Martin Dash

by Andy Bailey

  Martin just shrugged his shoulders.

  “You travel light, don’t you, Darling?” Susan ruffled his hair indulgently. It was so soft. Maisie looked on.

  “Well, do you need a hand? I could come and help you?” Susan offered.

  Martin sat up and thought. “Well, yes, that would be useful actually. Thanks.”

  “Useful . . .” Maisie shook her head in despair.

  “I’ve got to meet the agent at the apartment at 10:00 tomorrow morning, sign some papers; he’s going to give me the keys; then I’d planned on getting the Tube back up to mine, fill the car and drive it back down.”

  “OK, I’ll meet you at the apartment then. What’s the address?”

  “Fatima Mansions on Valhalla Avenue, Flat 3.”

  13.

  It had been raining earlier but those heavy, black clouds had exited the stage now to be replaced with smaller, fluffier, whiter cousins, drifting along in clumps rather than gangs, so the sun was now coming out periodically to blaze away and shrink the damp circles on the pavement below. Susan was looking down onto the street through the window of Martin’s new flat. She felt excited for him. The place was lovely, with big rooms, pale wood floors, all modern furniture provided – everything new – and, as Martin stood behind her with the agent at the breakfast bar, signing papers, taking the keys, shaking hands, she let herself imagine for a moment that they were a normal couple, starting out on a new adventure, getting their first place together, planning for the future. As she turned back from the window, he glanced up and they both smiled, the agent smiled – another satisfied customer, another commission cheque in the bank – and took his leave.

  “What do you think?” asked Martin, when the agent had left.

  “It’s lovely” she said, swivelling her gaze around the room. “How did you find it? Must be expensive.”

  “No, it’s not too bad – you’d be surprised. The rents on these sorts of places are coming down now.”

  “Yes, everything’s coming down, isn’t it – what do you think’s going to happen?”

  “Who knows.”

  “Well, you can’t be blasé about it Martin, we could end up out of our jobs. Well, some of us – I imagine the partners will look after each other” – a sly little dig, which Martin laughed off.

  “No, but seriously, do you think it’ll be as bad as they’re saying?”

  “Oh, it’ll go down. Then back up again. Then back down – that’s how it works. You’ve just got to keep ducking and diving.”

  “Is that what you do? – duck and dive?” Susan was in a teasing mood, but playful.

  “Yeah, float like a butterfly.”

  “And sting like a bee . . .”

  “Right, that’s it – enough badinage,” he laughed. “Let’s go and get my stuff.”

  “The closest Tube is High Street Ken isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, we can change at Monument to get on the Northern Line up to Angel.”

  14.

  As they sat on the bench on the eastbound platform at High Street Kensington Underground Station, they chatted while they waited for their next train. Martin was telling Susan of Barry’s antics in a recent meeting with the planners on his new development in Richmond and, once again, Susan marvelled at how well Martin dealt with his condition, really. The more she had looked into it online, the more she had noticed that Martin was an unusual case study.

  The condition was usually described as a clinical symptom in depression with most sufferers having an incredibly flat mood and major difficulties with motivation and yet here was Martin blossoming in a great job, finding his way in the big city, collecting the keys to a fine new apartment

  'And chatting happily to his beautiful girlfriend,' a mischievous little voice piped up in her head, which made her smirk to herself.

  “What are you smiling at?” Martin had noticed and interrupted his story.

  “Oh nothing – carry on.”

  “OK, well . . .” Martin carried on and Susan glanced around the scene as she listened.

  The sun was really out now with a vengeance declared against the black rain that had been sent scurrying to the hills in defeat. This part of the station was overground and its customers were now being warmed by the bright radiance of the morning rays.

  Susan preferred these parts of the Tube to the dark caves of the rest of the network. Many of the overground stations were built over a hundred years before and the original styling was often still intact so that, as Susan sat looking up towards the ticket office and exit – watching the travellers scurrying through the ticket hall and the flower seller standing with his red carnations, pink chrysanthemums, and yellow and white daffodils against the ochre bricks of the station wall – she could trace the black ironwork of the railing panels ascending up the steps; the shaped curlicues decorating the canopy edges overhanging the platforms; and the bright red and green painted doors and windows of the ticket office and toilets. The scene might have been transplanted from a hundred years before at the inception of the mighty network that now criss-crossed the sprawling metropolis, with travellers in bowler hats and tight buttoned-up suits, swaying pleated skirts and jaunty bonnets.

  Then Susan became aware that Martin had stopped talking very suddenly and, now looking at his face, she saw something she had never seen in Martin during the whole 14 months she had known him: an emotion. And the emotion was fear, pure and simple.

  He had stopped talking, mid-sentence, and his entire frame had frozen rigid. Plain to see in his features and demeanour was a frantic battle for supremacy between hyper-alert animal instinct and terrorised blind panic. But it was his eyes that told you what was going on. They had clearly locked onto something that had shocked him to the core and was now absolutely monopolising his attention and holding him like a starship tractor beam pulsing fear data into him and drawing the life force back out of him.

  Susan swung her head to follow the line of his sight and immediately she saw that it was fixed on a man sat on a platform bench directly opposite them, on the other side of the tracks. This man was staring directly at Martin with a look that could equally be for an enemy as for a friend.

  He appeared to be a similar age to Martin, with curly sandy hair; freckles carried over from his youth; eyes that simultaneously threatened and implored and a mouth that looked lively but was now very still. He looked to be a good height and naturally slim but was by now clearly working on the beginning of a paunch that was only going one way. His outfit comprised a rather loud brown and green check sports jacket, tangerine shirt, dark blue chinos and camel loafers.

  In short: 'Dodgy', thought Susan.

  From the look of horror on Martin’s face, you would have imagined that we were looking upon a cat with a bird pinned under its claws but there wasn’t that degree of dominance in the gaze that was cast upon Martin – he was staring without inhibition but also without a fixity of purpose. In short, Martin could have been afraid as much of what the guy represented as of who he was.

  But it was the fact that Martin appeared afraid at all that was unnerving Susan rather than the threat that 'Dodgy' might actually represent.

  “Martin, what is it?” she asked. He didn’t appear to hear her.

  “Who is that man?” she hissed, trying not to motion in his direction.

  Her words now pulled Martin’s face round to look at her and, as he did so, a realisation broke his trance that Susan had seen him in that state and was now questioning him. He had trouble both sides. Susan watched this pass across his features and now their eyes locked. That decadent face never looked so beautiful as it did now, thought Susan.

  He knew what she was asking him.

  But he couldn’t answer.

  He dropped his eyes and then his head lowered and she knew that something had happened.

  Martin angled his face back to look across to the opposite platform again to see that the onlooker had swivelled his gaze to Susan and a none-too-innocent smirk now played aro
und his mouth, which Susan caught too.

  The two men then did something so totally in unison, it might have been choreographed. Further down each platform (to Martin’s right and the onlooker’s left) a wide flight of steps led from each platform up to the gantry concourse that ran at right angles to, and overlooked, the tracks below. These provided the access between the platforms and the ticket hall and station exit beyond and, therefore, the means of access to get from one platform to another. The two men looked simultaneously to the set of steps from their own platform and, again simultaneously, back to each other.

  “I’ve got to go,” croaked Martin in a voice that, again, seemed changed to Susan. Just as Martin grabbed his bag and stood up from his bench, she saw the same motion on the opposite platform and both men started for their steps in an increasingly hurried fashion.

  Susan’s head involuntarily jerked backwards and she mouthed a 'What?!' without actually saying it. As she had a grandstand view of the two men running up their respective set of steps, a certain inertia disinclined her to follow on, at least immediately. She had perhaps imagined that, from her vantage point, she would have the best view of the two of them meeting but hadn’t accounted for the fact that the parapet of the gantry directly above the train tracks between the two platforms was actually rather high – no doubt to frustrate the foolhardy and the depressed alike – so that, from where her bench was located (not far from the steps), she couldn’t actually see up and over it to where the two men would have met after they had scaled their respective steps. If they had, in fact, met . . . what if one had chased the other out through the exit (and, if so, who would have been doing the running away . . ?)

  So she lost them – at least she lost sight of them – but she was able to hear one thing: just a second after they both turned out of view at the top of the steps she heard Martin’s voice – again, strangely animated – shout “Michael !”

  She realised all of a sudden that she ought to get up to that concourse and so grabbed her bag and set off. This was the third person the other travellers had seen jump from a seat and career up the steps in dramatic fashion and so, given the less-than-gratifying experience of some underground users reported by the slavering media over the years (preyed upon by terrorism, fire and faulty switchwork), a number were now looking nervously around and up and down like meerkats at a speedway, wondering whether they should be doing the same.

  At the top of the steps she looked this way and that but there was no sign of either man. Out through the barrier onto the bustling street . . . but they had gone.

  Her bearings were lost but a feeling was gained of things now never being the same again.

  15.

  But, come the Monday morning, it was just the same again, or at least appeared to be so. She had tried to catch up with Martin over the weekend but to no avail. Straight away after the Tube station incident, she had tried his mobile but it went straight to voicemail. So she tried completing the journey they’d been on when they were so dramatically separated, back onto the Tube up to the Angel and stood ringing the bell on the door of his house.

  This was a Georgian townhouse split into three flats – basement, ground floor and upper – with a common hallway behind the street door to the entrances to all three and Martin occupied the middle of these, with a lounge window that looked out onto the street but also had net curtains to frustrate those outside who wished to have sight of those inside.

  So she rang the bells for the other two flats. No answer from upstairs but a Dalek voice answered the basement bell with a curt “Hello?” It was Sean, one half of a gay couple that Susan had met once or twice when passing in and out of Martin’s flat. She apologised profusely and explained that she was concerned about their upstairs neighbour but she realised fairly quickly that she would be getting no help from that quarter: hardened city-dwellers like Sean and Ray knew better than to open the door to the first person ringing the bell after a domestic row.

  On the Sunday, having – again – got no response on the phone, she had gone back to the Kensington apartment but, once more, no-one was home.

  So, come the Monday morning, she was all fired up and ready to give it to Martin with both barrels. How dare he abandon her like that? Why didn’t he answer her calls? Who the hell was that guy?

  But she was temporarily denied. When she arrived at the office, Martin was already in a meeting ‘upstairs’ that lasted through till 11 o’clock, by which time she’d been required to go to the City to see a new client Vanessa had pushed her way. And when she returned late in the afternoon, Martin had apparently gone off somewhere with Gerry and was not expected back.

  Finally, she got a text from Martin later that evening: “Sorry about the weekend, Susan. I’m still with Gerry at the moment and out in the morning but let’s go for lunch and I’ll explain?”

  Susan texted back: “You’d better !”

  16.

  The next day, Martin and Susan sat together at a table near the back of The Range, a bistro recently opened around the corner from the office, with pink flamingos painted on jungle green walls, serving light bites to the stressed execs of the surrounding reserve.

  Susan was looking for clues on her immutable quarry, signs that the Tube incident might have left its mark on the smooth sheen of the Dash countenance. The passage of a day at work had served to calm her somewhat – if she’d have got hold of Martin during the Monday, there would have been more of the bad cop to his grilling than the slightly more forgiving interrogator that now sat before him. Now, her injured pride at being cast aside in such a manner had begun to give way to an overwhelming curiosity to find out (a) who it was that had spooked him and (b) how come he could feel so spooked anyway?

  She scrutinised him. On the face of it, things appeared as normal with Martin – he had been his usual gentlemanly self when they met at the restaurant, kissed her on the cheek and squeezed her hand – but she sensed that, underneath the façade, something had changed in him and she was trying to calculate the best strategy for teasing the truth out of him.

  Interestingly, he was also not wearing his work suit: still smart – russet brown jacket, cream shirt, pale blue jeans and pebble-grain leather Derby shoes – but more the outfit of a successful Hollywood film producer than a top-draw City lawyer. But she decided to get to that later. First there was the immediate business.

  “So who – or what – is Michael?” Straight in, feet first.

  Martin looked momentarily startled.

  “I heard you shout his name.”

  Susan could see him casting his mind back to the Tube station. To re-check his story. And then –

  “Michael Green.”

  “Michael Green?”

  “Michael Green.”

  “And who is Michael Green?”

  “He’s someone I knew from years ago.”

  “A friend?”

  An involuntary laugh escaped from him. Again, very un-Martin-like. Then he deadpanned: “No, not a friend; more of a . . . stalker really.”

  “A stalker?!” Susan was wide-eyed. “He stalked you?”

  “Yes, I got a court order against him eventually.”

  “Wha . . . where was this?”

  “In Lewes, a couple of years after my parents died.”

  “Oh Martin, you poor thing,” Susan thought of him all alone at 18, having his parents die on him and then having to go through that; her heart melted and she reached over to take his hand. Martin smiled a wan smile.

  “But stalking? Why?” and then she started to think of what he was talking about. “You mean he . . ?”

  “He was after me, basically. He was a bit of a thug – worse than that, in fact; came from a real criminal family, they were well known in the area. And it turned out he was a homosexual and he propositioned me.”

  Susan was agog but managed to say: “And you turned him down?”

  “Yes . . ." Martin gave her a quizzical look which made Susan realise what she'd asked. But s
he just shrugged.

  He returned to the story: "Anyway, that's when the trouble started. He didn’t take kindly to it. Started coming round my house at nights, harassing me, chucking bricks through the windows. Said he was going to kill me. Burn the house down.”

  “Unbelievable !”

  “Well, the police did get involved eventually. Warned him off and arrested him a couple of times and, finally, I got the court order which is basically indefinite and says he must never be within 500 metres of me.”

  “Is that why he ran when he saw you?”

  Martin huffed, “I’m not sure he’s that bothered about it – he breached it once or twice before, nearly went to jail. And I’m not sure he was running to get away at the Tube.”

  “You mean he was coming to get you?” Susan was horrified at the thought. And then she puzzled a bit more – “Well, what were you doing, Martin? Running away? Because I heard you shout after him.”

  “I don’t quite know what I was doing. I think partly I was trying to get him away from you . . . to protect you.”

  Martin was now looking straight at Susan but, not for the first time, she was left wondering what the hell was going on behind those eyes.

  “Martin, I saw your face when you first spotted that guy and you looked . . . terrified. I’ve never seen you display such . . . emotion before.” The word was loaded.

  “Just because I am how I am, doesn’t mean I can’t be concerned about things. To be motivated to act !”

  “Really?”

  “Yes . . . it’s more of a . . . heightened concern really.”

  “For me?”

  “Well, yes, you’re my . . . friend.” He was now even beginning to appear somewhat indignant – this was getting interesting.

  “So, what happened when you got to the top of those steps?”

  “He’d moved quicker than me and was disappearing out of the exit when I saw him.”