Only Darkness Read online

  The train ran on through the industrial East End of Sheffield where the skeletons of the great steelworks were gradually disappearing and the streets and houses looked decayed and defeated. The toy-town dome of Meadowhall shopping centre stood among sprawling acres of car parks, already full. People struggled off the train, other people got on. They looked anxious and tense. The bridge that took the shoppers over the road was seething with people. To the shopping, a sign said. Joke … The train pulled out, past some tumbledown buildings, through areas of green where the canal ran sluggish and black close to the line. Fisto was spray-painted on a stone building, and again on a derelict shed. It looked quite decorative. The spire of Moreham church came into view, and Debbie picked up her bag as the familiar platform ran past her window.

  The college day was in full swing when she pushed her way through the crowd of students on the steps leading into the Broome building. The day was fine after the storm of the night before, but cold. The steps served as an informal coffee bar, meeting place and, since the college management implemented a no-smoking policy, a smoking room for students and staff. It didn’t make a particularly attractive venue, as a busy road ran between the buildings, and conversation was interrupted by the noise of cars, and buses pulling away from the stop outside the main entrance. The air always smelt dirty, particularly on cold, still days.

  Debbie nodded to Trish Allen, a psychology lecturer and hardened smoker, who was continuing her class through the coffee break with a small group of students, all huddled in a companionable, smoky ring. She saw the lanky figure of Sarah Peterson, one of her A-level students, standing uncertainly in the entrance, drawing awkwardly on a cigarette. Debbie greeted Sarah as she went past and received a quick, eyes-averted smile. She felt tempted to go back out and join the group on the steps, spend ten minutes talking to another human being – something she hadn’t done since nine-thirty the previous night, but she pushed through the double doors into the dark, high-ceilinged corridor beyond.

  One of the first people she saw as she pushed through the doors was Rob Neave coming down the stairs towards her, heading out of the building. He stopped when he saw her. ‘Get wet last night?’ he asked. Debbie nodded and he laughed. She began to feel more cheerful.

  ‘There was something I wanted to ask you about,’ she said. ‘I had a bit of bother last night, during my class.’

  ‘OK. I’m on my way to a meeting now.’ He pulled an eloquent face. ‘But I’m free later. I’ll come along to your staff room – four-thirtyish?’ He directed a smile at her that made her feel pleasantly buoyant, and she turned towards her staff room. Chatting with Rob Neave was one of the grains of sugar in the otherwise worthy muesli of Debbie’s working life.

  The lie on Debbie’s timetable was that Friday morning was her morning off, as payback for her evening class. The lie on her contract was that she worked a thirty-five-hour week. She was usually at her desk by ten on Friday mornings, catching up with her marking and the never-ending paperwork that was now a feature of the job.

  She let herself into the small room she shared with Louise Hatfield, who was in charge of the English section which, these days, meant her and Debbie, and the changing faces of part-time staff who were employed through an agency. When Debbie had started at City, the English section had consisted of five members of staff, but financial crises and falling student numbers had led to a series of early retirements, and now there were just Louise and Debbie. ‘There goes my empire,’ Louise had remarked to Debbie at the end of last term. ‘Our days are numbered too. You mark my words, girl.’

  Debbie had been hoping that Louise would be in the staff room, but the locked door told her that she must still be teaching – so no one to talk to. She began to sift through the pile of mail on her desk. She was tired. When she’d gone to bed, she hadn’t been able to sleep, and had lain awake listening to the radio until gone three. Now she was at her desk, she couldn’t concentrate. She wanted to talk to someone about the odd scene at the station the previous night, laugh about it to get rid of the lingering feeling of – what? – dread? – that the silent figure had evoked.

  Don’t be stupid. It was nothing.

  She sighed and turned over the pile of post that had arrived on her desk that morning. Most of it was circulars and advertising from companies selling textbooks and training. Bin the lot. There were a couple of memos, one from the principal about an audit of class registers, and one from the union about the ever present threat of redundancy.

  Debbie ran her hand through her hair, worried. She felt vulnerable. She wasn’t sure how she would manage if she lost her job. There was no point in thinking about it for the moment. She had other things on her mind – like marking. She pulled her work folder towards her, and tried to pin back a lock of hair that had freed itself from its confinement of combs. The disturbance brought the whole lot down round her shoulders, and she irritably pulled it back off her face and wound a rubber band round to hold it. Fifteen A-level essays to mark, and about thirty GCSE pieces. She picked up the first one and started reading.

  She wasn’t even halfway through at twelve-thirty when hunger drove her over to the canteen in the Moore building.

  Fridays usually weren’t too busy in the canteen. Most students didn’t have classes on a Friday afternoon, and a lot of those that did ‘wagged’ it. Debbie collected a mixed salad from the salad bar, struggled with her conscience and got a side order of chips, and looked around for somewhere to sit.

  ‘Hey, Debbie!’ Tim Godber, media studies lecturer, journalist manqué and at one time a lover of Debbie’s, was waving her over.

  ‘Hi, Tim.’ Debbie was wary. She’d been very attracted at one time, but once they had fallen into bed together after a departmental party, he’d turned into a game player who’d tried to control and manipulate her through different hoops via charm and indifference, and Debbie was nowadays more put off than interested. They’d gone out for drinks together a couple of weekends ago, and again ended up in Debbie’s bed, but she’d told herself the next morning that that was the last time.

  He pushed his hair back from his forehead and moved his empty tray to make space at the table for her. ‘How are you, sweetheart?’

  ‘I’m not your sweetheart.’ Debbie had learnt to be brisk. ‘And I’m fine. How are you, lover boy?’

  ‘I’m not your lover boy, and I’m fine too.’ Tim no longer found it necessary to charm Debbie. They chatted in a desultory way as they ate, exchanging gossip from their different staff rooms. Debbie was fielding an invitation for a drink, when there was a flurry of discord from the coffee bar at the far side of the canteen, shouts and the sound of breaking china – breaking glass – that meant either horseplay or a fight. She got up from the table to see what was happening, though she had no intention of doing anything about it. Some of the young male students could be quite intimidating. Someone seemed to be dealing with it anyway. The shouting had died down. Rob Neave was talking to a group of students over where the trouble had been.

  Tim, who had no more desire than Debbie to get involved in student fights, looked relieved, but continued to watch the situation with interest. ‘Machismo fascismo,’ he said, ‘wins out every time.’ Debbie looked at him. ‘Your friend the ex-policeman. The one laying down the law over there.’

  He did look a bit authoritarian, actually, but Debbie was damned if she was going to agree with Tim about it. She liked Rob Neave. ‘I don’t think he’s laying down the law. Why should he be doing that? He’s just sorting them out. Is he an ex-policeman?’ Debbie thought that she ought to have known it.

  Tim knew everything. It was partly his journalist’s love of gossip, and partly his connections at the local newspaper. ‘That’s his job. Security, antivandalism, keep the buggers down. You remember that business with the lift last term?’

  Debbie shook her head. Tim’s story gradually came out about how some students at the end of last term had vandalized one of the lifts in the Moore building so badly the
y’d jammed it, trapping themselves inside. When they pushed the alarm button and summoned a rescue party, Neave, working the situation out, had delayed the rescue for two hours, claiming they couldn’t get the lift moving. The caretakers had stood around outside the lift, threatening to light a fire in the shaft. By the time the pair were released, they were pretty subdued, and the college authorities, faced with a bill for the lift repair, weren’t in any mood to listen to complaints. Debbie laughed as he got to the end of the story. Tim was a good raconteur. ‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘the railway strangler has struck again.’

  ‘What?’ Debbie dropped her fork.

  ‘Didn’t you hear? It’s been all over the radio this morning. It’ll be in the paper as well, I should think. They found a body on the line last night.’

  Debbie felt cold. ‘Where? When last night? Who was it?’

  ‘On the way to Mexborough, I think. They haven’t given a name and they haven’t said it’s him again, but it must be.’ He picked up one of Debbie’s chips and ate it. ‘You’ll get fat.’ He ate another.

  ‘Not at this rate. Look, Tim, this woman, she wasn’t killed in Moreham, at the station, was she?’

  ‘Don’t know, shouldn’t think so for a minute.’ He began to look at her more closely. ‘Why? Come on, tell me.’

  Debbie found herself telling him about her encounter at the station last night, and the way the strange figure had made her feel. ‘He looked sort of, well, dangerous,’ she finished, lamely. ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘No, go on, it’s interesting.’ She had his attention now, and he plied her with questions she couldn’t answer. Had she really heard the sound of breaking glass coming from the station? Not from anywhere else? What did he look like? Was she sure he didn’t catch the train?

  ‘Perhaps you saw him – the strangler,’ he said, half seriously.

  ‘Rubbish! If it was over at Mexborough it can’t have been anything to do with what I saw.’ Debbie was annoyed because she felt uneasy.

  ‘It’s the next stop up the line.’

  She thought about it, and then saw what time it was. ‘Oh, God, I’ve got to go. I’m teaching in five minutes.’

  Tim smiled at her encouragingly, and as she left was getting out a notebook and pen. ‘I’ll just stay here and get some work done. It’s quieter than in our staff room. See you later.’

  As she left the canteen, she saw Rob Neave leaning against the wall watching the students with a conspicuously bleak expression. He caught Debbie’s eye and winked. As she went past him, he said, ‘It’ll be nearer five than four-thirty. Is that OK?’

  ‘Yes, it won’t take long. It’s nothing much.’

  He looked sceptical. ‘Your last nothing much took half my budget,’ he said, referring to the time when Louise and Debbie had decided to take advantage of the fact that the college had actually appointed someone with responsibility for security. They’d campaigned for better lighting in some of the isolated parts of the campus, assuming that the boyish face and easy charm of the new appointee meant he would be a pushover. He’d proved to be a tough negotiator, who was, fortunately, on their side. They’d got their lighting.

  Debbie noticed as she looked more closely at him that he was tired and drawn. She wondered if he was another person who’d had a sleepless night. She almost told him about her experience at the station. She felt in need of expert advice.

  Debbie’s Friday afternoon A-level class distracted her and she forgot, for the moment, about the incident at the station. The students were studying ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, and making heavy weather of it. Debbie had asked them to think about the lines: God save thee, ancient Mariner!/From fiends that plague thee thus!/Why look’st thou so?’ With my crossbow/ I shot the Albatross. Why, she had asked them, did the mariner shoot the albatross that had brought good luck to the ship? Somehow, the discussion had got hijacked into an animal rights argument that was interesting, but not what Debbie wanted them to do.

  ‘Anyway, it’s cruel,’ said Sarah Peterson, who had been following the discussion closely. Debbie sighed. Sarah rarely contributed, but it was typical that when she did it was with the wrong end of the stick securely in her hands. She could see Leanne Ferris, one of the brighter members of the group, about to deliver a sharp rebuttal, and she pulled them back to the poem, and began to work them around to thinking about a less literal interpretation. She saw Sarah diligently writing down the points she was making.

  Sarah was Debbie’s particular concern that year, a different kind of student from Leanne. Leanne, quick-minded and confident about her own ideas, would sail through anything the exam system threw at her, as long as Debbie could persuade her to do a bit of work. Sarah worked very hard, but didn’t understand. She had no confidence in her own ideas and opinions, so she wanted someone – Debbie in this case – to tell her what she should think. She didn’t want to know why the answers were correct, what they meant or what the implications were. She just wanted the answers, as her palpable puzzlement when answers weren’t offered made clear.

  After the class, Sarah waited until the others had gone, and then asked rather diffidently if there was time to discuss her last essay. ‘The one I did on Othello. I didn’t get a very good mark.’ She rummaged in her bag and produced the essay which looked rather crumpled, and a can of Coke. ‘I’ve got to go straight to work,’ she said apologetically, gesturing at the can. Sarah, like a lot of students at City, could only afford to stay at college by working. She had a job at a pub on the outskirts of Moreham.

  They discussed the essay, or at least, Debbie did, while Sarah wrote things down. ‘Have another go at it,’ Debbie suggested. ‘Once you’ve got one good essay, it gives you a model for others. Let me have it on Monday, OK?’

  ‘Thanks, Debbie.’ Sarah smiled and briefly met Debbie’s eyes before hurrying out. Debbie collected her things and headed back to her room.

  When she got there, Rob Neave was leaning on the windowsill beside her desk, flicking through the pages of one of her books – a collection of Auden’s poems. He usually showed some interest in her books, though she sometimes found it hard to tell if he really meant it. His face could be difficult to read. He looked up as she came in. ‘Deborah.’ He was one of the few people who used her full name. ‘So what’s this nothing much problem?’

  ‘Do you want a coffee? There was something else as well, actually.’ He declined the coffee, as she knew he would. He’d made some pointed comments in the past about the standard of the coffee that she and Louise drank. He waited as Debbie got herself a drink, idly turning the pages of the Auden.

  She remembered the last time she’d talked to him about poetry. He’d picked up a copy of The Waste Land from where it was lying on Debbie’s desk. What had this got to do, he’d wanted to know, with the lives most of the students led? ‘A lot,’ Debbie had retorted. And was it going to help them with what they really needed in their lives – a way to make a decent living? ‘It teaches them how to think.’ Debbie wasn’t giving anything away to anyone about the value of studying literature. He’d argued the point good-naturedly for a bit longer and she’d wondered at the end of it if he’d been winding her up.

  ‘You can borrow that, if you want.’ She was surprised when he said he would. ‘I thought you didn’t see any point in poetry,’ she said.

  ‘I didn’t say that.’ He was still turning the pages, but not really reading.

  Aware that it sounded a bit blunt, Debbie asked, ‘Is it right that you used to be in the police?’

  He looked at her. ‘Who’s been talking to you? Yes, for ten years.’ He didn’t seem to mind her question, but something told her not to ask any more.

  ‘Let me show you this.’ She took the book out of his hands, and started leafing through it. ‘This one. That end bit there.’ She was looking at the lines towards the end of ‘The Shield of Achilles’, the bit about the ragged urchin in the weed-choked field. That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third/ were axioms to him,
who’d never heard/ Of any world where promises were kept/ Or one could weep because another wept. He read it through and looked at her, waiting. ‘Didn’t you meet that boy a hundred times when you were in the police force?’

  He was still reading the lines. ‘Yes, you see them all the time.’

  ‘That’s what I meant. Poetry has a lot to do with their lives.’

  He grinned, acknowledging both the point, and the fact that she wasn’t prepared to let the argument go. ‘OK, but you can romanticize as well.’

  ‘I don’t think that romanticizes. It calls raping and killing axioms.’ She was standing close to him as they read the lines, and she was aware of the warmth coming from him, the smell of a laundered shirt, the faint smell of sweat.

  He nodded, but cut the topic off. ‘Right. What’s the problem.’ He listened while Debbie outlined the concerns that she had working in Room B110 at night, where the curtainless windows, brightly lit, looked out on to the street and gave any passer-by a clear view of who was – and who wasn’t – in there. She told him about some trouble she’d had with youths in the street the night before. He looked at her – ‘Why didn’t you report it at the time?’ – making a sudden switch from friendly to official. She had seen him use this device to wrong-foot people, and now it derailed her.