On the Loose Read Free

from the crowd. Mr Fox was like the King’s Cross lighthouse, the strange tumbledown Victorian monument above the street that went unnoticed because it was always somewhere in the background.
    In and out of the stores and bars that occupied the glassed-in areas behind the exposed-brick arches—Foyles bookshop, Neal’s Yard, Le Pain Quotidien, Marks & Spencer—he searched for the lonely and the weak. He was drawn toward the lame straggler, the vulnerable visitor, the indecisive commuter. He could not afford to take long because too many watchful lenses were assembled in clusters on the surrounding arches. One pass through the main concourse of St Pancras was usually enough. The beauty of operating in a place like this was the sheer number of potential victims.
    There were plenty of police strolling about, but the location gave them a disadvantage. So many civilians approached with questions in the course of a shift that their differences were dissolvedby sheer weight of numbers. The officers were like keepers in charge of an ever-expanding anthill.
    Mr Fox never made contact inside the railway station. He followed his targets at a distance, out to the cab ranks and crammed pavements where they waited to cross the road, distracted by their coats, bags and maps, disoriented by their unfamiliar surroundings. He had been born and raised in these grim streets, knew every alley and shadowed corner, but had not known their tangled history until recently. He listened and learned from others, knowing it would all prove useful to him one day. When he lacked knowledge, he befriended people who had it, absorbing everything he needed before discarding them and moving on.
    Knowledge was not the only thing he stole.
    Sometimes he would look his prey right in the eye, knowing that after they had discovered their loss they would think back without remembering him. He had the kind of face no-one could ever recall. In the legitimate business world it would have been a curse, but for him it was a blessing.
    He watched and heard and remembered everything. He soaked up even the most irrelevant information and stored it away, every newspaper headline, every station announcement, every passing scrap of conversation. As yet his territory was small, no more than a few roads, but he was still young, and there was time to grow.
    He was filled with a terrible, restless energy.
    Mr Fox trusted no-one because he knew that trust would make him weak, and he already had one flaw—a temper that could make him forget who he was or what he was doing. There was a fire within him that had to be tamped down, for fear that it would flare up and incinerate the world.
    He stood behind a beautiful Spanish girl with the latest Apple laptop sticking out of her rucksack, then waited beside a Chinese man who carelessly returned his wallet to an open pocket in his raincoat. Today he had no need of such easy pickings. That kind of thing was beneath him now, small-time stuff. He was looking for a dupe, a penniless rat-boy with the loyalty of a dog for its master, someone he could use and string along, someone he could blame and dump. He did not have to look hard, because the dupe found him. Mr Fox could not believe it; the little runt was about to try to pick his pocket! He turned sharply, catching the boy with his arm poised.
    ‘Hey, I know you!’ said the boy, suddenly unfreezing from his guilty pose in a tumble of awkward angles. ‘Your name’s—hang on—it’ll come to me.’ He wagged his finger. His face was as pale as neon, bony and spotty with drug abuse. Mr Fox mapped out his life in an instant. An illustrious career that went from stealing on demand to hawking drugs and selling himself. The area’s old clubbers had their ugly pasts and their doomed futures etched upon their faces, the nights and fights filled with trash-talk, bravado and petty cruelties.
    ‘You’re local, innit, I seen you around here loads of times.’
    ‘I’m Mr Fox.’
    ‘Nah,