They could take me now, she thinks. The two of them. Take a chance on it and flip me into that car in broad daylight. Where is he? Where’s Malik? I wish I could risk a quick look; see how much he’s caught up. He sounds so close. His heels click and scrape on the surface. Segs. She remembers that he always hammered metal segs into his shoes the moment he bought them. He said they made them wear better. It was only later that she realised that they also inflicted more damage if he felt a need to stamp.
She can’t tell if the figure in the car has seen her. She dips her head and crosses the road. If Burim wants to get her, she’s going to make him leave the car and give her warning. No silent electric slide of the window and a steel-hard hand shooting out to grab her wrist for him. She lifts her bag off her shoulder and puts it over her head so that the strap crosses her body. If she’s going to have to fight, or run, she needs both hands free.
The sunshine is so bright that, even through her shades, it hurts her eyes. Step, breathe, step, breathe.
Away from the shops around the tube, there are fewer people on the pavement, but the road is filled with the blessed hum of noonday traffic. If they try to take her, they will be seen. She reaches the far-side pavement and stops to choose her direction. Go on to the bus stop, or go back? You might get past him, or he might just turn around and follow you down the escalator. These suburban stations are all but empty at this time of day. You’ll be most likely alone on the platform with him, nothing but air between you and the track.
Okay. The bus. I’ll take the bus.
They can follow the bus. I can take it to Tooting. It’s always busy there, because of the hospital, and the market and the shops. Go to Tooting, get on the tube. If you cut through Sainsbury’s, come out the back way, you might get there before he realises where you’ve gone.
She scans her possible routes home in her head. Maybe I should go into town. Victoria, Waterloo – they’re both busy. Lots of places where buses and cabs can go and cars are forbidden. If I go up to one of those… then back down to Clapham Junction. Busiest station in the country. When a train lets out there, that long, long tunnel beneath the tracks is like 28 Days Later. If Malik’s following, I can change to another platform before he’s even seen where I’ve gone. Hide in one of the shops. Go out the exit where the cars drop off: most people don’t even seem to notice it’s there as they rush up towards the main barriers. Yes. Clapham Junction. If I’m lucky, I can get the Northbourne train first time.
And if you’re not, you’ll lead him straight to your front door.
Ahead, she sees a bus approaching. The stop is a hundred yards away, no distance at all. The display on the front says it’s going to Wimbledon, but it’s single-storey, which suggests that it might well take a long route to get there. But it’s a bus, and that’s people, and people are safety for now. Wimbledon’s always busy, around the station. If he follows her now, she can lose him there.
Without looking over her shoulder, Collette takes to her heels and sprints.
Chapter Thirty-Six
‘Excuse me!’
In another life, this woman would have run the WAAF. She has a natural built-in foghorn, a height and stature you only get from generations of plentiful meat. Thomas sits up to attention as she marches towards him wheeling her three-wheeled lightweight buggy, an OshKosh toddler straining to keep up without dropping its Peppa Pig. She gets within talking distance, but her tone stays the same, as though they are communicating across a playing field. She’s got a touch of sunburn. That high medieval forehead, made higher by the sort of Alice band he hasn’t seen since the 1980s, will be peeling later. ‘Do you mind not feeding my dog?’ she shouts.
He adopts his harmless smile and blinks at her, myopically. Chucks his new black spaniel friend behind the ear and lets it go. ‘Molly!’ she shouts. The dog, ignoring her, circles the bench on which Thomas sits a single time, sniffing the ground in the hope that he might have dropped a titbit, then comes back and sits at his feet, gazing up, expectantly.
‘I’m sorry,’ says Thomas. He puts his hands pointedly in his lap and says to the woman, ‘It’s just a bit of kidney. Nothing harmful.’
‘Molly!’ she shouts again. The dog ignores her. Its eyes plead until he sees the whites at their edges. ‘Yes, but she’s on an all-natural diet, you see,’ she informs him, staying ten feet away, as though she is nervous of getting closer.
The common is full of sunbathers and picnickers and joggers and drinkers, the way it has been all summer long. On a day like this, when a twenty-foot gap from your nearest neighbour feels like luxury, she stands no chance at all of coming to harm unless she eats a hotdog from the unlicensed wheelie-cart, but there’s a type of woman who revels in their sense of vulnerability, he’s noticed. Somehow the thought that someone could want to harm them makes them feel special.