Kissed a sad goodbye - Deborah Crombie [26]
The sound of an engine roused him. He looked out, blinking. A green coach pulled up to the station, then another, and another. Men shouted commands and the buses were maneuvered into position beside the platform. Lewis felt his heart thud as the children woke and a stir ran through the car.
The loading of the buses went smoothly, as most of the children were too hungry and exhausted to cause any trouble. Lewis’s class was put with another, and as their coach pulled away from the station, the children clutched their parcels and stared out at the red-bricked buildings of the high street. But they soon left the town behind, and the road ran west into wooded, rolling hills and the afternoon sun.
Lewis had found himself near the front of the coach, and to quell the panic rising in his chest at the sight of all that openness, he spoke to the driver. “Where are we, mister?”
The driver, a thin man with a leathery face and wispy hair, glanced back at him and smiled. “Surrey, lad.”
That didn’t mean anything to Lewis. He tried again. “How far is it? Where are we going, mister?”
Another flick of the man’s eyes in the mirror and he replied, “Ten miles or so. Not far. You’ll see.”
Subsiding in his seat, Lewis thought the man had a funny sort of accent, all stretched-out and blurry-sounding. But at least they’d be off this bus soon. The twisting and rising and falling of the road was making him feel all-over queer, and he wrestled with the catch on his window until he managed to get a bit more air.
He tried closing his eyes, but that only made it worse, so he looked at the great, green hump of land rising away to the right.
Following Lewis’s gaze in his mirror, the driver said, “That’s the north Surrey Downs, lad. Old earth, that is. Feet have walked that way since the Dark Ages.”
Lewis did not find the thought comforting.
After a bit they turned off to the left into a lane no wider than the coach. The lane dipped down between thick hedges, curving and turning, and at every bend Lewis gasped in terror and squeezed his eyes shut. Surely they would crash into the hedge, or meet something coming the other way, but the driver seemed unconcerned and eventually Lewis relaxed a little.
Then the hedges disappeared, and a triangular bit of grass appeared. A few houses were clustered round it, and a ways up the hill on the opposite side rose the steeple of a church. The coach continued past the green and into another narrow lane, but this one had houses either side, and it came to a dead end at a long, low building that bore the legend: Women’s Institute.
They had arrived.
• • •
“KIT SHOULD BE BACK AT THE flat by now.” Kincaid disconnected the mobile phone as he negotiated the entrance to the Blackwall Tunnel.
He’d left the top down on the Midget, and Gemma held back the strands of hair that had blown loose from her hair grip with one hand while she turned the pages of the map book with the other. “I’m sure he’s fine,” she reassured him without looking up. “The Major will keep an eye on him.” She traced a spot on the A to Z page with her finger. “I think I’ve found the street, but it doesn’t look like much on the map. It’s just above the old center of Greenwich.”
“Right. I think I can get that far.”
They were on their way to interview Annabelle Hammond’s sister, having been given her address by Reg Mortimer.
“Did you find anything on Mortimer?” Gemma asked as they emerged from the tunnel into the evening sunlight. She’d been arranging for a car to run Mortimer home while Kincaid had a word with Janice Coppin.
“Sod all, at least in the system. Not even a traffic ticket, as it seems our Mr. Mortimer doesn’t drive.” He squinted as he turned west into Trafalgar Road and the low sun blinded him. “What did you think of his story?”
“Holes you could drive a lorry through,” Gemma responded. “If Annabelle