Post Mortem, Gary Bell [best fiction novels .txt] 📗

and into Stratford International, where the boy approached one of the large touchscreen ticket machines and started punching his selections in without discretion. He chose the 9.32 Southeastern train.

He was going to Margate.

He paid in cash and pocketed the receipt. Not just pocketed. He folded it carefully and placed it into his wallet, an unusually conscientious move for a boy of his age. My eyes moved to the weight of the rucksack on his back. The mystery prize.

Margate: the land of Isaac Reid’s Tinderellas and two butchered drug dealers.

It was twenty past nine when the boy disappeared through the barriers for his platform.

It was twenty-five past when I purchased a ticket and followed.

Despite the run of fine weather, there weren’t many Londoners bound for a Thursday at the seaside and the platform was almost empty. I waited on the staircase for the boy to board and then hurried for a separate carriage just as the alarms at the doors began to sound, signalling that the train was about to leave.

It was an hour and twenty minutes to the end of the line. I already knew who’d be waiting at the other end. I’d only been to Margate once before, on an early date with Jenny. I could still remember the Shell Grotto and Dreamland, the amusement park, but what I oddly recalled more clearly as the train got going was that T. S. Eliot recovered there after his mental breakdown.

‘On Margate Sands I can connect nothing with nothing,’ I muttered to myself. ‘You and me both, Eliot.’

After sixteen minutes, the train passed through Gravesend, where my phone must have picked up signal, because it started vibrating with message alerts in my pocket. In fact, in those sixteen minutes I’d missed two calls from Percy, one from Lydia, and four from Zara. The last began to ring again, and I moved into the empty area that connected my carriage with the boy’s before answering. Outside, London had disappeared, and open greenery was pouring past the windows.

‘Is everything all right?’ I asked.

‘Where are you? Are you coming into chambers?’ She sounded unusual. Offish.

‘I’m on a train to Margate.’

‘Margate?’

‘I think I have a lead on Deacon. If I’m correct, there’s a whole bagful of Spice heading straight towards him on this very train, and you’ll never believe who’s carrying it!’

She didn’t try to guess. I heard her swallow. ‘You haven’t heard?’

‘Heard what?’

‘They … Deacon … saying it’s …’ Her voice was fading in and out. The floor rumbled underfoot.

‘Hello? I’m between stations, I’m losing signal again.’

‘You need … come back to London … get to chambers!’

‘Chambers?’ Here it was: all at once, the cold returned. ‘What’s happening?’

‘Deacon! It’s Deacon! The police have got him!’

And with that, the line died. ‘Zara? Hello, Zara? Bollocks!’

Deacon had been arrested, and in circumstances that required me to return to chambers as soon as possible. It sounded as if the case was already over, and I was stuck on a train bound for the very edge of the country. I was missing all the action. I pocketed the phone, crept to the doorway of the next carriage and peered inside. I could just see the boy’s blond hair sticking up above his seat. He was facing away from me. Through speakers overhead, the driver announced that we would shortly be arriving at Strood.

‘Please collect all personal belongings before departing.’

All personal belongings. My belongings.

I pressed the button and winced as the door hissed open, but the boy didn’t turn. There was nobody else in here except for an elderly man who was dozing at the far end. The train was slowing down. I got onto all fours and peered under the seats, hoping to hell that nobody would be watching a live feed of the carriage’s CCTV. The rucksack was there underneath the boy’s chair.

Reduced to crawling like an animal, I slipped into the footwell of the seats behind him and carefully reached under, my hands coming within inches of his stylish trainers, which were tapping rhythmically to whatever drill music was pounding through his headphones. Slowly, I pulled the bag towards me by the jaguar. I held my breath as I opened the zip, still undecided on how I would deal with the boy and the inevitable mountain of rolling tobacco in the bag.

I looked inside and saw … nothing.

Nothing out of the ordinary, anyway. A scrunched-up jumper. A phone charger. A couple of snapped biros, some textbooks for Key Stage 2 SATS exams and a stack of papers with revision notes on them. Less cautious now, frantic with disbelief and rage, I opened the front and side pockets, rifling through the empty folds. Defeated, I undid the knot holding my jaguar emblem and pushed the bag back to its original position.

The train came to a standstill and, as my phone caught the town’s signal, it began to vibrate again. I got up, clenching my fists only inches behind the head of the boy who had ruined my car, and stormed off the train just as the doors began to close. They locked behind me and the mechanics under the carriage hissed back into life. My phone was still jittering as I walked along the platform, but before I answered it I got to the window where the boy was sitting and pounded my fist against the safety glass. He looked around, startled, as the train began to pull away.

I was holding up two hands. In one, my jaguar roared. In the other, I returned the two-fingered salute he’d once flashed in my rear-view mirror. The look on his face was worth it. He scrambled down under his seat, yanking the rucksack out, but before he had chance to spit his dummy out proper the train had whisked him away and I was left on the empty platform, howling with laughter.

Yes. Absolutely worth it.

My phone stopped ringing and started up again.

I took it out of my pocket, swinging the jaguar from my other hand, and answered more brightly