain casually, as if it was none of his concern anyway.

  This felt like internal exile, as if somehow Lofthouse expected Quill to accuse himself of something. The week lasted forever, and Quill underwent several pints of therapy, on his own, each night.

  It was early on a Monday morning, before the other two had come in, that Ross looked up from the wheezing PC and caught his eye. She, in her quiet way, had dug in, had become the one who was too busy to make tea. Quill realized that, for her, doing something that still even tangentially involved Toshack must be some sort of lifeline. And he wondered if it would actually be a mercy to her to cut that line and to let her get on with life.

  ‘I’ve found something in the Goodfellow case notes,’ she said.

  He went over, and she pointed out the entry: ‘Lassiter, the driver of the Fulham Road security van. He lost a lot of blood, too. It was assumed that he’d been beaten, but I think someone was a bit quick to jump to that conclusion, ’cos the injuries I’ve got here aren’t entirely consistent with that explanation.’

  ‘You’re saying getting people’s blood to explode in all directions might be someone’s modus operandi?’

  ‘It’s just one data point, so I’m not, not yet.’

  Quill sighed. ‘Listen, do you want to go and check out the scene of the crime over at the Hill? The other two bloody can’t, but while it’s just you and me here . . .’

  ‘I think that’s a reasonable risk.’

  ‘You think Tony’s dodgy,’ said Ross, as they crossed the road and headed towards the rear gate of Gipsy Hill.

  Quill neither confirmed nor denied it. ‘I do sometimes think there might be some other reason for this weird unit assignment. Maybe to shake something out.’

  ‘So why us too?’

  Quill shrugged. He saw that it was Josh Stuart stationed at the back gate, and actually got a smile out of him as he showed him his warrant card and then Ross’ ID. Ross seemed to be trying to make herself invisible, and she was doing a good job. They headed down the garden path and out of earshot.

  ‘I need this op to be real,’ she said. ‘Is it?’

  Quill stopped. They were by that strange pile of earth, and still nobody had planted that bloody tree or whatever it was going to be. ‘You know as much as I do.’

  ‘Only, you three already have that look on your faces . . .’

  ‘What look?’

  ‘That copper look. That British look. The “Oh well, it’s all going to fall apart, so might as well get on with it, even though we’re going to fail.”’

  ‘Do you have a point, Lisa?’

  ‘Because if this is a real op, and if you all treat it as a real op, we can make real progress. If you make proper use of me; if you let me do what I do. And I’m going to need you too, because otherwise I don’t know what I’m going to do. And because . . . we’re standing on top of something huge.’

  Quill realized that her expression had become urgent – amazed, even. And that she kept looking between his eyes . . . and then at the ground by his feet.

  He turned and examined the pile of soil closely for the first time. There was a pattern there, preserved by the frost, not washed out too much by the rain. It was as if someone had inscribed it in the disturbed earth with a spade. Or maybe it had needed a tool more precise. It was a fine spiral.

  ‘Literally,’ continued Ross. ‘I’ve seen that symbol before.’

  With joy bursting in his heart, Quill looked up and around. He pointed up at the CCTV camera that was looking straight down at them. ‘Bingo,’ he said.

  Quill headed into Gipsy Hill to get the CCTV tapes sent over, while Ross rushed back to the Portakabin to grab her camera. ‘We’ve got a new intelligence analyst,’ said Harry, falling into step beside him. ‘Since you took away ours.’ Many more arrests were being made, extending to the outlying reaches of the Toshack firm. Harry waited until the corridor was clear, then dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘What are you doing out there, Jimmy?’

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine. I asked to get you over straight away—’

  ‘’Course you did: you knowing which side your bread is buttered. But Lofthouse said no, didn’t she?’

  ‘Harry—’

  ‘No no, it’s not your fault. But, I tell you what: you have not seen the depth of ill feeling here.’ He leaned closer and locked that sleepless gaze of his on Quill. ‘You have no idea.’

  Costain and Sefton had arrived by the time he got back to the Portakabin, and had obviously been told by Ross that something was finally happening. She looked up from a huge pile of what looked like school exercise books that she’d brought in. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘where can I display some images?’

  Quill had to use a biro to mark a new square of best focus on the wall.

  ‘The spiral tag.’ Ross’ first image, from a PC projector she’d brought in herself, was a photo of the design that had been etched in the soil, the real thing now having been covered in plastic and fenced off – if Quill’s orders had been complied with. ‘A pile of soil, bit wet for London average, in a spiral pattern that seems to have been formed with some sort of vacuum tool. Nobody’s ever come up with any more than that, concerning its formation. One of the first things that Rob Toshack got into, when he took over the family firm, was fixing football matches. He needed to make and launder cash very quickly, and a series of big certs would have done that for him.’

  She clicked the mouse and the next image appeared: a picture of another such symbol, this one slightly different. ‘The reason we know about this is because this ap
proach immediately clashed with how clean football had become at the time. Players didn’t automatically cave in when threatened, so a number of them started to have the spiral tag appear in their gardens. Some of their managers, and a DI called Sam Booney—’

  ‘Sam Booney,’ interjected Quill, ‘out of Kensal Rise, shot in the knee in the course of his duties. Could burst an apple with his hand, goes the story.’

  ‘—knew what the tag meant,’ she continued. ‘It’s a legend that was purely associated with West Ham Football Club, before it became a more general threat.’

  ‘Is this,’ asked Sefton, ‘that same urban myth about anyone who scores a hat-trick against West Ham dying?’

  Quill saw Costain glance sidelong at the other UC. ‘Didn’t think you’d be into football.’

  Sefton gave him a dangerous look, but his tone remained neutral. ‘Why?’

  Costain just shook his head, with a smile on his lips.

  ‘Right,’ said Ross, ‘Toshack always was a West Ham fan. That myth of dying after scoring a hat-trick was the myth that he, or rather someone working for him, was using to try to scare these footballers into cooperating with him. This tag was also associated with some of those deaths.’

  ‘There really were some deaths,’ nodded Sefton.

  ‘Who do you support?’ asked Costain.

  ‘Chelsea,’ said Sefton, again in that oh-so-reasonable tone.

  ‘I sometimes get . . . feelings about sidelines, so I do stuff like this on my own time,’ Ross persisted. ‘Last night, I ran the numbers. Footballers who score hat-tricks against West Ham do not always die in suspicious circumstances, but—’

  She clicked to the next image, which showed a series of graphs.

  ‘—they often do. More often, statistically, than they should. The shape of the graph here, the extent that it deviates from the norm, is very close to what you get if you look back through records of previously unlinked deaths while looking for serial-killer traits after it’s been proved there has been a serial killer operating.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ murmured Quill, aware of Sefton and Costain also leaning forward.

  ‘So,’ Costain pointed to the image, ‘that’s saying that there’s probably a genuine effect? That someone was killing players that scored hat-tricks against West Ham?’

  ‘Thanks for providing subtitles,’ said Quill.

  ‘Yeah,’ confirmed Ross, ‘and if we match players who died after having scored hat-tricks against West Ham with people who have had the spiral tag show up in their garden . . .’

  Two circles came together on the screen, one representing the unfortunate scorers, and one for the people with the tag appearing in their garden, and a number whirled in the space where they intersected. It settled at 78%.

  ‘Fuck,’ chorused all three members of Ross’ audience, simultaneously.

  ‘So,’ said Quill, when he’d got his breath back. ‘That means a seventy-eight per cent success rate on the part of a very specific serial killer. Which would just be a brilliant new cold-case lead . . .’

  ‘Apart from the fact that the tag showed up when Toshack died, too. Presumably a statement on the killer’s part, rather than a warning, this time. And, erm . . . thanks,’ she looked awkwardly away, ‘but there’s more. Most, though not all, of these murders were committed with what was assumed at the time to have been poison. Investigators were obviously a lot more comfortable with the idea of unknown toxins back in the day. Also – and this is the big one – the data that doesn’t overlap here is uneven. One of those circles on that diagram contains more items than the other. Eighteen per cent of the other cases are hat-trick scorers, over the years, who probably died of natural causes. The four per cent in the other circle represent people who got the tag planted in their gardens, but hadn’t scored hat-tricks against West Ham. Indeed, none of those people is a footballer. They’re a range of organized crime network bosses, bankers and made men – many of them with connections to Toshack. I’ve prepared a list. And how many of those also died?’

  She clicked on to another image. This time, the two circles slid together and the numbers gradually spun . . . to reach 100%.

  Quill couldn’t help it, he started to applaud. To his delight, Costain and Sefton joined in. Ross nodded, looked away again, unable to deal with this reaction. ‘Shut up,’ she said, finally. ‘Let me finish. What we see here, then, is strongly indicative of Toshack hiring a serial killer who specialized in football-related poisonings, using a still unknown delivery system, a killer who also presumably has a love for West Ham—’

  ‘You could see how that would mess you up,’ said Quill.

  ‘—who, after Toshack abandoned his plans for fixing matches, was kept on, and remained an enforcer, killing on Toshack’s orders. The number of deaths slows down across the decade, perhaps as the reputation of Toshack by itself starts to do the job without the threat having to be carried through. And when Toshack is killed, subject to what we’re going to see on the CCTV footage to establish a time frame, that killer – or someone who knows of them – plants their usual marker near the scene of the crime.’

  ‘I didn’t see any of this,’ said Costain. ‘No, I mean, I do believe it, this really is the first sight we’ve had of one of Toshack’s freelancers, but this was kept from his ordinary soldiers.’

  Quill got to his feet. ‘Lisa, can you take us back to that first Venn diagram?’ She did so. ‘Ta.’ He went to the wall and used the shadow of his hand to point at the intersection between the two circles. ‘That’s a person there on that screen. That’s bloody fantastic police work, that is.’

  Ross was shaking her head, as if she didn’t deserve all this praise. ‘But the trouble is,’ she said, ‘apart from the non-footballers, the people on that list . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The data goes . . . back a long way,’ she said. ‘To when West Ham first played under that name, in 1900.’

  Quill paused only for a moment. ‘Then it’s a gang tradition. We’ve got an angle now – so let’s not look it in the mouth.’

  SIX

  When it was examined, the soil from the spiral was indeed revealed as being different to that of the Hill’s gardens, and the same in consistency as any that had been used for the other spiral tags, similar to soils from areas along the river Thames, and extending north of it around underground rivers. Weirdly, it seemed to have been specially conveyed to the site. The CCTV tape, when it finally arrived, had to be taken back into Gipsy Hill so that Quill could find a machine to play it on, but Quill managed to get an IT spod to copy it to a disc that the ancient PC in the Portakabin could then read.

  The four of them stood round the monitor and watched. ‘Oh,’ said Ross, ‘so that delay in getting us the footage wasn’t just the Goodfellow team sulking.’

  On what the time code confirmed was the morning of New Year’s Day, two and a half minutes before Toshack’s death, the video showed the pile of soil not to be there one second . . . and to be there the next. Ross got the IT staff on the line, and they sounded as if they’d been expecting her call. With their help, she narrowed it down to two individual frames. ‘No soil . . . then soil. It just appeared. And the time code hasn’t been messed with. To do this so seamlessly would need serious expertise.’

  ‘Then we’re dealing with someone who’s got it,’ said Quill. ‘It’s Occam’s thingamabob, innit?’

  Sefton spent a fun afternoon that Saturday in the Boleyn pub on the corner of Green Street, close to the West Ham ground. It wasn’t quite UC work – all he was pretending to be was a West Ham fan – but it was close enough for him to feel more comfortable than he had been lately. It got him away from Costain and that bloody Portakabin, where Sefton found himself swallowing more and more frustration every day. The pub contained a vast display of Irons memorabilia, and a reputation for being peaceful, but committed enough to ask away fans to refrain from coming in on match days. Ideal.

  ‘The curse?’ said a bloke with the castle an
d crossed hammers tattooed on his neck. ‘Sometimes I think that’s all we’ve got left to make the opposition fear us.’

  ‘That’s why Ryan Scotley put two in against us – this is twenty years back – and then got himself taken off the field,’ agreed his mate. Sefton bought a few pints and heard lots of names that tallied with his mental list of those Ross had already discovered. The most recent, a decade ago, right at the start of Rob Toshack’s reign, was a Liverpool player called Matt Howarth.

  ‘It’s a long time for them to have remembered this stuff,’ he said, on his return to the Portakabin, ‘but that means it was always a big deal. There’s a few anecdotes worth checking out, and a specific threat of a surreal nature directed at Howarth by a West Ham season-ticket holder. The bloke who told me remembers it ’cos it was on the same day that Howarth died.’

  ‘Who made this threat?’ asked Quill.

  ‘She’s commemorated in the following terrace chant.’ He cleared his throat, then spread his hands theatrically. ‘We went one up for Mor-a! She’s going to shag the scor-er! Come on you Irons, come on you Irons!’

  He waited for the applause. None was forthcoming.

  ‘Her name’s Mora Losley,’ he said. ‘Bit of a terrace legend.’

  ‘Description?’ said Ross, already scribbling in one of her notebooks.

  ‘Little old lady . . . but nobody agrees on the details.’

  ‘How long ago was she a season-ticket holder?’

  ‘She’s still attending.’

  Ross ran the name ‘Mora Losley’ – as well as all the others – through CRIMINT, the Police National Computer, the Police National Database and the Met’s own systems. She found that the same name, Mora Losley, kept popping up regarding quite a few formal warnings but nothing beyond that: no arrests. This was what made something inside Ross relax, that feeling of uncovering something hidden, and of showing it to the world. It was all that could make her feel okay these days. It was as if she was feeling a message forming out of noise.