Signal Point

by Marcus Alden

  Sarah’s transformation was complete so she would need to keep her distance from Dan who still looked sloppy. They had arranged on the train that she would lead out in front and he would trail behind to avoid exposing her. Sarah had made the observation that you never saw suited professionals arm in arm with scruffy counterparts. Dan had agreed, but his pride had taken a bruise from the comment. He had considered his image as individual not scruffy.

  Sarah left the smelly loos and strutted out through the busy station; her new ponytail swayed from side to side with each step. She held her bag in the crook of her arm and her phone in her other hand while texting. Dan watched as her figure appeared in his peripheral vision. He continued to look down at his mobile. It buzzed with a new message.

  ‘I’m going in, wish me luck.’

  ‘I’m right behind you, I know you can do it.’ Dan felt somewhat helpless not going to the office. After all, it was his cause they were fighting for. But after lengthy discussion they had both agreed that Sarah would be the one who could pull off any acting, and had the demeanour to seduce security guards should the need arise.

  The cramped street was busy with traffic as Sarah walked out of the entrance of the red bricked station. She joined the pavement and went in the direction her phone was telling her to. Dan followed behind her mixing into the pedestrians. Walking past chain shops that were squashed next to each other, she saw a glass tower piercing into the afternoon sky. The sun bounced off the shiny exterior which caused her to squint while looking at it. She cut through the buildings to her right passing a coffee shop on the corner of a darkened underpass. Dan watched as she disappeared from view.

  ‘Great Winchester Street, ha, I can’t even escape when I want to,’ Sarah said. The momentary distraction from what she was doing calmed her nerves.

  The icon on the map pulsated showing where Sarah stood in comparison to where her destination was. She was getting very close but still couldn’t see the building. She strained her neck back and looked up high. The metallic stripes of the tower poked up from an uglier beige building; she was near. She crossed the road and walked straight following her map. She reached the glass atrium at the foot of the tower and silenced her mobile; the time had arrived. She took in a breath.

  The glass atrium had an air of cool urban sophistication. Sarah saw three escalators ahead, all stretching up to a mezzanine reception area. She scanned the space for clues. Glossy white panels suspended from the ceiling above the escalators hovered like aerodynamic wings. There seemed to be glass everywhere she thought: frosted, clear, and semi-frosted but little decoration apart from a couple of sparse potted ferns and orchids. The people moving about seemed to come and go from the mezzanine level and, in the enormous space, she could hear faint electronic beeps.

  What. I don’t have a key card. The last thing I want to do is sign in, Sarah thought as the escalator glided her up towards the glossy reception. Security cameras would capture her entrance, but she hoped to blend in unannounced with the other people that had a legitimate reason to be there. After all, this building saw thousands pass through its doors every week and she doubted that the footage was watched unless something was wrong. She tried hard to maintain her calm composure while her mind motioned fast trying to find a solution. There were four or five treads left before she would reach the top. The moving stairs were soon enough swallowed into the floor and she stepped off meters away from the broad reception suite that glowed with white light.

  To the left and right of the desk were banks of slim aluminium gateways each one with a glowing green light. She could try just walking straight through and hope it wouldn’t sound an alarm, but it was risky; the promising green light might turn to red. She had just decided to try it when, at the corner of the mezzanine level, she spotted the back of a security guard. He was podgy with short legs and about 5’8 she thought. It was too risky, even if he was unfit.

  Not wanting to stride straight up to reception and give Atmore’s office forewarning of her arrival, Sarah turned to her immediate right where a bean shaped table and swivel chairs sat in-between two of the escalators. On the table stood a tall white orchid in a square pot and beside it was sheets of A4 paper. Sarah dumped her bag down on the table and looked through it pretending to search for her pass. She had seen a man sat there when she climbed the escalator and pretended not to see him as she acted out her lost item scenario. The man, who looked in his late forties, had a large forehead and combed oiled hair that was swept back. He wore a dull mushroom-coloured suit with a bright blue and pink striped tie. He interrupted her fumbling.

  ‘Forgot your pass eh?’ His chat up line was greasy like his hair.

  ‘Yes, how did you know?’ Sarah said with false sincerity.

  ‘Just a guess. Tell me where you’re going and what time you’re free for coffee and I might help out a fellow colleague.’ The man grinned; the expanse of his pure white and well-maintained teeth dominated his face. Sarah looked back at the man feeling repulsed but forced a smile and a nervous laugh before looking away. This wasn’t his first time doing this, and Sarah imagined this man picking up desperate women that passed by on a regular basis. Maybe his approach worked on overburdened women from the office that were too busy to trawl dating sites, but it didn’t work on her.

  ‘I’m going to Hub, but I’m afraid I’m far too busy to––.’

  ‘Nonsense, look, take my pass,’ the greasy man said. ‘Do what you’ve got to do and I’ll swing by later to collect it. I’m out of the office for the afternoon, here’s my card.’ In a single smooth motion the flirting man slid his business card across the table with the photo ID pass card attached to a lanyard. Sarah couldn’t believe how easy it had been, but wondered how easy the man expected her to be later.

  ‘Thank you, but you really shouldn’t trust strange women you just met,’ Sarah said taking the business card and pass. She picked up her bag.

  ‘Oh really, and why’s that?’ The man said in a suggestive tone. His toothy smile grinned wide again and a smug look covered his face.

  ‘Because some of us bite.’ Sarah walked away returning his flirtation. He watched her bottom walk towards the bank of metal gateways and called out.

  ‘I’ll look forward to that later.’ Sarah kept facing forward and shuddered at the thought. She would not be seeing the sleazy man again if she could help it. Sarah smiled to herself; he had one flaw in his plan. He had admitted that he was out all afternoon so she would have no problem avoiding him, but still, she felt a small tug of guilt taking the pass knowing she wouldn’t return it.

  Sarah touched the ID pass on the polished aluminium surface as she had seen others do; it responded with an affirmative beep and the light turned green. She was in.

  Chapter 15

  A phone rang and echoed into the deserted space outside the lift. Sarah looked around and checked the floor number again; this was the right place according to the directory downstairs. The expanse of space was not what she had been expecting. There were no internal offices, teams of people, or even a sense that it was a functioning workspace. A single desk, marooned by an unnerving amount of space, belonged to the receptionist. The receptionist looked up at Sarah with a blank expression, and looked away to answer the ringing phone.

  ‘Good afternoon, how can I help?’ The receptionist said, her voice sounded hassled. Sarah walked across the shiny floor, conscious of the noise her unfamiliar heels made with every step in the hollow space. The receptionist looked up again at Sarah and put her hand up for Sarah to wait until she had finished talking.

  Sarah waited by the reception desk and looked around trying to keep her breathing regular to appear relaxed. Behind the arc-shaped desk was the only striking feature in the room: a 3D lit sign of the word Hub mounted to the wall so that it appeared to float. Sarah’s eyes searched again for possible clues to a filing room, but there was nothing depicting a typical office. The dominating feature of the room wasn’t even in the room, Sarah thought; it was t
he view outside. With the floor being so high up it had a spectacular viewpoint across London. Foreign businessmen needn’t trail through queues at tourist sites, she thought, they could look out of a pallid office when doing business with London.

  ‘Can I help’? The receptionist said. She looked at Sarah with pinched eyes. Though her words were meant to be a welcome, Sarah could feel the pressure being emitted from behind the desk towards her.

  ‘Wait, don’t tell me.’ The receptionist continued to speak without giving Sarah a chance. ‘Chase, is it? Caroline Chase?’ the receptionist said looking down at the sheets of paper on her desk. Sarah was taken aback and the words she had practised melted into oblivion. ‘You are Caroline Chase, the new consultant for the office renovations?’

  ‘I’m––, I am, yes,’ Sarah said. She was flummoxed but nodded with hesitation.

  ‘Well you’ve come to the wrong place; this is the new office. You are renovating the old office. How many more times do I have to explain it to your people? Yes, both addresses have the word Tower in it––. ‘You are supposed to be at that office, not this one. As you can clearly see this office does not need renovating.’ The patronising receptionist gestured for Sarah to look around the empty space. ‘I’ve got enough to be dealing with already, you understand?’ Sarah stared back.

  ‘Of course, but how I am supposed to know. I’ve been given this address,’ Sarah replied.

  ‘Yes, I know, because whoever is at the helm of your incompetent so-called business clearly needs an eye test because the same mistake keeps repeating.’ The receptionist mumbled while typing a message on the computer console. The phone rang again. ‘How do they expect me to manage this office on my own when I’m getting constant interruptions?’ She looked up at Sarah. The receptionist handed Sarah a photocopied page that detailed the various office locations. Sarah thanked her ignoring the woman’s attitude. The receptionist neither acknowledged nor reciprocated Sarah’s response, she just answered the phone in the same manner she had earlier.

  Sarah clopped back to the lift and pressed the button for the ground floor. Descending the tall building, she hoped the sleazy smooth talker from earlier had gone. When the lift opened, Sarah stepped out and kept her eyes fixed on the area where he had been. Sarah exhaled the built-up tension; he was not there. But a closer glance alerted her again. The podgy security man was looking straight at her. She held the pass close in her palm to avoid anyone being able to see the greasy man’s portrait on it and walked back over to the row of electronic gateways. The guard looked at Sarah, she could feel his eyes on her. She looked up and smiled at him while gliding the pass close over the scanning section. He raised his eyebrows a couple of times as he looked her up and down and nudged his colleague to catch a glimpse of her too. The light turned green. Sarah strode over to the escalator. The smooth ride down brought her back to the minimalistic entrance and, with the pass still in her hand, Sarah walked over to the revolving door. As the door swept round, Sarah let the pass slip through her fingers. The plastic holder landed on the floor and got pushed round with the soft bristles that skimmed over the floor. Sarah walked away from the building.

  ‘What happened, did you find anything?’ Dan said as she got nearer to where he had been waiting at the foot of another office building. He handed her a coffee that was still warm.

  ‘Not yet, but I’ve got this.’ Sarah handed the photocopied sheet to Dan. ‘The receptionist mistook me for someone else; she thought I was something to do with renovating an office. This place is empty. Literally no furniture or anything, so I guess the files must be over there,’ Sarah said pointing to the map. It showed a street map of various office locations, the correct one had been circled in red biro that ingrained the sheet in an angry scrawl. ‘But we should hurry; I don’t want the real woman to turn up before I do.’ They walked as they talked.

  ‘Well done, we must be getting luckier,’ said Dan.

  ‘Luck had nothing to do with it! It was only because of my acting skills––.’

  ‘Wait,’ Dan said. He looked at the details on the page. ‘There’s another place we haven’t thought to look.’

  Chapter 16

  ‘Hurry up Dan, I can hear footsteps,’ Sarah said in a hushed voice. She turned back to Dan who had his hand twisted through a broken mesh panel and was reaching for a lock on the other side.

  ‘I am hurrying,’ Dan said panicked, but Sarah didn’t reply. She gave him an irritated glance that was lost in the darkness of no man’s land. Dan’s hands slipped about grasping for the bolt on the other side of the door, relying only on touch.

  ‘I’ve almost got it,’ Dan said pressed up against the cold metal panel. The door swung open. Chunky heaps of stones, like the ones laid between rail tracks, made up the uneven path outside the stacked terrapin buildings. They shifted about as the pair crept across them.

  ‘You know we are trespassing on private land which is a punishable offence, don’t you?’ Dan said.

  ‘And now’s the time you choose to think about it? Dan surely you realised that when we planned to break in?’ Sarah whispered back.

  ‘I know I know it’s just that––.’

  ‘Oh, never mind Dan, we’re here now.’ The pair climbed the narrow steps attached to the outside of the cubicle to find an orange door with a square window in it. Dan tried the handle.

  ‘Well it’s not going to be open, is it?’ Sarah said.

  ‘It was worth a try.’ Sarah turned and went back down the stairs.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Dan spoke into the dark. ‘Sarah.’ His strained whisper remained unanswered. He looked around; from the height of the terrapin he could see vague lights in the distance. Dan followed the sound of footsteps approaching hoping it would be Sarah. She emerged from the darkness carrying something in her hands. Without explanation, Sarah smashed the breeze block through the pain of glass in the door. She reached her hand through and pulled the handle down. The door opened.

  ‘See, what you need is a woman’s touch,’ Sarah said.

  ‘More like a burglar’s touch,’ Dan muttered.

  ‘I heard that,’ Sarah said flicking the light switch on. The rectangular room had a desk, filing cabinets, and a row of hard hats and high-vis jackets hung on the walls. A well-thumbed calendar with a naked woman straddling a motorbike swayed from a hook on the back of the door.

  ‘I’ll start with these drawers,’ Dan whispered. He opened the first one and began searching. Sarah nodded and walked to the desk to look at what was spread out across the surface. Coffee ringed notes and loose papers covered the table top like a collage. She walked behind it and sat down in the saggy office chair that had a musty smell and cigarette burns on the arms.

  ‘This filing system is almost as good as mine,’ Sarah said looking at the mess and turning over some sheets of paper.

  ‘Sarah, keep your voice down!’

  ‘Okay okay. We’re safe; no one knows we’re here Dan. If they did, there would be dogs and shouting guards already. Just relax.’ Sarah spoke rather than whispered. Dan drew out some of the plump grey suspension files and placed them on top of the cabinet. His fingers turned the corners of the pages like he was dealing cards as his eyes skimmed the text.

  In another building, a bank of computer monitors captured CCTV footage. The screens cycled through floodlit empty platforms, corridors, lifts and abandoned carriages; each image fixed for three seconds before switching to the next camera. The guard took a sip of his drink and his glazed eyes glanced over the top of his book to scan the monitors. On screen 5 the camera changed to the outside of the terrapin Dan and Sarah were searching. His eyes squinted at the light shining through the blinds of the temporary building. A shadow of a figure moved. The image flashed off from the screen. The guard jumped up out of his chair spilling his hot drink down him and shouted into his walkie-talkie.

  ‘Intruder in G2, intruder in G2!’

  * * * *

  Dan saw his surname and stopped; his name on
pages of plans, council permissions, and proposals. The words ‘Easton’ and ‘estate’ struck him like a blunt object. He turned over more pages of proposals with Hub’s logo on headed paper. His pulse beat fast; everything had been leading to this moment and he didn’t know what to expect. Dan found a map folded in between some sheets. He laid it out on top of the files. It was Hub’s proposed plan of the rail line from London to Birmingham. Most of the line was in black, but there was an area of track in red and a highlighted box that signalled an area of land. He moved on to more sheets.

  ‘Sarah,’ Dan said with a dry voice too stunned to be able to project it louder. ‘No, this can’t be right. There are letters between Hub and my grandfather.’ Sarah threw back the chair and shifted over to his side. ‘The address is Flat 4, Sunnyhill Retirement Village; he wasn’t even in a care home!’ Dan kept looking. His heart beat faster. ‘The words Easton and estate keep reappearing.’ He looked at her perplexed unable to put into words his thoughts. Sarah took over.

  ‘The site will provide direct access to link the tracks between site 71 and 72. The surrounding area has been assessed and, providing the development is in keeping with the conditions as specified in document HC11, we grant full permission for the rail line on the former Easton estate,’ Sarah said.

  ‘Former? My grandfather sold land to this project? To Atmore? That’s rubbish. If he’d sold all that land to Atmore there would be a lot more than £45,000 to show for it.’ Dan took short sharp breaths and tried to calm himself.

  ‘Dan, don’t you see? Your grandfather was wealthy,’ Sarah said looking at him.