‘Go on,’ said Gareth. ‘Go home, Jake. Get some rest and recover. You’ve had an ordeal. Come back Thursday, see the medico and get yourself cleared as fit, and then you can throw yourself back among the files. We need you, Jake, but we need you fit. No work for the next twenty-four hours. And that’s an order.’
Chapter 4
Jake stood on the platform at Victoria underground waiting for the train. The platform was packed with people. Where do they all come from, he thought. At rush hour, he could understand, but this was supposed to be the quiet part of the day. He heard the approaching sound of the train. Automatically, he edged forward, eager to be one of the first on the train and so get a seat. He hated standing, his nose pushed into someone’s else’s smelly armpits, but it nearly always happened.
The train was nearly out of the tunnel when Jake felt a push in the small of his back. Someone trying to shove in! Jake pressed back, but then was shocked to feel the pressure on his back was firmer, harder, moving him firmly towards the very edge of the platform, shoving hard. If he hadn’t already been resisting he’d have been pushed forward on to the lines, right in front of the train.
Jake turned, trying to see who was behind him, and as he did so the person gave one last hard push and he felt himself stumbling and falling, into the path of the oncoming train!
‘Look out!’
A man grabbed him and pulled him back, just as the train surged past him. Jake even felt the moving train hit him on the arm. Then he was stumbling back, the man who’d saved him holding his arm.
‘You all right, mate?’ asked the man, concerned.
Jake studied him. The expression of concern on his face looked genuine.
‘Yes.’ Jake nodded, still shocked.
The man released his hold on Jake’s arm.
‘You ought to be more careful, mate,’ said the man. ‘Losing your balance like that. If I hadn’t caught you, you’d have been under that train.’
Jake was about to say, ‘I didn’t lose my balance. Someone pushed me.’ But then he thought how stupid it would sound. Instead, he nodded and thanked the man, and got into the carriage. He found a seat and collapsed into it, still feeling shocked.
Someone had pushed him! Not just once, like an accident, but firmly. A hard push.
Or maybe Gareth was right. Maybe there really had been something toxic in the air at the dig, something that was making him feel paranoid. Why would anyone want to shove him under a train?
All the way to his home station at Finsbury Park Jake thought about what had happened. Had he really been pushed? Even if he had, maybe it hadn’t been aimed at him particularly. Maybe it had just been some lunatic who felt like pushing someone under a train for no reason. There were plenty of lunatics at loose in London, some dangerous, some who just sat in parks and talked to themselves.
As the train neared Finsbury Park, his mind turned back to what had happened at the dig, and then at the department afterwards. The words ‘Sigma’ and ‘Malichea’ hung in his mind. What were they references to? Something to do with what had happened at the dig, he was sure. But what had happened? He’d seen a man find something wrapped in leather, and open it up to reveal a book. He’d opened the book and then been turned into some kind of mass of vegetation. It sounded like a sci-fi or horror film plot, or something to do with a sort of weird unusual science thing.
As he thought the words ‘weird unusual science thing’, his mind automatically went to Lauren, his former girlfriend, of very recent and painful times. He suspected he’d deliberately dredged up the phrase about ‘weird science’ just so he could think of her. Not that he needed any excuse, he often thought of her. Too often. It was a pity she obviously never thought of him these days.
How long had it been since he’d last spoken to her? Three months? And the conversation they’d had then could hardly have been called ‘speaking’. She’d hung up on him. And that had been that. Maybe he was just using this as an excuse to talk to her again. Try and start things up again, maybe. Fat chance, he admitted to himself. But then, stranger things had happened. Were happening.
As he called up her number, he felt a thrill of anticipation. He heard the call tone, then her voice, still sending a shudder through him the same as always, even with that one brief word:
‘Yes?’
Doing his very best to keep his voice calm and relaxed, he said, ‘Hi, Lauren. It’s Jake.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I saw your name.’
Was that a good thing? he wondered. She still had his number saved. But then, from the cold tone in her voice, maybe it wasn’t a good thing after all.