EIGHT
Stuart sat down on his sofa and felt the bile in his stomach rumbling away. He hated feeling sick. He always had. Even when he had a Cold, he tended to be really thrown out of balance. Right now, though he felt sick. Sick to his stomach. He could feel the gruesome bile inside his stomach build up. He did all that he could to keep it down and not bring up the evening drink and food all over the place. He started to take quick, fast breaths that helped keep his vomit down despite gagging several times. He wanted to go outside but knew he could not. He felt like running and never returning.
That sensation lasted for another five minutes.
With his sickness dissipating, panic came.
The face of his friend was staring into his floor and it was more than he could bear. So he went to the bedroom grabbed a duvet and covered it over him. He wondered across to the kitchen. He reached into his fridge, pulled out an ice-cold bottle of beer, and tried to forget what had happened.
He had never seen a man die violently before. In fact, he had never seen anyone die before in his own home.
This was a cold-blooded, calculated murder.
Unexpectedly and abruptly, Stuart stopped panicking and now felt scared. Scared for his life and scared about what might happen next.
At that moment, he realised that that he could be next. In fact, the murderers might still be in the building right now. What would he do?
He suddenly found himself frozen in the centre of his kitchen not knowing what to do. The room felt like it was spinning around in his head. Conversations he had with John came rushing though his head. Panic and sickness came back.
He knocked his bottle of beer over. It fell from the ledge by the side of the light switch. It bounced on the wooden floor tipping over and releasing the remains of his beer all over the floor. He gazed at the spilt beer for a few seconds as the beer spread across his floor expanding like lava flowing from a volcano consuming up his floor inch by inch.
The sound of the glass falling brought him back to reality. This somehow got him to pull himself together.
He looked at his watch, and saw that it was just after midnight. How long had he been standing there he wondered?
An idea came to him.
He began to search his flat.
He opened the knife draw and drew out a large chopping knife. This gave him some sense security. He then began to search each room. He systematically checked each room one after another.
All the rooms were empty. He was safe. He rushed over to his front door and quickly locked the door with his key. He patted the door and then lent against it with his forearm above his head.
He closed his eyes with the knife still in his hand.
He let out a long winded sigh of relief.
Nobody was here. He looked around the room and could see there was no trace of anybody. He walked over to his kitchen, put the knife down, and started to clear up the spilt beer that had now formed a large puddle by the door to his flat.
With the beer cleared up, he suddenly froze. The windows, he had not checked them. He rushed over to them and set about bolting all the windows closed. He then had an idea. Just to make sure he put a chair on the door preventing the door handle from being lowered.
He was safe.
By this time, his senses were coming back to him, and he started to understand just what had happened.
He went to his bedroom.
It took Stuart all night to figure things out, and he did not need to hurry because unless the murderer came back for him, he had until the next day until he needed to report John’s death.
Stuart realised that he was in the shit. That was clear. Crystal clear.
Any doubt he might have had about the truth of John’s tale was now gone forever. The proof laid under his king size red and purple Marks and Spencer’s duvet. The men who were looking for him had found him, and had taken the best way to make certain of his silence.
‘Fuck’ he yelled with much venom
Not only had they killed John but they had made Stuart the main suspect and his fingerprints were now all over another knife. They had managed to clear their involvement and make Stuart the main suspect.
It also looked like Stuart would be the next to go. Probably in prison or on the way to court. Stuart bet one of the inmates would kill him before he had the chance to tell anyone his account.
Then suddenly he thought of another possibility. Supposing he went out now and called in the police, or let someone else find the body. What kind of a story was he to tell about John?
If he made a clean breast of it and told the police everything, he had been told they would lock Stuart up. Everything was against Stuart. Stuart would be charged with murder, and the circumstantial evidence was strong enough to send him away for 8 years at least. Few people knew Stuart in Edinburgh. Stuart had no real friends who could come forward and swear to his character. It looked like that was what they were hoping would happen.
Besides, if Stuart told the whole story, and by some miracle was believed by the police. He would be playing straight into their game.
The media would run the story. They would say a terrorist cell had been found to be in Edinburgh ready to assassinate the Chinese President and Al Qaeda were to blame. In fact, this would result in the Chinese President probably staying in China, which was what they wanted.
Somehow or other the image of that dead body excited him and gave Stuart something in life to fight for. He was gone, and now it looked like Stuart had no option but to continue his work.
It took Stuart a few more hours to think this out. As morning came, he had come to a decision. He must vanish somehow, and keep vanished until near to the planned attack on the Chinese President. Then Stuart realised that he must somehow find a way to get in touch with the Government people and tell them what John had learned.
Stuart wished John had told him more, and he had listened a little bit more closely to the little he had been told.
Stuart knew nothing but the barest of facts.
The government might still not do anything, even if he survived but Stuart realised he had nothing to lose. Stuart had to take his chances and hope that something might happen which would confirm this to the Government.
His first job was to keep going for the next couple of weeks and that meant several days of hiding before he could approach the government or the Police. That would mean two groups would be searching for Stuart. The murderers and the Police. Most people that go on the run are picked up within 48 hours so it did not look good for Stuart.
His next thought was whether John had anything to help him. He checked his bedroom again but there was nothing but some money and an empty chocolate wrapper. There was no sign of his little book in which he had seen him making notes. His murderers had no doubt taken the little book.
Nevertheless, as Stuart looked up he saw that some cupboard shelves had been pulled out from the desk. John would never have left them in that state, for he was anal about being tidy. In fact, he was sure John had a mild case of OCD.
His thought started to drift.
He remembered reading somewhere that OCD is the 10th most common mental illness in the world. Living with OCD must be very difficult. He sort of imagined John’s home as being immaculate with lists written all across his flat and him constantly cleaning his house from top to bottom.
Then his thought came back to the present.
Someone must have been searching for something. He went round the flat. There was no trace of the book. Most likely, they had found it. Well there would be no point searching for it. It would be long gone.
Then Stuart began to consider where he should go next. He decided that it would be best to remain in Scotland and hide out away from the main cities. He fixed on the West Highland Way as he could pass for a walker and the area was wild and hard to get to in a car.
Yes that would be safe he thought. If he stayed in Edinburgh, he would be spotted and certainly killed or picked up by the police.
He picked up his mobile and clicked open one of the applications that listed train time.
A search on a rail enquiry website informed him that a train left Waverley Station at 10.20, which would land him at Milngavie station by the late morning.
That was well enough, but a more important matter was how he was to get to Waverley Station without being detected. He had watched enough episodes of Taggart to know for certain that the police would be watching the stations. Unsure what to do he went to bed and slept for several troubled hours.
Stuart got up at six in the morning and looked out of the window. In the faint light of a spring morning magpies and swifts begun to chatter. For a few seconds he almost forgot what had happened. Depressed that it was not a dream he closed his curtains.
He then had a shower. A long hot burning shower. One of those showers that you have when you try to wash away a memory. Of course, that did not work but for a few minutes, he felt free.
Having dried himself he got dressed in some jeans, a woolly green jumper and a pair of strong walking boots. He put on a jacket and then stuffed a spare t-shirt, tooth-brush and a flannel into a small rucksack and a few other essentials that he thought he might need. He had drawn a good amount of cash out the other day in case John should want money. As a result, he was able to stuff just over £500 in his pockets. He had a shave and brushed his teeth.
However, at eight o’clock, as Stuart knew from bitter experience, the bin men turned up with a great clatter of bins. Stuart had seen the same bin men each week. They were young men with Celtic or Rangers tops on and bright aluminous jackets on top. One these men Stuart decided he would stake all his hopes on escaping undetected.
Stuart went into the living room where the rays of morning light were beginning to creep through gaps in his curtain. There he grabbed some cornflakes and a mug that he planned to fill coffee from the cupboard. As he put his cornflakes away, Stuart noticed something hard in the cereal box. He shook the box and heard a thud.
‘No it can’t be, can it’, he thought
He put his hand in the box, searching around the loose cornflakes he found what he was looking for and drew out a black pocket-book.
Putting the book away into his inside jacket Stuart looked at John for the last time.
'Goodbye old friend' he said
'I am going to do my best for you. Wish me well, wherever you are.'
Then Stuart hung about in the hall waiting for the bin men. That was the worst part of it all, for Stuart was desperate to get out of the building and Edinburgh.
Eight-thirty passed, then eight-forty five, but still the bin men did not come. Was it a local holiday? Just typical for the Bin Men to be late.
At Nine AM, Stuart heard the rattle of the bin van outside. He opened the front door, and there were the bin men, singling out his bins. They emptied his bin. As they returned, Stuart asked one of them to come over to the front door.
Stuart asked one of them if he could borrow their bright yellow and Black jacket and hat with the company’s logo on it. Stuart offered him a crisp £50 note. The bin man’s eyes opened at the sight of the money, and he grinned broadly.
'Ok!' he said cheerily.
Stuart stuck on his woolly hat and his yellow and black jacket with his small rucksack on his back. He picked up one of bins and took it to the Bin Van. Where he left it.
At first Stuart, thought there was nobody in the street. Then he caught sight of a police officer a hundred yards down, and another man on the other side of the road. Some impulse made him raise his eyes towards the window of one of the flats opposite, and there looking out the window was a face. As the man passed he looked up, and it looked like some sort of signal was exchanged.
Stuart walked along the road and then crossed the street. Stuart took the first side street where he came to a hill that passed the Grassmarket Bar. He walked past the pub he regularly went to after work and then went down a left-hand turning.
Stuart quickly took the bin-man’s jacket off, placing it in his ruck sack and walked passed some vacant land just down from the castle where they were still building the Edinburgh tram system.
Stuart passed a plot of vacant land and walked past one of those Georgian flats that Edinburgh is famous for when a postal worker came round the corner. At the moment, the clock of an architect’s office struck nine thirty. There was not a second to spare if he was to get that train. As soon as he got to the Princesses Gardens, he ran. By the time, he was near the train station the clock at the Balmorals showed five minutes past the hour. At Waverly he had no time to take a ticket, let alone settling upon his destination. The information board told him it was platform 12, and as he entered the station, he saw the train was ready to go. Stuart leaped over the ticket block and sprinted to the train, jumping on before the doors closed. A few seconds later, the doors locked and the train was off.
Five minutes later, as the train was roaring through the various railway tunnels of Waverley Station an irate inspector asked Stuart for his ticket.
Stuart sat there in his seat looking around him. The well-worn train seats smelt of the morning rush hour. How he was glad that you could not smoke anymore on trains. The smell would have been unbearable. He remembered how when he was a child his father used to drag him around pub after pub and the smoke would hang above his head ingraining his clothes and skin in tobacco.
A few minutes later, the inspector asked him for his ticket. He hoped this one would not be a job worth person. Thankfully, he was not and he just asked him for the fee.
Stuart paid by switch and he was handed his ticket to Milngavie. Single one way.
He went off asking the people around him for their tickets while Stuart mopped his brow and continued to notice that the people sitting on the seats around him. One of them was an old woman with her walking stick firmly positioned between her legs. She looked scary.
Breaking the silence Stuart announced ‘it was a great way to get fit almost missing your train’.
There were a few polite smiles but no conversations came from it. Secretly he was thankful; he did not really want to talk to anyone.