The Train, Sarah Bourne [dark books to read .txt] 📗

again for the duration of the journey. He could have been travelling to and from Euston with a serial killer for years and he wouldn’t have been able to identify him – or her – in a line-up. Terrible admission really, for a barrister.

He picked up his paper again, opened it to the crossword and reached into his breast pocket for his pen. Another stab of loss hit him as he pulled out the Bic. He hadn’t had a chance to replace his Montblanc and hadn’t dared admit to his wife he’d lost it. She’d given it to him for their wedding anniversary a few years ago. It was likely an important one – silver or something. He’d probably asked his secretary to order the usual flowers and book a restaurant.

Feeling discombobulated, he stared at the first clue.

1A Very sad unfinished story about rising smoke (8)

He read it and read it again. He did the cryptic crossword every day and usually managed to finish it in under ten minutes. Today, however, it was as if his brain was frozen. The individual words all made sense but he couldn’t pick them apart and delve into the meaning of the clue. He just kept imagining a ruined house with smoke rising from the rubble. After a few minutes he threw the paper onto the seat next to him in disgust and sat with his fists clenched in his lap.

He wanted a coffee. His throat felt parched. He wondered if the trolley girl would come through with the train stopped, or was there some protocol stating that no drinks be served in the event of a suicide? He looked at his watch and wondered where they were and how long it would take to get to Euston. He considered going to find the guard to ask him, and get himself a coffee at the same time but decided not to bother. It wouldn’t make any difference.

His phone rang. Deidra. A wave of exhaustion passed over him. He didn’t want to talk to his wife. She was probably just calling to remind him about the meeting with Liam and what to say and what not to say, as if he couldn’t decide on his own. As if he had to be coached to say the appropriate words when his whole working life was about choosing the right words because someone’s future might depend on him being precise and accurate. He knew she’d wanted to come to the meeting. She hated being ‘out of the loop’, as she called it in an awful American TV way. Truth be told, he wished she could take care of the whole thing too, but she’d broken her neck in a riding accident a couple of weeks ago and was still in a lot of pain. It was pure chance she hadn’t ended up a paraplegic – the fracture to her vertebra was displaced and could have severed the nerve. He had rushed to the hospital dreading what he would find, wondering how he would cope if she was an invalid for the rest of her life. She was younger than him by a few years, he was already thirty when they’d married and she in her mid-twenties. She was the one who looked after people, not him. She’d been a stay-at-home mother to their children, she organised their social life, engaged gardeners and painters as necessary, cooked the meals and made sure all the household duties were seen to. Everything would fall apart if she were a vegetable.

He pressed ‘decline’ and the phone stopped ringing. Sitting with his head resting against the back of the seat he let himself drift off to thoughts of that boat and the places he’d go.

He’d nodded off by the time the train dragged itself from its inactivity and slowly worked up to its mechanical canter. He rubbed his eyes, dry from the train’s air conditioning, hoped he hadn’t snored, and once more looked at his paper. It was a matter of principle to finish the crossword. It was like a private competition between him and the compiler every day and he would not be outdone just because of some bloody fool throwing themselves in front of the train.

1A Very sad unfinished story about rising smoke.

Tragical. Of course. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen it first time. He frowned at the idea that perhaps he’d been blind to it because the word somehow seemed to encapsulate what he expected from his day, and then carried on with the crossword. He finished it in nine-and-a-half minutes. But the word tragical stuck in his head. Was it even a word? Surely it was tragic. Was it an American corruption? He hated the way they abused and changed the language. He pulled his phone out and looked it up before he worked himself into a lather about it. The definitions were all for tragic, but there were quotes from Shakespeare and Henry Fielding that used tragical. So it was old, falling out of use but proper English at least. That established, he slipped his phone back into his pocket.

By the time they pulled in to Euston he had read the paper, written himself a few notes for the meeting he had to attend and given some serious thought to what to do about Liam. There was nothing like a train journey to concentrate the mind.

When he got to the hospital Lawrence followed a Chinese woman into the room he’d been directed to for Liam’s case conference. He stood while she took a seat and then made his way to the only chair left in the small, airless room that had certainly seen better days. He forced himself not to think about how the stains on the seat had been caused. Crossing his legs, he tried to look more relaxed than he felt. He was used to being in court, to standing in front of people and presenting a case or tearing the opposition’s apart.