∨ Off the Rails ∧
42
Sleight of Hand
“Hillingdon’s overcoat,” said Bryant, wandering into the Crime Scene Manager’s room, “the oily patches are tobacco spray.” He looked very pleased with himself.
“How did you know?” Banbury asked. “The results only just came back. I was about to come and see you.”
“The killer didn’t forget the coat, he planted it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Someone in that house has been a bit too clever for their own good. The principles of magic; if you see the impossible happen, it isn’t impossible. You’ve been tricked.”
“Sorry, Mr Bryant, I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”
“You can only disappear from a moving train carriage if you were never on it in the first place.”
“Do you want me to get John before I go?” Banbury made it sound as if he was offering to fetch a nurse for a rambling patient.
“No, go and keep an eye on – who did you draw this time?”
“The girl – Ruby Cates. Giles is covering for me until I get there. I’m going to make her take that cast off.”
“Go on, relieve him.” Bryant waited for the door to shut, then turned back to Professor Hoffman’s book of card tricks. Holding it open with his left hand, he attempted to shuffle a fresh pack with his right, and sprayed cards all over the floor.
♦
Outside in the corridor, John May saw a ghost. The sight brought him up short and chilled the blood in his veins. Fearful of seeing the sight again, he slowly walked back and turned around.
Liberty DuCaine was sitting on an orange plastic chair in the hall, reading a copy of Hard News. Except that was impossible; Liberty’s corporeal form had been sifted into a City of London Crematorium urn on Monday morning.
May looked at DuCaine, and DuCaine gave him a friendly smile back. “I’m here to see Janice Longbright,” he said cheerfully.
“Is she…expecting you?” asked May.
“Yeah, I’m Fraternity – Liberty’s brother?”
Now May saw the differences between the pair. Fraternity’s eyes were a little more deep-set and thoughtful. He was bulkier, with a dense neck and arms like heavy copper pipes. The black gym shirt under his tracksuit said Full Contact Fighter.
“Sorry, I’m a little late. Some kind of problem with the Northern Line.” When he rose, Fraternity stood a full head above May.
“Don’t worry. I’ll take you to her office.” May wondered why Henley had turned him down, if DuCaine had achieved good grades. Despite the guidelines set by the Equal Opportunity Commission, physically imposing males were always useful on the street.
May pushed open the door to Longbright’s office and found it empty, her coat gone. “It looks like she’s nipped out,” he said. “Do you mind waiting?”
“No problem.” Fraternity walked around the room, taking it in. “She said she had some information about my case. I appreciate the help.”
“I’ll have to leave you here until she gets back. We’re having a very difficult day.” May headed to his own office, and found Bryant on his hands and knees, picking up playing cards.
“I see you’re hard at work on the investigation, then,” he said.
“I am, actually. I know how Matthew Hillingdon was able to vanish from a moving train. Obviously, I had a rough idea fairly early on in the investigation, but it only became crystal clear to me a few minutes ago. Would you like to hear?”
May waited at his desk while Bryant picked up the cards and clumsily attempted to shuffle them. “On Tuesday night, Hillingdon boarded a train at Liverpool Street station, went west on the District & Circle Line to King’s Cross and was supposed to catch the last southbound Piccadilly Line train. It arrived on time in King’s Cross at 12:24 A.M., yes? He texted Ruby Cates from the King’s Cross interchange at 12:20, telling her he was heading for Russell Square tube, a two-minute journey. The CCTV showed him getting onto the train. The next shot we’ve got is of the train pulling out. But there was another event.”
“What?”
“Hillingdon shut his coat in the door, so they had to re-open the carriage doors. We don’t know how soon after this the driver shut them again, but it was probably no more than a few seconds. Suppose Hillingdon ducked and ran down the carriage, getting off at the other end before the train left?”
“To go where? The cameras would have picked him up.”
“If you remember, there was one more train that night, leaving from the Northern Line platform three minutes later. The tunnel connecting the two lines was being retiled, and that camera wasn’t working – Dutta told us that. So he hops onto the train, deliberately shuts his coat in the door, waits until the doors re-open, hops back off through the next set of doors, beyond sight of the working camera, and catches the northbound train.”
“Matthew Hillingdon’s body was found in King’s Cross, not at the far end of the Northern Line.”
“I didn’t say it was Matthew who caught the other train, did I? Hillingdon was sprayed with tobacco somewhere in the station and left to die. The killer switched clothes with him. He put on Hillingdon’s woolly hat and his ridiculous candy-striped overcoat, and ran for the train. The cameras picked up the hat and the coat. I mean, they could hardly miss, could they?”
“I know we only saw the figure from the back, but it looked like Hillingdon.”
“No, it moved like Hillingdon. Not a very hard motion to imitate, typical drunken student pimp-roll, feet at ten to two and arms swinging. And he was running, so the frames were blurred.”
“Then what happened to Hillingdon? If he’d been anywhere in the station, we would have seen him – Oh, my God.”
“Precisely. We did see him. He was caught by the cameras, and in the process he became his own urban myth.”
“The Night Crawler.”
“Exactly. Not the ghost of a dead man, not a giant walking bat, and not a homeless person, either. A dying student in a black leather long-coat several sizes too large for him. He was pouring with sweat, so his long black hair was plastered around his head, and he was dying – crawling along the floor in the only direction he could manage – downwards. Disoriented and confused, barely able to breathe, he falls from the unused platform and lands in the cool darkness – but he somehow manages to get the coat off and loosen his shirt collar before losing consciousness.”
“You think even that part was planned? That the black leather coat was chosen – ”
“ – by the killer to hide the victim. Probably. But what if it was somebody who actually knew about the myth of the Night Crawler?”
“That’s something only the guards gossipped about,” said May. “Isn’t it?”
“No.” Bryant offered his partner a card. “It’s in a book called Mind the Ghosts. You brought back the paperback from the house in Mecklenburgh Square. It belonged to either Ruby Cates or Toby Brooke.”
“Or both of them. No, it can’t be her. She’s in a plastic cast. She’s got a broken leg.”
“Except that Renfield never did check to see if it was really broken. Tell me which card you picked.”
May turned over the card and studied it.
“It’s the nine of clubs, yes?” said Bryant triumphantly.
“No. Mrs Bun the Baker’s Wife.”
“Bugger,” said Bryant, “I’ve mixed up the decks again.”
∨ Off the Rails ∧
43