An open exterior door, night-time countryside rushing past. Someone falling from the train, breaking against a gravel verge. And someone coming for her, from behind.
If that was a few pages ahead, she’d rather fold the corner at the end of this chapter, put the book on her bedside table and never open it again. But that wasn’t how the world worked.
Arnold came with her second gimlet. This one she sipped.
“Perfect,” she told the conductor, suppressing shivers.
II
Annette’s recovery impressed Richard. Two gimlets and a nip to her compartment to fix her face, and she was set. Her strings were notches too tight, but so were anyone else’s. She flirted, presumably on instinct, flitting among her colleagues, seeming to offer equal time. Only Richard noticed he was getting marginally more serious attention than Harry Cutley or Danny Myles. She already knew them but needed to puzzle out the new boy, fix him in her mind the way Harry fixed names, by rolling him around, pinching and fluffing, testing reactions. Which, as ever, were warm and, he thought, horribly obvious.
Harry sourly made shorthand notes in his folder.
The frightening vicar gently enquired as to the lady’s condition. Annette said she was fine, and he retreated, satisfied. Richard still wondered if the man was faking his aura. His killer’s hands seemed made to be gloved in someone else’s blood.
Standing nearby, Annette was carefully not looking at the communication cord. Of course. Anyone who travelled by train knew that imp of the perverse which popped up at the sight of a PENALTY FOR IMPROPER USE – £5.00 notice – pull the chain, see what happens, go on, you know you want to. On the Scotch Streak, the imp was a bullying, nagging elemental.
Annette felt Richard’s lapel between thumb and forefinger.
“Real,” she said. “Sometimes I can’t tell any more.”
He didn’t know where to put his hands.
“Put the boy down, Annie,” said Harry. “Come fill in this Incident Form. Since you’re convinced you were assaulted, we must have a first-person account before memories fade.”
She shuddered and joined Harry. He gave her a sheet of paper and a pencil, which she proceeded to use as if sitting an exam, producing neat, concise notations in the spaces provided.
Danny Myles sat at the piano, fingers tapping the closed lid. His bruises were rising. He smiled, did a little two-finger Gene Krupa solo on the polished wood.
“Me next, you think?” Richard asked.
Myles lifted his shoulders.
“Watch your back, Jack.”
The carriage windows were ebony mirrors. If Richard got close to the glass and strained, he could make out the rushing countryside. A late supper would soon be served in the dining carriage. The train didn’t stop until Edinburgh, at half-past one; then, after a twenty-minute layover, it would continue to Portnacreirann, arriving with the dawn.
The overnight express felt more like an ocean liner than a train. Safe harbour was left behind and they were alone on the vast, deep sea.
Though they had compartments, none of them would sleep.
Richard took out his father’s watch, checked it against the clock above the connecting door. He had ten past nine, the train clock had ten to. He’d wound the watch at Euston, setting the time against the big station clock.
Myles saw what he was doing, rolled his sleeve back and felt a glassless watch – a holdover from his blind days. “Stopped, man,” he said. “Dead on the vine. Seven seven and seven seconds. That’s a panic and a half.”
“I won’t have one of those things,” said Annette, looking up from her form. “Little ticking tyrants.”
“Prof?” Myles prompted Harry.
Harry pulled a travel clock out of a baggy pocket and held it next to his wrist-watch.
“Eight thirty-two. Ten-o’-six.”
“Want to take a stab at which is the real deal?” asked Magic Fingers.
They all looked at the train clock, ticking towards supper time.
“What I thought,” said the jazzman.
Harry Cutley riffled through his folder and dug out more forms. He handed them out. Myles got on with it, turning out a polished paragraph. Richard simply wrote down “WATCH FAST”.
“Perhaps now you’ll stay away from mechanical instruments and rely on people,” said Annette. “You know clocks run irregularly in haunted places, so why do you trust thermometers, barometers, wire-recorders and cameras?”
“People run irregularly too,” said Harry, reasonably. “Even – no, especially – Talents.”
Richard was piqued. His watch was no ordinary timepiece. His father had inherited it from his grandfather, who had sat with Mycroft Holmes on the first Ruling Cabal. Geoffrey Jeperson had carried the watch all through the War. The Major, thinking his business done in a refugee camp, had been checking the time when he and a large-eyed, hollow-bellied child noticed one another. The watch brought them together. The boy who would become Richard Jeperson reached for the bauble, taking it reverentially when the Major, on instinct, trusted it to him. He had solemnly felt its weight, listened to its quiet tick, admired its Victorian intricacy through a panel in the face.
Inside, gears and wheels were tiny fragments of unknown crystal, which sparkled green or blue in certain light. The roman numerals were lost in tiny engravings of bearded satyrs and chubby nymphs.
Those first ticks were where Richard’s memory began. Before now, the watch had never betrayed him.
If Jeperson’s watch wasn’t to be trusted, what else in the life furnished for him by the Diogenes Club was left? The watch wound with a tiny key, which was fixed to the chain – it could also stop the mechanism, and Richard did so. If the watch could not run true, it should not run at all. He felt as if a pet had died, and he’d never had pets. He unhooked the chain and wondered if he’d ever wear it again. He slipped watch and chain into a pocket and handed back the incident form.
Arnold, who obviously had no trouble with his watch – a railway watch, as much a part of the Scotch Streak as the wheels or the windows – announced that supper was served. According to the train clock, it was nine o’clock precisely.
Harry reset his watch and clock against the train time. He made a note in his folder.
“I foresee you’ll be at that all night,” said Annette. “Without using a flicker of Talent. It’s Sod’s Law.”
Harry smiled without humour, not giving her an argument.
It hit Richard that something had gone on between Harry Cutley and Annette Amboise, not just an investigation into a Puma Cult. Harry took teasing from her he wouldn’t from anyone else. He sulked like a boy when she paid attention elsewhere. She’d told Richard not to underestimate the Most Valued Member.
Now, in a way that annoyed him, he was jealous.
“Should we sample the Scotch Streak fare?” said Annette. “In Kilpartinger’s day, the cuisine was on a par with the finest continental restaurants.”
“I doubt British Rail have kept up,” said Harry. “It’ll be beef and two veg, pie and chips or prehistoric bacon sarnies.”
“Yum,” said Magic Fingers. “My favourite.”
“Come on, boys. Be brave. We can face angry spirits, fire demons, Druid curses and homicidal lunatics. A British Rail sandwich should hold no horrors for us. Besides, I’ve seen the menu. I rather fancy the quail’s eggs.”
Annette led them to the dining carriage. Wood-panel and frosted glass partitions made booths. Tables were laid for two or four.
As he passed under the lounge clock, Richard looked up. For a definite moment, he saw a face behind the glass, studded with bleeding numbers, clockhands nailed to a flattened nose, cheeks distended, eyes wide, clockmaker’s name tattooed on stretched lips.
“That’s where you’ve got to,” he mused, recognising Douglas Gilclyde. “Lord Killpassengers himself.”
The face was gone. Richard thought he should mention the apparition, then realised he’d only have to fill in another form and opted
to keep stum. There’d be plenty more where that came from.
III
They were all laughing at him, the bastards!
Harold Cutley tasted ash, bile and British Rail pork pie. He wanted to tell the bastards to shut up. The only noise he produced was a huffing bark that made the bastards laugh all the more.
“Gone down the wrong tube,” said the insufferable Jeperson Boy.
The French tart slapped him on the back, not to clear the blockage – taking an excuse to give him a nasty thump.
“Get Prof a form to fill in,” snarked the beatnik. “See how he likes it.”
Cutley stood and staggered away from the table. He honked and breathed again. He could talk if so inclined. As it happened, he bloody well wasn’t.
He knew they’d all gang up on him!
That was how it always was. At Brichester, no one understood his work and he was written off as “the Looney”. Muriel hadn’t helped, betraying him with all of them. Even Head of Physics, Cox-Foxe. Even bloody students! He was with the Diogenes Club toffs on the sufferance of Ed Winthrop, who habitually overruled and sidelined and superseded. Ed had saddled Harry with this shower so he couldn’t get anywhere, would never have any findings to call his own.
No one was coming after him. He shot a glance back at the booth, where Annette was canoodling with the teddy boy. The bitch, the bastard! Magic Fingers was tapping the table, probably hopped up on “sneaky pete”. If there were results to be had, he’d have to find them on his own.
He would show them. He would have to.
The conductor – what was his name? Why hadn’t he fixed it? – was in his way, blocking the narrow aisle. Cutley got past the man, shrinking to avoid touching him, and strode towards the dark at the end of the carriage.
“Well, really,” said the frumpy bat who was the only other diner, the old girl with the guns. She’d spilled claret on her gammon and pineapple and was going to blame Harold Cutley. “I must say. I never did.”
Cutley thought of something devastating to snap back at the pinch-faced trout, but words got mixed up between his brain and his pie-and-bile-snarled tongue and came out as spittle and grunts.
The woman ignored him and forked a thin slice of reddened meat into her mouth.
He looked back. The carriage had stretched. The rest of his so-called group were dozens of booths away, in a pool of light, smiling and fondling, relieved he was gone, already forgetting he’d ever been there. The bastarding bastards! They had the only bright light. The rest of the carriage was dim.
Now there were other diners, in black and white and silent. One or two to every fifth or sixth booth. Shadows on frosted glass partitions. Starched collars and blurry faces. Some were missing eyes or mouths, some had too many.
Muriel was here somewhere, having her usual high old time while someone else brought home the bacon.
Bitch!
“May I see your ticket?”
It was the conductor. Or was it another official? This one looked the same, but the tone of voice was not so unctuous. He sounded deeper, stronger, potentially brutal. More like a prison warder than a servant.
What was the name again? Albert? Alfred? Angus? Ronald? Donald?
Arnold – like Matthew Arnold, Thomas Arnold, Arnie, Arnoldo, Arnold. That was it. Arnold.
“What is it, Arnold?” he snapped.
“Your ticket,” he insisted. His collar insignia, like a police constable’s, was a metal badge. LSIR. That was wrong, out of date. “You must have your ticket with you at all times and be prepared to surrender it for inspection.”
“You clipped mine at Euston,” said Cutley, patting his pockets.
Cutley searched himself. He found his bus ticket from Essex Road to Euston, a cinema stub (1s, 9d, Naked as Nature Intended, the Essoldo), a slip pinned inside his jacket since it was last dry-cleaned three years ago, a sheaf of shorthand notes for a lecture he’d never given, an invitation to Cox-Foxe’s thirty-years-service sit-down dinner, a page torn out of the Book of Common Prayer with theorems pencilled in the margin, a linked chain of magician’s handkerchiefs some bastard must have planted on him as a funny, a Hanged Man tarot card that had been slipped to him as a warning by that blasted Puma Cult, his primary school report card (FAIR ONLY), an expired ration book, a French postcard Muriel had once sent him, his divorce papers, a signed photograph of Sabrina, a Turkish bank-note, a card with spare buttons sewn onto it, a leaf torn out of a desk calendar for next week, and a first edition of Thomas Love Peacock’s Headlong Hall he had once taken out of Brichester University Library and not got around to returning but which he could’ve sworn he’d left behind in the house Muriel had somehow wound up keeping when she walked out on him. But no ticket.
“Would this be yours?” said Arnold, holding up a strip of card.
Cutley was more annoyed. This was ridiculous.
“If you had it all the time, why didn’t you say so, man?”
“We have to be sure of these things.”
Cutley noticed that the conductor wasn’t “sirring” him any more. Before he could take the proffered ticket, he had to return his various discoveries to his pockets. Even if he piled up the things he could afford to throw away, it was a devil of a job to fit everything back into his jacket, which was baggier and heavier by the minute.
Arnold watched, still holding out the ticket.
Beyond the conductor, the dining car was nearly empty again. Jeperson, Annette and Magic Fingers were in the far distance, merrily tucking into knickerbocker glory or some other elaborate, sickly-sweet pud. None of that on his old ration book, he remembered with a bitter twinge.
He was sorted out. Except he had put the Peacock with the used bus and cinema tickets. He slid the book into his side-pocket, tearing a seam with a loud rip. He had a paper of buttons but no needle and thread. Muriel always had a needle, ready threaded, pinned about her in case of emergencies. She wasn’t in the dining carriage now – probably off in some fellow’s compartment, on her knees, gagging for it, the cow, the harlot!
“Why are you still here?” he asked Arnold, snatching his ticket.
“To make sure,” said the conductor. “This isn’t your place. This is for First Class Passengers only.”
Bloody typical! These jumped-up little Hitlers put on a blue serge uniform that looked a bit like a policeman’s and thought they could order everyone else about, put them all in their proper and bloody places. One look at Harry Cutley was enough to tell them he didn’t belong with silver cutlery and long-stemmed roses at every table. All the knickerbocker glory a fat girl could eat conveyed with the compliments of the chef to the table in crawling, grovelling deference! Only, just this once, Harry Cutley did belong. Baggy, torn, patched jacket and all, Cutley was in First Class. He had a First Class ticket, not bought with his own money, but his all the same. With angry pride, he brandished it at the conductor’s nose.
“What does this say, my good man?”
“I beg your pardon,” responded Arnold, with a tone Cutley didn’t like at all. “What does what say?”
“This ticket, you bastard. What does this ticket say?”
“Third Class,” said the conductor. “Which is where you should be, if you don’t mind my saying. This is not the place for you. You would not be comfortable here. You would be conscious of your, ah, shortcomings.”
Cutley looked at his ticket. It must be some sort of funny.
“This isn’t mine,” he said.
“You said it was. You recognised it. You would not want to make a scene in the First Class Dining Carriage.”
“First Class! I don’t call a stale pork pie first class dining!”
“The fare in Third Class might be more suited to your palate. More your taste. Rolls are available. Hard-tack biscuits. Powdered eggs, snoek, spam. Now, move along, there’s a good fellow.”
Arnold, seeming bigger, stood between him and the booth where the others were downing champagne cocktails. Cutley tried to get their att
ention but Arnold swayed and swelled to block him from their sight. Cutley tried to barge past. The conductor laid hands on him.
“I must ask you to go back to your place.”
“Bastard,” spat Cutley into the man’s bland face.
Arnold had a two-handed grip on Cutley’s lapels. So where did the fist that sank into Cutley’s stomach come from?
Cutley reeled, hearing another long rip as a lapel tore in the conductor’s hand. His gut clenched around pain. He knew when he was beaten. He slunk off, towards the connecting door. Beyond was Second Class, not his place either. He was supposed to be at the back of the train, with the baggage and the mail, probably with live chickens and families of untouchables sat on suitcases tied with string, lost in the crowd, one of the masses, trodden under by bastards and bitches. In his place.
There were things back there which he could use. He knew where they were. He had overheard, at Euston. He remembered the long cases.
Guns!
He limped out of the dining carriage, into the dark.
IV
“What’s up with Harry?” Richard asked.
“Gyppy tummy?” suggested Magic Fingers.
“I should go after him,” said Annette, folding her napkin. “We shouldn’t be separated.”
Richard touched her arm. His instincts tingled. So, he knew at once, did hers.
Harry had stumbled past Arnold, who was briefly bewildered, and charged out of the carriage.
“You stay here,” said Richard. “I’ll go.”
He stood. Annette was supposed to admire his manly resolve. She radiated a certain mumsy pride as if he were a schoolboy striding to the crease to face the demon bowler of the Upper Sixth. Not quite what he intended.
Harry Cutley had been seized in the middle of a mouthful of pie. Not necessarily a phenomenon worth an Incident Form. Something in his eyes as he veered off, trying to staunch coughing, suggested he wasn’t seeing what Richard was. The man had been touched. Attacked, even.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 18 Page 59
