“What the hell is going on? I think we’ll have to shut the East Gate completely.”
“We’ve never done that before,” objected Sandwich. “The BTP will be pissed off if you back passengers up onto the street.”
“The British Transport Police should be telling us about this, not the other way around. The Northern Line southbound platform is overloaded. They’re virtually falling onto the rails.”
The system worked so long as the law of averages operated normally and only a fraction of those who held travel cards decided to travel at the same time. Today, though, it seemed as if the law of averages was on hold.
“So long as the trains keep coming in on time we should be all right, but if one of them gets a signal delay, we’re screwed. Where are all these people going? You’d better get everyone in here.”
♦
Nikos Nicolau sat by the window in Costa Coffee, monitoring the messages on his laptop. They were climbing fast now. A few minutes ago they had stuck at 3,700, but suddenly they were hitting 7,000 and rising. There was a gullibility factor in people that you had to target by appealing to their vanity, he decided, as he posted another instruction. He figured the PCU had probably sent one of their drones to keep an eye on him, but what would they see? An overweight geek sitting alone at his laptop in a coffee shop. He played on the cliché, because he knew it would blind them to his real nature.
Time for another post. He typed THIRTY-TWO MINUTES TO REACH KING’S CROSS. Skipping through the messages, he felt like a chef adding flavours to a stew. It needs something more, he thought, a fresh ingredient. Looking at the original post, he had a brainwave. He recoloured the words in Day-Glo greens, blues and yellows, then changed the font setting to ‘Balloony’, a script kids loved. Next, he dropped the message onto RadLife, a new social networking site targeted at tweens. Damn, he thought, this is going to be so cool.
He wanted to be there, but it was smarter and safer to handle the event remotely. This way he could keep it going right up until the last minute. Nikos wiped a patch of condensation from the window and peered out into the afternoon rain. Watch me and learn, you losers, he thought, hitting Send.
∨ Off the Rails ∧
45
Kill Proximity
Ruby Cates had unclipped the plastic cast on her leg and dropped it off at the University College Hospital outpatients’ department. She emerged from the entrance a few hundred yards behind Tony McCarthy.
Now she was heading along the rain-battered pavements of the Euston Road toward King’s Cross station. Her mind was racing. The police were suspicious. She had seen various members of the PCU lurking about outside the house, and for all she knew one could be following her right now. That could work in my favour, she thought, hopping between stalled taxis. Things are seriously getting out of control.
In the past week, it seemed as if the world had turned upside down. Matt gone, Cassie dead. Everything that had seemed exciting a week ago had been wrecked or tainted. The true horror of what she had done was only now starting to sink in. Get to King’s Cross, she told herself. Put an end to it and get the hell out.
♦
Toby Brooke could see the man with no neck watching him in the reflection of the furniture store window. He was wearing a black padded jacket and jeans, but couldn’t stop himself from looking like a copper. He thumped miserably from one boot to the other and wiped the rain from his shaved head, but seemed sort of content, just standing there in the downpour like a dumb animal.
Brooke wanted to get away, but was running out of options. Everything had gone wrong, and he had a bad feeling about the way it would end. He thought about slipping into the store and exiting through the rear door, but knew it would not be so easy to shake off the man who was following him. The sight of a taxi with its ‘For Hire’ light glimmering through the sheeting rain forced his hand, and he hailed it, jumping inside before his shadower was able to react.
“King’s Cross,” Toby told the driver, and sat back, turning to see if the policeman was managing to follow.
♦
Meera Mangeshkar was five metres behind Theo Fontvieille, who was looking very unhappy indeed. Rich kid, she thought. He’s more upset about having his car nicked than he is about his so-called mate being killed. But where’s he going? Fontvieille had cut up from the house in Bloomsbury and was heading toward King’s Cross station. Tucked beneath his elegant Smith & Son umbrella, he was immaculately attired in a handmade suit and matching black overcoat. Must be a bit of a shock for him, having to board public transport, she thought. Probably going to visit Mummy and Daddy’s country estate. Meera frowned, looking again. Ruby Cates had appeared behind Theo, near the overcrowded entrance to the tube station.
The top of her spine tingled in alarm. Something was not right – all these people in the afternoon – what were they doing here? Crowds of them milling around, waiting to get through the station entrances. It just looked – dangerous. Cates was closing in behind Fontvieille, but had they even seen each other? From here it was hard to tell. Meera tried to get nearer, but the crowds pressed in.
♦
Dan Banbury sat watching Rajan Sangeeta eat a salad in the UCL caféteria. The student was idly twirling an alfalfa sprout between his forefinger and thumb as he scanned a paperback copy of Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf. I’ve really drawn the short straw here, thought Banbury. This one’s far too boring and studenty to be involved in anything dubious. He sat back on the uncomfortable plastic banquette and waited for something interesting to happen.
♦
“Keep going,” said Longbright, giving Mac a shove in the back. “What’s the matter?”
“This is his territory.” Mac was frightened now. They had stopped by the clogged underground entrance and were swiftly hemmed in by new arrivals.
“If you try to give me the slip, I’ll leave you somewhere he can get at you and withdraw police presence, do you understand?”
“He knows I’m here. He always knows when I’m in the station.”
“He can’t be everywhere at once, Mac.”
“This is his home.”
The crowd was still moving. After waiting a minute, they slowly descended the staircase into the ticket hall. So many people were milling around that the makeshift queue barriers for the ticket office had all been pushed back. They weren’t descending to the platforms or using the tunnels, they were just standing there, as if waiting to be told what to do next. A cluster of BTP officers stood off at one side of the crowd near the security control centre, but they seemed uncertain how to act.
“Now what?” asked Mac, panicked. “He could be anyone; I don’t know what to watch for. He could be creeping up beside us right now.”
“You’re going to start making me nervous if you don’t shut up,” Longbright warned. “I want you somewhere with maximum visibility.” She pointed to the guards waiting to feed passengers through the unused ticket barriers. “Go over there and start an argument with one of them. Tell him your travel card doesn’t work and you want a refund. Tell him he looks like a warthog, tell him anything. Make it loud and be bloody-minded – I’m sure that’ll come naturally. Wait.” Her earpiece crackled into life. She listened to Renfield and nodded. “Go!”