He drank some tea, turned the radio volume up and stretched back in the upholstered seat. His car was parked on the opposite side of the road, a few yards to the side of the house, providing a perfect, uninterrupted view of the household’s comings and goings. Seven minutes later, the hipster drugs casualty stumbled out: Maggie. She’d been named after Britain’s greatest prime minister, apparently – Mrs T would be spinning in her grave. Shaking his head disapprovingly, he watched as she lit a cigarette, pulled a hood over her head, and sloped off in the direction of the train stations.
At a quarter past eight, the last two occupants emerged: the willowy, pale girl with the obvious beauty and the haughty manner. And Joel. He remembered who Joel was. The stuck-up girl – Eleanor…? Isobel…? Imogen, that was it – Imogen stopped to adjust the heel of her shoe, holding onto Joel’s arm for support. He checked his BlackBerry notes: everyone had left at approximately the same time two days ago, but Heidi had rushed back five minutes later, having forgotten something. Everyone had vacated the property by twenty past eight.
Now he switched off the radio and waited a few moments as the couple sauntered down the road. He got out, shut the door and locked the car with his infrared key fob. Nonchalantly slipping both hands into his overcoat pockets, he followed Imogen and Joel along the parallel pavement.
After a few minutes, they came to the busy South Circular road junction. He crossed over to the same side as Imogen and Joel, who stopped at the traffic lights. Imogen pushed the button for safe crossing.
He quickly caught up with them and joined the queue, waiting for the green man; half a dozen people were positioned between himself and the couple. Joel whispered something in Imogen’s ear. She guffawed and gave her boyfriend a playful shove.
The traffic slowed to a standstill and the pedestrians crossed the busy road; Imogen and Joel out in front. He stayed several paces behind as the lovers walked up towards Catford’s two train stations. They slowed down and then kissed goodbye, causing him to halt and pretend to read the ads in a newsagent’s window. Looking up, he saw Imogen crossing the road to Catford station while Joel continued on to Catford Bridge. He went after Joel.
Down on platform one, he tapped his pay-as-you-go Oyster card on the reader, then navigated his way through the rush-hour crowd, making sure Joel stayed in plain view. The train arrival display board showed the 08.32 was delayed by three minutes. He waited with the downtrodden commuters, regularly glancing over at his quarry. Joel was reading the Metro newspaper. Every couple of minutes, he would look up from the paper and check the arrivals board.
‘Excuse me.’ A middle-aged professional type was attempting to get by him. The man jostled past, breaking his concentration. He imagined a swift shove towards the platform edge, but the man was quickly out of range. There was no sense in abandoning his mission for the sake of a fleeting retaliation. Long ago he’d trained himself to resist his violent impulses until the time was right.
When he looked over again, Joel was playing with his phone, totally oblivious. He asked himself what Imogen saw in this cretin. Admittedly he was handsome enough, six foot tall and slim. But that ridiculous topknot protruding from his head and the wispy adolescent attempt at a beard were quite tragic. A pleasing picture appeared in his mind: the topknot caught between train doors and Joel screaming as it dragged him along the platform.
The crowd turned to look up the track and he did likewise, seeing the delayed 08.32 advancing towards the station. It pulled up beside the platform and the doors opened. Two passengers alighted before the vast horde stepped up into the carriage. It was standing room only and not much of that either. Joel was closest to the doors when the train arrived, so he bagged a spot leaning against the dividing partition that separated the standing and seating areas.
But when it was his own turn to board, being in the middle of the crowd meant he had to move down and stand in the already overcrowded narrow aisle between the two seat rows. Peering through the sea of heads and shoulders, he could just about see Joel’s ludicrous topknot.
There was a short delay while the stragglers left behind on the platform called out ‘Can you move down please!’ to no avail. The carriage doors closed. He grabbed the back of a head rest to steady himself as the train left the station. His crotch was level with the heads of the seated passengers and positioned two inches away from an obese man’s sweaty pink face. The big man turned away, his wrinkled expression and huffiness conveying disgust at the close proximity of a fellow passenger’s genitals.
The train stopped for over nine minutes just outside of Lewisham. The driver made a garbled announcement, but the only words he could discern were ‘being held at a red signal’. The fat man had resorted to closing his eyes. The carriage was heating up and someone asked for a window to be opened. Eventually the train resumed its journey. He looked through the window when they arrived at London Bridge and then Waterloo East, scanning the departing passengers, but Joel wasn’t one of them.
After what seemed like an eternity, the train reached its final destination: Charing Cross. The remaining passengers, including Joel, disembarked onto the platform. He saw him through the window, but had to wait for the aisle to clear before he could reach the doors and so was one of the last to exit. Jumping down from the carriage, he moved away from the platform edge and then weaved in between the mob. Up ahead, he finally saw the topknot of brown hair. Rapidly picking up pace, he tried closing the gap, but there were now scores of commuters flowing between the two of them.
Passengers were queuing to leave through the ticket barriers and more were entering the platforms from the concourse side, adding to the great mass of people. He bopped around until he relocated Joel, near the front of an exit line further along the row of barriers. To keep Joel in view, he joined the back of the adjacent queue.
He watched as each passenger in front of Joel passed through the gates. His own queue didn’t seem to be moving forward at all. Tapping his foot impatiently, adrenaline surging through his body, he looked over: Joel was next to the exit. He craned his neck to see the front of his own line. A tall brunette woman was trying to feed a paper ticket into a slot in the exit gate and looking in confusion at the red Seek Assistance display on the reader. She kept staring at the closed gates with a baffled expression on her face. His eyes darted over to the adjacent line: Joel was moving through the open barrier and onto the concourse, where sixty or seventy commuters were intersecting.
He looked back at the imbecile causing the jam, now speaking to the youth stood behind her, who pointed towards the lone railway official in charge of the whole lumbering operation. All around him, people late for work were cursing and muttering. He scanned the concourse: Joel was gone. He ran a hand across his scalp and sighed. There was nothing quite like a wasted journey to start the day. Tomorrow would go better; he’d join a front carriage so he could beat the queues, wait for Joel on the other side of the ticket barriers, and then stick to him like glue.