read, “This woman caught the 11:08 p.m. train from Waterloo to Petts Wood on the evening of Saturday, 8 September. Did you catch that train? Did you see her? Contact the Metropolitan Police on these numbers.”
On this second journey along the corridor of Angela’s London, Kathy began to recognize features and landmarks from the previous day. The difference was that, although her own train was again almost deserted, the rest of the system was in convulsive action, the city-bound trains packed with rush-hour crowds crammed behind the windows of the carriages, and the station platforms dense with rushing figures. The suppressed violence of commuting struck her, of squeezing into a metal tube in one part of the city, of being crushed against sweaty strangers for a while and then abruptly ejected into a charging mob in another part.
She recognized the names of the stations—Hither Green, Grove Park, Elmstead Woods, and then through dark woodland and out on to the long straight to Petts Wood and Orpington.
There were more posters of Angela on the metal bridge across the station at Petts Wood. Kathy took the steps down the east side and walked around the Tudorbethan loop of Station Square, with the half-timbered bulk of the Daylight Inn at its centre, named in honour of the district’s most famous citizen, William Willett, the inventor of daylight saving time, appropriately enough for a community regulated by the clockwork discipline of the railway timetable.
The lights of the taxi rank and the shop windows would have
finished here
, she thought,
and then it would have been the street lights, partly screened by the thick summer foliage of the trees. Would you notice someone following on rubber soles? Or a car gliding slowly past, stopping around the next corner, its lights extinguished? At what point would he make his approach, ask to use her phone to get help for a girlfriend in the car, perhaps, suffering an asthma attack? Was there anyone else at home, he might ask, who could help him lift her out of the car? No, no one. I’m all alone. Come inside. Use the phone.
As she walked the deserted suburban streets, heavy with the aroma of roses and cyclamen, murmuring with the sound of bees and foliage stirring, the sense of unreality and suspended time returned to Kathy.
The crimes that happen here happen indoors, hidden from the public eye by lush, lovingly tended gardens. Private crimes. Family crimes. And the occasional thunderbolt from outside.
Mrs. Hannaford looked as if she’d aged ten years in the previous forty-eight hours. Weeping and lack of sleep had drained the colour and the muscle tone from her face, which sagged around the despairing points of her eyes. Her husband’s face, by contrast, had hardened in the interval. His big head was fixed in an expression of grim outrage. The contrast between them was heightened by the distance at which they sat apart, as if they were suffering in isolation, without reference to one another. Glenys sat in the same armchair as before, beside the fireplace, while Basil Hannaford took the settee against the wall farthest from it, leaving Kathy to take the other armchair, at the third point of a remote triangle.
“I’m so sorry to intrude again. You must have seen more than enough of us over the last couple of days,” Kathy began, lamely trying to break the heavy silence. “I have a list here of men that Angela may have known socially or through her work. I wonder if you could help us by suggesting any more names for that list.”
Kathy gave a copy each to the silent couple. Mrs. Hannaford lowered her head to the piece of paper in her lap, but Kathy wasn’t sure that she was really focusing on it.
Basil Hannaford glared at his copy. “I’ve never heard of some of these people. Clive Ferry is the manager where she works, isn’t he? What is the point of this?”
“We want to eliminate everyone who was known to Angela from our inquiries, if we can,” Kathy answered
On this second journey along the corridor of Angela’s London, Kathy began to recognize features and landmarks from the previous day. The difference was that, although her own train was again almost deserted, the rest of the system was in convulsive action, the city-bound trains packed with rush-hour crowds crammed behind the windows of the carriages, and the station platforms dense with rushing figures. The suppressed violence of commuting struck her, of squeezing into a metal tube in one part of the city, of being crushed against sweaty strangers for a while and then abruptly ejected into a charging mob in another part.
She recognized the names of the stations—Hither Green, Grove Park, Elmstead Woods, and then through dark woodland and out on to the long straight to Petts Wood and Orpington.
There were more posters of Angela on the metal bridge across the station at Petts Wood. Kathy took the steps down the east side and walked around the Tudorbethan loop of Station Square, with the half-timbered bulk of the Daylight Inn at its centre, named in honour of the district’s most famous citizen, William Willett, the inventor of daylight saving time, appropriately enough for a community regulated by the clockwork discipline of the railway timetable.
The lights of the taxi rank and the shop windows would have
finished here
, she thought,
and then it would have been the street lights, partly screened by the thick summer foliage of the trees. Would you notice someone following on rubber soles? Or a car gliding slowly past, stopping around the next corner, its lights extinguished? At what point would he make his approach, ask to use her phone to get help for a girlfriend in the car, perhaps, suffering an asthma attack? Was there anyone else at home, he might ask, who could help him lift her out of the car? No, no one. I’m all alone. Come inside. Use the phone.
As she walked the deserted suburban streets, heavy with the aroma of roses and cyclamen, murmuring with the sound of bees and foliage stirring, the sense of unreality and suspended time returned to Kathy.
The crimes that happen here happen indoors, hidden from the public eye by lush, lovingly tended gardens. Private crimes. Family crimes. And the occasional thunderbolt from outside.
Mrs. Hannaford looked as if she’d aged ten years in the previous forty-eight hours. Weeping and lack of sleep had drained the colour and the muscle tone from her face, which sagged around the despairing points of her eyes. Her husband’s face, by contrast, had hardened in the interval. His big head was fixed in an expression of grim outrage. The contrast between them was heightened by the distance at which they sat apart, as if they were suffering in isolation, without reference to one another. Glenys sat in the same armchair as before, beside the fireplace, while Basil Hannaford took the settee against the wall farthest from it, leaving Kathy to take the other armchair, at the third point of a remote triangle.
“I’m so sorry to intrude again. You must have seen more than enough of us over the last couple of days,” Kathy began, lamely trying to break the heavy silence. “I have a list here of men that Angela may have known socially or through her work. I wonder if you could help us by suggesting any more names for that list.”
Kathy gave a copy each to the silent couple. Mrs. Hannaford lowered her head to the piece of paper in her lap, but Kathy wasn’t sure that she was really focusing on it.
Basil Hannaford glared at his copy. “I’ve never heard of some of these people. Clive Ferry is the manager where she works, isn’t he? What is the point of this?”
“We want to eliminate everyone who was known to Angela from our inquiries, if we can,” Kathy answered
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