“So our priority is still to find Gloria Taylor’s attacker.”
“You’d better copy Mr Fox’s updated file, the one with the new photos, get it over to Islington and Camden, and let’s hope the plods at the Met manage to pick him up on their rounds. You know how they think; if he gets rid of a few thieving junkies, it might be better to let him continue clearing the streets.”
Longbright sat back and allowed herself to relax. “I’ve reached a dead end with the witness statements. Nobody remembers who was walking behind Taylor on the stairs. If it had happened on the escalator they’d have been standing still, not concentrating on where to place their feet, and someone might have noticed who was there.”
“Maybe Giles is wrong and it was just an accident. But the man has good instincts. I keep asking myself, how could it have been murder? There are simply too many variables. First, there was the risk of being seen and blamed. Then, the chance that someone else would catch her or merely get in the way and break her fall. Even pushing an old lady down her stairs at home doesn’t guarantee that she’s going to die. It’s best to test these things out with physical experiments. I tried it once before with a pig.”
“What happened?”
“It was very upset, jumped over the banisters and landed rather heavily on our hall table. Alma was furious. I should have used a dead one, but I was minding it for a friend.”
“I notice Taylor’s death didn’t warrant a mention in the press. It’s been written off as an accident. And Janet Ramsey didn’t pick up on Mac’s vampire wound.”
“I’d probably be inclined to think it was accidental if I didn’t share John’s puzzlement over these students,” said Bryant. “If you were going to attempt to take someone’s life in such a damned awkward manner, you wouldn’t risk drawing attention to yourself by whacking a label on the victim’s back. Why leave a clue at all? And once you’ve pushed her, then what do you do? You can’t fight your way up the staircase when everyone’s coming down, so you have to carry on walking to the bottom. Too much of a risk.” Bryant wiped his lips and set down his tumbler. “It’s no good, I can’t drink any more of that. Is there really nothing else?” He tipped the remains into Crippen’s bullet-punctured litter tray.
Longbright poked about in one of the crates. “There’s half a bottle of Merlot here. You try it.” She unscrewed the top and tipped some in his glass.
The bouquet forced his eyes shut. “Well, it’s got a bit of a bite. It would probably burn quite well.” He examined the label. “Produce of Morocco. Why was it in the crate?”
“Old evidence.”
“Not the Lewisham Poisoner? Give me a top-up.”
“When you think about how crowded the tubes get, it’s amazing there aren’t more accidents.” Longbright pulled off her heels and put her feet up on Bryant’s desk, crossing her nylons at the ankle.
“The guards were telling me that drunks tend to fall down the stairs or onto the tracks further out of town, away from the West End stations, because the alcohol is kicking in just as they arrive at their destinations. There are very few deliberate assaults, though. I suppose it’s the proximity of others, the lighting and the CCTV system. No, I think we have to assume the Taylor death is a one-off. The Hillingdon disappearance is bloody odd, though. You can’t disappear on a moving tube train in the two minutes it takes to travel between stops. The boy will probably turn up with some silly-ass explanation.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“As far as I know, there’s never been a serial killer with such a random MO, even in the forties, when entire neighbourhoods slept down on the platforms during the air raids. Once you go down those stairs, it seems as if there’s a separate unwritten code of manners in place.”
“The peer pressure of the crowd,” agreed Longbright. “Everyone has a go at you if you do something wrong. It’s like all these freesheets they give out at the stations. There’s an understanding that you can leave your paper folded on the back of the seat when you leave because someone else will read it. It seems to be a form of recycling that’s acceptable.”
“And this thing with the litter bins.”
“What thing?”
“Well, there aren’t any. Not around the station anyway, because of terrorist threats. So people tuck bottles and coffee cups in every little corner of the street. They can’t be bothered to take stuff home, but they don’t want to leave the place untidy, either. What strange creatures we English are. We make up our own rules, despite the politicians trying to control us. Remember when the mayor banned booze on the tube and everyone had a huge party in the carriages the night before it came into effect? I love a bit of anarchy, so long as it doesn’t harm the undeserving.”
“Absolutely. It’s a bloody good idea to frighten Whitehall once in a while.”
“Odd about the stickers being a symbol for anarchy. The mad are often seen as free instead of prisoners.”
“I had the same logo on an old Vivienne Westwood T-shirt, back in the 1980s.” Longbright emptied the last of the bottle into their glasses. “This brings me back to the old days, when the three of us would take on lost causes, the cases no-one else believed in, like your Deptford Demon, the Oxford Street Mannequin Murderer, and that business with those glamour models, the Belles of Westminster. You should put them in your memoirs.”
“I will if I ever find the energy,” Bryant promised. “There are so many projects I’d like to embark on, I can’t imagine finishing them all. I sense a gathering darkness, Janice, not just in me but in the world outside. Perhaps it’s something everyone of my age feels. But I do wonder if anyone really cares about the same things anymore. Who honestly wants to know about the history of pubs or hidden waterways, or mysterious goings-on underneath the streets? I have no conversation about diets and celebrities or the bad habits of television personalities. Just once I’d like some bottom-feeding media slug to be caught in a criminal situation more imaginative than one involving call girls and drugs. Their world is too predictable and mundane for me, but it’s what everyone else seems to be interested in.”
“You can’t blame people for being fascinated by their own species,” said Longbright.
“That’s where John comes in. He genuinely likes people. I think I’m more of an ideas man. But I do care.” He removed his glasses and smiled at Longbright with suddenly diminished eyes. “I know it seems John and I disagree about everything, but we don’t about the important stuff. He has very sound instincts. I believe in him. And in you. I remember when you used to come to Bow Street with your mother. She’d leave you to play with us while she was on duty, and I used to threaten to lock you up when you became annoying. Once I even marched you down to the cells. I had every intention of leaving you there, because I’ve never been able to abide children. But even then you knew how to twist me around your little finger. I’m so sorry you lost him.”
“Liberty? I’m sorry for him, not me. I’m still here. Don’t start getting sentimental in your old age.” She made a show of looking stern.
“I know everyone thinks I’m difficult. It’s just that as I’ve got older I’ve become less gullible. And that makes me harder to control. I don’t listen to my peers anymore, but that’s because most of them are either dead or have gone mad, so now I’m free to explore anything I want.”