Robert Young - Gatecrasher

A red haired young man that she guessed was barely out of his teens and certainly not in her league stood and took a step toward her but the bus rounded a corner fast and hard and he lost his footing and stumbled awkwardly to the noisy delight of his friends.

It didn’t put him off though and he walked over to her and asked if he could sit next to her. She shrugged and then regretted not saying no.

‘What’s your name?’ he slurred.

‘Sorry?’ she replied turning to him. He wasn’t attractive and the effect of alcohol did nothing to help that as his eyelids drooped and his mouth hung open.

‘Your name love.’

‘Well its not love for a start,’ she said flatly.

‘Could be if you give it a chance,’ he replied and grinned.

She bit back a laugh. That had amused her but there was no good reason to encourage this and she turned away from him. ‘Doubtful,’ she said.

‘Eh, come on. I’m just trying to be friendly,’ he kept on, his words slurring.

‘Thanks. But we don’t even know each other.’

‘We can soon put that right.’

She looked him in the eye for a moment and her silence and expression said most of what she wanted it to but she spoke as well, just to make sure. ‘No. We can’t.’

He looked at her for a moment, no quick response this time.

‘Please, I get off at the next stop,’ she said politely and her tone made it clear that the conversation was over and that he had been let off without humiliation in front of his watching friends.

‘Well it was nice to meet you anyway, he smiled sheepishly and stood.

Smiling to herself she turned back to the window and noticed that she was near her stop now and she stood and made her way along the aisle to the stairs.

‘See you later gorgeous,’ the redhead called out and she flashed him a quick smile from the top of the steps before dropping from sight and bouncing off the bus.

The rain had begun to fall more heavily now, plump drops of cold water splashed down on her and she pulled the compact umbrella from her bag and opened it quickly before she started walking.

The street was well lit and lined with shops, most of which were shielded now behind metal barriers drawn down at closing time. Some were still open and shone bright neon across the wet pavement which reflected the light back up from beneath her feet. Off-licences and all night convenience stores and take-away shops manned by dark skinned men and the smell of frying onions and cooked meat mingled with the pungent scent of the display of fresh vegetables outside one shop with a sign in Turkish above the door.

Few cars rolled past at this time but the noisy hiss of tires on wet tarmac was still pervasive and she looked up to see if there might be one with a large orange light on the top. It was only a five-minute walk to her flat but this weather was disgusting.

Another burst of wind and cold rain pushed itself under her umbrella as she surveyed the street and she dropped it back down against the oncoming bluster and picked up her pace.

Soon she had turned off this road and into more residential one; fewer lights here, more shadows. The wind barrelled down at her along the high narrow channel created by the terraced houses on each side and she dropped the umbrella lower again and kept on, pushing against the wind.

From behind, a car slid past and the horn sounded a short sharp blast and three young men whooped and wolf-whistled at her through the window. She ignored them and breathed deeply trying to settle the surge of adrenaline in her chest that the shock had brought. Wankers, she thought as the car rounded the corner at the end of the street ahead of her.

She didn’t really hear the sound of a car door opening then. The footsteps she heard were just footsteps and though on edge she wasn’t about to jump at every sound she heard and start imagining rapists and killers out of the shadows.

She definitely felt the thick arm wrap around her chest though and the big hand close solidly over her mouth before any sound could escape. And she certainly felt the ground disappear from beneath her feet as she was plucked from the pavement and stuffed into the black back seat of the car.

Her face was pressed into the stale smelling fabric of the seat and the crushing weight of the body on top of her pinned her utterly motionless where she lay. The adrenaline already in her veins served only to heighten the rising, suffocating panic she felt as the engine tone rose and the car began to move.

Somewhere, less than a mile away through the rain, a phone would soon ring in George Gresham’s home. He would be told, as he tried to blink away the sleep from his eyes, that his debt would be paid and that to make sure he was adequately motivated he would not be hearing from his only daughter for some time since she would be unable to speak properly through the rag in her mouth.

Thursday. 11.30pm.

The fire was dying now and there were only two small logs in the basket, hot orange embers glowing in the grate. The two of them shared a sofa, Campbell sunk low in the corner against the arm with his legs thrust out across the rug toward the hearth. Sarah sat at the other end with her legs curled up beneath her and a glass in her hand. Her hair was tied back into a ponytail and she wore jeans and a white scoop-necked t-shirt.

Outside, the blustery afternoon had worsened into a stormy evening. They had listened as the wind picked up and the rain went from a pattering on the windows to a rattle against the glass to a full-blown hammering on the roof tiles above them. The wind whistled loudly and the windows and doors rumbled every so often as they shook in their frames.

The wine and the food had relaxed them both immensely and Campbell drew himself up to place the last logs onto the fire. He arranged the wood on the embers and shifted them with the poker to let air in underneath until the flames were jumping up beneath the logs. He stood, slowly and stiffly and moved back to the sofa where Sarah sat staring into space.

‘How the hell are you going to pull this off then? I mean, how are you going to get hold of a senior member of HM government? You don’t just pop in to the office in Whitehall and ask if he can spare five minutes.’

Campbell looked back at her for a long moment. ‘I realise that,’ he said.

‘And what are you going to say? How on earth are you going to make him listen to you or even believe you?’

‘I know Sarah,’ he said running a hand through his short hair and shaking his head. ‘I know. Its impossible. I don’t even have any proof really, just a lot of connections. Some of them pretty tenuous at that. I just have no idea. Need to think this through.’

‘You need to be sure.’

‘That too,’ he said but looked her in the eye. ‘Do you…?’

‘What?’

‘Believe me? Are you sure?’

‘It’s the most preposterous thing I’ve heard in my life,’ she replied, holding his gaze. ‘But I do believe you. How can I not? It’s too preposterous not to be true.’

Campbell plopped himself back down on the sofa next to her and smiled wearily. ‘I think the phrase is ‘damned with faint praise.’

‘I don’t mean there’s anything wrong with your conclusions and certainly not your methods,’ she said taking a sip of wine. ‘I just mean that the whole idea is crazy and seems even more insane because we’re involved in it. A few days ago I was up to my eyeballs in filing bloody paperwork. And now…’

Her words trailed off and Campbell noted the expression on her face.

‘I’ve just remembered something.’

‘What?’ he asked.

‘Well, like I said, a few days ago I was sorting paperwork. Griffin asked me to go and sort through the paper archive to see if anything had been taken from there in the break in but it hadn’t been touched. Anyway, it’s a boring job you know, just making sure paperwork is all still there and in order. Especially when its all years old and you don’t recognise the names and the information and so on. So your eyes wander.’