He watched the platform, and he watched the window in the door to the adjoining car. Heads swaying in and out of view.

Nine fifty-eight.

The crowd thinned. He watched Amtrak conductors walk the length of the platform, checking for late boarders. A guy in his seventies was talking to a pair of Amtrak cops, apparently being told he couldn’t bring his five dogs with him on the train.

The clock on Vincent’s phone ticked over to ten.

The whistle blew, and the doors sucked shut, precise and hermetic. He watched the platform slide away backward, the motion so gentle there was no sensation beyond the visual. Then with the quickening pace he felt his chair pushing him forward, the train gliding ever faster into the dark, and the rhythmic click of wheel-on-rail rising to a manic tempo.

He waited until the train was up to speed, the car cradling gently with the motion, and then he rose from his seat. He stood there for a minute in the aisle, learning the sensation, surfer-reflex absorbing each jolt through his knees. To either side, the cabin reflections hung just beyond the windows, twinned anti-trains matching them curve for curve. Vincent moved to the staircase and ascended quietly, balance skewed in the tight space, the walls jostling him gently.

He waited on the top stair and scanned the backs of heads. Clear. He moved carefully along the aisle. At the front of the car were two facing bench seats, a man reclining on one and an Alsatian on the other. The dog raised its head, ears perked, and watched him with wet-gem eyes as he passed.

Clear in the next car, too. Vincent walked the length of the upper deck, checking faces, and then took the stairs to the lower level. Glum-looking people with their luggage, Amtrak staff killing time, looking at their phones.

He repeated the process a car at a time, moving steadily toward the front of the train. Every so often he passed someone in murmured conversation on a phone, but mostly it was quiet. Rank after rank of silent heads, people looking out the window at the dark shapes and disembodied lights floating past in the night. People with nothing and nobody, maybe wondering if the world out there still held promise.

He found Andre in the seventh car he checked. He was on the upper deck at the front. Left-hand side, the rear-facing bench seat. Nobody across the aisle, but there was a young guy two rows away, wearing headphones. Vincent was halfway down the car when Andre noticed him. His expression didn’t change, but he maintained eye contact as Vincent approached and sat down on the opposite bench.

‘You found me.’

He was sitting by the aisle with the duffel bag up on the bench beside him, under the window. Zipper open and his right hand hidden in the bag. Left hand in the pocket of his coat.