Web of Deceit Read Online Free Page B

all over everything. I’m coming, she thought.
    Alex came back with the stretcher, spine board and four burly firefighters. He lowered the board to Jane, then jumped down onto the tracks himself.Jane laid the board on the rocks next to Ken, who was humming untunefully, and she, Mick, Alex and the cop, who’d put down her torches, rolled Ken gently onto his side and slid the board underneath his uniformed back. They strapped him securely to it, Ken giggling at their touch, then they lifted the board to waist height and walked to the platform. The crouching firefighters took hold of the frontand helped slide it along, then Mick clambered up and coordinated the lift of the board up onto the stretcher.
    Down on the track, Jane closed Mick’s drug box and zipped up the Oxy-Viva.
    Alex went to peer around the front of the train at the body. ‘Poor sod.’
    ‘I know. Especially as it might’ve been an accident.’ She heaved the box and the Viva onto the platform. ‘Apparently therewas a fire and people panicked.’
    ‘It wasn’t a fire,’ one of the fireys said. ‘It was some kind of smoke device that someone dropped up the other end there.’
    ‘Deliberately, you mean?’ Jane said.
    The firey shrugged. ‘Idiots everywhere.’
    ‘On a peak-hour platform too.’ Jane scrambled back onto the platform and tried to brush off her hands. Her palms were black with train dustand there were smears of it on her shirt and trousers too.
    Flat on his back on the stretcher, Ken said, ‘Told you.’
    ‘We got everything?’ Mick said. ‘Where’s the lift?’
    Jane slung the strap of the Viva over her shoulder, then heard a voice say, ‘I was about here,’ and looked around to see one of the witnesses talking to a uniformed police officer near the bottom of the stairs.
    ‘He came barging through so hard that he caught my eye,’ the man said. He looked to be around thirty, his clean-shaven face, neat navy suit and white shirt contrasting with the rough way his tie had been loosened and now hung at an angle from his collar. ‘Then the smoke started, then I saw the guy go in front of the train.’
    ‘The guy who’d been barging?’ the cop said.
    ‘No, theone from before. The one who pushed past me muttering about somebody being after him, somebody going to get him.’
    A chill touched Jane’s heart.
    ‘First I thought the barger was just getting to a good spot on the platform, to be ready when the train came in, but later I thought it was more. He had real purpose. And then he glanced up from under his cap and saw me looking at him.’ Hetugged at his tie. ‘I don’t know if I’m making much sense. It all happened so quickly. But somehow the way the first guy was saying someone was after him, then the second guy came through behind him –’
    Jane dropped the Viva on the platform and jumped back down onto the line, grabbed one of the torches off the cop who was still standing there and rounded the front of the train. The torchbeam lit up the grey trousers, stained with dust and grease and dark drying blood, but she could only see as far as the upper thighs; the rest of the body was under the train, twisted around and between the wheels. She squatted down and tried to find the man’s face with the beam, her heart pattering in her chest, a whistling sound in her ears. Blood lay in clotted puddles between the rocks, and scrapsof flesh were stuck to the undercarriage. She could see a stark white hand, but no face.
    ‘What are you doing?’ Alex said on the platform.
    ‘Get the other torch and shine it in from the front.’ She reached between the wheels.
    Alex jumped down, then shone the torch in.
    ‘Don’t touch anything,’ the cop said, crouched at Alex’s side.
    ‘Can you see his face?’ Jane said. ‘Isit him?’
    ‘Who?’ Alex said.
    The wheel’s edge cut into her shoulder, its flat surface cold against her cheek. She could see the back of his head. The hair was brown. She felt sick.
    ‘You’re not