Then he was gone. She stood in the corridor and stared upward, scared her pursuer would still follow – there was a scuffle up there, then a cry, and finally the sound of squealing brakes as the last southbound train was brought to a sudden halt. An alarm sounded and she blanched, knowing what had happened. She just didn’t know to whom. A shadow moved at the top of the stairs, and she saw a man’s silhouette against the lights of the incoming train – a tall figure in a long, dark coat; a hat obscuring his features. He seemed to look down at her, just for a moment, and then he was gone.
Now staff arrived. She found herself shouldered to one side as guards ran up the stairs, and a very nervous young man tapped her arm, tried to shepherd her back towards the ticket offices, and the way out. “If you’d come this way, Miss …”
She nodded, and allowed herself to be led. From behind her came the unmistakable sound of someone throwing up.
As she walked into the office next morning, chatter stilled – she saw heads turn as she passed by, eyes drop as she sought to engage them and find out what was so interesting. Then she saw her boss, George Burrows, appear at his door and beckon her into his office, and her heart sank.
“If I could have a word, Miss Lane,” he said, and stood back to allow her entrance.
She nodded and swept past him, trying to ignore the nervous muttering that swelled behind her.
He followed her in and indicated the chair opposite his, and waited until they were both seated before he continued. “I’m surprised to see you in this morning,” he said, his tone kind.
“You are?”
“You’ve been up most of the night, after all,” he went on. He registered the incomprehension on her face and smiled. “This is a newspaper, Emily, surely you realised we’d hear of a death on the line?”
Realisation dawned, and Emily was embarrassed. “I didn’t think. I mean, I knew you’d hear about the body on the line, I just didn’t connect the fact you’d find out I was on scene, as it were.”
“You’re tired, of course,” George said. “There’s no reason for you to be up to speed with the office at this hour.” He pressed a button on his intercom and spoke to his secretary. “Can you bring those files in, please, Carole?”
The door opened almost immediately, and Carole swept in with a manila folder clutched to her frail chest, tattered pieces of paper creeping from its edges. She smiled at Emily, before a “humph” from George dissolved her grin and sent her scuttling back to her desk.
George opened the file, and took out various clippings – placing them side by side on the desk before her. “You’re not the first one, you see.”
“I’m not the first one…? I’m not following you.”
He tapped the clippings, impatient now. “Look! It’s right there, see?” He sighed at her confused expression, and sat back. “I wouldn’t be a million miles from the truth if I said you were about to be attacked before this happened, am I right?”
Emily stared. “How…?”
“Look at the clippings,” he said. “There have been a number of instances of ‘phantom rescues’ over the years; yours is just the latest.”
“Phantom what?” Emily laughed. “I’m sorry, but just because I got the willies late at night on a train platform doesn’t mean I was attacked.”
“What were you scared of? Last night, on the platform?”
Emily laughed. “It sounds stupid now, but I thought someone was following me.”
“And you felt threatened, yes?” George was bending forward now, his hands clasped in front of him, a finger on his lips.
Emily nodded. “Of course. A woman on her own, late at night, no one around … and someone’s walking behind you, at the same pace as you, speeding up when you do…” She stopped, spooked all over again, her mind back with the events of the previous night, the man’s heavy footsteps catching up with her own, each heel tap accompanied by a deeper echo …
“Of course.” George sat back, satisfied he was right. “And then someone appeared, out of the night, and saved you.”
“He saved me from falling, I suppose,” she conceded, “but I hadn’t actually been attacked, had I. I just got scared.”
George shook his head. “I believe you were about to be attacked, and if you’re honest,” here he stared at her over his half-rim glasses, his expression serious, “so do you.”
Emily attempted a smile, but failed miserably. “Because it’s happened before, right?”
“That’s right,” he said, and nodded. “Read the clippings.”
The clippings were of varying age, she saw, from issues of the paper as far back as the 1970s. All told similar tales – a young girl leaving the station late at night, complaining of a sense of being followed – a man attempting to catch up with them. All the girls had been grabbed at the head of the stairs (she’d been lucky, she realised, to get down them without being caught) and pulled towards the darkened waiting room. So far, so unsurprising. The odd fact was that, in each case, the girl concerned spoke of the smell of pipe smoke, and strong arms wrestling them away from their attackers … and a brief glimpse of a manly shape in a long dark overcoat with square shoulders and a hat, brim down over the eyes, as it descended upon their assailant; a style that had been old-fashioned enough to stand out, even then.
Stapled behind each of these clippings was a shorter article from the following day – a tale of a body on the tracks, no sign of a struggle. One girl had seen her rescuer fall onto the line alongside her attacker, and screamed until help came – but the railway workers thus summoned only found the body of her attacker; there was no trace of anyone else having been at the scene.
She placed the clippings back in the folder, congratulating herself on the fact that the shaking in her fingers was almost imperceptible, and let out a breath. “They can’t all be the same.”
“And yet the similarities just keep stacking up.”
“Someone’s exaggerating, making things up.”
George sat forward, frowning. “That doesn’t track though, Emily, does it. Different people, different times … yet all tell of a man in a coat and hat.”
“Doesn’t have to be the same man,” Emily pointed out.
“I’ll grant you that in the forties a lot of men wore dark coats and hats,” he said. “But what about since then? And all of them smelled of pipe tobacco?”
“Lots of people smoke,” she tried … but she could see George already shaking his head.
“Not pipes,” he said, sighing. “It’s a very different smell, as you know. And besides, not that many people smoke anymore, compared to then. I mean, look at films – in the seventies everyone was doing it. Not these days, though; these days if a character in a movie smokes, he’s usually a baddie.”
Emily had no answers. “I didn’t really see anyone,” she said. “Just felt his arms, and smelled the tobacco.”
“So you do admit it was tobacco and not a fag you smelled?”
“I have to, don’t I,” she said. “It was Dad’s brand, Old Holborn.”
“And the man was wearing a long coat, and a hat, just like the other times?”
Emily nodded. “I don’t know what kind of hat, though … the name, I mean. It was like those old films – with that actor Dad loved. James Mason.”
George laughed. “God, that’s right – he did, didn’t he?”
Emily stared out at her colleagues; all staring in, amazed he was laughing. “George, they’re looking.”
He frowned again, but the corners of his mouth were twitching, and Emily knew he’d be laughing again before long. He and Dad had been two of a kind that way, and she felt his loss all the more keenly when she was with her uncle.
“All right, lass,” he said. “Best get out there and investigate this, eh? We wouldn’t want everyone knowing the cub reporter’s my favourite niece.”
She smiled, then scraped her chair back and stood up. Leaning forward to pick up the files she whispered, “Can I come and see you and Auntie
Ann on Sunday?”
“Course you can,” he said. “Can’t see you doing a roast, somehow.”
She grinned and held the files tight as she turned, forcing herself to look serious. “See you then, then.”
Two hours later, poring over the files she’d found in the paper’s archives, Emily was forced to admit George had been right. East Finchley station had, over the years, been prey to a number of these incidents – the earliest one she’d found had happened in October of 1972 when a seventeen year old girl had been coming home from a day visiting family in Camden Town. She’d been followed as she got off the train, and grabbed before she reached the stairs leading down to the exit. The only witness had been a middle-aged man in a black overcoat and a grey hat, who’d shouted for help and run to her aid. The two men had scuffled, and in the melée the girl had been thrown to the floor. She’d struggled to her knees just in time to see the older man grab her attacker as he made for her once more, knife in hand. In the struggle, both men had apparently overbalanced and fallen on to the tracks, into the path of an oncoming train. Both had died almost instantly.
No one had listened to the victim’s protestations that her saviour hadn’t fallen; he’d pulled her attacker down onto the tracks, and held him there as the train bore down on both of them. Emily didn’t believe it either; who would willingly go to their own death, when all they’d had to do, really, was knock the attacker down and pin him there until help arrived – which in a staffed underground station shouldn’t have taken more than a minute or two?
She spent another hour going through various other reports from over the years, but none seemed to quite fit the facts of what she’d been told by her uncle. There was a long and dispiriting list of the usual muggings, fights and accidents – some resulting in death, others in injury – none of these mentioned the man in the hat and overcoat.
Looking at the clock, Emily was surprised to see it was almost four o’clock; she hadn’t even taken a lunch break, or had a coffee. No wonder she felt sick.
A shadow appeared at her left side and, looking up, she saw her uncle there, frowning again. “Any progress?”
She shook her head. “Not much; the usual list of violence – brawls, attacks, not much else.” She reached into the hanging drawer on her right and drew out her handbag. “Do you mind if I go home a bit early? I’ve got a thumping headache.”
“I’m not surprised,” he answered. “You haven’t left your desk all day, and you can’t have got much sleep last night.” He started to walk back to his office. “Go home, get some rest, but clear your desk first.”
She nodded. “I will. Thank you.”
“Bright and early tomorrow, mind,” he called. “And I’ll expect some progress tomorrow, alright?”
She groaned. She knew she’d better have something he could run by the end of the next day, but had no idea what to write. She trudged towards the exit, shoulders bowed. She’d worry about that later.
Twenty minutes later she was sitting on a train, heading back towards East Finchley. She glanced at her watch, and was comforted to find it was only four thirty. There should be plenty of people about when she reached her destination.
Sure enough, she hit the beginning of the rush hour, and East Finchley was teeming with people as she got off the tube and headed for the stairs. She couldn’t help being over-cautious, jumping when anyone got too close – which earned her more than a few dodgy looks from people who couldn’t decide if she was on drugs, drunk or just plain crazy. She was starting to think they might have a point – perhaps she was mad, after all. As she turned left at the bottom of the stairs, heading towards the ticket barrier and the High Road, she caught a glimpse of a hat. A very old-fashioned hat that looked uncomfortably familiar. The crowds parted and she saw that the hat belonged to an elderly gentleman, being buffeted towards her by the evening tide of commuters.
She stood back to let him pass, earning herself a few choice comments in the process, but she didn’t care – he looked worried enough without being accosted by a loon of a woman demanding to know where he’d got his hat.
Keeping her head down so she didn’t find herself getting into even more trouble, she made her way out to the High Road and hopped on a bus heading towards North Finchley. Twenty minutes later, she was letting herself into her flat above a shop just off Tally Ho Corner, trying not to fall over the cat winding its way between her feet and purring. “Come on, puss,” she said, nudging the animal gently with her toe. The cat jumped and started off towards the kitchen. Emily laughed as she followed, shedding her jacket onto the bannisters as she followed. “You’ve got me right where you want me, don’t you?”
Later, dinner cooked and eaten, cat fed and watered, Emily found herself channel-hopping as she thought over the events of the previous twenty-four hours. She felt such a fraud – it wasn’t as if the man at the station the previous night had actually attacked her, after all. She’d been scared, yes, and he might well have tried to drag her off if the man in the hat hadn’t …
Hadn’t what, exactly?
She’d felt someone. She had. The feel of his body as he pulled her upright and the smell of pipe smoke that rose from his damp wool coat; she couldn’t have imagined that. She examined her arms, and was a little surprised to find no trace of his clasp. He’d hauled her to her feet; surely there should be a mark? Something to show the strength of his grip? Whoever had been following her had definitely felt his strength – her rescuer had swept him off the platform to his death. Hadn’t he?
She tried to focus on the TV screen before her, aware she’d just missed something important. Offering up a silent prayer of thanks to the great god Sky Plus, she picked up the remote and rewound. The local news was on, and a reporter was standing outside East Finchley station, microphone in hand, with a suitably solemn expression on his face. He was reporting the apparent suicide of a young man the previous night – a Warren Lytton, nineteen years old, a history of minor problems with the police; a couple of mugging convictions that seemed to consist more of aggravated shoving than outright violence, no one had been hurt, shoplifting … nothing too sinister.
Someone just off camera was shouting, and Emily strained to hear what was being said. No use; whoever it was had been pushed out of range of the microphone, and all she could make out was raised voices. A female voice, shouting, and more voices speaking in a conciliatory tone. The reporter stopped speaking, and in the silence that followed Emily heard quite clearly: “My boy wouldn’t kill himself! He wouldn’t do that!” The report cut back to the studio, and the newscaster shaking his head in disapproval.
Emily turned the TV off, her stomach churning. She ran for the bathroom and just made it in time before she doubled over and lost her supper. She sank to the floor, shaking, and wiped the sweat from her face. So it was being labelled a suicide. Perhaps it even had been, who was she to say? She couldn’t help feeling a sense of relief that it was over – she’d been dreading more questions by the police. They’d been lovely to her, calming her down and taking her home – but no one had taken her story of the man in the hat seriously, that was obvious. She supposed in the absence of any sign of someone else at the scene they’d had no choice – no one else had even seen him.
She found herself crying, and rubbed her face clean of tears. She would not let this get to her. It was done, and she could move on now. She’d file a piece in the morning about the suicide, and that would be the end of it.
She smelled pipe smoke, and flashed back to the tunnel – she had seen him, she knew. So why had no one else?
The next morning found her at her desk bright and early, typing up the report of Warren Lytton’s apparent suicide – she felt someone standing beside her and looked up to see George, reading the copy as she typed it.
“What about the attack?” he asked.
Emily shrugged. “What can I say? There’s no record of anyone else being seen at the station at that time, just this guy. Who knows? Maybe he slipped off th
e platform running away.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“No,” she answered. “I don’t. But I don’t want to look like an idiot, or crazy.”
He said nothing.
“Would you?” she pushed.
George stared at her for a long moment before nodding. “Fair enough.” Then he was gone.
Emily sat, nonplussed, not entirely sure from their exchange whether she should go ahead and file the piece or not. Gradually the office started to fill up, chatter replacing the peace of a few moments before; not making things any easier to focus on. Someone laughed and she whirled round, the voice familiar, but no one seemed to be responsible – most of her colleagues were by now seated at their desks, concentrating on the monitors in front of them.
She tried to work out why the laugh was familiar, but to no avail – it had been a man’s voice, of that she was sure; probably an older man, but no one in her immediate area fitted that description.
Her nostrils filled with the scent of Old Holborn and tears welled up as she thought of her father; she’d loved to sit on his lap as a child, and this smell brought her back to those days in an instant. Yet no one around her was smoking.
She gave up, and sent her article to her editor, then closed the screen down. She needed some air.
As she left the building, someone jostled her, and as she automatically apologised she realised this was no accident. Her attacker’s mother stood before her, her expression furious. Emily glanced back over her shoulder to see if anyone was on hand to help should it be necessary, but she was on her own.
“Excuse me,” she said, and moved to side-step the woman.
Mrs Lytton, however, was having none of this. She stepped in front of Emily once more, her eyes narrowed.
In Times Of Want Page 12
