On the Loose (2 page)

Bea boiled a kettle while Ethel attended to her face and tidied her hair. They were better when they had things to do. The problem, said Bea, was the lack of information. The papers told them nothing, and not knowing got on your nerves. What a Christmas they could look forward to! Then she realised what she had said, and looked back at Ethel, who would be spending her first Christmas without her son.

Harold picked his way between the stacks of fallen masonry, crumpled chunks of an internal lathe-and-plaster wall and an entire fireplace surround that had landed perfectly upright in the road, as if it had been placed there by a giant hand. A confused-looking ARP warden was trying to direct people away.

‘Mrs Porter,’ Harold called, ‘stay right there. I wouldn’t move if I were you.’ His neighbour was standing dazed on a splintered wooden floorboard that jutted out above her smoking cellar, all that remained of her living room floor. She was dressed in a torn white blouse and skirt, and bedroom slippers. She had been preparing some supper to eat in front of the radio, which was still working even though it dangled from the end of an electric cord. A jaunty foxtrot, ‘’Til the Lights of London Shine Again,’ played as Harold inched his way onto the creaking platform.

‘Give me your hand, love,’ he called softly.

Mrs Porter seemed not to have heard him.
‘Don’t you cry when
I’m gone,’
sang the radio.
‘Wear a smile and carry on, ’til the lights of London shine again.’

‘I’m just here in front of you,’ said Harold.

‘And now Sid Lypton and the Grosvenor House Dance Band play ‘Blacking Out the Moon’ for every—’
The radio spat an electrical pulse and went dead. All that could be heard was the soft suffering of the injured, the chink and tumble of dislodging bricks.

Harold stretched out his hand. ‘You can do it, love. Don’t look down. Just reach toward me.’

Mrs Porter remained frozen, staring past him to where the wall had been. To where her husband had been sitting, waiting for his dinner.

‘He’s not there,’ Harold explained carefully. ‘He’s gone, love, and the house has gone.’ He had passed the old man’s body as he approached the house, crushed beneath a collapsed chimney stack. Nearby, a grandfather clock had landed facedown on the pavement, like a felled parade soldier.

She noticed him for the first time, and fluttered her eyelids as though coming to her senses. For a moment he thought she might faint and fall into darkness. Then she held out her arm, just far enough for him to grab at her and haul her back from the edge. ‘My name’s Irene,’ she murmured, and passed out in his arms.

2
MR FOX

W
hat the bombs could not accomplish, the town planners finished off. Any building deemed a danger to public safety could be pulled down, and soon this was used to rid the city of anything staid and dull. So the classic portico of Euston station was torn apart, and the Gothic cathedral of St Pancras would have followed it into the dust but for the protestations of campaigners like Sir John Betjeman. The grand edifice remained intact but derelict, a home to rats and pigeons, awaiting rebirth in the next century.

Now that it was open once more, the cobwebs and pigeons had been banished from its environs, but vermin remained… .

Mr Fox was the master of his territory, as sly and adaptable as his namesake. He could vanish and reappear at will. The cheap grey hoodie, chain store leather jacket and tracksuit bottoms he wore rendered him virtually invisible. He gave the impression of being small and pale, so light that he might not leave footprints in snow, but this was not the case. His limbs were thickly muscled, and his strength could startle.

He plotted a route through the great vaulted station of St Pancras, instinctively looking out for the lost ones. Ridges and
furrows of glass rose above him in a matrix of pale blue ironwork, allowing an immensity of light to fall across the concourse. It was the end of April, and Mr Fox was one day away from becoming a murderer.

As he insinuated himself through the crowds, he imagined his appearance as witnesses might remember it, unfocussed, silvery and opaque, a blur on a photograph. He was feral, instinctive, always on the move, always wary of being cornered. If his image could be captured (and it certainly could, given that there were over four million cameras watching London, an astonishing proportion of which were hidden in its stations) he made sure it would only appear as lost pixels on a screen, a time-lapsed smudge without a face. True subversives, he knew, were unnoticeable. Fake subversives (suburban kids and people in dull jobs) dressed to stand out from the crowd. Mr Fox was like the King’s Cross lighthouse, the strange tumbledown Victorian monument above the street that went unnoticed because it was always somewhere in the background.

In and out of the stores and bars that occupied the glassed-in areas behind the exposed-brick arches—Foyles bookshop, Neal’s Yard, Le Pain Quotidien, Marks & Spencer—he searched for the lonely and the weak. He was drawn toward the lame straggler, the vulnerable visitor, the indecisive commuter. He could not afford to take long because too many watchful lenses were assembled in clusters on the surrounding arches. One pass through the main concourse of St Pancras was usually enough. The beauty of operating in a place like this was the sheer number of potential victims.

There were plenty of police strolling about, but the location gave them a disadvantage. So many civilians approached with questions in the course of a shift that their differences were dissolved
by sheer weight of numbers. The officers were like keepers in charge of an ever-expanding anthill.

Mr Fox never made contact inside the railway station. He followed his targets at a distance, out to the cab ranks and crammed pavements where they waited to cross the road, distracted by their coats, bags and maps, disoriented by their unfamiliar surroundings. He had been born and raised in these grim streets, knew every alley and shadowed corner, but had not known their tangled history until recently. He listened and learned from others, knowing it would all prove useful to him one day. When he lacked knowledge, he befriended people who had it, absorbing everything he needed before discarding them and moving on.

Knowledge was not the only thing he stole.

Sometimes he would look his prey right in the eye, knowing that after they had discovered their loss they would think back without remembering him. He had the kind of face no-one could ever recall. In the legitimate business world it would have been a curse, but for him it was a blessing.

He watched and heard and remembered everything. He soaked up even the most irrelevant information and stored it away, every newspaper headline, every station announcement, every passing scrap of conversation. As yet his territory was small, no more than a few roads, but he was still young, and there was time to grow.

He was filled with a terrible, restless energy.

Mr Fox trusted no-one because he knew that trust would make him weak, and he already had one flaw—a temper that could make him forget who he was or what he was doing. There was a fire within him that had to be tamped down, for fear that it would flare up and incinerate the world.

He stood behind a beautiful Spanish girl with the latest Apple laptop sticking out of her rucksack, then waited beside a Chinese man who carelessly returned his wallet to an open pocket in his raincoat. Today he had no need of such easy pickings. That kind of thing was beneath him now, small-time stuff. He was looking for a dupe, a penniless rat-boy with the loyalty of a dog for its master, someone he could use and string along, someone he could blame and dump. He did not have to look hard, because the dupe found him. Mr Fox could not believe it; the little runt was about to try to pick
his
pocket! He turned sharply, catching the boy with his arm poised.

‘Hey, I know you!’ said the boy, suddenly unfreezing from his guilty pose in a tumble of awkward angles. ‘Your name’s—hang on—it’ll come to me.’ He wagged his finger. His face was as pale as neon, bony and spotty with drug abuse. Mr Fox mapped out his life in an instant. An illustrious career that went from stealing on demand to hawking drugs and selling himself. The area’s old clubbers had their ugly pasts and their doomed futures etched upon their faces, the nights and fights filled with trash-talk, bravado and petty cruelties.

‘You’re local, innit, I seen you around here loads of times.’

‘I’m Mr Fox.’

‘Nah, that’s not it. Not Fox, another name, unless you changed it.’

‘I think you’re mistaken, Mr—’

‘Just call me Mac, everyone does. Nah, it’s definitely you.’ The boy gurgled and slapped at his shaved head as if trying to knock sense into himself. ‘I always seen you around, all my life. You was in Camley Street Park one time. I was with my mates havin’ a smoke an’ that. You was—Ah.’ Mac suddenly remembered, and even he knew it was better to quickly forget what he had seen.

‘What do you do, Mac?’ asked Mr Fox, walking with him, leading him from the station.

‘This an’ that. I make ends meet, shift a bit of stuff here and there. The usual, you know.’

Mr Fox knew all too well. He moved the boy aside as a pair of armed police constables in acid-yellow jackets walked past. King’s Cross had radically changed since becoming the target of terrorist attacks. He checked their epaulettes for area codes and saw that they were locals.

‘How long have you been out of Pentonville?’

‘How d’you know I was inside?’ The boy looked amazed.

Mr Fox had spotted the tattoos that edged out beyond Mac’s sleeves. The inmates at Pentonville prison were fond of inking themselves with fake Russian gang symbols, most of them poorly copied and misspelled. The one on Mac’s right forearm was actually a produce stamp for a Soviet state farm. If the boy knew he was advertising turnips instead of hanging tough, it might be the end of their association before it began.

‘Wait a minute, that’s where I seen you,’ said Mac. ‘You was my English teacher, you used to come and teach at Pentonville.’

Mr Fox studied his prey, deciding whether to let the identification stand.

‘One day you just stopped coming. What did you give it up for?’

‘The doors,’ he admitted.

‘What do you mean?’

‘The seventeen security doors I had to pass through every morning and evening. They added an hour and a half on my journey.’ He did not mention the lockdowns, those days when the alarm rang and no-one was allowed in or out. Six or seven hours at a time spent doing nothing, shut in a stale blank room
like one of the inmates. He didn’t mention the smell that got into your clothes and made you dread each working day. Mr Fox was determined to stay out of prison because he had witnessed its horrors from close quarters.

‘How would you like to earn some easy money?’ he asked.

Mac’s eyes shone, then dimmed. You could see exactly what he was thinking. ‘I don’t do queer stuff no more. I mean, no offence an’ that.’

‘Don’t worry, it’s just some simple errands. To meet someone, relay some messages. Maybe deliver something back to them.’

‘It ain’t drugs, is it, ’cause I’m on probation.’

‘Nothing like that. It’s completely legitimate, I assure you. Just a local job. I need someone trustworthy.’

‘I don’t let people down.’

‘I’ll need you to be around here tomorrow evening. Give me your address and mobile number. I have to be able to get in touch with you easily. Tell me, do you drive?’

‘I got a van.’

‘Unmarked, is it?’

‘Well, it’s white.’

‘We may need to use it at some point. If you do well with this, there could be more work for you.’

‘Yeah, then, I reckon I could do something like that. You know, for the right price.’

The right price
, thought Mr Fox.
You were going to steal my wallet a few moments ago, you little tapeworm
. But he saw the desperation in the boy’s eyes and knew he had found a born victim, and that was all he needed.

As soon as Mr Fox had received the phone call, he had realised he was about to move into the big time. All he needed to do now was remember his own rules:
Never leave a trace of yourself behind, and if things go wrong make sure someone else takes the
blame. Always remember, we do not live in a meritocracy. Nobody gets ahead because they’re good. The spoils go to those who build the strongest networks. Everything that happens, happens not because of what you can do, but because of who you know. The whole world is corrupt, and only those who acknowledge its corruption find their true place in it
.

Mr Fox felt sure that, despite his age and background, he was moving up, destined to operate in grander circles.

He did not know it, but within twenty-four hours he would be wiping a dead man’s blood from his hands.

3
SHUTDOWN

From the
Police Review:
END OF THE LINE FOR
LONDON’S OLDEST SPECIALIST UNIT

After many threats on its life, London’s most notorious and controversial crime unit has finally been shut down.

From this month, the main goal of the National Policing Improvement Agency will be to modernise the British police service, taking on some Home Office and ACPO functions, including officer training, national IT infrastructure, forensics and information sharing. As part of the drive to eliminate duplication, the Home Office has closed London’s longstanding Peculiar Crimes Unit, returning its ongoing investigations to the capital’s homicide and major enquiry teams.

The PCU was created to handle specialised cases and crimes (mostly homicides) which could be considered a risk to public order and confidence if left unresolved. The unit survived through the second half of the twentieth century, but found itself increasingly mired in controversy after being placed under the control of the Home Office, who accused its management team of becoming politically
partisan and failing to follow accepted procedural guidelines.