Beneath the Streets by Adam Macqueen

Author:Adam Macqueen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Eye Books
Published: 2020-02-24T11:01:15+00:00

TWENTY-FIVE

I will say this for them: the police can be very quick on the scene when they put their minds to it. Both passengers and conductor had reacted in just the way I’d hoped: the whole top deck erupted and the old lady in the seat behind us even took her umbrella to my assailant as he tried to push his way through the suddenly rowdy crowd of passengers and down the stairs. He didn’t make it that far before the conductor erupted up, grabbed him by the arm and told him in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t going anywhere until the cops had been called.

Undoing my jeans was a nice touch. I’d had plenty of practice whipping people’s flies open in my time, and it was a cinch to open the buttons on my own under the guise of fumbling for change to pay for my ticket. I’d maybe overdone things by adding an affronted yell of ‘and I’m only 16!’ when the guy was trying to make his escape – certainly the first policeman on the scene looked sceptical about that particular detail when the time came to write it in his notebook. But there was no way I was risking my would-be abductor getting off with a stern warning and sent on his (which is to say my) way. I needed him, and preferably his pal in the car behind, taken in to the station at the very least.

At least no one seemed to doubt the main thrust (as it were) of my story. ‘He followed the poor boy right down the bus and sat next to him even though there were seats free on the other side,’ the old lady happily testified as the concerned-looking constable scribbled it all down in his pocket-book. ‘And then he was fumbling around with him and whispering in his ear all the way. Poor lad looked terrified.’

I nodded, doing my best to look tearful, which wasn’t actually that hard under the circumstances. The crowd around me murmured in sympathy, and someone even patted me consolingly on the back. Everyone had been made to get off the bus, which was parked up with its engine off, and most of them seemed in no hurry to continue their journey on any of the alternative ones that had gone by, preferring to stay and watch the show instead. A few other passers-by – mostly long-haired students from the nearby university – had swelled their ranks, wanting to see what was going on.

The one person who wasn’t there was the blond in the black car. He’d pulled in behind the bus all right, and hung around for a good five minutes with his engine idling, ignoring the honking protests of other bus drivers trying to pull in to the stop – but when he saw the uniformed policeman turn up and his companion marched off the bus to meet him, his arms firmly held by the conductor on one side and the driver on the other, he had pulled out again and shot off down Gower Street like a scalded cat.

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