Breaking Cover

53

Sarah Gordon was leaning on the balcony railing, looking out over the Thames as the sun set. The sky was a glorious pinkish-red and the colour was tinting the buildings in Tower Hamlets across the river, making them look a lot more beautiful than they were in full daylight. To her right the windows in the towers of Tower Bridge were glowing as though pink lights were switched on inside. She was sipping a last glass of champagne while behind her the caterers were clearing up the remains of a drinks party.

She loved her riverside apartment with its wonderful view. As a senior executive and part-owner of a property development company, she’d been able to buy it off plan before the other flats were marketed. The building was an old brick warehouse with beamed ceilings and huge windows; she knew as soon as her company acquired it that it was going to be stunning. Once she’d bought her part, she’d made very sure that the conversion was done beautifully, with no expense spared.

There was always something to look at from her balcony whatever the time of day. The river was surprisingly busy, though there were not many ships nowadays of a size to need the roadway on the bridge to be raised to let them through. But when it happened, she found it very exciting to watch the great arms lift themselves up into the air as they had been doing ever since the bridge was built at the end of the nineteenth century.

She drained her glass and sighed with contentment. It had been a good party. Clients and prospective clients loved coming to the apartment and the view was the great draw, especially for the foreigners. She decided to ring the restaurant in the basement and get them to send up some supper. Her busy life didn’t allow much time for shopping and cooking. Though she had a splendidly equipped kitchen and a dining table that seated twelve, most of her entertaining was done by caterers. She went inside to phone the restaurant and say goodnight to the caterers and when she came out on to the balcony again the colour had faded from the sky. Instead of glowing pink, all the buildings were returning to a dull flat grey. The traffic had died down a bit on Tower Bridge although it was never really quiet, even in the middle of the night. There were not so many pedestrians as there had been earlier. Maybe there was something good on TV – perhaps a football match – and everyone had hurried home to watch it. Sarah didn’t have time to watch TV, though she had several large shiny sets in the apartment – and she had no interest in sport.

It was beginning to grow chilly now and she was just thinking of going inside to get a shawl when she noticed a woman lingering on the suspension part of the bridge, just before the tower on the near side. She was slim and rather smartly dressed in a short bright blue jacket over what seemed to be a blue or grey dress – it was difficult to see precisely from this distance, in the fading light. The woman looked as though she might have come straight from her office. She had bobbed dark hair, which obscured the side of her face as she gazed over the railing into the water below. There was something odd about the way she was standing, looking down at the incoming tide that was flowing fast now under the bridge. That stretch of water was quite shallow at low tide but the river was filling up fast and the mud bank had long since disappeared. While Sarah watched, the woman walked on slowly, almost dreamily, as though unaware of her surroundings or of anyone else – she almost collided with a man in a dark suit, walking at a fast march, looking straight ahead, on his way somewhere.

There was a trance-like quality about the woman’s movements. She stopped from time to time to stare out upstream, then she’d walk on a few paces only to turn around and retrace her steps.

Sarah was beginning to feel very uneasy about the way the woman was behaving, wandering up and down while everyone else on the bridge was hurrying past, so she went inside to get the binoculars her business partner had given her when she moved into the apartment At the same time, not knowing quite why, she picked up her phone which was lying on a table.

When she came out again the woman was still there but she had stopped wandering up and down and was standing just beside one of the towers. As Sarah watched she put one foot on the bottom of the railing and slowly began to climb up it. Just as Sarah hit the first button on her phone, the woman reached the top of the railing and jumped and all that Sarah could see of her was her head bobbing in the water as she was swept away fast upstream by the tide. While Sarah was shouting at the operator, the head disappeared from her view and she could see no more of the woman.

On the bridge where she had climbed over, a small crowd was gathering and a man with a phone pressed to his ear was gesticulating and pointing down into the water. Sarah turned away feeling sick just as the doorbell rang. ‘Restaurant service!’ shouted a voice. She opened the door and said to the waiter, ‘A woman’s just jumped into the river!’

‘Oh, dear, madam,’ he replied calmly. ‘It does happen from time to time. It’s always very sad. Shall I set the table and pour a glass of wine?’

‘Yes, please,’ said Sarah automatically as through the open window came the sound of police sirens.