Knight & Culverhouse Box Set - Books 7-9

Chapter 45

45

Heather Bateman looked up from her mobile phone at the electronic noticeboard. Platform one at Middlebrook station was a boring place at the best of times, but there was another eighteen minutes until her train was due to arrive. She was glad it wasn’t raining.

She tried to calculate how many hours she’d spent waiting on this platform. Her job meant she had to commute into London at all sorts of hours of the day. The morning rush hours weren’t so bad, as the trains came through every few minutes. At other times of the day, though, you could be in for a long wait — especially if there were delays or station closures.

Heather had the unfortunate situation of living near the worst-performing train line in the country, according to official figures. Well, at least the area was finally famous for something.

She’d been a shift manager on the London Underground for almost twelve years now. It was true that the network was staffed by only two types of people: those who worked for London Underground for a very short period of time, and lifers. They said if you got past your first six months, you’d be there until the day you retired. Retirement seemed a long way off for Heather, but she could see the truth in it. It was a job you either loved or hated, and although Heather wouldn’t admit it out loud, she actually quite enjoyed her job.

It was something that gave her a huge amount of variety in her days. The job was always the same, but what it threw at you changed every single day. In the past couple of days alone she’d had to help coordinate the response to a woman having a heart attack at Canning Town station, an infestation of rats at Green Park and a child whose Batman outfit had got caught in the escalator at Baker Street. It certainly wasn’t a job where any two days were the same.

She looked up at the electronic noticeboard again. Sixteen minutes. She leaned back against the cold metal seat, hanging her head back over the edge as she felt the sun on her face and the top of the seat digging into the back of her neck. Only for a minute, though. She’d fallen asleep in this position on one of these seats once before after a stretch of long shifts, and couldn’t get back up again. Her neck had locked into place.

Remembering this, she brought her head forward again a little sooner than planned, and looked around her for something of interest. There was never anything of interest at Middlebrook station. Situated in a village of two thousand people — most of whom lived on the far side of the village and were already at work in London by now — it was a quiet station at the best of times. Unless she was here at rush hour, she rarely saw another person on the platforms, even less often a member of staff milling about. The station was completely out in the open, and you could see for miles in either direction up and down the tracks.

It was then that the figure caught her eye, on the bridge that connected the four platforms.

She put her glasses on to get a better look, and could see that it was a man. He was standing in the middle of the bridge, looking over the edge, up the tracks. It was an odd thing to be doing, she thought. There were occasionally trainspotters at the station, but they usually worked in pairs and stood on the platforms with cameras. This man just appeared to be peering over the edge, motionless.

She noticed movement further up the tracks, on one of the fast tracks. On this line, platforms one and three were southbound; two and four northbound. Two and three, the middle lines, were for fast, overtaking trains which only stopped at a handful of stations along the line — usually in the cities and major towns.

The train barely seemed to be moving at all — an optical illusion, she knew, as she was watching it from an almost head-on position. She knew the train would actually be doing well in excess of eighty miles an hour.

Just as she noticed the train, she heard the automated station announcement over the tannoy.

The train now approaching platform three does not stop here. Please stand well clear from the edge of platform three.

Heather watched as, far from keeping clear of the edge of anything, the man hung his arms over the top of the bridge and hoisted himself up, swinging a leg up onto the top of the wall before clambering onto his knees. She looked on in horror, frozen to the spot, knowing exactly what was going on, as the man slowly and carefully got to his feet.

She knew the breeze would be strong up there, even though the air was still at platform level. She watched as the man put his arms out to the side to steady himself, waiting for the perfect moment.

She broke free from her terror and shouted out. ‘No! Stop!’

The man turned his head in the direction of the noise, saw Heather, and turned his head back to look up the train line as Heather watched the train hurtle down the track towards him.