Free London Falling by Paul Cornell

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