The announcement board above their heads was blank and dark as Jack said it had been the night Frost died. It was a risk to let a child travel alone on the Underground. Terry had trusted her and she had justified that trust.
Trains still went from Stamford Brook to Barons Court, but her mum was on the other side of the world and Terry was dead. Stella pulled herself together.
‘You said Frost was standing still, then he ran. Sounds like a snap decision. Sit!’ Stanley was straining towards the end of the station, an area of darkness beyond the staircase balustrade. Dogs weren’t like children, she couldn’t warn Stanley about live rails or strangers.
‘He’s sensed Frost’s ghost,’ Jack observed.
‘Or he’s smelled a food wrapper.’ The case was thin enough without Jack introducing the supernatural. She could smell aftershave, no doubt lingering in the air from a passenger; there was no one but themselves on the platform. ‘Besides, didn’t you say he died up there?’ She pointed in the opposite direction.
‘He broke into a run, then swerved off.’ Jack walked along the platform. ‘Right here.’ He crossed to the outer side, perilously close to the edge.
‘Jack!’ The dog was still pulling on the lead. Dogs were meant to make the owner feel protected. His behaviour was freaking her out.
‘Before he jumped, he looked at me.’ Jack was on his haunches. He continued to recite:
‘When the bird began to fly,
’Twas like an eagle in the sky;
When the sky began to roar,
’Twas like a lion at the door.’
In the empty station his voice was different. Stella wished he wouldn’t do this.
‘A person about to jump looks at the train. Frost looked at me.’
‘Perhaps he changed his mind.’
At last Jack moved away from the track. ‘I heard a man on the radio who survived jumping off a bridge and straight away regretted it. Water is like concrete if you hit it at speed, and the impact sucks you under. Water is incredible,’ he marvelled. ‘It comes from the river and it returns to the river.’
‘Did you tell the coroner?’ Stella pulled him back to the present.
‘They want facts, not impressions.’
Stella was tempted to suggest impressions weren’t useful at any time, but Jack’s impressions had played a role in solving their last two cases. He seemed able to place himself in the mind of a murderer.
‘Why did he run along the District line side then cross to the Piccadilly?’ Jack pushed his fringe off his forehead and scanned the deserted platform. In the dim light Stella couldn’t see his face; his eyes were lost in their sockets. She looked down the platform; the wooden seating booths were empty, the announcement boards remained dark and the tracks were silent. She felt uneasy. It wasn’t just that a man had died here. She zipped her anorak up to her chin.
‘We should go,’ she said.
‘Plenty of time,’ Jack replied. ‘It was as if he changed his mind.’
‘Frost was out of sight of the driver? Had he seen Frost, he would have braked,’ Stella hazarded.
‘Good point. At the inquest the driver’s statement said Frost came out of nowhere and he had no time to brake. On the other hand he didn’t need to run, why not simply step off?’
Jack’s reflection in the partition glass of the nearest booth was warped and strange. Stella thought again how, if she didn’t know him, she would be unnerved by meeting him at night. She
was
unnerved anyway.
As if to underline her thought, Jack walked on and resumed his rhyme:
‘When the door began to crack,
’Twas like a stick across my back.’
Like this he was impossible. Stella let him go. She watched him until he stepped out of the last pool of light into the shadows and, giving into the dog’s straining, she walked back up the platform towards the stairs.
‘They never do what they’re told, do they!’
Stella stifled a shout.
‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to surprise you.’ A man was by the wall. She couldn’t see his face, although he reminded her of someone – she couldn’t think who.
‘You didn’t.’ She kept her voice level, although surely he must hear her heart smashing against her ribcage. Besides, he would know he had surprised her.
‘They have finely tuned senses,’ he remarked. ‘Lovely dog.’
Stella was impressed that he put the back of his hand towards Stanley rather than tried to pat his head. He must know about dogs. Stanley licked his fingers. So much for protection. Jack was at the other end of the station; he could do nothing.
She looked up the line. Behind the brick building, they were only visible to the driver of a westbound train, but there was no train at Ravenscourt Park Station, a dot in the distance. Any driver would see two people chatting. Which was all it was.
Come on, Jack!
‘He’s not mine,’ she said. ‘I’m giving him back soon.’ The man would be surveying the track. Better to do it at night with fewer trains, she supposed.
‘He’s pretty.’ The man took his hand away and surreptitiously wiped it on his coat.
‘Thank you,’ she said, as if the compliment were for her. ‘I’d better go, my friend’s waiting.’
Be polite to strangers.
She let him know she wasn’t alone.
The Piccadilly tracks were humming. Whoosh! Lights strobed, making her blink; doors and windows flashed a hair’s breadth from her. The clunkety-clunk then faded to nothing. Stella swept Stanley into her arms and ran down the platform looking for Jack.
‘I thought I’d lost you!’ He was in the last shelter, legs crossed, tucked into the corner as if resting after a Sunday-afternoon stroll. He was facing the Piccadilly line track. She collapsed next to him, too agitated to care when he continued to recite his rhyme. Jackie believed that reciting rhymes helped Jack to think.
‘
When my back began to smart,
’Twas like a penknife in my heart;
And when my heart began to bleed,
’Twas death, and death, and death indeed.’
‘He wasn’t running towards the track.’ Jack linked his arm through hers and drew her closer.
‘What?’ She would put up with this from no one else. It was freezing, although the glass gave shelter from the wind.
‘What’s the matter with him?’ Jack was looking at the dog. Stanley had begun straining on the lead again.
‘He must want to go back up there. Sit!’ Stella rewarded the dog’s obedience with a fishy treat from the pouch strapped to her waist.
With Jack sitting so close, Stella began to warm up. There was a flicker and she saw that a Richmond train had been flashed up on the board.
‘Fear. It wasn’t the calm expression of a man acting on a decision. The look on his face was fear.’ Jack let go of her arm and set off back up the platform. He continued talking. ‘William Frost said his brother was frightened of someone.’
Stella caught up with Jack at the top of the staircase. ‘Suppose he was where that inspector is? You wouldn’t have seen him, after all. If not for the dog, I could have missed him there. It is probably out of the CCTV’s line of sight.’
‘What inspector?’
‘A man surveying the line.’ The dog wasn’t pulling any more, so she let the lead slacken. ‘Except Frost wouldn’t have seen him either.’
‘Where is he?’ Jack demanded, seeming suddenly alert.
‘Who?’
‘The inspector.’
Stella lowered her voice. ‘Behind that building at the end of the platform.’
Jack strode along the platform and around the brick building at the end of the station.
Stella started after him but, contrary to his behaviour since they had arrived at the station, Stanley now refused to move. She was still urging him to ‘heel’ when Jack returned.
‘No one there. What did the man say he was doing?’
‘He didn’t say. I presumed he was inspecting the line.’ Now that she thought about it, the man had no torch, no notebook and was all in black, unwise for working on the track. ‘I suppose he was waiting for a train. Odd to leave when it’s due.’
‘Oh no!’ Jack exclaimed.
‘What?’
‘Frost wanted me to see who was behind him. It was a sign. But of course I kept watching him.’
‘Meaning?’ Stella started walking down the stairs.
‘Meaning you were right – there
was
another person on the platform that night.’ Jack took her arm again, feet in step they returned to the ticket hall. ‘I need to go or I’ll be late for my pick-up at Earl’s Court.’ He let go of her arm and made for the eastbound platform staircase.
‘I could give you a lift.’ Stella was unwilling suddenly to let him go.
‘Thanks, but there’s a train in three minutes and thirty seconds. Are you OK going to the van by yourself?’ Jack hesitated as if he’d picked up on her unease.
‘Of course!’ Stella shook her head at the idea she would not be.
‘Oh, here, I almost forgot. take this.’
Stella saw a flash of silver. It was Rick Frost’s phone.
‘What can I do with it? You’re the techno whizz.’
‘It’s been wiped, remember? You may as well have it for safe-keeping. For your files.’ He nodded as if to emphasize his words. They were detectives, they would have case files.
Stella watched Jack until he vanished at the turn of the stairs. She was standing where Terry had that afternoon; she had turned at the top of the stairs and looked back to see him still there watching her. Jack didn’t look back.
A square of white lay inside the photo booth: a set of rejects carelessly dropped. Stella batted aside the curtain and retrieved it; flipping it over she stared unbelieving. In each of the four shots was a man. He was facing the wrong way; the photographs were all of the back of his head. No one did that by accident. Not seeing a bin, Stella slipped the sheet into her anorak pocket.
Goldhawk Road was quiet – no traffic, no sign of the inspector or of the man who had used the photograph booth. On the bridge, the Richmond train slid to a stop, the windows yellow squares against the sky.
Hurrying Stanley beneath the bridge before the train moved off, Stella got an incoming text. It was Jack.
Frost wasn’t running towards the train, he was running away from someone.
October 1987
By half past four the last of the light gave way to dusk. A pewter-grey sky dulled the waters of the Thames, and conflicting currents between Chiswick Mall and the eyot, fast flowing and dangerous, plaited the surface.
The scrawl of traffic on the Great West Road was muffled by the brewery, a bulwark for the gale that smacked against the embankment wall and harassed mooring chains. On the far bank, spindly larches along the towpath bent against the force. An undulating moan resembled a wail of regret, ever more insistent. A storm was brewing; some talked of a hurricane.
On Chiswick Eyot, beneath the hiss of the wind, the river rose with the wash and hush of the turning tide and a constant trickling. Where once the Thames had dredged up oyster shells and fragments of clay beer mugs, now it offered up more vivid London detritus to the ragged shoreline. Plastic bottles, rubber gloves – blue, yellow, red – tangles of nylon rope, a fractured storage crate.
Three children scampered out from the church porch and, battling against the gale, made it to railings overlooking the beach. Abruptly one broke away and pointed with a half-finger. ‘Follow me,’ he cried.
Simon sounded more confident than he felt. Aided by the wind, he marched along the pavement, careful not to check that the others were behind him, for fear of betraying doubt that they would be.
He ducked down a cobbled passageway, the stones slick and black. Someone stepped on his heel. Simon switched on his torch. It was Nicky. The Captain was there too. They had obeyed him.
‘Where are we going?’ the Captain demanded.
‘Can’t you guess?’ Simon shone the torch into his face. He ran along the alley and halted by the cage door. He shone the torch upwards. In open-mouthed awe, as if watching a spaceship land, the children gazed up at the tower.
‘What is that?’ The Captain’s voice quavered. He rattled the cage. The hum of vibrating metal rang in their ears after he let go. ‘We shouldn’t be here,’ he said to Nicky.
Simon pulled on his half-finger. If the Captain ordered her to leave, Nicky would go and it would be over. In the last hours Simon had formed two ambitions: one, he would impress Nicky so much she would be his friend; two, he would become the Captain. Lying in bed late the previous night, the boy had worked out that either of these ambitions would lead to the other. Somehow this would lead him to Justin.
‘We shouldn’t be
anywhere
,’ Simon said. ‘The unit works undercover. We “slide under the wire of rules and regulations”.’ He had mugged up on spies. He saw Nicky smile and turn her head away to avoid the Captain seeing. It was going well.
Simon turned the handle in the grille. The door opened with a terrible groan.
‘Anyone could get in. It’s not secure,’ the Captain objected. ‘Let’s go.’
Simon was thunderstruck. In a flash of a second he understood the situation. The Captain was scared. In all his planning and imaginings, Simon had supposed the Captain invincible, a formidable opponent. But he had an Achilles heel. With a steady hand, Simon shone the torch into the other boy’s face and, deathly calm, said, ‘We could get a padlock, but it would give us away.’
‘How did you know about this place?’ the Captain whispered.
‘I found it on reconnaissance.’ Simon was airy. ‘It’s the ideal HQ. It’s fortified with full sight of the surrounding territory.’
‘It must belong to someone,’ the Captain persisted.
‘It belongs to me.’ In the dark Simon smiled. The future was unfolding: the water tower
was
his; he was the host and they would be his guests. He would be the Captain.
‘We should come in the day,’ Nicky said.
‘It is the day,’ the Captain snapped at her.
‘I meant with more light,’ Nicky said. She darted a look at Simon and he felt his nerve falter. As if it had been orchestrated, they were hit by a gust of wind. The metal vibrated and jangled.