May drained his mug. “Well, we don’t have the facilities to do it well, and we can’t get help from anyone else. Come on, let’s get back. I’ve a lot of work to get through, and I’d like to leave on time tonight.”
“That must mean you’re still seeing that Frenchwoman.” Bryant refused to be hurried. He dunked his cake, but half of it fell in his mug. “Your granddaughter told me she’s very nice. For a divorced bottle-blond alcoholic.”
“Brigitte has gone back to Paris to see her children,” May explained as he watched Bryant fishing around for soggy icing. “She loves red wine and tints the grey out of her hair.”
“But she is divorced.”
“Why is it de rigueur to take a shot at anyone who tries to have a life outside of the Unit?”
“I suppose you’ll be slipping more and more French phrases into your conversation from now on. Is that why you agreed to move the Unit to King’s Cross? So you’d be near the Eurostar?” Bryant enjoyed teasing his partner because May took so much at face value.
Bryant was wilier and meaner, but May knew how to deal with him. “I’ll bring Brigitte around to meet you next week,” he suggested. “She works for the Paris tourist office. I’m sure she’d love to tell you all about her wonderful city, and how much nicer it is than London.”
Bryant made a face and set the last of his tea aside. “I remember Paris, thank you, all garlic and accordions and waiters refusing to cook your meat properly. Parisians are the most argumentative people I’ve ever met.” He unglued errant crumbs from his dentures with a fingernail. “The last time I was in Paris some ghastly woman threw soup over me just because I accidentally sat on her dog. They carry them around fully loaded like hairy shotguns and feed them chocolates. I don’t hold with animals in restaurants unless they’re being eaten. Why can’t you date a London woman for a change?”
“They have a different mind-set. Frenchwomen argue, but Englishwomen complain. Frenchwomen are thin and think they’re fat, but Englishwomen are fat and pretend they’re thin. Frenchwomen – ”
“All right, you’ve made your point. Come on, Casanova, I’ve done with my tea, let’s get back.”
They were just rising to leave when a skinny boy began moving toward them through the café tables. He looked as if he was on a methadone programme. There were scarlet spots around his thin lips, and his skin was the colour of fishmeat. When he spotted the detectives at the window, he made his way through the tangle of chair legs.
“Is one of you Arthur Bryant?”
“That’s him.” May pointed.
The boy dug in the back pocket of his jeans, produced a crumpled white envelope and handed it across.
“Who gave you this?” Bryant asked.
“Some bloke outside.”
“What bloke?”
“Dunno. He’s gone now.”
The boy was already racing away. “Wait, come back here,” May called.
“No,” said Bryant. “Let him go. Look out of the window. There are about a thousand people out there.” He tore open the envelope and pulled out a slip of paper. Reading it, he looked up with a grunt of annoyance. “The boy won’t be able to tell us anything.”
“Let me see.” May took the slip and read.
Mr Fox was born below in Hell and now there will be Kaos.
Beneath this was a small hand-drawn symbol, long red ears, a white snout; a fox’s head.
“What is that supposed to mean?” asked May. “Chaos with a K? Born in Hell? It’s like something Jack the Ripper might have come out with. There was no sign that he was religious, was there?”
“None at all. This is all we need.” Bryant’s frown deepened. “I humiliated him, so now we have to play cat and mouse. This is about respect. He has to re-establish his power over me.”
“You can’t be sure it’s from him, Arthur. The press know about this now. It might be anyone.”
“It’s his method. He uses other people, and always seems to know exactly where we are.”
May rose and went to the window. “That means he’s within sight of us. It gives us a chance of catching him.”
“No, it doesn’t, John, any more than you could run after a real fox and seize it. They say criminals who do this sort of thing want to be caught, but I’m not so sure. I think he’s arrogant enough to assume he’ll always be one step ahead of us. And coming right back here, into the station! The nerve of him.”
“The message is a bit vague.”
“Is it?” Bryant studied the letters, thinking. “I wonder. Hell in St Pancras station? Torment and brimstone, down below, underground – underground? You don’t think he’s talking about the tube, do you?”
“How can you tell? There’s not enough here to go on.”
Bryant tightened the moulting scarf around his neck. “I haven’t got any better ideas.” He pointed toward the underground entrance. “Perhaps that’s where we should start looking.”
∨ Off the Rails ∧
9
Push
“One bleeding, sodding week,” said Renfield, watching the Daves as they attempted to thread electric cable through a baseboard with a bent coat hanger. “They’re having a laugh over at the Home Office.”
“They won’t be if we pull it off,” Longbright replied.
“Oi, you’re doing that wrong,” Renfield told one of the Daves. “You’ll need to earth it.”
“You leave the wiring to us,” the Dave answered, “and you can get on with what you’re good at, framing innocent bystanders and knocking protestors unconscious.”
Renfield’s bull head sank between his shoulders as he strode over and snatched away the Daves’ nail gun.
“Blimey, look at this.” Longbright pulled a water-stained book from beneath Bryant’s desk. “Put him down, Jack.”
Renfield finished nailing the Dave to the wall and came over. “What have you got?”
She turned the page around to show him a photograph of a sooty old building surrounded by a howling mob waving burning sticks. “This place, taken in 1908. The locals were trying to burn it down. Listen to the caption: ‘Police were called in to disperse an angry crowd of residents attempting to incinerate the home of the Occult Revivalists’ Society. According to unconfirmed reports, society members had succeeded in their attempt to invoke the Devil. Evidence of Satanic worship was found on the building’s first floor (third window from right)’. That’s Raymond’s office.”
“Can you get me down?” the Dave called plaintively. “You’ve ruined my jacket.”
Renfield ignored him. He moved in for a better look at the photograph, although he was also enjoying standing close to Janice Longbright. “They summoned the Devil from Land’s office?”
“That’s what it says here.”
“That would explain a lot. The pentagram on the floor, for a start.”
“Maybe they succeeded,” said Longbright. “Maybe that’s where Mr Fox came from.”
♦
A fine rain was falling with the kind of wet sootiness that stained the colours from the cityscape. Looking along Euston Road was like watching old monochrome television, thought Bryant, like the original opening credits of Coronation Street, grey and grainy and out of focus.
He and May were taking the note back to the Unit so that Banbury could analyse it, but Bryant was already convinced of its sender’s identity. The few civilians who knew about Mr Fox had been interviewed, but their knowledge added nothing. Despite the vigilance of the anti-terrorist police and the ubiquity of the capital’s camera network, it seemed he could appear and vanish at will.