Only Darkness Read Free

had been a long day, so he’d made himself something to eat and gone to bed. Sleep hadn’t come easily. He’d turned on the radio in the end and listened through close-down and then the
World Service.
    He was coming out of the shower, towelling himself when he caught the end of the first news bulletin …
The body of a woman was found on railway lines early this morning in South Yorkshire. A police spokesman commented that it is too early to say how the woman had died. Three women have been killed in the South Yorkshire region in the past eighteen months and their bodies left on or near railway tracks …
    He listened to the end of the bulletin which just recapped on the killings, but gave no more information about the deadwoman. He could see Deborah Sykes in her light mac, struggling to hold her umbrella straight as she had disappeared into the storm the night before. He decided to leave breakfast, and started pulling his clothes on, looking round for his keys and cash. Ten minutes later he was braking for the first set of lights that held him on red in the middle of an empty road.

2
    City College, Moreham, is so called because it stands in the centre of the town, five minutes’ walk from the train and bus stations, and just a stone’s throw from the fine medieval church and the chapel on the bridge. The college buildings display a selection of twentieth-century architecture. The North building, the most modern, nearly twenty years old, presents a face of smoked glass to the world; its entrance is hard to find and the casual visitor can get lost in a confusing maze of corridors. The Moore building, the middle sibling, is a box of glass windows and concrete, nearly forty years old, and shabby and depressing. Inside, it is more comfortable. On the other side of the road stands the oldest, and the most beautiful despite its run-down appearance, the Broome building, an elegant art-deco construction with an oak door in its curving facade. Its windows watch you like eyes.
    Debbie had overslept, and had arrived at the station two minutes before a train was leaving. She usually read the paper on the journey, but as she hadn’t had time to buy one, she stared out of the window instead. The track side was overgrown with weeds and the high walls were covered with graffiti – mostly incomprehensible and, to the uninformed eye, indistinguishable, tags, and the occasional word.
Joke
was written in letters about two feet high across a wall covered and over-covered in spray paint. When Debbie had been at college, the graffiti had been political: anti-government slogans, ANC slogans, comments about the Gulf War, even some left over from the bitter miners’ strike –
Coal not dole, Thatcher out, Save our pits.
Now it seemed to be tagging, a meaningless cry of,
I’m here!
or the inevitable,
Fuck you, Wogs stink, Irish scum.
    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