Death on a Branch Line (3 page)

‘Come again?’ he said, by which he meant, ‘Let’s see if you’ve got the brass neck to repeat those words.’

‘The thing of it is, sir … How do you let folk know who you are if you don’t show your warrant card?’

A beat of silence.

‘That’s their look-out,’ said the Chief.

He ought not to have given the bank’s man a pasting. Banks were rich and powerful. They could fund legal actions for assault.

‘If that bugger does put up a complaint,’ said the Chief, who seemed to have read my mind just at that moment, ‘I’ll bloody mill him.’

By which the Chief meant that he would see him gaoled, but I wondered on what charge. The company solicitors might be able to dream something up. Had the bank’s man not impeded the Chief in the execution of his duty? And had his actions not allowed the escape of the two York roughs who’d been eyeing the money bag?

My next question was designed to get points with the Chief.

‘How did you know the fellow wouldn’t fire on you?’

The Chief threw open his desk drawer and pitched the weapon – which he’d confiscated – onto his desk top.

‘Pick it up,’ he ordered, and I did so. Guns were always heavier than you expected.

‘It’s a Luger,’ he said. ‘Single action.’

‘Right-o,’ I said. ‘So that when you pull the trigger …’

‘… Nothing happens,’ said the Chief, taking back the gun. ‘You must cock the hammer first.’

‘And the bloke hadn’t done that?’

The Chief shook his head.

‘What if he
had
done, sir?’

The Chief stood up.

‘I dare say I’d have been a little more cordial. Fancy a pint, lad?’

On Platform Four, I gave good evening to the Chief. We’d just returned from the Station Hotel, where we’d put the peg in after a quick two pints. It was the Chief’s wife’s birthday, and he had to get off.

I looked up at the great clock: five to five. I thought about wandering over to the booking office, where they kept some sea-side brochures. It might be worth pitching up in Scarborough and calling in on a few places in hopes of a vacancy. The heat had barely abated, but the station light was yellow, signifying the start of evening – yellow with floating specks of soot plainly visible.

A fair quantity of passengers stood on the platform, and they were not excursionists but business types, for a London train was about due.

I turned to my right, and the train was approaching under the far gantry where the signals were once again various, looking like a rabble rather than a disciplined army. But it was a ‘down’ train coming in across the way that held my attention. The on-coming engine was one of the Great Northern company’s 0-6-0s, and its fire was for some reason not in good nick, so that thick black smoke was brought towards the platforms by such little breeze as existed.

I watched the stuff roll past the open door of the First Class Tea Rooms, where ladies ate strawberries and cream with long-handled spoons and pretended they were in a nicer place. The smoke came on, and was now combined with a few drops of moisture from the chimney of the engine, so that it seemed as though we were in for an electrical storm. There seemed to be an epidemic of bad firing that day. The firebox must be fairly smothered in coal to give that much smoke.

I walked over the footbridge to Platform Nine where the engine
came to rest – and where the driver was down from his cab, and talking to the platform guard, who looked agitated. The guard then broke away and came dashing past me as I approached.

‘What’s up?’ I said.

‘I’m to fetch an ambulance team,’ he called out, and he began bounding up the stairs of the footbridge.

‘Railway police,’ I said to the driver, as I gained the engine.

‘It’s my mate,’ said the driver. He held a rag in his hand, and he used it to draw sweat and coal dust from one side of his face to another.

I swung myself up on the footplate, and the fireman seemed curled up asleep in front of the fire door – just like any cat on a tab rug before the hearth. Only he was lying in half an inch of coal dust.

The fellow stirred as I stepped up, and the driver said, ‘Heat sickness.’

I could quite credit it, what with the great heat of the day, and the white, rolling fire of the engine.

‘We’re up from London,’ he said. ‘Passed Retford in very fair time,’ he said, ‘but I knew summat was up. He hadn’t said a word since Peterborough, and he’s normally a great one for nattering, is Bob.’

I leant over the fireman, and shut the fire door to save him from a roasting – at which he rolled over a little, and looked up at me, saying, ‘No, no, the fire needs air. Must keep up the steam, you see.’

‘… Fired her in myself,’ said the driver.

I didn’t like to see the man lolling down there in the dust, so I said, ‘Let’s have you up, mate.’

The driver gave a hand, and we sat him on the sandbox, and he sat there rocking, and looking too white. An inkling of trouble told me to step back just as the great wave of stuff came out of his mouth. Half a minute later, the driver was playing the water hose over the footplate, and the fireman was saying, ‘Reckon I’ve shovelled ten ton of coal today … and it’s not the bloody weather for it.’

The spray of boiling water was moving the last of the stuff off
the footplate. It wasn’t a very manly colour, being yellow and bright pink.

As the stuff rolled away, the fireman said, ‘I don’t know what that is,’ just as though he was trying to disown it. ‘I en’t eaten all day,’ he said.

‘Bob forgot his snap,’ said the driver, and he turned a lever to stop the hose, which caused the whole engine to judder. ‘Bloody cursed, is this run,’ he said, looping the hose and setting it back on its hook.

I looked down, and there was a whole press of blokes on the platform by the engine. First, there was the ambulance team – four blokes in queer hats. I stepped aside, and they came pouring up. One of them began questioning the fireman, and it was more like an interrogation than a medical examination. The driver stepped down to make room, and I followed him. He began talking to two men in dark suits. They’d evidently just climbed down from one of the carriages.

‘Will we be held here, or what?’ asked one of the two blokes.

‘We’ll need a relief,’ said the driver.

‘I’ll send a lad over to the firemen’s mess,’ I said. ‘Should turn one up in no time.’

As I spoke I raised my eye to the small clock that hung above the team rooms on Platform Nine. It was dead on five. The clocks would be clanging all over York.

‘And who are you?’ asked the first of the blokes.

‘Railway police,’ I said.

He was being short with me, and he’d get likewise in return.

‘We’re Met boys,’ said the second of the two blokes, meaning the Metropolitan Police. He had boggly eyes, which made him look as if he was trying to burst out of himself.

Beyond this pair, I saw a man step down from one of the carriages, and another came down after him, or more like
with
him. They were too close. The first wore an official-looking moustache; the second had long hair, and had not lately shaved. Well, I knew what was going off all right.

‘Prisoner under escort,’ I said.

The first of the two blokes standing directly before me gave me the evil eye. He would’ve denied it if he could.

‘Who is he?’ I said, indicating the prisoner, who was now being fairly dragged towards us by his guard.

The boggly-eyed man looked at me, and I watched his eyes. It was like waiting for Bob the fireman to chuck up his guts.

‘Now that’, he said, indicating the man under escort, ‘is what you might call perishable goods.’

Chapter Four

Pending the arrival of a new fireman, the prisoner was stowed in the holding cell of the station police office. The hard-looking Met man stood smoking on Platform Thirteen along with the guard who’d brought the prisoner down from the train. They both stood within hailing distance of the boggle-eyed man, who was evidently junior to both of them. He stood in the doorway of the police office, which Wright had now vacated.

I was the only man in the office, and I sat at my desk looking at the bread and cheese. It was a quarter after five. The question of the time seemed to press on me rather; had done all day. The hot weather was like a clock ticking.

‘His name’s Lambert,’ said the boggle-eyed man, turning in the doorway and entering the police office. ‘Hugh.’

He meant the prisoner, of course.

‘From the quality he is,’ he went on. ‘Brought up in a country mansion – old man lord of the bloody manor. Adenwold. Heard of it?’

I nodded.

‘Went to all the best schools, Cambridge University – nothing wanting at all, and then what does he go and do?’

He took out a leathern wallet and began making a cigarette out of the stuff inside it.

‘Shoots his old man.’

He eyed me over the top of a cigarette paper.

‘Ungrateful,’ he said.

‘He’s for the drop, then,’ I said.

‘Monday morning,’ said the boggle-eyed bloke. ‘Eight o’clock sharp.’

Holding up the baccy pouch, he looked a question at me.

‘… Obliged to you,’ I said, and he lobbed the whole thing over, whereas I’d been banking on him rolling me one.

As I caught it, I said, ‘Hold on – this is the Moorby Murder.’

Moorby was immediately south of the Yorkshire Moors, and a place just waiting for a murder to happen so that all the papers could speak of ‘The Moorby Murder’, which rolled so easily off the tongue, and looked eye-catching in print. But Adenwold, which was near to Moorby, was where it had actually happened. I had read of the trial, which had been held about three months since, down in London – a regular Old Bailey sensation. But I could not recall the details of the case beyond the striking fact that a son had killed his father.

‘I don’t understand why you’re shifting him,’ I said, as I set to work with the baccy. ‘It en’t regular to move a condemned man.’

(
It’s adding insult to injury
, I thought,
that’s what it is
.)

‘Well now,’ said the boggle-eyed man, ‘we’re taking him to Durham. Reason being, the scaffold at Wandsworth nick’s busted. The drop mechanism …’

And he violently mimed the pulling of what might have been a signal lever.

‘… It’s packed up, and there’s no prospect of fixing it in time.’

‘Is it on account of the heat?’ I asked.

He folded his arms.

‘Why would it be on account of the heat?’

‘Well, it’s playing bloody murder with everything else,’ I said.

He shook his head, while unfolding his arms.

‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s just busted. They need to get a blacksmith to it. Gas torch. But that ain’t the only reason we’re shifting him,’ he ran on, blowing smoke. ‘There’s another, more important.’

And now he really started boggling at me.

‘What’s that, then?’ I said.

More boggling.

‘It’s confidential, mind,’ he said.

I nodded, and struck a Vesta for my cigarette.

‘Governor at Wandsworth,’ he said, ‘he don’t think he did it.
Won’t hang him.’

I took this in, smoking.

‘Won’t have it on his conscience,’ said the bloke.

‘But the gallows either is bust or it en’t?’ I said.

‘Well then,’ said the boggle-eyed bloke, ‘it’s not.’

Through the opened door, I could hear trains coming and going, and it all seemed so vulgar and unmannerly with a bloke in the holding cell having only one week-end left to live.

‘Did he not appeal?’ I asked the boggle-eyed man. He shook his head, and I thought about the time I’d seen a fellow hung at Durham gaol …

The execution had not arisen from a railway police case, but from a stabbing in the Durham workhouse. It was just after I’d had my promotion that the Chief had taken me north, and he’d eyed me throughout the proceedings. He’d said, ‘It’ll
fix
you, lad. A copper who’s not seen it happen is floating about in a dream world.’

But the business itself had
been
like a dream – both fast and slow like a dream. The prisoner had been marched through thick fog across the yard, and this had happened in a sort of relay. He’d set off in company with four wardens, the governor, the vicar and the doctor – all blokes who might have been looking out for him, who might in some way have been on his side; but they gave him over to the hangman and his assistant, who definitely weren’t. The Chief and I had waited in the shed that held the gallows, and which normally contained the prison van. We’d stood alongside the High Sheriff of Durham or some such gentry.

The place smelt of oil and horse droppings, and the absence of the van was the most terrible thing about it. When the prisoner came in, it was all movement and no words. The High Sheriff had whipped off his top hat at the exact moment of the drop, and I thought he should have done it sooner.

The man was left hanging in what seemed to be a great weight of silence, and it came to me only then that the whole thing had happened in the time it took the prison clock to strike eight.

And that silence, and the fog, had seemed to stay about us for the rest of the day.