On the Loose (27 page)

‘I can’t imagine why you did that, old fruit. You should have told the truth and said that there’s a mad killer roaming our streets and we have absolutely no clue about who he might be or what his motives are.’

‘That’s what you would have done, isn’t it? Because you don’t care what you say to your superiors; you never have. I remember the Brixton Prison breakout, when you called Faraday a time-wasting dung-beetle.’

‘If I remember correctly, which is fairly unlikely, I accused him of behaving like Cardinal Richelieu or a rabid weasel, depending on whether he preferred to take his comparisons from history or the animal kingdom.’

‘All very amusing, Bryant, but Faraday was a junior official then and he’s your boss now, and that’s exactly why we’re in this fix. If you’re mean to them on the way up, they’ll knife you once they reach the top. We’re all going to be thrown out on the streets any minute now.’

‘Drink your tea, Raymondo, you’ll feel better. It’s got whisky in it.’

‘It’s half past eleven in the morning. I can’t drink alcohol this early.’

‘I only added a drop to buck you up. We’re doing everything we can. Apparently the room was covered from every angle by cameras and very well lit, but the killer took the precaution of smashing up the CCTV’s hard drive. There was a separate system in operation outside which he couldn’t get at. April and Meera are going through the footage right now.’

‘What about everyone else?’

‘Renfield is with Kershaw at the morgue, John has gone with Janice and Dan Banbury to the ADAPT offices, Bimsley and DuCaine are getting interviews and I’m ploughing my lonely furrow here. In fact, you’re the only one not doing anything useful.’

‘Then tell me what I can do,’ Land pleaded.

‘Go over Faraday’s head. Talk to Oskar Kasavian and tell him the truth. If you don’t, I will.’

‘I don’t see what good it will do—’

‘I want him to understand one thing,’ said Bryant. ‘He must realise that whether he likes it or not, we’re his only hope. Tell him that we’ll clear up the case. We need everyone on our side for this. And I think we can do it.’

‘Do you really believe that?’ Land asked.

‘Yes, I do,’ said Bryant. ‘But if I told you why, you’d probably have a heart attack.’

‘We know that he was here until nearly ten p.m. because he called home from work to check his messages,’ said John May. ‘Where have you gone, Dan?’

Banbury appeared from behind the desk units. ‘I’m trying to
get the carpet tiles up,’ he explained. ‘There’s an awful lot of blood underneath them.’ The area surrounding Cavendish’s desk had been taped off and photographed, and the floor closed to all members of staff, who periodically peered in through the glass with impassive faces. Occasionally one of them would discreetly record some footage onto a mobile phone.

‘If the courtyard hadn’t been closed outside, we might have had witnesses walking past. How the hell did the killer get in?’

‘No forced entry. It must have been someone Cavendish knew.’

Longbright bagged the dead man’s appointment book. ‘I’ll do the remaining co-workers,’ she suggested. ‘His suppliers and clients will take longer to sift through.’

‘What happened, Dan?’ asked May. ‘You must have some idea.’

‘This is only in the early stages, John. But I can tell you our man is starting to panic. The victim was killed here. The cuts are the same as before, but nastier, more ragged and careless. Once the bone was severed he tore through the remaining section of skin. There are bits of it all over the place. Looks like he’s taken the head away. Hang on, here’s something…’ He raised a white rubber glove above the desk to show May. Between Banbury’s thumb and forefinger was a tangle of brownish black hair. ‘It’s from a dead animal. The collar of a jacket?’

‘No,’ said May grimly. ‘Too coarse. Looks to me like it’s from a deer or a stag. Mr Toth has every reason to panic. I think we’ve got him this time. Okay, Janice, let’s bring him in.’

34
EXORCISM

L
iberty DuCaine had been the fastest runner in his school, but he had bulked up since then, and knew that the extra weight would slow him down. He had misjudged the height of the railing and was stuck halfway across it. The iron spearheads were digging into his upper thigh, and his quarry was getting away.

Xander Toth had decided to make a run for it.

DuCaine had been forced to kick in the front door but Toth had barricaded himself into the living room. Now there were crashes and slams coming from within the second-floor flat, so with Mangeshkar on guard at the front, DuCaine had run around the entire block to the courtyard at the rear. The morning light was unusually low, and although it had stopped raining the air was furred with damp. There were no lights on in the building. It sounded as if Toth had gained access to the apartment next door. Suddenly he appeared half out of the bathroom window. Toth was muscular and agile. A moment later he had jumped. His sneakers skittered on the wet roof tiles, then he was pelting along the slope toward the end of the roof.

DuCaine ran up the concrete steps to the half-landing but knew he would not be able to reach his quarry from here. Toth was in navy tracksuit bottoms and a white t-shirt; it was almost
as if he had been expecting to have to run. DuCaine tried to see which way he would move, but moments later Toth had passed the crest of the roof and leapt from sight.

Liberty pelted back down the stairs, wondering why Meera had not come down, then caught sight of Toth running across the dewy grass bank, heading toward the road. DuCaine raised the pace, pumping up the same slope, closing the distance, but Toth darted behind a row of parked vans. Toth was heading toward St Pancras Old Church. If he got inside the gates, DuCaine knew he would be able to reach the canalside and lose himself in the empty buildings awaiting demolition.

The silver coils of newly risen mist wreathed the churchyard like sheets of fragile silk. The effect was absurdly theatrical, something from a Hammer horror film, but Toth vanished into them as if passing through layers of years into the past. The grounds were deserted except for some crazy-looking old hippie in a pin-striped suit who was shouting out at Toth, warning him away. Toth ignored the commands and powered forward across the grassy graves, aiming for the far side of the churchyard. He had not got far when something tripped him and he fell. A green nylon tarpaulin closed about his legs and he vanished from view, into an open grave site that had been covered to protect it from the rain. The grave digger leaned on his shovel and watched from a safe distance, neither alarmed nor concerned.

‘Bloody vandals!’ Austin Potterton shouted at DuCaine. ‘This is a site of archaeological importance and he’s damaging it. Honestly, young people have no bloody respect for the past.’

John May looked at the watch Arthur Bryant had bought him. The second hand had never worked properly. Bryant’s ability
to infect every electronic device he touched had apparently spread to mechanical objects as well.

May wondered where his partner had disappeared to this time. It felt like the pair of them hardly ever worked in tandem anymore. Bryant was off sorting through arcane publications in an attempt to prove that London’s criminals were influenced by myths from past centuries, while he was trying to cope with the exigencies of a modern metropolis.

Right
, he decided,
I’m putting my foot down. It’s time he learned that criminals aren’t fingered by recourse to thousand-year-old ghosts. If the PCU is to have a future, I have to make Arthur understand how a modern police team works
.

But as he walked to the interview room a few minutes later, he thought,
Fat chance
.

‘You can’t hold me,’ said Toth, sprawled out across a straight-back chair. ‘You’ve got nothing.’

‘Why did you run?’ DuCaine asked.

‘I don’t want to talk to you. I’ll talk to him, no-one else.’ He pointed at John May.

‘I’ll be happy to offer you advice after you’ve answered a few of Mr DuCaine’s questions,’ said May.

‘Then I have nothing to say. I’ve done no wrong. I’m not obliged to explain anything to anyone.’

‘I think he might want to talk about this,’ said Meera, carrying in a black plastic garbage bag. Dropping it on the floor, she pulled out the stag-man’s furry jacket and a handful of knife blades. Behind her, a nervous pregnant girl stepped forward into the room.

‘Lizzi, what are you doing here?’

‘I had to tell them, Xander. I know where you go at night. I saw you putting on that stupid outfit. I want to find out exactly how many lies you’ve told me.’

Toth pulled himself upright, and sat in stupefied silence. He was trying to come up with a fresh game plan, but realised there was no escape from the truth. ‘Where do you want me to start?’ he asked.

‘Why don’t you let me do it for you?’ said Bryant, sauntering into the already overcrowded interview room. ‘Can I have a chair? I’m knackered and it’s only one o’clock. Is anyone on tea duty? Meera, would you ask April to fill up that huge teapot I saw in the hall? Make sure Crippen’s not been near it first. Thank you so much.’

DuCaine dragged in a battered armchair and everyone waited while Bryant squirmed into it. ‘The land, the land,’ mused Bryant. ‘You studied land rights when you worked at ADAPT, didn’t you?’

‘So what?’

‘And the more you found out about the practice of co-opting properties, the less you liked what they were asking you to do. Is offering someone money to leave their home a bribe? I’m sure ADAPT’s lawyers would argue that no illegal acts were ever committed. But you saw the rules being bent, the meetings with councillors and property developers, and finally decided to complain. I found a pretty hefty file on you in Camden Council’s department of planning.’

‘I tried the official channels but nobody would listen to me,’ said Toth. ‘So I switched to unofficial ones.’

‘But all you could find were a few disgruntled householders who eventually caved in and sold out. After all, everyone wanted to see King’s Cross restored to being a decent neighbourhood. That’s why the ADAPT Group was offered so many sweeteners to start undoing the damage that the railway had done, clearing uninhabitable slums and unrentable factories. They’re doing
London a huge favour and making millions in the process. Marianne Waters will probably get an O.B.E.’

‘She’s a corrupting, thieving bitch.’

‘I assume it was while you were digging into the land rights that you came across the area’s extraordinary history. Everything you read made you angrier. Almost everyone who ever came to this site stole from it. The royals arrived and threw the rightful owners off their land to build a spa. The railway destroyed the churchyard. Now ADAPT is paving it all over. And the final straw, of course—your own background. Your family descended from the great manor of Tothele, which was destroyed and sold off by an earlier generation of land speculators. I found an old photograph of you on your first protest march, dressed in a green suit—’

‘—the lord of the forest, Jack-in-the Green,’ said Toth. ‘I did it to attract a photographer from a local paper.’

‘A nice traditional touch, but the novelty soon wears off, doesn’t it? You needed to rekindle the fire of publicity for your cause. So you came up with a rather more elaborate outfit.’

‘I couldn’t think how to make the antlers. Real ones were too heavy.’

‘So you riveted together some kitchen knives. Not such a smart move. Meera, how many are in the bag?’

She emptied the trash bag onto the interview desk and counted. ‘Twelve.’

‘But you still didn’t attract enough attention. Did you enjoy going out on your late-night jaunts?’

‘I was doing it for a reason.’

‘But you started enjoying it, all the same. Who was the girl you abducted?’

‘What girl?’ asked Lizzi.

‘She works at the club,’ said Toth. ‘I met her in the café. I was just mucking about with her. Call her if you don’t believe me.’

‘Have you been seeing a girl behind my back?’ Lizzi fumed.

‘That’s why no-one reported her missing,’ DuCaine explained. ‘She wasn’t a victim; she was a girl he fancied and picked up. When did you make the jump from faking kidnaps to committing murder?’

‘He didn’t,’ said Meera. ‘His girlfriend here can vouch for his whereabouts over the last few nights.’

‘Mr Toth would have been quite happy to hitch a ride on the publicity,’ Bryant added. ‘Except that so far no journalist has bothered to link his appearance with the murders. A bit too clever for your own good, weren’t you? The only person whose attention you managed to attract was me.’

‘What about the hairs on Cavendish’s trousers?’ asked May.

‘He was out at the site with us, remember?’ said Bryant. ‘He was there at the spot they found Jesson’s body. We all picked up mud and hair in the field. All it proves is that Cavendish and Shaggy here wandered over the same swampy ground, along with everyone else.’

‘So what are you going to charge me with?’ Toth demanded. ‘It’s not a crime to bring attention to injustice.’

‘It is when it nearly results in a death,’ said May. ‘And we could do you for carrying an offensive weapon, or rather twelve of them. Go on then, Shaggy, you’ve had your Scooby-Doo moment; now bugger off before we beat you with sticks.’

‘The outfit stays here,’ DuCaine warned. ‘We’re still going to run some tests on those knife blades.’

‘I’m surprised you’re prepared to let him go,’ said Meera, disappointed.

‘He’s going to catch hell when he gets home,’ said May. ‘We have a bigger fish to catch. We exorcised a ghost, that’s all.’

‘He could have killed someone.’

‘I’m more interested in someone who
is
killing people, Meera. Keep your focus on that. It’s a small recompense, but at least Marianne Waters and her team can inform their workforce that there’s nothing supernatural to fear. The land doesn’t throw up ancient spectres to stop the progress of the centuries, a myth which Mr Bryant has actually helped to dispel for once.’

‘But the cause of these three deaths still lies in the past,’ Bryant insisted, ‘and there’s the ritual element of the beheadings. I found some other old documents in the archives—’