Christopher Fowler - White Corridor

“While your partner is risking his life,” she tutted, pulling on his arm. “For heaven’s sake, come on.”

Arthur Bryant rose with creaking knees and carefully stepped around the body. He felt disembodied, faintly unwell. There was no point in remaining inside the tunnel now. Pressing his left hand against the wet wall, he slowly made his way back towards the dazzling disc of light.

When the body dropped on him with its arms locked around his shoulders, the air was crushed from his chest, and the sudden weight threw him down onto the track. The grip tightened around his neck. Bryant knew there was little point in resisting, but twisted over onto his stomach, forcing his attacker to roll onto the line.

“What are you doing, Madeline?” He breathed with all the calmness he could muster. The flints that surrounded the sleepers were cutting into his chest. “Are you going to kill me as well? You can’t take revenge on the whole of mankind.”

She was shocked to hear him address her by name, but remained silent, her hands clasped tightly around him. He wondered what she thought she was doing.

“You shouldn’t have picked the names from your book, Madeline. It’s called Famous Trials because that’s exactly what they are to anyone in law enforcement. And you shouldn’t have got Ryan to lie for you. Children are always so obvious when they’ve been asked to lie for their parents. They simply can’t look you in the eye.”

They remained locked in position on the track, although she was trying to pull him further in. Bryant’s hand gripped the freezing rail. He dug his boots in against the sleeper, determined not to budge.

“The boy whose throat you just tore open with the scissors from the Swiss Army knife you keep in your bag really is called Johann Bellocq. And a small pair of scissors is a woman’s weapon, you should know that.”

Bryant raised his chin so that he could speak more clearly. “In his own way, Bellocq paid for the crime he committed. He never hurt anyone but his mother, and that was after years of being locked away and tortured by her. He was a petty thief, and had borrowed cars, although he usually returned them. It’s true that when an old hunting friend of his grandfather’s died, Bellocq borrowed his house, but there was no real malice in him. Nor was there any dead body in the villa-the local gendarmerie has had a chance to visit it; in your hysteria, you merely thought you saw one. You were furious about being lied to once more, and thought that your pattern with men was starting to repeat itself all over again, but you only saw what you wanted to see. When Johann told you about his past, he was opening himself up to you because he genuinely loved you. He wanted you to know everything about him, but in your panic you shut him out and ran away, embroidering his history with lurid scraps culled from your own warped imagination.”

She was lying rigid now, breathing hard behind him, her legs wrapped around his. He tried to turn his head, to make her hear. “When you found the truck driver who’d given him a lift, he told you how desperate Johann was to find you, how much he said he loved you, but to you it was just further proof of the conspiracy of men. You shut out the truth, even going so far as to shut him up, slashing out at him. Do you even know that you killed him? Of course there are bad men in the world who’ll seek to harm you, Madeline, but they’re not all alike. Who made you believe they were?”

He suddenly realised why she was so still. She was listening, not to him, but to the tinging of the approaching train through the steel tracks.

From the corner of his eye he saw two silhouettes appear in the bright tunnel entrance, but before he could call out, her hand pulled hard on his scarf, tightening it over his mouth and throat until he could no longer draw breath.

I’ve forced her to realise the truth about herself, he thought. She’s decided she has nothing more to live for. And the trouble is, she’s going to take me with her.

As John May and Maggie Armitage reached the mouth of the tunnel, they threw away caution and began calling for their friend. Their voices returned unanswered from the curving walls.

“He has to be inside,” said May, “his tracks lead to the entrance. Stay out here and look after the boy. I’ll go in.”

As he stepped into the blanket of the dark, he heard it, the distant ring of the approaching train. “Arthur, are you hurt?” he called. “Listen to me carefully. Madeline Gilby is a very dangerous woman. The man she insists is hunting her is Johann Bellocq, and he’s actually trying to stop her. There are no pictures of murder victims, no forged passports. Arthur, answer me!”

He could feel the weight of the train on the tracks, the steady displacement of air in the far end of the long tunnel, the faint crackle of electricity. A dim light appeared on the wall of the first bend. As it slowly increased in brightness and moved down, he saw what appeared to be a bundle of rags lying across the tracks. As he watched, it flinched like an animal caught in the coils of a snake, and he realised that he was looking at his partner, trapped with Madeline Gilby’s limbs twisted around him. Bryant’s boots kicked out in a burst of gravel, and he twisted his head to look plaintively around for help.

May dropped to his side and pulled at an arm, but Madeline’s clutch tightened, rolling Bryant further onto the centre of the track. “You’ll kill us all,” May told her. “We can get you help, Madeline. It doesn’t have to end this way.”

Ahead, the lights of the train grew brighter as it coasted the bend of the tunnel in a roar of sparking steel.

He tried to prise open her hands, but the muscles in her fingers and arms had locked with steely rigidity. Bryant kicked and wriggled, but was rapidly losing strength. Gilby was on top of him now, knotted around his body in a death grip that nothing could loosen. Braced against the track, May pulled at them in vain.

“Let me,” said Maggie, hopping across the tracks and grabbing Bryant’s attacker from the other side. Madeline Gilby let out a sudden piercing yell and threw out her limbs as wildly as if she had been electrocuted. Released and able to breathe once more, Bryant let out a gasp.

May pulled hard, dragging his partner across the rail and up against the wall. He reached out a hand to Madeline, shouting for her, but she crawled further away, turning to face the explosion of light and noise.

May caught sight of Madeline’s pale face one last time; her widening eyes were staring into the long white shaft of light that emanated from the front of the engine in the corridor of the tunnel. She looked quite calm, as if she was glad to be finally faced with the prospect of meeting her Maker.

A moment later, the duo watched as the flashing yellow panels raced past them, and the carriages started to slow with the braking of the train. When it had finally passed, there was no trace left behind of Madeline Gil by.

Maggie Armitage had flattened herself against the opposite wall of the tunnel. Her arms were splayed and her hair had been shocked into a vermilion sunburst around her head, like Struwwelpeter.

“What did you do to make her let go?” called May as he pulled Bryant to his feet. “Stick her with an evil enchantment?”

“No, a hatpin,” replied the white witch breathlessly. “Every bit as effective. At least she didn’t have to go towards the light. It came to her.”

“The final white corridor,” said May, taking her hand. “Come on, you two. Let’s get out of the dark.”

They stood neatly in line, the seven of them, Meera Mangeshkar and Colin Bimsley, Dan Banbury and Giles Kershaw, Raymond Land, April May and Janice Longbright.