The Beautiful Dead Read online

  ‘Only for the boy,’ Carla had said breezily. ‘And anyway, nobody will ever know.’

  So the three of them had carried out the first half of Carla’s plan to a T. They’d caught the bus to school, then left school and caught the Tube at Hammersmith, after changing their clothes in the station toilets. They’d shopped all day, which meant a lot of looking and trying on, and minimal actual buying. Carla’s stepfather had given her fifty quid for her birthday and so she was flush, but Maddie only had seventeen pounds to spend after her train ticket, and Zoey even less than that. Zoey made up for it by nicking a mascara from Superdrug. Maddie was shocked, but didn’t want to show it and ruin things. They’d all tried the mascara, exclaiming how excellent it was and how their lashes looked mega.

  Carla had bought a hat she looked cute in, and a dress she did not. Maddie had been pointedly restrained in her admiration of the dress, but her subtlety had been no match for Zoey’s OMG-overload. Then Maddie had bought a blue micro skirt with a gold tasselled hem for fifteen pounds, and Zoey had pinched a £7.99 necklace.

  Not even a nice one.

  Maddie had made up her mind never to go shopping with Zoey again.

  Despite that, they’d had a laugh and the hours flew by, so that by the time they got to the Tube station to head home, the entire population of London seemed to be down there with them.

  They’d already missed one train in the crush.

  ‘Shit,’ said Carla. ‘Why are there so many people?’

  ‘Rush hour,’ shrugged Maddie.

  ‘Gross,’ said Carla. ‘It stinks down here. Someone smells like cat pee.’

  The woman in front of them turned to glare and they all giggled.

  ‘If we don’t get the next train we’re going to be late and my mum’ll have a fit,’ said Maddie.

  ‘No she won’t,’ scoffed Zoey. ‘You can just say the bus broke down. I tell my mum that all the time.’

  ‘Doesn’t she check with the school?’ asked Maddie, and Zoey gave her a look so blank that Maddie knew that such a possibility had simply never occurred to her – or, probably, to her mother.

  ‘This is shit,’ said Carla. ‘We shouldn’t have gone to Superdrug. That queue was, like, a mile long.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Zoey. ‘No wonder people have to nick stuff from there.’

  ‘Let’s get right down the front,’ said Maddie. ‘So we definitely get on the next train.’

  So the three of them did that, squeezing their skinny way between the dark-coated mass of humanity, blithely breaking unspoken commuter rules in their colourful ski jackets and fake-fur hoods, like little fireflies, giggling and making airy, empty apologies as they twisted and flitted through the crowd.

  ‘Sorry. ’Scuse me. Sorry.’

  If they’d been men, they might have met resistance – if only in the form of muttered tuts. But three pert girls, all bright and happy? The crowd indulged them. When they got to the edge of the platform, grudging would-be passengers made way for them by shuffling backwards and sideways into each other.

  Carla and Zoey and Maddie giggled at each other. Their plan was back on track. Now all they had to do was catch the train that would get them home on time, so that nobody would ever know …

  Joe still wasn’t answering his phone. Not to her, anyway.

  Bollocks.

  Eve looked at the clock. Five thirty.

  Then she looked at her watch: five thirty-one.

  She hadn’t told anyone else about the call because she didn’t know whether she should go to Piccadilly to meet the man or not. They’d played the clip; he’d had his fifteen minutes of fame – what more did he want?

  What more did he have?

  The moral buck had stopped with her, but now she didn’t know whether to spend it.

  She called Joe again. This time she left a message, speaking low and casting furtive glances about her. ‘Joe, the man who sent the clip called me last night. He wants to meet us at Piccadilly Tube station tonight at six. Please call me.’

  The man hadn’t said he wanted to meet them, he’d only said her, but it was a very white lie, and designed more to get Joe to call her back than anything else.

  He didn’t, again.

  It made her feel defensive, even though Joe wasn’t attacking her, just ignoring her.

  She looked at the clock once more.

  Should she go?

  It would take her fifteen minutes to walk to Piccadilly Circus. At least another five to get to the westbound platform at this time of day.

  She’d be safe going alone. She wasn’t meeting a contact in some dark alleyway – she’d be in a well-lit Tube station with thousands of fellow travellers. What could go wrong?

  Hell, if she didn’t go, she wouldn’t be doing her job. Ross Tobin was as fickle as a bonobo, and she needed to keep producing the goods to cement her position. Another exclusive would certainly help.

  If this was an exclusive, of course. Or a story at all. Right now she didn’t know this man was the killer; he might be someone who wanted to turn in the killer! And he may not even show up – in which case, Piccadilly Circus was her station and she would be delighted to go home on time.

  One thing was sure: if she didn’t go, she’d never know.

  She checked her watch again.

  Five thirty-eight.

  She stood up and pulled on her coat and scarf.

  Katie Merino smiled as she passed. ‘Going home early, Eve? You’ve certainly earned it.’

  Oh piss off, thought Eve, and left.

  Despite the bitter weather, Eve walked the fifteen minutes to Piccadilly Underground station in a dystopian throng, because taking a cab at this hour in central London was an expensive way to be overtaken by pedestrians.

  The snow had stopped, but the wind had picked up with an icy intensity that made her shiver, and she was relieved when they all descended from the biting cold of Piccadilly Circus into the netherworld of the subway system.

  There was no wind here, but somewhere a busker on a clarinet played ‘Smoke Gets In Your Eyes’ – which only made her think of the deadly fire at King’s Cross station, and feel uncharacteristically claustrophobic.

  There was an unholy crush, and Eve joined the human lava flow, funnelling slowly but inexorably towards the turnstiles.

  It was a strange feeling, this subjugation of the self. This was no place for the individual, no place for independence or free-thinking, certainly no place for an emergency. If she’d been chasing a pickpocket, or a lover – or if she’d needed to be on the next train to save the world – she would still have had to submerge her identity within this collective colloid, shuffling shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, toe to heel through the steel bottlenecks.

  She suppressed the desire to turn around and get the hell out, and instead braced herself to move down the escalators into the white-tiled intestines of London.

  At least it got warmer the deeper she went. Although with the warmth rose the damp-dog smell of other people. It was odd to smell people in the twenty-first century. It made Eve feel medieval.

  The damp and the heat brought out the essence of the unwashed, punctured by curry, or fried onions; now and then a fragrant shampoo on sleek hair two inches from her nose brought heady relief, or – if she was lucky – that Lush lemon soap that cut through it all like menthol. More often, any respite from body odour and wet coats came in the form of an eye-watering wince of over-optimistic aftershave.

  Down the escalator, and then another bottleneck under the white vaulted ceiling, while she waited her turn to get on to the platform, let alone a train.

  Stationary for a moment, and with her view blocked all around by people taller than herself, Eve felt suddenly, completely, crushingly alone.

  Alone at work, and alone at home.

  She had tried so hard for so long to behave as if Duncan Singer was in a state of flux, and at some point would recover and remember who he was, and remember her, and be aghast that he could ever have forgot
ten someone he loved so much.

  But deep down, she knew that wasn’t true. There was no going back with this disease. Her father was on a road that led to only one end. There had to be an end. But how long would it take to get there? And what sort of shape would they both be in by the time they reached that end?

  A year ago, Eve thought she had found the limit of her resilience. She’d teetered on the edge of a breakdown, and simply could not take another day of juggling work and Dad and Ross Tobin and the mortgage and all the blood.

  Something must snap.

  And while she’d been expecting to snap, another day had passed.

  And another. And another.

  Until it turned out that her resilience was a false-bottomed well. There was still water in there – even if it was increasingly distant and muddy and difficult to reach.

  But simple logic dictated that one day it must run dry.

  Maybe today was that day.

  And what would happen to her father if it were? And what would happen to her?

  Her new distance from Joe felt like the straw that might break the camel’s back and suddenly Eve wished fervently that she hadn’t given Ross Tobin the clip. Fuck her journalistic instincts – it wasn’t worth it if it meant losing Joe’s respect.

  Eve’s eyes stung and she sniffed soupily. A middle-aged man in front of her turned to look at her with an expression that might have been sympathy, or might have been a warning not to get snot on his coat. The crush was so deep around her now that just getting a tissue out of her pocket to blow her nose made two people glare at her for digging them with her elbow.

  She turned round and tried to go back, but quickly gave up. The crowd behind her was a wall hundreds of people thick. There was nothing she could do but allow herself to be carried onward by its relentless shuffle.

  Eve sighed and was propelled forward as trains squealed in and out of the station, unseen, ahead of her. Finally she reached the platform, but just failed to get on to the train that was there. The man who’d looked around at her was the last person squeezed into the carriage, so squashed that the belt of his overcoat was trapped between the doors as the train pulled out of the station. If he needed to get out of the opposite door at the next station, he was going to be in trouble.

  At least missing that train meant she was in plum position for the next one. She hurried freely down the platform ahead of the mass of people, almost all the way to the end, sticking close to the yellow safety line so she wouldn’t be jostled backwards in the surge for the doors.

  The platform filled quickly behind her.

  The distraction of moving had made her feel marginally better, and she was able to blow her nose without disapproving glares.

  The strains of the busker had faded to nothing and the air echoed with the silence of many people not talking.

  A bored voice announced that the next train would not be stopping at Barons Court, and shortly after that came the familiar rush of warmth that preceded each train’s arrival.

  Eve!

  Eve looked back down the platform. Had somebody called her name? She couldn’t see anyone she recognized. Or anyone who appeared to have recognized her.

  It was nothing. Just random tunnel sounds playing into the hands of her ego.

  She was about to look away—

  ‘Oh!’

  Near the far end of the platform a girl in a pink ski jacket suddenly stumbled out of the dark commuter ranks, across the yellow line.

  It happened so fast. But Eve had time to think, Somebody catch her!

  Both arms outstretched, the girl almost fell flat on her face.

  If she had, she would have been OK.

  But the girl didn’t fall. She kept going in rapid slow motion. Feet stuttering, arms reaching, ponytail bouncing.

  Gravity calling …

  Ohmygod! Somebody catch her!

  People broke ranks to do just that. But nobody actually did …

  With a shriek, the girl pin-wheeled off the edge of the platform and into thin air.

  She never hit the ground.

  Her cry was cut brutally short as she exploded on the front of the train like a pink-and-blood bomb.

  Eve stood on the platform with the clattering noise of the train filling her head in time to her own guilt: It serves me right I shouldn’t have come. It serves me right I shouldn’t have come. It serves me right I shouldn’t have come …

  But the train wasn’t moving. It was stationary in front of her.

  Vaguely confused, she turned her head slowly to the right.

  And the people had gone.

  She hadn’t noticed them leave. Hadn’t noticed the panicky exodus, hadn’t noticed the shoving, the crying, the falling down and the helping up.

  All she knew was that four hundred would-be Tube passengers had disappeared, seemingly in an instant.

  Further down the platform, a small knot of people in Day-Glo and dark green were tending to two brightly dressed teenage girls, maybe thirteen or fourteen years old. Bright leggings and ski jackets. Ear muffs and mittens.

  The dead girl’s friends. One bent double and clutching her stomach as if in pain, the other on her knees. Faces distorted, mouths agape.

  Crying without noise.

  Eve turned her head stiffly to the left. Still clattering.

  Another group of officials were looking serious, huddled around what she assumed was the train driver – a grey-faced young man who sat cross-legged on the platform next to his cab. He looked as if he had climbed out and sat down, and now might never have the energy to get up again. He had a foil blanket around his shoulders, and two paramedics squatted in front of him, trying to help.

  But the time for help had passed, and there was nothing anybody could do now.

  The sound of a train was her teeth chattering, she finally realized. She stopped them with difficulty, and the train inside her head gave way to the more terrible sound of uncontrollable howling from the two distraught girls.

  She watched them being helped away.

  Eve knew it was sad, but she couldn’t feel it. There was a strange disconnection between her heart and the rest of her, so that she couldn’t even be sure her heart was still in her chest.

  Her teeth started chattering again and she let them drown out reality.

  She looked at the driver tableau. Nobody had moved. Further to the left, close to the wall, a pink woollen glove caught her eye.

  Eve frowned. There was something odd about it.

  It lay on its back on the smooth pale platform under a red splodge on the tiled wall, like a carefully arranged piece of modern art.

  But that wasn’t what was so odd about the glove …

  Eve’s mind tried to assemble disparate information into a logical conclusion. And suddenly she wished it hadn’t.

  ‘Oh no,’ she said, and took a step backwards. ‘Oh no!’

  She felt her legs start to give way and sunk ungracefully to her knees. She clapped a hand over her mouth, but the vomit escaped past it and spattered on to the platform.

  Another shudder, and acid tears in her eyes and nose.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  A woman’s hand on her back. Green legs. Black Dr Martens. A paramedic had stopped. Eve didn’t look up – just shook her head and then waved her arm to the left and choked, ‘There’s a hand in that glove.’

  There was a pause, and then the woman said, ‘Shit,’ and the green legs hurried away to alert somebody in Day-Glo.

  Eve didn’t want to see what happened next. She stayed on all fours for a minute, staring down at the sick. Trembling. Then she raised her head and looked straight ahead at the side of the Tube train. Also empty, she now registered, so that she could look through the windows to the curved, poster-covered wall on the opposite side of the tracks.

  She stared, seeking the distraction of meaningless commercial enterprise. Les Misérables and the British Museum and Vodafone. Each giant poster had at its centre a small white flyer advertisin
g an exhibition. Not allowed, she imagined, defacing the big, expensive hoardings. But there anyway. Artists were rebels. Always. Caravaggio and Van Gogh and Warhol. Going their own way, doing their own thing. Swimming against the tide and – finally – towing the world along with them.

  Well, nobody would be going to any exhibition today, Eve thought darkly. Nobody would be switching to Vodafone or booking Les Mis after what had just happened here. Her own mission was a dim memory, slight and meaningless now. She wished she’d stayed in the office.

  The office.

  Eve sat back on her heels and wiped her mouth on the back of her glove. Then she peeled off her soiled gloves and dropped them beside the vomit. She got slowly to her feet.

  She called Joe.

  ‘Joe—’

  His voicemail picked up. She couldn’t squeeze another word past the lump in her throat, and she hung up. She couldn’t sob on the shoulder of his voicemail; she needed the comfort of a human.

  Any human would do.

  She called Ross Tobin.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘There’s been an accident at Piccadilly.’ She took a deep breath. ‘A young girl just fell in front of a train.’

  ‘Yeah?’ he said. ‘Is she dead?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Got pictures?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Have you got pictures?’

  She was stunned by the question. It wasn’t why she’d called. It wasn’t what she’d wanted.

  ‘No,’ she whispered, and explained, ‘It happened right in front of me!’

  ‘We’re a TV news show,’ he snapped. ‘Get pictures or get a job on the fucking radio.’

  He hung up and Eve stood on the platform, shaking as if she’d fallen through the ice on a lake.

  She looked down at the phone in her hand and heard the Apple Genius’s words as clearly as the voice of God.

  ‘… eight megapixels …’

  Eve spoke over the pictures – not trying for stylish, only stating the facts. She panned the phone slowly around. The blood-spattered platform, the driver in the silver blanket, the stationary train, Les Mis and Vodafone, and the scattering of shoes kicked off in what must have been a stampede off the platform.