Slow Train

by Jack Benton

  There could only be one possible reason. Slim folded up the map and headed out.

  47

  Elena looked uncomfortable to find Slim standing on her doorstep. He was aware he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days nor changed his clothes, but he had stayed off the drink. Things could be worse.

  ‘I’m not sure to what I owe this social call—’

  ‘I’m sorry to drop by unexpectedly like this, but I wanted to let you know that I’m not done with your case,’ Slim said. ‘You might be, but I’m not. I’m no longer working for you, however. I’m doing this for myself. I have a couple of questions. I can ask them here, or I can ask them inside. That would be preferable.’

  With a tired shrug, Elena said, ‘Then I guess you’d better come in.’

  She led him through into a small but pretty living room, decked out in floral patterns and motifs. A fresh bunch of flowers sat in a vase on a corner table, and the room was well lit from a bay window facing east. Slim took a seat on a two-seater sofa and pulled a file out of his bag.

  ‘I’d prefer it if you sat down,’ Slim said as Elena lingered in the doorway, fidgeting with her hands. ‘I want to show you a couple of photographs and I’d like to see your reaction.’

  ‘Photographs of what?’

  ‘Please sit down.’

  Somewhat reluctantly Elena perched herself on the edge of an armchair, hands placed neatly in her lap. Slim withdrew a photograph and held it out.

  ‘Have you ever seen this man?’

  Elena leaned forward, frowning. After a few seconds she shook her head. ‘No … not that I recall.’

  ‘That’s fine. How about this one?’

  Slim pulled the first photograph quickly away to reveal a nearly identical picture directly beneath. Elena’s reaction was instantaneous. She let out a little gasp then drew back, hands over her mouth.

  ‘You’ve seen him, haven’t you? Tell me where.’

  Elena buried her face in her hands. ‘He was watching me … oh Lord, he was watching me.’

  Slim looked at the pictures again. They showed two very similar men’s faces, both in their early twenties, but one with a naturally sneering look and a vicious scar that ran down his face from the bottom of his right eye to his jawline.

  Jim Randall and Jeremy Bettelman, two brothers, one with an almost cherubic innocence, the other carrying the eyes and appearance of a devil in human skin. The police photograph that would make Bettelman famous had of course been taken two years later, when he was wearing a full beard with only the first inch of the scar visible above it. This picture could be the face of a different man, and Elena’s reaction, despite how distressed she had become, was the one Slim had been hoping for.

  ‘You saw him watching your house, didn’t you?’

  Elena, still covering her mouth, gave a frantic nod. ‘Yes, yes, I did. On three separate occasions. The first time he was idling across the street when I came home from school. I didn’t think much of it because I’d never seen him before, but I immediately noticed that scar. The other two were at night. Once was near my school. The other in the park across the street. He was sitting on a bench, looking across at our house.’

  ‘When would this have been?’

  Elena shrugged, shaking her head. ‘Oh, I’d guess the summer and autumn of 1977. It was after my mother had disappeared because I remember feeling isolated, unprotected. My dad was still struggling to hold a job, so often wouldn’t be home until long after I’d got back from school. The three occasions were spaced out, and I would have just about put the previous time out of my mind when I saw him again. The last one could have been October or November, because it was dark, but I remember it was not that late.’

  ‘And do you know the identity of this man?’

  Elena shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t. After I stopped seeing him I gradually forgot about him. I figured it was just coincidence, that he was a local perhaps, who had moved away.’

  Slim pulled out a mugshot of the bearded Bettelman after his arrest. ‘The Strangler,’ he said. ‘He was the Peak District Strangler.’

  Elena let out another little gasp. ‘Oh my. He was after me?’

  Slim shook his head. ‘Not you,’ he said. ‘I believe he had no interest in you at all, and that you kept seeing him was just bad luck. I believe he was after your mother. He was after Jennifer.’

  48

  ‘I don’t have absolute proof,’ Slim said, sipping a coffee as he sat across from Lia. ‘But I’m close. If I can only find her, I’m sure I’ll be able to prove it.’

  ‘She wasn’t a victim of the Strangler?’

  Slim shook his head. ‘No. But she was meant to be. My theory is that she befriended Jim Randall in hospital, and provided him with something which would end his pain. But either some time before he died or on his deathbed, he revealed her identity to his brother. Incensed, Jeremy went after her.’

  ‘But how did he end up in Holdergate? He was a delivery driver. No way could he have driven up here through that snow.’

  ‘He didn’t. I spoke to my contact in Manchester, a man who knew both brothers. Bettelman was only working part-time for the delivery company at that time. At night he was moonlighting, working cash in hand in a loader’s yard.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Outside Manchester Piccadilly. Robert told me a freight train came in just after the commuter Jennifer was on. Jeremy was on it, stowed away. He must have been as surprised as her that the snow stopped them at Holdergate. The freight was diverted out to a wide siding track, and Jeremy, perhaps afraid of being discovered, climbed over the fence, went around and approached the station from the front.’

  ‘And Jennifer saw him watching her?’

  ‘Yes. But—and here’s where I’m guessing a little—Jennifer didn’t know about Jim’s brother. I talked to Elena, who told me her mother was deeply religious. Church every Sunday, prayers before meals. It must have gone against every one of her core values to help Jim die. Therefore, when she sees a scarred, angry older version watching her, what’s she going to think?’

  Lia leaned back in her chair. ‘The devil. She thought the devil had come after her.’

  ‘Exactly. It would literally have put the fear of God into her, and she might have felt that even a station full of people would be no protection. In a blind panic she runs right through, back out onto the platform. She’s trying not to leave tracks to be followed, but there’s snow everywhere. The only way she could see free of snow is a path out into the goods yard.’

  ‘She got away?’

  ‘Initially. My guess is Bettelman panicked at the sight of so many people and did a runner, perhaps back to the train, perhaps hiding out overnight. But he came back, over and over again across the following year, whenever he could get away with it on his schedule without it being too obvious. He was hunting her. Eventually he must have realised she had disappeared, or perhaps seen something in the newspaper. Still incensed, he began to look for somewhere else to take out his anger. He encountered Jim’s old girlfriend, and began killing prostitutes.’

  ‘So what happened to Jennifer if Bettelman didn’t kill her?’

  ‘Someone else did.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Tom Jedder.’

  ‘And who on earth is that?’

  Slim spread his hands and smiled. ‘At this point, I have no idea.’

  49

  Delusion. Depression. Psychosis. Irrationality. The list of Toby’s symptoms went on and on. What the two bottles of medication didn’t answer were why. What had caused Toby’s illness, however it was described, and what effect, if any, did it have on Jennifer’s case?

  Slim was still mulling over these things when the cafe’s door opened and Toby entered. Slim stood up quickly, offering a hand and an apology for missing their previous meeting.

  ‘I’m so sorry, I double-booked you with someone else,’ he said, feeling a brief stab of guilt at the lie. ‘I was halfway to Manchester before I realised
.’

  Toby shrugged and took a seat across the table. ‘Quite all right. These things happen. I gather the case is coming along well?’

  Slim smiled. ‘In some ways. I’m not getting far with any answers, but I’ve been figuring out a lot of the things which didn’t happen.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘She wasn’t a victim of the Strangler. Jeremy Bettelman had an alibi for that day.’ Slim felt that now was not the time to reveal who he had identified as the man in Toby’s photograph. ‘I have a couple of questions to ask you, though. Some things I’d like to clarify.’

  ‘Sure, go ahead.’

  Slim took two pictures out of a folder and passed them across. One was the drawing of the man identified in the reflection. The other the picture of Jim Randall after being put through a sketch converter on an online paint program.

  ‘Was either of the men the one you saw that night outside Holdergate Park?’

  Toby frowned then shook his head. He pointed at the picture of the reflected man and said, ‘This one looks familiar. This other, though … I have no idea.’

  Slim sat back, being careful to hide his disappointment. He had hoped Toby would identify the reflected man as his own father, whom Slim suspected it to be. Perhaps the drawing’s likeness wasn’t close enough.

  ‘If you remember, please let me know.’

  ‘Of course.’

  A minute of awkward silence passed between them. Slim had something else to ask but wasn’t sure how to bring it up. In the end, Toby got in first, pulling a scruffy handful of papers out of his bag.

  ‘I found some more information I thought might interest you,’ he said. ‘It’s about Tom Jedder.’

  Slim looked down at the printed web pages and read the first few lines. Barring the odd grammatical correction, it was word for word what he had read on the prints he had seen in Toby’s drawer.

  ‘Where did you get these?’ he said. ‘I couldn’t find anything other than a brief reference in a history book to a local mine worker of that name.’

  Toby grinned. ‘You have to know where to look. I’d guess as a writer I’ve spent a lot more time researching things on the internet than you have.’

  Slim doubted it, but he appeased Toby with a nod and a smile. Let the man think he was played. ‘Can I take these to read over?’

  ‘Sure. These are copies I made for you. I can summarise them briefly if you like.’ Without Slim responding either way, Toby continued, ‘Jedder disappeared without a trace in around 1930. It was believed some sort of accident had befallen him, or perhaps he had even been murdered. A few years later, he began to be seen again, around the anniversary of his death.’ Toby leaned forward. ‘Get this. While you might expect to see a ghostly representation of a boy, Jedder appeared to be aging. Not as fast as you or I, but gradually, a year for every three or four of ours. He was aging, but something else was happening. He was fading, too. His features were starting to disappear. His eyes were closing up, his nose and mouth shrinking. Something like this.’

  Toby thrust a picture across the table. It was a drawing of some kind of horror movie character, a man with tiny facial features, receding hair, slumped ears, no noticeable chin.

  ‘What the hell is this?’ Slim said, pushing it away in revulsion.

  Toby pulled out another picture, this a print of the Polaroid he had taken but withheld from the police.

  ‘It’s an artist’s impression of the Visitor I saw that night. It’s quite clear that’s what he was, and whatever dimension he went to was slowly taking his humanity away from this one.’

  Slim looked up, his anger rising. ‘Look, I’ve had just about enough of this crap.’ He jabbed a finger at the photograph, at the man standing outside the fence. ‘It’s a damn reflection, and I can prove it—’

  Toby sat up. His eyes twinkled as he shook his head, a grin that hinted at madness spreading across his face. ‘Oh, not him. I’m not talking about him, Mr. Hardy. I’m talking about the other man, the one peering through the railings in the fence.’

  As Toby’s finger snaked out, indicating a tiny white circle Slim had thought was a snowflake glare on the camera lens but was in fact the outline of a face pressed between two fence railings, he felt an uncontrollable urge to punch the triumphant smirk off Toby’s face. Instead, realising with sudden horrifying clarity the aberration which may have been the root cause of Toby’s lifetime of mental illness, he slipped from his chair and went crashing to the floor.

  50

  ‘It’s impossible to see what it is,’ Lia said. ‘He said it’s a face, but it could be anything. A bulge in the film, a reflection. You can’t trust a word he’s telling you.’

  Slim nodded. ‘I sent it back to my friend in linguistics, and he passed it on to the specialist who decoded the two people in that picture. He didn’t even notice it. Even with Toby’s claim, there’s no proof it’s a face.’

  ‘He’s a novelist, and he’s crazy,’ Lia said. ‘I imagine the two complement each other pretty well.’

  Slim took a sip of his coffee. ‘I’m convinced at this point that Toby’s playing me for a mug. I asked another friend to get me some info on these sites he’s supposedly pulling these documents from, and he couldn’t find anything. Said if there’s anything on the web it’s encrypted, on a private server, but what he suspected was more likely was that the prints were formatted on a computer to look like web printouts. He thinks Toby wrote them himself, which is what I think now, too.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I think that he truly believes he saw something terrifying that night. You have to remember, he was a six-year-old kid, playing with his first camera, seeing that kind of snow for the first time. He was living a fantasy already. And then there’s the fact that for one reason or another he might have been the last person to see Jennifer Evans alive. He knew that, because police questioned him. It’s in the reports. This is a little kid, and he thought he saw something out there, and over time it’s manifested in his mind to something infinitely terrifying. He started having psychotic episodes, leading to a dependency on medication and strange personality traits which included the craving of attention and excessive deceit as a way of gaining it. And then, as an adult, he learned how to channel it into his writing.’

  Lia rubbed her chin. ‘Didn’t you say your secretary read his books? Perhaps you should ask her if there are any elements of this which tie up with what Toby’s been telling you.’

  Slim nodded. ‘I’ll call her this afternoon.’ He pulled the folder of notes he had made out of his bag. ‘In the meantime, could you do me a favour?’ He pointed at the second picture he had shown Toby, the one he had been convinced was Toby’s father. ‘Could you show this picture to your mother? I need to know who this was. It could be significant, or it could mean nothing at all. If she lived in Holdergate back then she might recognise him. It could be a local, and if so, I’d really like to know what they saw.’

  Lia nodded. ‘Sure.’ She started to get up, then reached across and squeezed Slim’s hand. ‘I had a thought. It sounds stupid, but what if … what if Jennifer also saw the other person?’

  Slim shook his head. ‘I’m thinking that Toby’s out of his mind, that’s all. I can’t believe that’s actually a face.’

  ‘But let’s say he isn’t the complete nutjob he appears to be, and he really did see something else he thought was a face. If Jennifer saw it, and it looked anything like that monster in the picture you showed me … it would have scared a God-fearing girl like Jennifer like nothing else could.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Jezebel.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The fallen angel. Satan’s very own sidekick.’

  Slim frowned. ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve got to run,’ Lia said. ‘I’ll explain it later.’

  Slim watched her go, then finished up his coffee and headed out.

  51

  ‘I’m so sorry to bother you,’ Slim said as Theresa opened the door. ‘I won
dered if Robert was home. I meant to call ahead but my phone battery died.’

  For once, it wasn’t an excuse. His phone had given up the ghost halfway through a call to Kim. Slim had thought about heading back to the guesthouse to recharge it, but he was already halfway to Robert’s house and figured he could at least see if the old guy was home.

  Theresa shook her head. ‘I’m afraid he’s not here right now, but if you want to come in a moment, I’ll check his diary to see when he’ll be back.’

  The old lady led Slim into a quiet living room. A comfortable armchair sat beside a recliner, both angled toward a large TV. A towering bookshelf stood against one wall, overloaded with books which at a glance followed a railways or Peak District theme. Beside it was a cluttered dresser adorned with photographs and ornaments. Theresa left Slim standing beside it while she went through into a kitchen. Slim looked around him, taking in the comforts of late middle-age, admiring the collection of books which must have cost a fortune, then casting his eyes over dozens of framed photographs, some of them black and white, dating back perhaps fifty years. In a large, ornate-framed one placed centrally, a silver-haired couple smiled as they cut a wedding cake.

  Theresa returned, holding a Filofax open. ‘I’m afraid he’s gone to bridge club. I thought that was Wednesday, but apparently Wednesday is the local wildlife committee … in any case, he won’t likely be back until later this afternoon.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Slim said. ‘Could you tell him I stopped by? I just had a few more questions. Nothing too urgent.’

  ‘Certainly. I’ll let him know.’

  As he turned to leave, Slim nodded at the wedding photo. ‘I thought Robert said you weren’t married?’

  The woman laughed. ‘We’re not, legally. We had a mock ceremony, but that was all. Robert didn’t want to do it all again.’