“I told you, the night shift covered every foot of the tunnel between here and Russell Square, but found nothing.”
“What about the terminus? Did someone examine the train at Uxbridge?”
“It was a Heathrow train, so it stopped at all five terminals. It’ll be an expensive business checking all the logs.”
“We know he got on board, and disappeared sometime before its next stop.”
“But it’s imposs – ”
“Don’t.” Bryant squeezed his eyes shut and held up a warning forefinger. “Just don’t say that.”
“Hillingdon went drinking in the East End with someone,” May reminded them. “We could search the station footage at Old Street and Liverpool Street, see who he was with.”
“There’s no reason to assume he was accompanied on the train journey,” objected Bryant. “He came over to King’s Cross, changed platforms and went down to the Piccadilly Line to go to Bloomsbury.”
“Then how did his travel card mysteriously reappear in his house? We’ve got enough to bring in Toby Brooke for questioning. You said yourself Brooke’s alibi doesn’t hang together. Suppose they went drinking, had a fight and Hillingdon got concussed, woke up with amnesia somewhere? Brooke could have stolen his pal’s card to prevent his exit from the tube system being registered.”
“Surely he would have thrown it away rather than hang on to incriminating evidence?”
“Maybe he didn’t know something was going to happen to his friend. Maybe Hillingdon went off with another girl and Brooke was helping him to hide the indiscretion from Ruby Cates.”
“Matthew Hillingdon texted his girlfriend moments before running for the train!” Bryant all but shouted.
Anjam Dutta attempted to defuse the situation. “I sent Rasheed here to go over the footage again,” he said, “and the platforms were all empty within moments of the last train going. But there’s something – ”
“Me and Marianne, we told you about the man in the tunnels who looks like a crawling leathery bat,” Rasheed gabbled, “and I know it was just a story an’ that, ‘cause there’s no such thing as giant bats in the tube system…”
“Are you all right?” said Bryant, almost concerned. “Perhaps you should eat less sugar.”
“It was a silly story about something the guards said they’d seen in the tunnels, Mr Bryant,” Marianne reminded him.
“Yeah, we got something that looks like proof now, from two nights ago, the night your bloke went missing.”
“Wherever there’s darkness there are ghost stories,” Bryant conceded. “So what are you saying, that you’ve actually seen this creature for yourself?”
“Better than that,” Rasheed told him. “We have footage. Mr Dutta was going through the hard drive checking it again and he found this.” Rasheed searched beneath the burger wrappers on the desk. “Where did you put it, Sandwich?”
“Sorry, mate, I was using it as a coaster.” Sandwich pulled the disc box out from beneath his tea mug. Rasheed wiped it down and inserted the disc in the optical drive beside his desk.
“The footage is very dark because half of the lights are out,” he apologised. “When the old Thameslink station shut down and moved over to St Pancras, they left the tunnels open because the maintenance crews still need access to the trunking at night. Most of the CCTVs have been decommissioned because there’s no-one down there anymore. A couple of cameras are still used for fire prevention, but they’re pretty dirty and have no burned-in time code. We know this footage was shot late on Tuesday night, though, because the cameras are still programmed to record at set times, and there’s an electronic log. Here we go.”
Rasheed hit Play, and they all watched the screen. At first it was difficult to make out what they were seeing. “That’s the tunnel wall, on the right.” Rasheed tapped the screen. “Now watch the floor.”
On the monitor, a white flap tumbled and fluttered. “That’s just a sheet of newspaper. You feel the wind in the tunnels more at night.” In the murky brown corner of the screen, something appeared to be crawling slowly along the floor.
“See it?” asked Rasheed. “It’s too big to be a dog or anything like that.”
A tingle ran across Bryant’s skin. The thing was scuttling like a crab, trying to claw its way up the wall, only to fall back. It had a shiny black carapace like an enormous wrinkled beetle, but there was no way of making out any details. “What on earth could it be?” he asked, leaning forward.
Bitter suddenly spoke up. She opened her mouth so rarely and spoke so softly that everyone found themselves listening intently. “It’s the Night Crawler,” she told them. “People say it’s the ghost of a dead man, but it’s not.”
“Then what do you think it is?” asked May.
“A vagrant. When we turned off the electrical supply to the tunnels, we created an ideal hiding place for outcasts. There are people living down there, but you’ll never find them. Not without a guide. We can’t cap off the tunnels, see.”
“It makes no sense,” Bryant insisted. “Why would a bright, successful student with a great future ahead of him stage a disappearing act to live in an unlit network of tunnels with a bunch of homeless people?”
“If that’s what he did, he must have been very frightened of something,” said May. His finger traced the crawling creature on the screen as it twisted and evaporated. The pixels split into rainbow prisms and the screen crackled into darkness once more.
∨ Off the Rails ∧
30
Lost Tribe
The asymmetrical complex of towers, gables, dormers, chimneys, spires and angled arches that comprised the old redbrick Cruciform Building had been abutted by the vast white façade of the University College Hospital. Together, the two medical centres, one Victorian, one millennial, dominated the streets around Euston. Meera Mangeshkar and Colin Bimsley arrived on the hectic third floor at the hospital just before five P.M. Naimh Connor, the duty nurse, took them to Tony McCarthy’s bed.
“How’s your arm, Meera?” asked Connor. “Fully healed? You didn’t come back to get signed off.”
“I took the sutures out myself,” said Mangeshkar. She had recently received a minor injury in the course of duty, and regarded anything less than twenty stitches as something not worth mentioning. “How’s he doing?”
“He’s on heavy medication for pain management. I’d be in favour of keeping him that way, to be honest. He’s nothing but trouble when he comes off his methadone program.”
“You’ve had him in before?”
“He’s turned up on my emergency room shift a few times.”
“Is he ever with anyone?”
“Gentlemen with anger management issues like Mr McCarthy here don’t have too many friends,” answered Connor. “No-one’s tried to see him. You can have a word. Hope you get more out of him than I do.”
Mac was propped on a stack of pillows with a white plastic OxyMask fixed to his face. His right wrist was strapped to the bed-rail to prevent him from pulling out his saline drip. He yanked down the mask when he saw the officers. “I need to get to a private room,” he told them. “One with a door.”
“Sure,” replied Mangeshkar. “Just give me your credit card and I’ll have you moved this evening.”
“I don’t feel safe in an open ward, man.”
“You think he’s going to come after you again?”
“You don’t know what he’s like.”
“Tell us. We may be able to help you.”
Mac leaned up on one yellow bony elbow. He’d been washed, but still looked grubby. “He’s a crazy man. He hired me to do a bit of work, right, nothing shifty, make a delivery, drive a van, only he goes and – ” Even in his doped-up state, Mac realised he was about to incriminate himself.