The Best British Mysteries III

False Light by Margaret Murphy

From her viewpoint high above street level Carol can see St. George’s Hall. Undergoing renovation, it is swathed in plastic, a colonnaded monument in bubble-wrap. To her right, the sun sinks low and golden over the Mersey tunnel entrance. She loves the broad sweep of steps down from the Greco-Roman facade of the museum. She walks slowly, taking her time, head up, shoulders back; it makes her feel grand, like a movie star. She wears a trouser suit-a good linen mix in pale green. Her hair, ice-blond and fine as spun silk, lifts in a faint breeze and she enjoys a moment of blessed coolness.

Carol has been working late on a new coleopteran exhibition. Her favourites are the iridescent types; they shimmer with false light-purple and green and electric blue-oil on water, prisms in sunlight. She checks her watch. Eight-thirty. Not too late to chance crossing the cobbled street into St. John’s Gardens.

The borders are planted with blue violas and pink biennial dianthus; warmed by the sun and enclosed within the walls of the old churchyard of St. John’s, the scent of violets and cloves is almost hypnotic. Laughter carries from one of the lawns to her right and she glances without turning her head. A group of students, talking, flirting, testing their knowledge of their current reading on their friends. Harmless.

She passes them unnoticed. She has learned the art of invisibility: Walk confidently but without show; look like you know where you’re headed; stare straight through a crowd, as though you can see your goal unimpeded by the crush-as though they are invisible. Never meet the eye of a stranger.

Traffic is heavy, belching hot exhaust fumes into the already hot and exhausted air. Too early for the clubs, but too hot to wait indoors for dark, the streets are already thronged with youths in white shirts, eager for the rut, eyeing the tanned girls who flaunt their toned midriffs and thighs. Liverpool city centre swelters in a brown heat haze, the crowds irascible and uncomfortable in their own skins: The heat has taken the fun out of the game.

Central station is empty. She walks invisible past the guard at the ticket barrier. She hears voices raised, laughter; it echoes, reminding her of swimming baths, caves. Cave men. The constant scream of a faulty escalator handrail, rubber on metal, sets her teeth on edge, but it is cooler underground, and she is grateful for this.

The voices grow louder, nearer. She sees them without looking, using her peripheral vision. An untaught skill, urban survival. Three boys-only three. They hoot and howl, pounding the air with their shouts. The space-the emptiness of the platform-lends them size and significance. She keeps her gaze steady and flat, moves to the shelter of one of the massive square pillars to escape notice.

A faint whine and a puff of warm air announce the approach of a train. She hangs back, waiting to see what the boys will do. The vibration passes down the line like a series of whip-cracks, then the first glimpse: twin aspects, insectile, emerging from the dark. The train slows and stops with an electrical sigh.

The boys jostle each other into a carriage to her left. She steps into the next. Four or five others sit at discreet distances, respecting each other’s space, taking care to avoid eye contact as they plunge into the tunnels and deep cuts on the edge of the city centre. Two disembark at Brunswick. Then she sees the three boys at the link doors; they peer into her carriage, grinning, making animal noises. She looks out of the window. They come in and she looks up again, alarmed, catches the eye of the man in the seat diagonally opposite. She sees him sometimes when she works late. Grey suit, tie loosened, respectable, early forties. He smiles and she is reassured. It’s okay.

The boys sit at the far end of the carriage, out of sight, but she can hear them; their laughter, their sniggers. A whiff of solvent and the squeak of a marker pen on glass-they’re vandalising the windows. She won’t look. A woman gets off at St. Michael’s; their mutual vulnerability allows a brief moment of contact. Carol sees her own fear reflected in the woman’s eyes.

The boys get up-she sees them ghosted in the window-it’s almost night and the steep embankments on either side of the track draw darkness down into the carriage. Two tall lads, one who looks younger, nervous. They are dressed in the uniform of sports gear, trainers, baseball caps. She takes her paperback from her shoulder bag and pretends to read. The largest of the three walks down the car and sits opposite, staring at her until she is forced to look up. He has short brown hair and grey hate-filled eyes. His mouth is twisted with fury-against what? She knows the standards: society, authority, the self; but looking into this boy’s eyes she sees his hatred is directed at her. You don’t know me, she wants to say, but the words won’t come. He continues staring and she looks away again. Her invisibility has failed her.

A man gets out at the next stop. She wants to get out with him, to stay close, to ask for his protection, but her legs won’t carry her and she focuses instead on her book and prays the boy will go away.

Now it’s just her and the three boys and the man in the suit. She wants to be home, to be out of the heat, drinking chilled wine, listening to the blackbird in her hawthorn tree improvising a tune in the last glimmer of dusk. She wants to be left alone.

The other two have been loitering at the far end of the carriage, but now one of them comes forward and kneels on the seat behind the tall youth, peering through the gap between the headrests. He has jug ears and a snub nose, which make him seem childlike-monstrous.

“D’you wanna come for a drink with us?” the first boy asks. His breath is thick with beer and vomit.

“I think you’ve had enough already, don’t you?” Carol says.

The other boys laugh. “Boz is getting his arse kicked by a girl!” the second boy says.

Boz. Carol memorises the name.

Boz leans so close that she can’t see her novel when she looks down at it. His hair gel smells of coconut oil. His hooded jacket is open, showing off his six-pack. This is not a boy you want to humiliate, she tells herself. He’s vain, and vanity does not forgive criticism.

“D’you wanna bevvy or what?”

“No,” she says, pleased that her voice is so steady. “Thanks.”

The second boy sobs theatrically. “She’s breaking his heart!”

Boz grabs his crotch. “I might shag it, but I’m not in love with it.” He lets his eyes drift to the top of her legs, the crease of her trousers. “You a natural blond?” he asks.

The skin on her scalp tingles and her heart flutters in her chest like a trapped bird. The man in the suit is reading his paper. Is he deaf? she wonders. Can’t he hear what’s going on?

Boz blows in her face and she flinches as if he has hit her. “Look at me when I’m talking to you, bitch.”

He is smirking, enjoying her humiliation, and a tiny spark of anger flares in her gut. “Sod off,” she says, but too tentatively.

He mimics her; he’s a good mimic, he captures her accent, her voice, the note of fear she cannot hide.

“I mean it,” Carol says. “Back off or I’ll call the guard.”

His eyebrows lift. “Yeah? How you gonna do that? ESP?”

The emergency cord is six feet away, above the door. It might as well be six miles. She glances around the carriage for security cameras, but can’t see any.

She stands. The boy stands with her. She moves left. He mirrors the movement.

The man in the suit is still reading his paper. Bastard.

“Excuse me,” she says; her voice is weak, frightened. The man doesn’t respond and the boy’s eyes flicker greedily over her body. His sickly-sweet breath in her nostrils is an intrusion, a violation.

Why are you being so bloody polite?

“Hey!” she shouts.

Boz jerks back, startled.

The anger feels good. “HEY, YOU!” she shouts again, louder this time.

The man flicks down a corner of his newspaper. He seems irritated.

“Are you going to help me?” The way she asks, it’s a clear accusation.

The boys watch, curious to see what he will do.

She sees a muscle jump in the man’s jaw, then he exhales through his nose as if he has been asked to perform some irksome task.

He folds his paper neatly and places it on the seat beside him. The train slows and the recorded announcement tells them they are approaching Cressington. Thank God-her stop.

“That’s us, Boz.” The youngest boy has appeared suddenly by the door. He sounds troubled, unhappy.

The man stands in a smooth, easy movement. He’s taller than they expected, more athletic, and the boy says again, the tremor in his voice accentuated by the rattle of the train, “Our stop, man.”

Boz keeps his eyes on Carol, but she notices the tension in his shoulders, the bunching of his fists. He gives her one last disparaging look. “What-did you think it was grab-a-granny night?” He jabs a thumb towards the youngest boy, standing anxiously in the doorway. “I wouldn’t even touch you with his dick.”

The doors open and they’re off, onto the platform, whooping and laughing, making barking noises at her. They swarm up the steep stone steps; she hears their footsteps echoing all the way through the Victorian station house. She looks at the man and he raises a shoulder, a slight smile on his face-embarrassment or amusement? She can’t tell. Doesn’t care.

Her stop. She steps out onto the platform. Seized by dread certainty, she stares wide-eyed at the stairwell. What if they’re waiting for her outside the station? The narrow muddy shortcut she usually takes to Broughton Drive is dark and poorly lit, and even on the roadway there are places they might hide: behind skips outside the house refurbs, in the shop doorways on the main road. To hell with it, she’ll go on to Garston, get a taxi home.

The warning buzzer sounds that the doors are about to close. She wheels round as they begin sliding shut, jumps back on the train. One of the doors slams into her shoulder and she is caught off-balance. She grabs the handrail and steadies herself. The man in the suit is watching her.

He sighs and smiles in resignation and welcome. He smells the fear on her. Exciting, raw, unrestrained. It smells of warmth. Of woman. Of pain. Of sex.