The Perfect Daughter (23 page)

‘How could I? By the time I knew what she'd been doing, she was dead.'

‘You're sure of that?'

I started shouting at him that of course I was sure, then I saw where this was heading and went quiet. My silence sounded even more guilty than shouting.

Burton said, with a cog-wheel purr in his voice, ‘Yes, Miss Bray?'

I said nothing. He went on talking, but this time there was a horrible confidence about him, like a chess player seeing the end of the game in his opponent's first mistake.

‘I was telling you my theory about what happened to Verona North. I'll go on. She came to London. The two of you met and talked. Foolishly, from your point of view, you told her more than you should have done about the activities of some of your friends. Perhaps, who knows, you were trying to impress her. Then somehow, and this is a part of the story you'll know much better than I do, you find out that she's not on your side, as you'd assumed. That she is, in fact, on what you'd think of as the other side. In your place, Miss Bray, I'd have felt very angry about that.'

I'd stopped sweating. I was cold now with shock and fear, not believing that I'd actually gone looking for this. From his expression, I guessed the shock and fear were showing but couldn't do anything about it.

‘You felt angry. Guilty too, probably, at betraying your friends. It was too late to do anything about that, but there was one thing you could do. I don't suppose it was too difficult to decoy Miss North down to Devon. Some message about a family emergency, perhaps. You met her off the train. You had a syringe of morphine in your bag, probably that same bag you're holding now. Perhaps you borrowed a boat and rowed her up the estuary to the boathouse. Can you row, by the way? I'm sure you can.'

He was observant. I was clutching the bag like a lifebelt. He stopped talking and stared at me with the cold analytical kindness of a doctor looking down at a patient after an operation. My fingers were rummaging in my bag, looking for the tear in the lining. I found what I was looking for, raised a hand to my mouth, bit and swallowed.

‘Stop her.'

Stone grabbed my wrist, but he was too late. I slumped to the floor.

‘Oh God, you should have been watching her!'

One of them trod on me in the hurry to get the door to the corridor open. Burton shouted, presumably to the ink monitor.

‘Doctor! Get a doctor!'

The ink monitor started to ask where he'd get one, a reasonable question in the circumstances.

‘A police station. Run.'

Stone was kneeling over me, trying to force my mouth open. Too many bad memories there from forcible feeding. His rotten luck. I let him get his fingers over my lower jaw then bit down as hard as I could. I heard and felt bone scrunch. He yelled and let go. I struggled to my feet – I think my knee made contact with his jaw but that wasn't intentional because he was out of the fight in any case. My bag and his black notebook were on the floor. I grabbed them, turned and found Burton standing in the doorway of the compartment and simply hurled myself at him. We both went down but I was up first, into the corridor then out of the door to the platform that the ink monitor had left open when he went for the doctor. I sat on the platform edge and slid down into the darkness under the train. There were shouting and running feet up above me and the sharp taste of peppermint in my mouth.

Chapter Eighteen

A
LOT OF SHOUTING, BUT ONLY ONE MAN
doing it. I recognised Burton's voice, gone high and sharp – from pain, I hoped. A pair of feet was thundering along the corridor over my head.

‘Outside! She's outside!' Burton, out of the train now, yelling to Stone, still inside. Then, more loudly, ‘Come back! Come back here!'

He couldn't be stupid enough to think I'd come when he called. It must be the ink monitor he wanted back, presumably sticking to the original order and running for a doctor. He hadn't seen me slipping under the train. It gave me the advantage for a little while but I couldn't see how I could use it, with Burton waiting for me on the platform. I was crouching between two sets of wheel axles, looking out at an expanse of rails between me and the coal heaps. If the sidings had been completely dark it would have improved the odds in my favour, but there was enough light coming from somewhere – possibly street lamps outside – to put a shine on the rails and make objects visible as dark shapes. I turned towards the platform, not worrying too much about making noise because the machinery was cooling with a troll orchestra of clanks, bumps and and little wheezing sounds, then I almost yelled when my shoulder came into contact with a pipe that was scalding hot, even through clothes. There was a smell of hot oil or grease. Everything I touched or that touched me was sticky and something was clotted in my hair. Yet it was, in its clamorous way, almost peaceful under there, like being in a sea cave, as if you could let the world go by and rejoin it or not as you fancied. It was a pity some people had other ideas. Squinting up through the gap between train and platform edge I could see two dark columns that must be the legs of Burton on guard. Somebody was walking along the platform, so that meant two of them at least were outside and watching. Then somebody from inside the train shouted. I jumped and came into contact with the hot pipe again because it seemed to come from right overhead. It sounded like the voice of a man used to giving orders.

‘Underneath. Look underneath.'

The man Burton had gone to consult. The man who sent him back to accuse me of murder. I dropped down on all fours and wriggled under the wheel axle and further down the train with no plan, just an instinctive urge to get away from the voice. It made things worse because on the other side of the axle was the gap between the two carriages with a metal step placed very conveniently for anybody coming down from the platform. I wriggled back under the axle, catching my hair on something, yanking it free and had hardly got clear of the gap before a foot came down on the step. Then Stone's voice, so close I could feel it vibrating in my head.

‘Could you get the lantern, sir?'

With a badly bitten finger and probably an aching jaw, no wonder he was hesitating. He was facing away from me. I wriggled backwards in the direction I'd come from, making for the higher part where I could get back into a crouch at least, not wanting to be dragged out like a ferret from a rabbit hole. I'd been aware for some time of another noise, but with no attention to spare for it. Now it was getting louder and unmistakeable. Another train was coming into the siding.

*   *   *

It was moving slowly. I couldn't see it but I could smell the smoke and see the red glow from its firebox reflected in the rails. At first I cursed because it would stop me hearing what Stone and Burton were doing, but then I realised it might give me just the ghost of a chance. I got on hands and knees and put my head out on the side away from the platform. The back of a goods wagon was coming towards me, not much faster than walking pace. I made myself wait until it was almost on me, not wanting to give the driver a chance to brake if he happened to be leaning out of the cab and looking back, then pushed myself upright and half-ran, half-dived across the tracks in front of the wagon. I landed with my face on ballast, shins against the rail and an arm, still with the bag hanging on it, crushed under me. What got me upright, shaking and gasping, wasn't even Stone and the rest but the fear of my feet being sliced off by the train's wheels. It was a goods train, rusty with a lot of high-sided open carriages. Perhaps I could have got into one of them if I tried, but it was too much like a trap. With the goods train now screening me from the men on the platform I went running and stumbling across the tracks. If they'd seen what happened, the only start I'd have would be the time it took them to run behind the goods train. What I was counting on was that with Stone under the train and Burton and the mystery man looking out on the platform side they might not have seen.

At first I was tempted to make for the coal heaps, but that would be the first place they'd look and I would waste any advantage I might have. I looked along the tracks and saw to my right tall brick warehouses and the glow of lamplight on open water. It was like seeing an open window instead of cage bars and I changed direction and went running along the tracks towards the glint of water, fearing at any moment to hear shouting, but the blessed goods train, still slowly shunting backwards, was screening me. The tracks went across a docks road. There were two motor-lorries parked on it, headlights on, loaded with flour sacks. I dodged in between them. A driver called out something. It sounded like a joke, certainly not an alarm, but I didn't wait to make sure. There was a wharf in front of me, ship masts to the right, sheds and warehouses to the left, new sounds and smells. One smell was especially strong. I put my foot on something that squished and recognised what it was. Cowpat. There was disturbed mooing in the air coming from one of the sheds, wisps of straw floating about. I walked along the wharf in the direction of the smell and the mooing, slowing down and trying to look as if I had a right to be there. Even at night men were working on the wharf, doing things with the boats or stacking crates by lamplight in the warehouses, all too busy to take any notice of a stranger. Still no tumult from the sidings. If my luck held, Burton and the rest would be hunting me through the coal heaps. I wondered if the mystery man in the train would be getting his hands dirty too and somehow didn't think so. I could see the cows now, black and white Friesians, heads poked over the rails that penned them into the shed. I stroked warm, muscular necks, made a narrow gap between a couple of rails and slipped inside the welcoming cow-smelling dimness.

*   *   *

The cows were remarkably tolerant. There was the occasional fresh outbreak of mooing as I stroked and shoved my way through them, but nothing loud enough to attract attention. The far side of the shed, like the front, was open with only metal rails to keep the cows inside. Beyond was a concreted yard lit by a couple of gas lamps with a single-rail track running across it and half a dozen cattle wagons in position, then walls and a broad wooden gate closing off the yard on the far side. I leaned on the rails with white and black necks on either side, thinking. On the other side of the yard there might be a road. If there was a road I could get to the station. I had money in my pocket. Thanks to Stone and Burton I'd even re-discovered my comb. I could tidy myself up, go to the ticket office like any respectable passenger, take a ticket to … where? Not so easy. Burton was no fool and the unseen man who gave him orders even less so. They'd have men watching the station. I still had a ticket to the Hook of Holland in my pocket but they'd be watching the docks and the boats. Even if I did, by some miracle, manage to get on a train back to London, they'd be waiting for me at Liverpool Street. Things had changed in the train. I knew now that I'd stirred up something that was better left unstirred. Until this evening, in some odd misguided way, I'd
trusted
the watchers to stick to the rules. We had our differences but deep down I'd thought there were decencies we all accepted. If the initials had made a bad mistake and sent Verona to spy on people who killed her they'd want to know what happened, just as I did. It was only a matter of making them understand that and we'd be on the same side. I'd been wrong, so wrong that it looked as if I'd be marooned on the other side for all time. The world had changed in that siding by the docks. Some people – including the unseen man in the train – must know what really happened, who really killed Verona, and yet if it suited their purposes they'd hang me for it all the same. So I wouldn't be stepping into their welcoming arms at Liverpool Street, which left the question of where in the world I went from here. Certainly not into the town. Wandering around at getting on for midnight in a place I didn't know would be a sure way of getting arrested. The word would have gone out by now: dangerous female spy on the loose. They could be searching the docks in a matter of minutes, especially if they happened to speak to one of the lorry drivers who'd seen me heading there. Stowing away on one of the ships by the quay had its attractions if I could discover where it was heading. But I might easily end up in a German or Baltic port facing permanent exile, no friends, not much money, no hope of walking into a consulate and getting help.

Which left the cattle wagons. I shoved a couple of cows aside, squeezed between the railings and walked across the yard. The wagons smelt of clean straw, which was a good sign. The cows must have arrived by sea and would be travelling on somewhere in the morning, early probably. If I could get through the next six hours or so I could steal a ride with them – hoping for all our sakes that it wasn't to an abattoir. The wide doors were all open and the ramps down ready for loading. The wagon at the end was a different design, divided into three wide stalls inside, for horses not cattle. I walked up the ramp into the rustling darkness. There were worse places to sleep than on straw in a nice solid horsebox. I chose the stall at the far end, shuffled a pile of straw up against the wall and lay down with my jacket for a pillow. The doorway faced the cattle lair age and the quayside. There were still some lights on over by the ships, slow footsteps on the quay, a man in the distance whistling
Won't you come home Bill Bailey?.
For some reason that struck me as funny and I joined in under my breath.
I'll do the cooking, darling, I'll pay the rent, I know I've done you wro-o-ong.
Reaction, I suppose. I didn't sleep; I was expecting any moment to see a policeman's lantern coming from the direction of the quay or hear footsteps on the other side of the wagons. At around four the rectangle of sky through the doorway was light and the cattle in the lairage were getting restless, shifting about and mooing. Later buckets clanked and I supposed somebody was bringing them water. By that time there were other sounds, men calling good morning to each other, a machine starting up. Quite soon they'd be loading up the cows and, presumably, horses although I hadn't seen any so far. All night I'd wondered how not to be discovered while that was going on. The question was urgent now and I still had no answer. I was combing straw out of my hair – though goodness knows why I was bothering – when the gate in the wall on the far side of the yard opened. I heard it dragging back, then a man's voice shouting. He sounded angry. I jumped up and looked out through a ventilation slit.