Murder Club - Mark Pearson [7]
Then Andrew’s eyes closed as he came, the tension in his thighs and knees relaxing as he collapsed his full weight upon her again, so that she feared she might well suffocate. He snatched the knickers from her mouth and used them to wipe himself.
‘Jeez, you nearly crushed me to death,’ said the woman beneath him.
Then Andrew Johnson opened his eyes again.
And there was no kindness in them.
Half an hour later he was waiting on the west-bound platform of the Bakerloo Line. Waiting for the train to take him to Baker Street, where he would catch his connecting Metropolitan Line train back to Harrow-on-the-Hill.
A small smile broke out on his face as he replayed in his mind what had happened in the flat. The look of fear in her eyes. The thought of it aroused him once more. He moved his hand surreptitiously down and stroked himself through his trousers.
The sound of a train clattering in the tunnel did little to distract him from his dark thoughts. Past and future pleasures imagined. He smiled again.
A hand fell on his shoulder.
4.
‘I CANNOT TELL you what was in the man’s mind. I have had a jumper once before. A woman – she put herself in the path of my train. Her motion was such that it indicated no panic, no fear, but a resigned acceptance of her fate.’
‘I see.’
‘But this man, his face was not towards me, his arm was raised. Maybe in a farewell gesture. I would simply be speculating if I were to say what his motivations might have been.’
Detective Inspector Tony Hamilton nodded and made a note in his book. ‘I was simply asking if you thought it was a suicide, or if you saw someone push him?’
The train driver was a tall man, in his early fifties, Tony would have guessed, with long, but neat, greying hair and half-rimmed tortoiseshell glasses perched on the end of a long, aquiline nose. There was something stork-like about him, Tony decided.
‘If someone pushed him, I don’t recall seeing it. My focus was straight ahead.’
‘Ken here used to be an English teacher,’ said Terry Randall, one of the two transport policemen who were assisting him with his enquiries into the suicide of an unknown man who had jumped in front of a west-bound Bakerloo Line train at Piccadilly Circus station. Constable Terry Randall, like the train driver, was in his early fifties, but was shorter, squatter and had a sour expression on his face that showed what he thought of the Metropolitan Police invading what he perceived as his territory. Back in 2006 Sir Ian Blair, the then head of the Metropolitan Police, had wanted a single police force in the capital. He had proposed absorbing the British Transport Police into his force, and this was agreed to by the then Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, bringing it under the control of the Home Office. But it never happened and the two forces remained separate entities. The only difference being that constable was as high as the BTP’s law-enforcing ranks rose. Any serious crimes and the Met would be brought in. Some constables like Randall resented it, but his colleague, Constable Emily Wood, didn’t mind. She was in her early thirties, blonde-haired with a bubbly sense of humour, and she obviously liked the look of the tall, dark-haired detective.
‘Couldn’t face the horror of it, could you, Ken? And so became a train driver.’
‘My doctor advised that I take a less stressful occupation some years ago,’ agreed the thin man. ‘I have always been interested in trains, electric and steam, and my pension was such that I could indulge my hobby and remain in full-time employment.’
‘Is it easy to become a Tube driver?’ asked DI Hamilton.
‘Why’s that, Detective?’ asked Emily Wood. ‘Thinking of hanging up your truncheon?’
Tony smiled at her. ‘I’m a detective, remember. I don’t carry a truncheon.’
The female constable quirked an eyebrow at him, suggesting she thought that might not strictly be true. He had to force himself not to smile as the driver answered his question.
‘It’s not easy, no. Vacancies are rare. To get on the handle isn’t as easy as some people think.