Bryant & May on the Loose: A Peculiar Crimes Unit Mystery Page 0,116

ice.

They all ran for the stairs, Longbright leading. The holding room was on the third floor. As Longbright climbed, the sense of dread deepened within her. They entered the dim corridor. She saw the dark, prostrate bulk and her stomach turned.

Liberty DuCaine was lying on his side across the hall floor. The boards were bisected by a single spray of arterial blood, as thin as a line of red ink from a fountain pen. DuCaine’s right hand was cupped below his left ear. He had tried to staunch the flow from the puncture wound, but the skewer had been pushed deep in one thrust before being swiftly removed.

‘No,’ said Longbright, reaching out for the wall, ‘not him.’ She dropped down beside DuCaine and felt his neck for a carotid pulse, then began to massage his heart, but experience had taught her that it was already too late.

She tried to follow the path of the wound. Could the skewer have pierced his brain? Mr Fox had received some form of medical training, hadn’t Bryant told them that? A single centimetre would mean the difference between death and survival. The attack had been so sudden that DuCaine had fallen before he could call out for help.

She continued to press his chest, to ensure there was pressure to take the blood to his heart. Death or brain damage, she thought angrily. One moment of lost concentration and this is what it causes.

‘I’ve got an ambulance coming,’ May said. ‘Leave him, Janice. He did a pretty good job of blocking the blood flow. Don’t move him. Any extra movement now could disrupt the clotting.’

‘I’ll go with him,’ said Longbright, numbly brushing her hair from her face. There was nothing more to be done, but she found it impossible to look away. As the medics arrived and took over, she rocked back on her heels, watching DuCaine’s immobile face. She willed him to see her one more time, to register her presence before he was removed and placed out of her reach within the system, but there was no flicker of sentience.

May checked the holding room and found the door wide open. The lock was undamaged. It had been firmly closed, but Mr Fox had managed to spring it. He had jumped DuCaine as he left the room. May didn’t understand; they had carefully searched their suspect for weapons upon arrival at the PCU. They had taken his shoes and most of his clothes, and checked his underwear; he had nothing on him. What the hell had they done wrong? What had they overlooked?

‘My God.’ With difficulty, Bryant knelt and held Longbright tight. ‘I’m so sorry, Janice. This should not have been possible. We thought he’d be safe there. I’ll never forgive myself—’

‘You have to get that bastard,’ whispered Longbright, pulling away and looking at Bryant with a ferocity he had never seen before. ‘I don’t care what you have to do. If you don’t catch him, Arthur, I swear to you I will.’

Mr Fox slipped between the backpacking Italian students pouring out of King’s Cross tube station. He had perfected a way of insinuating himself through the tightest crowds without ever touching anyone. He paid cash for a ticket so that it would leave no record, and avoided the searching gaze of each hidden camera with ease.

He was glad his little trick had come in useful; it had been incredibly difficult to master. He had secreted the silver skewer in his throat by attaching a piece of fishing nylon to a tooth, an old trick used by drug smugglers to sneak their personal stash through customs. He was surprised he had been able to hold it there for so long without gagging while they removed his clothing. Transferring it back into his armpit without anyone noticing had been the easy part.

He was disappointed with Bryant and May. He had expected to outwit them, but thought they would at least be able to discern his purpose in taking Xander Toth through the tunnel to the church and dressing in the mask. He had been about to place the Fox’s head on Toth when the detectives arrived.

The hunted had knelt before the huntress to take his own life. At least, that was how it would have looked. And who for a moment would have disbelieved the notion that Toth had become even more unbalanced, finally choosing to kill himself in accordance with the mythology he had so tirelessly promoted? The circle would have been perfectly closed