Then You Were Gone (17 page)

She was sitting alone at a table for two, and the man stopped just in front of her, his looming presence and cheap imitation leather jacket seeming absurd in the refined air of first class. ‘Hello, Simone,’ he said slowly. ‘Fancy seeing you here.’ His voice was surprisingly high-pitched, a horrible, south London whine.

A woman at the next table, whose gaze had switched between her casserole and her iPad for the whole of the journey so far, looked up sharply at the sound of such tones in her carriage.

‘Hi,’ Simone said stupidly. She felt utterly vulnerable, sitting beneath him like this, so she stood up in the cramped space between her seat and the table. ‘Who are you?’

‘You don’t need to know that, sweetheart. But don’t worry, I’m not here to hurt you. I’m just here to make sure you get home safe.’ The word safe had never been made to sound so threatening, Simone thought.

‘What?’ Simone felt fury overtake her, anger that she had managed to keep suppressed for all this time. Anger at Mack, for bringing her on this stupid chase in the first place, anger at whoever it was that had caused him to run away from her, anger at Jazzy for being in London when he should have been here, with her, protecting her instead of Ayanna, and most of all, anger at this horrible mound of muscle breathing through his mouth and exuding low-rent menace. ‘Who are you?’ she said again, this time with much more feeling, ‘And what fucking business is it of yours how I get home? Leave me alone!’

She was surprised to find that this man did not frighten her now she was seeing him close up. True, he was huge, and true, he was so meaty that even his ears had a dense, sausagey quality. True also, that his haircut and clothes and demeanour did not speak of someone who worked in one of the caring professions. But behind the physical presence, there seemed to be very little substance. The blankness behind the man’s eyes reminded Simone of a mistreated zoo animal, the kind that would one day turn on its keepers and maim them for life. His accent, his style, his drawled threats, like dialogue stolen from a 1990s cockney gangster film, all screamed ‘Keith’, and Simone was sure that this man must have some connection with Keith, but strangely that did not frighten her either. If this guy was the best that Keith could do, then Keith did not scare her. And she felt certain now that Keith could not be the thing that had scared Mack either, that Keith could not be the reason that he had run away.

‘Let’s just say,’ the man drawled, ‘that I’m a well-wisher. I don’t want to see you come to any harm. Nice young lady like you, chasing up and down the country after some bloke like this. It ain’t right. I’m here to escort you home. Make sure nothing, you know,
happens
to you.’

The woman across the aisle was now staring openly. Had she been twenty years younger, she would probably have been filming the whole episode on her phone.

‘How do you know what I’m doing?’ Simone snapped. ‘I’m visiting my family,’ she said, remembering the lie she had fed to Jazzy. ‘I’m not even going to London tonight.’

Simone could see the thought process labouring behind the man’s dull eyes, but was unsure whether he had managed to process the significance of this remark. ‘Yes you are,’ he said eventually. ‘You need to get back home where you belong, and you need to stay there. I think I’ll just have a little seat here, keep an eye on you and make sure you behave yourself.’ He gave a leery wink at Simone. ‘Don’t mind me, love. If you want to have a little snooze, that’s fine by me. You just relax and I’ll wake you up when it’s our stop.’

He sat down heavily on the seat across the table from Simone. The woman with the iPad shot him a look of open disgust and moved her belongings as far away from him as she could, before turning and attempting to engage Simone in eye contact. Simone kept her eyes trained on the table, her mind racing. The man’s great bulk had effectively hemmed her in. She would have to lift her legs over his to move, and she knew she would never have the strength to push him out of her way. The man shifted around in his chair, cleared his throat in an ostentatiously phlegmy manner, then stuck both feet farther across into Simone’s side and unfolded a copy of the Racing Post from his coat pocket. The train announcer’s voice came over the Tannoy, announcing the next station in a few minutes’ time: Darlington. Simone knew it was a biggish station with more than one entrance and exit. If she could somehow get off there, then she stood a reasonable chance of ditching this lunatic. She had noticed at Newcastle that there was another train to London running that night, an hour or so behind this one. If she could manage to get off the train without this man following her, she could still be home by midnight. She would be far quicker than him. If she could get out from behind this table, then she could be off the train by the time he had hauled his lumbering bulk out of the seat. Slowly she reached one hand under the table to grab her rucksack as she felt the train beginning to slow down, drawing her ankles under her chair.

The movement of Simone’s arm must have caught his attention because he looked up casually from his Racing Post and shook his head slowly. ‘No, darling. Don’t bother, eh? All that’s going to happen is I’m going to follow you, and I’ll end up chasing you round bloody – where are we again?’ He peered theatrically out the window as the station lights came into view. ‘Around bloody Darlington at nine o’clock at bloody night, then we’ll both end up back on the same train again tomorrow, both looking a bit the worse for wear, won’t we? Keep your seat, love. Don’t bother,’ he leaned across the aisle towards her and lowered his voice. ‘It ain’t worth it.’

Simone fixed him with the steeliest stare she could summon and slowly moved her arm back onto the table.

‘I mean,’ the man continued, ‘none of it’s worth it. Not even Joe Mackinlay. Especially Joe Mackinlay. Trust me, darling. A girl like you could do much better. What you need to do now is go home, find a nice new fella and forget all about him. He’s trouble.’ The man’s words sounded sincere; there was real venom in the way he delivered his last sentence, and Simone felt a shiver of doubt run through her. Trouble was certainly what Mack had landed her in this time.

The woman across the aisle’s eyes were wide and she was shifting in her seat as though she felt she ought to do something, but she was not sure what. Her hand twitched towards her phone.

The lights of the station slid away as quickly as they appeared, and Simone felt the last tiny spark of hope disappear. Was this man really going to sit there all the way to London? And when they got there? Would he follow her home? Perhaps he would even escort her there? But why? Why did he – or Keith – want her to stop looking for Mack? What were they afraid she was going to find?

‘Excuse me.’ It was the woman across the aisle. Simone turned her head to respond, but then realised that the woman was in fact addressing the man. ‘Excuse me.’

He looked up from his paper, his face a study of dismissive boredom. ‘Yeah?’

‘Have you got a ticket to travel first class?’

The man took a heavy, wheezing breath. ‘What’s it to you?’

‘Well, have you?’

The woman’s voice was clipped school mistress Scottish – the most intimidating possible accent, Simone thought.

He shrugged and returned his gaze to the racing form. ‘No. Don’t make no difference does it? Not
bothering you
, am I? What’s it matter where I sit anyway?’ He continued, as though talking to himself. ‘Only means you get bigger chairs and free booze, what’s it to you, you nosy old bitch?’

If the woman was intimidated she did not show it. She simply stood up, ostentatiously taking her handbag and iPad with her, but leaving her newspaper and jacket on her seat, and left the carriage. After a few minutes, she returned with the train manager trailing obediently behind her.

‘Sir, can I see your ticket please?’

The man in the leather jacket levelled his blunt gaze on him. ‘Why?’

‘Sir, if you want to sit in first class, you need to have a first class ticket. Please can I see your ticket?’

He stared at him a moment longer, but the manager did not look away. ‘And what if I don’t want to show it to you?’

The train manager sighed and reached to his belt, unclipping a walkie talkie. He had obviously seen this man’s type and worse several times already just that day. ‘If you won’t show me a valid ticket, then I’ll have no option but to issue you with a penalty charge and a formal caution. Now, if you could give me your name and home address, I will contact the transport police to have that information verified.’

Simone could see a small flicker of panic in the man’s face. The word ‘police’ had been all it took.

‘Sir? Either show me a valid ticket or give me your full name and address so I can issue you with a penalty notice. And don’t bother trying to tell me you’re called Mickey Mouse and you live at Disneyland.’ He tapped his walkie talkie. ‘These guys can check it out for me in no time, you’ll only make things worse for yourself.’

The man pulled a face like a naughty schoolboy who has just realised he has gone a step too far, and reached in his wallet. ‘Here.’

‘This is a standard class ticket.’

‘Yeah. Sorry. Didn’t think it would matter, you know, what with this carriage being half-empty. I just wanted to sit with my friend here.’ He gestured at Simone.

‘Sir, you can’t sit here without a first class ticket. Now, if you’ll follow me to take a seat in standard class, we’ll forget this whole thing. Frankly it’s far too late in the day for me to be bothering the police over a pain in the arse like you. Come on.’

And, to Simone’s relief and amazement, the man meekly stood, picked up his paper and followed the manager out of the carriage.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, this train will shortly be approaching Northallerton. Northallerton, your next station stop. Thank you.’

Simone stood up, grabbing her bag from under her seat. ‘Thank you,’ she said feelingly to the woman across the aisle.

The woman smiled broadly. ‘You’re welcome. Goodbye.’

The door beeped open and Simone jumped down onto the platform, pressing the button so the door closed behind her. The cold air hit her in a vigorous blast, fresh from the hills and still smelling of sheep. Simone knew that air. She was here, she was home; she had done that thing she so often longed to do and got on the train that took her here.

Chapter Eighteen

It had been Ayanna’s idea to go and see Keith. Jazzy told himself that he had not considered the possibility because despite his instinctive dislike for the man, Mack liked and trusted Keith and Jazzy still, despite everything, trusted Mack’s judgement. But on a deeper level he understood the real reason he had avoided the plain truth that if he ever wanted to find out what was going on with Mack then he absolutely had to confront Keith; he was afraid of Keith, and afraid of what confronting Keith might reveal.

Jazzy had no idea how long it would take them to trek to the other side of London. It was something he had never done, nor had any desire to do. London to him, in the ten years he had lived there, largely consisted of the half that lay north of the river. He and Petra had liked to walk along the South Bank in the early days of their courtship, and he had taken his parents to the Imperial War Museum one rainy November weekend, but the sprawling southern suburbs remained a foreign country. Even Mack rarely ventured to what he still called ‘home’, still less as far as Chislehurst where Keith had chosen to invest the fruits of his long career (fruits, Jazzy was sure, all ill-gotten).

After studying his tube map and checking the journey planner app on his phone Jazzy realised with a sigh that it was going to cost them the majority of the morning to visit Keith – as the journey planner put it, he was looking at walk, bus, tube, tube, train, walk, followed by the same thing in reverse. But he could think of no alternative. He had Keith’s mobile number, but Keith also had Jazzy’s and caller display would make it too easy for him to dodge any phone calls. More than that though, Jazzy wanted to see Keith’s face as he was talking, to try and read his body language; see the whites of his eyes, as Keith himself would no doubt put it. Jazzy was far from an insightful person, he would be the first to admit that. If his wife, for example, were to say to him that she was fine and he should not worry about her, he would invariably take that to mean that she was fine and he ought not to worry about her – an assumption that had, on many occasions, been the cause of domestic friction. But even Jazzy had been aware of Keith’s shiftiness since Mack’s disappearance, the nervy gestures and the unnecessarily aggressive manner.

Plus, Jazzy reflected as he stopped into the corner café near the bus stop and bought a bucket of latte each for him and Ayanna, at least the long wakeful night meant they were up and out of the house early; the rush hour had barely started, but by the time they finally reached Chislehurst it had already died away, leaving them a conspicuous pair wandering the deserted suburban streets as they trekked to Keith’s house.

Jazzy had visited Keith at home before, shortly after he officially became one of his employees. It had been at Keith’s invitation that time, a ‘cocktail party’ straight from a 1970s-based sitcom. Keith had held court in a sports jacket, a cigar permanently in his hand while his (third) wife ran round with a tray of smoked salmon and a wall-eyed stare for anyone who tried to engage her in conversation.

Jazzy felt a surge of adrenaline when he saw Keith’s car parked in the drive. Keith never walked anywhere, not even to the golf course, which was about three hundred metres away. If the car was home, then Keith was home.

Jazzy attempted to open the gate at the bottom of the drive, but after half a minute’s unproductive fumbling, he realised that this was not the kind of gate visitors opened themselves. It was the kind of gate the house’s occupants opened (or not) once they had found out who the visitor was. On the pillar to his right was what looked like an intercom speaker. He reached over and pressed the buzzer.

‘Jeffrey,’ came Keith’s voice in – was Jazzy imagining things? – a mocking drawl. ‘Fancy you coming all the way down here just to see me. And who’s your little friend?’