Death and Judgement Read Free Page B

disturbed as they stole their 1000-lira ride. Besides , if he had a ticket, he'd be gl ad to be awakened before the train pulled in, especially if he had to catch the No. 1 boat to Rialto, which left the embarc adero in front of the station exactly three minutes after the train arrived.
    She rolled the door open and stepped into the small compartment. 'Buona sera, signore. Suo biglietto, per favore!
    Later, when she talked about it, she thought she remembered the smell, remembered noticing it as soon as she sfid back the door of the overheated compartment. She took two steps towards the sleeping man and raised her voice to repeat, 'Suo biglietto, per favore! So deeply asleep, he didn't hear her? Not possible: he must be without a ticket and now trying to avoid the inevitable fine. Over the course of her years on the trains, Cristina Merli had come almost to enjoy this moment: asking them for identification and then writing out the ticket, collecting the fine. So, too, did she delight in the variety of the excuses that were offered to her, all by now grown so familiar that she could recite them in her sleep: I must have lost it; the train was just pulling out, and I didn't want to miss it; my wife's in another compartment and she has the tickets.
    Conscious of all of this, knowing she would now be delayed, right at the end of the long trip from Torino, she was sudden in her gestures, perhaps even harsh.
    'Please, signore, wake up and show me your ticket,' she said, leaning down over him and shaking his shoulder. At the first touch of her hand, the man in the seat leaned slowly away from the window, toppled over on to the seat, and slid to the floor. As he fell, his jacket slid open and she saw the red stains that covered the front of his shirt. The smell of urine and excrement rose up unmistakably from his body.
    'Maria Vergine,' she gasped and backed very s lowly out of the compartment, to her left, she saw two men coming towards her, passengers moving towards the door at the front of the train. I'm sorry, gentlemen, but that door at the front is blocked: you'll have to use the one behind you.' Used to this, they turned and walked back towards the rear of the carriage. She glanced out of the window and saw that the train was almost at the end of the causeway. Three, perhaps four minutes remained until the train drew to a stop in the station. When it did, the doors would open and the passengers would get out, taking with them whatever memories they might have of the trip and of people they had seen in the corridors of the long train. She heard the familiar clicks and bangs as the train was shunted to the proper track and the nose of the train slid under the roof of the station.
    She had worked for the railway for fifteen years and had never known it to happen, but she did the only thing she could think of doing: she stepped into the next compartment and reached up to the handle of the emergency brake. She pulled at it and heard the tiny 'pop' as the tattered string broke apart, and then she waited, not without a distant, almost academic curiosity, to see what would happen.

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    The wheels locked and the train slid to a halt; passengers were knocked to the floor of the corridors and into the laps of strangers sitting opposite them. Within seconds, windows were yanked down and heads popped out, searching up and down the track for whatever it was that had caused the train to grind to a stop. Cristina Merli lowered the window in the corridor, glad of the biting winter air, and stuck her head out, waiting to see who would come towards the train. It turned out to be two of the uniformed poli zia ferr ovia who came ru nning up the platform. She leaned out from the window and waved at them. 'Here, over here. ’ Because she didn't want anyone except the police to hear what she had to tell them, she said nothing more until they were directly underneath her window.
    When she told them; one of them broke away and ran back towards the