The Turning Tide (27 page)

‘Phew, that’s bracing!’ the Major exclaimed. ‘I asked for a peated malt, but wasn’t expecting a full on campfire.’ He leaned towards Erykah and grinned. She shrank back and found herself cornered in the end of the sleeping compartment. His arm reached out past her towards her bag. He must be going for her phone. He was definitely on to her.

The Major, dentured smile still firmly intact, grabbed a bottle of water sticking out of Erykah’s handbag instead. ‘Water for your whisky?’

‘No thanks,’ she said and shook her head. The sound of blood was pumping in her ears now like a drumbeat.

‘Your choice,’ he said, and added a tot of water to his drink. He sipped it and grimaced. ‘Bit strong for my taste,’ he said, and poured a few more glugs of water in his glass. ‘Always been more of a Speyside man myself.’ He kicked off his shoes and undid his sporran, and leaned back on the sleeper bed. ‘You look like you want to tell me something,’ he said.

Erykah was stunned. In all the ways she had imagined the conversation playing out, him starting it was not one of them.

The Major downed his drink and tipped the water bottle to his mouth. He finished off half of it in a single gulp, then wiped his moustache with two fingers. ‘You get your words together, honey,’ he said. ‘I’m going to drain the main vein.’ He stumbled into the corridor in search of the toilet.

Erykah exhaled as the door slammed shut and poured her whisky down the sink. There had to be some way out. Jumping off the train was out of the question and there were no scheduled stops for passengers to alight until tomorrow morning at Euston. There were hardly any staff on board, and none who would take on the Major if she called for help.

Maybe she could go to the dining car and scope out who was in there. Maybe somebody she could get talking to, and pass the time in public. Although that depended not only on staying up all night, but convincing someone else – a total stranger – to do it too. And while she knew her powers of persuasion were good, that was a very big ask.

She had gone some way down this route of thinking before it occurred to her that the Major had been gone for a long time.

There was no noise outside, apart from the rhythmic clatter of the train. Several minutes passed. If someone was lying in wait for her outside the door she would have heard them by now. Especially a creaky old goat like the Major.

She turned the door handle and looked out. Not a soul. She tiptoed past the closed doors of the other compartments to the toilets at the end of the carriage. The window on the door at the end of the carriage was open a couple of inches, and the faint smell of cigarette smoke hung in the air. But it was only very faint, and might not even have been his. The women’s loo was open; the men’s was locked.

Odd. Maybe he was still in there.

‘Whitney?’ Erykah whispered, and tapped on the toilet door. ‘Whitney?’ A little louder this time. Still no response. She pressed her ear to the flimsy divide. Nothing. No gasping, no breathing – nothing.

She slipped into the women’s toilet and listened through the wall. Still nothing. No farting, no sighing, no tinkle of piss in the toilet or the crumpling of paper. Nothing. She tapped harder, but again, no answer.

Ten minutes passed. She heard someone come up and try the door, then give up and walk away. No response from inside the loo where Whitney was.

Which meant he was probably asleep. Or dead.

She shook her head. No, that would be ridiculous. He could be in another carriage, she thought. Or maybe he had gone to the bar. She wandered in back to the sleeping compartment and sat on the bed. Her eyes rested on the half-empty bottle of water.

The bottle of water that she had taken off Schofield’s desk the day she broke into his office. Erykah had forgotten about the bottle. It had been rolling around in the bottom of her bag for almost a week, until the Major found it tonight and added some of the water to his whisky.

When the penny dropped, it clanged. The bottle was poisoned.

‘Fuck!’ Erykah hurried back to the end of the carriage and tapped at the lavatory door: still locked, still no answer. But she couldn’t stay out here waiting forever, someone would see her.

She went to the room, dazed, and locked herself in. It should have been obvious. Cutting Schofield’s throat and dumping the body off the coast of Scotland wasn’t the first time they had tried to off him. It was the backup plan.

Which meant that whoever planned it probably had to call in some muscle to finish the job.

Such as Billy. Who was going to be waiting when the sleeper arrived in London. She took out her phone. But they were already out of range of a mobile signal and would be for most of the night.

What now? It was an accident, or at least she wasn’t the one who had intended to poison anyone. But would the police believe her? What were the chances? ‘Slim to none, and Slim’s on a diet,’ she said out loud, and laughed. That was one of Billy’s phrases, the one he said just before breaking her husband’s fingers.

She grabbed the Major’s sporran off the bed and snapped it open. Inside was his wallet and the cheap little phone he always guarded so jealously. It was switched off. She jabbed at the power button but it appeared to be dead. Shit. She replaced the wallet, dropped the phone into her bag and closed his sporran, careful to wipe her prints from the leather and the metal clasp.

There was the question of being able to sleep in one of the beds. She didn’t know much about forensic evidence, but there was probably too much chance of leaving traces behind. Erykah gently transferred herself and her bag from the bottom bunk to the floor.

She stared at the wall of the little room. She wasn’t on the passenger register, but had she been caught on camera at the station? Maybe, maybe not. Either way, there was nothing she could do now. She pulled a packet of make-up wipes from her bag and started frantically wiping the hard surfaces in the cabin: the doorknob, the counter, the bottle and cups, the edge of the bed. Eight more hours of sitting and waiting. And then what would happen when she got to Euston?

: 25 :

Shards of morning light criss-crossed the platform at Euston. It was early yet, the hum and buzz of the busy station day was only starting to click into place. Erykah rubbed her eyes. She had managed to doze off for part of the journey, sitting up, but her eyes felt gritty and tired anyway. Every time the train had sped up or slowed down, or came to a stop, she woke. Every set of footsteps down the hall gripped her with panic until long after they passed. She had heard the soft knock at the door of the carriage attendants leaving two cups of coffee outside the compartment; she didn’t even open the door to look.

Erykah dug around in her leather bag until she found Kerry’s black and yellow print scarf. She pulled it over her hair and flung the ends round her neck to approximate a hijab. Her dark coat was buttoned up, covering most of the long dress. She popped a pair of expensive sunglasses on and checked herself in the mirror above the sink. It wasn’t much of a disguise, but it would do, as long as no one was looking too closely. She would have to brazen it out.

The section of the train that had started in Cameron Bridge had joined other trains on the way, and her carriage was now at the far end of a long platform. Erykah walked up the train corridors five, ten, a dozen carriages before getting out. A greater chance of being spotted and remembered by other passengers, maybe – but she was more worried about
CCTV
in Euston Station. Only a handful of people had boarded with her and the Major. If she happened to be identified on video getting off a Cameron Bridge part of the train it wouldn’t take much to put two and two together.

Erykah stepped off the train. Just like in Cameron Bridge, there were no ticket barriers on the sleeper platform. She took a deep breath and counted her steps: stay moving forward, don’t look suspicious, and don’t look over your shoulder.

Once in the station proper she was folded back into the comforting chaos of rush hour London. There was no rhyme or reason to the crowds in Euston, as early commuters and eager tourists rubbed shoulders. A busker by the front entrance was trying to sing his way out of being moved on by security staff.

Erykah peeled off to join the Tube queue but changed her mind at the last moment. Too many cameras, and she couldn’t use her Oyster card without risk. She had money in her bag – a giant roll of it – but all fifty-pound notes and no change.

OK, no problem. Just walk down to Euston Square or Warren Street, maybe a bit further. Buy a coffee to get the change on the way, ticket in cash, done. Maybe Billy would be caught up in traffic. Maybe something else would have come up and she would be able to get somewhere safe before he and Buster turned up. Maybe she would be lucky, and they would be late, and she could get away before they saw her.

No chance. Seminole Billy was parked in the bus zone, leaning against the bonnet of the Merc, squinting one eye against the smoke of his cigarette. She should have known he was as good as his word.

Billy reached into the stream of people and grabbed her elbow. ‘Hey, nearly didn’t recognise you there,’ he grinned. He stood back and took in her full outfit. ‘Good thing I can tell that walk anywhere. Didja go and convert on us while you was gone?’

Erykah shrugged as he led her to the car. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ No going back now.

‘Just saying it ain’t your usual look, is all.’

‘Oh?’ Erykah said. ‘What’s my usual look?’

‘Like you don’t know,’ Seminole Billy popped open the boot. ‘Ten pounds of sugar in a five pound sack.’ He reached for her bag. Erykah looked down and saw Buster’s familiar legs, and also something that made her heart skip a beat.

A pile of sports bags with Union Jack prints. Crisp and unused, folded in plastic sleeves. Bags exactly like the one Schofield had been dumped in, according to the news.

She clutched her bag with her free arm. ‘You know what? I think I’ll keep this up front,’ she said.

Billy slammed the boot shut. ‘Suit yourself,’ he said.

Erykah took a crumpled pack of cigarettes from the dashboard and lit up. She savoured the momentary sweet smell of tobacco after lighting, before it was replaced with smoke.

‘Didn’t know you smoked.’ Seminole Billy merged into the queue of traffic, raising a scarred hand to a black cab that let him in.

‘New phase of a bad old habit,’ Erykah said. Maybe the cigarette would calm her nerves. Wasn’t that why they always gave a last smoke to prisoners before they were executed? An ambulance zoomed the other way. She watched it in the rear view mirror until she was satisfied it wasn’t heading for the station. ‘This fucking week I’ve had.’ She drew a deep lungful and coughed.

‘That bad, huh,’ Seminole Billy said. ‘Did you not have a nice time in Cameron Bridge with the Major? I take it he and Heather are making their own way back.’

Erykah took a deep breath. ‘Yeah.’ She wondered how long she had before anyone found the body. ‘I guess so.’

‘Nice trip?’

‘It was fine,’ Erykah said. She slipped her hand into her bag to check everything was still there. For all she knew Billy was going to drive her off somewhere, slash her, and dump the corpse as he had with Damian Schofield’s.

‘Cool. We have a stop to make this morning,’ he said. ‘After that I’ll take you home.’

The corners of her mouth turned up in a smirk. ‘My knight in shining armour,’ she said.

‘Someone’s gotta be,’ he said, and gave her a sidelong glance. ‘You don’t think much of that husband of yours, do you?’

‘No, I suppose I don’t.’

‘Why’d you marry that dude anyway?’ he said. ‘I don’t know much about cactus but I know a prick when I see one.’

‘Bad time of my life. We got married quickly. He seemed nice for a while, and when I came out of my trouble, well, that’s where I was.’

‘Bad time huh? What’d you do, knife someone?’

She laughed, smoke pluming from her nose. ‘No, nothing like that. I was kicked off my degree.’

‘Ooo, dreadful,’ Seminole Billy said. ‘How did you ever recover?’

‘Shut up. It was bad at the time. There were drugs involved, someone got shot.’

‘Yeah?’ he said. ‘I never figured you for a runner.’

She shook her head. ‘Not even close. I was pretty uptight back then,’ she said. ‘Believed those scare stories they tell you about drugs at school, you know? Thought if I got downwind of a crack pipe or even a spliff – well. In retrospect, if I’d known the trouble I was getting into, let’s say a toke here and there wouldn’t have made a difference either way.’

‘It was because of a man,’ he said. ‘Not your husband.’

Was it that obvious? ‘Yeah.’

‘Did you ever love him?’ Billy said. ‘Your husband, I mean.’

‘I think I did,’ she said. ‘Maybe I loved the idea of who he said he was.’ Fog burned off the city as they turned onto the Westway. She had got so used to seeing the sunrise from the water, she had trouble imagining it any other way. Now the city looked strange to her, the morning routines of London unfamiliar. A mass of people in their own bubbles, millions of them rising and leaving their houses to go about their lives, wrapped up in their little dramas, unaware of any of this.

‘How about you?’ Erykah asked. ‘Love, I mean. There must be some great romance in your past.’

Seminole Billy shrugged. ‘There was a woman. We weren’t right for each other. I knew going in, she didn’t.’ He paused. ‘About all there is to say on that.’

‘If you knew it was wrong, why let that happen?’ Erykah asked. ‘Wouldn’t it be better to not even start?’

‘I couldn’t help myself,’ he said. ‘The moth loves the lamp, even though it does neither of them any good.’

Erykah nodded. Love. She didn’t know what to think any more. She had loved her husband, for a bit, in a way. She had been in love with Nicole or thought she had . . . well, who knew.

She leaned her head back on the rest and pretended to sleep as they came into Ladbroke Grove. Billy guided the car down a series of streets and to a deserted building site by a canal. The car slowed and the suspension creaked as he navigated the potholes in the hard standing drive. A hulking great gas works loomed over what had once been an industrial estate, cleared for planning a Crossrail station and high rise apartments that, as it turned out, no one was interested in building. The low arched bridges over the canal and towpath were empty save for a barge moored in the water on the far side. Across the canal was Kensal Rise Cemetery. Not much of what had been on the spot before was left, apart from a few shipping containers, broken glass, and pieces of twisted sheet metal strewn about. Behind the high brush and scrub that had grown up on the perimeter of the site, a few trains ran along the cluster of lines from Paddington to the rail depots. It was an eerily empty location for being so close to central London. You could get away with a lot of things in a spot like this.

She tried to remember the sequence of turns they had taken getting there, in order to escape later. It might be her only chance to run before they killed her.

Billy switched off the engine and went to the boot. Buster bounced out and sprinted off towards a shipping container.

Erykah gulped and opened her eyes as slightly as she could. She was in the same position, leaning against the head rest, her hand buried in her bag. There was a lump in her stomach, dread of what she was about to do. She eased her other hand onto the door handle and prepared to push it open. She listened, tried to figure out where he was without moving her head. His cowboy boots made a scratching noise on the dusty ground as he paced in the yard.

Billy leaned down and tapped slightly on the passenger window. Erykah suddenly opened her eyes, sat up and kicked the door open, knocking him backwards several feet. He doubled over, winded. She jumped out with the bag on her shoulder and the pistol from the Major’s office held tightly in both hands in front of her.

‘You keep backing up now,’ she growled. She realised she had no idea whether the gun was loaded or not. Erykah’s heart was pounding.

‘Fuck’s sake, woman, what has gotten into you?’ Billy squinted up at her, clutching his middle.

‘Shut up. Just shut up. I know what you came here to do. Get your hands up where I can see them.’ Slowly, Billy raised his hands.

Buster jogged back towards them with a canvas bag rolled up in his hand. When he saw Erykah and Billy he started sprinting. ‘Call him off!’ Erykah shouted. Her voice bounced off the grimy brick sides of the canal and echoed back at her.

‘Call what off?’

Erykah closed the gap between them to a few metres, aiming now at Seminole Billy’s temple. ‘I know Buster has a gun and you don’t,’ she said. ‘Call him the fuck off.’

Billy raised his hand. ‘Buster,’ he said. ‘Do what she says.’

‘The fuck is this shit?’ Buster said, but he did stop, hand still poised over his side. He looked from Billy to Erykah to the open car door and back again.

‘I know you’re here to kill me and dump me, like you did with Schofield,’ Erykah said, ‘And just so you know, that is not what I had planned for today.’

‘Woman, listen—’

‘Shut up! I know what you did. I read Schofield’s notes. I know about Livia.’

‘The hell are you talking about?’ Billy said. He straightened up, keeping his eyes on the gun.

She dropped one hand from the gun and pulled out her mobile. She tapped at it with her thumb.

‘Bitch, you better not be calling no police,’ Buster said, but stayed planted where he stood. ‘We don’t know any Livia.’

Erykah dropped her phone on the ground and kicked it towards Billy. ‘Go on, pick it up,’ she said. He crouched down, hands raised until the phone was within reach, and plucked it off the ground. ‘Now look at the screen. Tell me what that is.’

Billy shook his head slowly. ‘It’s a photo of a whiteboard,’ he said. ‘Meeting with LL?’ He looked at Erykah. ‘Sorry, but I got no idea who that is.’

‘Liar,’ Erykah said. ‘Lady Livia. Knows the Major. Schofield’s co-worker said she was a journalist working for
LCC
. Only I called the station and they’ve never heard of her. So who is she? I reckon she hired you to off him,’ she said. ‘Like you were going to do with me.’

‘This is bullshit,’ he said. ‘Never met any Livia.’

‘Bullshit yourself. I saw the bags in the boot. Exactly like the one he was dumped in.’

Billy nodded slowly. ‘OK. OK.’ He sighed. ‘You’re right, sort of. It’s complicated. I can explain.’ His voice was reedy. She could hear his age in his voice, the years he had spent inside. ‘Buster gets those bags from his cousin. Used to run a market stall. Now he’s got a shop in Clapham selling ironic junk at insane mark-ups to jerkoffs.’ Buster murmured agreement. ‘Come on,’ Billy said. ‘Put the gun down. You, me, Buster here, the Major – we’re all on the same side.’

‘Right,’ Erykah said and licked her lips. ‘Guess I should mention the Major’s dead.’

Buster’s eyes looked like they might pop out of his head. ‘You killed him?’ he said.

‘I wish. He drank a bottle of water, poisoned. The water came from Schofield’s office.’ She shrugged. ‘That was Plan A, right? You were going to poison him, and when it didn’t work out, you cut him up and shoved him in a bag and threw it in the ocean.’

Billy offered his hands towards her. She snatched back her phone. ‘You’re not listening. It’s not what you think,’ he said.

Erykah took a step back so he couldn’t grab the gun. ‘I said keep those hands up,’ she said. ‘If it’s not what I think then what is it?’

Billy frowned. ‘It was back sometime after New Year, I guess,’ he said. ‘We got a call from the Major to get out to a house. The guy was in a bad way. Cut to the neck. Not quite dead, but not exactly alive either. This woman had made a hash job of it, she called the Major, Major called us. All we did was put him out of his misery and clean things up. No more, no less.’

‘Jesus,’ said Erykah. ‘You said he was not quite dead – how close to not quite?’

‘He was mostly still,’ Billy said. ‘And you would have thought he was dead, but as soon as we put the light on in the bathroom, he starts thrashing around on the floor.’ Billy looked at the ground, as if seeing the scene right there in front of him. ‘Like he was having a seizure. Blood everywhere. Fucking mess. Buster had to get on him and we tied him up. The woman who did it left a knife on the floor, and—’