In the 7.37 from Portsmouth, some people blocked out their nervous thoughts by turning to newspaper articles they would otherwise have skipped, about travel in the Greek Islands or training for the marathon. Others switched on their mobiles and rescheduled the morning. A few made eye contact with the passengers opposite and gave little tilts of the head that said you couldn't travel anywhere with confidence these days. This being Britain, not many words were exchanged at first, but after twenty minutes voices began to be heard.
'Where are we, exactly?'
'You talking to me?'
'I said where are we?'
'Almost at Woking, I reckon.'
'What do they mean - an 'incident'?'
'Could be anything from a suicide to cows on the line.'
'I blame privatisation.'
'No, it goes back further than that. It all started going wrong about the time British Rail stopped calling us passengers. When I first heard myself being called a customer I knew they'd stopped trying to get us from A to B as their first aim. They were out to sell us things.'
'You mean the reason we're all sitting here is so they can empty the refreshment trolley?'
'Dead right'
One man in a pinstripe let down the window and looked out. 'There's another train pulled up ahead of us. Must be the 7.07.'
'My sainted aunt,' a reader of the
The pinstriped man turned from the window and reached for his hat and umbrella.
'Where the blazes are you going?' the
'Up the line. I can't afford to sit here all day. I'm going to board the 7.07. It's a more comfortable ride, anyway. Better than this old rolling stock.'
'You want to be careful.'
'It's safe enough. I know what I'm doing.' He opened the door and stepped down onto the gravel at the side of the track and started walking.
'There's always one, isn't there?' a woman in a suit said, looking up from
But not two minutes later, pinstripe was back and asking his companions to open up and help him back inside. 'You're not going to believe this,' he said when the door was closed again. 'There's a leg down there.'
'What's he beefing about now?' the
'I said someone's leg is down there, or part of it, from the knee down.' Pinstripe put his hand to his spotted silk tie and tightened it. 'Horrible.'
'Where?'
'Just a short way along, by the side of the track at the bottom of the embankment. You wouldn't spot it unless you were down there.'
'It'll be a dummy from a dress shop.'
'No, it's real. I could see the raw flesh. It must have been chewed by a fox or something.'
'Leave it out, will you?' a
'Has anyone got a mobile I can use? We ought to tell the police.'
'Do us all a favour, mate,' the
Not everybody chimed in, but no one objected. Three minutes later, the 7.07 resumed its journey to London, and in another three minutes the 7.37 was in motion, leaving the leg behind.
The senior officers were sitting in armchairs and there was a table in front of them with filter coffee and chocolate digestives, but nobody was comfortable.
'As you know, I managed to get full backing from Headquarters,' Georgina was saying. 'We're in the seventh month of this inquiry, and they've given it one hundred per cent support.'
'So have my team,' McGarvie said. 'They've put in hundreds of hours of unpaid overtime.'
'I know. They've been terrific. We can be proud of them.'
Diamond said, 'But you're going to scale it down.'
'The office manager has shown me the costings, Peter. It's impossible to keep it running at this pitch.'
'You told me budgets didn't exist in this case. You'd see it through, whatever.'
'That was in February.'
'And we're no further on. That's the truth.'
McGarvie took this as a personal attack. 'We're miles further on. We've got statements, forensic reports, video footage, we've recovered her bag, her diary and the bullets, we've interviewed over six hundred people.'
