Post Mortem by Gary Bell (free children's ebooks pdf .TXT) 📕

‘Morning, Rook. I hear that you’ve offered to help Barnes out this morning. Have you left for Snaresbrook already?’

‘Left? I’ve just got off the Tube – I’m walking up to the courthouse as we speak.’

‘You shouldn’t have bothered.’

‘Why? What is it?’

‘Her trial has been stood out for the day.’

‘Stood out?’

‘Apparently so,’ he said. ‘One of the jury is unable to attend.’

I came to a stop on the pavement. ‘Sick?’

‘Must be. Hospital, I think. The listings officer just called.’

‘Does Zara know?’

‘Yes, I just spoke to her. How else would I know where you were going? I don’t have a tracker planted in that tramp’s hat of yours, you know.’

‘Goodbye, Percy.’

‘Wait!’

I sighed. ‘Yes?’

‘If you’re looking for something else to do with your day, I was thinking that you could come into chambers instead. Perhaps have a sit-down with the rest of the pupils and give them a few first-hand lessons on how a silk goes about organising and preparing for a major –’

‘You’re breaking up, Percy, I can’t quite hear –’ I hung up without finishing and dropped the phone into my coat pocket. Close call.

Pedestrians were stepping around me, flocking towards the court’s gates ahead, but I remained there for a while, a static body with racing thoughts.

Something cold had settled in my gut. Something like poison. It was something I hadn’t felt since that snowy night in Radcliffe. It accompanied me back into the station, and it was still there when I boarded the westbound train for home.

Yesterday had been the first sign of a break in Zara’s case, and now a member of the jury had fallen ill? Hospitalised. What if our cases really were connected, only somebody didn’t want that getting out? What if they’d got to Charli? Her children?

‘The next station is Leyton. Please mind the gap between the train and the platform.’

I told myself that I wasn’t going to repeat yesterday’s trip to Low Hall Lane. This time I was going to remain in my seat, that’s all I had to do. Even as the train came to its stop and the doors glided open, I was telling myself not to move.

‘This is Leyton.’

No. I would have the whole day to myself. I would take the dog out for an hour, maybe two, and just unwind in Regent’s Park like any ordinary person. I would read a novel. I would forget about work for a while. I might even enjoy myself for once.

These lies were still echoing in my head when I barged out of the sliding doors and landed with both feet on the platform.

Last night it had taken ten minutes to get to Charli’s in the taxi. I estimated that I could check in on her and be back on the Tube within half an hour. A minor detour. Nothing but a courtesy call. Easy enough. So, why not ring?

It was just past nine o’clock, and Leyton Station was about as busy as it had been yesterday afternoon, its remaining morning commuters preferring the semi-calm that borders both sides of every rush hour. I approached the barriers with my contactless bank card ready in my right hand, still denouncing my own poisonous thoughts as paranoid nonsense. I was already swiping the reader when a small freckled boy with an oversized rucksack shoved his way into my barrier’s lane from the other side. The gates opened and then snapped shut like mechanical jaws behind him and he walked straight into me, earphones blasting, apparently oblivious to me standing directly in front of him.

‘Pardon me!’ I said sarcastically, but he didn’t bother to meet my eye. He just glowered and carried on walking, ten years old and ready to fight the world. ‘Little bastard!’ I called back, refusing to let my voice be lost under his music. ‘Shouldn’t you be in school?’

He didn’t hear me, or more likely ignored me altogether.

I was still complaining to myself about the cheek of it all, and having to swipe twice, as I exited through the barrier.

I made it four steps before coming to a frozen halt. There’d been something in that scowl, in the blaze of his green eyes, that was impossibly familiar. I glanced back over my shoulder and caught sight of him once more before he got onto the staircase. I couldn’t quite believe my eyes.

It wasn’t just because I recognised his trainers. It was the rucksack. More to the point, it was the thing hanging from its zip, a very unique sort of lucky charm for a ten-year-old boy to be flaunting: a chrome jaguar.

‘You’ve got to be fucking joking me.’

I tripped back through the barrier, that coldness in my gut now boiling, screaming for me to run up and catch him like a mouse by the tail. I somehow managed to summon restraint and instead followed him through to the platforms. Westbound. He stepped straight onto the waiting train and I shadowed his movements, entering the next carriage along and watching him through the connecting windows, now continuing in the same direction I had been going before. I was aware that my poorly practised, irresponsible stalking had already got me into more trouble than I could afford. I just didn’t really care.

He got off a stop later at Stratford and, of course, I did the same. I maintained as much distance as I dared, though between his music and the course he was on, the boy seemed isolated and ignorant to much of anything going on around him. I wondered if, after a dose of full beams to the eyes, he’d be able to recognise my face anyway. I hadn’t been wearing my hat at the time, and, though I was now grateful for the perpetual shadow it cast over my features, I knew it wouldn’t look good for a large man to be seen following a small boy. This was an explanation I wouldn’t ever want to be asked for.

Together, and yet not really together at all, we walked through the connecting shopping centre