At first he looked doubtful, but he rummaged in his bag and produced not one but two items—a letter and a package. “Glad you stopped me. Never anything for 43, so I don’t usually look. I would of had to come back, and that would of set me back a bit.”
Ignoring his appalling lapses of grammar, I held out my hand. “It’s my birthday.” I don’t know why I told him, presumably only kids, rather than twenty-two-year-olds, are so anxious about possible presents.
“Well, happy birthday, sir.” He whistled on his way.
But I had been discovered! The front door opened, and both Sam and Virginia rushed out, grabbed the post, and hustled me back in.
“What’s all this?” demanded Sam. He can be very efficient as long as Virginia is around. “You’re not supposed to get mail. No one knows this address.”
I had to confess. I admitted to the phone that I’d gotten when Sam took me into town—it seemed a bit petty, but I didn’t see why I should take all the blame.
“I told my mother where I was. It’s my birthday, you see, and she so wanted at least to send me a card, but she promised she’d tell no one except immediate family, and she’s a woman of her word.” It sounded weak and juvenile, but at least it was the truth.
My minders grumbled, muttering dark thoughts about compromising the situation, but as I confirme
d that the writing on the envelope was my mother’s, they let me have it. Or rather they opened it in front of me, gingerly removed the card, a sentimental animal scene showing some sort of dog looking welcoming, and the superscription Waiting for the master to come home.
Then they turned to the package. “Probably a gift.”
“The handwriting’s different,” observed the ever-vigilant Virginia. “Is it your father’s?”
I denied it. “I suppose it could be from my aunt Connie, she and my mother are very close.”
“See how information spreads,” complained Virginia. “What the fuck were you thinking of?”
As Virginia rarely if ever swears, I realized the enormity of my indiscretion. “Sorry,” I mumbled, small boy caught in the act.
“Please let me have the phone. We’ll see what’s in the package.” She shook it, and something rattled inside.
“The phone’s upstairs. I’ll go and get it.”
I was halfway up the stairs when the explosion happened, a vicious eardrum-cracking detonation that shook the house. I heard the crash of breaking glass as the front windows were blown outwards.
But I was unharmed, and I turned back down to see through the shattered doorframe the ghastliest of sights. Both my minders were dead. That was obvious. In fact they were in pieces. Blood and bits that I didn’t want to identify were scattered everywhere. I felt sick and guilty that it had been my fault, but there was nothing I could do.
I had no doubt that the explosion must have been heard, if not witnessed, by the neighbours, who obviously would be frantically dialing 999. Nevertheless, I raced to my room, grabbed my phone and all the money I had left, and got out the back way. There was no point in staying. I could tell the police very little. All I knew was that the bomber, whoever he or she was, knew my address and had tried to finalize the act they had started with the fire.
I got out the back door, down the apology of a garden, over the fence, and was away. I did call the police, in case the neighbours had been too traumatized to summon them.
“Send police to 43 Wells Road. Explosion. At least two dead.” I rang off. They didn’t have my phone number—it was on a pay-as-you-go tariff. I didn’t think they could track me and I hoped that whoever had sent the lethal package couldn’t either. However, they did know my credit card. They had after all provided it and would be able to find out if I had drawn out money and from where.
Speed was essential. I ran to the nearest bank with an ATM and again withdrew the maximum, £250. But I couldn’t stay in Glastonbury. Since the Beeching cuts, there had been no railway station there, but there was a coach station, in fact two. The Town Hall coach station was closer, and I bought a ticket to Castle Carey, the nearest town with a railway station, thirty-three minutes if the next coach left on time. It did, and I transferred to the railway with trains to Paddington in under two hours.
I was away from that horrible scene and would be in London in two and a half hours, as long as I didn’t have to wait for transfers.
But, and it was a big but, the police would be after me, and what was more terrifying, my unknown assailant was also. Could the perpetrator actually be one of the police? Could I lose myself in the capital until they found the culprit? They obviously hadn’t been successful so far. Whoever it was had been playing with them. But it was me they were after. In my paranoid state, I suspected everyone.
Chapter 7—London
I MANAGED to find what was euphemistically called a flat. It had two rooms, one of which was curtained off to hide a gas ring, and a tap over a sink. The other held a bed of sorts with one leg shorter than the other three. It was propped up by a block of wood but still wobbled. The shower room/lavatory was down the corridor.
Occasionally I bought and ate takeaway meals, though I had no appetite. If the bathroom was occupied, and it seemed that it had to provide for all the tenants of the house, I didn’t bother to wash all over. I pissed in my sink, though I had to shit in the communal lavatory, often decorated with the defecations of others, even less fastidious than myself. I certainly didn’t wash my clothes and only ventured out when I really needed food. My credit card I never used, as I knew it could be traced, and eventually sold it to an individual in a pub for a tenner.
“Whose is it?” he asked.
I shrugged.
“Is it valid?”