Holes for Faces (13 page)

“We saw,” he says just as low and reaches for the briefcase. “Give it here.”

However grateful I am to let it go, I want to be sure he understands. “You saw who left it,” I mutter.

“We know all about those.”

This could be prejudice symbolised by the badge. Under the circumstances I can’t be choosy, and I hand him the briefcase. “Be careful with it,” I whisper. “Whatever’s inside—”

“It’s seen to, granddad,” he says and steps onto the platform.

As he strides towards the nearest exit a young woman offers me a seat. Perhaps I look shaken by having to deal with the briefcase, unless she heard what the cleaner called me. I sink onto the seat, but I can’t begin to relax until the train leaves the station and is safely in the tunnel. “Thank God that’s over,” I say aloud.

I oughtn’t to have spoken. At least nobody seems to want to enquire into my remark. One man clasps his hands and bows his head as if to dazzle everyone with the shine of his bald scalp. A girl in a sweater striped like a wasp stares out of the window at the repetition of the lights. A young businessman reads a magazine, and the woman next to him might almost be hypnotised by the swaying of her earrings, which are shaped like inverted question marks although she doesn’t look remotely Spanish. More passengers manage to find room when we reach Central Station, and soon the voice of the train reads out the illuminated announcement about James Street. In a very few moments I’ll be out of the loop at last. Just one person leaves the train and heads for the exit. He’s wearing a yellow jerkin, and he’s carrying a briefcase.

He’s the man who spoke to me. It needn’t be the same case, except that I can see the warped lock. Didn’t he understand my warning? How could he risk bringing the case back on the train? The explanation makes my nerves yank me to my feet. “It’s him as well,” I gasp. “He’s part of it.”

Nobody appears to want to understand or to let me off the train. I have to shout in one man’s ear before he gives an inch, followed by hardly any more as I struggle past him. I’ve barely staggered onto the platform when the train shuts its doors. I could shout to the driver, but if anyone else hears me, won’t that cause a panic or worse? My heart thumps like a frenzied drum as I dash up the steps to the underground bridge.

I can’t see the man in the yellow jerkin or the briefcase. Has he used one of the lifts up to street level? I could—there are always staff at the top—but that might take longer than it’s safe to take. There’s a more immediate way of communicating with the staff, and I sprint across the bridge to leap down two steps at a time to the other platform.

Passengers are waiting for a train around the loop, but I can’t see what I’m afraid to see. An intercom is embedded in the wall. A blue button offers
Information
, but I jab the green one that says
Emergency
. My heart deals me a couple of irregular thumps that I hear as well as feel before the grille above the buttons speaks. “Hello?”

“I’m  at James Street.” Lurching close to the grille, I cup my hands around my mouth to murmur “I think—”

“Can’t hear you.”

“You won’t want anybody else hearing.” All the same, the man’s voice is coarse with static, and suppose mine is even more distorted? I press the sides of my hands around the grille and shove my mouth closer. “Someone’s up to something down here,” I say as loud as I dare. “They keep trying to leave a case on the train.”

“Who does?”

“I think they’re Muslims, or they may not be. Maybe they’re people who’re against Muslims and trying to make it look as if it’s them.” The speaker has begun to remind me of a grille in the door of a cell. I strain my eyes as far to the side as their aching muscles will drag them. I can’t see the man or the briefcase, but everyone nearby seems to be watching me until they look away. I’m the last person they ought to suspect, and they wouldn’t find my behaviour odd if they knew I was acting on their behalf. “The one who’s got the case now,” I say urgently, “he’s one of your cleaners or he’s pretending to be.”

“Where are you saying he is?”

“He just got off the train at James Street. I’m not sure where he went.” I have to raise my voice to compete with the sounds of the latest train. Most of the people around me converge on the doors, and I’m so confused by nervousness that for a moment I think I’m about to miss the train. Of course I don’t want to return to the loop, and I’m about to demand how the railway will be dealing with my information when a man darts off the stairs and onto the train.

He’s wearing an unobtrusively dark suit. It’s no longer hidden by the yellow jerkin, and I might not have recognised him except for the flag pinned to his lapel and the briefcase in his hand. “He’s here,” I shout, and my hands sprawl away from the grille. “He’s got back on the train.”

The only response from the grille is a blurred metallic clatter. I didn’t say that the man has the case, and now I’m sure it’s too late. My instincts send me to the train before I have a chance to think, and I dodge between the closing doors. “Let me through,” I say at once.

I didn’t have time to reach the carriage the man boarded. Nobody ahead of me seems to believe my mission is urgent. I have to thrust my pass over people’s shoulders to flash it in their faces, just long enough to leave them with an impression of officialdom. I’m crawling with sweat from the closeness of so many bodies, whose softness feels horribly vulnerable, ready to be blown apart. The carriage seems little better than airless, and I feel walled in by the tunnel, not to mention my own scarcely rational decision to pursue the man onto the train. Now I’m at the door to the next carriage, and someone is lounging against it. As I pound on the glass my heart mimics the rhythm. At last the loafer turns his sluggish apathetic head. He stares at my pass and then at me as if I might be a patient posing as a nurse, and then he slouches aside just far enough to let me sidle around the door.

I can’t see the man with the briefcase. His badge is too small to show up in the crowd, and what else is there to distinguish him? Mousy hair, bland nondescript face, dark suit—none of these stands out. My heart counts the seconds like a clock or some more lethal mechanism as I force my way along the carriage. I peer at the floor but see only people’s legs—bones that could shatter in a moment, flesh and muscles that would fill the air. I’m nearly at the first set of doors, and I crane around the partition behind the seats. There indeed is the briefcase.

I feel as though I’ve rehearsed the moment. I stoop and grab the handle, and I’m lifting the case when the train shudders in the midst of a burst of light. I’m almost used to that, because I know it means we’ve reached Moorfields. I still haven’t located the man with the flag in his lapel, but it can’t matter just now. The moment the door opens I struggle through the crowd and its reinforcements onto the platform. Where can I take the briefcase? I’m fleeing to the nearest exit when a hand grasps my shoulder. “Where do you think you’re going with that?” says a voice.

It belongs to a tall man in an unobtrusively expensive suit. The lines on his high forehead and the hint of grey in his cropped black hair may be raising his apparent age, but he seems reassuringly official. “Where’s safe?” I blurt.

“I’m asking what you’re doing with it,” he says and keeps hold of my shoulder.

“Trying to get rid of it, to dispose of it, I mean. Someone deliberately left it on the train, and not just once either. Don’t you know what that means?” I’m so desperate that I shake the case at him, and it emits an ominous metallic rattle. “Just let me—”

“You made the call.”

I don’t see how this can be an accusation, and so I say “It was me, yes.”

“Thank you, Mr Conrad.”

I’m bemused by this, even though his grip on my shoulder has begun to feel more appreciative than custodial. “How do you know my name?”

“We know everything we have to know.”

His eyes have grown so professionally blank that I say “You’re not with the railway, are you?”

“We’re responsible for this kind of situation. That’s all I can tell you.” He lets go of my shoulder and repeats “Thank you, Mr Conrad.”

Even when he holds out his hand I don’t immediately see he’s asking for the briefcase. Its reappearances have left me wary, and I say “I wonder if you’ve got some identification.”

“Don’t you think we would have?” he says and produces a wallet almost as thin as a wafer. It contains a single card with his name and his likeness and some abbreviated information. “Is that good enough for you?” he wants to know.

“Thank you, Mr Joseph,” I say and hand over the briefcase.

He doesn’t move away at once. He has to know what he’s about, which is why I didn’t panic when he lingered over questioning me—he would hardly have been putting himself at risk. There may be a trace of doubt in my eyes, since he says “Are you sure that settles it? Would you like to be there when it’s disposed of?”

“I’m  sure.” Indeed, I’m growing anxious for him and the case to be gone. “You’re the authority,” I tell him. “It’s in safe hands now.”

As he heads for the nearest stairway I hear a train. I’m eager to board, and more eager for it to leave any danger behind. The doors close as I find a seat and give in to expressing relief—shaking my head, mopping my brow, letting out a loud sigh that shudders with my heartbeat. “I’ve really done it this time,” I declare.

Nobody responds except for glancing at me as if I might be a mental patient on the loose. I don’t care what they think of me; I know I’ve kept them safe. A young man in a business suit returns to reading a comic book, and a girl gazes at her extravagantly large wristwatch, which shows seven minutes to six. A woman who pushed her thin spectacles high with a forefinger lets them subside, and a man lifts one foot after the other to rub the toecaps of his shoes even shinier on his trouser cuffs. None of the passengers might be able to do any of this without me. The idea accompanies me around the loop, past Lime Street and Central Station, and prompts me to stare along the James Street platform. I see nobody with a briefcase, but the absence isn’t quite reassuring enough. As the doors start to close I jump off the train and run up the stairs to the underground bridge.

I still seem to have a task. When a train appears I stay on the platform until the doors begin to close, but I can’t see anyone suspicious. As soon as I step aboard a girl gives me a seat, and everything seems settled as the train sets off around the loop. A bald man with a tweed hat on his lap gazes at the polished toecaps of his shoes before turning over his newspaper. A bespectacled woman in a checked overcoat and with queries dangling from her earlobes is reading another copy of the paper. A young man dressed for business takes a comic book from among the documents in a cardboard folder, and a young woman in a waspishly striped sweater pushes a headphone away from one ear while. she consults her considerable wristwatch. As blackness closes around the train I see the time is seven minutes to six.

I could imagine the lights on the tunnel walls are signalling to me, and I search for some distraction inside the carriage. The headline on the front page of the bald man’s newspaper says
ISLAMIC PANIC
, but I’m not sure if that’s the name of a terrorist group. The bespectacled woman’s paper has its letters page facing me. One letter is entitled
NO ASYLUM
, which seems to be the slogan of a party called Pure Brit, and the correspondent has suggested that the party is planting bombs so as to blame Muslims and provoke a backlash against immigrants. I grow aware of a voice too small to belong to any of the passengers. It isn’t in my head; it’s on the young woman’s headphones—a recorded radio phone-in, where somebody is arguing that the bombs are the work not of Muslims or their foes but the first stages of a plan by the secret service to force the country to accept dictatorship. Another caller on the phone-in accuses the man who was credited with trying to save his fellow passengers of having planted the bomb himself. All these idle theories make me feel as if nothing is to be trusted, and I focus my attention on the young man’s comic book. The cover shows a boffin grimacing in disbelief while he tells his colleagues “It’s not that kind of time bomb. It’s a bomb that destroys time. It’ll blow the past to bits.”

“It’s nothing like that.” The idea has gone too far, and I can’t keep quiet any longer, especially since I’ve seen the truth at last. I can hear the women murmuring behind me like nurses, and I should have listened to them sooner. “That’s right, someone’s talking about us again,” I tell everyone. “But don’t you see, if they can keep changing it we can change it too.”

Nobody appears to want to listen. They’re all gazing at the floor, even those who’ve turned towards me. “It needn’t be what any of them say happened to us,” I insist—I feel as if a voice is speaking through me. “It needn’t even be what did.”

Everyone is staring at the floor beside me. I look at last and see the briefcase. “We don’t have to be what people say just because of where we are,” I vow as I take hold of the handle. A thunderous rumble swells in my ears, and brightness flares in my eyes, but it’s on the wall of the tunnel. I mustn’t be distracted by the absence of my shadow—of anyone’s. I have to get my task right this time, and then we can head for the light, out of the tunnel.

“Here they are at last,” David’s grandmother cried, and her face lit up: green from the luminous plastic holly that bordered the front door and then, as she took a plump step to hug David’s mother, red with the glow from the costume of the Santa in the sleigh beneath the window. “Was the traffic that bad, Jane?”