Bryant & May on the Loose: A Peculiar Crimes Unit Mystery Page 0,74

clay of the hillside. It’s easy to forget London’s on a slope until you have to climb it, she thought, turning a corner into the next lengthy stretch.

She came to a sudden stop. The stag-man was standing on the path no more than twenty metres away from her.

Although he still wore his leather boots and ragged fur jacket, he was no longer trying to assume the appearance of a wild beast. The headdress of blade-antlers had been replaced with a brown balaclava and cap. His face was smeared with mud. He reminded Longbright of a primitive forest hunter, especially since his right fist contained a large knife with a serrated blade.

Wary of confronting him, she remained calm enough to make a visual analysis. He was muscular, between twenty-five and thirty-two. His boots raised him to an imposing height. His eyes gave less away than she’d expected, but there was something in his posture that recalled John May’s description of Xander Toth.

He was waiting for her to make a move.

If she called DuCaine, how long would he take to skirt the perimeter fence and reach her? She pulled out her cell phone to make the call, but to make sure she had a record, snapped a quick photograph first. At that instant he lunged at her, lowering his body like a sprinter leaving the starting blocks. She jumped back, then ran.

‘Liberty, I’m heading west around the fence, he’s right behind me.’ The phone crackled and she heard no clear answer. She had already lost ground. The stag-man was close behind and gaining.

Her shoes were slipping in the mud. She grabbed at the security fence and swung around its corner, running hard as he swung out at her arm, the weapon reverberating against the wires. A feral grunt sounded close behind her, and another, each expulsion of breath matching hers as they pounded beside the fence.

He’s within range of the CCTV, she thought. That’s it, keep coming, and now she saw DuCaine racing toward her, as the stag-man suddenly backed off and she heard him springing up against the steel fence, over the razor-wire on top and down the other side, to be lost within seconds among the heavy plant machinery and stacks of building materials. DuCaine started to go after him, but his concern for Longbright held him back.

‘You okay?’ he asked. ‘You’ve been cut. I saw him swing at you. I’m glad you didn’t turn around and see how close he was.’

‘He’s stuck inside.’ Longbright bent down, hands on knees, panting. ‘Blimey, he nicked my jacket. If we can get backup we can keep him in there.’

‘No backup,’ DuCaine replied. ‘Can’t call in the Met.’

‘Then how do we stop him from getting out?’

‘You know how wide the site is. There must be over a dozen other exits. You think it was Toth?’

‘We have no proof. Raymond says we’ll need a warrant to search his apartment unless we can prove that we’re preventing a breach of the peace, and he doesn’t think we have evidence for that. I’m happy to go with a gut feeling, but he’s insisting on doing everything by the book. I’m sure he thinks we’re being monitored. At least I got a photo of our stag-man.’ She held up her mobile.

‘That’s something. Let’s get it to Dan and see what he can find.’

‘Damn, if I could have just made an ID, I’d have had him.’

‘No,’ said DuCaine, ‘he nearly had you.’

Rufus Abu was waiting for John May in St Pancras station’s champagne bar. He was under the minimum legal age to be served alcohol, so a waitress had given him an orange juice, to which he had added some Bentink’s gin from a small silver flask.

‘Hey, my man.’ Rufus touched May’s fingers in a complex salute and waited for him to sit. Rufus was a computer hacker without a base who did not take kindly to being described as ‘homeless,’ for he regarded the whole of London as his home. He had just entered his teenage years, but showed no sign of growing any taller. With the mind of a university professor and the body of a child, his disconcerting mix of intelligence and innocence gave him an edge no bedroom-bound hacker could beat. He left no signature in the electronic ether and managed to pass beneath the city’s surveillance radar. He could usually only be lured into the visible world with gifts of illegal software, but had agreed to answer May’s call-sign because he owed the