The Man Called Kyril by John Trenhaile

Author:John Trenhaile
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canelo
Published: 2021-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Kyril lay between the rails, fighting to get his breath back. His brain had temporarily seized up. All he could think of was stories of men who suffered terrible amputations and could feel nothing, numbed by shock into the belief that they had miraculously come through unscathed.

He moved his right leg, then his left. He was alive. He could feel all his limbs.

And he could hear. A horn, the sound of many voices. It was time to go.

Carefully avoiding the live rails he flipped from under the train across to the track nearest the platform where he had arrived with Vera a few moments ago. He wanted to look back to see what had happened to his attacker but his brain, active once more, forbade it. Better not. You’ve got enough to cope with. So has Vera…

Using the monkey crawl he edged his way along the tracks beneath the first train, making for the end farthest from the barrier. There, all was peaceful. He poked his head out cautiously. Anyone who had been standing at this point a moment before would understandably have been attracted back along the platform where all the commotion was. He climbed from under the train and stood upright between the rails. There was nobody about. No one looked in his direction.

Kyril vaulted up on to the platform. A few metres away he could see an iron stairway leading to a gantry which spanned the platform. He ran up it three steps at a time, coming to rest in the shadow of the overhead air-terminal which the gantry was designed to serve. He peered round the corner to find that he had a bird’s eye view of the scene for which he was responsible.

Vera stood in the middle of a crowd of people, her face white. She was crying. A policeman was standing next to her, notebook in hand. An ambulance advanced slowly down the platform towards them.

On the other side he could see where the incoming train had stopped well short of the buffers, and there the crowd was smaller, more professional. A second ambulance was already parked close up to the train, its open doors flanked by policemen who every so often waved back a curious passerby. But for the most part the casual watchers had gone, repelled by their glimpse of what lay under the wheels of the train.

A necessity of the mission, Kyril told himself as he walked casually along the gantry, making for the platform farthest from the scene of the ‘accident’. For Vera he had no worries, once the initial shock had worn off: before leaving the house he had primed her with things to say if it went wrong, and he never doubted her ability to stay cool in a crisis.

For a moment he allowed his heart to go to her in a spasm of sympathy and remorse; then he was himself again. He had to go on. No matter what, he must succeed.

He took his seat in a ‘local’ which was going to Battersea Park.

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