Murder At Deviation Junction (17 page)

    I saw
the telegraph boy walking towards me - the Lad, as he was always known.

    'How
do, Mr Stringer?' he called out.

    'How
do?' I said.

    'Where're
you off to?' he asked, as we closed.

    'Platform
Thirteen,' I said.

    'Good-o,'
he said.

    He
was always cheerful, the Lad.

    I
jumped down off the edge of Thirteen, which was against regulations, and strode
out over the sidings, on to which a few snowflakes that looked like bits of
paper were falling. I was making for the old loco-erecting shop, which having
been disused for years had lately been converted into a shooting range for the

    Company
rifle club, of which Chief Inspector Weatherill was the governor.

    I
pushed through the door of the great shed, which at first seemed empty as well
as freezing, and then a shot rang out, quite deafening me for a space. In front
of me were booths roughly made out of railway sleepers. Each booth corresponded
to a target dangling from a wire stretching the width of the building at the
far end, and the bullets flew to these targets through half a dozen columns of
light from gas rings high in the roof. There was a balcony above the line of
targets, and, set into the wall behind it, a vast clock with no hands, but the
central spindle that had once held them remained, and it struck me that it must
have made a tempting supplementary target for the riflemen.

    I
walked along the line of booths, and they were all empty but the last one, in
which the Chief sat at a low stool, hunched over with the rifle on the stone
floor beside him. Evidently the contest hadn't started yet—that, or it had just
finished.

    'Sir?'
I called. 'Might I have a word?'

    The
Chief seemed not to have heard; he wore a cravat against the cold, but no
topcoat or jacket (to allow free movement to his arms, as I supposed), and he
was bareheaded, allowing me sight of his scant strands of dirty yellow hair,
which fell across his head at intervals of about half an inch, like the lines
drawn on a globe.

    I
heard a thin squeal of metal, and the targets fifty yards off began to moving
to the right. They were being winched towards a hut made of old boiler plates
in the right-hand corner of the building. The target marker sat in there, I
knew.

    I called
to the Chief again, and then I spied the ear defenders bundled into his
earholes. He was still looking down at the floor, perhaps muttering to himself,
but what he was saying I could not make out, just as I could never make out
what the Chief was
thinking.
I couldn't make him out
full stop,
but I liked him, and I'd always felt he had a liking for me, though he'd given
me the hard word on plenty of occasions.

    I had
taken the photograph out of my coat pocket, and was advancing towards the Chief
when an electrical bell sounded from the far end of the shed. This made enough
din to rouse the Chief, who looked up in a daze as I passed him the photograph.

    'If
you have a second, sir, I wanted you to see this.'

    'Eh?'
he said.

    I passed
him the photograph, and he looked at it with his ear defenders still in. Behind
him, at the far end of the range, the marker had opened the door of his iron
shelter, and was approaching us under the line of gaslights.

    'It's
the Club,' I said.

    He
knew the story of the Travelling Club in rough outline, but this was the first
time he'd had sight of the photograph. He was studying it as the marker leant
across the low timber barricade that separated the firing positions from the
main part of the range; he passed the Chief a target that had been riddled with
the Chief's bullets, and the Chief passed the photograph back to me as he
received the target. It was about the size of a newspaper, and the Chief took a
while getting to grips with it, which annoyed me, for it was a hard job to keep
his mind fixed on a subject even without distraction.

    Indicating
the photograph, I said, 'I believe they're all dead, sir - murdered. This one's
Lee.'

    'Lame
Horse man?' said the Chief.

    'That's
it.'

    'Maybe
the fellow that did for him did for all of 'em?'

    I
shook my head.

    'Can
hardly believe it. Sanderson was a burglar - no other burglaries have been
reported touching the others.'

    'I
know the one on the left,' the Chief cut in, and my heart began racing, but
he'd gone back to studying the target along with the marker, who was leaning
over the barrier. Both were shaking their heads.

    'My
best bet would be to run at it with a bloody bayonet,' the Chief said to the
marker.

    'You
know this one, sir?' I said, holding up the photograph, and pointing to the
handsome man in black.

    But
the Chief was listening to the marker, who was grinning and imitating the
Chief's firing position, saying, 'You're too much
this
way.'

    'Bloody
left shoulder,' said the Chief, who was loading his rifle again from the kitbag
at his feet.

    I
pressed the photograph on him for a second time, and he took it as the marker
returned to his boiler-plate hut.

    'Aye,'
said the Chief, evidently a little riled at my persistence, 'this one. His
name's Marriott, and I'm surprised you don't know him yourself.'

    He
passed the photograph back to me, took up his rifle and adopted the shooting
position.

    'Bloody
left shoulder,' he said again, when he'd seemed to be set.

    He
was looking away from me now, towards the target. Before he could start
blasting away again, I asked:

    'Who
is he, sir?'

    'Brief,'
said the Chief, still eyeing the targets. 'Barrister; defender mainly. Name's
Marriott. I went against him a couple of times at the Assizes.'

    'York
Assizes?' I said.

    'Course
bloody York,' said the Chief.

    'I
don't see much of the Assizes,' I said, 'being forever in the police courts,
prosecuting small fry.'

    That made
the Chief turn round, and I was worried as he did so, but as luck would have
it, he was grinning. He could be suddenly friendly in a way that was quite as
worrying as his distant moods.

    'You
put up a good show when you were last in the Assizes,' he said, and I coloured
up with pride. The Chief was talking about the murder - my murder, the killer
netted by my own efforts. I had been leading witness for the prosecution, and
the Chief had twice taken me to breakfast at the Station Hotel in the course of
the trial.

    'You're
like me, lad,' he said, finally removing his ear defenders. 'Better outdoors -
firing at the
long
range. You like a challenge.'

    'But
Detective Sergeant Shillito wants me always in the office filling in reports.'

    The Chief
gave me a look that might have meant anything.

    'Do
you still see him about at the York Assizes?' I said, pointing to the handsome
man.

    'I
don't,' said the Chief.

    'I
knew it, sir,' I said. 'Ten to one he's dead.'

    'Well,
he wasn't one of the regular ones,' said the Chief. 'I mean to say, he wasn't
from York chambers. The fact that I haven't seen him lately could mean nowt at
all.'

    'Was
he any good? Did you win against him?'

    'Ended
in a tie between me and him. He won one; we won one. Company official - fraud
case. We got that bugger sent down. But Marriott got a chap off a wounding
charge.'

    'Wounding?
What was the name of the accused?'

    'You
and your bloody questions,' said the Chief, shaking his head.

    'Some
of the fellows at the Assizes,' the Chief continued, 'they'll walk in holding
the papers tied with the pink ribbon and you'll practically shit yourself.
You'll think, "It's all up - might as well chuck it in now." Marriott
was bright enough, but he wasn't in that company.'

    The
Chief smelt a little of beer, as usual; perhaps he'd taken a drop to steady his
arm before the contest. At the far end of the shed, the marker was hanging up
another target for the Chief.

    'He
was an arrogant sod, mind you,' said the Chief, who was picking up his ear
defenders once again.

    'How
do you mean?' I said.

    'I've
nothing against barristers,' said the Chief, 'though they're all snobs and half
of them are sodomites, but this bloke took the bun. Got up to the bloody nines.
I mean, they're all that way, but I reckon half his money must have gone on
tailoring - that and laundry bills. I was bloody determined to win both times
we were up against him - just to take the gas out of him a bit.'

    'Shillito's
warned me off the investigation, sir,' I said. 'He says Middlesbrough won't
stand for it.'

    'They
won't,' said the Chief. 'I've seen the letter from Williams.'

    This
meant Shillito had seen the Chief only an hour or so since.

    'He's
out to block my application for promotion as well,' I said. 'It's not right.
It's not -' 'Sporting?' put in the Chief. But he wasn't smiling now.

    It
was disheartening to see the Chief fixing the second ear defender in place as
he said this; or maybe it would be better if he hadn't heard, for it was all
just more sob stuff, like the letter to Ellerton.

    'Shillito's
your senior officer,' said the Chief, turning away and making ready to fire. 'I
can't interfere.'

    'We
don't get along,' I said, marvelling once again at the strands of hair dangling
from the back of the Chief's head. 'He's always trying to check me.'

    As he
squinted along the sights of his rifle, I could have sworn that I heard the
Chief say, 'Don't stand for it - lay the bugger out.'

    I was
about to say, 'Come again, sir?' when the first bullet was loosed, and I stood,
quite deafened, watching the gas lamps swaying in the vast, freezing shed.
After a moment, it came to me that the Chief was cursing, getting ready to fire
again.

    I
pushed off before he could do so.

    I was
walking back along Platform Four a couple of minutes later when I saw what I
knew to be the Pickering train at a stand. It was waiting at the bay platform
just north of the police office, and I was closing on it even before I saw
Davitt, the fare evader, climbing up.

    He
had snow on his cap and coat, for the stuff was now coming down thickly, and I
marvelled at how this bloke would go to any lengths to get out of his house and
ride on a train without paying. But he gave me an excuse to go to Pickering - home
of Club member Moody's son. After all, Shillito himself had told me to put the
collar on Davitt.

    The
guard was now holding out his green flag. I broke into a run, and was only
half-way to the train when the flag was waved.

    'Wait!'
I shouted, but you can't unwave a flag, and the train was off. My hurtling
progress took me past the open door of the police office, from where I fancied
that I heard a man shouting after me - it might have been Shillito, might have
been Wright. But I ran on regardless. I leapt up on to the footboard of the
rear carriage just as that carriage came out from underneath the glass roof,
and into the flying snow. I wrestled with the door - the train was now making a
good thirty miles an hour through a blizzard, and there was only six inches of
timber between me and the sharp track ballast. We were out of the station
bounds, and running along by the back gardens of the Bootham district by the
time I managed to fettle the door and get in.

    Inside
the compartment, a fearful-looking man sat in the semi- darkness: Davitt. He
nodded to me over the top of the
Yorkshire

    
Evening
Press
that he was pretending to read. He was a small bloke in a dinty
bowler - shop assistant type or junior clerk in looks, but he rode the trains
so often that his work must have required him to do it. Perhaps he travelled in
some line of goods or other, but he was never seen to carry anything except a
newspaper.