Free The Shadow of the Soul by Sarah Pinborough

room. Hayley. She cancelled it quickly, but even as she waved an apology at the PM, her sister’s name stayed in her head. There was no reason for Hayley to call her – it had been a long time since her little sister had called her for a chat, and if something had happened to one of their parents, Abigail would have heard first. There was a nine-year age gap between them, and although Abigail blamed Hayley’smove to London and starting university for their distance as she started growing up and leading her own life, deep down she knew that wasn’t the case.
She
was the one who had grown distant – she’d grown distant from all of them. Suddenly she felt sad, as if remembering a place that had once been special, and yet could never be returned to.
    ‘It’s impossible,’ McDonnell said. ‘He can’t be everywhere. There must be another explanation. There must be more than one of them.’
    ‘That’s the theory we’re working on,’ Dunne said.
    ‘They look identical.’ Dawson stared at the screen. ‘Even down to the clothes – and the way they move. It’s uncanny.’
    ‘Where do they go?’ The Prime Minister looked at Dunne. ‘Have you traced a route, either to or from any of the sites?’
    Fletcher and Dunne exchanged a glance. Abigail forgot the phone call; that look intrigued her. Dunne often showed his feelings, but never Fletcher. They looked like men who knew they were in trouble and there was nothing they could do about it.
    ‘Unfortunately, we can’t.’
    ‘What do you mean? Not even for one of them?’
    Silence hung in the air until Fletcher finally broke it.
    ‘No. The one link we have is that they all go into thenearest Underground station – and then we lose them as the cameras transfer. In one frame they’re there, and then in the next they’re not. And we’ve had teams trawling the footage of people leaving the stations that day. There’s no evidence of even one of these men coming out of the Underground system at all.’
    ‘That’s impossible.’
    ‘Yes,’ Fletcher agreed, ‘it is. And so there must be some explanation. We just haven’t found it yet.’
    ‘Have you got enhanced images?’ Dawson asked. ‘Can you bring them up through the overhead? I want to see two of these men side by side.’
    Dunne started tapping and a few moments later the large LCD screen on the wall burst into life. Abigail stared, ignoring the phone that was now vibrating persistently against her leg.
    ‘I know him,’ she said, the words tumbling straight from her brain to hang in the silent room.
    The four heads who had so far ignored her turned her way. She stared at the screen. The suit fitted neatly in both images. His skin looked sickly, mottled and shiny, on his face and neck. His eyes were dark, beyond brown, the pupils leaking out into the surrounding irises like black ink soaking into blotting paper. The images were undeniably identical. One man. Not two.
    The PM spoke softly. ‘You know him?’
    ‘No,’ Abigail said, ‘I’ve seen him.’
    ‘Where?’ Fletcher was on his feet. ‘When?’
    ‘The night of the bombings. He was just standing in the street when I ran home. Near my flat.’ Her words felt like water trickling down a drain. Her insides cooled. For a moment she was back there, out of breath and sweating, feeling again that blissful sense of emptiness she’d had whenhe looked at her. She remembered his finger rising to his lips. Her own pupils dilated and she bit the side of her tongue to shut it up.
    ‘What do you mean, just standing in the street? What was he doing?’
    Abigail moved closer to the screen and frowned. ‘Maybe it wasn’t him. It might have just been a fat man …’
    ‘Did he speak to you?’ Fletcher asked.
    ‘No.’ Her phone buzzed again and this time she reached for it. ‘Can I take this? It’s my sister. She keeps ringing. Maybe something’s wrong?’
    ‘Be quick,’ McDonnell said.
    She felt all four sets of eyes watching her as she slipped out