Cold Courage (13 page)

No free cabs were visible on the street. After waiting a moment, Lia started walking towards Waterloo Tube station. She glanced behind her and made sure to keep to the better lit parts of the street. Thankfully no one was following her.

At Waterloo there was a long stagnant queue for taxis. The trains would be running though.

Dozens of people stood on the Tube platform, kissing couples and young club-goers. Lia was starting to feel more secure, and the train would be coming soon, in three minutes.

She had thirteen stops to travel, about thirty minutes. From Hampstead station she would have to walk home, since getting a taxi at this time of night would be like winning the lottery.

The Tube carriage was full to overflowing, so Lia had to squeeze her way in. She set her back against the wall to keep herself firmly upright and protect herself from anything hitting her arm.

The train arrived at Embankment. Lia carefully watched everyone entering the carriage. No man in a dark suit, no bald thug.

As the train picked up speed again, the screeching of the tracks mingled with the mirthful buzz of conversation. At a bend in the tracks, the carriage rocked, and Lia could see back into the rear of it. A bald head momentarily flashed into view.

Lia felt as if she had been slugged in the stomach with a lead pipe.

Frantic, she closed her eyes. When she opened them, the man was no longer visible in the mob. The carriage rocked. Again the man came into view.

He was in the same car as Lia and trying to stay out of sight.

Perkele,
what a stupid Finnish girl
.

Heart pounding, Lia began running through her options.

Get out at the next station? He’ll follow me.

Get out at Hampstead? He’ll follow me and see where I live.

Call the police? He’ll definitely run away, but I’ll have to explain why he was following me. And they’ll record my name.

Lia looked at the time on her mobile. Almost half an hour to Hampstead station.

What if I ring Mari? Maybe I could stall for time in the Tube station. I should be safe with people around. Mari could send someone to help. But that would take time.

Then she remembered Mr Vong. Mr Vong always helped when one of the young students ended up locked out on the street at night. And Mr Vong had a moped. But how could she contact him?

Phones only worked in the parts of the Tube network that were above ground and sporadically in a few places underground near the stations. Lia glanced at her mobile. No signal.

For station after station her phone stayed dead. The Northern Line was just too deep.

The Tube train hurtled on. Lia stared ceaselessly at the corner of the phone. No bars.

As the train slowed on its approach to the next station, a sound further up the carriage caught her attention. Someone had received a text message. As Lia thought, she remembered the same thing happening to her once or twice even though the stations here were so far underground.

A text message only required a momentary connection. It would be nothing short of a miracle if the SMS got through, and she would have no way of knowing if Mr Vong had received it.

Growing ever more anxious, she quickly typed a message before the next station arrived: LIA. NEED HELP. BAD MAN ON TUBE. HAMPSTEAD STATION. MOPED.

The carriage stopped. Lia extended her mobile towards the open door, knowing how empty a gesture it was.

She pressed the green button and waited.

A status bar. After a few seconds, the display of her mobile went black. Lia frantically pressed another button to wake up the phone but was returned to a different screen.

The couple standing next to Lia glanced at her as if she was mad, but she didn’t let them disturb her.

Then the doors closed and the carriage moved again.

Now all Lia could do was wait twenty minutes and seven stations for the train to arrive in Hampstead and then dash to meet an aged saviour who probably wouldn’t be there. Twenty minutes was plenty of time for her to imagine herself kidnapped and beaten bloody or mashed to a pulp in the boot of a white Volvo. She wondered what sort of resistance she would be able to put up against the bald man. At each station she felt an almost uncontrollable desire to rush out of the carriage. She thought of the year in Finland when the fear of physical violence had become a normal part of her life. How on earth could she have let her relationship with her parents grow so distant? Mentally she reproached Mari, who had suggested that she visit clubs looking for evidence of the Latvian woman. She reproached herself for rejecting the offer of a minder. Why had she wanted to pry into this whole ugly business anyway?

She tried to calm herself by breathing deeply, but it didn’t work.

In all of those twenty minutes, Lia never glanced into the rear of the Tube carriage. This required a significant effort, but Lia knew that if she saw the man staring at her, she would instantly start screaming.

The train braked at Hampstead station. Lia edged closer to the exit. Finding that her left arm was almost completely useless, she realised that she had not thought of it once during the whole journey.

When the doors opened, Lia was among the first to push her way out.

When she glanced to the side, she saw the bald man exiting from the other door of the carriage. Now she could see him properly. It was definitely the man from the nightclub, the same face, the same thin, sunken cheeks. Cheeks drawn tight by years of hard training, Lia knew instinctively.

The man cast a glance at Lia as well. For a moment their eyes locked.

The Underground platform had two routes out: the slow lift or the long, difficult stairs. Lia chose the safety of the crowd and joined the crowd queuing for the lift.

She saw the bald man off to the side of the crush. Perhaps he wouldn’t fit in the same lift.

Suddenly there was jostling and shouting. The bald man was trying to force his way towards her, elbowing people out of his path.

The doors opened, and Lia was among the first to shoot in. She turned to watch as the bald man roughly cleared his way towards the lift. Most people sidestepped him in outrage, but a couple of men stood their ground and grabbed him by the coat.

The lift doors closed.

The trip to the surface took ten seconds, but Lia knew the man would not stay to wait for the next lift.

Lia dashed out of the lift towards the Tube station’s barriers, Oyster card in hand ready to touch out. She heard running steps echoing from the stairs.

When the bald man arrived at the gates, Lia was already on the other side.

Now came the moment of truth as Lia ran through the doors.

There on the street in front of the station was Mr Vong. Small, old and frail, Mr Vong sat in the saddle of his blue moped, waiting. He raised his hand.

As Lia rushed towards the moped, she saw how Mr Vong looked on in stupefaction at the man charging after her.

‘Let’s go,’ Mr Vong yelled and kicked the moped into motion.

Throwing herself onto the small scooter, Lia felt pain tear at her left shoulder.

As Mr Vong swept around the street corner, Lia turned to look back. The bald man stood on the pavement anxiously looking for a means of transport to continue the pursuit. The other people in front of the station stared, aghast at his strange behaviour. Some stared at Mr Vong and Lia, the aged Asian gentleman fleeing the scene with a young blonde riding pillion.

Holding on tightly to Mr Vong, Lia swore an oath.

No more of this ever. Not ever.

‘That was a bad mistake,’ Mari said.

The next day when Lia related how the evening had ended, Mari repeated this several times.

It was Thursday. Lia was glad that she was on holiday and didn’t need to try to work with her sore arm. And she was happy to be alive.

‘I should have thought this through more thoroughly. I’m sorry, Lia,’ Mari said.

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Lia said. She had wanted to go to the club herself, even though Mari had warned her and even offered her a bodyguard.

‘I was being stupid. I’m not the secret agent superwoman I’ve been imagining. I almost lost my mind, I was so afraid when I saw that bald guy in the Tube,’ Lia said.

‘I can believe it. I’m sorry. This thing of trying to have two different jobs going at the same time doesn’t work. It doesn’t give me enough time to think. Now we have to proceed carefully,’ Mari said.

‘Mr Vong is quite the hero. I feel like hugging him,’ she added.

‘So do I. Of course I thanked him last night, but everything happened so fast. There wasn’t time for anything else. I’ll get him something nice as a thank-you gift.’

As Mr Vong sped off into the Hampstead night, Lia had thanked her lucky stars. The bald man would have been able to catch her easily on those dark little streets.

At Kidderpore Avenue, Lia had motioned to Mr Vong that he shouldn’t drive straight up to the hall of residence in case the man had succeeded in following them. Mr Vong had driven his scooter a few yards further and from there walked her to their building, entering through the other stairwell.

Mr Vong was too polite to press her for details of how she had ended up in such distress, but Lia had felt the need to explain.

‘That man and his friend tried to attack me at a club and then started following me.’

‘Clearly the kind of person from which one should keep one’s distance,’ Mr Vong observed.

Lia had gone to her flat, and Mr Vong waited for her to lock the door. Lia had listened and waited as Mr Vong returned home and gradually returned to bed.

She didn’t turn on any lights: for the first time, her basement room felt unsafe.

But after Lia had sat shivering in the dark for some time and then gone looking for a torch so she could find some painkillers for her shoulder, the situation began feeling absurd.

Why am I afraid?

She had sat down on her bed. In all probability, she had shaken the man off her trail. How long was Lia intending to huddle at home alone in the dark then?

I’m going to stop being afraid now. I’ve done this before. I can do it again now.

She thought of the woman found murdered in the white Volvo and her agitation abated. Determination rose in its place.

Whoever you were, I’m going to find you. Fear isn’t going to stop me. Fear is only an emotion.

The feeling of numbness had begun to abate. She switched on the lamps and brewed a couple of cups of tea.

She had taken a sleeping pill with the painkiller. As she waited for this to take effect, she searched the back of her cupboard for a book Mr Vong had given her.

It was an old guide to London written in Hong Kong for Asian travellers. At first, Lia hadn’t bothered even to browse through it because it looked so cheap and simplistic. Once she looked at it more closely however, she changed her mind.

The name of the book was
London, Good For You!
and it contained such chapters as ‘Why London?’ ‘London for women’, and ‘Remember to shake hands’.

The book was silly, its language clumsily translated, rote English. Representing a mixture of 1960s London and an Asian view of British customs unfamiliar to Lia, many of the things the book described had almost died out, such as gentlemen’s clubs and
travelling
salesmen. But the book also had a disarming sincerity.

Lia had lain on her bed looking at the guidebook, immersing herself in its world, which was in such stark conflict with the events
of the past evening. It helped her re-examine her feelings towards her environment. Emotions could be controlled. The innocent, good city the book described did not exist, but somewhere out there were its remnants.

She had slept soundly through the night.

In the morning Lia had visited her GP so he could look at her shoulder, which still hurt but could be moved. The muscle was badly strained but her shoulder wasn’t dislocated. Lia made up an
explanation
involving a run-in on the street with a motorcyclist. The
painkiller
the doctor prescribed took away the remainder of the aching.

‘I got off with a scare. But what I don’t understand is why those thugs reacted so aggressively,’ Lia said to Mari. ‘A couple of
questions
about Latvian prostitutes and they’re immediately trying to beat up a lone woman.’

If the men were running a pimping business involving a good number of customers and a lot of money, she could understand the heavy-handedness, Mari observed. Anyone who came around asking questions could be a risk.

‘Well, I’m certainly not going back there ever again,’ Lia said.

‘No, you aren’t. And investigating nightclubs alone isn’t a good idea at all,’ Mari said. ‘But we’ll come up with another way. Maybe Paddy could go to the clubs. I have to think.’

Lia looked around at Mari’s office, thinking how safe she felt at the Studio.

Silly. Just a few weeks ago this place felt so strange and mysterious.

‘You’re thinking about how your attitude towards this place has changed,’ Mari said.

‘Yes, I am.’

‘Since you’re coming to the Studio so often now, would you like your own key? Then no one has to come to open the downstairs door for you any more.’

Lia couldn’t come up with any reason to say no.

‘And you can choose a research room to start using. Maggie is using one of them, but two rooms are usually free.’

That Lia had to consider longer. Having an office sounded sensible because then she would have a place for all of her papers. But then would she be working as one of Mari’s employees like everyone else?

‘I don’t think of you the same way I do the others,’ Mari said. ‘You aren’t working for me. We’re friends.’

That sounded good to Lia.

‘Right then. I’ll take an office, but I don’t work for you. I’ll do what I want here.’

Mari smiled, satisfied.

‘What next?’ Lia asked.

‘Wouldn’t a little rest be in order?’ Mari asked.

‘No,’ Lia replied.

If she got stuck at home nursing her wounds alone, she might think too much about the man with the bald head and end up being scared of going outside at all.

‘Well, since you ask, tomorrow evening there is this one event. I was thinking you could attend.’

‘Arthur Fried?’

‘Arthur Fried.’