Blood Red City

by Rod Reynolds

  And all that was without thinking about his fuck-up. A slip of conscience that he still couldn’t explain or understand. One that left him vulnerable.

  He checked his route to High Barnet station, the point he’d intercept Tan on his way home. Google said it was twenty minutes away. Stringer pressed himself into the seat and took a deep breath. He let his mind drift, taking him to Islamorada in the Florida Keys. He’d holidayed there once, before this life, and he held on to the idea of going back someday. The water was so blue and so still there, on a cloudless day you couldn’t tell where it met the sky. It used to be a simple escape fantasy – sitting in the sunshine with a large drink and nothing to do. These days it was darker; in his dreams, he imagined drinking up his courage all day on the white sand, until there was nothing left of himself to save, and he could stand up and walk into Florida Bay and just keep going. The water over his head, filling his lungs until it dragged him down into its depths. Finding closure in the place his life came apart.

  It came and went. But some days, the only thing stopping him was the thought of all the people he’d have to kill before he’d allow himself to do it.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Tube crawled into Woodside Park station in the dead of night. The line ran above ground this close to its terminus, but it felt airless all the same.

  Lydia was alone in the carriage. She picked her way along its length looking for bloodstains or any sign of violence. It was pointless, she knew that; knowing the video was shot on a Northern Line train did little to pinpoint anything. There were more outdoor stations at the northern end of the line than the southern, so she went that way first, but even that only narrowed it down to two branches and more than a dozen stops.

  She started on the High Barnet branch, the one that ran through Finchley – a possible connection given the Facebook post. But even if she’d picked the right branch, there might be ten trains per hour running in each direction. She felt foolish being there, but her loyalty to Tammy trumped it – and was bolstered by her guilt.

  No one ever said they’d got rid of Tammy because she’d encouraged her to keep working the Goddard story after the bosses shut it down. Tammy herself never hinted at it. Looked at objectively, she’d been an obvious candidate for redundancy: commanding a big salary on the wrong side of fifty, at a time when all papers were slashing budgets and moving away from investigative work. But the timing felt more than coincidental – Tammy gone three months after they’d sidelined Lydia to showbiz. It felt like a vindictive move on the part of management – and it meant Lydia owed her.

  The doors slid open but there was no difference in temperature inside or out, the night close and still. For a moment there was silence. She ducked her head out to look along the platform, but no one got on or off. No one waiting. No staff. A southbound train was slipping into the distance on the other side, blue sparks lighting up its undercarriage, marking its wake.

  Back inside, she could see a man at the far end of the next car. She watched him for a few seconds, seeing no outward signs of life. She landed on the thought that it could be her victim – sitting there, dead or dying, somehow missed until now. He was huddled in on himself, head hanging, the kind of bloke you gave a wide berth – maybe a way to explain why he hadn’t been disturbed. If they’d assumed he was just another drunk…

  The man moved, making Lydia jump. He looked in her direction, holding her stare as her heart crashed against her chest. Then he turned the other way, half rising, the faltering movements of someone trying to work out where he was. He sat back down on the seat and rubbed his face.

  Lydia closed her eyes and let her head loll back against the glass panel behind her. Get a fucking grip. The doors closed and the train moved off again.

  She made it to the end of the carriage as they pulled into High Barnet. An empty Lucozade bottle rolled off a seat and clattered to the floor, snagging itself on a discarded Standard. She looked through the window into the night and wondered what the hell she was doing. The driver came over the tannoy – tinny, muffled – to call all change.

  The yellow tint to the platform lighting gave everything a jaundiced hue, feeding her sense that she was walking through a surreal dream. There were half a dozen new emails on her work phone – the time difference to the States kept them coming right through the night – to add to the pile already in her inbox requiring an action or a response. That was on top of the four sidebar articles she was supposed to upload by dawn; thousands of words of dross about celebrity holiday snaps.

  The platform was an island, another train already waiting on the other side. She crossed over and walked alongside it, peering through its windows. She saw an older woman with wet hair, looking like she was on her way to an early shift; a man with paint marks on his work clothes; a city type in a pin-stripe suit. A stain on the ground drew her eye – a dark spatter across the white lettering that read MIND THE GAP. She toed it and saw it was dry.

  She carried on to the end of the platform where the driver was standing outside his cab.

  ‘Excuse me—’

  ‘Leaves in three minutes.’ He lifted his chin to indicate the dot matrix overhead.

  ‘Actually, I wanted to ask about an incident earlier tonight. Did you hear anything about an attack?’

  He screwed his face up. ‘Where? Here?’

  ‘Somewhere on the Northern Line.’

  He was already shaking his head. ‘News to me.’

  ‘They’d notify you though – about something serious? We believe the man might have been murdered.’

  ‘We who?’

  ‘I’m a journalist with the Examiner.’ She took out her phone and opened the video. ‘I was sent this footage—’

  He put his hand up and stepped back. ‘I’m on a timetable, love. Ask them upstairs about it.’ He pointed towards the station building, then slipped into his cab and shut the door.

  She looked along the empty platform towards the staircase. A covered footbridge across the tracks led to the ticket hall. In her line of sight, a CCTV camera extended from the wall on a short bracket, spikes like needles sticking up from it to keep the birds off. The Underground staff at London Bridge had blanked her when she’d asked her questions, the same as the one at Camden Town. If the victim had been left on the train, chances were he’d have been found here or at Edgware – but surely a major incident would’ve been declared. So it seemed certain he’d got off somehow – or been taken off. But that didn’t mean there’d be no trace.

  She crossed the platform back to the train she’d arrived on and walked along until she found who she was looking for: a cleaner, moving carriage to carriage with a clear plastic bin bag and a grabber.

  She waited by the door for her to step off. ‘Excuse me.’

  The woman stopped.

  ‘There was a man attacked on a train tonight. Have you seen anything?’

  ‘Like a fight?’ She spoke with a clipped Caribbean accent.

  ‘Yes, but serious. I’m thinking about blood on the seats or the windows or anything?’

  The woman started moving again, stepping onto the next carriage. ‘We get all sorts.’

  Lydia followed a few steps behind. ‘But tonight?’

  ‘Tonight, I don’t know. Go and ask the control room.’

  ‘Does that mean there was something?’

  The woman stopped and turned around, squeezing the grabber’s claw open and shut by her foot. ‘Please, I finish in ten minutes, I have to do this. Go and ask.’ She turned and carried on.

  Lydia stepped off the train and checked her phone – first for the time, then for emails; the latest was one of the digital subs chasing her copy. At the end of the platform, a pigeon pecked at a discarded Subway wrapper, spilling it onto the track and scaring itself enough to take flight. She jogged over to the stairs.

  Stringer noticed her straight away. Passengers were sparse enough at that time of night, so the lone woman stepping off the train only to linger on the platform caught
his attention. He kept one eye on her as she went over to talk to a driver. It’d been hours already, all that time trying to smother the rising tension in his gut.

  He’d waited almost ninety minutes for Jamie Tan at High Barnet – but he never showed. He’d taken the precaution of putting eyes on him – Angie Cross, his runner, confirmed he’d left the pub next to his office near Bank just after 10.00 p.m. and gone to the Tube. When there was still no sign by midnight, Stringer raced to his house, on the off chance he’d missed him. Finding the place empty, he’d gone straight back to the station to keep watch while he figured out what was going on. He’d put in a desperation call to Angie, kicking himself for not getting her to follow Tan all the way home. She was in the dark.

  So this anomaly almost brought relief – a chance to do something other than wait. He watched as the woman tried to show the Tube driver something on her phone. For a second he wondered if she was lost, asking for help reading a map on the screen, but the driver couldn’t get away from her fast enough, and now his instincts told him to get a closer look at what she was doing.

  Stringer took a picture of her with his mobile, but the distance and the light made it grainy. He’d guess her age as mid-thirties, light-brown hair worn in a ponytail, probably no more than shoulder length when down. She had a knee-length skirt on and a grey blazer over a navy blouse – professional clothes, but too neatly turned out to have been worn since the start of a nine-to-five; a point to chew on later if she proved to be relevant.

  The woman took off across the platform and started speaking to a cleaner, disappearing from view when she stepped onto the train. He kept watching, seeing the other train leave and wondering if there was any chance Tan would show up on the next one to pull in. His concentration kept slipping, running through excuses and explanations he could offer to Suslov.

  She got off again a moment later and nipped along the platform to the staircase. He moved away from his perch by the windows in the ticket hall and went around the corner so he could watch the top of the stairs, holding there until she popped into view again. She took big strides walking across the footbridge, coming in his direction, glancing around as if she was looking for someone.

  She tried the ticket office but it wasn’t manned. Checking around, she zipped over to a door marked Staff Only and knocked on it. An Underground worker in an orange hi-vis vest opened up, and she launched into him about whatever she wanted. He watched as she talked, assessing her as rushed but not frantic. Too harried to be police, not enough to be a friend or relative. Which left … what?

  He moved closer, staring at his own phone as cover, until he could just hear what she was saying.

  ‘…an assault? Do the CCTV feeds from the trains come here?’

  The hi-vis man folded his arms. ‘Sorry, but I’m not going to stand here and discuss—’

  ‘Can I just show you this?’ She already had her phone up so Hi-Vis could look. ‘Please?’

  Stringer lingered a short distance away from them, looking distracted, as if he was waiting for his turn to ask the Underground man a question. At first he couldn’t see her phone’s screen, but suddenly Hi-Vis reacted to something he’d seen, tilting his head just enough to give Stringer an angle to get a glimpse. His skin went cold. Even at a distance, he recognised Jamie Tan being pinned to his seat.

  Hi-Vis was shaking his head. ‘It’s got to be a prank.’

  The woman shrugged, uncertain. ‘You haven’t heard anything about this then?’

  ‘There’s no way someone did that tonight. They’d shut half the network down.’

  That seemed to derail the woman, and she looked away from Hi-Vis into the open doorway next to him, scratching her throat.

  ‘Someone’s mucking you about. Sorry.’ He retreated into the office and closed the door.

  The woman hesitated then put her phone away, moving off as she produced another one from her pocket. She read something on it, swore under her breath, and turned down the stairs to the platforms.

  Stringer let her have a few seconds’ head start, then followed.

  CHAPTER 4

  Lydia finished typing the night’s last story at 7.00 a.m., a fluff piece about Lottie M’s latest beach break, her words just wallpaper for all the bikini shots, and a boxout on ‘How To Get the Look’. Another Trump tweet was making headlines across the board, and it was no consolation knowing her article would get a higher billing on the website than the president’s latest display of ignorance. Celine, the more senior Botox Twin, was fond of saying they were in the business of ‘giving the readers what they want’.

  She went to the communal kitchen to make a coffee. What she wanted was a glass of white wine. Waiting for the kettle, she picked up her phone and found Tammy’s name on her recents log. She pressed call.

  Tammy picked up on the second ring. ‘Hey.’

  ‘Didn’t wake you did I?’

  ‘No, I never made it to bed. My brain won’t stop.’

  Lydia launched straight into her dash to High Barnet. Daylight had been streaming into the office for a couple of hours, a disorienting effect that made the night before seem even more like a fever dream.

  Tammy took a breath before she spoke. ‘You’re saying none of them know anything about this?’

  ‘Nothing. Everyone I spoke to looked at me like I was mad.’

  ‘Explains why no one’s reporting it yet, at least.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve been keeping an eye too. What did the police say?’

  ‘The British Transport Police are looking into it, but it was the first they’ve heard about it. Whoever Joe the banker is, no one’s missing him yet.’

  ‘What about the witness? The woman who shot the video?’

  ‘Christ knows, poor cow.’

  ‘They went after her, Tam. If they caught up with her…’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’

  Lydia picked up her coffee and headed back to her desk. ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘I haven’t got it to hand, I’ll have to check Facebook again. I’ll text you.’

  ‘Have you tried messaging her?’

  ‘First thing I did. She hasn’t replied.’

  ‘So what’s your next move?’

  ‘I want to go back over my notes from when I spoke to Joe – see if he gave away anything about himself that I missed. I’m struggling to concentrate though.’

  ‘You should get some sleep, even if it’s just an hour.’

  ‘I will. Later.’

  ‘Look, just ping me the woman’s name and let me know if you hear anything from her. I watched the video again, and it freaks me out every time that guy looks down the camera.’

  ‘Yeah, I will. And Lyds – thank you. I know you’ve got enough on your plate, I really appreciate what you’re doing.’

  The Examiner homepage was open on her screen, the top story a reality TV star in lingerie, headlined, ‘Undie-believable!’

  ‘No problem.’

  The morning was bright and hot as Stringer made his way back to his car at High Barnet.

  He’d followed the woman on the Tube to London Bridge. She’d been glued to one or other of her mobiles the whole journey, both iPhones, but favouring the white one that she’d showed to Hi-Vis. The train had been nearly empty, the woman sitting alone on her bank of seats, meaning there was no way Stringer could get close enough to see without being conspicuous. His frustration nearly boiled over a couple of times. He looked at his reflection in the black mirror of the Tube window and wondered what the fuck this job was doing to him.

  When she got off, he’d trailed her as far as one of the new office towers that had sprung up in the footprint of The Shard. She passed through a security gate in reception and that was where he let her go, sticking around just long enough to note that the lift took her to the thirteenth floor and that there were three visible CCTV cameras in the lobby; enough to deter him from talking to the receptionist to determine the woman’s name.

  He flagged down a black cab and spen
t most of the ride back to his car Googling. It’d taken seconds to establish that the building was the home of Consolidated News & Media – owner of the Examiner and its trashy website, and a host of regional newspapers to boot. Which suggested the woman was a journalist of some stripe – a complication that didn’t make sense from a host of angles. He’d trawled the corporate website looking for her, but there were no staff headshots to browse, so her identity remained unknown a little while longer. All the while, he’d kept an eye on the Examiner’s main page for anything that might pertain to Jamie Tan – but if the woman on the thirteenth floor knew something concrete, she hadn’t shared it so far.

  When he picked up the car, he went straight back to Jamie Tan’s place in Arkley. The house was one rung below a mansion: red-brick new build, Roman columns flanking the front door, a large gated driveway that homed an E-Class Merc and a Lexus LC with space to spare. The place had to top two million, even this far out of town.

  Stringer looked along the windows, watching for movement inside. He’d been here before – only a handful of occasions but long stretches each time. The Lexus was Mrs Tan’s, so its presence on the driveway was of note. A natural blonde ten years Jamie’s younger, Alicia Tan had been a rising star in her own right at the American investment bank Cawthorne Probert – a role she’d seemingly given up when Jamie’s career as an equities trader went stratospheric. That was three years ago, long before Stringer had ever heard of Tan, so this was all from his background work; but from everything he’d learned about her, she seemed too smart and too driven for a shift down into the role of gym-and-gin kept woman. The couple had no kids, so that couldn’t explain the sudden end to her career, and a cursory sweep had turned up nothing to suggest she’d been forced out in disgrace. A low six-figure salary that doubled with a bonus wasn’t easy to just ditch, no matter how rich they were. It was the kind of anomaly that cropped up in every life if you looked hard enough, but one that hadn’t seemed germane at the time. Now, everything would be second-guessed.