Dark Eyes of London (3 page)

Chapter Five

In a daze, Tom Raymond trudged out of Goodge Street tube station and made his way round the corner to Whitfield Street.   In a daze as he was still in shock from the bombshell Sergeant Mary Green had dropped on him last night; in a daze because he only managed to achieve ninety minutes, maybe two hours, sleep the previous night. He still couldn’t believe it: he spent most of his sleepless hours during the night watching television and the regular news and travel bulletins made mention of an
incident
at Green Park; his long-held suspicion that
incident
was a euphemism for
death
was now proved correct. Although what on earth was Lisa doing at Green Park?  Maybe she fell asleep on the way over to Waterloo, woke up at Green Park and was on her way back. It was all on the Jubilee Line. Yes, that must be it.

He ran his hand through his hair again and he turned into Whitfield Street. Sergeant Green had said the address was number 16.  Looking down the street he could see two or three police vehicles parked outside a building - that must be it, he thought.

Sure enough it was, sandwiched in between the Crazy Bear Eatery and an office building.  Of course, he thought, he was here at the Crazy Bear only three or four months back. Little did he know then...

He paused outside the main door, adjusting his coat.  The front door opened and two uniformed police officers stepped out, chatting. The second officer smiled at Tom and held the glass door open. Tom nodded his thanks and walked in.

In the reception area there was a waiting area by the large front window comprising four low level armchairs and a coffee table upon which there were some magazines.  In the corner were a water dispenser and a notice board filled with public information notices. There was a reception window with a bell marked
Please Ring for Attention
. Tom pressed the buzzer and jumped when the bell rang louder than he expected.

A woman police officer appeared momentarily. ‘How can I help you, sir?’ she asked politely.

Tom shyly ran his hand through his hair again. ‘Yes, my name’s Tom Raymond.  Sergeant Green’s expecting me.  We spoke last night.’

‘I’ll give her a call,’ said the officer. ‘Why don’t you take a seat?’ She indicated over to the reception area.

Tom nodded and made his way back to the reception area. Sitting on one of the armchairs he gazed out of the window.  The two officers he had passed in the doorway had climbed into one of the police vans parked outside.  Chatting and laughing, they drove away.   A DHL delivery truck had parked across the road, and the driver was wheeling some packages to the premises opposite. He began to browse the magazines: the first was called
Community Matters
.  He leafed through it and started to read an article about the history of Neighbourhood Watch.

He looked up as he heard a door open. The door was at the opposite side of the reception area.  A uniformed police woman, easily six feet tall, well built, with long dark hair tied in a ponytail stepped out.  She was in white shirtsleeves, but on each shoulder was a small epaulette with three white stripes. This must be Sergeant Green, Tom thought.

‘Mr Raymond?’ the officer said loudly as she strode across the floor, holding out her right hand. Automatically he stood up and held out his hand too.

‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘Tom Raymond. Pleased to meet you. I think,’ he added as an afterthought.

‘Mary Green,’ she said, shaking his hand in a vice-like grip. ‘Thanks so much for coming over this morning.  I hope we haven’t inconvenienced you too much.’

‘No, not at all.’

Sergeant Green indicated over to the door. ‘Come this way, please.’

She led him through the door into another corridor, then up a flight of stairs to an office suite where there were several offices, all with frosted glass walls. She motioned for him to go into the second room.

‘Please take a seat, Mr Raymond,’ she said. ‘Can I get you a drink? Tea or coffee?’

Tom sat down slowly.  ‘Er - just water, please - if you’ve got it.’

‘No problem, be back in a jiffy.’

A minute or so later, she was back, a paper cup of water in one hand and mug of tea in the other. She held a brown manila file under her right arm. She gave Tom his water and put the mug of tea on the table.    Tom noticed   the mug had a
Little Princess
logo printed on it.

Sergeant Green could see that he noticed. ‘From my daughter,’ she said by way of explanation, as she sat down opening the manila file.

‘First of all,’ she said closing the file again, ‘may I say how sorry I am for your loss.  It must have been a terrible shock for you.’

Tom nodded as he took a mouthful of water.  He was glad of the drink, as his mouth had got very dry.

‘It was,’ he muttered.  ‘Although she’s  - was - my ex-wife.’

‘Nevertheless.’

She drank some tea and sat back in the chair. ‘Look, Mr Raymond.  I know you were no longer married to Ms Kennedy.  I haven’t asked you here to identify her body or anything like that.’

Tom was expecting to be asked to view Lisa’s body, so his relief on being told this was not the case was quite apparent.

‘You’re not the next of kin, you see,’ she continued.

‘Of course not,’ Tom replied, thinking aloud more than responding to what Green had said. ‘That would be her sister - Jane - or her parents, I assume.’

Green glanced into the file. ‘Yes, her sister Jane.  She’s coming down from...’

‘Newcastle,’ said Tom as Green ran her eyes down the paper in the file.

‘Newcastle. That’s right. Insisted on doing it herself, not their mother. Said it would be too much for her.  Apparently their father died last year. But you probably knew that anyway.’

Tom looked up. ‘No, I didn’t.  We didn’t keep in touch much after the divorce.’

Green looked at him for a moment. ‘Okay.  Well anyway, I’m just trying to put together the facts of what happened last night.  You were on our list of people to call as it happened. We’ve got her mobile, and were working down the contacts list.  So you would have got a call from us anyway.  You just saved us the trouble.’

She drank some more tea. ‘Since we spoke last night, we’ve retrieved Ms Kennedy’s voicemails and you left a couple, referring to a meeting you were going to have with her last night.  Is that the case, Mr Raymond?’

Somehow, her use of Tom’s name at the end of her question put him on the defensive. ‘Yes, but that’s nothing to do with it, is it?’ he snapped back.

Green reached out and touched his arm. ‘Please, Mr Raymond - Tom? - I’m merely trying to piece together Ms Kennedy’s last few hours.   You said you didn’t keep in touch much after the two of you divorced, but you were due to see her last night. How so?’

‘She phoned me yesterday afternoon.  It was out of the blue. I hadn’t heard from her in months, maybe since last year.’

‘So it was quite a surprise, then? To hear from her after all that time?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Where did she call you? At work or at home?’

‘I was at home. Working.’

‘What do you do?’

‘I work in my local public library, but in my spare time I am studying for a PhD, and yesterday afternoon I was at home working on a thesis.’

Green took another sip of tea and spoke, both hands on the mug. ‘She rang you on your mobile, I assume,’ she said.

‘That’s right. I hardly ever use my landline.’

Green put the mug back on the desk and leaned back in her chair. ‘So, she called you out of the blue, and said what?’

‘She didn’t say much, really.  Said she didn’t have much time.’

‘Not much time? What do you think she meant by that?’

‘I assumed not much time to talk. She didn’t want to chat. And she was talking quietly.  I got the impression she didn’t have much time to talk to me, as she was at work herself.’

‘So what did she say?’

‘She said she needed to talk to me about something and could we meet.’

‘Did she say what it was about?’

‘No, she didn’t.’ Tom broke off to take a mouthful of water. ‘She said she wanted to talk about something, and it had to be face to face.’

‘I see. Go on.’

‘Well, we arranged to meet at - I can’t remember the name of the place now - an old coffee shop we used to go to when we first met.’  He paused a beat. ‘Sorry, I can’t remember the name. It was Italian.’

‘Don’t worry.  Go on.  Where is this coffee shop?’

‘Very near to Waterloo Station. In Lower Marsh, I think it is.’

Green nodded. ‘Yeah, I know where you mean.’

‘Funny thing is,’ Tom went on, ‘when I got there, now it’s a
Café Nero
. Anyhow, I waited there for about an hour, but she didn’t show. I left a couple of messages which you’ve probably heard -’

Green nodded her head.

Tom continued, ‘And made my way home.’

‘Why did you call again later that night?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know, really.  Guess I just did it on impulse.  I was sort of intrigued as to why she wanted to meet me, why it had to be face to face. I was disappointed in a way when she didn’t show.  I was just about to go to bed and thought I would give her one last try.  I wasn’t really expecting anyone to pick up.’

‘Yes,’ said Green. ‘You sounded surprised.’

Tom gave her a weak smile and ran his hands through his hair.

‘You said she called you from work.  She works around Canary Wharf, I understand?’ Green asked.

‘That’s right, I think. Like I say, we’ve had little contact recently.’

‘I’m just trying to work out her journey to you. She presumably planned on seeing you straight after work.’

Tom nodded. ‘Yes. At six that evening.’

‘So I’m assuming she would have got on the Jubilee Line from her office and gone straight to Waterloo.  An easy journey.’

‘Yes, that’s right. That’s why I can’t understand what she was doing at Green Park.  I can only assume she dozed off or something, woke up and realised she had missed her stop, and got off at Green Park to get the train back to Waterloo. And somehow, on the way back - I don’t know - got caught up in the rush hour crowds and fell off the platform.’

Sergeant Green leaned forward and rested her chin on her steepled hands. ‘Well, that’s one theory, for sure. And she may have got herself caught up in the rush hour crowds. But she wasn’t going back to Waterloo.’

‘What?’

‘She was on the westbound Piccadilly Line platform.’

Chapter Six

Tom Raymond collapsed into the bench of the station platform.  He looked up at the dot matrix indicator.  The next train would not be arriving for seven minutes. He started to feel sick and claustrophobic. He tried to focus on the advertising hoarding the other side of the tracks, but it was blurred.

He needed some air. As he strained his eyes on the hoarding he felt the rush of air and heard the sound of a southbound train arrive at the adjacent platform. He stood up and hurried through the passageway and jumped on the train. 

The carriage was full so he had to stand, but it was a short journey - four stops to Embankment.  He alighted there, and hurried up the escalators to daylight.

Ten minutes later, he was sitting on some steps in Trafalgar Square.  He pulled his coat around his neck and shivered. It was cold, windy, and starting to drizzle.  But at least there was some air.

He looked around at what was going on around him.  The traffic around the square consisted mainly of taxis and buses, periodically sounding their horns.  The square itself was not as full of people as he had seen previously.   There was what looked like a school trip around the King George IV plinth: a bespectacled young woman was lecturing a dozen or so girls, all dressed in green blazers and grey skirts.  There was a young family walking across the square.  One of the children was running about chasing the pigeons, his mother calling out for him to slow down.   A Japanese couple stood at the foot of Nelson’s Column: he took a picture of her in front of the column, and then they changed places.

Just an everyday scene, Tom thought. But of course, for him it wasn’t. It wasn’t every day that you get told that your ex-wife had fallen in front of a tube train.  He kept getting an image in his mind of Lisa standing on the platform, then lying across the tracks.

He started to cry.  It was all his fault!  She was on her way to meet
him
.  If she hadn’t arranged to meet him yesterday....

But his second question remained unanswered: what was she doing on the Piccadilly Line?

*****

That was what had puzzled Tom. Why had she changed lines?

‘She was on the westbound Piccadilly Line platform,’ Sergeant Green had told him.

Tom sat up, puzzled. ‘The Piccadilly? What was she doing there?’

Green shrugged. ‘You tell me. In fact, from what you’ve told me, there was no need for her to be there.  If, as you say, she was at work in Canary Wharf and meeting you at Waterloo, it’s a straightforward journey - what, six or seven stops?  If we assume she missed her stop for some reason - dozed off, perhaps - then she would have been able to get off at Westminster and double back.  If she missed Westminster, she would have done the same at Green Park.  How long had she lived in London?’

‘Years,’ replied Tom. ‘Seven, eight, at least.’

‘So she could hardly have got off at Green Park and switched lines by mistake, could she?’

‘Why would she do that, then?’

‘Did she have any friends living or working in places the Piccadilly covers?’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Hammersmith, Acton, even Heathrow?’

Tom sat back again. ‘Not to my knowledge, no.’

‘In any case,’ the sergeant said, ‘I’m not sure
why
she changed lines is relevant. Our investigations, and the inquest, will just focus on
what
happened.’

‘That’s obvious, isn’t it?’

‘That’s what’s to be investigated.’

‘You’re not saying she was pushed, surely?’  Tom leaned forward, hands resting on the table.

‘I’m not saying anything. Look, in cases like this, there are three possible explanations. One: She stumbled somehow, tripped, and fell.  Two: she jumped. Three, and statistically this is the least likely: somebody pushed her.’

‘Pushed her?’

Green nodded. ‘It’s an option.  Tell me, I know you’d not had much contact with her, but is there any reason you know of for her to take her own life?’

He shook his head slowly. ‘No, not that I’m aware of.’

‘I have to ask: are you aware of anybody who would have a reason to - to push her?’

‘No, no, no,’ Tom said.

He sat quietly for a moment, then asked, ‘When will the verdict be decided?’

Green exhaled deeply. ‘We have to interview the driver, and whoever witnessed it on the platform. And we study the CCTV footage.  The results of our enquiries  are presented  to the coroner at the inquest, and the coroner gives his or her verdict.’

‘Okay,’ Tom said slowly. ‘When is the inquest?’

‘No date yet,’ Green said, sitting up. ‘Look, I’ve no more questions for you at the moment. Is there anything else you need to ask me?’

He stared at the empty table, and said slowly, ‘No.  No, there isn’t.’

She stood up. ‘If that’s the case, I’ll show you out.’

Tom stood up and slowly followed her out. He stopped in the corridor outside.

‘Just one more question, if you can,’ he said.

‘Sure.’

He paused a beat to get the words right. ‘Was she badly injured?  What I mean is, did she suffer much?’

Green shook her head. ‘This will all come out in the inquest, but I can tell you, it was relatively quick.   There was some physical injury caused by contact with the train, but she was probably dead already.’

‘You mean before the train hit her?’

‘Possibly.  You’re aware that there is a pit running under the tracks the length of each station?’

‘The suicide pit?’

‘Sometimes known as that, yes. Well, in Lisa’s case, she was falling into the pit. But her fall was obstructed by the central live rail.  That rail holds just over two hundred volts, so as she touched it, she was either electrocuted straight away, or was at least rendered unconscious so she probably didn’t feel the impact of the train.’