The Primrose Switchback

by Jo Bannister

  For an instant Shad glanced at his hostage, and Rosie saw in his eyes that he’d forgotten he was there. His mind was in such turmoil that he could hold a man on the cusp of death and lose track of the fact.

  He blinked and his gaze came back to her. He spoke for the first time. It was a mere growl, even lower than his normal speaking voice, but it was a recognisable word. He was understanding at least something of what was said to him, processing it and formulating a response. “No.”

  “Yes,” Rosie insisted. “Nothing that happened was your fault. Unless you use that knife, you have nothing to regret.”

  “How can you say that?” he stumbled, grief twisting up his voice. “I killed someone.”

  Rosie shook her head emphatically. “No. Someone made you think that, but it never happened.”

  “I remember!”

  “It’s a false memory, Shad. It was planted there by someone who needed a scapegoat. Precisely because of what you are – a clairvoyant, someone who can tune in to other people’s thoughts – he succeeded better than he could have hoped. But that isn’t your memory: it’s his.”

  It was a bizarre notion to inflict on someone who was only now rediscovering the idea of self. For half a minute he seemed to wrestle with it, his face screwing as he tried to get his head round it.

  But he hadn’t the strength left to punch through to the truth. “It’s too hard,” he whined, looking away.

  Rosie steeled herself. Compassion would undo them both. “Shad, I have news for you. Life is hard. Always: sometimes it’s a right bugger. It throws difficult decisions at us, puts us in situations where the only choice is between bad and worse. But there is an answer, it’s always the right answer and, as luck would have it, it’s easy to remember. It’s, Don’t give up. Don’t give up, don’t lie down, don’t let it beat you. Don’t let the bastards grind you down. Think. Remember. Separate the real things in your mind from the ones that were planted there. I don’t care if it’s hard – you have to do it. Otherwise the bastards have won.”

  He tried. She could see him trying. It wasn’t enough. He couldn’t get through the constructs fabricated in his mind. “It’s … all real,” he managed. He rubbed his temple with the heel of his hand. After a moment he raised the other one as well, clasping his fingers behind his cradled head.

  In another moment Marsh realised he was free. He straightened slowly and sucked in several deep, soft breaths. But he knew better than to dive for safety. That knife could reach him before he could reach the door.

  Rosie nodded in microscopic approval. “No, it isn’t. You didn’t kill anyone. That’s not who you are. I know, right now you don’t know what to believe; but I know who you are, I can remember for both of us. You’re strong and you’re tough and you can cope with this the way you cope with everything – with sheer guts and honesty. I swear to you, Shad, the worst is already over. Come home. You’ll never regret it.”

  At least now there was enough intelligence in his eyes to fuel uncertainty. He lowered his hands, including the one with the knife. Rosie almost dared to think she’d done it.

  Then in a sudden, fluid, cat-like movement he’d rocked to his feet, stepped over Marsh and passed her in the doorway, holding her at arm’s length with the knife.

  Rosie responded as she always responded to threats: with anger. “Wave that thing in my face, Shad Lucas, and I’ll break your bloody arm!” It was an empty threat – even without the knife he was both faster and stronger than she – but she felt better for making it.

  “Stay away from me.” Despair caught up the edges of his voice. “Leave me alone.”

  “I can’t do that. I’m your friend – I can’t let you vanish into the night when I know you need help.”

  “It’s too late,” he stumbled. “I can’t … change it. And I can’t bear it. What I’ve done – what I am. Let me go.”

  In fact she had no power to hold him. He was already outside, keeping her at bay with the knife. He didn’t seem to realise he could just turn and run, and neither of them could stop him.

  Or maybe, somewhere, he did, and he didn’t want to do it. Rosie said calmly, “No.”

  “It’s none of your business!” He was looking frantically over his shoulder. Rosie couldn’t think what for.

  “Yes it is. You’re my friend – that makes it my business. I don’t have so many friends I can afford to lose one.”

  Finally he saw what he was looking for: lights moving steadily on a track a hundred metres away. A train being put together. “Nobody needs friends that badly.” He began backing away from her.

  Harry Marsh had found his feet, appeared in the door beside her. “What’s he doing?” Then he saw the train too. “Where does he think he can go on that?”

  Rosie shook her head bemusedly. “I don’t know.” But in the moment of saying it she did. “Oh dear God! He isn’t getting on the train – he’s going under it!”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Marsh snatched the torch and gave chase; but he was pursuing a man half as old and twice as active as himself. He was never going to catch Shad before he reached the track, and if it had been further away he’d only have dropped further behind. If Shad was determined to die, Harry Marsh couldn’t stop him.

  But he couldn’t keep from trying. He ran as fast as he could over the rough ground, hurdling rails when he saw them and falling over one that he didn’t. He rolled and came up running again. The noise of the engine was getting louder, the rumble of the wagons on the track coming closer. Even if the driver saw the torch, semaphoring wildly as Marsh ran and only occasionally finding the figure racing ahead of him, there would be nothing he could do now. Only blow his horn, and Shad wasn’t heading that way because he thought the track was clear.

  In the event the driver saw neither of them – not the running man who reached the track an instant ahead of his first wagon nor the breathless one who ground to a halt when he could achieve nothing more. The half-dozen wagons that would be picked up by the next train through here and borne off to Holyhead, or Manchester or Glasgow, trundled unconcernedly past, and all Harry Marsh could do was bellow in an agony of frustration, “Cunningham’s going to get away with murder!”

  It must have taken twenty seconds for the leisurely little train to pass him. The driver, shunting from behind, finally saw his torch and raised a hand, mistaking him for a colleague. Marsh let him go. It was already too late.

  Puffing along in the rear, Rosie saw Shad eclipsed by the train and the shock hit her like a blow. Wide-eyed, open-mouthed, she froze in her tracks and then dropped to her knees in the cinders. A moan of barely human desolation wrenched from her throat. Now, finally, she didn’t care about Cunningham. She didn’t care about Jackie. She didn’t even care much about the loss to the world of Shad Lucas’s remarkable abilities. She cared that she had lost a friend. That they’d almost saved him, but not quite. That all the suffering and all the effort had, in the end, been wasted. She hugged her arms about her and crouched on the ground, rocking in impenetrable sorrow.

  Marsh waited for the engine to pass, not knowing what it would leave: a broken body or just a nasty smear on the rails. When it was gone, slowly, reluctantly, he raised the torch again.

  There was nothing on the rails. On the far side, hunched and shapeless in the stolen coat, braced to flee again, for the moment Shad Lucas held his ground with his face half turned towards the light.

  “Cunningham?” he echoed warily.

  Rosie heard his voice and thought it a phantasm. She thought she’d seen him hit. But she had to be sure so, after a moment, nerves clenched against disappointment, she looked.

  She saw Shad, afraid and stubborn, ready to run but not running. She saw Harry Marsh edge towards him as if stalking a deer, one step at a time, no sudden movements; saw him extend a hand as he stepped across the rails. And there the drama ended. Shad waited for him.

  Rosie clambered to her feet, the heart bursting in her chest. She set off towards them at a
cumbrous jog, but when she got there she didn’t know what to say. She stared at Shad, the tears coursing down her cheeks, and still no words came; so she just grabbed him and hugged him mutely. He looked surprised, but maybe they’d had that sort of relationship. He couldn’t be sure they hadn’t.

  It was a long way back to where Marsh had parked his car. As they walked, between them they told Shad most of what he’d missed. Some of it he understood; some of it even sounded a little familiar.

  “You mean, you remember?” prompted Marsh.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “What do you remember? Think, Shad, it’s important.”

  “I remember …” He had to stop and check it against the memories that weren’t his, that weren’t real, and only when he was sure that this one was did he continue. “I was here before. Not the platform – back there, by the fence. I remember climbing the fence. Is that right? Did I do that?”

  Marsh nodded. “Yes.”

  Shad was nodding too. “Yeah, I remember. She was in the last wagon.”

  “Jackie Pickering.”

  “I didn’t get her name. You don’t. People never think their own names. She was so scared. She was dying already, her life shrinking … I climbed into the wagon. I tried to stop her bleeding.” He blinked at a sudden recollection. “I pulled the knife out. Jesus! I knew I was hurting her, but there was so much blood. I thought, maybe I could stop it. But it didn’t help. She died while I was holding her. She disappeared down the tunnel, and the tunnel closed.”

  Rosie let out an unsteady breath. “Which is how your fingerprints got on the knife and her blood got on you.”

  “Someone else was there,” said Marsh softly. “The killer. Did you see him?”

  Shad shook his head. “I felt him, though. Behind me, in the dark. I turned to look but …” The memory ended abruptly, truncated by violence. “I suppose he hit me.”

  So near; so desperately near and still, for all they could prove, Andrew Cunningham would walk free.

  “That’s the last thing you remember?” asked Marsh, and Shad nodded. “All right. What was the first you knew of all this? Why did you go to Railwayview Street?”

  “I told you, I felt her fear. I followed it, like a scent. When I realised they were in the yard I left the jeep with the car and climbed over the wire.”

  Rosie and Marsh traded a swift and wide-eyed glance, at once astonished and expectant. Detective Superintendent Marsh said, very carefully, “What car?”

  “The one beside the wire. The silver one.”

  The silver car Marsh had sat beside, in front of or behind in more rush-hour traffic jams than he cared to remember. “Make?”

  There were so many things Shad Lucas didn’t know, even with all his wits about him. But he wasn’t bad on cars. “Jaguar XJ8.”

  Harry Marsh exhaled very, very softly. “Got you, you bastard,” he whispered. After Shad’s safety, and his own, that was what he wanted most. “He left the way Shad got in, and he knew he was going to. He left the car there ready. So he wouldn’t have to walk up the platform if he’d got her blood on him.”

  Rosie had already got what she wanted. She went on hugging his arm as if he might run away again. “I thought we’d lost you.”

  Shad had the grace to look embarrassed. “It suddenly seemed … rather final. I couldn’t cope with what was happening, how I felt – I just wanted it to stop. But then I’d never have known, and I wanted answers more than I wanted out. I thought, if it was a good idea after all, maybe I could come back.”

  Marsh gave an appreciative chuckle. But Shad’s puzzled glance told him it wasn’t a joke.

  Shad too had what he needed most. He kept checking he hadn’t imagined it. “I really didn’t kill anyone?”

  Rosie shook her head. “No. The only person you hurt was hurting you, and he’s all right.”

  “I couldn’t … survive … in prison.”

  “You’re not going to prison,” said Marsh gruffly. “You can quote me on that.”

  It was Friday morning. Rosie never showed her face in the Chronicle at nine o’clock on Friday mornings, but she thought perhaps she should make an exception today. If she was going to ask for her job back.

  On the way to the editor’s office, however, she bumped into Jonah McLeod, the chief photographer, a small sandy-haired Scot with the steadiest hands in the business. Just now, though, he seemed to be having a fit of the vapours. He came out of the lift wringing in his hands the soft yellow duster he used to clean his lenses. Then he mopped his tears with it.

  “Whatever you’re doing,” he managed at last, “it isn’t worth missing this. Go up to your office right away.”

  “Why?” she demanded, intrigued. “What’s going on?”

  But he wouldn’t explain. “Just go. Go now.” He went on his way, giggling. Rosie got back in the lift.

  Jonah wasn’t the only one who’d been enjoying himself. When she opened her door she found Alex and two young men in a similar state of discomposure. One was tall and fair with a blond moustache, the other was small and dark.

  The tall one was wearing a floral pinafore and a go-to-meeting hat.

  “I’m sorry,” said Rosie smoothly, going into reverse, “I thought this was my office.” She checked the name on the door then came back. “This is my office.” She spread plump hands. “Would anybody care to … explain?”

  Alex performed the introductions. “Rosie, this is Fran Barclay” – in the dress – “and Jamie Lloyd. Fran, Jamie – this is Rosie Holland. I’ve been standing in for her for a few days.”

  She produced Fran’s letter and her own, waited while Rosie read them.

  They explained something but not everything. “And the reason our senior photographer is reduced to using his best yellow duster as a handkerchief is …?”

  Alex blew her own nose, though not on a duster. “We’ve been having a bit of fun. The boys talked about what they wanted to do – publish that as it stood, or specify the exact nature of their problem – and they decided they couldn’t do any better than pose for a photograph to go with it.”

  “Like that?”

  “Like that.”

  Fran was struggling out of the pinafore. It wasn’t his normal attire: underneath he had a perfectly respectable shadow-striped shirt. “Jamie and I had a heart-to-heart about the whole sorry business. This was our idea.”

  They’d devoted considerable thought and discussion to their dilemma over the last couple of days. As Alex had anticipated, Jamie’s first reaction was horror that Fran had considered leavings. His second was fury that his employers had subjected him to a pressure to which none of his colleagues was vulnerable; and his third that he was angry enough now to do something about it.

  “You want to see it published?” asked Fran anxiously. “You can cope with the consequences?”

  “Cope with them?” snarled Jamie. People who’d known him for ten years had never seen him as angry as this. “I’m going to instigate them. Nine o’clock Monday morning me and the Chief Executive are in conference – no calls, no interruptions. If I haven’t got this sorted out by the time we finish, he’s looking for a new Senior Clerk (Accounts). He’s also looking at a lot of publicity. I’m not taking any more crap from these people. Either they treat you the way they treat everyone else’s other half or I give a full, frank and attributable interview to this reporter friend of yours.”

  Fran blinked back a tear of admiration. “So maybe we should forget about the letter?”

  “I’m not going to forget it,” growled Jamie, “so why should anyone else be allowed to? We didn’t start this, they did; but I’m damn well going to finish it.” He disappeared next door to ask a favour of their neighbour, a tall Polish woman with a fine eye for a flowered hat.

  “And we thought,” said Fran, carefully laying Mrs Sikorski’s most treasured possession on Alex’s desk, “that if we gave Jamie’s bosses what they were expecting we’d rather cut the ground out from under them. I
f it isn’t a secret he can’t be blackmailed. If they go on treating him as they have, it’s obvious why. They can’t get away with saying it’s a coincidence, that they didn’t know about him and me.”

  “And the hat, and the pinny?” asked Rosie carefully.

  Fran grinned. “If we need everyone to know we’re a couple of queers, we’d better look the part. At least for the photo.”

  “Er – you didn’t think of shaving off the moustache?”

  “There are limits to what a man will do,” Fran Barclay said

  loftily, “even for love.”

  Before she asked for her job back Rosie thought Dan Sale had better hear the whole story. He sat in shell-shocked silence while she talked. It wasn’t all news to him, but enough was that horror bleached the colour from his thin cheeks and ironed out the furrows on his brow.

  “And … how is he now?” he managed when she’d finished.

  Rosie gave her all-encompassing shrug. “Dan, I really don’t know. Better than I’d expected; but he’s obviously been damaged, how well he’ll recover and how much he’ll be stuck with I can’t begin to guess. I don’t know how his brain works at the best of times, I have no idea how it’ll have been affected by an overdose of ECT. There may be long-term repercussions for his normal brain function, or for his ESP, or both; or not. On the basis that what doesn’t kill you makes you strong, it’s conceivable that his abilities will have been sharpened by a close encounter with the national grid. I don’t know. I don’t think anybody can know at this point. We’ll have to wait and see.”

  Dan Sale nodded. “But how is he?”

  “Calmer. I’m not sure how much he really understands of what happened, but he’s been told, and we’ll go through it again, as often as necessary, as he’s able to absorb it.”

  “Does he know who he is?”

  “Oh yes,” nodded Rosie. “Most of what he mislaid has come back. The last week’s a bit of a blur still, but he knows who he is and most of what happened up until the murder. And we know pretty much what happened afterwards, so there won’t be any gaps to haunt him. If he gets no better he’ll manage.”