I’d trust Victorian engineering over the 70’s stuff, any day, Rodney was thinking as his 6.30 from Holyhead approached the Britannia Bridge that spans the Menai Straits, and was due at Liverpool's Lime Street at 8 all being well, no leaves on the track, ahem, ahem, Rodney joked to himself.

Rodney had been up all night preparing for his nine o’clock presentation at Liverpool University. Called in as a last-minute replacement for the eminent Dr Braithwate who had decided to renege on this quite prestigious event, in order, so Rodney had heard, to jet across to Beijing and contribute to some multi-billion infrastructure development. Rodney was aware that this could be a really big break for himself - the world’s leading design engineers (except those in Beijing, of course) would be there. Rodney, an assistant to Braithwaite, had been brought in for the conference keynote - ‘The Impossible Is Now Possible - Designing the 21st Century.’

A few hundred yards to his left Telford’s flashy, and certainly more famous, Menai Suspension Bridge glinted archly in the bright June morning. Show off, thought Rodney. Rodney had always preferred the Britannia Railway Bridge, built by Robert, son of George Stephenson, with its genius tubular construction. Burnt down in 1970 it had been replaced by this box girder monstrosity because replacing such a tubular system would be too costly. Of course, they went for cheap as they always do. But they kept the original name. How dare they? 

Ahead of the train, across the bridge, to the East, Rodney watched the peaks of Snowdonia rising silhouetted and gloomy. The carriage was stuffy and hot. Don't those people from Virgin know that there’s such a thing as air conditioning and it was invented in the early 1900’s?

But the train was stopping. What? In the middle of the bridge? Mmm. I wonder if I can make some witty anecdote about it in my speech? For, as Rodney would have been the first to admit, his speech was somewhat lacking in witty anecdotes. Or anecdotes of any sort. Or wit for that matter. Oh! The damned speech. I wish I’d had more time. He gazed down from the train, through the iron girders and made out the swirling, frothing Straits below. The patterns on the surface were slipping over patterns beneath them which seemed to be slipping over patterns further beneath. Hypnotic. His felt his eyes begin to close … 

… Dragging them open, he looked across at the person sitting opposite him on the other side of one of those knee-scraping miserable little tables with the tiny wrap-around rim that keeps the spilt coffee sloshing around for the duration of the journey. He hadn’t much noticed this man before. There was something menacing,  something sinister about him. A hit-man, Rodney thought, though with a silent chuckle - he wasn't used to using his imagination. But the man did not return Rodney’s gaze. For the man’s eyes were fixed across the aisle. Furtively, surreptitiously, so as not to make any movement that might be noticed, Rodney followed the gaze. Ahh, it’s that beautiful woman he’s looking at - blond haired, with those pouting film-star lips, and that exotic fur hat. Or is it the middle-aged, balding man next to her. He’s… oh it can’t be … but it is … he’s the man in the news - the Russian, the billionaire ex-colleague of Putin, who’s gone into hiding in Britain. Well, why not Anglesey? Rodney's imagination was, after 35 years of very limited use, beginning to, if not gleam, then at least raise its metaphorical head above the metaphorical parapet.

‘Pow!’ What was that? In front of Rodney, next to the sinister man, a snotty-nosed, freckle-faced little boy was pointing a bright orange toy gun straight at Rodney’s head. ‘Got ya…’ he shouted.
'Wayne! Put that stupid thing away.' Wayne's mother (Rodney supposed) was shouting. 'Leave the man alone. I’ve ‘ad it up to ‘ere wiv you today.’ Rodney looked away. If Rodney knew anything about little boys, and it was now well over thirty years since he was one, it was that it was probably best to ignore them. Mind you, that hadn’t helped him much at school where, however much he tried to ignore them, they always wanted to do him, as they would say.

So Rodney found himself looking out of the train window again, at the metal girders a few feet away. ‘Pow!’ Pow!’ But that’s not possible. Some of the bolts were dropping out. He followed several of them as they span and tumbled down, down below. ‘Ping. Ping’ and now ‘Twang’. A girder. A whole girder was spinning downwards like those sycamore seed wings that Rodney used to play with as a child. Then another … then another.  Rodney looked around as if for reassurance that his companions in the carriage were seeing the same thing. But they weren’t. The sinister man opposite was now standing up. He was reaching under his coat. What was that? He was pulling out a gun. A real gun. And pointing it at the Russian émigre across the coach. The beautiful woman next to the émigre screamed: ‘Vladimir! Vladimir! Look you out!’ 
’Hey mister, is that a Gloch or a Colt?’ 
’Wayne!’ I won’t tell ye again!’ 
‘Virgin Railways wish to apologise for the delay.’ The voice from the intercom was speaking. ‘There is a slight technical problem. Virgin Trains hope we haven’t inconvenienced you. As you know our customers are our passion.’

But the whole carriage was now turning and his companions were rising into the air, as if in slow-motion, as if in some space station.

Rodney sighed and closed his eyes. Impossible. Impossible. I’m just having a dream. A fur hat, a hot June day, a jowly man with narrow eyes. How silly. I must have dozed off he thought as the broken train careered headlong towards the inferno of water over a hundred feet below.