The Passenger

by Daniel Hurst

  ‘Do you know where he might be?’ I ask, my tone growing more desperate by the minute. ‘It’s really important that I speak to him.’

  ‘I’ve no idea. I saw him this morning when I got back from work, but I’ve been asleep since then. He isn’t up here now.’

  ‘You must have some idea. He lives with you!’

  ‘Just call him,’ Christine replies with a shrug, and she goes to close the door, but I put out my hand to stop it.

  ‘He’s not picking it up. Can I come in and have a look around for anything that might tell me where he might be?’

  ‘No, you can’t,’ Christine replies curtly, and she tries to close the door again.

  But I’m getting seriously pissed off now, and this woman isn’t helping me, so I barge my way past her and head up the stairs.

  ‘Hey! What are you doing?’ Christine calls after me, but I ignore her and enter the door at the top of the stairs that takes me into her home, if you can even call it that. There’s a mattress on the floor, several open bin bags of clothes that the occupier hasn’t unpacked, and an empty pizza box lying on the grotty kitchen counter. But one thing concerns me amongst the mess, and it’s something that’s missing that was definitely here the last time I visited.

  ‘Where are his things?’ I ask Christine as she reaches the top of the stairs, looking like she is about to hit me.

  ‘What?’ she replies, but her anger quickly evaporates when she notices what I already have.

  There is nothing here that belongs to James. It’s hard to tell amongst all the mess, but the more I look, the more I see.

  James has cleaned his stuff out.

  ‘I don’t understand. His things were here this morning,’ Christine says, scratching her head.

  ‘He must have cleared out while you were asleep.’

  ‘The cheeky bastard,’ Christine mutters as she realises he has done a runner on her, but there’s no way she can be feeling as hard done by as I am right now.

  ‘Is there anything here that is his?’ I ask, hoping for a small glimmer of hope as I search the tiny flat, but Christine just shakes her head.

  ‘This is all mine,’ she replies, clearly upset about James’s sudden disappearance.

  I bet she thought he was the only woman she was seeing too.

  ‘There has to be something here,’ I say, more out of desperation than of any real belief. I can’t believe my partner would have screwed me over like this. Without me and what I did on that train, he never would have got the code to that safe. I’ll kill him if I ever get my hands on him again. But first, I need to figure out how I might be able to do that.

  ‘There’s got to be something he left behind,’ I say, rummaging through the bin bags of clothes.

  ‘Hey, those are my things!’ Christine protests, and unfortunately, she is right.

  I let out a cry of frustration and kick the nearest bin bag to me, expecting it to be full of yet more of the homeowner’s clothes. But instead, it’s a rubbish bag, and the top bursts open, spilling the contents out across the floor.

  ‘Hey!’ Christine cries again, and I’m just about to storm out when I see the piece of paper lying amongst the empty beer cans and microwave meal wrappers.

  I scoop it up and open it out to see James’s handwriting scrawled across it. I recognise it from the crosswords he would do when we were in prison to pass the time. He’s written out a series of times, but I’m not sure what they relate to.

  18:42

  18:59

  19:12

  19:27

  My eyes scan down the list, trying to figure out what they might be. But then I see the final entry and I know. These are train times. I know that because of the underlined words written beside the last entry.

  21:12 – last Eurostar of the day.

  41

  AMANDA

  I didn’t expect to be back on a train again so quickly considering how eventful my last journey was, but here I am. The countryside is whizzing by my window, and my elbows are leaning against the table as the carriage shakes all around me. But unlike the last time I was on a train, I actually have hope. That’s because I’m no longer the prey.

  This time, I’m the hunter.

  ‘Why is it not updating?’ I ask my daughter sitting beside me as we stare at the laptop screen on the table in front of us.

  ‘He must be on the tube,’ she replies as she continues to refresh the page. ‘There’s no signal down there, so it won’t update until he’s out.’

  ‘Okay,’ I reply, trying to stay positive. That makes sense. The signal from the phone will come back as soon as he goes above ground again, and all we can do until then is remain patient. The problem is that isn’t an easy thing to do when there’s so much at stake.

  But I console myself with the knowledge that we have been able to track Louise’s mobile phone this far, so there’s no reason to think that we won’t be able to for a little longer yet. Unless James throws it away, of course. Then we are screwed. But neither of us want to dwell on the negatives right now. We have to believe that we are going to be able to find James again using this technology, and when we do, I will be able to get back what he stole from my safe.

  Ever since Louise told me there was a way to see where her mobile phone was, we have been keeping an eye on the red dot as it has moved around the south of England. When we first saw it, it was already heading north out of Brighton, and the speed of its movement suggested to me that James was on a train. After a frantic few minutes to get ready and prepare myself mentally, Louise and I took a taxi to the train station and purchased a couple of tickets to London to give chase. While we couldn’t be sure that London was his destination, we figured it was as good a guess as any considering the direction he was headed, so we decided to start making our own way north so the gap between us and that red dot didn’t grow any bigger.

  It had been ten minutes since we saw that the red dot was at London Victoria Station, which gave us hope that James’s journey was coming to an end and we could catch him up. But then the signal went dead, and we are left refreshing the page, praying that it will pop back up again when he emerges from the tube, if that is what has caused us to lose track of him for now.

  ‘Come on, where are you?’ Louise mutters under her breath as she double taps the mouse pad again. Even though the circumstances are far from ideal, I feel glad that she and I are spending some time together. At first, I was completely against the idea of Louise joining me as I went after James, not willing to risk her being in any more danger than she has already been in today. But she insisted on coming, and after all she has been through because of me, I could hardly say no. Besides, she seems to understand this technology on her laptop much better than I do, and the fact she is accessing the internet through something called a dongle is just more evidence of that. It helps to have her operating the laptop while I stare out of the window and think about what I will do if and when I am able to catch up with the man who stole from me.

  I have a plan, one that Louise helped me put together, but it isn’t without risk, and I’m not confident of its chance of success. But it’s the best one we could come up with in the limited time we had before we raced from the flat to the station, and we at least have this train journey to London to iron out the details.

  ‘’It’s so weird seeing you as a blonde,’ Louise says with an amused look on her face. I smile, which may be the first time I’ve done that since I realised the man on the train wasn’t flirting with me earlier. ‘I might have to borrow it for a night out sometime.’

  ‘You’re not old enough for a night out,’ I remind my daughter with a wry smile.

  She is referring to the wig I put over my dark hair before leaving the flat, which, along with my change of clothes and dark sunglasses, is part of the disguise I am wearing tonight for my potential encounter with James. It’s a similar disguise to the one that I wore for my escorting jobs, although this time I’m not wearing it just because I’m worried abou
t male clients trying to find me online after our dates.

  I’m wearing it because it’s my only way of getting close enough to James without him realising that something is wrong.

  I figured that James would most likely be aware of my appearance, either through his work with his partner as they followed me over the last few weeks or simply because he saw the photos of me around my flat when he visited Louise. Therefore, a disguise is in order if I want to get close to him without raising his suspicions. The plan Louise and I have come up with requires me to get very close to the thief, but I’m confident that my trusty escorting disguise and persona is going to help me do just that. The fact that my own daughter barely recognised me when I emerged from the bathroom after getting changed told me all I needed to know about how good a disguise it actually is. But that doesn’t mean it’s a comfortable one.

  ‘I hate this thing,’ I say as I fiddle with the wig for what must be the hundredth time since we boarded the train. ‘It’s so itchy.’

  ‘But you look hot,’ Louise says with a shrug, as if that is more important than comfort, which perhaps it is. ‘No wonder you made so much as an escort. Maybe I should give it a go.’

  ‘Don’t even think about it,’ I reply with a stern expression.

  ‘Well, hopefully, neither of us will have to do that after tonight,’ she says as she goes back to refreshing her laptop. ‘Aha!’ she cries suddenly. ‘I’ve got him! He’s at King’s Cross.’

  My daughter was right. James must have been on the tube. That explains how he got across the city so quickly.

  ‘Where do you think he is going?’ I ask again, even though there is no way for either of us to really know until we catch up with him.

  ‘I’m not sure. From King’s Cross, he could get a train to pretty much anywhere in the UK,’ Louise replies, and I’m afraid she is right.

  I wonder just how far from Brighton we are going to have to go tonight to try to catch him. But it doesn’t matter. I’ll go to the ends of the Earth to get back the things from my safe if I have to.

  ‘Unless…’ Louise says, thinking out loud.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, it’s not just trains to parts of the UK that go from there,’ Louise says, and a wave of nausea comes over me as I realise that she is right. St Pancras Station is right beside King’s Cross, and from that particular station, he could get a train into Europe.

  ‘The Eurostar,’ I say dejectedly.

  Louise nods.

  ‘Will we be able to track him on this if he goes abroad?’ I ask my daughter.

  ‘I’m not sure. I don’t know if it works overseas.’

  ‘Shit,’ I say, because that’s about the best word to sum up the situation right now.

  I turn to look back out of the window, silently cursing this train driver and the speed at which we are going. We’re going fast, of course, but it isn’t quick enough, especially not if the man we are chasing is preparing to board a train out of the country.

  ‘We’re going to get him, Mum,’ Louise says to me after a moment of silence between us.

  ‘Yeah,’ I reply, nodding my head, more for her benefit than my own. ‘We’re going to get him.’

  But I don’t feel any better for saying it. That’s because after all the bad luck I have had in my life, I don’t believe a single word of it.

  42

  JAMES

  I hate waiting. I feel as if it’s what I’ve spent most of my day doing so far. Waiting for the right time to call around at Louise’s flat. Waiting for the safe code. And now finally, waiting for the train that will take me out of England and help me leave behind the women I stole from and the partner I screwed over in the process.

  I just want to get moving. I hate inaction. But there is still twenty minutes until the Eurostar is due to depart, so for the time being, I’m stuck here in this departures lounge with the rest of the passengers who are waiting to go to Amsterdam.

  It’s not that I’m nervous about being caught before I can flee the country. My chances of being stopped now are slim, mainly because I’m moving so fast that I’ll be long gone before anyone can catch up with me. I suspect my partner is still sitting in that pub on the Brighton seafront, and while he has surely figured out by now that he has been double-crossed, he will have no idea where I am and how to stop me. Our plan was to board the Eurostar to Paris tomorrow morning, so perhaps he thinks he will be able to catch me at this station then. But he’ll be disappointed when he doesn’t see me here because I’ll be long gone by then.

  Looking down at the rucksack by my feet, I long to unzip it and take another look at the contents. All that money just waiting to be spent. I’m going to have some serious fun with it soon, but this is not the time to draw any attention to myself. Right now, I just need to look like a normal English tourist heading to Holland for some fun.

  I glance up at the screen above my head to double-check that the service is still running on time, which it is, before I plan to close my eyes and have a moment’s rest after what has been an eventful day. But the vibration from my mobile phone in my pocket disrupts me, and I take it out to see that it’s my partner calling me again. He’s already tried me several times, as well as having sent me a series of text messages, but they have all gone unanswered, just like this one will. I’m tempted to just turn my phone off, but then he will know for sure that I’ve screwed him—leaving it on at least makes it plausible that I’m currently distracted and unable to get back to him. The longer he is uncertain about what I have done to him, the better, and the text message that flashes up on my phone now confirms that he still has no idea what I am up to.

  “Where are you? I’m getting worried. Can you still make it to the pub?”

  I smile at my partner’s naivete and feel tempted to text back that I’m on my way. But I don’t want to play with him too much. The poor man will be suffering enough once he learns that all his hard work following Amanda over the last weeks has gone to waste, as well as everything that he went through on that train with her today. But I don’t feel bad for him. Not one bit. That’s because I know he can be equally as ruthless as I am being right now. I learnt that in prison when I watched him stand by as a fellow inmate whom he called a friend was beaten by several other prisoners, and he did nothing to step in and help. There is a cold streak beneath that slick persona of his, and I have no doubt that he would have looked to screw me over at the first opportunity at some point in the future if I didn’t get in there first.

  Nor do I feel sorry for Christine, my ex-girlfriend, who kindly offered me a place to stay upon my release from prison, only for me to ditch her and disappear while she slept. She’s not a bad person, but she’s hardly a winner, and I can’t hope to go far in life taking somebody like her along for the ride. That’s why I sneaked out of her flat this afternoon while she was asleep, stuffing the few belongings I had into my rucksack and heading round to Louise’s to put the plan into action. Christine has probably woken up by now and realised that my stuff has gone, and she probably feels hurt that I used her, but she’ll get over it, just like my partner will. Besides, she’s no saint either. I know she’s been stealing money from that casino she works at, and the only reason I didn’t try to get a piece of that action was because the potential profit was too small. She’s happy skimming a few pounds here and there from her employers, but I need so much more than that to make it worth my time. That’s why she’s still stuck in that grotty flat in Brighton with a few pounds to her name, and I’m about to board a train to Amsterdam with thousands of pounds to mine.

  That just leaves Louise as the other person I have betrayed today. Unlike my partner and Christine, as far as I know, she has never been guilty of a crime and so probably doesn’t deserve what I have done to her and her mother. She’s just a typical teenager, unsure of her path in life and thinking that every guy that shows an interest in her is doing so because he loves her. I’ll have taught her several important lessons today, the most important
one of which is that she shouldn’t trust anybody, and that even extends to her mother, who clearly had way more money saved in that safe than she had been letting on.

  What does Amanda think about what has happened today? Does she blame me and my partner for undoing all her hard work in saving that money? Does she blame her daughter for giving me this opportunity to steal from her? Or does she just blame herself for not being strong enough to keep the code to that safe a secret, even if it cost her daughter her life?

  I guess I’ll never know. But one thing is for sure.

  Amanda is just as pathetic as the rest of them.

  43

  AMANDA

  It’s a relief to be out of the tunnels of the London Underground and back in the fresh air again and not just because it was so crowded down there. It’s because Louise is able to get a Wi-Fi connection again now that we are above ground, and that means we are able to check on James’s location.

  After a brief moment of holding my breath while the laptop screen refreshes, I see the red dot again. Louise’s phone is still at this station.

  That means James is here.

  But that doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy to find him. King’s Cross and St Pancras are two of the busiest stations in the country. There are thousands of people rushing all around us right now, going in and out of the station.

  Commuters. Tourists. Locals.

  So many faces.

  How are we ever going to find the one we need?

  ‘Is there any way of narrowing it down a little?’ I ask Louise as she holds the laptop in front of her and tries to get a more precise location on her phone.

  ‘I think this is as good as it gets,’ she replies. ‘My phone is definitely in the station somewhere, but it’s not accurate enough to show me the exact place.’