I started to pull him away. Just like we planned. Into the bushes round the back of the flats, give him a talking to, get a bit heavy, teach him a lesson. Threat management. Dead easy. I started to drag him away.
Didn’t get very far.
Because she was there, in front of him, on his chest. Calling him stuff that I would never have imagined she would ever say, stuff even I wouldn’t say out loud.
Hissing at him, her voice low, like liquid hate pouring out of her mouth. I was stunned, she was like a whole different person. An angry, nasty, venomous one. I didn’t know her.
The gurgling sound in his throat changed tone. I looked down. She had the knife in both hands and it was buried in his chest, right up to the hilt. Blood pooling round it, running down, staining through his clothes.
She stepped back, stared. Smiled. It wasn’t pretty.
I didn’t know what to do, I was too stunned to react. I left go of him, let him drop. He crumpled to the ground.
Ambulance… I said. Oh, Jesus Christ, call a fucking ambulance…
She gave me a look, shook her head with a look on her face like she was laughing at sadness, then ran inside the block of flats.
I looked at him. Felt helpless. No phone, like I said. Just stood there, with this bloke I didn’t know but was supposed to hate because she had said so, watching the life drain out of him, his face wet with tears and rain.
He flopped and squirmed, like a fish hooked out of water and gasping, trying to get its gills to work properly and failing.
I don’t know how long I stood there. But it didn’t seem long before the sirens arrived. Police and ambulance. The works. Suppose I should have felt important.
She came out of the flat then. In tears. Looked like her old self, the one I had enjoyed being with so much. The pretty one, beautiful and vulnerable.
The one I absolutely, honestly, hadn’t fallen in love with.
I heard her talking to the police. Picked out words.
Delusional.
Alcoholic.
Dangerous. Anger management issues.
Mental problems.
I said nothing. Just stared at her. Stood there in the rain with my parka hood up, face in shadow like some horror movie monk.
Threat management. I could have laughed.
She was a solicitor. A legal mouthpiece.
I forgot that.
She was clever.
They put me in the car. I let them. No sense in arguing. Drove me to the station, processed me, stuck me in an interview room. I told them everything. Everything I’ve said here.
Well, they listened, I’ll give them that.
Then they went out. Left me.
And here I am. I don’t know when they’ll be back, but it doesn’t matter. Because I know what they’ll do with me. I know what’s going to happen. And it’s nothing like the future I was planning a few days ago.
The fantasy future. If anything was delusional, that was.
So what can I do now? Nothing.
But at least I’ve told the truth. I didn’t make it up.
Honest.
I’ve told it exactly how it happened. Exactly.
So I suppose that’s something. I suppose that’s progress.
FINGERS TO THE BONE by Andrew Taylor
1: The Arteries of Wealth
Robbie Trevine saw Mary Linnet before she saw him. She was standing under the archway, tucked in the angle between the wall and a trolley laden with corded boxes. She wore a dark cloak that belonged to her mother, and she had drawn up the hood, holding it across her face with her hand. Her fingers were white and thin, like bones.
Two trains had recently come in, one of them Robbie’s, and people hurried through the archway to the city of Bristol beyond. He wriggled through a group of soldiers, arrogant in scarlet and gold, and touched her on the arm. She flinched and pulled away, jarring her shoulder on the wall. She glared at him as if he were a stranger.
“Mary, what is it? It’s me.”
“Creeping up like that! You scared the life out of me!”
“What are you doing? Collecting?”
“No.” She looked away. “Not today.”
Sometimes Mary collected money for the Rodney Place Missionary Society, though usually she took her box up the hill to Clifton or down to Queen’s Square, where the pickings were better because the people were rich enough to afford to be generous. Sometimes she was sent further afield, to Bath or Chippenham or Swindon. The railways had made the world smaller, more manageable.
“So why are you here?” Robbie asked.
“Taking the air.”
“Here? At Temple Meads?”
“Why not? The doctor brought a nurse, Mrs. Allardyce. She’s sitting with Ma.”
“How is she?”
“No better. Worse, if anything. And what are you doing here?”
“Tried for a job. Just digging, that was all. Foundations for a signal box. But they’d already-”
“Robbie,” she cut in. “Go now, please. Go.”
He gawped at her. “But why?”
A door had opened on the other side of the porter’s trolley. A man laughed. A cloud of cigar smoke wafted through the air.
Mary gripped his arm. “Too late. Look at that notice. You don’t know me.”
“You’ve lost your wits.”
“Just do as I say.”
He turned away and pretended to study a notice concerning the transport of livestock on the Great Western Railway. The fact that he could read it all was due to Mary’s mother. Several gentlemen emerged through the doorway. They exchanged farewells and most of them strolled through the archway to waiting carriages.
But two of the gentlemen lingered. Side by side, cigars in hand, they surveyed the seething crowds. Porters shouted and cursed. Trains murmured and hissed and rattled. The sounds rose to the high vault of the roof.
“Ten years ago this wasn’t here, Sir John,” said the younger and smaller of the two. “Twenty years ago it was barely conceivable. Thirty years ago it would have been beyond the wildest dreams of an opium eater.”
“Impressive, I grant you,” answered his companion, a white-haired gentleman of perhaps sixty years of age. “But the noise is intolerable.”
“Noise? Yes, indeed. It’s the sound that money makes. The Great Western Railway has restored prosperity to the towns it touches. Railways are the arteries of wealth. As you yourself will discover, I trust, when the Lydmouth and Borders Railway is built.”
“You go too fast for me, sir.”
“Because there is no time to waste!” cried the younger man, waving his cigar. “The fruit hangs ripening on the tree. If we do not pluck it, then someone else will. Which is why my directors and I are so desirous of your joining us on the board. Where Sir John Ruispidge leads, other men will follow. Your position in the county, sir, your influence with the administration, your friends in Parliament-you have it in your power to smooth our way considerably and, I may add, to reap a just reward for doing so. Once the line is built, you may transport your coal at a fraction of the price you now pay, and at many times the speed. The general prosperity the railways bring-the freer movement of people and capital-cannot but have a benevolent effect on the fortunes of all those concerned.”
“Ah, but the investment must be considerable. Nothing will come of nothing, as the Bard tells us.”
“I speak from experience. You must allow me to show you the figures from South Devon.” There was another wave of the cigar. “And consider the convenience of it. You will be able to travel from your country seat to your house in town within a day, and in the utmost comfort. If Lady Ruispidge desires quails in aspic from Fortnum’s, they could be on her table within a few hours.”
“You are a persuasive advocate.” Sir John took out his watch. “Alas, I must leave you until tomorrow.”
“Good God! Is that a Breguet watch?”
“It is indeed. You have sharp eyes, Mr. Brunel.”
Robbie’s eyes swung towards the little man. The great Brunel himself!