The Stranger on the Train (5 page)

The questions continued.

“Do you have a boyfriend? Someone you've been seeing?”

“I haven't been with anyone since Oliver.”

“Who else do you know in London?”

Emma thought.

“My ex-flatmate, Joanne. But we're not that friendly now.”

“What about your neighbors here?”

“I don't really know any of them.”

Behind Lindsay, two of the policemen exchanged glances. Emma caught them and said angrily: “Why do you keep on and on asking me about people I know? I told you, the woman who took Ritchie was a stranger. I'd never met her before.”

“I'm sorry, Emma.” Lindsay touched her arm. “I know the questions are upsetting. But just at the moment, we can't rule anything out.”

“What are you doing to find Ritchie?” Emma jerked her arm away. “Apart from asking me questions, I mean. What are you actually doing to find him?”

Lindsay said patiently: “We're doing quite a lot, Emma. We've spoken to some of the witnesses at the scene earlier—the tube station, and the street outside Mr. Bap's—and we'll do our best to find and talk to as many more as we can. Your table in the café wasn't cleared after you left, so we've taken the coffee cups you and Antonia used. Antonia might have left some of her DNA on hers. Also, we're checking to see if any CCTV cameras are in operation on the street outside the café. If so, we might get some pictures of who took Ritchie and which way they went. The tube stations, at least, will have cameras, so we've put an urgent request in to look through those. And we've passed Ritchie's details to all the newspapers. You saw the late evening edition.”

She had. A short paragraph on page five: “The alleged snatching of a toddler from . . .” But why hadn't they put him on the front page? Put him on
TV
? It all seemed so passive. So . . . so . . . Surely in films they did more to hunt for lost children. Emma floundered, lost for what else to ask.

“What about dogs?” she said. “Helicopters?”

Lindsay repeated: “Anything that's appropriate, we're doing it right now.”

Emma wanted to argue, but her breathing was coming too fast again, the way it had in the hospital. She put her hands to her mouth, trying to get it under control. More exchanging of glances between the policemen.

“My son does exist,” she said, and her voice came out as a sob.

“I know he does,” Lindsay said gently. “I know.”

• • •

She had to get away. All these people in her flat, asking about Ritchie, and none of them knew him at all. He was just another job to them. She felt like a goldfish, frantically swimming around and around in a bowl, trapped and banging off the sides, while these calm, trained people looked at her from the outside and took notes.

The only private place was her room. She took Gribbit the frog from Ritchie's cot and crawled into bed, holding him in her arms. She wrapped them both in her duvet and lay there, exhausted, yet unable to slow down her thoughts.

What are they doing to my child?
That was one of the worst things, nasty, ugly, lodged like a roll of barbed wire in her stomach. Lindsay had said she was sure he was being treated well, but then, she had to say that, didn't she? The truth was, none of them knew who'd taken him or what was happening to him. She pictured Ritchie drugged, breathing in a loud, obstructed way, his eyes rolled back, waiting in a van or a shed somewhere for . . . what? Or shivering in a corner, eating things off the ground and crying because no one had changed him and he was dirty and sore. She pictured him with tears rolling down his cheeks, emitting little high-pitched hiccups of distress, wondering what he'd done for her to leave him like this. To ease the horror of it, she concentrated on trying to send a hug to him. She focused on him; the bed swam away and there was just Ritchie, sitting by himself in a cot in a darkened room. He looked up, puzzled, the tears still on his cheeks. Emma felt a fierce tenderness and joy. Her arms went around his fat little body and he gave a glad cry and snuggled into her. She soothed him, weak with thankfulness; felt the way he trembled as he clung to her, wanting her to bring him home. The sensation was powerful enough to wake her, jerking her back to the bed. It wasn't Ritchie she held, it was Gribbit, his wide, stitched-open eyes blank with misery. Emma wept with the pain of it. She wasn't with Ritchie, she was here and he was God knew where, all alone. Crying for her. What were they doing to him? What was some sick, twisted pervert standing over him doing to him?

Emma writhed in agony. She couldn't take much more of this. Why? Why had she taken her child for coffee with Antonia? A complete stranger! She'd been so naive, so desperate for someone to talk to. Why
had
she gone to the bathroom and left her small child—her baby—with a woman she'd never seen before? What sort of mother was she? Why had she let Ritchie get trapped on the train? Why hadn't she been watching him properly? Again and again she saw him there, standing in the doors. Over and over she replayed it in her mind: that strange tug on the harness, the sense that something was not quite right. But her bag was an inch out of reach, so that she spent that extra fraction of a second groping for it before she turned around.

She could never have that moment back. It had come and gone, and when it mattered most, she had chosen a bag of vests and trousers over her son.

• • •

If Emma slept at all, she didn't remember it. The hours dragged as she lay in the bleak silence, that barbed-wire coil in her stomach. At six in the morning, she abandoned the farce of trying to sleep and got up again. The phone hadn't rung once. She picked it up to check there was a dial tone. There was. Lindsay had left a note written in thick, black marker on a Post-it, stuck to the receiver: “Here's my number again, just to make sure. I'll be back tomorrow. Or sooner if there's any news.”

Emma was still wearing her jeans and jumper from the night before. She left her bedroom, trying not to look at the cot under the window. She made herself a cup of tea and sat without drinking it at the round table in the sitting room. The curtains to the balcony were open. Through the glass doors, she saw the black tower block opposite, a gray halo in the sky just softening its edges. The heating in their building hadn't come on yet. The coldness exaggerated the loneliness and emptiness of the flat.

A whole night. He'd been gone a whole night. She'd thought she'd known what misery was, but now she knew she hadn't at all. She'd known nothing, nothing compared to this. Gribbit sat on her knee, his long fuzzy legs brushing off her calves, just at the place where a toddler's feet might reach. Emma stroked him, over and over, feeling her fingers bump over the dents on his tummy where his stuffing was wearing out.

How long she sat there for, she had no idea. The buzz of the intercom, belching harshly through the silence of the flat, brought her to. Emma started. Lindsay had said she'd call round today, but surely she hadn't meant this early? Why would she be here now, unless it was to say they had some news? Oh Jesus! She jumped up, flinging Gribbit off her lap, and hurried to the intercom.

But it was only Dr. Stanford, her GP. What was she doing here? She didn't normally make house calls. Emma pressed the button to open the main doors below. Dr. Stanford arrived up in the lift a few minutes later. She had a second person with her: a youngish, frizzy-haired woman in a green top.

“Emma, how are you?” Dr. Stanford floated into the tiny hall of the flat. She was tall, greyhound-thin, with ash-colored hair smoothed back in a bun. She wore her usual uniform of immaculate gray skirt suit and silk blouse with a bow at the collar.

“This is really awful,” she said. “You must be at your wits' end. You've met Alison Regis, haven't you?” She indicated the woman in green. “Our health visitor?”

“No,” Emma said listlessly. She'd met several health visitors after Ritchie was born, but it seemed to be a different one each time.

“I've been on maternity leave,” Alison Regis explained. “Today is my first day back.”

“I've been away myself,” Dr. Stanford said. “All last week. At a conference in San Diego.”

“San Diego?” Alison brightened. “Lovely. That's where I went for my honeymoon.”

There was a pause. Dr. Stanford cleared her throat.

She said to Emma: “The police were at the surgery. They asked to see Ritchie's medical records. I hope you don't mind. I saw the form you signed, giving permission.”

“That's fine.”

“They asked if I would check on you,” Dr. Stanford went on. “I would have anyway, of course. After your last visit to me, if you remember, I had left an urgent message for Alison here to come and see you. Unfortunately, I didn't realize at the time that she was still on her maternity leave.”

For some reason, Dr. Stanford seemed nervous. Her bony fingers shook as she fixed a loose strand of hair. Usually she was very calm, efficient, remote. She'd seen Emma and Ritchie for various ailments; had given Ritchie all his vaccinations, and twice some antibiotics for an ear infection. Emma had worried that the infection wasn't clearing up properly, but Dr. Stanford was always briskly reassuring. The ten-minute slot didn't leave much time for chat. The last time Emma had been to the surgery was just over a week ago, and Dr. Stanford had been just the same.

“You look exhausted, Emma,” Dr. Stanford said now. “Have you managed to get any sleep?”

Emma's eyes stung from fatigue, and from the salt of a constant seepage of tears. Her jaw ached; no matter what way she held it, she couldn't seem to get it into a comfortable position. They'd given her some Valium at the hospital; she'd taken one and it hadn't worked at all. She wanted nothing more than to sleep, to get away from the panicky, relentless
thinking
about Ritchie, the horror of what might be happening to him, the helplessness and acid panic of not knowing what to do. But Lindsay had said to stay near the phone. Emma couldn't imagine how Antonia would have got her number, but if there was any chance at all that she would ring, she didn't want to be too drugged to take the call.

“You really should try to sleep,” Dr. Stanford advised her.

“I will,” Emma said. “But for now, I need to be awake.”

• • •

And then, just after five o'clock that evening, the phone rang.

Lindsay and Detective Inspector Hill were in the flat. Lindsay had been there most of the day, making endless cups of tea, and nipping round to Sainsbury's to buy soup that Emma wasn't able to eat. Detective Hill had just arrived an hour ago—to take Emma's official statement, he said. Lindsay explained to Emma how this was done.

“Just tell us everything you've told us already, as it occurs to you,” she said. “Plus anything else you may have remembered in the meantime. Don't worry if you get confused or if things aren't in the right order. We'll be recording everything you say, so we can put the full statement together later from the tape. At some point we'll ask you to read it through, and if you're happy we'll ask you to sign it.”

Emma spoke into the tape recorder and repeated most of what she'd told the police the night before. She didn't remember anything new. When the statement was finished, Lindsay got up and went into the kitchen to boil the kettle. Emma went to the bathroom. She was just unbuckling her jeans when the low
brrr-brrr
of the phone started up from the sitting room. She froze. In the mirror over the sink, a white-faced scarecrow, harshly lit from above, gaped with black, sunken eyes. Emma listened, hardly breathing, very still.

The ringing was cut off. Lindsay's voice spoke, paused, spoke again.

And then—Oh sweet Jesus!—there came running footsteps and a hammering on the bathroom door.

“Emma.” Lindsay's tone was urgent. “Quick. Quick.”

Emma let go of her belt and stumbled to the door.

“It's a man,” Lindsay hissed. “Wouldn't give a name. Are you expecting a call?”

Emma shook her head. She couldn't think . . . Unless it was Oliver, ringing to say he'd heard. She took the phone. There was no feeling in her fingers; she had to use her other hand to stop it slipping.

“Hello?”

A man's voice said: “Is that Emma Turner?”

It wasn't Oliver.

Emma went rigid. Beside her, Lindsay's eyes were so wide Emma could see the white bits around her pupils.

“Yes?” Emma said.

“Oh, hello. My name is Rafe Townsend.”

She had never heard the name.

“Yes?”

“We met yesterday. In the tube station, remember?”

Emma's legs buckled. Lindsay gripped her arm. Emma clutched a table for support.

“Hello?” the voice was saying. “Hello? Are you still there?”

“Yes,” Emma said coldly. “Yes, I'm here.”

“You left all your bags behind when you got on the train,” the man said. “Your number was in your wallet. I hope you don't mind me ringing, but I wanted to check you got your baby back all right.”

Chapter Five

Emma couldn't speak. It was a while before she could even understand what the man was talking about. Feelings rushed at her. Relief that this man on the phone wasn't the kidnapper.
Disappointment
that he wasn't. It was too much. Too much. She backed away, dropping the phone on the floor.

Lindsay and Detective Hill were with her at once. Who was this person? they wanted to know. Where had she met him? How much had he seen of what had happened?

“He tried to help me in the station.” Emma was shaking. “He pulled me back from going under the train.”

Detective Hill picked the phone up off the carpet.

“Hello,” he said into it in his deep voice.

The man on the other end was obviously still there, because Detective Hill, after listening for a moment, spoke again. Emma was still too flustered to hear much of the conversation, apart from the occasional “Mmm” and “I see.”

When Detective Hill had hung up, he said to Lindsay: “Mr. Townsend was planning to drop the bags here this evening. Apparently he'll be cycling past on his way home from work. I've told him we'd prefer it if he dropped them at the station.”

Lindsay was nodding. But Emma's brain was starting to work again. How much had this Rafe person seen? Had he seen Antonia? Had he noticed something about her that might identify her?

“No,” she interrupted. “Can't he bring the bags here? I want to talk to him. I want to meet him properly.”

“It might be better to let us take care of it,” Lindsay advised. “We can take his statement at the police station.”

“I want to hear what he says,” Emma insisted. “He was there. He saw Ritchie. You ask him. He saw what happened, he'll tell you.”

Lindsay hesitated. She looked at Detective Hill, who was busy cleaning something out from under his thumbnail. He shrugged.

“All the same to me,” he said. “We can do the statement here.”

“You're sure about this?” Lindsay asked Emma. “You're sure you're in a fit state to have this man come here?”

“I am. I want to see him. I want to hear what he says.”

Lindsay phoned Mr. Townsend back. They agreed between them that he should call at the flat in twenty minutes.

While waiting for Rafe Townsend to arrive, Emma pushed back the sliding glass door to the balcony and went out for some air. She walked up and down, pacing and re-pacing the three steps it took to go from one end of the balcony to the other. The balconies of the tower block opposite bulged with jumble: drying clothes, pushchairs, strings fluttering with flags. Windows, hundreds of them, studded the block, some blacked out with tinfoil or paper, like missing teeth in a row of mouths.

Imagine, Emma kept thinking. Imagine if this Rafe Townsend had seen Antonia. Recognized her, even.

“Oh, yes,” he might say to the police. “We're regular travelers, that woman and me. I see her most days. She gets off every evening at Tower Hill.”

And there was another thing she kept thinking.
Now they'll have to believe me
. For some reason, she just couldn't shake the feeling that the police were suspicious of her. As though they didn't believe her version of what had happened. They were trying to get CCTV footage, they said, that would show Ritchie getting trapped on the train. But so far they'd had problems finding the film. “Did anyone else see what happened?” Detective Hill had kept asking her. “Did anyone at all see you with Ritchie?” It was driving her mad. Well, now she had a witness. They'd have to stop all the endless, pointless questions and get on with looking for Ritchie properly.

The intercom buzzer sounded. Emma stopped her pacing and rushed to the sliding door. Voices swelled from inside the flat.

“. . . good of you to come . . .”

“. . . awful. I can't believe . . .”

Quickly, Emma stepped through the door. Detective Hill was standing in the middle of the sitting room, talking to a dark-haired man in a red T-shirt. Rafe Townsend, Emma presumed. She stared hard at him, trying to figure out what kind of a witness he might make. Whether he looked the type to be observant. Her first thought was how young he looked. She'd had an impression in the tube station of a much older man. This person was about her own age, lean and tanned. He wasn't as tall as Detective Hill, but that didn't mean he still wasn't fairly tall. He was carrying a canvas rucksack with holes frayed in the corners and his jeans and T-shirt were faded. Damp circles spread under the arms of the T-shirt.

“You look familiar,” Lindsay was saying curiously. “Weren't you in the police?”

“Only for a while,” Rafe Townsend said. “I finished Hendon, but left my training after a year of probation.”

“Oh?” Detective Hill raised an eyebrow. “Why was that?”

“Personal reasons,” Rafe said politely. He had a London accent, not a posh one.

There was a chilly pause.

Detective Hill said: “And what do you do now?”

“I work for a landscaping company. Digging. Knocking walls. That kind of thing.”

Hurry
up
, Emma thought. Ask him what he saw.

Detective Hill stood there stroking his moustache, moving his thumb from left to right and back again over the hairs. He was staring at Rafe as hard as Emma had done.

“You've been told what's happened,” he said after a moment.

“Yes.” For the first time, Rafe glanced towards Emma. “I'm sorry.”

“You don't mind if we ask some questions about what you saw?

“No. I'd be glad to be of any help.”

Lindsay looked at Emma. Before Rafe had arrived, she had asked Emma if she would mind waiting in a separate room while he gave his statement.

“Witnesses usually give their accounts in private,” Lindsay said. “But you'll have a chance to talk to him afterwards if you want.”

Emma went back out to the balcony. She slid the glass door shut and heard the voices in the sitting room drop to an incomprehensible murmur. She leaned on her arms on the railing for a while, letting the breeze numb her face. The car park below was a twilit blur. She didn't notice that the murmuring in the flat had stopped until she heard the balcony door open behind her.

“Mr. Townsend would like to see you,” Lindsay said.

Emma turned. The door slid further. Then there was a scuffling sound, and Rafe Townsend and his rucksack were beside her on the balcony.

“I brought your stuff back,” Rafe said.

Emma swung all the way round to face him. Close up, he wasn't so much tanned as sallow, as if he had Spanish or Italian blood. His eyes were very alert.

“What did you tell them?” Emma asked. “What did you say?”

Rafe said: “Well, the first thing they wanted to know was what I'd been doing at Stepney Green tube station. I said I'd been on a gardening job near Epping Forest, and my boss gave me a lift to the station on his way home. When I got onto the platform, I saw you running after the train and thought you were about to get yourself killed, so I ran down the tunnel to pull you back.”

“Did you see her? Did you see Antonia?”

“The woman on the train? No. I'm sorry.”

Emma slumped. But what had she expected? Even if he
had
seen Antonia, he wouldn't have been able to tell them much more about her than she herself had.

To comfort herself more than him, she said: “Well, at least you saw Ritchie. The way the police have been talking, some of them seem to think I've been making him up.”

Rafe shuffled a bit on the cement floor of the balcony.

“You know,” he said, “I didn't actually see your kid.”

Emma stared at him. “But you must have. You were there.”

“Yeah. Well, it's like I said to the police, I saw you holding on to a strap of some kind outside the door of the train. But I only knew when you told me afterwards that it was your baby.”

“But you—”

All over a fucking designer handbag
. Of course. Emma remembered now. He had thought Ritchie was a handbag. This person was blind. He couldn't help her at all. She turned away. Her throat felt like there was something in it, like she might choke. She didn't want to hear any more.

“I'm sorry.” Rafe sounded subdued. “Really, I am.”

Emma couldn't answer.

“How are you doing?”

How did he bloody well think?

“I feel like the world's biggest loser.” Rafe hit his fist off his rucksack. “I shouldn't have left you. I should have pressed the alarm.”

Emma said dully: “Why would you have? I told you not to.”

“But I shouldn't have listened. You were in no state to know what you were doing.”

Emma picked at a piece of rust on the railing. Beside her, Rafe shifted unhappily from foot to foot. One of those restless types who always had to be doing something. She didn't attempt to make it easy for him.

“Well,” he said at last. “I'll go, then. Give you some peace.”

He disappeared from the edge of her vision. More scuffling as he tried to fit his rucksack back through the door. On an impulse, Emma swung around.

“Wait.”

“Yes?” Rafe turned. In the light from the sky, his eyes were a peculiar color, so light brown they were almost golden.

He'd tried to help her, she couldn't deny that. It may not have worked, but at least he'd tried. It was far more than any of those other people, the ones who'd been outside the café, had done.

“You were in the police,” she said. “Would you know if there's something they're not telling me? Some reason they're not looking for him properly?”

“Why would you think that?”

“Something's wrong.” Now that she was saying it, it made her even more certain. “I don't know why, but they don't seem to believe me. The newspapers aren't interested either. Ritchie wasn't in the headlines this morning, and he's a little boy who's been kidnapped, he
should
be in the headlines. He
should
be. It's like they think I've made the whole thing up. Why on earth would I do that? If Ritchie hasn't been kidnapped, then where on earth do they think—”

Her voice had been rising, and now it turned into a croak. She couldn't finish the sentence.

Rafe said: “I'm sure for something like this, a missing child, they'd be doing everything they could.”

“Then why haven't they found him?” Emma cried. “Why are they just
here
all the time, sitting in the flat instead of going out looking for him?”

Rafe looked distressed.

“Sometimes you just need a lead. I'm assuming you've been over it all a hundred times? You haven't missed anything, even something really small, that could help identify the person who took him?”

“Don't you think I'd have said if I did? I keep thinking about it. On and on and on. It's all I think about.”

“I know,” he said. “I know.”

Emma turned away. It was hopeless. Hopeless. He was no good to her at all.

“Maybe I should get a private detective,” she said, more to herself than to him.

“I wouldn't like to say.” Rafe sounded uncomfortable. Then he said: “What is it? What's wrong?”

Emma was gripping the railing, staring over the balcony. At the grid of streets, the cars, the rows of wheelie bins five floors down.

“Are you all right?” Rafe asked.

“Something . . .” she said.

What
had it been? She thought back, trying to recap the last few seconds. They'd been talking about the police and then . . . what? What had put Antonia into her head, flashing by, so suddenly like that? She strained to pull the image back but it fled, tapering to a dot, like a rat showing the tip of its tail.

“No.” Frustrated again, she shook her head. “No. It's gone.”

“It'll come back,” Rafe assured her. “When you're ready, if it's important, it'll come back.”

• • •

The two of them didn't have much to say to each other after that. After Rafe had left, the pain in Emma's jaw worsened, spreading upwards to her entire head. Lindsay commented on her pale face and slitted eyes and persuaded her to take two painkillers. Emma went to bed and lay, fully dressed, on top of the duvet.

She held Gribbit, puzzling again over what had made her think of Antonia like that. Something had sparked that flash of recall, but what? And there was that image of her mum again, watching television in the house in Bath. Why did she keep seeing that? The scent of sour milk rose from Gribbit's fur. Think, Emma. Think! There was the sense that her mind had recognized something important, and jumped with shock so that the memory had been knocked out of place. But no matter how hard she drew at it, it refused to come back.

A tap on her door.

“Emma?” Lindsay's dark head peeping around. “Are you feeling any better? DI Hill would like a word before he leaves.”

Something in Lindsay's voice made Emma sit up.

“What's wrong? Something's happened, hasn't it?”

“No, no.” Lindsay wouldn't look at her. “Nothing's happened. It's just a few more questions. If you could come to the sitting room for a moment.”

Emma fumbled, trying to get her legs out from under the duvet. Now what? She managed to escape from the bed and followed Lindsay out into the hall.

“Please.” Lindsay held the door open to the sitting room. “Come and sit down.”

She accompanied Emma to the couch and gently pressed her shoulder until she sat. Then Lindsay sat down beside her. Detective Inspector Hill squashed himself between the arms of the chair opposite. He looked so enormous sitting there. Ritchie, who was fascinated by men, would have gazed at him in awe. At this giant, who could have fitted little Ritchie twice over into one of his pockets without anyone even noticing he was there.