Everything was dark. No, not dark. Black. Sightless. And there was a terrible pain in the back of his head. Not headache pain, but pain like someone had exploded a miniature bomb just behind his brain. There was pain in his back too, though this was nothing by comparison. And it was nothing compared to the panic that was rising though his whole being. Why the hell couldn’t he see? He tried to feel for his face, but his right arm was stuck under his body behind him. Hell, he was lying on his back, and he couldn’t lift himself up. At least his left arm could move. He felt for his face, and his fingers fastened onto something soft and woollen. It was his ruddy hat, and for some reason it was pulled down over his eyes. No wonder he couldn’t see. He ripped it off, and felt the sudden shock of cold air on his shaven head. That was better. He could see shapes now, different shades of dark and light. Clouds up above him, and to the side the darker shapes of trees.
He pushed himself up with this hand, so he was sitting upright, and he became aware of something else. Beyond the pain which lanced through his head, there was a noise. It was a noise he recognized, and yet couldn’t place. Where the hell was he? He was outside, he knew that, and yet there was no light. Nothing close anyway, though he could see two lights in the distance. The pain came surging up the back of his head again, and he shut his eyes against it. When he opened them again, the lights were brighter. ‘Tiger, tiger burning bright’. Back from his past the words came. He had been crap at school; the teachers were so boring. Only Mr Gascoigne had been any good, and it was he who had taught him that poem. God, he had almost forgotten it, just as he had almost forgotten Mr Gascoigne’s piercing eyes, and soothing voice, and the brutal grip of his hand. ‘Tiger, tiger, burning bright, In the forests of the night.’ And the tiger’s eyes were coming closer now, and closer, and behind his eyes the tiger was roaring. A sudden spurt of fear shot through him, and he struggled to his feet. He had to run, to get out of the way, before it was too late, but he couldn’t move. His left leg wouldn’t move. He pulled at it again, screaming at it. But his screams were lost in the roar of the tiger. He looked up again, into its eyes, and he knew it was too late. He knew there was no escaping the beast.
‘Are you all right?’
Andy Stonehouse focused his eyes on the woman who was sitting opposite him and wondered if he had heard her correctly. She was his counsellor. He knew that because she had told him so. She had also told him her name, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember what that was.
‘Andy,’ she was saying, in her softest, most encouragingly confidential voice. ‘Why don’t you tell me about it? Tell me what happened. You’ll feel better if you do.’
He’d feel better! Was that a promise, a guarantee, or just the sort of psycho-babble shit she always churned out? How the hell would she know? He felt terrible. And not just in his head. He felt nauseous. He coughed, and for several moments thought he was going to vomit. He felt the bitter taste of regurgitated food in his throat, but fought it back. It was a natural reaction, to resist being sick, though if he’d been near a loo he’d have let it all come out. Sometimes you had to be sick before you could feel better, but sitting here in this grotty little room with this ridiculously overconcerned woman, he just wanted to get out and go home.
‘Look,’ she was saying, trying another tack, ‘I’m not going to pretend that I know how you are feeling right now. Because I don’t know. Only you can know. But you’re not the first person to have had an experience like this, and I do know that it’s important that you talk about it.’
He looked at her, and he laughed. Not loudly or unkindly. But he had just realized something. She had been looking at him intently, her face all serious and frowning, and her eyes wide and pleading. And then she had raised her hand and stifled a yawn. And realization had dawned on him. Christ, she was just as desperate as he was to get this over with and go home! For all her overt concern, he was just another job to her, at a bloody inconvenient time, and the sooner she had got him done and dusted, the happier she would be. Well, lady, so would he.
Stonehouse forced himself to speak. ‘I didn’t see him until the last second.’ He paused then, and his face puckered as something occurred to him. ‘Or was it a her?’ He looked at the woman, properly this time, to check if she was really listening. ‘I think it was a him. In fact, I’m almost sure, but it happened so quickly. Anyway, when I realized what was happening, in that split second I thought to myself, what the hell is he doing there? What the hell is that man doing there? And then, bang! Well, not so much bang as thud. It all happened so quickly. Of course I hit the brakes as soon as I saw him, but it was far too late. But I couldn’t just keep driving, could I. Besides, that is what the emergency procedures are there for. We train for it, you see. We train for people throwing themselves in front of trains.’
He stopped, suddenly aware of what he had said, and he started laughing, though this time it was prolonged and highly strung laughter that see-sawed as violently as his emotions. It wasn’t the first time his counsellor had witnessed hysteria, and she knew it wouldn’t be the last either. So she waited for it to run its course, because what else could she do? And besides, there was a question she needed to ask. Eventually, she judged that Stonehouse had calmed down enough for her to continue.
‘It’s interesting that you talk about people throwing themselves in front of trains. Is that how you saw it? Someone throwing himself in front of your train? An act of suicide? Or could it have been something else? Someone wandering onto the track under the influence of drink or drugs, for example?’
Stonehouse winced as he tried to think. He shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Christ, that’s the last thing you expect. Suddenly he was there, in front of me. He looked up at me. And then he was gone.’
The woman nodded. She was satisfied. Whatever the police might say, the guy had been through enough. And he had told her enough. It was up to them to work out how it was that the victim had ended up there in front of Stonehouse’s train. Her job was to help the driver survive. That would be hard enough. Some drivers never got over it. She knew that. So the least she could do was protect him from unnecessary questions.
They drove in silence – round the southern ring road, over the endless humps which litter the road through the elongated village of Kennington, and past the umbrella of bungalows which mark the start of Radley. Fox was driving, Holden was sitting next to him, and in the back was one detective constable. Wilson had been late. Just as they had been drawing out of the Cowley station car park, he had hurtled in on his bike, and had almost skidded into them. ‘Drive on, Sergeant,’ Holden had rasped, sensing that Fox was about to stop the car. And she had held up her wrist so Wilson could see it, and tapped ostentatiously on an invisible watch.
No one was speaking. Even Lawson was improbably quiet. It wasn’t just because she had been shaken by Holden’s brutal treatment of Wilson. It was more what was in front of her. Train incidents were outside her experience, and she had realized that she was feeling rather unnerved at what she might see. She looked out of the right-hand window to distract herself. The bungalows had given way to farmland, and above it, no more than fifty metres up, a red kite was wheeling idly around the grey skies. She watched it briefly, but red kites are a common sight now in Oxfordshire, and besides, her mind kept lurching back towards the task in hand. Fox was turning left now, past the church of St James the Great, and she tried to focus on that. Her father had taken her there once as a young teenager. He had been invited to preach during an interregnum. Not that she remembered anything of the sermon (who would have?), but she did remember him telling her about how the church had been a battleground in the civil war, when royalist soldiers had taken refuge there from the parliamentarians. Or was it the other way round?
‘There they are.’ Fox’s words dragged her back from her interlude. They were through Radley now, driving down a rough narrow lane with open farmland on either side. The ‘they’ were a pair of figures in the distance, one with an arm raised in greeting. The raised arm belonged to Nick Birch of the British Transport Police. Holden knew him vaguely. They had met on a training course, and sat together in some small group sessions. He had, she recalled, a taste for cheap aftershave and a tendency to apply it liberally.
Holden was out of the car almost before it had stopped moving. She shook hands with Birch and introduced her team. Birch’s colleague had already wandered off.
‘There’s not much for you to see.’ Birch launched straight in. He wanted to keep this short. He couldn’t think they could gain much from the scene that he couldn’t have told them over the phone or in an office, but Holden had insisted on it. ‘Frankly, that’s lucky for you. The train would have been going between fifty and sixty miles per hour, and at that speed it’s going to make one hell of a mess of anyone stupid or desperate enough to get in its way. Sometimes they end up like a sack of jell
y, but other times, like last night, they end up sliced and diced. We’ve picked up all the bits we’ve been able to find. That includes various items of clothing, both boots, and as I mentioned on the phone a wallet complete with credit cards. Which is why we can be pretty sure the victim is Jim Wright.’
‘Were the boots on his feet?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Can I see them?’
Birch studied Holden. He remembered her from the course too. Nice enough, but talking of boots, she was as tough as the oldest. Even so, he tried to dissuade her.
‘I wouldn’t recommend it,’ he said firmly. ‘We’re used to this.’ And you’re not, he implied.
‘I need to be sure they are Jim Wright’s boots,’ she said with equal firmness. ‘At the very least, I need a photo I can show Mrs Wright, and I need to know the size.’
‘We can email you the details – size, make, distinguishing features – and photos within the hour. Is there anything else?
‘I’d like to see where exactly you think the impact took place.’
‘If you think it will help.’ He spoke slowly, reluctantly, as if to demonstrate his own belief that it couldn’t possibly help.
‘I don’t know if it will help or not!’ Holden flared. Bloody men! Why was it they always had to know best? They always want to be in control. And Birch was no different from the rest of them. ‘The fact is that yesterday we were trying to get hold of Jim Wright to question him in relation to a murder. And today he’s dead. Now it could be suicide, and I dare say you’ll trot out the statistics for railway suicides to underline your belief that suicide is most likely, but as far as I’m concerned, suicide is just too damned convenient. So if that is all right with you, Inspector Birch, I’d like to take a closer look at what may be the scene of a murder.’
‘OK!’ Birch said, looking down at the ground. Sometimes, a tactical withdrawal was the only option. ‘But just be alert to the fact that the track is open and trains are running.’