I couldn’t keep my neck craned like that to look at him. I let my head drop. ‘I remembered your little speech at the Hollywood Hotel, about the Morlocks and the Eloi. You were trying to sound urbane, detached but looking back, there was just a little too much bitterness in there. It didn’t mean anything till I discovered you like the ponies.’

  ‘A shame, though, you turning up at the track just when I was there.’

  ‘So you had no reason to be there, but for the racing?’

  He shrugged. ‘I made up that story about following you there. I thought it would do.’

  ‘But then you confused yourself, overcompensated. You asked me for directions back home, where you’d supposedly just followed me from, because you knew you had to pretend you’d not been there with O’Connor.’

  He clicked his tongue. ‘And I’m supposed to be a spy. I realized my mistake, of course, as soon as I spoke. I could only hope you wouldn’t spot it.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘But that was …’ – he thought for a moment – ‘Thursday. By Friday you were at Ingram’s flat. Didn’t take you long.’

  ‘Once I’d found out that you and Holsworth were one and the same, the rest was easy.’

  ‘And how could you possibly do that?’

  ‘I showed people your picture.’

  ‘My picture? How the devil did you —?’ He cut himself short. He must finally have understood.

  ‘Photography was O’Connor’s thing,’ I said. ‘You emptied my pockets. At least take a look at what you found.’

  He reached to one side of his jacket and took out both my wallet and the drawings. ‘Remind me to give these back to you. Wouldn’t quite fit with the suicide story if you’d been stripped of your possessions.’

  Maybe it was bravura, but it seemed to me he really didn’t understand that the game was up. He unfolded the pages. I couldn’t tell which was which but he raised his eyebrows at two of them.

  ‘I should have taken your artistic background more seriously. Did you copy the pictures that O’Connor took, too?’

  I nodded and then winced at the stabbing pain that it induced.

  ‘You weren’t supposed to get a good enough look at them to be able to recognize Vince. No one was. Even so, if I’d not sent him to shut Remick up, you’d never have made the connection.’

  ‘It would have taken a little longer. If I’d been quicker, Ingram might still be alive.’

  ‘He had to go.’ He said something else, but I didn’t catch it. The pain was becoming a distraction. I raised my fingers to my temples and rubbed them, but it provided only slight relief.

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘There had to be a scapegoat for O’Connor’s murder,’ Tremaine said, making it clear he didn’t enjoy having to repeat himself. ‘I say, are you all right?’

  His fake concern was enough to make me smile. ‘I’m fine. Wasn’t Metzger any good as a scapegoat?’

  ‘That was the first line of defence, but I never wanted him arrested.’

  ‘Killing the goose that laid the golden eggs?’

  ‘Exactly. And anyway, once you’d found the rest of the pictures, showing so clearly it wasn’t him, that turned into a non-starter. Where did you get them, by the by?’

  ‘You’ll find out. I thought I was the first line of defence. Your first patsy.’

  ‘Goodness, no. You were my alibi. And therefore I had to be yours.’

  ‘So it was Ingram I met in Eccleston Square?’ I didn’t need to phrase it as a question – I was pretty sure now. My only niggling doubt was that I hadn’t spotted his accent, but Tremaine would have told him to disguise it, and his voice was muffled behind the gas mask.

  ‘Of course it was. But why should anyone think it wasn’t me, once I’d admitted to meeting you and thereby saved your bacon?’

  ‘And meanwhile you were in Brighton, at my flat, killing O’Connor. Then you went back up to London, got the photographs off Ingram, and came down again to get me out of gaol.’

  ‘Precisely. Did you spot the tattoo, by the way? If you did you kept very quiet about it.’

  ‘Yours or his?’

  ‘Hopefully both.’

  ‘Actually, all three.’

  ‘What?’

  It was one of my few bits of solid evidence, but it was safe now. ‘That’s what I found at his flat yesterday. A copy of your tattoo, so that he could draw it on his own arm – temporarily, of course.’

  Tremaine tutted again. ‘I knew you’d found something. He was supposed to burn it. He hadn’t even scrubbed his arm properly. I made him do that before I killed him.’

  Until then I’d not been certain I’d got it right. It seemed unnecessary. ‘But why bother with it all?’ I asked. ‘Why not just get Ingram to deal with O’Connor for you?’

  ‘He wasn’t a killer. It’s not easy, you know, to kill a man – not face to face. It takes a certain something. That’s one of the things they look out for when they’re recruiting you.’

  ‘They look out for gamblers too?’

  At that moment a train rolled by, on the far side of the cutting, building up speed as it pulled away from the station. I hadn’t even noticed it coming, its noise hidden by the mounting pain in my skull. When Tremaine chose his moment, I’d be easy meat for him.

  ‘Yes, they do like gamblers, not so much my kind, though.’

  ‘Losers, you mean?’

  ‘That’s not a pleasant word.’

  ‘And how much have you lost?’

  He breathed in deeply. ‘Thousands.’

  ‘And no family income to support you?’

  ‘In my entire life, every penny I’ve ever had, I’ve earned.’ He laughed. ‘I am truly working-class.’

  ‘Was Metzger the first?’

  ‘Not by a long chalk. But every one of them has to be done differently.’

  A sudden pulse of agony ripped through me. I let it pass before speaking again. ‘The problem for me was in working out who you could possibly hope to fool. Not Metzger – not his superiors either. You convinced O’Connor that he was really taking those pictures in secret, but that wasn’t the main idea. And then I got it: it was your own bosses you had to deceive.’

  ‘Running an agent inside the German Embassy takes a lot a resources. A lot of money. More than they pay me. Those pictures convinced them I had Metzger twisted around my finger, just like all the others. It’s really very lucrative.’

  ‘Don’t they expect information?’

  ‘I do have a few genuine agents who provide enough to keep them happy. Eventually they’ll suspect something, but who cares? There’ll be a war soon, and Herr Metzger will be back off to the Fatherland with the rest of them.’

  ‘Did it take you long to find someone who looked enough like Metzger?’

  ‘They’re not really that similar. And I wasn’t actually looking. But when I saw Vince up at the racecourse, well, a plan formed. You know how these things go.’

  ‘But then O’Connor got in the way.’

  ‘O’Connor got in the way of everything. He was putting the screws on me, and a dozen others too. He got hold of an address for me – from Frank Dudley, one presumes. Sent his filthy little blackmail note there. It was poste restante, of course, under the name of Holsworth, so he couldn’t link it to me.’

  ‘So why worry?’

  Tremaine gave a tight smile. ‘He would have found me ... eventually. Luckily I found him first, thanks to Mr Mullender’s sense of professional ethics. I employed O’Connor, told him I remembered him from the Gilbert case. Told him I had a couple of jobs for him; maybe more if he did well.’

  ‘And the first job – the photos – was for real.’

  ‘Seemed worthwhile to kill two birds with one stone. I needed those pictures taken.’

  ‘And then you asked him to burgle my flat.’

  ‘Yes, that was more my idea than his. I had to have a reason for him to send you up to London. And he was happy to do it … until he climbed in through the window and discovered that I was already there, waiting for him.’

  ‘And the file you stole from me – Grove Street?’

  ‘I just grabbed something at random, in case I needed it later.’

  ‘To incriminate Ingram.’

  ‘As it turned out. It was easy enough to plant some extra bits and pieces in there.’

  ‘Did you really need to kill him?’ I hadn’t noticed that I’d moved, but I was squatting right down now, almost curled into a ball, my hands at the side of my head.

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ No one could have doubted the sincerity of Tremaine’s question.

  ‘I … suffer … from migraine.’ I could hear the involuntary pauses between my words.

  ‘Oh, I say, how awful for you.’

  ‘I asked if you needed to kill him.’

  ‘It was you that killed him. Once you found those other pictures, Metzger was lost as a suspect. And then, when you ran into him at Miss Westby’s, I knew he’d have to go sooner or later.’

  The mention of Rachael’s name cleared my mind momentarily, but only because a wave of fear passed through me as I wondered what he might have done to her. ‘She told you?’

  ‘She told me … everything. A very accommodating girl, it turns out – though I think we’d both guessed as much.’

  I felt sick. Sicker than I did already. If Tremaine had dealt with Ingram and was about to push me under a train, he’d have no qualms about doing something similar to Rachael. Perhaps he already had, just after he’d made her call and arrange to meet me at the cinema. I was glad for the other people whose names he didn’t know, Lottie and Sylvia for a start. I wondered if he’d make it look like suicide for Rachael, too. Or perhaps he’d make it look like she’d been killed by one of her tricks – it was a likely enough way for a brass to end up. Then I remembered what he’d said about the reason for my suicide, about how she’d broken my heart. Perhaps it would be made to appear that I’d done it.

  I looked up at him. ‘I won’t write a suicide note, you know. Not like Ingram did. You won’t make me.’

  Tremaine laughed lightly. ‘I didn’t make him write anything.’

  ‘You forged it, then? The coppers’ll spot that.’

  ‘Not at all. He wrote it perfectly willingly, but in a quite different context.’

  ‘Wrote it to you?’

  ‘That’s right. Said he was quitting my employ and heading back north. Very long and apologetic, but the last couple of lines served my purposes entirely. I don’t suppose you’ll have written anything quite so useful. To Miss Westby, perhaps?’

  I didn’t give him a response. My eyes were squeezed shut and I pressed the heels of my hands against my temples as hard as I could, half hoping that my skull would shatter and that the pain would be able to escape. I heard the crunch of his feet on the gravel and saw that he had dropped down to stand beside me.

  ‘If the good people at the Southern Railway are sticking to their timetable, then there’ll be another train along before very long. Seems unfair to take advantage of a man in your unfortunate condition. But, on the other hand, it will make things a lot easier. Can you get up?’

  ‘It’s too late,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t think so. A few minutes’ delay at Fishersgate, perhaps.’

  I couldn’t help but smile. His charm hadn’t abandoned him, even now. ‘Too late for you, I mean. He knows everything, or he will soon.’

  ‘Who does?’

  ‘Sir Vernon Kell – your Director General.’

  ‘K? Knows all about this? You’re bluffing.’

  ‘I put it all in the post last night.’

  ‘Well, thank heavens for that. He won’t be in till Tuesday, if then. Plenty of time for me to get hold of it.’

  ‘Not to him. You ever hear of Brigadier Graham Woolf?’

  ‘A relative of yours, I take it?’

  ‘Great-uncle.’ I could barely form a coherent sentence now, but I had to get my message across. ‘Sent it to him. Read it by now. Knows Kell well enough. Same club.’

  There was silence, followed by ‘Shit!’ A sprinkling of soil and chalk rained down on me. I thought Tremaine had begun climbing away but, when I looked up, he was still there, deep in thought.

  ‘You’d do better to make a run for it,’ I said.

  He looked down at me, smiling, and shook his head. ‘Too convenient. You may be telling the truth, but I’d be a fool to let you live, either way. Come on.’ He leaned forwards and offered me his hand. ‘Let’s get you on your feet.’

  There was another cascade of rubble from the cutting above. We both looked up. A dark figure was descending by the same route we had taken, dark because of the uniform he was wearing: a police uniform. Above him at the top of the cliff, I could just make out another figure peering down at us.

  ‘What the devil are you two up to?’ With the mess my brain was in, I couldn’t recognize who was speaking, but Tremaine evidently did. He raised his hat – and his voice.

  ‘Lovely to see you, Inspector!’

  ‘You didn’t think I’d fall for that call from Rachael, did you?’ I hissed.

  Tremaine looked down at me. Even now his manner was as calm and insouciant as always. ‘I think perhaps I’ll take your advice.’

  He turned and walked briskly alongside the rails, towards the gaping tunnel mouth. I managed to haul myself to my feet and watch him go. After only a few yards he found he was running out of space, and so he skipped nimbly across the electrified rail to walk along the track itself. From the roaring noises that echoed inside my skull emerged a single, identifiable, recognizable sound, quieter than the uproar that raged within me, but cutting through it precisely. It was the sound of a train: the insistent hum of the electric motors and the clicking of the wheels on the joints between the rails. I squinted and saw that it was on the other line, pulling away from Brighton. Slowly it caught up with him and then began to overtake. The driver sounded his horn when he saw Tremaine, but Tremaine’s only reaction was to break into a run. Before half the train’s length had passed him he had disappeared into the dark, subterranean passageway, perhaps to join the Morlocks.

  The next moment, the police constable dropped down beside me, just as Tremaine had done earlier. Another sound accosted me, this time from the rails closer to us, a high-pitched whine, as if they were singing.

  ‘You hear that?’ said the constable. ‘There’s another one coming.’

  I looked up as another train emerged into the light at the end of the tunnel, on the same set of tracks that Tremaine had been walking along. It was coming at quite a pace, not yet slowing for the station. The first train still hadn’t completely disappeared and the two of them were momentarily side by side at the tunnel mouth. I gazed at them, not fully aware of what was happening, not able to comprehend the speed at which the train approached, nor the danger that it brought for me.

  Then it was passing me, a flickering procession of windows and doors, and the occasional gap between the carriages. I didn’t notice myself stepping away from the track and into safety. It was only once the train was past that I realized I hadn’t, not of my own volition, anyway. I felt the constable’s hand hard on my chest, pressing me back against the chalk cliff. I pushed him off me and stepped out, looking upwards to see if Marchant was still there. I couldn’t make him out, or indeed anything much, but still I shouted for all I was worth.

  ‘Furze Croft! Flat 202! Get there now!’

  CHAPTER 22

  I was in no state to climb back up out of the cutting and so we waited. It seemed like an eternity. I tried to measure time by counting the trains passing in each direction. In the end, I think it was less than an hour before they managed to get a rope down to us. By then the migraine was beginning to recede. It hadn’t been the worst attack I’d ever known, but I was still weakened by it. I simply let them pull me up, using my arms and legs only to keep myself from scraping against the chalk.

  At the top, Sergeant Purvis was waiting for me along with a number of uniformed colleagues. We climbed back over the wall and he bundled me into a car, which set off immediately.

  ‘We’ve got to get to Furze Croft,’ I said. I felt my strength returning with every second.

  ‘That’s where we’re going.’

  ‘What’s happening there?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. The inspector’s already there, and he told me to bring you.’

  We sat in silence for a few moments. The journey wouldn’t take long. ‘I didn’t see you,’ I said. ‘At the cinema.’

  ‘You’d already gone in. You didn’t give us much notice. But I saw you both coming out, and followed you. When you climbed down to the railway, I thought I’d better call it in. Took a while for reinforcements to arrive.’

  ‘I wasn’t sure Marchant believed me when I telephoned.’

  ‘He wasn’t convinced about Ingram, whatever he said to Tremaine.’

  ‘Have you caught him? Tremaine, I mean.’

  We were just pulling up outside the block of flats. Purvis stepped out of the car even before we’d stopped moving, then held the door for me. ‘One thing at a time, eh?’

  There were three other police cars already parked outside the flats. A couple of bluebottles were leaning against one of them, smoking and chatting. Purvis pressed the buzzer and the latch opened without any enquiry as to who he was. We went up to Rachael’s flat. I felt weak again, not from the migraine but out fear of what I might discover once we arrived. When we got there the door was ajar. Purvis pushed it open to reveal Marchant standing on the far side of the room, staring out of the window. As he turned his face was grim. He gave Purvis a brief nod, then turned to look across the room at something I couldn’t see. Purvis stepped back and finally allowed me to enter. I went in. There was no point in hesitating. I turned straight to look in the direction of Marchant’s gaze.

  It was Rachael. She was sitting just as I had first seen her, on her chaise longue. She had her spectacles on and in her hand she held a cup of tea. She was fine, though her expression didn’t hide the fact that she was annoyed by the intrusion. The natural thing to do would have been to run over and embrace her. But I didn’t. The fact that she was alive had implications which made it a senseless thing to do.