Off the Rails Read Free

some clearly defined criteria.’
    ‘You can come up with something later—let’s take him.’ Meera paced up through the crowd, then stopped by the French market, puzzled, looking back. ‘Colin?’
    ‘What’s the matter?’
    ‘Something weird.’ She pointed to the far side of the concourse. There half a dozen teenagers had suddenly stopped and spaced themselves six feet apart from each other. Bimsley shrugged and pointed to the other wall, where the same thing was happening. ‘What’s going on?’ Meera asked.
    All around them, people were freezing in their tracks and slowly turning.
    ‘They’re all wearing phone earpieces,’ Meera pointed out.
    Now almost everyone in the centre of the station was standing still and facing front. Beneath the station clock, two young men in grey hooded sweatshirts set an old-fashioned ghetto blaster on a café table and hit Play.
    As the first notes of ‘Rehab’ by Amy Winehouse blasted out, the two young men raised their right arms and spun in tight circles. Everyone on the concourse copied them. The choreography had been rehearsed online until it was perfect. The station had suddenly become a dance floor.
    ‘It’s a flash mob,’ Meera called wearily. The Internet phenomenon had popularised the craze for virally organised mass dancing in public places, but she had assumed it had fallen out of fashion a couple of years ago.
    ‘I took part in a flash-freeze in Victoria Station once,’ Bimsley told her, watching happily. ‘Four hundred of us pretending to be statues. It’s just a bit of harmless fun.’
    ‘Well, our man’s using it to cover his escape.’
    ‘Meera, he’s not
our man,
he’s just a guy buying a newspaper and catching a train.’
    But the diminutive DC did not hear. She was already running across the concourse, weaving a path between the performers. The song could be heard bleeding from hundreds of earpieces as the entire station danced. The tune hit its chorus—
they tried to make me go to rehab, but I said no, no, no
—and the choreographygrew more complex. Colin could no longer see who Meera was chasing. Even the transport police were standing back and watching the dancers with smiles on their faces.
    As the song reached its conclusion there was a concerted burst of leaping and twirling. Then, just as if the music had never played, everyone went back to the business of the day, catching trains and heading to the office. Meera was glaring at Colin through the crowds, furious to find that her target had disappeared. But just as Meera started walking toward Colin, someone grabbed at his shoulder.
    Colin turned to find himself facing a portly, florid-faced businessman who was slapping the pockets of his jacket and shouting incoherently. ‘Hey, calm down, tell me the problem,’ Bimsley advised.
    ‘You are police, yes?’ screeched the man. ‘I have been robbed. Just now. I was crossing station and this stupid dancing begins, and I stop to watch because I cannot cross, you know, and my bag is taken right from my hand.’
    ‘Do we look like the police?’ Colin asked Meera via his headset.
    Her derisive snort crackled back. ‘What else could you be?’
    ‘Did you see who took it?’ Bimsley asked the businessman. ‘What was the bag like?’
    ‘Of course I did not see! You think I talk to you if I see? I would stop him! Is bag, black leather bag, is all. I am Turkish Cypriot, on my way to Paris. The receipts are in my bag.’
    ‘What receipts?’
    ‘My restaurants! Six restaurants! All the money is in cash.’
    ‘How much?’
    ‘You think I have time to count it? This is not my job. Maybe sixty thousand, maybe seventy thousand pounds.’
    ‘Wait a minute,’ said Bimsley, ‘you’re telling me you were carrying over sixty thousand on you—in cash?’
    ‘Of course is cash. I always do this on same Monday every month.’
    ‘Always the same day?’ Bimsley was incredulous. How could anyone be so stupid?
    ‘Yes, and is perfectly safe because