Silence

I was nine years old when the seven-seven bombings happened. I don’t really remember anything about that day. My family didn’t personally know anyone who died. There was one thing, though, that we all took from it, etched into our heads like an unspoken rule: An abandoned bag on a train is no longer just a mild inconvenience to its owner, it’s a genuine cause for widespread panic. Any other time I would have pulled the alarm immediately, but something about the circumstances made me hesitate…

Just to backtrack a little, I was alone in the carriage of a Victoria-line bound for Highbury and Islington. It was nearly 10pm and I had tuned out the billboards which flashed past the train windows three stops ago. I hated Thursdays with a passion. My schoolbag, fencing kit, three pieces of unfinished homework and the remnants of a takeaway dinner were scattered across the row of seats beside me; a testament to the misery of being the only child of highly aspirational parents. It was another three stops before I noticed the bag.

As far as I know, I’ve never met a terrorist, or anyone who leaves suspicious bags on trains for that matter but there were a few pieces of common sense I’d picked up from every action film I’d ever seen. If someone wants to blow up a train, they tend to go for the busiest one they can and the 10:53 out of Vauxhall didn’t strike me as a particularly appropriate choice. Then, there was the bag itself. Large rucksacks and black duffels tend to be the vessel of choice for anything which might set off the alarms in airport security. This was a satchel. Not just a satchel, an elegant maroon leather satchel with a small set of initials carefully embroidered on the front. It was big, but it didn’t look big enough to hold any explosives. There was even a keyring with googly eyes which added to its sense of harmlessness.

I should have left it well alone. My stop was approaching, and it would have been easy enough for me to just get up and go. But it had been an exceptionally boring end to a boring day of a boring week. I shuffled down the row until I was opposite the satchel and carefully undid the buckles. Inside were an old copy of Northanger Abbey and a smart black notebook.

‘No-one who reads Jane Austen could be dangerous’ I thought, snatching the satchel from its seat and hastening to pack up the rest of my belongings, just as the train doors slammed shut. I cursed under my breath, but it wasn’t far to walk from Finsbury Park and I was too intrigued by the satchel and its mysterious contents to be genuinely distraught.

It was a warm, muggy evening and the fumes from the stagnant traffic blended with the scent of tree-pollen as I rounded the corner onto Seven Sisters road. I’d walked this route so many times I barely had to think where to put my feet. There was just enough light left to examine the notebook in more detail.

It was no bigger than a large box of matches and its finely-tooled leather was worn without seeming shabby. A pencil, its point carefully sharpened with something akin to a scalpel, tied with a loop of string was attached to the book’s spine. I finally opened it, hoping to find sketches, the beginnings of an epic novel or at the very least a semi-scandalous diary entry but what I saw surprised me. There were rough furrows, where it looked as though quite a bit of its contents had been torn out. Every page was empty, but for one at the very back where an address had been hastily scrawled.

I looked up the address on my phone. ‘SW8’ was Battersea park if I remembered correctly. Sure enough, google maps dropped its little red pin somewhere between a bus depot and an industrial estate in Nine-Elms.

I stared at the book, then back at my phone as if one of them would suddenly tell me what it meant. My parents were usually asleep by the time I got home on Thursdays and I had a free-period the following morning. That doesn’t change the fact you’d have to be utterly mad to want to go traipsing around an industrial estate in Battersea in the middle of the night… utterly mad or extremely bored.

There was no time to wonder which it was as I ran back towards the station. Getting to Victoria would be easy, but trains to Battersea Park were once an hour at this time of night, if that. It felt weird to be the only person on the platform.

I waited ten minutes, feeling increasingly foolish with the mountain of my belongings next to me. But, as I stroked the spine of the notebook for reassurance, I realised I’d already come too far to turn back.

My carriage contained exactly four other people, all of them asleep with one side of their faces smushed against the misted glass of the train windows. Safe from prying eyes I, opened the last page and stared at the address again, hypnotised by it.

I had to set some ground-rules; at the first sign that I was walking into any kind of danger, I’d turn back. If I saw anyone who looked dangerous skulking around, I’d turn back. And if anything happened which might invoke even the remotest possibility of my parents being left childless, I’d turn back.

Despite the empty shells of what would soon be luxury flats, springing up from the enormous building site that encircled the old power-station, much of Battersea was still a patchwork of brownfield land. The warehouses which bordered the river were poorly lit, the furthest no more than a series of black triangles cutting into the umber cloth of the river beyond. I looked up at the great chimneys in their scaffold-casings, a strange relic of an era when people thought putting coal-fired power-plants on the edges of cities wasn’t the dumbest idea they’d ever heard. There weren’t any road-signs here, but as I cut across newly laid tarmac and great mounds of earth, my phone seemed to know the way.

I’ve never been very comfortable around enormous machines when no-one’s operating them. The diggers, bulldozers and other vehicles I passed seemed to be lying in wait for something, as if any second they might leap to life and snap at me. My mouth was dry and my palms left damp patches on my knees when I wiped them furiously.

There was no-one else here. I had absolutely nothing to be afraid of. If spotted, I knew better than to announce that I’d been tracking an address I found in a mysterious notebook on a train. As far as anyone else knew, I was filming Battersea at night for an art project about our vanishing industrial heritage. I’d broken no rules.

Finally, I found it. An unimposing little warehouse unit, hemmed in by two parallel trainlines. The door was ajar but it was pitch-black inside. With my phone-screen as a makeshift torch, I scanned the space for any sign of life. A sports bag, like the one I carried my fencing kit in, lay in the middle of the floor. Everything else was covered in a layer of dust so thick it might have been grey snow.

I lifted the bag gingerly. It seemed stuffed full but was lighter than it looked. When I undid the zip Liz the 2nd stared up at me from two dozen identical pairs of eyes. I froze. It’s one thing to find yourself in a warehouse in Battersea late at night with no-one else around, quite another to find yourself in a warehouse in Battersea late at night with no-one else around and a bag full of money.

What on earth was I supposed to do? This much money doesn’t just fall from the sky, someone had put it here and left specific instructions on how to find it. Try as I might, I couldn’t think of a single plausible way to explain the sudden appearance of it to my parents but how could I walk away knowing it was here, unguarded and seemingly mine for the taking?

What would I do with that kind of money? There were thousands in here. My family weren’t rich but we were comfortable. My parents had bought their home at a time when property in East London was still cheap and were now mortgage-free. I could give the money to charity… but that would probably lead to a lot of questions. I pictured myself going round the highstreets of every one of the former villages absorbed into London, stuffing a single banknote into charity collection pots to avoid suspicion. When would I even find the time?

It happened so quickly I barely had time to think. Just as I’d resolved to leave the money anonymously at a police station, a shadow flickered in the doorway and I felt a hand, large, strong and smelling faintly of aftershave, across my mouth and nose. I couldn’t scream. The other hand was at my throat and I couldn’t even turn to look at my attacker.

Here’s a minor detail I forgot to mention. I’m deaf. With a set of hearing-aids, my ears function at about 10% of the capacity they should. And I tend to turn them off on the train to avoid getting too much static. Whether he spoke to me, I have no clue. I couldn’t even tell whether he let out a yell when I brought my left foot up as high as it would go and kicked him hard in the crotch. All I know is that he let go. I fell hard against the concrete floor but there was no time even to wince. Scrabbling to my feet, I grabbed my sabre and hit him hard across the side of the head. Fencing swords don’t have blades but with enough force they can make you see stars and I was terrified.

Grabbing my kit-bag, I bolted for the door. I couldn’t tell whether or not he was running after me and I couldn’t risk turning around. I sprinted back past the diggers and bulldozers, zig-zagging wherever I could in the hope of losing him and finally halted when I reached a mercifully flood-lit road.

There were people here; the usual cast of tired dog-walkers, commuters who’d pulled a late one and those who wanted to start their weekend a day early. Just enough to blend into. My shoulders sagged as I felt my breath coming in sharp gasps. I was sure that without the money, he didn’t care what happened to me. I hadn’t seen his face properly in the dark of the warehouse and couldn’t have picked him out of a police line-up unless they brought me a tray of aftershave samples.

I made the last train by a hair’s-breadth and sank into my seat, allowing myself to relax for the first time. None of it felt real. I was still slightly out of breath but otherwise I had no proof of what had just happened. Nor, thankfully, would my parents.

The train pulled into Victoria with a weary a sigh, sinking down a little on the tracks as the doors snapped open. I grabbed my kit-bag and headed for the underground only…

That wasn’t my kit-bag.

I’ve never had the experience of a cold sweat on a muggy summer evening before. I didn’t dare open the bag to confirm my suspicions. I simply walked, as if on autopilot, to the Northbound platform and wondered how long it would be until whoever this enormous amount of money belonged to figured it out. What’s more, how on earth was I going to explain losing the rest of my fencing kit to my parents?