Paul Cornell - London Falling

‘So why us too?’

Quill shrugged. He saw that it was Josh Stuart stationed at the back gate, and actually got a smile out of him as he showed him his warrant card and then Ross’ ID. Ross seemed to be trying to make herself invisible, and she was doing a good job. They headed down the garden path and out of earshot.

‘I need this op to be real,’ she said. ‘Is it?’

Quill stopped. They were by that strange pile of earth, and still nobody had planted that bloody tree or whatever it was going to be. ‘You know as much as I do.’

‘Only, you three already have that look on your faces. .’

‘What look?’

‘That copper look. That British look. The “Oh well, it’s all going to fall apart, so might as well get on with it, even though we’re going to fail.”’

‘Do you have a point, Lisa?’

‘Because if this is a real op, and if you all treat it as a real op, we can make real progress. If you make proper use of me; if you let me do what I do. And I’m going to need you too, because otherwise I don’t know what I’m going to do. And because. . we’re standing on top of something huge.’

Quill realized that her expression had become urgent — amazed, even. And that she kept looking between his eyes. . and then at the ground by his feet.

He turned and examined the pile of soil closely for the first time. There was a pattern there, preserved by the frost, not washed out too much by the rain. It was as if someone had inscribed it in the disturbed earth with a spade. Or maybe it had needed a tool more precise. It was a fine spiral.

‘Literally,’ continued Ross. ‘I’ve seen that symbol before.’

With joy bursting in his heart, Quill looked up and around. He pointed up at the CCTV camera that was looking straight down at them. ‘Bingo,’ he said.

Quill headed into Gipsy Hill to get the CCTV tapes sent over, while Ross rushed back to the Portakabin to grab her camera. ‘We’ve got a new intelligence analyst,’ said Harry, falling into step beside him. ‘Since you took away ours.’ Many more arrests were being made, extending to the outlying reaches of the Toshack firm. Harry waited until the corridor was clear, then dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘What are you doing out there, Jimmy?’

‘Your guess is as good as mine. I asked to get you over straight away-’

‘’Course you did: you knowing which side your bread is buttered. But Lofthouse said no, didn’t she?’

‘Harry-’

‘No no, it’s not your fault. But, I tell you what: you have not seen the depth of ill feeling here.’ He leaned closer and locked that sleepless gaze of his on Quill. ‘You have no idea.’

Costain and Sefton had arrived by the time he got back to the Portakabin, and had obviously been told by Ross that something was finally happening. She looked up from a huge pile of what looked like school exercise books that she’d brought in. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘where can I display some images?’

Quill had to use a biro to mark a new square of best focus on the wall.

‘The spiral tag.’ Ross’ first image, from a PC projector she’d brought in herself, was a photo of the design that had been etched in the soil, the real thing now having been covered in plastic and fenced off — if Quill’s orders had been complied with. ‘A pile of soil, bit wet for London average, in a spiral pattern that seems to have been formed with some sort of vacuum tool. Nobody’s ever come up with any more than that, concerning its formation. One of the first things that Rob Toshack got into, when he took over the family firm, was fixing football matches. He needed to make and launder cash very quickly, and a series of big certs would have done that for him.’

She clicked the mouse and the next image appeared: a picture of another such symbol, this one slightly different. ‘The reason we know about this is because this approach immediately clashed with how clean football had become at the time. Players didn’t automatically cave in when threatened, so a number of them started to have the spiral tag appear in their gardens. Some of their managers, and a DI called Sam Booney-’

‘Sam Booney,’ interjected Quill, ‘out of Kensal Rise, shot in the knee in the course of his duties. Could burst an apple with his hand, goes the story.’

‘-knew what the tag meant,’ she continued. ‘It’s a legend that was purely associated with West Ham Football Club, before it became a more general threat.’

‘Is this,’ asked Sefton, ‘that same urban myth about anyone who scores a hat-trick against West Ham dying?’

Quill saw Costain glance sidelong at the other UC. ‘Didn’t think you’d be into football.’

Sefton gave him a dangerous look, but his tone remained neutral. ‘Why?’

Costain just shook his head, with a smile on his lips.

‘Right,’ said Ross, ‘Toshack always was a West Ham fan. That myth of dying after scoring a hat-trick was the myth that he, or rather someone working for him, was using to try to scare these footballers into cooperating with him. This tag was also associated with some of those deaths.’

‘There really were some deaths,’ nodded Sefton.

‘Who do you support?’ asked Costain.

‘Chelsea,’ said Sefton, again in that oh-so-reasonable tone.

‘I sometimes get. . feelings about sidelines, so I do stuff like this on my own time,’ Ross persisted. ‘Last night, I ran the numbers. Footballers who score hat-tricks against West Ham do not always die in suspicious circumstances, but-’

She clicked to the next image, which showed a series of graphs.

‘-they often do. More often, statistically, than they should. The shape of the graph here, the extent that it deviates from the norm, is very close to what you get if you look back through records of previously unlinked deaths while looking for serial-killer traits after it’s been proved there has been a serial killer operating.’

‘Bloody hell,’ murmured Quill, aware of Sefton and Costain also leaning forward.

‘So,’ Costain pointed to the image, ‘that’s saying that there’s probably a genuine effect? That someone was killing players that scored hat-tricks against West Ham?’

‘Thanks for providing subtitles,’ said Quill.

‘Yeah,’ confirmed Ross, ‘and if we match players who died after having scored hat-tricks against West Ham with people who have had the spiral tag show up in their garden. .’

Two circles came together on the screen, one representing the unfortunate scorers, and one for the people with the tag appearing in their garden, and a number whirled in the space where they intersected. It settled at 78 %.

‘ Fuck ,’ chorused all three members of Ross’ audience, simultaneously.

‘So,’ said Quill, when he’d got his breath back. ‘That means a seventy-eight per cent success rate on the part of a very specific serial killer. Which would just be a brilliant new cold-case lead. .’

‘Apart from the fact that the tag showed up when Toshack died, too. Presumably a statement on the killer’s part, rather than a warning, this time. And, erm. . thanks,’ she looked awkwardly away, ‘but there’s more. Most, though not all, of these murders were committed with what was assumed at the time to have been poison. Investigators were obviously a lot more comfortable with the idea of unknown toxins back in the day. Also — and this is the big one — the data that doesn’t overlap here is uneven. One of those circles on that diagram contains more items than the other. Eighteen per cent of the other cases are hat-trick scorers, over the years, who probably died of natural causes. The four per cent in the other circle represent people who got the tag planted in their gardens, but hadn’t scored hat-tricks against West Ham. Indeed, none of those people is a footballer. They’re a range of organized crime network bosses, bankers and made men — many of them with connections to Toshack. I’ve prepared a list. And how many of those also died?’