The Last Train Witness

At 12:43 a.m., Leena saw a man push a red suitcase from platform six onto the tracks.

The last train was already moving. Across the carriage, another passenger stood at exactly the same moment. He wore a grey shirt and held a camera.

The man on the platform looked up.

He saw both of them.

Leena pulled the emergency alarm. Nothing happened. The stranger crossed the carriage and showed her his camera screen.

“I photographed him,” he said. “And whatever is inside that suitcase.”

His name was Arjun, a wedding photographer going home after a twelve-hour job. Leena was a junior lawyer who knew enough to say, “Do not send that through station Wi-Fi.”

At the next stop, two men boarded their nearly empty carriage.

Leena and Arjun moved into the adjoining coach without looking hurried. The men followed.

“How attached are you to that camera?” she whispered.

“Emotionally or financially?”

“Both.”

He removed the memory card and slipped it beneath the label of her water bottle. Then he left the camera on a seat and walked away.

One pursuer grabbed it. The other kept following.

At the driver's compartment, the door was locked. Leena called emergency services while Arjun held the connecting door shut with his belt.

“Tell me something distracting,” he said as the man struck the glass.

“I failed my driving test four times.”

“That is not distracting. That is alarming.”

“I drove into the same flowerpot twice.”

Arjun laughed despite himself. “If we survive, I am teaching you.”

“If we survive, I am never entering a vehicle again.”

Police met the train two stations later. The red suitcase contained stolen medical records and cash meant to silence a hospital investigation. The photograph showed the face of the administrator responsible.

For three weeks, Leena and Arjun gave statements, identified suspects, and drank terrible courthouse tea. When the arrests were made, they stood outside in sudden daylight with no emergency left to discuss.

“I suppose this is where witnesses stop meeting,” Leena said.

Arjun handed her a photograph. It showed her reflected in the train window, frightened but standing. On the back he had written: The bravest person in carriage four.

“I still owe you a driving lesson,” he said.

Leena looked at the traffic, then at him. “Start with a train.”

They took the metro to the end of the line and back, sitting beside each other without needing to watch the platform.

Six months later, Arjun photographed their first road trip. Leena drove. No flowerpots were harmed.