Off the Rails (5 page)

Gladys had discussed the mysteries of human behaviour with her daughter in a kindly, dispassionate manner, as if they were stories that could damage the sensibilities only of other, less robust families. Janice had grown up tough enough to survive the defection of her father and the loss of her beloved mother. She had spent eleven years with a partner whose nerve had ultimately failed him when faced with commitment. There was a core inside her as firm as oak, inherited from a long line of strong women, and nothing could chip it away.

But by God, she was sorry to lose Liberty DuCaine.

Friends for four years, lovers for one night, they would probably have proven too similar for their relationship to grow further, but the chance to try had been snatched away from her. So she sealed his death inside her head, somewhere at the back with the other sad things, and told herself she might look back one day in the future, but not yet. There was too much to do. Her colleagues probably all thought she was an icy bitch, but it couldn’t be helped. There was a time to cry, and it was not now.

First things first; if they were really going to clear up all outstanding work by the end of the week, they needed to get organised. The offices were a dirty, dangerous disgrace. The Unit hadn’t had a chance to catch its breath since it moved in. Crates were piled in the hall, taps leaked, lights buzzed and smouldered, the floors were strewn with badly connected cables,
doors jammed shut or opened by themselves. The detectives’ files were a hopeless mess. Bryant kept hard copies in cardboard folders, May kept his on discs, and neither knew what the other was doing.

She had hoped April would help her sort everything out, but the poor girl had declined into her former agoraphobic state after DuCaine’s death, and could not be persuaded to return to the Unit. Janice was annoyed with her for giving in to her demons. April’s departure had handed another small victory to Mr Fox.
She’s gone and it’s a shame, but there’s work to do,
Longbright thought, rolling up her sleeves and filling a bucket.

The PCU’s new home was situated on the first and second floors of an unrenovated warehouse on the corner of Balfe Street and the Caledonian Road, sandwiched between a scruffy Edwardian residential terrace and a traffic-clogged arterial road. Bryant and May’s offices overlooked the latter, and despite the Detective Sergeant’s best efforts, the elderly detectives had so far proven resistant to rehabilitation.

A little chaos had always suited Arthur Bryant and John May. The world was an untidy place, Bryant always told her, and he had an innate suspicion of those who tried to keep it too neat. May was, of course, the exact opposite. His white apartment in Shad Thames was eerily immaculate, and only the burbling presence of a small television, left on a 24-hour news channel whenever he was home, disturbed the sense of orderly calm. But here in King’s Cross, their chaotic offices defied order.

Longbright looked over at the two Turkish Daves. One was drinking tea and the other was reading Thackeray’s
Vanity Fair.
‘Are you two going to do any work?’ she asked.

‘We’re waiting for the wood,’ said one.

‘Can’t do anything without the wood,’ said the other.

She snatched away the mug of tea and the novel. ‘If you’re reading this for tips on British society, it’s out of date. These days, pushy little bitches like Becky Sharp end up working in media.’ They stared blankly at her. ‘It doesn’t matter. Go and get the wood or you’ll get the boot.’

‘No good,’ said one. ‘We got no cash.’

Longbright dug a roll of bills from her pocket and tossed it over. ‘Buy the wood, bring me the change. And get a receipt or I’ll break your nose.’

The workmen left muttering under their breath.

Longbright wondered if she could get away with throwing out some of Bryant’s rubbish. He would notice if the bear’s head table-lamp went missing, but perhaps his collection of Great Western Railway Timetables 1902–1911 could be quietly dumped in the skip at the back of the building. She hoisted up a mouldy carton.

‘I’ll kindly thank you to return my railway timetables to where you found them,’ said Arthur Bryant, poking her in the back with his walking stick.

‘You can’t possibly need all this stuff, Arthur.’ She dropped the carton back on his desk with a cloudy thump.

‘It’s not all timetables, you know,’ said Bryant, pulling off his overcoat. ‘Remove the top volume.’

Longbright did as she was told. Underneath was a dog-eared copy of
Greek Mausoleums: Their History & Meaning.

‘You see?’ Bryant declared triumphantly. ‘You’d have felt a bit silly throwing that away.’

Longbright wrinkled her nose. ‘It’s even less useful than the timetables.’

‘Wrong. The sculptor Scopas carved mythical figures with the features of humans, not gods. He was the first artist to
notice that hidden muscles shaped the face, which was square rather than oval. Scopas taught us to see what was hidden. In that sense, he was the first detective.’

‘All right, but blimey, we’ve moved on a bit since then. We’ve got forensic psychology and serology, DNA testing—’

‘You’re missing the point, enchantress. A body is more than mere meat and fluids. Its humours are ultimately unknowable. Why do people behave as they do? Every book I own adds a tiny piece to the puzzle.’

‘But books don’t hold the key to people.’

‘They hold the key to society, and if we ignore that, we know nothing. Now put everything back in the same order.’

‘There was no order.’

‘
Exactly,’
said Bryant mysteriously.

‘What about these, then?’ Longbright held up a set of tattered blue volumes. ‘
Conjuring & Tricks With Cards,
volumes one to six. What are they going to teach you?’

‘I’ll show you. Over there in the corner you’ll find a small corkboard.’

Longbright picked up the board, which was divided into nine panels.

‘Stand it on the shelf behind John’s desk,’ Bryant instructed, pulling out a pack of cards. ‘Now pick one of these. Look at it, then pick eight more.’ Longbright drew the three of spades, and added eight more cards. Bryant gave her a handful of pushpins. ‘Shuffle your cards and pin them facedown on the squares of the board.’

‘I’ve got more important things to do with my time,’ the DS complained. She completed her task and turned to find Bryant pointing a gun at her. It looked like a Colt Single Action Army revolver. ‘Where did you get that?’

‘Evidence room. Get out of the way. You don’t know which square holds the card you picked, do you?’

‘No. Are you sure this is safe?’

‘Of course. It’s a Victorian parlour trick.’ Bryant aimed randomly, squeezed his eyes shut, and fired the gun. The explosion made their ears ring. ‘Check the board,’ he instructed. Longbright found a bullet hole in the centre of one card. She unpinned it and turned it over.

‘Is that the card you chose?’ he asked.

‘No. I picked the three of spades. This is the nine of clubs. What did you do?’

‘You were meant to pick the nine of clubs. An identical card with a bullet hole was pinned to the back of one of the board’s squares. The square is on a pivot. When you pressed the card onto it, you activated a timer that flicked the square over. Persistence of vision covered the switch. The gun was loaded with a blank, obviously.’

‘Well, if you’d forced the right card it would have worked,’ said Longbright encouragingly.

Just then, Raymond Land came storming into the office. ‘What the bloody hell is going on?’ he demanded to know. ‘Someone just fired a gun!’

‘That was just a blank,’ Longbright explained. ‘Mr Bryant was showing me a trick.’

‘Blank, my arse! The bullet came straight through my wall. You could have killed me! It missed my ear by about two inches and exploded Crippen’s litter tray. Gave him the fright of his life. Look.’ He held up a squashed slug.

‘My mistake,’ Bryant apologised absently. ‘I’m sure I gave you the nine of clubs. I think I’ll just step out to my verandah for a smoke and a ponder. Behave appropriately while I’m gone.’

‘Wait, come back, you’ve got no right—’ Land began, but Bryant had slipped out.

After all this time he’s still trouble,
thought Longbright.
I like that in a man.

Land was looking for someone to blame. ‘And you, the way you encourage him …’ he sputtered, shaking a finger at her.

‘Don’t look at me, boss. Mr Bryant’s teaching himself magic.’

‘Well, I’ll teach him how to disappear if he’s not careful,’ Land concluded ineffectually, stomping back to his room.

Longbright replaced the books in their rightful places, but the dust was setting off her hay fever. Checking her watch, she noted that Liberty DuCaine’s funeral would soon be starting. Although the Unit had been warned to stay away, she felt that someone should represent them. Reaching a decision, she donned her jacket and set off.

A
t first glance, the City of London Crematorium appeared to be nothing more than a pleasant London park. There were a great many rose beds neatly arranged like ledgers, and a variety of clipped English trees—elm, walnut, chestnut, beech. On closer inspection Longbright noticed the small rectangular plaques set at ground level in the grass. An aquamarine sky released soft patters of rain, accentuating the landscape’s greenness, releasing the fresh smell of spring leaves.

Feeling guilty because she had forgotten to change from her PCU staff jacket, Longbright turned up her collar and headed for the chapel’s anteroom. She could hear an organ recording of ‘From Every Stormy Wind That Blows’ coming to an end.

The doctor at University College Hospital had told her that if Liberty DuCaine’s neck wound had been a centimetre lower, it would have been over his jawbone. The tip of the weapon would have been deflected and prevented from going into his brain.
Instead it had slid straight up, tearing into his temporal lobe. Longbright had spent the weekend trying to imagine what she could have done differently. But there was no use in wondering, because they were all at fault; they had fatally underestimated the capabilities of their suspect.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ demanded a large Caribbean woman, watching her from the damp archway.

‘I was just reading the tributes on the flowers,’ said Longbright, straightening up.

‘We don’t want the police here. Did you even know my son?’

‘I worked with him for a while.’

The older woman examined the badge on Longbright’s jacket. ‘He wasn’t at your unit for very long.’

‘No, but we brought him in on a number of special investigations before he joined full-time.’ Longbright held her ground. She had heard about Liberty’s mother, and knew what to expect. ‘I’m sure you’d rather not have anyone from the PCU here, Mrs DuCaine, but I counted myself as a close friend.’

‘How close?’ Mrs DuCaine gave her a hard stare before approaching the floral display with a weary sigh. She bent with difficulty and tidied the tributes with the air of a woman who needed something useful to do. ‘If you want to be here, I suppose I should accept with grace. There’s too much bad blood in the world.’

‘Thank you.’

She stood with a grimace, sizing Longbright up. ‘I’m as much to blame as anyone. I encouraged Liberty to enter the force. We all did. But I didn’t want him joining that crazy unit of yours. Most of his friends were against it. They said it would damage his career, that it wasn’t even part of the real police.’

‘There’s a lot of prejudice against us, Mrs DuCaine. We don’t operate along traditional lines.’

‘Then what
do
you do?’

‘We look after cases of special interest. Sometimes people commit acts that can cause—unrest—in society.’

Mrs DuCaine waved the notion aside with impatience. ‘I don’t know what you mean by that.’

Longbright tried to think of a good example. ‘Suppose two people were killed in your street in one week. People would think it was a bad neighbourhood.’

‘We already live in a bad neighbourhood.’

‘Well, in such a situation the Peculiar Crimes Unit would be called in to find out if the deaths were connected, or if it was just coincidence. We would try to lay public fears to rest. A lot of people live and work in this city. Someone has to look after its reputation. Your son was invited to help us do that. Not many people are good enough to be asked.’

‘Is that supposed to make me feel better? My son ended up getting stabbed in the neck.’

‘It could have happened to him anywhere, Mrs DuCaine.’

‘As soon as I heard the doorbell, I knew.’ She reached past Longbright and delicately replaced a card on top of a spray of yellow roses. ‘It was the stupidest thing. My mother had a plate, a big Victorian serving plate with scalloped edges, covered in big red roses. I dropped it. We never use that plate, it stays in the dresser and nobody touches it. But that day I used it. I remember looking at the pieces of china on the floor and thinking something just broke.’

‘We’re going to catch this man. I don’t know how long it will take, but we will. He’s dangerous. He hurts people for money, and has no feelings for anyone except himself. But we’re going to take him off the street.’

Mrs DuCaine studied the array of flowers. ‘When someone in the police force dies, his friends are supposed to rally around
him, aren’t they? No-one from Headquarters even called. Liberty’s workmates deserted him because he told them he was moving to your unit.’

‘I know.’

‘Well, then.’ Mrs DuCaine studied the flowers with dry eyes. ‘There’s nothing more to say.’

Longbright knew she was being dismissed. She turned to leave.

‘Take one of the yellow roses,’ said Mrs DuCaine, unexpectedly. ‘It was his favourite colour.’

Longbright selected a rose and turned, to see two horribly familiar figures looming out of the misty rain. With the arrival of Bryant and May, it became obvious that a police presence at the crematorium was not a good idea. One officer was acceptable, but three looked defensive. The rest of DuCaine’s friends and relatives were emerging from the chapel into the cramped anteroom to mourn their lost brother, and a demarcation line quickly developed. DuCaine’s father fired a baleful stare toward the detectives, who moved back onto the porch.