Shouting at the Window

By JR Alexander

SHOUTING AT THE WINDOW is an intense, claustrophobic thriller.

A man takes a train journey between two (unnamed) cities. Haynes - we only ever get to know his surname - is on the margins of society: a petty criminal, living from day-to-day, who has had to flee from his usual territory to somewhere more secure. The three parts of the story - “Departing”, “Changing” and “Arriving” - reflect his progress on the journey.

The police suspect Haynes of the murder of an elderly lady and the theft of her jewellery. He is also sought by the vicious henchmen of the local gangland boss - a sinister bookmaker called Malcolm.

The events leading up to Haynes’s flight are told in flashback. During the course of the journey, much is learned of Haynes’s background - his dreadful school, his estranged brother, his opportunistic daily lifestyle - as he observes changes in the landscape and his fellow travellers. It becomes clear that the apparently mundane circumstances of the passengers hide states of affairs that, in reality, are much more complicated and serious. There is death on the journey, as well as adultery and deception, despair and resignation.

But Haynes’s principal journey is in his mind, as he considers his own deteriorating circumstances. The train presents him with a means of escape, but it also represents entrapment and claustrophobia.

Haynes’s only hope of salvation lies with his brother, living in the second city. He knows his destination, but has thrown off his various pursuers?

• Language: English
• Publisher: High Ridge Publishing
• Release date: Jun 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9781839780523

Book preview

end.

PART ONE

Departing

The train departed from the station at ten minutes to one.

Haynes knew that this was the hour. He could see the rectangular electronic clock that was suspended from a steel beam above platform three. The regular change of the figures on the clock’s face betrayed the progress of the time. Haynes’s attention was focused on the continual movement within the seconds box, where the numbers re-shaped themselves with a metronomic efficiency. There was a rhythm to the change in the digits, the frequency of which was predictable and secure. The shapes of the numbers were constrained within the physical boundary of the adjacent squares within the box. There were no curves on these figures; there were no circles; there was no smoothness. There was only the harsh angularity of the square or the rectangle or the simple bleakness of the straight line.

Haynes concentrated on the numbers in the seconds column. He observed how they were formed by the illumination of successive combinations of individual lights, the sequence of which passed through an unerring and repetitive cycle as each second was recorded and lost. Haynes saw that the shapes of the numbers could not take the full flow of their usual design, but were restricted to the limited options made available by the array of lights: the straight lines and squared corners.

The change of the numbers was unceasing. The time was moving on. The figures on the clockface had just registered 12:50:30 when the train began to inch forward.

Haynes’s carriage started to ease along the adjacent platform. The train’s progress was slow - less than a man’s walking pace - but the sensation of movement caused Haynes to gasp, quietly and to himself. He was leaving the city. He was moving on to a safer destination. He was escaping from the dangers that lay in this place. He was fleeing from Stransky the Pole, whose square and brutal face, even at this moment, he expected to peer in through the train window in search of his quarry. Haynes had bought a single ticket. As the train began to creep forward, Haynes knew that he did not intend to return.

Haynes sat alone at a table seat, next to the window. The seat was one of a group of four, which, in other circumstances, might have housed a happy family with the proud father and the smiling mother and the two children with their faces pressed against the window looking out at the departed scene. Or the seats may have been used by a party of friends, of students, of businessmen, travelling with common purpose towards a common goal. Or they may have been occupied by more discrete travellers, a couple perhaps or a random collection of individuals, each with their own reasons for being on the train. But Haynes was alone. He had no family and, probably, at this time, his circle of friends would not be sufficiently wide to occupy all the seats at his table.

Haynes sat back in his seat, his head pressing rigidly against the high headrest. He was glad of the headrest. It gave the support which was its primary purpose. And it provided some privacy from whoever might be sitting behind him at the next table.

Haynes’s head was sore. It was sore with a dull ache that pressed forward from behind his eyes. This was the type of ache that he had regularly experienced in the last six months, the type of ache that he usually associated with the morning hangover. The strange thing now, however, was that, in this case, he had not been drinking to excess. He had had only a couple of drinks in the pub during the previous afternoon - though he had somehow still managed to spend one of the ten pound notes given to him by Malcolm - and he had had a solitary bottle of the American beer when he had been in hiding from Stransky and the Cook during the evening. He had not been drinking to excess. And yet he had this dull headache.

In addition, to compound his discomfort, there was a sharper pain emanating from a more specific point, towards the back of his head on the left hand side. Haynes leaned forward slightly and raised his hand gently to stroke the offending area. As he moved his palm backwards, he touched the patch of knotted hair, the crusty surface of which was in pronounced contrast to the full smoothness of the hair on the top and back of his head. He brought his hand down and looked at it. It was clean; there was no mark on it. At least, his hair was dry now. And the bleeding had stopped.

Haynes leaned back again against the headrest. His neck and back were straight and his head was upright. He still had a full range of vision, however. With only the smallest movement of his head, and without raising it from its support, he could see across to the empty seats at the table next to him on his right and then on down the carriage towards the automatic sliding door at the far end and then, continuing the sweep of his line of vision, out of the window to his left, where, he supposed, the life of the city was continuing, its triumphs and crimes, its kindnesses and cruelties, its little personal battles of hope and despair.

The train crept forward and, eventually, the end of the platform was left behind. Haynes found himself looking out on to the river below, which was separated from him by the ordered arrangement of steel girders and concrete supports. The river was high and fast moving, the result not so much of the continuous rain of the last few hours but of the swell of the incoming tide. At an intermediate level, between the river and the railway track, lay a road bridge, dark and grey apart from the freshly painted green trimming which surrounded the regular iron columns on its pavement.

The rain had now stopped, although the cloud cover remained and the sky was dull and threatening. Haynes could see that, in a couple of places on the pavement, some drier patches were already emerging. But at the side of the road, where the detritus of litter had blocked the entrance to the drains, the pools of water were still in place, only diminishing in size as the occasional vehicle, driving close to the curb, ploughed through them to redistribute their contents across a broader field. Further down the river was another bridge, wider and of a more modern functional design than its nearer neighbour. Its traffic load was heavier and, at the time Haynes looked across, the load was stationary. At the front of the queue, travelling in the same direction as the train, was an orange bus, double decked.

Half way across the railway bridge, the train slowed down and then stopped. From somewhere in the medium distance behind him, Haynes heard the muffled sound of a platform announcement followed by the piercing shriek of a whistle. A few moments later, another train passed by on the next track, also heading out of the station. Out of the corner of his eye - and without turning his head - Haynes saw that this was a shorter train, with only a couple of carriages. Its livery was dark blue with occasional broad yellow lines and Haynes knew, therefore, that it was probably a constituent of the rolling stock for the city’s commuter network. Haynes watched as the local train overtook the long distance vehicle, a little whippet scurrying past a dormant mastiff. He could see that, at this time of day, in the dead time of the lunch hour, the train carried only a few passengers.

After a short pause, Haynes’s train started to move again. This time, gradually, it began to accelerate more strongly. It did so against the background of a loud rumble, echoing and amplifying throughout the carriage, as the wheels vibrated against the track and as the supporting infrastructure of the bridge sought to adjust to the new pressures being placed upon it and as the train itself strained in its effort to gather pace.

The train reached the far bank of the river. Backing on to the railway line was a group of old warehouses. They were the legacy of an earlier time. They were the legacy of the days when the river was the principal thoroughfare for the city’s trade with other cities and with other nations. They had once been an integral component of the city’s buoyant commercial life. But, now, they were blackened and dead, their windows smashed and their roofs stripped and their gutters worn away by the elements of the decades. All that was left were the shells of old stone, dark and rotten and sodden and derelict. Haynes looked at the warehouses with a vacant indifference. He had no interest in the city’s history. These buildings were simply part of the city he was leaving behind.

On the far side of the old warehouses were the newer warehouses, perhaps fifty years old rather than a hundred. But these buildings did not store grain or spices or cotton or coffee. Nor did they store any of the goods now in modern demand: Italian suits or designer trainers or mobile phones. These warehouses stored people. These buildings were the high-rise villages once beloved of developers and planners and always detested by those with a soul. Haynes quickly counted six blocks of identical height and design. As far as he could tell, the only differentiation was to be found in the colour of the curtains which some of the apartments displayed to the outside world. While most - nearly all - were a uniform brown or beige, there were the occasional individual statements of yellow or green or blue. But that was all. Apart from these small patches of isolated colour, the blocks were indistinguishable, illegitimate offspring of the same father. At the foot of each block of flats, there was a small and random collection of parked cars and vans. But there were no people. The rain had stopped and the pavements were drying, but Haynes could see no people.

Haynes looked at the last of the tower blocks and closed his eyes. He began to imagine a scene behind one of the curtains. He pictured a black leather sofa, in the middle of which his contact - a man called Malcolm - was sitting. Malcolm was reaching into the inside pocket of his light grey suit in search of his wallet, also leather. Haynes’s mind raced on to the next scene. Malcolm was unfurling a bundle of ten and twenty pound notes, from which he was carefully counting out five - coloured brown - to give to Haynes. Haynes pictured the scene and he knew that the scene was false. He knew that he always met Malcolm in the backroom of his bookmaker’s shop, not in a dilapidated room at the top of a tower block. The scene was false: why was this? Then, in an instant, the scene was gone. Haynes’s silent speculation on life behind the curtains in the passing tower was interrupted - no, terminated - by a stranger’s voice.

It took Haynes a couple of seconds to realise that the voice was coming from the public address system within the carriage. Haynes opened his eyes and began to listen, as the conductor welcomed everyone to the train and then listed the destinations towards which the train was heading. The conductor spoke slowly and precisely and the list of destinations was long. Haynes surmised, silently, that the conductor had a north country accent, Lancashire possibly. It seemed similar to those he heard, occasionally, on the television behind the bar in the pub when he had the cash for an early evening bottle of the American beer.

Immediately after the conductor had finished, another voice was heard. This speaker, having introduced himself as Steve, announced that he was the chief steward and that he had a wide range of refreshments and that the buffet was now open for the sale of teas and coffees and plain and toasted sandwiches and spicy beanburgers suitable for vegetarians and a wide selection of alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks and that, unfortunately, there would not be a trolley service on the train because of staff shortages and that he would be grateful if passengers visiting the buffet could please avoid bringing large denomination notes as he was short of small change.

The voices shifted the focus of Haynes’s attention. The tower blocks had been left behind. Haynes moved his gaze away from the view outside the train. Instead, from his vantage point next to the window - and still without moving his head from its comforting rest - he looked around his half of the carriage, as demarcated by the Perspex curtain which, midway, extended behind the rows of seats on both sides of the aisle. Haynes could see that, in his half, there were four sets of tables on each side of the aisle. Each table had four seats. Four times two times four. There was seating for thirty two people in this half of the carriage. Worked out another way, there were four tables on his side of the aisle and each table serviced four seats and there were two sides of the aisle. Four times four times two. There was seating for thirty two people.

Haynes was sitting at the second table in from the end of the carriage. Directly behind him, there was at least one person. He knew this because he could hear the steady and loud munching of a packet of crisps. Haynes listened, but did not change his position in his seat. He could tell that the noisy bastard was not only crunching through the crisps with a firm bite but was then eating with the mouth open and the jaw working furiously. From the aroma wafting over from the seat behind him, Haynes speculated on salt and vinegar.

Haynes was not sure if there was anyone sitting behind him and to his right. He did know that there was no-one immediately next to him on his right; that table was empty. However, the next table in the carriage was occupied by a middle-aged couple engaged in animated conversation. They sat in the aisle seats, the man facing the direction of travel and, therefore, away from Haynes. The man would occasionally comb back his thinning hair with a broad hand. He had a short beard freckled with grey. Opposite him, the woman, with a plump face and full lips, responded energetically to whatever points he was making. In turn, her comments seemed to prompt further reactions from the man. The conversation was bilateral and even-handed. But the couple’s voices were low and the subject of their discussion was inaudible to the disinterested listener sitting in Haynes’s seat.

On the other side of the aisle from the couple, also seated next to the aisle, was a tall, gangling youth with thin-framed spectacles and shoulder-length hair. Haynes had seen him before. He had seen him in the queue to buy a train ticket at the travel centre of the city station. Haynes had decided then that he was a youth, even though this probably understated his state of maturity. Haynes had also decided that he was probably a student. The designation would suffice, therefore: youth. Later, before the train had departed, Haynes had watched as the youth, carrying a full and weather-beaten rucksack, had looked for his allocated place, checking the numbers on each seat against the printed selection on his ticket. Haynes had watched as the youth had found his seat and, standing next to it, had confirmed the number on his ticket. He had then looked at his seat number again and then he had checked his ticket again. Haynes had wondered why he had done this. Of all the seats available, only a handful seemed to have been reserved in advance. The youth could sit virtually anywhere without risk of imposing himself on someone’s else’s travelling arrangements. Sit down, Haynes had thought to himself. For God’s sake, sit down. The youth would eventually sit down, but not yet. He placed his rucksack in the storage space between his block of seats and the next block along the carriage. He then changed his mind and removed the rucksack in order to place it in the luggage rack directly above the seat. When the young man did eventually sit down, he did not do so for long. Already, since he had first taken his seat, he had stood up twice to extract things from the rucksack. First, a paperback book. Then an apple. Sit down, thought Haynes to himself. For God’s sake, sit down.

At the next table, behind the youth, in the corner next to the window and with her back to the Perspex division, a girl was asleep. From where he was sitting, Haynes could not now see her, but he had noticed her on his arrival in the carriage before the journey began. The girl had already fallen asleep at that stage. Haynes had judged that she was in her late teens or early twenties. She was also pale, with streaky blond hair and a narrow face. As she slept, her head was slumped forward slightly.

Haynes, the crisp eater, the couple, the nervous youth, the pale girl. Six of the places were taken. In Haynes’s half of the carriage, six of the places were taken. Six out of thirty two. Haynes conjured the numbers around in his head. Six divided by thirty two. What percentage was that? It was not easy to work out. If it had been six out of thirty, it would have been easy. It would have been one fifth. It would have been twenty per cent. But the number of seats was thirty two. Four times two times four. Or four times four times two. Six out of thirty two was less than six out of thirty. Haynes concluded that just under twenty per cent of the seats were taken in his half of the carriage.

Haynes reckoned that there were six passengers in his half of the carriage: five plus himself. There were others, of course, in the far half of the carriage and elsewhere on the train, but Haynes did not know how many. He stared blankly over the top of the seat in front of him, his eyes unfocussed. In his half of the carriage, he was one of six people incarcerated within the moving vehicle: a voluntary prisoner at the start of his journey.

There were other passengers in the far half of the carriage. Haynes did not know how many and nor, he realised after his meaningless exercise in mental arithmetic, did he really care. But he knew there were some, as they had passed by his table on the way down. They had passed mainly as isolated individuals, but there had also been one group of four, who had walked by in a state of some jocularity. Haynes had been grateful that they had not sat at the empty adjacent table, but, after having paused there, had decided to continue their journey down the aisle. And now, from some distance, he could hear the occasional laugh and raised voice. Haynes looked across at the empty table and imagined the scene of only a few minutes before. He had been sitting in his seat, with his head against the rest, when the group had arrived at the table. One of them - a fat middle aged woman in a light blue shell suit - had started to sit down. Haynes had realised, at that instant, that he had wanted the group to move on, to locate themselves at the far end of the carriage. And, thankfully, that is what they did. The group decided to reject the adjacent table to Haynes and to move further down the carriage. The woman reluctantly abandoned her attempt to sit down and, after the others had passed, trudged down the aisle behind them, the broad beam of her shell suit bringing up the rear of the procession.

Haynes sat with his head against the rest. The table in front of him was clear. He had brought nothing with him. The carriage was bright. All the lights were on, having suddenly been fully illuminated in the last few seconds before the train’s departure. It was also warm. Haynes could feel a continuous injection of hot air flowing from somewhere on the side of the carriage under the table. He sat with his legs outstretched and apart and with the lower part of his left leg slightly away from the heater.

From behind, a man walked past Haynes and continued down the length of carriage. He was short and stocky with bulky shoulders. Haynes thought that, from the brief perspective gained of his quarter profile, the man was older than the typical wearer of a tight black leather jacket and faded jeans. The man held a robust, knotted walking stick in his left hand. On his head was a deerstalker. Haynes watched as the man left the carriage through the distant door. He permitted himself a long intake of breath and an even longer exhalation. It was not the Pole, Haynes reassured himself. It was not Stransky the Pole. And it was not the Cook.

The train travelled through the ugly urban sprawl. Haynes looked out on an estate of council houses. Each house had the same two-storeyed design and the same harshness of a grey, pebble-dashed face and the same sloping, angular roof. At the end of the houses, appearing quickly and facing away from the estate, was a huge advertising hoarding, on which there was the smiling face of a man in a smart business suit. Underneath the face, in huge lettering, was the instruction on the political party for which the observer should cast his favour. Haynes looked at the face and attempted to put a name to it. He had seen the face before somewhere – in the bar, probably on television. But the name would not come, even when the politician’s eyes followed Haynes as the train sped by. I’m watching you, said the politician. Vote for me. Haynes looked back into the politician’s eyes. What do you know? What do you really know? What do you really know, with your smiles and your slogans and your soundbites? That was the word they used these days, wasn’t it: soundbite. Yes, I know. But what experience of real life do you have? What experience of real life do you really have? The politician was left behind to solicit his next customer. And the next customer would be on the train, not on the estate.

After the council houses came a scrubby open space with its occasional patches of coarse grass. It was not quite a park, though the local inhabitants may well have judged it as such. It was an open space on which the local hard men could exercise their salivating rottweilers and the local youths could smoke or inject and the local teenage mothers could walk their screaming infants. It was a local territory with its clear boundaries and an invisible wall protecting it from outside curiosity. On this day, as the train passed by, there was nobody there. And so, as with the politician, the train left it behind.

After the scrubby open space came more open space. There was no green here at all, not even grassland pretending to be a park. This was a derelict wasteland with a couple of parked cars and a ragged and random collection of plastic bags and other litter caught up in the occasional sharp bush. Behind the wasteland, at some distance, was another family of four tower blocks, cousins of the first family, with the same dismal uniformity of height and design. Haynes looked across towards them. He would not have to live here. Somebody did. But not him, thank God. He would not have to live here.

Haynes’s attention was again distracted by a voice inside the carriage. It was not the conductor this time; it was closer to hand. He looked down the aisle and across towards the couple. The man was speaking again, but this time louder and this time the woman was not interrupting and this time Haynes could hear him. Haynes tried to switch off from the conversation. It was nothing to do with him and, in any case, he was not interested. But there was something about the man’s voice that was distinctive. Haynes listened again and then he realised what it was. It was the voice of an American.

And then the sound and light of the train changed. The train went into a tunnel and the background noise became louder, as if the speed had risen and a warning was being shouted that an excessive velocity was being approached. At the same time, the illumination in the carriage also seemed to become brighter, as if triggered automatically by some external signal. The sound and light of the train became more pronounced and the American’s voice was drowned. Haynes moved his right hand forward to grasp the edge of the table in front of him. There was now a double incarceration: the prisoner on the train; and the train in the tunnel. And, as if to emphasise the reinforcement of Haynes’s captivity, the noise within the carriage had become louder and the accompanying illumination now shone more brightly.

The window next to Haynes’s seat was black against the inside of the tunnel. It was now a mirror in which Haynes could detect the vague outline of his own reflection. The mirror showed a stockily built man seated upright in his place with his head against the headrest. The man wore a cheap casual jacket, the front zip of which had been fully opened to reveal a cheap casual shirt. The man’s profile showed a firm jaw and a squarish nose which, at some time in the past, may have been broken. In the blurred image presented in the window, Haynes could not make out the rest of the detail of the man’s face, except that he seemed to have two or three days’ growth of beard. The man was not old, nor yet approaching middle age. He was in his mid to late twenties perhaps, approaching a physical peak. What the mirror did not reveal, though Haynes himself knew it, was that the man was hungry. He had not eaten since the morning of the day before. He hadn’t been able to get anything to eat in the subsequent period. He had been in hiding from Stransky the Pole.

************

The picture appeared again in Haynes’s mind. The picture he saw was clear in some parts and dull in others. The picture was clear around the black leather sofa, in the middle of which Malcolm was sitting. Malcolm was leaning back with his arms outstretched and his small hands resting on the sofa’s top. His hands were small, like a woman’s, and smooth. Haynes guessed that Malcolm had never had the need to coarsen his hands through physical work. Malcolm’s hands had never pulled or drawn or shaped or carried.