The Stranger on the Train Page 6

  Imagine, Emma kept thinking. Imagine if this Rafe Townsend had seen Antonia. Recognized her, even.

  “Oh, yes,” he might say to the police. “We’re regular travelers, that woman and me. I see her most days. She gets off every evening at Tower Hill.”

  And there was another thing she kept thinking. Now they’ll have to believe me. For some reason, she just couldn’t shake the feeling that the police were suspicious of her. As though they didn’t believe her version of what had happened. They were trying to get CCTV footage, they said, that would show Ritchie getting trapped on the train. But so far they’d had problems finding the film. “Did anyone else see what happened?” Detective Hill had kept asking her. “Did anyone at all see you with Ritchie?” It was driving her mad. Well, now she had a witness. They’d have to stop all the endless, pointless questions and get on with looking for Ritchie properly.

  The intercom buzzer sounded. Emma stopped her pacing and rushed to the sliding door. Voices swelled from inside the flat.

  “. . . good of you to come . . .”

  “. . . awful. I can’t believe . . .”

  Quickly, Emma stepped through the door. Detective Hill was standing in the middle of the sitting room, talking to a dark-haired man in a red T-shirt. Rafe Townsend, Emma presumed. She stared hard at him, trying to figure out what kind of a witness he might make. Whether he looked the type to be observant. Her first thought was how young he looked. She’d had an impression in the tube station of a much older man. This person was about her own age, lean and tanned. He wasn’t as tall as Detective Hill, but that didn’t mean he still wasn’t fairly tall. He was carrying a canvas rucksack with holes frayed in the corners and his jeans and T-shirt were faded. Damp circles spread under the arms of the T-shirt.

  “You look familiar,” Lindsay was saying curiously. “Weren’t you in the police?”

  “Only for a while,” Rafe Townsend said. “I finished Hendon, but left my training after a year of probation.”

  “Oh?” Detective Hill raised an eyebrow. “Why was that?”

  “Personal reasons,” Rafe said politely. He had a London accent, not a posh one.

  There was a chilly pause.

  Detective Hill said: “And what do you do now?”

  “I work for a landscaping company. Digging. Knocking walls. That kind of thing.”

  Hurry up, Emma thought. Ask him what he saw.

  Detective Hill stood there stroking his moustache, moving his thumb from left to right and back again over the hairs. He was staring at Rafe as hard as Emma had done.

  “You’ve been told what’s happened,” he said after a moment.

  “Yes.” For the first time, Rafe glanced towards Emma. “I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t mind if we ask some questions about what you saw?

  “No. I’d be glad to be of any help.”

  Lindsay looked at Emma. Before Rafe had arrived, she had asked Emma if she would mind waiting in a separate room while he gave his statement.

  “Witnesses usually give their accounts in private,” Lindsay said. “But you’ll have a chance to talk to him afterwards if you want.”

  Emma went back out to the balcony. She slid the glass door shut and heard the voices in the sitting room drop to an incomprehensible murmur. She leaned on her arms on the railing for a while, letting the breeze numb her face. The car park below was a twilit blur. She didn’t notice that the murmuring in the flat had stopped until she heard the balcony door open behind her.

  “Mr. Townsend would like to see you,” Lindsay said.

  Emma turned. The door slid further. Then there was a scuffling sound, and Rafe Townsend and his rucksack were beside her on the balcony.

  “I brought your stuff back,” Rafe said.

  Emma swung all the way round to face him. Close up, he wasn’t so much tanned as sallow, as if he had Spanish or Italian blood. His eyes were very alert.

  “What did you tell them?” Emma asked. “What did you say?”

  Rafe said: “Well, the first thing they wanted to know was what I’d been doing at Stepney Green tube station. I said I’d been on a gardening job near Epping Forest, and my boss gave me a lift to the station on his way home. When I got onto the platform, I saw you running after the train and thought you were about to get yourself killed, so I ran down the tunnel to pull you back.”

  “Did you see her? Did you see Antonia?”

  “The woman on the train? No. I’m sorry.”

  Emma slumped. But what had she expected? Even if he had seen Antonia, he wouldn’t have been able to tell them much more about her than she herself had.

  To comfort herself more than him, she said: “Well, at least you saw Ritchie. The way the police have been talking, some of them seem to think I’ve been making him up.”

  Rafe shuffled a bit on the cement floor of the balcony.

  “You know,” he said, “I didn’t actually see your kid.”

  Emma stared at him. “But you must have. You were there.”

  “Yeah. Well, it’s like I said to the police, I saw you holding on to a strap of some kind outside the door of the train. But I only knew when you told me afterwards that it was your baby.”

  “But you—”

  All over a fucking designer handbag. Of course. Emma remembered now. He had thought Ritchie was a handbag. This person was blind. He couldn’t help her at all. She turned away. Her throat felt like there was something in it, like she might choke. She didn’t want to hear any more.

  “I’m sorry.” Rafe sounded subdued. “Really, I am.”

  Emma couldn’t answer.

  “How are you doing?”

  How did he bloody well think?

  “I feel like the world’s biggest loser.” Rafe hit his fist off his rucksack. “I shouldn’t have left you. I should have pressed the alarm.”

  Emma said dully: “Why would you have? I told you not to.”

  “But I shouldn’t have listened. You were in no state to know what you were doing.”

  Emma picked at a piece of rust on the railing. Beside her, Rafe shifted unhappily from foot to foot. One of those restless types who always had to be doing something. She didn’t attempt to make it easy for him.

  “Well,” he said at last. “I’ll go, then. Give you some peace.”

  He disappeared from the edge of her vision. More scuffling as he tried to fit his rucksack back through the door. On an impulse, Emma swung around.

  “Wait.”

  “Yes?” Rafe turned. In the light from the sky, his eyes were a peculiar color, so light brown they were almost golden.

  He’d tried to help her, she couldn’t deny that. It may not have worked, but at least he’d tried. It was far more than any of those other people, the ones who’d been outside the café, had done.

  “You were in the police,” she said. “Would you know if there’s something they’re not telling me? Some reason they’re not looking for him properly?”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Something’s wrong.” Now that she was saying it, it made her even more certain. “I don’t know why, but they don’t seem to believe me. The newspapers aren’t interested either. Ritchie wasn’t in the headlines this morning, and he’s a little boy who’s been kidnapped, he should be in the headlines. He should be. It’s like they think I’ve made the whole thing up. Why on earth would I do that? If Ritchie hasn’t been kidnapped, then where on earth do they think—”

  Her voice had been rising, and now it turned into a croak. She couldn’t finish the sentence.

  Rafe said: “I’m sure for something like this, a missing child, they’d be doing everything they could.”

  “Then why haven’t they found him?” Emma cried. “Why are they just here all the time, sitting in the flat instead of going out looking for him?”

 
Rafe looked distressed.

  “Sometimes you just need a lead. I’m assuming you’ve been over it all a hundred times? You haven’t missed anything, even something really small, that could help identify the person who took him?”

  “Don’t you think I’d have said if I did? I keep thinking about it. On and on and on. It’s all I think about.”

  “I know,” he said. “I know.”

  Emma turned away. It was hopeless. Hopeless. He was no good to her at all.

  “Maybe I should get a private detective,” she said, more to herself than to him.

  “I wouldn’t like to say.” Rafe sounded uncomfortable. Then he said: “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  Emma was gripping the railing, staring over the balcony. At the grid of streets, the cars, the rows of wheelie bins five floors down.

  “Are you all right?” Rafe asked.

  “Something . . .” she said.

  What had it been? She thought back, trying to recap the last few seconds. They’d been talking about the police and then . . . what? What had put Antonia into her head, flashing by, so suddenly like that? She strained to pull the image back but it fled, tapering to a dot, like a rat showing the tip of its tail.

  “No.” Frustrated again, she shook her head. “No. It’s gone.”

  “It’ll come back,” Rafe assured her. “When you’re ready, if it’s important, it’ll come back.”

  • • •

  The two of them didn’t have much to say to each other after that. After Rafe had left, the pain in Emma’s jaw worsened, spreading upwards to her entire head. Lindsay commented on her pale face and slitted eyes and persuaded her to take two painkillers. Emma went to bed and lay, fully dressed, on top of the duvet.

  She held Gribbit, puzzling again over what had made her think of Antonia like that. Something had sparked that flash of recall, but what? And there was that image of her mum again, watching television in the house in Bath. Why did she keep seeing that? The scent of sour milk rose from Gribbit’s fur. Think, Emma. Think! There was the sense that her mind had recognized something important, and jumped with shock so that the memory had been knocked out of place. But no matter how hard she drew at it, it refused to come back.

  A tap on her door.

  “Emma?” Lindsay’s dark head peeping around. “Are you feeling any better? DI Hill would like a word before he leaves.”

  Something in Lindsay’s voice made Emma sit up.

  “What’s wrong? Something’s happened, hasn’t it?”

  “No, no.” Lindsay wouldn’t look at her. “Nothing’s happened. It’s just a few more questions. If you could come to the sitting room for a moment.”

  Emma fumbled, trying to get her legs out from under the duvet. Now what? She managed to escape from the bed and followed Lindsay out into the hall.

  “Please.” Lindsay held the door open to the sitting room. “Come and sit down.”

  She accompanied Emma to the couch and gently pressed her shoulder until she sat. Then Lindsay sat down beside her. Detective Inspector Hill squashed himself between the arms of the chair opposite. He looked so enormous sitting there. Ritchie, who was fascinated by men, would have gazed at him in awe. At this giant, who could have fitted little Ritchie twice over into one of his pockets without anyone even noticing he was there.

  Lindsay touched Emma’s hand.

  “Try not to take this personally,” she said. “Sooner or later, we ask this to almost every family in your situation.”

  “Ask them what?”

  Detective Hill cleared his throat. He said: “I was intending to discuss this with you earlier, before we were interrupted by Mr. Townsend. I had a long talk with your GP this morning. When we were looking through Ritchie’s medical records.”

  “My GP?” Emma was confused. What did Dr. Stanford have to do with this?

  Detective Hill leaned forward. He clasped his huge hands in front of him.

  “Ms. Turner,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I have to ask you. Is there any chance at all that you may have done something to your son?”

  Emma stared at him.

  “I don’t understand,” she said. Her cheeks grew hot. “Ritchie’s been kidnapped. You know he has. Why are you asking me this?”

  “Dr. Stanford has told us a few things,” Detective Hill said. “She was reluctant to do so, but given that you had allowed us to view the records, she felt she had no choice. She thinks you may not be telling us the truth about all of this.” He paused. “In fact, based on a visit you paid to her recently, she’s worried that you may have harmed Ritchie.”

  Ha-ha-harmed. The “Ha” sucked in her chest. You may have Harmed Ritchie.

  “Emma?” Detective Hill’s eyes were very cold. They bulged at her, laser blue. “Do you remember your last visit to Dr. Stanford, eleven days ago?”

  “My last—”

  A fizz rose in Emma’s belly. In a second, she was back there in the surgery. The lurid coughs from the waiting room. The gravel rattle of rain on the window. The stench of socks and antiseptic.

  The expression on Dr. Stanford’s face. Sitting there, so shocked and upright behind her desk.

  Emma hunched forward until her elbows were on her knees. She put her hands to her face.

  “Do you remember?” Detective Hill was saying. “Do you remember what you told Dr. Stanford that day?”

  In a low voice, Emma said: “Yes. Yes, I remember.”

  So at least now she knew. The reason they weren’t taking her seriously. From the balcony came a seagull-like cry. Oh, Ritchie. Ritchie. What have I done?

  Lindsay was pulling at her, trying to take her hand. Her face was a blur of smoothness, all professional concern. But her thoughts sprang at Emma as clearly as if she’d spoken them aloud:

  And here we were feeling sorry for you! What kind of mother are you?

  Emma kept her face covered. She couldn’t look at Lindsay. She turned away.

  Chapter Six

  From the first, Ritchie had Oliver’s smile, and every time she saw it Emma’s heart skipped a beat. Ritchie was a solemn child; the smile usually had to be coaxed out of him, often appearing around a fist or a toy or a rusk in his mouth, but it was there. Someday, some woman was going to be floored by that smile, and Emma didn’t know whether to pity her or envy her.

  Because, of course, it was that smile that had stopped her in her tracks one evening, halfway across the Blue Grape in Clapham with three drinks in her hands. The owner of the smile wasn’t even looking in her direction at the time, but it knocked the breath out of her for a second.

  “Who’s that bloke Barry’s talking to?” Emma hissed, back at the table, sliding Joanne and Claire’s glasses of vodka and cranberry juice over to them.

  Joanne twisted on her high stool to see.

  “Oh, him,” she said. “Oliver Metcalfe. Works in Barry’s company.”

  “He’s got a girlfriend, if that’s why you’re asking,” Claire Burns said. Claire had been to uni with Emma and Joanne and was one of those people who always seem to know everything about everyone. “I’ve seen him with an Asian girl with hair down to her bum.”

  “Oh.” Emma was disappointed. The best ones were always taken.

  Still, though, she couldn’t help checking out Oliver Metcalfe as the evening progressed. What was it about him? She hadn’t felt this attracted to a bloke in ages. She watched him over Claire’s and Joanne’s shoulders as he laughed and chatted with his mates. He was tall, half a head higher than most of the people around him, standing under the window with the streetlight in his hair. The hair was dark blond, long enough so that his fringe brushed his eyes. He was part of the work-suited crowd, but where the others had shirts and ties under their jackets, he wore a yellow T-shirt with a picture of Homer Simpson on the front. He had a pair of extremely tatty trainers on his feet. The outfi
t would look ridiculous on a normal man—Barry, Joanne’s boyfriend, for example, whose pink belly strained at the buttons of his shirt—but Oliver got away with it. Emma guessed he was a person who knew absolutely what he was doing with clothes. They just hung right on him.

  Two sea breezes later, Emma had made her mind up. She slammed her glass on the table and grinned at Claire and Joanne.

  “Well,” she said. “I don’t see any Asian girls over there tonight. How about I go and say hello?”

  “Cheeky bint,” Joanne called as she left the table. “Hasn’t that Brian bloke from your work been begging to take you to dinner for weeks? You never chase men.”

  “So maybe it’s time I started,” Emma muttered. She checked her reflection in the mirror behind the bar. Her new green Topshop dress was holding up well. The neckline was perfect: not too low, not too high. Her hair was freshly washed and shiny. Her mascara was still in place, not yet at the stage where it had begun to slide down her face. Okay, so no one was about to mistake her for Kate Moss’s younger sister, but she wasn’t an absolute toad either. She looked all right.

  Barry looked astonished to find Emma greeting him as enthusiastically as if they were the best of friends. Normally they didn’t have that much to say to each other. He grunted at her, and she turned to Oliver.

  “Hi,” she smiled. “I’m Emma.”

  “Oliver,” he said politely, shaking her hand.

  She was slightly thrown to find that up close he was even better looking than she’d thought. In fact, there was no way around it, he was very, very good-looking. He waited, eyebrows courteously raised, clearly wondering what she wanted. Emma’s confidence wavered but she stood her ground.

  “We know people in common,” she explained. “I live with Joanne, Barry’s girlfriend.”

  “Oh, really?” Oliver had a lovely voice. Deep, very well-spoken. “How do you know each other?”

  “We were on the same course in Bristol. Business studies and marketing. And we went to Sydney for a year together after uni.”