Authors: Christopher Fowler
‘How long ago?’
‘Just a few minutes ago. He had to hold the other guy up, he was so pissed.’
‘Did you see where they went?’
‘Through there.’ She leaned further over and pointed down to a recessed door at the bottom of a flight of steps.
‘Why is he keeping Toth alive?’ May wondered as the detectives headed toward the basement.
‘I think I know why, but I hope I’m wrong. They’re going to Black Mary’s Hole. It’s directly underneath Spring House.’
May found a light switch and strip lights flickered on below them. Fourteen stone steps led to a damp cellar that housed the building’s electrical circuit boxes and elevator equipment.
‘Look around,’ said Bryant. ‘There has to be something else down here.’
‘I don’t know what I’m looking for, Arthur.’
‘Oh, you know.’ Bryant waved his hand about with annoying vagueness. ‘The tunnel.’
‘What tunnel?’
‘You don’t listen to a word I say, do you? The Bagnigge River ran beneath the church to Spring Place, where it was capped off. Our Mr Fox was employed at the church as a grave-maintenance person, or whatever Barton called it. Fox used the tunnel underneath, the one leading from the spa, to get back here. Where else could he have taken Mr Toth?’
‘All right,’ May conceded, ‘but what exactly are we hoping to find?’ When Bryant failed to answer, but merely pointed, May slowly turned around. ‘Oh.’
Behind him was a grey steel door studded with rivets the size of mushroom caps. ‘Try it,’ Bryant suggested. ‘There’s no lock that I can see. Put your shoulder to it.’
May did not have to push hard. The door’s hinges were thickly greased, and it swung in easily.
‘Do you have your Valiant on you?’
‘Of course.’ May pulled his cinema usherette’s flashlight from his overcoat and switched it on. ‘Mind your step. There’s a lot of rubble on the floor. Hang onto my coat.’ The pair made their way forward at a cautious pace. The floor was uneven, and followed
a gentle upward slope. The tunnel smelled of standing water but was neat and square, cemented with lichen-covered terra-cotta tiles, most of them badly damaged. A channel in the floor indicated the former path of the healing spring. Clearly, nothing but rain had come through here in a very long time.
Bryant grabbed his colleague’s arm and bade him listen. A soft fall of brick suggested movement far ahead.
‘Are you sure you’re up for this?’ May whispered. ‘We could go overland, back to the church. Land can watch this end.’
‘No, we’re too close now to risk losing them. I think he’s drugged Toth and has brought him up the tunnel from Spring House because he couldn’t go in through the church. The vicar and Kareshi would have seen them.’ Bryant climbed around a pile of collapsed brickwork and moved ahead. ‘Look.’ He pointed his walking stick toward a bend in the tunnel. There was a faint glow of light beyond it.
‘I don’t like this, Arthur. Mr Fox could be hiding anywhere, lying in wait for us.’
‘I know exactly where he is,’ declared Bryant. ‘He’s in the temple.’
‘You mean the spa room Kareshi showed us beneath the church?’
‘It became a spa room precisely because it had been a temple. There was a painting on the wall, worn and very faded but quite recognisable as Saint Helena. I knew at once it was her, because she was flanked by hunting hounds. Saint Helena is the oldest and most powerful of all the pagan goddesses ever to be worshipped on these shores. Saint Helena—or
Nouhelene
, who wore stag antlers, and who represented the force of natural regeneration.’ He stopped to catch his breath, leaning against the tiled wall. ‘St Pancras Old Church was founded by the Emperor Constantine’s mother, Saint Helena herself. Over
time her name was shortened to Nell, and she was depicted carrying a basket of fruit. And then Nell Gwynne moved into the neighbourhood. Nell and her basket of oranges. It’s where all of this came from, where the whole plan began.’
‘Arthur, you’ve lost me. Let’s get our man first, then you can explain.’ May shone the flashlight ahead. A glossy fat rat fell from the ceiling of the tunnel with a squeak, more alarmed than the detectives. They turned the bend, picking their way over bricks and garbage—others had been here before them—and the light ahead grew stronger.
A pale yellow ellipse revealed the entrance to the temple. The edges of the circular room had been marked with fat stumps of candles. In the centre, blindfolded and gagged, his hands and ankles tied, Xander Toth waited like a terrorist’s prisoner. The man who stood behind him was slight of build, but oddly nondescript in appearance, except that he was wearing a crimson papier-mâché fox’s mask, like the ones sometimes worn on Guy Fawkes night. He turned to stare at the detectives as they appeared in the tunnel entrance.
‘Why would you want to do this, Mr Fox?’ called Bryant. ‘Everything else you’ve done has made a sort of sense, but this is sheer madness. You’re being somewhat overly theatrical, if you don’t mind my saying so. Do you mind if I sit down? I’m beat.’
May was looking to his partner for a cue to act, but nobody seemed inclined to make the first move. He could feel the tension rising in the cold damp air.
‘I thought Mr Toth told you about the temple, but I suppose it might have been Mr Kareshi,’ Bryant continued cheerfully. ‘Really, though—a
sacrifice?
Who do you think you will appease? You learned to steal knowledge from other people, but you really shouldn’t start believing in too much of it, you know. You think it will come to an end and you can start all over again if
you shed young Alexander’s blood on this spot? You sold your case rather too well, Mr Toth.’
May had heard Bryant use this technique before, keeping up a soothing level of conversation with his adversary, gently disarming through the simple humanity of a caring voice. Except that Bryant sometimes got carried away and went for the Oscar.
‘But I’m afraid you can’t begin anew, because this is where it ends. We have officers here at the church and at Spring Place, too. All your exits are cut off. So you might as well let Mr Toth go. And it is my duty to arrest you for the murder of Terence Delaney.’
‘I am here at the church from ten in the morning until ten at night.’ Mr Fox’s voice was surprisingly thin and light. ‘I put in twelve-hour shifts. Barton will vouch for me.’
‘I’ll also be taking into account the murders of Adrian Jesson, Richard Standover and Maddox Cavendish.’
The crimson fox mask tilted slightly, regarding Bryant. Then it looked up into the darkness of the stairwell leading from the temple to the church above. Mr Fox seemed to have no fear. He was weighing up his options.
May saw the sharpened silver skewer glitter in his hand, and turned the flashlight directly into his eyes. He knew Mr Fox would expect to be attacked, so instead he kicked out at Xander Toth, knocking the bound man over on his side and slamming Mr Fox against the temple wall—it wasn’t a bad move for a senior.
The skewer swung out but missed its mark. May’s boot kicked again and he managed to trap Mr Fox’s wrist, pinning him in place. Two of the candles were knocked out, then a third. Only one remained alight. The temple was flickering into darkness.
‘Keep back, Arthur,’ May warned as Mr Fox rose to his feet.
Now we’re in trouble
, Bryant thought, taking in the scene.
We’re
all trapped together here. His only way out is through us. He has the only weapon. And he’s insane. My, it’s nice to be back
.
‘You’re Arthur St John Bryant,’ Fox said. ‘You still blame yourself for the way your wife Nathalie died. Your partner’s wife is in a mental home. Who are either of you to tell me what to do?’
Bryant was taken aback. How could he have known such things?
I’ve underestimated this fellow
, he thought.
We’re for it now
.
But that was before DS Janice Longbright leaned over the stairwell and dropped a sizeable chunk of paving stone on Mr Fox’s head.
In the light of the guttering candles, she bore a striking resemblance to Saint Helena.
50
THE LIE OF THE LAND
E
vents moved fast after Mr Fox was captured. The Home Office was informed that even in its etiolated state, the PCU had performed a service that no branch of the Metropolitan Police could have managed. Leslie Faraday hurried into his superior’s office, and Oskar Kasavian sent word to the Prime Minister and the capital’s news agencies. No-one congratulated the men and women of the Peculiar Crimes Unit for their dedication to duty.
When Bryant and May arrived back at their headquarters, they spent the next three and a half hours talking with Mr Fox, who seemed surprisingly keen to unburden himself to them. Without resources, it was impossible to impound evidence yet, but the PCU team was prepared to work through the night if Bryant and May were satisfied that they had their man.
It was now late in the afternoon, and their suspect had been placed in the building’s only lockable room until the staff could be debriefed and the suspect’s examination could be resumed. Time was of the essence in the initial interview process, and the detectives needed to bring everyone up to speed. On that point, it probably wasn’t the best idea to let Bryant do the talking, but the old man relished explaining his thinking to others and would not be dissuaded, despite the fact that he was prone to
lethologica, not to mention an annoying habit of wandering off-topic at the most crucial moments.
‘The roots of this case go back almost as far as I do,’ said Bryant, hovering uncertainly above the battered sofa Long-bright had managed to dredge up for the briefing room. He failed to lower himself gracefully into the seat, so he simply fell backwards. Once he had settled, Longbright handed him a mug of murky tea. The others sat wherever they could find a space. Everyone was impatient to hear how the arrest had been made.
‘It goes all the way to 1940, when a bomb fell on Mrs Porter’s house.’ Bryant took a sip of his tea, looked for a place to set it down and ended up cradling it in his lap. ‘But in a broader sense, it began several thousand years before that.’
There was such a collective groan and rolling of the eyes from the rest of the gathered staff that he decided not to follow that particular avenue of investigation. ‘All right, let’s start in 1940. A bomb destroyed a house in King’s Cross, the surviving member of the family moved away, and for over sixty years the deed to the property was not missed. That is, until the conglomerate entrusted with the regeneration of the area tried to identify the owners of every single parcel of land. And Maddox Cavendish, the architectural planner entrusted with this task, belatedly realised that a key piece was missing.
‘It wasn’t the end of the world; an occupier needed to last for eleven years on property before claiming the right to own it, and the ADAPT Group had been registered there for nine years. So, in order to comply with the law, all Cavendish had to do was wait two more years for change of ownership to become available. Except that ADAPT didn’t have two years to spare. Thanks to its agreement with the Prime Minister, it has to meet government targets on a very strict schedule, and is subject to a system of fines if this is not achieved. Cavendish’s failure to
notice the problem earlier suddenly looked like gross incompetence.
‘Then, during the clearance of the ground, one of the construction workers, Terry Delaney, discovered the deed in the remains of the well. Delaney went to Cavendish to ask his advice about what to do. I think we can guess that Cavendish offered to take care of the matter, because we know from his assistant just how driven and paranoid he was about his career. The architect made a disastrous move: He invited the construction worker to lunch—was his plan to get him drunk?—and during the course of this charm offensive, Delaney grew suspicious, resisting offers and even threats from Cavendish about handing over the deed. Instead, he announced that he would find the rightful owner and return it himself.
‘This is the point at which Cavendish had his hopes dashed; he realised that Delaney was smart, decent and determined to do the right thing.
‘Of course, it was the worst possible outcome for the architect. Now Cavendish got himself into a panic. He set out to find someone who could burgle Delaney’s flat. Of course, if there was a burglary, Delaney would have a certain amount of justified suspicion about who commissioned it. But it was a chance Cavendish was desperate to take; he’d already sailed close to the edge of the law on a number of previous occasions. And Mr Fox was fully prepared to go further than mere B and E. Cavendish emptied his bank account and paid his man some cash up front—perhaps he went through a go-between to do so—but he bought himself a far more serious criminal act: murder.
‘Mr Fox broke into Delaney’s flat, and meticulously searched for the deed. If he didn’t find it, he would be able to offer photographic proof that he had been there and had ransacked the whole flat.
‘But Delaney came back from work early. He was a gentle man, and before he knew what was happening—probably while he was still trying to reason with the intruder—Fox stabbed him in the neck with the skewer. Then he carried Delaney’s body downstairs into an unmarked white van. Mr Fox says the vehicle wasn’t his, but we’ve yet to find out who it did belong to.
‘It was late afternoon, the locals were still at work; he timed it well and he knew how not to be noticed. Fox remembered the empty store on Caledonian Road from a conversation he’d had with a local property agent. The shop was full of plastic sheeting and buckets, and even had a freezer. Using the surgical skill he’d been taught by Professor Marshall at the morgue annexed to the St Pancras Old Church graveyard, he severed Delaney’s head. Then he shoved the body in the freezer, taking the head away with him. He rightly figured that the mutilation would delay the identification process.
‘At this point we have to leave Delaney for a minute and backtrack a little, because by now another murderous situation had arisen. It’s the sort of thing that could only happen in a place like King’s Cross, where so many stories overlap simultaneously.