“Well, in that one second I lost everything. Three strikes. I crashed out of the game, all because she wouldn’t take another two stupid paces through the barrier. I don’t know what happened – I just nudged her in anger, I couldn’t control myself – and I was amazed to see her fall down the stairs. She was wearing these really high heels. So I just kept going as if I hadn’t seen, as if it was nothing to do with me, and caught the first train that came in. I was in a suit and tie. Nobody looked twice at me.”
“Jesus, Theo.” Rajan and Toby were staring at him in horror. Ruby, nursing her broken finger in the corner, remained sullen and silent.
“You don’t understand how frustrating it was,” Theo told them. “It was kind of an accident.”
“Not if you pushed her!”
“Yeah, but I didn’t mean her to die.”
“Let’s move on,” coaxed Bryant. “What happened after that?”
“I thought no-one would find out, but when I got home I remembered I’d sent all my photos to Matt. That woman was all over his phone and laptop. I had some time, though, because the story didn’t get picked up and none of the others knew what had happened. I saw a way that I could still come out on top. Matt came upstairs and told me he had seen the pictures, so he knew I had been eliminated from the game. I made light of it, bluffed it out – I’m a very good poker player.”
“Yeah, he only lies when he opens his mouth,” muttered Ruby.
“On Tuesday night, I took Matt out for a drink with the intention of getting him slaughtered, although he was already half-cut when he turned up. We hit a bar in Spitalfields – there are so many around there and they’re all so crowded that I knew no-one would remember seeing us. I’d taken his asthma spray and switched it with one filled with tobacco tea. Then I gave him the spray and waited for him to get sick, but it took longer than I’d expected. Earlier that day I went around the tube station and checked the cameras, and I could see that a couple were out, but I figured it would be more luck than judgement if I got away with it, because I wouldn’t know exactly where he’d collapse. The most useful thing was that Matt trusted me.”
My God, thought May, looking into Fontvieille’s dead eyes, he really sees nothing morally wrong with what he’s done.
Theo was anxious to explain, and appeared to be enjoying himself. “It was all pretty simple stuff. I switched coats with him, then he started to pass out behind one of those great big caged fans they’ve placed in the tunnel entrance. I was pretty sure it was a blind spot and the cameras couldn’t pick him up. And I’d been careful to keep my distance from him ever since we’d left Liverpool Street. I even sat on the escalators while he stood, so I wouldn’t be seen. I heard the train approaching, so I left Matt and ran for it. I’m only an inch taller, and in Matt’s hat and rainbow coat I figured I’d look like him from behind. I jumped onto the train but shut the coat in the door – I hadn’t realised how long it was – but when the doors opened I had a better idea. I went to the other end of the carriage, got off and headed for the last Northern Line train.”
“You’d prepared a lot more than that, though, hadn’t you?” Bryant suggested.
“Yeah, I’d taken Matt’s travel card – we used regular tickets ‘cause they couldn’t be traced – and I left it in Toby’s room. And I wrote Ruby’s name in his library books, just to confuse things further. But the best part went wrong. Before I met up with Matt, I drove to the Buddha Bar with Cassie and made a big deal about leaving the Porsche outside. Everyone remembers that car because of the personalised licence plate. I wore my matching red scarf and made sure they all noticed me. I figured I’d go out, meet up with Matt and come back at the end of the evening, and everyone would be so wasted they’d tell anyone who asked that I’d been there all night. Only as I got out of the car, I locked my bloody keys inside it.
“Then I remembered an old trick. If you lock your keys in your car and you’ve got spare keys at home, all you have to do is call someone on their mobile from your mobile. You hold yours about a foot from your car door and have the other person press the ‘unlock’ button, and it opens your door. So I called the house and Ruby answered the phone. I was kind of in a panic and I think she sensed that. Didn’t you, Ruby?”
“Don’t involve me, you scumbag,” she warned. “Everything you said, everything you ever told me was a lie.”
“Hey, it’s what I do.” Theo grinned at her. Incredibly, it seemed he was comfortable making jokes.
“Go on,” said May.
“I asked Ruby to help me unlock the car, and knew I’d compromised my alibi. So I thought to hell with it, and I asked her to say she saw me come home earlier than I did. I knew she was nuts about me, so I was kind of in the clear. I got to the bar to meet Matt – he’d already had a massive head start drinking with some old mates from Nottingham – but he still wasn’t drunk when we left. I had to wait a few minutes for the booze to kick in. I got him out of breath at King’s Cross and persuaded him to use the spray, went back to collect the car and then headed home. I had the evidence from Matt’s mobile, and no-one would ever suspect a thing. Plus, it looked like the money would default to me, because the game had to be stopped if the next player couldn’t take their turn. In this case, the next player had died – or at least, gone missing – I hadn’t expected him to crawl off like that. There were two small problems I needed to deal with, though, because you guys were starting to sniff around the house.
“First, Nikos was still holding the cash, and I knew it would be found if the house was searched. So he came up with a good idea – he went to some jeweller’s in Hatton Garden and used the money to buy a ring. You know what Jews are like, they see wads of money and don’t ask questions.” He smiled ingratiatingly at everyone, making Longbright’s skin crawl. “And to keep Ruby sweet, I told her she could wear it – to prove how sincere I was, you know?
“Everything had fallen back into place. I mean, obviously we couldn’t play on with you watching us, so the game was declared over. The others were furious, but like I said, we’d put a clause in the rule book saying that in the event of a force majeure the last high score would take the pot. I could claim the ring and pay off my debts.”
“But they had no proof that you were the winner,” May pointed out.
“Yeah, they did, because by then I’d had time to make a nice little edit of the photos. I just said I didn’t know where Matt had gone. I kind of implied he’d found out about me and Ruby, and had stormed off. But Ruby didn’t believe me. And then Cassie figured it out.” Theo shook his head, irritated by the thought. “Because you went to see her about the damned stickers. She knew one had been placed on the back of a woman who’d died on the tube – you told her. And she told me she knew I was involved. That girl – it was one of the reasons we broke up – she could always see right through me. I asked her what she was going to do about it, and she said she didn’t know. She wanted to talk to an old friend of hers, a lawyer. I knew then that Cassie had to be removed. I followed her to Greenwich – I was still wearing Matt’s coat because I’d put my black leather Marc Jacobs original on him and I didn’t want to get my clothes dirty – but I didn’t find a chance to get her alone. I kept trying to think of a way to kill her, but it was really difficult coming up with something good, you know?”
“You managed it, though.”
“Oh, yeah. I stayed outside the flat, watching as the pair of them got drunk, but I couldn’t tell whether Cassie had told her about me. I couldn’t see properly from outside. I wasn’t about to kill the friend as well – I mean, where would it have stopped? But then Cassie went back to the Westcombe Park station, and there was nobody on the platform. It was too good an opportunity to waste. By this time, I could tell that your investigation was falling apart, because it was so easy to provide a vague alibi.”