Platform Seven Read online

  I turn back to the man just as the train thunders towards us, the metal bulk and roar of it filling the cold air, rust-red containers heaped with tons of grey gravel. The man tips forward with his body unnaturally straight, as if he is a tree that has been felled. He doesn’t teeter, not for a moment, but stays completely straight, passes through me and onto the tracks just as the train rushes into the station. Gravity takes him. He doesn’t so much as flail an arm as he falls.

  2

  Is it painful, being dead? Of course not. You feel no hunger, no cold – you’re never tired, but there is a sensation that comes with being bodiless, as if you are drugged. The best way I can describe it is – you know that feeling when you wake in the middle of the night and need the toilet and you get out of bed and walk across the hallway? You’re awake but not awake. Your body works automatically and you don’t even think about it as you push open the bathroom door. Sometimes you don’t even remember you did it until the morning, when the person you were sharing a bed with grumbles, you woke me when you got up last night. It took me ages to get off again. And you say, really? I got up in the night? Are you sure? That feeling, that dreamlike state, awake but not awake, that’s what it’s like being me.

  When you don’t have a solid self any more, you realise what a lumpy, demanding thing it was to be chained to: all those needs, the weight of them. The hard thing is that this dreamlike state applies to my thoughts as well. I can’t remember who I was. A person with amnesia might say, I just want to know who I am – I know who I am, I’m a ghost, invisible and silent, nothing but consciousness. I want to know who I was.

  The other day, I saw a mother kneel in front of her child as they waited on Platform Three: a grey-haired mum, the child a small girl, around three years old, wearing a navy blue duffel coat with plastic-wooden toggles. The mother knelt and pulled the child’s knitted hat a little lower down over her forehead, then tucked her fringe beneath the hat. The girl stood very still as the mother performed this small, unnecessary gesture, and then she smiled – a smug smile, I thought: the smile of a child who knows herself to be loved, who is certain that her mother belongs to her.

  The mother kissed the child’s nose before she stood up and I felt a pang of recognition, like torchlight down a long tunnel. I was loved, at that age. I had a fringe when I was small. My mother used to trim it by holding it up from my forehead between two fingers and then, very slowly and carefully, cutting the hair along the line her fingers made. Afterwards, she would let the fringe drop and say, ‘Close your eyes,’ and then trim, here and there, where the edge was uneven. Then she would purse her lips, exhaling on my face, my eyes and nose, to blow away the tiny loose hairs.

  *

  When you don’t have a body, time is no longer even or consistent: it stretches and bends, folds in on itself. A moment watching someone walk along a railway platform becomes a decade. Two years pass in a flash. It’s a bit like gazing at an electronic information board. The minutes on it bear no relation to real minutes – sometimes you stare and stare at the letters and numbers that represent your train for what feels like hours, and nothing happens. At other times, the display seems to jump from saying you have twenty minutes until your train to telling you it’ll be here in two, better run. My whole life is like that. Life – I use the word in its loosest sense. My whole time would be more accurate. I don’t have a life any more: I just have time.

  The clocks went back last week. An hour lost; an hour gained – when we lose that hour in the spring, we are supposed to feel joyful that summer is coming: the lighter evenings, songbirds and all that, but a lost hour is a whole hour that has fallen down a crack. What if that hour was the hour when you might have bought the lottery ticket that would have transformed your life, or met your one true love? What if it was the hour when you made the best decision of your life? You’re never going to get that hour back, it’s gone – live to ninety-six and that’s a whole four days you’ve lost. The hour you gain in the winter isn’t your lost hour from earlier in the year, reappearing. That hour isn’t a gift. It is time cracking open, bulging and splitting, wide enough for all manner of things to crawl out. The next day, you will be plunged into darkness at 5 p.m. and even though you knew it was coming, it still feels sudden. Things are walking abroad that weren’t there before and the long British winter stretches ahead. From now on, it will get darker and darker. And at 4 a.m., it is darkest of all.

  *

  They don’t even cancel the 06.10 to Birmingham New Street. That isn’t how it works.

  As soon as Tom puts the call through to the Fatality Hotline, the trains are stopped. The next thing he does, because he knows them and has the direct line, is phone through to the British Transport Police offices in the small brick house next to the car park. It is less than a minute from the station’s main entrance.

  The only person on duty at 4 a.m. that night is PC Akash Lockhart (father from Midlothian, mother from Southall). His sergeant was there earlier but went off at 3 a.m. so PC Lockhart is on his own till the morning shift comes on at 7 a.m. There’s usually very little happening at that hour so he is doing what all PCs do when there isn’t a sergeant or inspector around: he has his feet up on a desk and his head is lolling back against the top of the chair. His eyes are closed. He is nursing a cup of instant coffee between both hands, resting it on his stab-proof vest. He is thinking of a young woman called Veena who is betrothed to his cousin Randeep in Leicester and is, in his opinion, the most beautiful woman he has ever set eyes on. She is a dental nurse and even though he has never seen her at work, he thinks about her in her white coat all the time. In his dreams, the coat is always pristine and her long, glossy hair waterfalls down over her back and shoulders. At four o’clock this particular morning, he is thinking about Veena in her white coat and wondering if he will love her forever and dwelling on how embarrassing that will be, as he is destined to see her at family events for decades to come.

  Then the phone rings and it’s Tom, saying breathily, ‘Who’s that? Who’s there? Peter?’ Peter Barker is the inspector. He and Tom are old friends and play together in a ukulele band.

  ‘No, it’s me, Akash,’ says PC Lockhart, even though he doesn’t recognise the voice on the other end of the line – he knows Tom by sight. ‘PC Lockhart, how may I be of assistance?’

  ‘Fatality on Seven,’ says Tom.

  PC Lockhart is upright in his chair, slamming down his coffee cup with a force that makes the contents slop onto his desk. ‘Have you told Control?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good, okay, I’m on my way,’ Lockhart says.

  Lockhart is out of his office in seconds and runs across Station Approach. Tom is waiting for him at the barriers, his face a mask of panic.

  As he runs past him, Lockhart says, ‘Lock down the station, now!’

  Tom nods.

  Lockhart runs for the stairs, taking them two at a time. As he traverses the covered walkway he speaks into his radio mike and finds out that BTP officers from Milton Keynes and Nottingham are on their way – the Nottingham squad was already somewhere between Corby Glen and Market Deeping, for some reason, so they won’t take long, but Cambridgeshire Constabulary will still get there first. He snaps on his rubber gloves as he runs down the stairs to Platform Seven.

  The platform is empty and for a moment he doesn’t see Dalmar, at the far end, near the bottom of the ramp, but then he spots him where he kneels. Dalmar has both hands clamped over his mouth but as he approaches, Lockhart can hear him muttering something, a prayer perhaps, or a series of horrified exclamations. He is rocking slightly. The young officer goes over to the security guard and places a hand on his shoulder. He doesn’t know his name. He leans down and says, ‘It’s alright, mate, help is on its way, it’s okay.’ Odd that he calls him mate, he thinks later, when the man is probably a decade older than him, a bit presumptuous. He’s just trying to be comforting.

  He looks to their right, up the tracks, into the Midland dark
ness that has swallowed the freight train. Somewhere down the line, he hopes, it will have stopped, although if it was a 60 mph-er with a full load, it could be miles away – that’s presuming the driver even saw the fatality occur and braked immediately. A statement from the driver is what Lockhart needs as soon as possible.

  ‘Did you witness it?’ he says, gently, to Dalmar, and Dalmar nods without speaking. ‘Was there anyone else nearby, anyone else on the platform, in the vicinity?’ Lockhart asks, and Dalmar shakes his head, still without speaking, still with his hands clamped over his mouth, his eyes full. The man is in shock, Lockhart thinks; a full statement can be taken later. Then Lockhart looks down onto the tracks and sees what Dalmar can see.

  *

  Cambridgeshire Constabulary arrive with torches and shine them down, left and right, up and down. Lockhart keeps one of them and sends the other two off to help Tom secure the station, even though there will be only a handful of people who need turning away. The first responders from the Ambulance Service turn up but there isn’t much they can do either. The clock is ticking on the ninety-minute rule – that’s how long Network Rail gives the BTP to get the body parts off the line and get the trains running through again. Their Specialist Cleaning Unit is on its way.

  Lockhart waits until Nottingham get there with the body bag. It’s two PCs and a sergeant who show up and he’s never been so grateful to see an officer of senior rank. The sergeant jumps down onto the tracks immediately and says, ‘Down you come, lad, it’s okay, I’ll tell you what to do. We need to do the large parts first. You done this before?’

  Lockhart shakes his head. The sergeant smiles at him in an uncle-ish manner. ‘Breathe through your mouth. Stay by me. We’re going to work together. I’ll do the heavy lifting, you’re going to hold the bag open for me, okay? When we’ve done that, we’ll send these two down the track.’

  When they have loaded the body bag and the other two PCs have set off with it down the track, shining their torches from left to right as they go, he and the kindly sergeant climb back up onto Platform Seven and wait for the cleaners to arrive.

  ‘Any idea how he got down there?’ the sergeant asks. ‘Did he go off the platform or was he already in the four-foot?’

  PC Lockhart shakes his head. ‘It’s easy enough to get in that way,’ he lifts an arm to indicate the freight depot, ‘but he could’ve just walked in the front. CCTV’ll tell us.’

  The sergeant’s radio crackles. He listens, then says, ‘Driver’s been located.’

  The Specialist Cleaning Unit comprises two men in orange waterproof jackets, with white face masks and black wellies. As they get down on the tracks, the sergeant’s radio crackles again and he tells Lockhart the Nottingham PCs are waiting at the entrance with the body bag. Lockhart and the sergeant head over and the four of them take a handle each, turn right out of the station and walk to the far end of the car park. That way, they are out of sight of any members of the public who might arrive for an early commute – people always go for the parking spaces nearest the station.

  Lockhart has never carried a body bag before. It’s not like a stretcher: it’s mobile. At the far end of the car park, they put it on the ground and wait for the little black van from Dignity. The sergeant calls the duty staff at Peterborough City Hospital and checks there will be porters on hand when Dignity arrives, to take possession of the body bag and deliver it to the mortuary.

  Lockhart has been doing very well up until now but while they wait in the freezing cold, he can feel his knees begin to knock together and prays inwardly that he will not let himself down. Twenty-four years old, with two and a half years’ service under his belt, he has never been good at bravado, at the gallows humour that keeps so many officers bonded to each other – but surely he can manage to stay upright and not drop to his knees in front of the others?

  The sergeant – whose name Lockhart has not registered – comes off the phone to the hospital and looks at him and says, ‘Head back now, lad, we’ll take it from here. You’ll have things to do.’ Lockhart turns away without shaking their hands or thanking them because he does not want them to cotton on that, now the immediate drama is over, he is only just holding it together. As he walks back to the station, he breathes large gulps of the freezing night air, but slowly, proud of the fact that he has not fainted or been sick; he has not cried.

  *

  By the time passengers arrive for the 06.10 to Birmingham New Street, the station entrance is open again. Around fifteen people are there for the train on Platform Seven. Only one of them, a Deputy Customer Services Manager on her way to a Network Health and Safety Information Exchange Group Meeting in Leicester, notices that the platform surface is freshly hosed and sand has been scattered along the tracks.

  *

  PC Lockhart is in the mess kitchen at the BTP offices, making himself another coffee but this time loading three heaped teaspoons of sugar into it, when one of the Nottingham lot taps at the door, comes in and hands Lockhart a small plastic evidence bag in which there is a piece of paper torn from a lined notepad with some writing on. ‘Boss says this should stay with you, for the Coroner Liaison,’ he says. ‘When we went up the line, the coat, it was wrapped round one of the front wheels. We cut it loose. It was in the left-hand pocket. No other form of ID. We did look, didn’t find anything.’

  The Nottingham PC leaves. Lockhart lays the small plastic bag on the counter top and smooths it. He can read the writing on the note through the bag. It is in blue biro and quite neat. It is the kind of note that will be presented at the inquest. If a family member can’t be found to verify it, then a handwriting expert will testify that the writing matches that on a shopping list found in the man’s residence, and that it doesn’t appear to have been written under duress.

  The note reads, I am very sorry about this and about everything. Please look after Mutton as he is a good dog and better than his owner. He has to be careful with sugar, even bananas are not okay. I would like my belongings to go to the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals not the Oxfam

  PC Lockhart stares at the note. There isn’t a full stop after Oxfam, which makes him wonder if the note is unfinished. Oxfam shop? He is touched that the man thought of his dog. No wife or children then. This makes Lockhart feel a little better.

  Still, he can’t jump to any conclusions and his first task now is to try and track down any next of kin as quickly as possible, so they can be informed. He’d better review the CCTV around the station immediately. If the man came in the front entrance, there will be a clear shot of his face as he approached. They’ll be taking dead-set fingerprints at the mortuary – he saw enough to know that is at least possible in this case – but who knows if there will be a match. They’ll do a DNA test as well, and they’ll try and do a toxicology to see if there was alcohol or any illegal substances in the man’s system but sometimes that’s not possible. Sometimes there isn’t enough fluid left to test.

  *

  I leave PC Lockhart to make his notes in his notepad, log his actions and list those he must now perform. I head back over to the station.

  The driver of the train is in the Duty Team Leader’s office. He is a very small, elderly man, nearing retirement I would guess, and frail-looking. He is gabbling – later, I think, it will occur to him that he nearly got through all his years of service without anything like this happening to him. He is telling his story to the ever patient Tom, who is nodding at everything the man says. ‘You don’t know what it is,’ the man keeps saying. ‘You just don’t know, do you? You don’t know. Could be anything, like a bit of falling roof, or, or cement. Or a dog, or something. You don’t think it could be, you know, a man, like, you just don’t think that. Happens so quickly, you don’t know what it is.’

  Dalmar sits with them both. He has said nothing so far, just held on to his mug of tea. The driver is everybody’s priority for now but he knows that once the driver is sorted and taken home, attention will turn to him. He would be allowed to
go home as well if he wanted but asking if he can feels wrong. There was a man on the station only two hours ago who will never go home again.

  Listening to the driver and watching Tom nod, Dalmar feels a sudden wave of nausea, as if the office has become very hot and started to tilt. The thoughts crowd his head – last time something like this happened, he had just left the station. He had a stomach bug and got permission to go home early, only minutes before. What is it about him? He didn’t witness it last time but all the same, he feels as if there is something about him that attracts disaster, as if he is a danger to other people. You don’t know what it is. He thought that same thing, once upon a time. He thought it as he watched a head floating on water, becoming more and more distant, less and less like a person and more and more like an object. But it wasn’t an object, it was a woman’s head and the woman was calling out. What is the point where a human being stops being a human being and becomes a thing? Most people think it happens with death but Dalmar knows it can happen a long time before then if it needs to, so that other people can bear what they are seeing. Dalmar moves his head from side to side with sudden violence and Tom and the driver stop talking and look at him.

  He rises to his feet. The metal legs of the chair scrape against the floor. ‘Excuse me for one moment.’

  Outside, he turns right and walks along Platform One, a few paces, to the stairs. He pauses, his hand on the rail, like a man who fears losing his balance, then turns and sinks down onto the third stair up. He rests his wrists on his knees, his hands hanging, and lets his head drop. Passengers are starting to arrive, none the wiser about what has occurred during the night. Within an hour, dawn will break and the busy period will begin in earnest. The staff will talk amongst themselves, of course, and people will seek him out and ask for his account of what happened. The women will look at him with sympathy. The men will clap him on the shoulder. Melissa, the Station Manager, will take him into her office and ask slowly and sincerely if he needs time off, or counselling. Everyone will be kind.