They stepped off the escalator together. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you were getting out. I thought you were serious about us.”
Ruby look uncomfortable. She turned the ring on her finger, studying it too intently. “I’ve been thinking. I’m not so sure I want to be with anyone just now. I need some space to think, Theo. I’ll call you from Brighton, okay?”
“What happened to spending more time together? Listen, I could come down with you just for tonight. I don’t have to go into town. I don’t really need another pair of sneakers.”
“No, that won’t work. I’m staying with these people I know – ”
“Well, it seems to me like you’re running away. Are you meeting someone down there?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then why is it I don’t believe a word you’re saying?”
The platform had become overcrowded. The guards were warning everyone to stand back from the platform edge, as there was a train approaching.
“Tell you what. As a token of trust, give me that back.” Theo pointed to the diamond ring on the third finger of her right hand.
Ruby gave an awkward laugh. “Actually I was going to leave it on your bedside table this morning but I couldn’t get the damned thing off. It’s a little too small for me. This is my train.”
“Give me the ring, Ruby.” There was menace in his voice now.
“I told you, I can’t get it off.”
When he grabbed her arm she was so surprised that she momentarily lost her balance, and was almost pulled in under the arriving train.
♦
Longbright could see Mac bobbing and shoving ahead toward the red-and-silver train that was just opening its doors. Mr Fox – she could only think of him in the identity he had used to kill – was closing in fast behind him.
♦
Mr Fox felt a strange, cold serenity descend over him, a feeling that always seized him in the moments before he killed. He saw everything at a distance; down among all those scurrying little people was the pathetic junkie Mac, desperate to escape, searching a way out like a tube rat sensing a coming inferno. Sweat was leaking from his hairline, down his sallow, diseased cheeks. He looked badly in need of a fix.
Perhaps that was the answer; perhaps the entire interchange needed to burn again, to sear itself clean in a rising tide of flame. But no, that wouldn’t work now. Steel had replaced wood, smoke sensors and cameras lined the walls. And what would another conflagration resolve? The horror of the past could not be erased with a second atrocity. The memory of that terrible day could never be burned away.
Mr Fox allowed the silver skewer to slide down into his palm. He felt its cool heft in his hand, demanding to be used. Killing would calm him.
But now the doors of the Victoria Line train stood open, and Mac was free to board. If he did, Mr Fox knew he could lose the opportunity presented by the crush of the anonymous crowd. He stamped hard on a woman’s foot and shoved her aside, moving in to commit the act that would provide him with a temporary respite from the ever-present pain of remembering.
Just as he reached toward Mac, however, a tall student stumbled into his path. The student was grabbing at his girlfriend’s hand, trying to twist a ring from her finger, and the girlfriend had turned to slap him in the face. The crowd – mostly made up of old ladies, it seemed – pushed back with force, and suddenly they seemed to have linked arms so that there was a solid barrier of them across his path. It was absurd, but he could not pass between them to reach his target. He watched, stalled, as Mac jumped to safety, moving nimbly between the closing doors of the carriage.
Now the tall student was twisting the girl’s hand and even Mr Fox heard the snap of her finger, saw her scream, knew that some other drama was unfolding before him, but all he could see was Mac escaping, getting away to some place where he could talk to the police, and then he knew he had lost, lost it all, because of the old ladies and this damned student and his stupid lovers’ tiff, and the needle-sharp point of the skewer had risen in his hand as if moving of its own accord.
He slammed it down into the student’s arm and pushed, shoved it through the artery above his wrist until the point emerged from the other side. But he couldn’t get the skewer back out, no matter how hard he pulled.
The student released the girl and collapsed with a roar of pain. The old farts before him were suddenly replaced with familiar faces, and he saw that he was surrounded by members of the Peculiar Crimes Unit.
The centre of the group slowly opened to reveal the crumpled face of Arthur Bryant, closely followed by John May. The most humiliating moment came when a woman, the big blond detective sergeant they called Longbright, twisted the silver skewer from his grip and removed it from the victim, confiscating his beloved weapon.
From the day he watched the burning match tumble down the side of the escalator, a part of him had always prayed for this moment to arrive. With delicious anticipation, he waited to hear the words that would finally seal his fate.
Instead he saw Arthur Bryant look past him and announce, “Theodore Samuel Fontvieille, I am arresting you for the murders of Gloria Taylor, Matthew Hillingdon and Cassandra Field.”
∨ Off the Rails ∧
49
Charismatic
“Two arrests before six o’clock,” Raymond Land was excitedly telling Leslie Faraday over the phone. “They’ve done it! No, I’ve no idea how. Nobody ever tells me anything. Oh, really? Oh, I thought you’d be pleased.” Land found himself looking into the receiver, a dead line burring in his ear.
This time, Mr Fox found himself locked in a cell at Albany Street police headquarters, and there was no way for him to escape – not that he wanted to. On the contrary, he seemed almost relieved to be behind bars, as if somehow the memory of those painful years between his destruction of the tube station and his return to killing had finally been laid to rest.
He refused to speak to anyone, and flinched when his features were recorded, fearful that his true face might be placed on display for all to gawp at. And gawp they would, for even as he lay curled in the corner of his cell, his jacket thrown over his eyes to shield them from the overhead cell lights that were never dimmed, the Home Office was leaking the story to the press.
Having been so protective of his true identity, Jonas Ketch, alias Lloyd Lutine, alias Mr Fox and a dozen other names, would now face his greatest fear – exposure of his most horrific, shameful secret. Thinking back to the moment when he ran sobbing up the escalator with the burning match in his hand, he buried his face ever more deeply within the cloth of his jacket, savouring these last few moments of darkness, knowing that the blaze of publicity would soon obliterate him, as the braying clamour of morons began.
♦
The PCU had dragged all the members of the Mecklenburgh Square household back to the Unit’s headquarters for a final showdown, and this time batteries of police recorders and cameras were there to cover the event. Theo Fontvieille had been stitched and bandaged, and was seated with plastic ties binding his wrists. The others found chairs or spaces on the floor where they could sit. The two Daves had been sent away, despite their protestations that they hadn’t had time to repair the hole in Bryant’s floor, but everyone else was in attendance, and it was Arthur Bryant, of course, who chose to take the centre stage.
“Well, it’s been quite a week for all of us,” he said, looking around, his blue eyes shining, “but tougher for some than others. Now that we’re all together, I think we should dispense with formalities for a while and talk about what happened.”
“We should be taking separate statements from each of them, sir,” said Renfield, “to prevent corroboration.”