Broken Homes

technology,’ he said, but I ignored him. Richard Lewis had indeed been at Oxford between 1985 and 1987, but wasn’t on the main list of confirmed Little Crocodiles – he was on a secondary list made up of those who had been personally tutored by Geoffrey Wheatcroft, former official wizard and the man stupid enough to start teaching magic unofficially. Nightingale doesn’t swear very often, but when he talks about Geoffrey Wheatcroft you can tell he really fucking wants to.
    ‘Is it just the fact that he’s on the list?’ I asked.
    ‘There was something off about the suicide,’ he said.
    ‘He was pushed?’
    ‘See for yourself,’ said Jaget and cued up the CCTV footage on his tablet. Because London’s tube stations are the target for everything from casual public urination to mass murder the CCTV coverage is literally wall to wall.
    ‘Here he comes,’ said Jaget.
    Jaget had obviously spent some time editing the footage together because it told the story with quite a bit of unnecessary flair. You could have put it to music, something grim and German maybe, and sold it to an art gallery.
    ‘How bored were you when you did this?’ I asked.
    ‘We don’t all have careers full of mystery and magic,’ said Jaget. ‘See, he rides the escalator all the way up but, before he reaches the ticket barrier, he turns round and heads back down again.’
    I watched as Richard Lewis shuffled patiently along a corridor with the rest of the crowd, down a flight of stairs and onto the platform. He wormed his way forward until he was standing on the yellow line that marked the edge. There he waited, staring straight ahead, for the next train. When it arrived Richard Lewis turned his head to watch its approach and then, at what Jaget said was precisely the right moment, jumped in front of it.
    I presumed there was more footage of the collision but luckily Jaget hadn’t felt it necessary to inflict it on me.
    ‘Where did he travel from?’ I asked.
    ‘London Bridge,’ said Jaget. ‘He worked for Southwark Council.’
    ‘Why would he travel from one station to another before topping himself?’ I asked.
    ‘Oh, that’s not unusual,’ said Jaget. ‘We had one woman who paused to finish her crisps before she stepped off and one guy at South Ken who wouldn’t go while there were any kids that might see him.’ Jaget described how the man, dressed respectably in a pinstripe suit and holding an umbrella, had grown visibly more agitated with each missed opportunity. Finally when he had the platform to himself, you could see him on the CCTV straightening his cuffs and adjusting his tie.
    ‘As if he wanted to make a good impression when he got there,’ said Jaget.
    Wherever ‘there’ might be.
    Then when the next train was a minute out, an entire school party, fresh from the museums, descended on the platform. Kids and harassed teachers from one end to the other.
    ‘You should have seen his face,’ said Jaget. ‘He was so frustrated.’
    ‘Did he manage it eventually?’ I asked.
    ‘Nah,’ said Jaget. ‘By that time somebody in the station control room had noticed and ran down to intervene.’ And less than six hours later the man in the pinstripe suit was detained, sectioned and whisked off to a psychiatric unit for a quick chat with the duty psychologist.
    ‘I wonder if he tried again?’
    ‘Just as long as he didn’t do it on our time,’ said Jaget.
    ‘So what makes our Mr Lewis suspicious?’
    ‘It’s where he jumped from,’ said Jaget. One-underers tended to be quite predictable when it came to choosing their jumping-off point into oblivion.
    ‘If they’re just making a cry for help,’ he said, ‘then they go from the far end of the platform – so that the train has almost stopped before it gets there. If they’re serious, then they go to the other end where the driver has no chance to react and the train’s going full speed. Shit, if you do it there you don’t even have to jump – just lean out and the train will take your head right off.’
    ‘And if they jump from the middle?’
    ‘Then they’re not sure,’ said Jaget. ‘It’s a graduated thing, a bit of doubt and they go one way, if they’re pretty sure they go the other.’
    ‘Mr Lewis went from the middle,’ I said. ‘Meaning he was in two minds.’
    ‘Mr Lewis,’ said Jaget winding the footage to just before the jump, ‘went from just in front of the passenger entrance. If a train had come immediately, I’d