THE WORLD stopped for what seemed like hours but was only seconds. Darian stood on the top of the embankment and looked down at the train, now still on the tracks, no sign of Will Dent. The two men in the cab of the train sat where they were and didn’t move, stunned by what had happened. Sholto was across on the other side, and although Darian didn’t notice it at the time he too was rooted to the spot. In the seconds after another man’s death a moment of respectful silence was forced upon them by shock. Dent was under the train. Darian couldn’t see him because the massive metal beast had moved forward another seventy or eighty feet before stopping at the mouth of the tunnel.
Everyone seemed to move at the same time. Darian tried to run, skidding down the slope as Dent had done, trying to kneel and slide on his feet but slipping and going on his backside instead. By the time he was at the bottom two men in overalls were getting down out of the cab of the train, a man in his forties and a smaller, older one. The three of them stumbled toward the section of track where Dent had last been seen. Darian caught movement from the corner of his eye as he passed the link between two carriages and turned his head sharply to see Sholto struggling to make his way down to them.
The taller of the two drivers got down on his belly and looked under. He said, “Oh Jesus.”
Darian looked to see for himself the grim scene below. A description isn’t necessary because no one needs or deserves to have the details darken their mind. No one’s family should have to read about what became of their loved one in a book like this. They knew at a glance that Will Dent was dead.
The older train driver said, “I’ll call it in.”
He climbed back into the cab as Sholto finally reached them. He looked at Darian and said, “He’s dead.”
“Yeah, he’s dead. Don’t look.”
It took only a couple of minutes from that point for the police to arrive. The first on the scene were a couple of constables who had been at the station and came running down the track with torches. The line had been shut, bringing an unsympathetic city even closer to a grinding halt than usual. They checked the body and asked a few basic questions, not getting too far above their pay grade. A still-breathless Sholto handled the talking.
He said to them, “There was a break-in at our office, Douglas Independent Research on Cage Street. It was William Dent, that’s the deceased. We chased him and he climbed the fence on this side. My colleague, Darian Ross here, he went on foot, I took the car because we thought he was going for the station. As I drove past I saw Darian climb the fence on Gallows View so I went round to Cladach Road thinking I could intercept him, cut off his escape. He stood on the train tracks in between us. He just stood there and let the train hit him.”
One of the officers said, “He must have done more than break into an office to take that way out.”
Whatever that may have been they never found out because the officer chose not to follow up his speculation. A couple of minutes later more cops arrived, and then a couple of ambulances. Within five minutes the area between the station and the mouth of the tunnel was crawling with people and shifting light. One of the train drivers was with them and Darian asked if he was okay.
The man touched the place on his chest where his shirt pocket would be, a nervous twitch Darian had seen him do a few times, and said, “Yes, aye, I’m okay. I’m…okay.”
He sounded like he was trying to convince himself, but at that point they all were. There was no way to be okay in the wake of what they had seen, what they had been a part of. It was horrifying and they were all shattered by it, but the need to focus on what Dent had been doing forced Darian and Sholto to turn their minds away from the death and back to the break-in, and that helped.
A detective from Bank Station appeared beside them. “Sholto, fucking hell, I thought this sort of thing was behind you, bodies and mayhem.”
“I hoped they were, but it seems where there’s life there’s death, Conall.”
“Very profound, Sholto, very profound. So what’s the God’s honest reason for this life turning to death? More to it than a burglary gone wrong?”
This was when they had to share everything they knew. Darian had hoped they might get away from the scene without spilling it all, give them time to talk to Vinny and DC Vicario before the nasty truth shocked everyone. Once Dent’s motives were out in the open word would filter instantly back to Harold Sutherland, and on to his nephew, and that was going to give them time to distance themselves from their employee, set up defenses. Darian’s first instinct was that Dent was obviously involved in Ruby-Mae Short’s killing and Freya’s disappearance, but his second thought told him it didn’t mean he was working alone. He had known they were at Harold’s party, that’s why he had attacked the office that night. Someone had told him. Raven or Harold or perhaps even the Sutherland who had gotten them on the guest list, Philip.
Sholto said to DS Conall Archer, “When you dig around you’re going to find out that William Dent was working for Harold Sutherland as his personal driver, and you’re going to find out that he’s being investigated both for the murder of Ruby-Mae Short from last January that Dockside are looking at and the disappearance of Freya Dempsey that Cnocaid are handling.”
“Sutherland? Wait, Freya Dempsey? Is that Vinny Reno’s missing ex? Oh, shite.”
He moved away quickly to make what looked, under the arc lights now set up alongside the train, like a series of frantic phone calls. DS MacNeith arrived and addressed Darian and Sholto only to tell them she would speak to them properly the following day, and it didn’t seem like she was planning on offering any good wishes. DC Vicario showed up with a colleague a few minutes later.
She told them, “I’ll make my pitch for information, but we’ll be at the back of the queue. Bank will handle the scene and Cnocaid are working an active search for a missing person so that’ll get priority. You really should have called us about the burglary instead of handling it yourself.”
Sholto said, “The police were called, they just weren’t arriving. We went to our office and found he was still there. There wasn’t much else we could do.”
Vicario nodded and said, “That might be enough to keep you out of trouble if it’s accepted he was going to flee before the police got there. I know you’ve given your witness statements twice already, so you should go home. There’ll be a lot of people wanting to talk to you tomorrow. If I can hold back some of the wolves I will.”
Darian said, “Thanks, Angela.”
He didn’t notice her smile at the mention of her first name; he had been familiar without thinking. If he had thought about it, he would have realized he hadn’t earned that yet. Angela patted Darian gently on the shoulder as he and Sholto turned away from the train and the lights and the teams of people in white forensic suits and made their way through the long grass and up to the fence on the far side. A panel had been cut away from it, the whole section would have to be replaced, and people were coming in and out. They got into the Fiat and Sholto picked an exceedingly careful path out between police cars, an ambulance, a large black van and, just coming up the street, what looked like a large crane on the back of a lorry.