The Stranger on the Train Read Online Free PDF

police!” she shouted to the man at the counter. “Someone’s taken my child.”
    The two men stared at her.
    â€œCall the police!” Emma screamed at them, and ran out into the street.
    There was still no sign. She couldn’t even run—she didn’t know which way to go. The street blurred; she was dizzy and sick.
    â€œRitchie,” she called. “Ritchie.”
    Her throat was clicky with fright. She looked up and down again, standing on tiptoe. People everywhere, in coats and scarves and hats, but no one with a baby. Ritchie seemed to have completely vanished. Emma wanted to vomit. She tried to cross the road to the island in the middle, to get a better view of the street on both sides of the café, but there were railings everywhere, blocking her way.
    â€œRitchie!” she yelled. And then: “Oh God. Please. Somebody help me. My baby’s been kidnapped.”
    A man in a baseball cap and jacket was striding towards her on the path.
    â€œPlease.” Emma tried to stop him. “Please. I need help.”
    The man veered past her and kept going.
    â€œSomeone. Please.” Emma was breathless with terror. She had to force herself to stay standing. Her legs were like water. She couldn’t think straight. What should she do? Someone had to help her; she couldn’t, she couldn’t think about anything.
    A large middle-aged lady, laden with plastic shopping bags, slowed down to have a look.
    â€œWhat’s going on here?” the lady asked.
    Emma almost threw herself at her.
    â€œPlease. Oh, please. Someone’s taken my baby.”
    â€œWho’s taken your baby?”
    â€œThe woman, she . . . Did you see them? A woman and a little boy? Did you pass them on your way up here?”
    â€œI don’t . . .” The woman hesitated. Around her, more people were stopping. People were talking, mostly in foreign languages, she couldn’t understand what they were saying. One or two English phrases came through:
    â€œWho’s taken a baby?”
    â€œThat thin girl with the torn coat.”
    â€œIs that blood on her face?”
    â€œMy child has been kidnapped .” Emma couldn’t believe it. Why were they all just standing there? She grabbed the ­middle-aged woman by the front of her jumper.
    â€œCall the police!” she yelled at her. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
    The woman recoiled, her mouth a rectangle: What have I got myself into? Someone else said in a sharp voice to Emma: “Hey, hey, no need for that.”
    Emma let go of the woman. She sprinted down the street in the opposite direction from which the woman had come, trusting her that if she’d seen Ritchie on her way up she’d have said. Her breath sounded thin and whistly. Only a tiny amount of air was coming in each time. Oh God, don’t black out. Oh, please, let her not black out now, there wasn’t time, she had to find him before he got too far away. She was trying to look everywhere at once, at the lighted windows, the darker corners and side roads, straining to see Ritchie’s tufty little head and blue fleece in all the colors and the gloom. Had Antonia’s husband come? Had the two of them bundled Ritchie off together? Did Antonia even have a husband? Or a child? Or was she just some nutter who . . . Oh Jesus.
    Ice.
    Maybe Ritchie wasn’t with Antonia at all. Maybe Antonia had got bored, and walked out of the café and left him, and someone else, some person Emma couldn’t even begin to imagine, had seen him there on his own and come in and taken him.
    The street disappeared. The road came and went in flashes, like the strobes at a nightclub. Then she was pushing past people, shoving them violently out of her way. She was flying down the street, spinning down side roads at random, then sprinting back up them again. She didn’t know which way she was going, whether she was