Murder At Deviation Junction (16 page)

    'What
do you think, Jim?' said Crawford, who was now halfheartedly poking the fire in
accordance with Shillito's instructions.

    'Eh?'
I said.

    'Do
you think the swear box should pay for the tea? Speaking as a regular
contributor to the swear box—'

    '—or
a regular
swearer,
at any rate,' put in Baker.

    But
just at that moment Shillito returned, killing all amiability with his habitual
order:

    'Your
notebook, Detective Stringer.'

    The
office fell silent as I picked it up from my desk, and passed it to him.

    'I
went to the Cape,' I said, 'but I did not arrest Clegg.'

    My
heart was galloping as I spoke, but I tried not to let him see it. This was the
first time that I had crossed him in any serious way. He said nothing to my
answer, making a show of reading the book for a space; but I could see the
colour rising in his face.

    He
initialled the book and handed it back to me.

    'I
have sent you twice to bring in this man, and twice you have failed to do it,
and for no good reason. Your book is once again full of this business of the -
Club.'

    I
reached over to my desk, and handed him the photograph.

    'This
is the picture described in the book. It shows the Travelling Club. It was taken
by Peters, who was murdered. I know for a fact that one of these men in the
pictures has also been killed and another more than likely. One of 'em's Lee,
who was done in the Lame Horse Murder - you might remember that. Burglary gone
wrong. But everything points to all the blokes having met a very sorry end.'

    Shillito
had a dead look in his eyes; he was staring hard at the top button of my suit
coat.

    'I am
placing you on report, Detective Stringer. I will speak to Chief Inspector
Weatherill later today, with the recommendation that your application for
promotion should proceed no further.'

    'But
the interview with Captain Fairclough is all arranged,' I said.

    'One
stroke of the pen will fix that,' said Shillito.

    Suddenly,
the end of my time in the police force came into clear view. I would not
continue in any event if I did not achieve the promotion on Christmas Eve.
Shillito spoke on. I hardly listened, but I saw in imagination the Gateshead
Infant crossing the high level into Middlesbrough station, and the picture of
it somehow reassured me. I was a railwayman through and through, where Shillito
was not, even though he got his living from the railways. He hardly ever gave a
glance to the traffic notices that were pinned up in the police office, and
were meant to keep us in touch with the world out there on the lines. The Iron
Roads held no romance for Ernest Shillito, and it was wrong that he should
prosper in the North Eastern, and therefore he
would
not. I would win
out over thin double-gutted bastard in the end, whatever setbacks there might
be on the way.

    Shillito
was now mentioning a name that was for an instant unfamiliar: Williams. He held
a telegram in his hand. Detective Sergeant Williams had been in communication -
letter sent express overnight, written in haste - forgive scribble, but
Williams most unsettled as a consequence of his interview with Detective
Stringer. Stringer, it appeared, had a bee in his bonnet about a case long
since solved and closed: the murder of George Lee. A very vicious individual of
proven bad character, Sanderson, had been hanged for this, a point seemingly
not taken by Stringer, who had appeared, all in all, a rather curious sort of
fellow, if one detective sergeant might so put it to another ...

    Williams,
then, was a bigger bastard even than Shillito, for he presented himself as
something else. Face to face, you'd take him for the whitest bloke that ever
stepped, with his kindly manner and 'Do take the documents away with you, if
you'd rather'.

    'You
are to return the files you took from the Middlesbrough office by the next
post,' Shillito was saying, 'and then you are to go back to your normal
duties.'

    'What
about the photograph?' I said.

    But
Shillito had gone back to his work.

    I
stood before his desk with my arms folded, photograph in hand, feeling like an
ass. Shillito looked up at me, saying, 'I've done with you for the present,
Stringer.'

    I
said, 'Do you want me to go back for Clegg?'

    At
this he gave a mock laugh, and set down his pencil.

    He
leant back in his chair and looked at me.

    'Now
that beats all,' he said. 'Do you honestly think I'm going to send you back so
you can sup another few pints with your pal Clegg? Why, you'll be turning out
for his blinking football team next.'

    
Nobody
would be arresting Clegg, for Shillito had now realised that he would be in
bother if the matter went any further.

    I
walked back to my desk, where I collected up the papers on Lee and Falconer, preparatory
to posting them back to Middlesbrough.

    'That
photograph of yours,' Shillito called across. 'What does it signify? You might
have a picture of any lot of men - the Institute Billiard Club for the matter
of that - and if you came to look at it again a year on you might see that some
of them had come a cropper. It's called damned bad luck, Stringer.' He said
this last with impressive force, as if he really knew something of damned bad
luck - and perhaps he did. After all, he'd missed his way in life, as I'd
missed mine. My goal had been the footplate, his playing football as a
professional.

    I
could not prove the importance of the photograph, and I had staked my future on
inadequate data. Well, that was too bad. As Shillito got his head down again,
for another hour of loud breathing and effortful writing, I got out my own pen,
and composed, not a flash report, but a letter to a good fellow called John
Ellerton. He was the shed superintendent for the Lancashire and Yorkshire
Railway at Sowerby Bridge where, four years ago, I had driven a locomotive
through a wall after a day of firing that engine in the company of an old boy
called Terry Kendall.

    Kendall,
my driver and therefore my governor, had asked me to stable the engine at the
end of the turn. It had been quite in order for him to do so, but he had also
told me that the engine brake had been warmed, which it had
not.
As a
result, the steam by which it worked condensed in its tubes instead of putting
the brakes to the wheels.

    It
ought by rights to have been Kendall who was jacked in and not me. I had always
known this, but had held off saying it. I would not say it now either, but it
was the conclusion that I hoped would be drawn from my letter. In any case,
Father Kendall, as he had been known, would be out of consideration by now,
superannuated long since.

    My
letter began: 'My dear John, You will be surprised to read my name after such a
long time . . .' and went on to ask whether he might see his way clear, if he
could do so without entrenching on his own convenience (which expression was
used, as far as I could see, by all police letters of a non-threatening
nature), to inquire as to the possibility of my appealing against the decision
to dismiss me, which I had always felt was unjust, and which over time might
have come to seem so within the motive power office. With Shillito labouring
away at his letters before me, I went on to say that my heart was not in
railway police work, and that my experience in the force had only confirmed my
decided inclination for the life of the footplate.

    I
closed with a few friendly remarks, and news of the birth of my son. I used
police-office paper, but crossed out that address and wrote in my own at
Thorpe-on-Ouse. I did not look over the letter on finishing it, because I knew
that I might not have the brass neck to send it if I thought too hard about
what I'd put. In fact, I was in such a rush to get it off that I swept my arm
across my ink pot as I reached for an envelope, sending a tide of blue across
the green leathern top of my desk, and towards the photograph of the Travelling
Club, which I automatically tried to protect by making a barrier with my arm -
with the
sleeve
of my good suit coat.

    'Fuck!'
I shouted, and Shillito's head rocked upwards.

    I
turned to see Wright, who, instead of shaping to help me mop the ink, was
tapping the swear box with his pencil. I ran off into the jakes with the idea
of soaking my coat sleeve, and when I returned, Wright
was
now blotting
the ink, and Shillito had left. It was as though there
could
be
fellowship in the office, but only with Shillito out of it.

    'I'm
obliged to you, mate,' I said to Wright.

    'No
harm done to your precious picture,' he said, handing it over to me.

    It
was on account of the picture that I had ruined the coat (for it
was
ruined), and I began to think the damned picture cursed. Perhaps it brought ill
luck to every man connected with it.

    My
letter had escaped the ink flood, and I gave it for posting to Wright, who was
pointing at the picture.

    'I
know this one,' he said.

    He
was indicating the distinguished-looking cove in black. But he was frowning at
the same time.

    'Can
you put a name to him?'

    He
closed his eyes for a space, which, Wright being very old, made him look dead.

    'No,'
he said, opening them again. 'But I have a mental picture of him here in York -
somewhere about the town.'

    I
looked again at the gent in the picture, contemplating the blank wall of
mystery.

    'Everyone
thinks they know this bloke,' I said, at which Wright looked a bit put out, so
I said, 'But thanks anyway.'

    'I'd
drop it if I were you,' he said, and he glanced at Shillito's empty chair,
adding, 'Never mind missed promotion - he means to have you stood down.'

    A
mental picture came into view: the high wall that ran around the York
Workhouse.

    'That
would be a shame, wouldn't it?' I said. 'I know what a lark it is for you to
watch our battles.'

    Then Wright
knocked me by saying, 'It would be more of a lark if you stood up to him.'

    I
nodded.

    'I
always mean to,' I said, 'but when it comes to the touch -'

    The
thought of my own weakness shamed me, so I changed tack, saying to Wright, 'I'd
like to telephone London again. Could you put me through?'

    Wright
took my letter for posting and wound the magneto for me.

    A
moment later, I was speaking this time to a very cheery bloke who worked on
The Railway Rover.

    'Editorial,'
he said.

    'Is
Mr Bowman about?' I asked.

    'Not
presently,' I think he said, which was followed by something that might have
been: 'He's been out of the office a good deal lately, and I haven't seen him
all day today.'

    The
sound of what seemed like a gale blowing down the line took all expression out
of his voice, so that he might have been delighted by Bowman's absence or
greatly worried by it. I said I would call back; but the idea was growing on me
that Bowman had bloody well disappeared too.

    'Where's
the Chief?' I asked Wright.

    'Don't
you know?' he said. 'He's at a shooting match.'

    I
struck out along Platform Four with the photograph in my hand.

    A
couple of dozen people waited there, huddled into their comforters under the
station's sky - the great frosted-glass canopy. Passengers always looked lonely
until the train came. A sort of Christmas lean-to, hung with tinsel, had been
put up by the side of the Lost Luggage Office for the sale of nuts and
sweetmeats. It was an assistant from the bookstall who'd been put to working
inside.

    I
gave him a nod, thinking the while of the letter I'd written to Ellerton, and
already wincing at the memory. It was all sob stuff. What did anyone at the
Lancashire and Yorkshire care that I was miserable in my new employment; and
had I really suggested that they might change their minds?