“And you did it again. You should never have had the car customised. Come on, then,” she stuck her hands on her hips defiantly, “do something about it instead of just standing there feeling sorry for yourself.”
♦
Bimsley had lost him. Only minutes ago, he had watched Toby Brooke heading back to the packed Brick Lane bar, where he had ordered himself a Kingfisher, but then the student had simply vanished. Bimsley tried the toilet but it was empty. The bar had been constructed on the ground floor of an old carpet warehouse, and, he now discovered, had a rear exit along a corridor on the far side of the building. Brooke had given him the slip. Furious with himself for having made such a fundamental error, he called Longbright and explained what had happened.
“I’ll tell the others,” said Longbright. “We need to know that the rest are all accounted for.”
“I’m sorry, Janice. It was my own stupid fault.”
“Don’t beat yourself up. You could try the tube station.”
“No good. We’re halfway between Aldgate East and Liverpool Street.”
“Then you’ve got a fifty-fifty chance of finding him. Put in a call to the house and see if he’s gone back there.”
♦
Banbury was having similar trouble keeping tabs on Rajan Sangeeta.
Minutes ago the Indian student had received a call on his phone, and had immediately conducted a search of the bar where he was drinking. Someone had clearly tipped him off that the housemates were being followed. If a warning had gone out, it meant that the others were attempting to slip off the radar, too. Sangeeta waited until the bar had become severely congested, then pushed away through the crowd, leaving Banbury trailing far behind. Only two members of the PCU – Longbright and the late Liberty DuCaine – had received surveillance training, so when the student made his move, Banbury found himself in trouble. Longbright had told him to fix the height of his target in his mind, but the room was being strafed with rotating rainbow lights, and Sangeeta had already slipped out through the throng.
Banbury was furious at being tricked. He called Longbright. “Has anyone else made a run for it?”
“Toby Brooke’s done a bunk; the others all seem to be accounted for,” the DS replied. “There aren’t enough of us to go around the clock. Go home, Dan. Get some sleep. Nothing’s going to change tonight. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Banbury took one last walk around the pulsating bar, then wearily abandoned his search.
♦
Cassie Field was waiting for her train on Westcombe Park station. She shivered and stared at the truculent downpour as it sluiced and slopped from the roof, and told herself once more that she had thrown away the evening. She had sought advice from an old schoolfriend, but had arrived at Sophie’s Greenwich apartment to find her drunk and weepy. Sophie had been dumped by her creepy real-estate agent boyfriend and was consoling herself with her second bottle of bad Burgundy. Cassie had been hoping for some prudent advice about her own love life, but instead had spent the evening listening to Sophie’s increasingly slurred complaints about men, before having to hold her head over the sink. Feeling alone and friendless, she headed back through the downpour to the station and just missed a Charing Cross–bound train.
Cassie retied her acid pink jacket and watched the yellow carriage lights recede into the distance, as the train swayed and sparked toward the city. There was nothing to hear now but the sound of falling rain.
She wanted to talk to someone, but most of her friends regularly visited the Karma Bar, and there was a good chance that her confessions would reach the residents of Mecklenburgh Square. Her best bet was to try Sophie again, once she had sobered up and cleared her hangover. What a mess. Cassie’s jacket was stained with rain and red wine, and the high heels she had chosen to wear had blistered her feet. The station platform was deserted; the overland line was used less frequently now that the underground reached down into South London.
There was a grey shadow behind the steamed-up, graffitied glass of the waiting room. Cassie couldn’t see who it was, but the figure’s body language was vaguely familiar. She wondered if she should go and look, but the pinging of the rails told her that there was a train approaching.
She walked to the edge of the rain-pocked platform and wondered how long it would take to get back indoors, where it was warm and dry. There was a sound behind her as the waiting room door opened. She glanced back, but there was nobody there now.
She looked for the train, and saw that it was coming in fast. Typically, she had chosen to wait at the wrong end of the platform. Beyond the tracks, the ice-blue lights of the city glimmered in melancholy relief. She had never felt so alone and in need of a friend.
Cassie was still wondering if there was anyone else in whom she could confide when a pair of boots slammed onto her shoulder blades, barrelling her forward onto the tracks, right in front of the arriving train.
∨ Off the Rails ∧
39
Flying
By the time Dan Banbury and Giles Kershaw arrived, Greenwich police had cordoned off the platform and covered the body with a yellow plastic tent. “Ghastly mess,” said Kershaw, checking under the tent flap. “Her name’s Cassie Field. She had John May’s card in her wallet, so I take it she’s involved with the case. Massive head injuries, so at least it was quick. What did the driver see?”
“He just caught a glimpse of her flying through the air, doesn’t really know what happened,” said Banbury. “He’s in the waiting room. He’s pretty shaken up.”
“The officer over there told me she jumped.”
“He only got here a few minutes ago; he’s going by what the guard told him.”
“Where was the guard?”
“On the opposite platform, texting his girlfriend, useless plonker. I’ll try and get some more lights rigged up. They need some decent overheads on this platform. What a miserable bloody place to die.”
“She reeks of wine, and there are red wine stains on her shirt. Very high heels. I know it’s the fashion, but they can’t be easy to wear. She could have been drunk and wandered too close to the edge. The platform’s somewhat on the narrow side.”
“The driver said she was ‘flying’. Ask him yourself. Like a trapeze artiste, he reckons, as in she either jumped or was pushed. He certainly doesn’t think she slipped.”
“A couple of fresh bruises on her back,” said Kershaw, carefully turning the body over and raising her jacket. “Are you getting this?” Banbury was operating the Unit’s camcorder, from which he would later pull stills. “Neat little crescents. They look like heelmarks, but they can’t be. Too high up her back, as if she was kicked onto the line. Mind you, if they were, we might get a boot match from them.”
“Flying,” repeated Banbury. He climbed back up onto the platform and looked around, thinking.
“Sorry, Dan, what did you say?”
“I said flying. As in propelled. Like Gloria Taylor.” Banbury headed for the waiting room, where he stopped to examine the doorway. “Giles, come and take a look at this.”
Kershaw left the police team and clambered back up, joining the CSM. Banbury was standing on tiptoe, running a penlight along the top edge of the waiting room doorway. The room was a freestanding box constructed of steel struts and scratched Plexiglas. The CSM pointed upward. “Eight little channels in the dirt up there, four and four, a couple of feet apart. Any ideas?”
“I might have,” said Kershaw cagily. “Have you?”
“Yes.”
“Go on, then, you first.”