The Redactor, Chapter 15

My first miscalculation was that Vienna Hauptbahnhof was impossibly huge.

  I knew it would be big, but when I asked my mind for an image of a railway station it handed me something I was familiar with, which was one of Perth’s provincial patches of concrete. Not the sprawling, multi-level hub of a European city.

  This would be haystacks and needles unless I could narrow it down. Then I remembered Hiero’s blog passage. He hadn’t just said Vienna Hauptbahnhof, he had said the line. I found a digital information board and looked up the line. Platform 5.

  A map of the station indicated the location of platform 5 and I wove through the crowd attempting to think calm thoughts. Calm thoughts. I would find Annika. She would be surprised to see me. Then I would tell her how close death had come. And she would believe me. It seemed to me that it wasn’t just her life I was racing to preserve. But my own too.

  But on reaching the platform, there was no sign of her. Or him. There was no train at the platform, so I went back and forth along the lip of the platform scanning the waiting commuters, until the weight of curious stares forced me to stop.

  Escalators connected every platform to the level above, which had to be a thirty foot drop. Far enough to kill barring a miracle. A drunk might fall that far and live. Something to do with relaxed muscles. I prayed that Annika was plastered.

  Further down the platform, an elevator was working in a transparently walled shaft. There was a third contingency Hiero didn’t seem to have covered. If Annika took the elevator to reach the platform with the train already idling, then he wouldn’t have the opportunity to push her in front of it or off the gallery. In that case, she and I could board the train together, where she would be a captive audience, and would have no choice but to hear me out.

  But then again, what were the chances she would take the elevator if the train was already at the platform? Half of not much. She would choose the stairs.

  And Hiero would give her that helping hand.

  I swore, and began pacing again.

  There was an ache reaching up through my calves and into my lower back when I heard the scream.

  The scream that was suddenly drowned by a metallic screeching that made the concrete rumble. My head twisted round in the direction of the noise. It had not come from this platform.

  Another scream tore the air. It wailed on, until the screeching sound died away, and went on alone for what seemed an eternity.

  I ran, dodging through the crowd that suddenly seemed magnetized and drawn to that sound.

  I reached the platform and took in the scene at a glance.

  A train was pulled up, two-thirds the way along the platform. Through its windows I could see passengers sprawled over each other, their faces wearing embarrassed smiles, or simple wide-eyed shock. In front of me, the platform was thick with people. A grey-haired woman in a heavy coat had fainted. One man simply stood with his index finger pointed at something below the lip of the platform. A young man raised a cellphone and its flash burst over the front of the train, reflecting. Another man turned and slapped the phone from his hand.

  I strained onto my tiptoes to see to the platform’s edge as cries of Hilfe! and Ambulanz! rose. A minute ticked by, and another, and I could neither get to the platform edge, nor see Hiero.

  It was then, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a still figure. Maybe I noticed him because he was the only person not running or standing. He was leaning on a railing, thirty feet above the platform.

  By the time I focused on him, he had turned his back and was walking calmly away. He wore a long coat with the collar pulled up and a shapeless felt hat. He walked with the loping ease of an athlete or an egotist.

  And then I was after him, my shoes slapping on the concrete. I bounded up the escalator, two and three steps at a time.

  It was only as I reached the escalator’s head and bounded after him that I heard the angry cries rise from below, now calling for the police. I turned my head once and looked back, just enough to see a sea of faces looking back up at me. I saw the same index finger that had been thrust at something in the dark below the platform’s edge pointed at me.

  A thick foreboding suddenly crystallized. The figure fleeing even now was wearing the same bland winter gear as me. The cheap coat and hat I had purchased at the airport that had seemed to offer a veil of anonymity now marked me a potential murderer.

  I pounded after the escaping figure, along a walkway, up another escalator, and out onto a mall, but I couldn’t close the gap between us. We had barely gone a hundred meters before my Medline began beeping angrily at me.

  For a moment I drove myself harder. I would catch him, and if my heart exploded in the process, too bad. I would pin him to the ground with my corpse.

  But he was gone. I turned a corner, and scanned the street hunched over, hands on knees, but saw no sign of him. He had escaped.

  I hailed a taxi, and slumped onto its back seat. I was gulping air, and it took me a moment to recover my breath enough to speak. I gave the driver the only address I could think of at the time—Annika’s address, the first one—and only later feigned a change of mind, and asked the driver to take me to a hotel out of the way.

  When I had checked into my hotel, I used the internet terminal in the lounge to log onto Hiero’s blog. Sure enough, he had already updated the latest entry. The murder now read:

 

  However, I don’t think she intended to catch the train in the manner she actually did. We had a surprise meeting. We chatted. I convinced her to ditch her plans and come with me to the Tiergarten. (I love German!) I walked her to the platform lip as “our” train approached, and whispered in her ear that I was going to show her something most people never see.

  I shoved her in the small of the back with one arm, and feigned to save her with the other. Her flight through the air was reminiscent of Piggy’s in Lord of the Flies. Even to the shattered spectacles. So too was the way her body crumpled on impact. The look on her face at the end as she corkscrewed right way up was priceless. Delicious.

 

  I spent the rest of the night mentally drafting my surrender. Put down the dice.

  Hiero was not just evil. He was insane. Had to be. And I needed to short circuit his game any way I could.