Many Deadly Returns by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House
Published: 2021-07-19T00:00:00+00:00

MARTIN EDWARDS – BAD FRIDAY

‘I want you out of my life! I just wish you would die!’

Like a chisel ripping through flesh, the woman’s voice pierces the hubbub in Coach U. I’m wedged in the carriage entrance as a morbidly obese businessman blocks the aisle while trying to squeeze his bulging suitcase in between two seats. The woman swears, and I wince as hot rage pours from an unseen mouth into the sweaty air.

The first off-peak train on a Friday evening from Euston to Liverpool Lime Street is always jam-packed. To make matters worse, the previous train has been cancelled – leaves on the line, or the wrong kind of rain, or some other excuse, I don’t know – and this one teems with specimens of exhausted humanity desperately seeking unreserved seats.

The fat bloke abandons the unequal struggle, and disappears down the train, matching fat suitcase in hand. As people push forward, I lean against a luggage rack and catch my breath. I’ve not felt so exhausted since the last weeks of my pregnancy. There is nowhere to stash my bag, but at least I can keep hold of it. Anything rather than the embarrassment of finding I’m the victim of a thief.

The train lurches forward, and I catch sight of the woman who wants someone dead. She’s lucky enough to have bagged a seat, but is staring at her iPhone with the sort of concentrated disgust that only a faithless lover can inspire. I can’t tell whether she’s hung up on him, or he’s hung up on her. She is in her mid-twenties, with luxuriant dark hair and lips whose default expression is a spoiled-brat’s pout. Because she has over-indulged in fake tan, and under-dressed for an October evening, a great deal of orange flesh is on display. If Josh were here, he’d find it hard to resist ogling. But I must stop thinking about him. Josh and I aren’t together any longer.

The orange-skinned woman stabs the dialling pad with a purple fingernail, and screeches, ‘It’s me!’ at precisely the moment we enter the tunnel outside Euston. Losing the connection provokes her into a lurid bout of swearing, and this prompts the old chap sitting next to her to bury his head in the Evening Standard. I read the headlines on the other side of the paper – Stock market plunges, Celebrity couple split, Hoxton minimart stabbings: ‘no arrest imminent’, Chelsea striker suspended – and, shuddering, avert my eyes. A young couple in the seats opposite Ms Orange murmur to each other in a foreign language I can’t identify. I find myself hoping their command of English isn’t good enough to enable them to understand what she is saying.

As we emerge from the tunnel into the evening gloom, the train manager announces that the shop and buffet car are open and, after apologizing for the overcrowded conditions, he offers a sweetener: a few free seats in the first-class carriages are being made available for the common herd. Those of

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