Untitled chapter
He watched her as she got off the train. Her blue sandals were distinctive in the sunlight. Her yellow bag even more so. She did not look around. Her head was down, a mass of red hair tumbling down her back. If she was trying to hide, she wasn’t making a very good job of it. He got out of the train and walked towards the exit. There was a scramble there; term was starting and the students were coming back. She might have looked like one herself, although she was a little too old to qualify. A postgraduate maybe? But he was losing track. In the mêlée he could just see her red hair disappearing through the station doors. He tried to elbow his way forward but by the time he had reached the exit she was gone.
He looked to right and left. He crossed quickly to the line of cabs, and went to the front of the queue. An older woman stared back at him from the taxi. Perhaps she thought he was going to challenge her occupancy. He crossed back again to the bus stops. This was daft. He was making himself very visible. He drew in a breath to calm himself and then studied the bus queues. She wasn’t there. It was obvious to him now what had happened. Someone had been waiting to pick her up. As soon as she had descended the station steps the car door would have opened and she would have been whisked away. He cursed. This woman was an easy target but he had still managed to lose her.
There used to be a little cafe near the station, a kind of transport place, dishing up egg and chips, bacon sarnies and mugs of thick, brown tea. He came out of the station and rounded the corner to go under the railway bridge. He was glad to see the cafe was still there. So much of this university city was being gentrified he was surprised to find it hadn’t become an upmarket coffee outlet, or a vegan sandwich bar. He was tired. Perhaps he was growing too old for this game. In the old days he would have been out of the station in a flash, even if it had meant vaulting the gates and upsetting the inspectors. He would be fifty next year, still a long way off from his pension.
He ordered himself a bacon butty and a big mug of coffee. There was a fug in the cafe so although he was seated at the front, by the main road, he still couldn’t see through the window. But did he really imagine she would just loiter in this area anyway? No, she was long gone. And he would have to report back to base and tell them that he had failed.
‘Christ, Mike, how the hell did you manage that?’ He could imagine what his boss would say. She didn’t suffer fools gladly. That’s why she had managed to climb the greasy pole in no time at all while he lingered somewhere at the bottom, smouldering resentment.
Someone was at the counter, laughing. He wondered about people’s ordinary lives and wished his was like that. Doing a day’s work, leaving it behind at five or six, and going home in the evening to a warm house and a kind heart. He had never had that. But when he had complained to his sister she had merely said, ‘I don’t know what job you do exactly, Mike, but you’re not a nine-to-five man and never will be.’ Sarah, his sister; sometimes he thought she was the only sane person left in his life.
The man at the counter shouted towards him, ‘Hey, mate, you want a top up?’
At first Mike thought he might have meant a top up for his mobile then he realised. The man at the counter was making a tipping gesture, indicating another mug of coffee.
‘On the house. If Wetherspoons can do it, so can we.’
Mike gave a small laugh. He went up to the counter and waited while the man filled his mug again. Then he decided to give it a go, hopeless as it was.
‘You wouldn’t have happened to see a woman with red hair and a yellow bag, would you, about thirty? I missed her at the station.’
The man at the counter didn’t even turn round. ‘Oh, you mean Jilly. She should be here about eleven.’
Mike almost spilled his coffee as the man handed it to him. No, surely, it must be someone else. Nothing is ever that easy. And besides, he’d blown his cover. If he waited the man behind the counter would say to her, ‘Hey, Jilly, there’s a guy over there looking for you. He’s sitting by the window.’ And then what? He’d made a real hash of this operation. What was happening to him? Was his brain addling because he was nearing fifty? He heard Sarah’s voice in his head; that’s just paranoia, Mike.
He couldn’t resist asking, ‘Is she still at Bedford’s College?’
The man behind the counter was pouring himself a cup of coffee. He looked about fifty himself. His hair was quite grey at the temples. He looked up now and studied Mike’s face. ‘Bedford’s? Jilly? Think we must be talking about a different woman.’ He hesitated, ‘Unless she serves at table.’
Mike had got himself off the hook. He was now able to say that Jilly was the wrong woman too. He finished his second cup of coffee, thanked the man behind the counter and told him he might be back at lunchtime. Then he wandered outside and looked at his watch. He had another hour to wait till eleven. He knew the towpath was close and the weather was sunny. He would take himself for a little walk, clear his head, try to think of what to do next.
The Thames was calm and green. On the other side of the bank there were allotments, some with very fancy sheds which faced the river. A different place from where Mike came from. His flat was stuck in the middle of a busy London suburb, and his bedroom overlooked the railway tracks. It had taken him a whole year to get used to the noise, to the rattling of goods wagons in the early morning and the whoosh of passenger trains well into the night.
He came to a little bridge which arched over a channel feeding into the main Thames. This channel made its way under a railway bridge to his right. Mike saw a man stooping as he emerged from under this bridge. He looked up at Mike and then put his head quickly down again. He didn’t come over the bridge where Mike was standing, but instead passed in front of him and turned right onto the main towpath of the Thames. There was no one else around. He could have been in the middle of the countryside and yet he was only a stone’s throw from the railway station.
As Mike approached the railway bridge, he understood why the man had been stooping. The bridge was low; there was graffiti scrawled on the walls and the cooing sound of pigeons who had found shelter on little ledges high above the water. At first he thought the bundle was a homeless person, likewise sheltering under the bridge. Then he saw it - a yellow bag poking out from under the grey blanket. He approached quietly, feeling bile rise in his throat. He knew what he was going to find even before he pulled the blanket back. She was dead. Her head was flopped to one side and blood was staining her neck.
