Murder At Deviation Junction (23 page)

    I
looked towards the editor's cubby-hole. Bowman was stepping out of it, papers
in hand.

    I
indicated to him that he should join me at the window, and we glanced down at
the man standing in the dirty snow. Bowman stepped back from the window and
said, 'Christ, it's him.' He then returned to the window, and began wrestling
with the catch, making to open it, at which the man in the street looked up. He
turned in the street, somehow like a man trying to make up his mind about
something.

    'What
are you doing?' I said. 'He'll see you.'

    The
man writing nearest to us was looking up:

    'It's
cold enough just as it is, old chap,' he said to Bowman - who now let the catch
alone and stepped back again, saying, 'I only meant to call down to him and ask
what he meant by skulking about in Wimbledon at all hours.'

    The
man in the street then turned smartly and began walking north with boots turned
outwards, heading back towards Fleet Street.

    'He's
going back ...'

    Bowman
was moving towards his desk, just as though he meant to start writing again.

    'Let's
get on his rear,' I said.

    'What's
that?' said Bowman, with a strange look on his face.

    'We
must follow him,' I said.

    Somebody
in the office cried out, 'Copy!'

    Bowman
stared at me with his mouth open.

    'He's
only going to Wimbledon,' he said. 'He'll take up station outside my house
again.'

    'It
makes no odds,' I said. I had my topcoat in my hand, and the office was waking
up to the agitation in our voices; I was through the door and down the stone
stairs in an instant. In Bouverie Street, I looked north towards Fleet Street.
The man had made the junction, where he wheeled his wide body to the left. I
followed him, as snowflakes fell in the darkening sky - and it was something
dangerous now, like the first flaking of a ceiling.

    I
stood at the junction with Fleet Street. Bowman was coming up - a lonely man
struggling to join the crowds. I shouted 'Run!' and he did his best, but I
thought his hot head would explode.

    I
pointed left so that he would know the way, and set off directly. I was fifty
yards behind the man, keeping him in sight without difficulty. Most people on
Fleet Street wore plain black and were thin; but this man was a tweed-coated
cube. He never once looked back, and did not seem in any hurry. He walked with
the swinging step of the outdoorsman. Where was he heading? I tried to put up
in my mind the Underground map. Was he heading for a station that could take
him to Wimbledon? I hoped not, for I knew about his Wimbledon connection, and I
did not want to go there. I did not like the place: high, thin red houses like
guardsmen in a row - a fucking prison of a place. No, this one would surely be
making somehow for the ironlands of Yorkshire.

    I
looked behind. Still Bowman came on, though with a few pavement collisions on
the way. I struck the billboard again: 'Doctor Killed and Eaten by Natives of
Nigeria'. The man ahead had not given it a glance, but kept his great head
tilted upwards, as though to receive the refreshment of the snow.

    Gaslit
advertisements flashed as we came towards the Strand; a huge church stood in
the road, blocking traffic. I did not remember it being there in my Waterloo
days. My eyes flickered back towards the path ahead, and the man had gone.

    Bowman
came panting up beside me.

    'Lost
the bastard,' I said, but Bowman was shaking his head, gasping out a word I
couldn't hear and pointing directly left, to one of the theatres. No, it was a
new Underground station - Aldwych - that he was indicating. We walked into the
booking hall followed by a blow of snow. All the signs in the place showed
arrows, but which one to follow?

    The
man was in the lift looking out - one of half a dozen occupants. The attendant
drew the steel mesh across, and down they all went.

    My
eyes moved right: there were two lifts and the second was ready to go. The
attendant had the mesh dragged half across, but I stopped him and pushed my way
in, dragging Bowman behind.

    'Ticket,'
said the liftman in a sour voice.

    As we
went down, I held up my warrant card - he might make of it what he liked.
Bowman he ignored.

    'Did
this fellow ever get a good look at you?' I said.

    'I
don't believe so,' said Bowman. 'I had my comforter up and cap down every time
I saw him - at first just on account of the weather, later on by design.'

    The
doors clashed open at the bottom, and I was out of that lift like a rat out of
a drainpipe, with Bowman panting along behind. The sight of the man in tweed
slowed us, though. He was only ten feet ahead in the passageway, walking slowly,
checking the people behind him like the church in Fleet Street. He certainly
seemed to have no notion that he might have been followed, for he'd never once
turned about. He was gazing up at a swinging sign that hung before the point at
which the passageway split into two. The sign was an electrically lit glass
box, and it showed two hands, each with a pointing finger. One was marked
'North', the other 'South'. He slowed further, approaching it. He did not know
London, and that was because he came from the ironlands of the Cleveland Hills.
Or was it simply that he hadn't decided where to go?

    He
hadn't quite stopped by the time he made his decision. He chose the northern
passageway, and we followed at a distance of twenty feet. You couldn't get to
Wimbledon this way.

    There
were perhaps fifty people in between the man and Bowman and me as we all lined
up on the platform. The adverts on the tunnel wall were for Lipton's tea, but,
looking sidelong, I saw that the man was looking above them all, gazing at the
tunnel roof.

    The
train came in, and we boarded the carriage behind the one into which the man
stepped, but we could see him clearly through the windows at the carriage end,
and the bright electric light seemed to bring him too close. I turned away from
him, towards Bowman, who had removed his sporting cap and was wiping his head,
dragging the few hairs on his head hard to the left.

    'I'm
in need of a dose of wine,' he said. 'Where do you think he's heading? The
Cross?'

    He
meant King's Cross.

    'Must
be,' I said. 'He's going north.'

    If we
stuck with the man, we would end back in Yorkshire, and that was fine.

    As we
came crashing into Russell Square station, I tried to picture the place he
might run to earth: one of the little iron-getting towns on the Cleveland
cliffs - Loftus or some such. The carriage doors opened. A third of the
passengers got off; a new third got on. The man remained, and it seemed to me
that the new third avoided standing near him, just as the old third had. It was
his great width, and that strange rig-out with the yellow stockings - a
challenge to all-comers. The train started away again with a jerk, and it
jerked a thought into my head: I knew the man.

    I
turned to Bowman, who was fixing his cap back on his head.

    'It's
Sanderson,' I said, as the black brickwork thundered away beyond the windows.

    'Who?'

    'The
man we're following is Gilbert Sanderson,' I said. 'He was hanged last year for
the murder of George Lee.'

    Bowman
gave me a narrow look.

    I
fished in my pocket for the Club photograph, pointed to Lee. 'This man was done
in as I told you. It happened in the course of a robbery committed by Gilbert
Sanderson. It's him,' I went on, tipping my head back to indicate the man in
the next carriage. 'I've seen his woodcut.'

    Bowman
was shaking his head as the train seemed to gain speed before suddenly seizing
up. It had stopped at the Underground station called King's Cross St Pancras.
And here of course the man who was Sanderson, or the spitting image of
Sanderson, turned and stepped off.

    'Identical
twin?' asked Bowman, as we again fell into line twenty paces and twenty people
behind the man. 'Or is he a ghost?'

    We
stepped off the train behind the man, merging into the moving crowd. He was
through the ticket gate. I held my warrant card up to the ticket checker, who
said, 'What the hell's this?' as we went by, but he was grinning as he said it.
In the passageway beyond the barrier, the man was slowing once again. His
choice now was King's Cross or the passageway connecting with its rival, St
Pancras.

    'It's
King's Cross for my money,' I said. 'He's heading for Yorkshire.'

    But
the man followed the
St Pancras
direction, his open coat swinging.

    'That's
rum,' I said. 'What the devil is he up to?'

    I
tried to think it out: the man had come to Bouverie Street half- intending to
do something - and then had decided not to do it. Had he seen me at the window,
and suspected I was a copper? Or then again, had he seen Bowman there, and decided,
looking at his terrified expression, that he had succeeded in putting the
frighteners on, and that his job was therefore done? But Bowman had told me
that the man didn't know him; that he wouldn't necessarily be able to pick him
out away from his known haunts.

    And
who had told the man of Bowman's haunts? Who had put the man-who-looked-like
Sanderson on to Steve Bowman?

    He
walked along the passageway, up another flight of stairs and out into the great
wide roaring of St Pancras Station. On the pillars and roof arches, the red
colourings of the Midland Railway looked like Christmas decorations. The man
paused again, and turned right around in the circulating area, taking sights,
or just letting everyone have the benefit of his biscuit-coloured suit and
bright yellow woollen socks.

    'The
glass of fashion, isn't he?' muttered Bowman.

    It
would have been a comical sight but for the brute power that obviously rested
in the man. He walked towards the booking hall, and we followed. We stood away
from him as he queued at the window marked 'Bedford and All Stations North
Thereof.'

    'He's
not going to Kentish Town, then,' said Bowman. 'I rather hoped he would be.'

    Kentish
Town was the next stop on the line.

    As the
man moved towards one of the pigeonholes to make his ticket purchase, I looked
at the tile map of the Midland territories that was fixed to the booking-office
wall. You
could
go to York from St Pancras and other points immediately
north of York. You
could
do it, but this wasn't the regular London
station for Yorkshire. I pictured the man alighting at Derby, Trent, the
Midland towns. But they were not in the
case.

    He
was buying his ticket now, but we could not risk moving closer to hear the
destination stated. He gave his request in the shortest amount of words
possible, I could tell that much. Having done so he stood back, looking upwards
again. It was as though his moustache was a false one, held on with gum and in
danger of falling off unless he held his head in that particular grand and
arrogant way.

    The
ticket was pushed out under the window, and the man paid over his gold: pound
notes - at least two by the looks of it. This was a bad lookout. At Third Class
rates, each of those pound notes represented about three hundred miles'
distance, and I did not think my North Eastern warrant card would pass muster
with a Midland ticket checker.

    The
man came out of the ticket hall, and swung away towards the waiting trains.

    'We've
struck a trail here all right,' I said.

    'Why
don't we just let him go?' said Bowman. 'He's given up hounding me, at any
rate.'

    'Then
we'll be left with the mystery,' I said.

    'Yes,'
said Bowman, 'and left alive as well.'

    As we
stepped out of the booking hall, we saw the man take up position once again in
the middle of the circulating area. He was gazing towards the trains this time,
then glancing at his watch.

    'If I
were him, I'd go for a stiffener just now,' Bowman said at length, and the
fellow was indeed within striking distance of the refreshment rooms, but he
didn't so much as glance that way.

    I
looked to the left: the platform behind the ticket gate at that extreme -
Platform One - was beginning to fill with people. A line of baggage trolleys waited
there. A pageboy was towing a heavily loaded tea wagon across the circulating
area towards it. The wagon flew a small flag that bore the word 'Sustenance'.
As I watched, a red tank engine came wheezing into view on that line, drawing
more carriages than it could easily manage.