After a few seconds, she begins to nod slowly. ‘Great response, Dan. Brilliant.’
He can see the hurt and disappointment in her eyes before she turns and leaves the kitchen. He chooses not to follow her but instead leans back against the kitchen cupboards and slides down, collapsing onto his backside and pulling his knees tight to his chest, the sobs and the memories taking over as he battles with a smorgasbord of emotions. Anger, hurt, resentment. But also relief and happiness that he’s no longer in that place. That place, though, will always be with him, tainting his thoughts and his words and his actions.
Dan hadn’t raised a fist to anyone, or even contemplated it, since that night at Pendleton House. Had tonight’s argument with Lisa happened on any other night, he knows it wouldn’t have ended that way. The only reason it did is because the incident with Mr Duggan was fresh in his mind, polluting his thoughts and turning him momentarily back into that little boy, Daniel. The little boy who saw everything but did nothing until it was too late. The little boy who just wanted to be happy.
35
Why Bratislava? I don’t know. I really don’t. It’s a city I’ve wanted to go to for a long time, but never got round to. Fortunately, I know Slovakia is in the Schengen Area, and I know it’s a long way east. It’s the farthest I can go without a longer-term plan, but it’s also far enough away that I feel as though I’ll have the space to actually come up with that plan. It’s also of the old Eastern bloc, and I’m fairly sure it would be easier for a man to live outside the law there than in Austria or Switzerland.
I know how terrible that sounds, but I’ve got to face facts. If I’m going to be able to put enough space between me and the police – not to mention me and Lisa and Jess’s killer – I’m going to have to bend the rules a bit. I’m going to need help, and that sort of help is going to be much more readily available in Eastern Europe than it is in a Swiss ski resort.
The ticket costs me eighty-six euros, which I think is actually pretty reasonable considering it’s a five-and-a-half-hour overnight journey. The train will get in at around two o’clock in the morning, with a change at Vienna on the way. I’m going to try and get some sleep on the train, if I can, as I don’t much fancy having to try and find somewhere to sleep in the middle of Slovakia at two in the morning.
My train doesn’t leave until 8.22 p.m., which gives me about two hours to kill. Having bought my tickets, I find a cafe and a newsagent. The first thing that strikes me is how busy the station is at this time. I suppose a lot of people will be on their way back from work. This both comforts me and worries me. On one hand, a busy station allows me to blend in more easily. On the other, it makes it far more difficult for me to spot an undercover police officer. Or a killer.
On top of that, there are the weird feelings I get from watching these people going about their everyday lives. Men in suits and with briefcases waiting to board their trains back home at the end of a long day. Families with suitcases and backpacks waiting to go on holiday. Couples parting after time spent together. Groups of girls heading off for a night out. It’s society in a nutshell, a mix of ordinary people going about their ordinary lives.
But my life is anything but ordinary right now. That’s the problem. Yet again, I’m one huge walking contradiction. I feel somewhat calmed by the presence of normality, by people unknowingly showing me that the world hasn’t actually stopped turning, but at the same time I’m convinced that it has. Why aren’t these people being more respectful? Don’t they realise that my wife and my – well, what was Jess? – have been murdered? That I’ve been framed for at least one of them, and no doubt will be heavily suspected of the other? Can’t they see the injustice?
No, of course they can’t, because they don’t know me. Is that a good thing? Probably. They don’t know me and they wouldn’t want to anyway.
I see a sign for the toilets and decide to head that way. It’ll give me a bit of breathing space, at least.
When I get there, I do what I need to do and then go to wash my hands in the sink. I look up at myself in the mirror and am both shocked and pleasantly surprised. I don’t look good. I look a fucking mess, in fact, but the main thing is that I look completely different from the photo that was on the front page of the newspapers. By now, more photos will have been circulated, but I’m sure none of them are going to look anything like I look now.
For years I’ve had fairly unruly hair and some form of beard. I can’t remember the last time I was without either. Now, though, I have neither. The whole shape of my face looks completely different. I can see the tiredness, too. My eyes are sunken, and I’m sure there are wrinkles which weren’t there before. I look like a man defeated, but deep down I know that I’m not.
I barely recognise myself, so I’m pretty certain that no-one else is going to pick me out in the middle of an Austrian train station. The only way they’d manage that is if they already knew I was here. And unless they’d followed me from the campsite and from the petrol station, that just wouldn’t be possible. I’ve been careful; I know I have. Either way, the possibility is always there and I doubt that fear’s going to leave me until this whole episode is over.
What I’m not worried about, though, is the passing policeman or observant member of the public spotting and recognising me. I’m hidden in plain sight, and I’m happy with that right now.
Things could get a bit sticky if there are passport checks at any point. Technically, there shouldn’t be. Getting from Austria to Slovakia means staying within the Schengen Area, which means EU nationals can cross borders without passport checks or visas. I know there’s the possibility of spot checks on the train, though. All I can do is hope, because it’s a long walk to Bratislava.
I exit the toilet and make my way back towards the cafe and the newsagent. In the newsagent, I buy myself a copy of Kronen Zeitung, a newspaper I presume to be Austrian. Probably the best way to blend in, I think. I grab a coffee from the self-service machine and take both to the till to pay.
As I thumb through my money, I do my now well-established trick of looking at the price on the till as the cashier speaks to me, but nothing shows. I keep my calm and hand over a twenty-euro note. That should be plenty. The girl looks at me disapprovingly and counts out my change. With a quick ‘Danke sch?n’, I’m off and back on the main concourse, ready to bed down and try to look normal for the next couple of hours.
36