His mortal remains won’t fare much better. They will stay in the mortuary at Peterborough City Hospital for a very long time. The inquest will take place in Huntingdon in the New Year and after that the body would normally be released to the family for burial but nobody will claim Thomas Warren. Nobody wants him, even when he’s dead. He will remain in pieces in the fridge in the mortuary for many months to come, until eventually Bina the Mortuary Manager, who thinks about that nice PC from time to time, will contact the hospital chaplain. The chaplain will agree Thomas Warren’s remains need to be disposed of in a suitable and dignified manner and agree to help. He will ask if it’s more suitable if they go for a Catholic burial at St Jude the Apostle or the Pentecostal Church on the Rock and Bina will say, ‘No idea, I don’t even know if he had any faith. He’s white, that’s all. No idea what he was.’ The phone calls will go on for a few months more and eventually Thomas Warren’s mortal self, such as it is, will go to an unmarked grave at St Jude in a ten-minute ceremony that will involve only the priest. While Thomas Warren sits on Platform Seven, contemplating what he is about to do, again and again, his body will spend its final months before burial as an inconvenience that takes up too much room in a fridge.

I turn away from him, back towards the stairs, leaving Thomas Warren on the bench and leaving Platform Seven for the last time.

*

I go over to Platform Three. If I get the 22.39, I’ll have to change at Stevenage but that’s okay, it’s about a half-hour wait but only another eleven minutes from there.