He listened to the city. A few minutes earlier it had been virtually silent, but almost on the stroke of seven o’clock a low, steady roar began and grew, like the sound of factory machinery starting up. It was the hum of engines, the turning of pistons, of voices and vans and coffee machines, of peristaltic traffic and disgorging trains. The sound of London coming to life.
He used the last of his cold coffee to wash down a statin designed to tackle his high cholesterol. As he stood above the water, his thoughts turned to Gloria Taylor’s uncomprehending daughter, and his fingers brushed the cotton of his shirt, over the ridged scar on his heart. A five-year-old girl left without a mother. The wound opened by the loss of a life could never be fully healed, but it was the PCU’s duty to find a way of restoring balance. He had not been able to save those closest to him, but perhaps he could make a difference in the life of a stranger.
He knew it was what his partner would be trying to do, in his own mad way. Tonight, long after the others had gone home, the top floor lights in their King’s Cross warehouse would be burning as Arthur worked on, driven less by a sense of injustice than the need to solve a puzzle. At least they would work toward the same end. The city was a blind, uneven place where injustices could never be fully righted, just smoothed out a little. With its funding returned, the PCU stood a chance of making a difference. If it failed in its first case, however, the fragile faith it had newly engendered would be destroyed.
He took the circular sticker from his pocket and traced the outline of the figure with his forefinger. It wasn’t much to go on, but anything with a connection to the case, no matter how tangential, was worth exploring.
♦
Ruby Cates lived on the second floor of a house in Mecklenburgh Square, in the back of Bloomsbury. The square had been named in honour of Queen Charlotte, on the grounds of the Foundling Hospital. The damage it had sustained in World War II had been tidily repaired, but the grand square and its spacious roads were little-used and overlooked. At the centre was a high-railed garden filled with mature elms and plane trees, shadowy and vaguely mournful, in the way that empty London squares could feel damp even in high summer.
Ruby answered the door in a sweat-stained red Mets T-shirt, with a white towel knotted around her neck. She was pleasant-faced, but too thin and fiercely blond, with an intensity in her deep-set eyes that put May instantly on his guard. Having emailed her first thing, he had received an instant reply providing the address and the time she would be at home. She held open the door and started explaining the moment he stepped inside. May saw that the lower half of her left leg was locked in a grey plastic cast.
“I went up to Camden police station but they said I have to wait until tomorrow. I told them there couldn’t be any mistake but they weren’t interested in listening to me, so I went down to the tube to check for myself.” Her voice had a soft country burr, Dorset perhaps.
“Come through. This is my kitchen but the others tend to turn up here for coffee. It’s not really fair because they have bigger bedrooms. There’s another kitchen upstairs but they use it as a storeroom. There’s a mountain bike in it no-one’s ever ridden. I’ve learned one thing: Never be the only woman in a household of men.” Ruby’s kitchen was overflowing with dirty crockery, newspapers, magazines and books. A heavy blue glass ashtray pinned down wayward paperwork. There was a faint smell of tobacco, as if someone had been rolling it from a pouch.
“Under normal circumstances I would have run back up here. I run everywhere. I finished the marathon last year. Not going to do it this time, though.” She rapped on the plastic cast.
“What happened?”
“I was training. Really stupid of me – I slipped off the kerb outside the house and fell badly. I didn’t even feel the bone break. I’m working out every day, trying to keep the muscles strong. It should be off soon. I didn’t leave details about Matt at the station so I suppose you’re going to take a statement now?”
“I’m sorry, I think we’re at cross-purposes. This is a routine enquiry about an accident.”
“You’re not here about Matthew Hillingdon?”
“No, a chap called Nikos Nicolau gave me your email address.”
“So you haven’t spoken to the police at Camden? That’s really weird.” Ruby shook the idea around in her head. “Well, it’s good you’re here.”
“Why?”
“Because Matt is missing – I reported him missing.”
“Ah – no, I’m not connected with that. I’m tracing a set of these things a girl called Cassie handed out at her bar.” He passed over the plastic sachet containing the sticker.
“But you must have known something. Matt has one of these things on his computer bag.”
“I think you’d better start from the beginning,” said May, sitting down.
“Matthew Hillingdon is a friend of mine. Well, maybe a bit more than a friend; I’ve been seeing him. He lives here.” She paced awkwardly to the window and back, unable to settle. “We study together at UCL. We were supposed to be meeting up last night, but he never showed.”
“And you went to the police?”
“As soon as he failed to appear. I know, I know, you’re going to say I was overreacting, that’s what they said, but I had my reasons. I haven’t heard from him since.”
“But if it was only last night…”
“He texted me just as he was entering King’s Cross station and said he’d be on the last train, okay? He’d been out drinking at some bar in Spitalfields.” She dug her phone from her pocket and showed him the message: At KX just made last train C U 2mins. The call register showed that the text was sent at 12:20 A.M. “He was probably pretty smashed.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Matt has a habit of texting me when he’s had too many, because if he calls I’ll hear him slurring his words, and he knows I don’t approve of him getting wasted when he’s got a lecture the next morning.”
“Does he get drunk a lot?”
“Yes, lately. He’s under a lot of pressure. He’s got money worries. And he’s finding the course difficult.”
“Did he tell you who he was drinking with?”
“No, one of his classmates, probably. But look at the time of the call. He always catches the tube, so he’d have come on the District & Circle Line, and changed onto the Piccadilly at King’s Cross. We both know that the last train goes at 12:24 A.M. I was waiting by the exit at the next stop, Russell Square. The train only takes two minutes, and came in at 12:26, but he wasn’t on it.”
“Maybe there’s another way out of the station.”
“No, I’ve waited there often enough; there’s only one exit and I was there, right at the barrier, as always.”
“Then he must have missed it.”
“He’d have walked down to me. It doesn’t take long.”
“He could have chosen not to catch the train for some reason.”
“In that case, why would he bother to text and tell me he’d be on it?”
“The London Underground is the most heavily monitored system in the world,” May answered. “There are some things we can do to establish where your friend went. But before I start that process, I need you to be absolutely certain about the facts.”
“If you knew me, Mr May, you’d know I’m certain.”
“One thing at a time. Tell me about the sticker.”
“I don’t know anything more. It was on his bag, that’s all. They’re from the Karma Bar. All the geeks have them. I said I wouldn’t call them geeks but it’s just that they hang out together so much and they never stop working.”