by Neal Bircher
Stephen
Gail carefully folded and placed into a large suitcase the clothes that she had piled up on the bed around her. She checked her make-up and then squeezed her cosmetics bag into the suitcase and zipped it closed. She tried it for weight … not too heavy, but probably a good job that it had wheels. Then she sat on the bed and looked once more around the room. She couldn’t help but take down a large photo frame from the top of her chest of drawers; it contained a collage of family photographs. She knew that the house would never be a happy home for her family again. Tears welled in her eyes. She cursed herself; she would have to touch up her make-up again.
Then a familiar sound made her start: a key in the front door. The door creaked quickly open, and she ran to the top of the stairs. She saw a large man slip through to the front room. It was her son, Stephen. Relieved, and yet nervous, she called his name. He didn’t reply, and she stepped gingerly down the stairs.
As Gail reached the bottom step the door to her front room flew open and Stephen emerged, carrying a ghetto blaster under his muscular arm. He glanced at Gail, not surprised to see her, and continued to the front door. Gail jumped forward and held the front door shut.
“Stephen, where are you going?”
Gail’s only son looked down on her, contemptuously. “I came to pick this up,” indicating the stereo.
Then came an extended pause whilst mother and son looked unblinking into one another’s eyes.
“Get out of my way, mum … And you can tell yourboyfriend” (he spat out the word) “that Alan’s going to sort him out. So he’d better hide himself away pretty quick, if he knows what’s good for him.”
And then he had gone through the front door, closing it calmly but firmly behind him.
Gail sat down on the stairs. Alan, Barry’s 38-year-old football thug of a brother, a former amateur boxer, liked nothing more than for some poor bystander to “spill his pint” on a Saturday night. Alan, to any reasonable person, was a nasty, dangerous, vicious wanker. The obvious thing now for Gail to do was to feel sorry for herself and cry her eyes out. But Gail was fed up with tears. She had an hour left before she had to go. She went to the kitchen and put the kettle on, but before it had boiled the telephone rang. Gail picked it up confidently, and was pleased to hear Catherine’s voice at the other end. Gail told Catherine what she could, and Catherine was sympathetic. At the end of their long conversation Catherine brought Ben to the phone. “Hello, Nana!” was the extent of the conversation, but it was enough to ensure that Gail couldn’t stop the tears flowing after all.
Annette
An hour after Gail had left his house Nick was hauling a stuffed large holdall into the back of his little Reliant van. He locked up the house, put the van out onto the street, got out to shut the gates at the end of his drive, and then drove quickly away. There seemed to be nobody on the streets, and he’d gone about half a mile before spotting his first pedestrians, five scruffy-uniformed fifth-formers sneaking out for a break-time fag. He could feel the all-male group sneering as he sped past and just caught the sound of a jeering laugh above the noisy burble of the Reliant’s exhaust. Much as Nick enjoyed the little three-wheeled van, he couldn’t help but feel a little uncomfortable when faced with those who didn’t appreciate the irony.
He drove to his place of work and leaned out of the window to wave his pass at a reader that opened a large concertinaed gate to allow him into the sanctuary of CountrySafe’s private multi-story car park. He drove in, and up the first ramp to the car park’s higher levels. As always here, his car tyres squealed like the tyres of every car in a 1970s American cop show, even though he was doing no more than ten miles an hour. The car park had six floors, of which only the first three were completely full. Nick parked on the fifth floor.
He walked briskly to the office building where he worked, and felt growing butterflies in his stomach as he half ran up the four flights of stairs to the second floor, and then marched to his desk at the far end of the building, without catching anybody’s eye. The office was open plan, with only a few Dilbert-cube-like “pods” reserved for managers, such as Nick. His was against an internal wall and his ten-strong team sat in desks around it. He nodded to a couple of his team members and was aware of most of them turning to look in his direction. He carried on into the pod and sat quickly at his desk. There was a single sheet of folded note paper on his computer keyboard. He opened it up and read the message, “Please contact Tony Clarke urgently!” The note was in Annette Price’s handwriting. Annette was Nick’s deputy in the team. Nick was aware of a presence and looked up to see Annette in the permanently open doorway (pods don’t have doors).
“Tony wants to see you.”
“So I see.” He placed the note back down on his desk. “How are things here?”
Annette was 29-years-old, more than averagely attractive, and always stylish in long and expensive-looking dresses that flowed elegantly on from her long rich brown hair. Nick had worked with her for three years and slept with her twice. He felt that three times would have turned it into a relationship, but it had never quite happened, and now she had got engaged to her long-term estate agent boyfriend, Jonathon.
“It’s fine here, but what about you?” She stepped closer and she looked genuinely concerned for him.
Nick got up and stood facing her. “I’m fine … thanks. … Look, I’m sorry, I have to get going.”
He gave her hand the briefest squeeze out of sight of anybody else and walked out of the pod. He waved an acknowledgement to the other team members, but wasn’t going to stop for a chat. He made his way across the office, carefully avoiding Tony Clarke’s pod and arriving at the one of his friend, Martin Broome. He was relieved to find Martin in, and on his own. Nick took no more than five minutes explaining to Martin how he needed him to help with his plan for the day, and Martin was more than willing to do so. Annette Price meanwhile sat back at her desk. She stared intently at her screen, and desperately hoped that nobody was watching as she took out a tissue and wiped a tear from her eye.
5. Pursuits
Trees
SUBJECT: Good Morning! 03-05-2010 08:47:16
FROM: Nick Hale NHAL003C
TO: Gail Timson GTIM001Q
Have a good weekend? Get up to anything interesting?
Nick Hale
Project Manager – Systems Development
SUBJECT: Re: Good Morning! 03-05-2010 09:05:32
FROM: Gail Timson GTIM001Q
TO: Nick Hale NHAL003C
Well, Friday night was good. I came across a really nice tree in the park.
Gail Timson
Product Merchandising
SUBJECT: Trees 03-05-2010 09:08:48
FROM: Nick Hale NHAL003C
TO: Gail Timson GTIM001Q
Yes, I like coming up against a nice tree too. They can really enhance the walk-in-the-park experience, don’t you think?
Nick Hale
Project Manager – Systems Development
SUBJECT: Re: Trees 03-05-2010 09:10:01
FROM: Gail Timson GTIM001Q
TO: Nick Hale NHAL003C
They certainly can. Maybe you’d like me to show you mine sometime?
Gail Timson
Product Merchandising
SUBJECT: Re: Trees 03-05-2010 09:21:33
FROM: Nick Hale NHAL003C
TO: Gail Timson GTIM001Q
(I’ll resist the temptation to ask “tree or bush?”) Yes, I’d like to come with you!
Nick Hale
Project Manager – Systems Development
SUBJECT: Re: Trees 03-05-2010 09:24:28
FROM: Gail Timson GTIM001Q
TO: Nick Hale NHAL003C
You can come with me any time … and I’d love to show it to you, whichever question you ask! X
Gail Timson
Product Merchandising
SUBJECT: Show 03-05-2010 09:29:06
FROM: Nick Hale NHAL003C
TO: Gail Timson GTIM001Q
>
Might get to squeeze something in at lunchtime sometime. X
Nick Hale
Project Manager – Systems Development
The Chase
Nick covered the quarter-of-a-mile-or-so route from the office to the railway station at his now-customary speedy gait. The road crossed over the railway via a bridge just before reaching the station, and, glancing from the top of the bridge, he could see that the arrival of a train was not imminent. He didn’t want to use his traceable Oyster card, so he bought a one-day railcard that would let him use any public transport in London for the rest of the day. The service into London from Norling was a regular one, but getting down to the platform Nick could see that he must have just missed a train as there were only two other passengers waiting. It would be about twenty minutes until the next one. He didn’t bother checking the timetable as the train might well not be on time, and even if it was, looking it up wouldn’t make it arrive any sooner.
He went back up to the station’s newsagent’s kiosk and bought aDaily Mail. Returning to the platform he sat down on a bench, opened his paper, and in the finest tradition of all black & white detective movies, inspected each of his fellow passengers to assess whether they might be following him. Neither a middle-aged Asian woman with a wheeled shopping bag, nor a pasty 18-year-old male art student-type looked the journalist part. And he was quite confident that he wasn’t big enough fry to warrant the deployment of a master of disguise.
He started reading his paper. West Ham had drawn 2-2 at Crystal Palace on Saturday. Not a brilliant result, but certainly not a bad one. He’d forgotten all about football during his temporary incarceration.
He read the match report.
When he next looked up seven or eight more people had arrived on the platform, and still none had a journalistic air. He chuckled to himself that he should be so self-important as to even consider it a possibility that anyone would be on his tail. But then it wasn’t impossible that they would be … and if not a journalist then maybe the police. Either way – fantasy or otherwise – it made waiting for a train at plain old Norling station a bit more interesting than it would otherwise have been.
An MP that Nick had never heard of had been caught with his pants down. A soap “star” he’d never heard of was going out with a footballer hehad heard of. A traffic warden had slapped a ticket on an ambulance. A quarter of an hour had passed by and the platform had become more crowded. A quick glance around – which was something he was starting to get used to doing – gave him confidence that still none of the other passengers was interested in him.
His eyes wandered and then settled on a set of concrete steps on the far side of the tracks, the steps in the photographs in the police cell. He pondered how much his life had changed since that moment in the photo, nine days before. Then, for the second time that day, his mind wandered to thoughts of how much more things might change in the near future.
A train thundered up to the platform, snapping Nick back into the present. He rolled his paper into a baton and placed it under his arm. The now thirty-strong throng arose and crowded impatiently around the small train’s four sets of double-doors. PSSST! The doors slid open, and in the absence of passengers alighting, the four mini-throngs surged again, pouring forth into near-empty carriages. Nick took a seat near the front of the train, facing backwards, and scanned the now-empty platform. Two late passengers came down the steps from the ticket hall. The first was a flustered fat black woman in a multi-coloured dress and flailing handbag, making a run for it in shoes unsuited for doing so. The second was a bearded mousy-haired man in his early thirties wearing a well-used short brown leather coat and jeans. He walked briskly but confidently, and stepped onto the far end of the train just as the doors were closing. Nick’s heart skipped a beat through a confused mix of excitement and disappointment: if ever there was a journalist then this was one. Nick could tell: the type of clothes, the way he walked, and the timing of his “run”.Pursuing journalist was written all over him. And there was, for Nick, another rather more conclusive clue to the man’s identity: It was the same bloke that he had turned away from his front door just two hours earlier.
There was a chance of course that itwas just chance; the man could just have happened to be travelling on the same train as him. But as that was pretty unlikely Nick had to slip back into old detective film mode and work out how to give his pursuer the slip. It would be easy enough, but at the same time, much as it seemed like fun, it really was vital that he was successful. He buried his head in his paper, where it remained for the entire journey, and he plotted out a plan for the next couple of hours.
On arrival at Paddington station he folded his now well-used paper and laid it neatly on his vacated seat for the benefit of a subsequent passenger. Then he got up and left the train, taking care (as best he could) to act as if he neither knew nor cared that a man in a leather coat might be following him. He had no idea whether the journalist had come into his carriage during the train journey, and he made a special effort (again, as far as such a thing was possible) not to look out for him as he disembarked.
Nick followed platform, steps, corridor, ticket barrier, and escalator to the Bakerloo line. At the bottom of the escalator he had a choice of turning left for the northbound line, or right for the southbound. The sound of an approaching train to the right sent him that way. It was a thirty second wait for the train to arrive, stop, and open its doors. Then it remained stationary for a very long further thirty seconds before the doors closed again: plenty of time for a pursuing journalist to catch up. Nick continued to resist the temptation to cast his eyes anywhere beyond his immediate environment. That environment consisted of an aging pin-striped-suited businessman with a sculptured walking-stick; a be-suited woman of about thirty with black-rimmed glasses, nice legs, and a book; the grubby carriage floor; some empty seats between the two aforementioned characters; his own image reflecting from a window whose other side was rushing by and very dark; and, above that, a partial Tube map. Nick made the map his focus for the duration of the trip. He didn’t plan where he was going: his body language wasn’t going to give anything away if he didn’t even know himself. (He was more than aware of the ridiculousness of that particular ploy, but at least it heightened the fun element.) The stops passed, and passengers came and went, all largely unseen by Nick’s eyes. The train was quite crowded by the time it got to Oxford Circus, but more than half of the passengers got off there, and most of those remaining went at the next stop, Piccadilly Circus. The woman with nice legs was still there. Then came Charing Cross. The journalist would be thinking by now that Nick was heading south of the river. The doors opened. Nick waited. Nobody got on or off in his carriage. He waited … and then he ran. He’d judged it well: it couldn’t have been more than two seconds after his feet hit the platform that the doors hissed back into place behind him. Nick didn’t stop to look. He carried on running, up stairs, along corridors, and down stairs, until he got to the Northern Line northbound platform, where he hid himself behind a buttress in the wall. He was panting and his legs and lungs ached … from the most vigorous exercise he had had in years. A train was due in two minutes, and in two minutes Nick was still knackered. He gave the open doors some time before diving into a carriage and taking one of the many empty seats. A few passengers looked at him quizzically. If he wasn’t being followed, then he was making a prat of himself for no reason. This time he hadn’t judged the doors quite so well; it was a good ten seconds before they began closing. And then they stopped before jerking back into motion … probably caused by somebody somewhere making a last second dash. He wondered.
After a couple of stops Nick permitted himself a casual glance around the train. No obvious signs of his pursuer. In a quarter of an hour he was at Camden Town, which seemed as good a place as any to get off. He was more relaxed now; that bloke would have to have been pretty keen and very good to have kept in tow. Nick strolled out into the sunlight, pausing for a minute or s
o this time to look back to the station that he’d just left. However slim the chance of the journalist still being around, Nick still wanted to be sure. He continued walking along busy Camden High Street until a bus at a stop coincided with him passing. He jumped on the bus and took up a seat near the front of the top deck. He had a final ploy in his pursuer shake-off plan. He just needed the right opportunity … and after a few minutes that opportunity presented itself. Ahead in the traffic the familiar outline of a red double-decker was coming towards Nick’s bus, it was some distance off; the two buses would probably pass in about two minutes. Nick pressed the bell and waited for the next stop, which was obligingly only a matter of yards ahead. Then he sprinted across the road and ran until he got to a bus stop. It worked a treat. The approaching bus was with him in seconds, and he enthusiastically got onto it. A couple of stops later he alighted once more, in a busy area of bustling shops, and he went into a small newsagent’s. Operation shake-off complete: time for the next phase of his plan.
He needed to buy a car, something quite cheap, and quite local. The free ads paper,Loot, would be full them. He refrained from buying a newspaper. The temptation was to get all of them and scan for any coverage of the body-in-the-canal case, and the arrests of its suspects, but he had better things to do with his time, and didn’t want to be distracted. He picked up only hisLoot, and went to the counter, correct change at the ready. There was one person ahead of him, but she was dithering over a decision on brand of cheap cigarettes. Nick waited impatiently, watching people hurriedly passing by on the cosmopolitan Camden pavement. As well as more average people, in the time that he was watching, a punk went by – a proper one with a huge green Mohican; a group of what looked like African tribesmen; a pair of gay men, hand in hand; and then the one that made his jaw drop: a mousy-haired bearded man in his early thirties in a short leather coat and jeans … his bloody journalist! His eyes met Nick’s for a fraction of a second, but showed no outward sign of recognition. (This guy really was good!) He walked on casually, without change of pace, drawing on a cigarette.