Obliquely, she wished she had her make-up with her, but that was in the bag she had left in Dom’s apartment. Hopefully it and Connie would arrive soon.
The graze on her chin continued to ooze a little, but seemed to be actually only a shallow wound. Most of the blood she had wiped away must have come from Marion. She was surprised to find that she could think about that in such a detached way. She was operating on a kind of auto pilot.
She ran her tongue over her teeth. Somewhat to her surprise they all seemed to be there and apparently undamaged, although her gums were sore.
She turned her attention to her clothes. She was wearing the same jeans and hoody she’d had laundered at the Soho House. Both were dirty and torn. The rip in the left sleeve of the hoody was so bad that the lower half had become almost detached from the upper, and was hanging from just a few threads of wool. She rolled both sleeves up, which improved things very slightly.
She rubbed ineffectually at the dirty marks and the few spots of blood which her raincoat had not protected her from. There was nothing at all she could do about the rip in the knee of her jeans. In any case, she only needed to make herself presentable enough to meet Connie at the appointed spot. Fortunately both her jeans and her tracksuit top were black. And this was New York. Hopefully nobody would even notice. She glanced at her watch again. If Connie had followed her instructions and left the loft apartment immediately, she would arrive soon.
She made her way back to the station concourse, keeping her head down, and limping as little as possible.
Remembering something from all those bad movies she’d watched, she paused at a news stand to buy a paper. At the entrance to platform one she propped herself against a conveniently positioned wall and held the newspaper up in front of her face. She didn’t really know what she was playing at, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. She still had a famous face — barely known in America, outside of scientific circles, it was true, but Britons did travel — and she had just left the scene of a terrible crime.
With one eye she peeped around the edge of the paper.
Connie arrived only a couple of minutes later, hurrying across the concourse. She had at least followed the first of Jones’s instructions and was wearing a baseball cap which she had presumably found among Dom’s belongings. Unfortunately, however, she hadn’t managed to tuck in all of her expansive red hair. And the cap was a strident yellow colour. The result was that she was probably likely to attract attention to herself even more than usual, particularly as she was wearing a green coat.
Oh my God, thought Jones. She had tried so hard to make herself inconspicuous, and now this multi-coloured vision, hair sticking out like a clown’s around the skull cap effect of the baseball cap, was tearing across the station, attracting a certain amount of attention even in this city.
A passing cop glanced first at the approaching Connie, and then at Jones. Jones buried herself deeper in her newspaper. The cop walked on by. Jones peeped around the newspaper again.
To her relief she saw that Connie had her bag over one shoulder, and the smaller cloth bag she always carried over the other. Both were being wielded almost like weapons. The station was far from crowded, nonetheless Connie scattered people in all directions as she rocketed through them like a multi-coloured windmill.
Jones would have laughed out loud at the sight of her, were it not for the tragic nature of the occasion. And as Connie approached she could see that tears were streaming down her face. Her anguish was all too apparent. She was oblivious to everything, looking but not seeing. She rushed right past Jones, who lowered her newspaper.
‘Connie,’ she called after her, sotto voce.
Connie turned, saw Jones, and threw herself at her, grabbing her shoulders, knocking the newspaper out of her hands.
‘Sandy, Sandy. Tell me everything that’s happened. I have to go to Marion. I have to!’ she shouted.
People began to stare. Jones had to stop her behaving like this. She pushed her away as gently as possible, then grabbed both her hands.
‘Connie, shush, shush,’ she said. ‘You must calm down. You are in terrible danger. And people are staring...’
‘Do you think I care?’ Connie’s green eyes blazed. ‘Do you think I care about myself? I have to find Marion. I have to go to her...’
‘Connie, for God’s sake...’
Jones looked anxiously around. Connie was behaving crazily. They could not afford the attentions of a curious police officer.
‘We can’t stay here,’ Jones continued. ‘We need to go somewhere we can talk. Please.’
Perhaps surprisingly, Connie stopped shouting and nodded her agreement. She didn’t seem able to stop crying, though.
Jones coaxed her across the concourse to the Vanderbilt entrance and the Campbell Apartment. The place was still deserted. It was the nearest to private she could come up with at the moment.
Once inside she wrapped her arms around Connie and drew her close. Connie’s body felt so tense, it was almost as if she were made of some substance much less malleable than flesh and blood.
‘It’s my fault, it’s all my fault,’ she wailed into Jones’s shoulder.
‘No, Connie, no,’ Jones soothed. ‘Of course it’s not your fault.’
‘Yes, it is. I should never have involved Marion. None of this has anything to do with her. But I did involve her. I got her into it. And now she might be dead...’
Jones didn’t know what to say, so she didn’t speak. It seemed like for ever but was probably only a minute or two before Connie’s sobs eased. Jones continued to hold on to her. The almost comical baseball hat had fallen from her head. Jones stroked her hair gently.
‘Listen, Connie, it’s not just you who is in danger, it’s me too,’ she said. ‘We have to work out what to do next. We both have to at least try to be calm and rational.’
Jones reckoned that Connie Pike was just about the most unselfish person she had ever met. She knew that if anything could get through to her it was the suggestion that somebody else dear to her might also be in danger, because, in her mind at any rate, of her actions.
After a few seconds Connie stopped sobbing and looked at Jones as if seeing her, and the state she was in, for the first time.
‘You’re hurt too,’ she said. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine,’ Jones replied, for the second time that morning. It was a considerable exaggeration.
Connie nodded. She was clearly making a huge effort to pull herself together.
‘All right, let’s talk,’ she said. ‘And first I have to know everything about Marion.’
Jones gestured towards the flight of steps leading up to the locked and bolted Campbell Apartment itself.
‘It’s not a Chesterfield, but why don’t we sit down,’ she suggested.
Connie did so at once. Jones joined her gratefully, stretching out her injured leg before her, and proceeded to tell the other woman everything, just as she had demanded, even about her fears that one of Marion’s legs had been severed. Connie reacted with only the faintest flicker of an eyelid. Jones told her about the truck reversing back at both of them, and how it was possible that its far-side wheels may have run over Marion’s head.
Connie then let out a little gasp, and her eyes filled with tears again. Almost impatiently she brushed them away with the back of one hand.
‘Possible?’ she queried.
‘Well, I really don’t know,’ Jones continued honestly. ‘Dom pushed us both out of the way. He knocked all the breath from my body. By the time I’d recovered enough to get up on my feet again, and I tried to see what had happened to Marion, she was just lying there, with a crowd gathering around her. Oh God, that sounds awful.’