Murder At Deviation Junction (32 page)

    'Hello
there,' I said, while flat on my back.

    No
reply.

    I
tried 'Steve.'

    No
answer. I rolled upright, and all my body was saying, 'No, no, time has
stopped, don't try and start it again.'

    I
could not hear Bowman. He had disappeared into the darkness. I dragged myself
about the stone hut like a man on a wild sea. Twice I slammed into the walls,
gashing my head each time. I rolled back towards the middle. I wanted to vomit,
but my headache wouldn't allow it. I was slowly upended by the constant
lurching, as it appeared, of the floor, and I found that I had fallen on a soft
mass.

    My
hands were on Bowman's face, but it was far away. It ought, from memory, to
have been red and hot, but it was as cold as the stone under my boots.

    I
slapped the face twice, hard. I was trying to make it red again: the face red
and the nose brighter red still - that was the correct order of things with
Bowman.

    There
was a rattle at the door, which rose and fell.

    The
cold had become an illness with me: it was dragging me to the place where Bowman
was - some great white land further north than anywhere.

    And I
needed water.

    The
rattle at the door again. Was I making that rattle or was there another person
in all this? That I could not credit; I was finished with
people.
The
door was coming towards me, and the light lifting with it. The door was
opening, but caught on the stone I'd lifted.

    'Who's
there?' I called, in a weird voice.

    'Ah've
come tae dae ye.'

    The
light had brought Small David with it.

    'Where's
Marriott?' I called.

    He
was shaking the door, trying to get it past the upraised flag.

    'Hum?
Deed.'

    It
was his favourite word.

    'Dead?'

    'Aye,
kulled.'

    'Who
killed him?'

    'Husself.'

    Small
David was now revealed in the open doorway - the full width of the man. Small
particles of snow flew about behind him, as though playing a game, and beyond
them lay all the white, beautiful Highlands. The revolver was in his hand. He
stepped forwards and fired, and I thought: that sound was pretty loud, and then
it struck me that I was enjoying the luxury of hearing the sound die away. I
was still alive, and the bullet had given life, not taken it away, for the soft
mass underneath my hands was rolling again. Bowman raised himself up quickly
and without a word. But Small David, over by the doorway - the snowlight was
flowing in over the top of him, for he was down on the ground. The small hole
I'd dug had been enough to trip him, and now it was his turn to scrabble on
that stone floor as he searched for the gun he'd dropped.

    I
stood, still shaking, and thinking: what do you do with a man when he's down?
Why, you kick him, and I knew I could give a kick for all the queer feeling in
me. His big brown head was football-like, and I got him squarely on the temple.
He went down further and I was across the floor, spider-like, searching for the
revolver.

    Bowman
lurched towards the doorway.

    He
turned there, and said, in a dazed sort of voice, 'That's the second time today
I've come within an ace of dying.'

    I
couldn't find the gun; I gave it up. Small David was breathing heavily on the
stone floor like a man sleeping off drink.

    'Is
it the same day, though?' I said to Bowman, as once more we half-walked,
half-fell down the hillside towards river and railway line. The light was
changing: a mysterious smokiness was brewing over the white-covered fields, but
whether it was increasing or decreasing, I could not have said. Small particles
of snow flew about us - just the odd one or two, racing each other or circling
in a dance.

    We
walked as before, moving forward and down with each stride, looking back
fearfully to the house that had held us. But there was no sign of Small David.

    'I
might have put his lights out for good,' I said.

    'Let
me get alongside you,' said Bowman. 'I can't see my way.'

    The
walking had warmed me somewhat, and I kept scooping up snow from the heather tops
as we walked, drinking the stuff. That stopped me thinking of water while
giving no satisfaction. I took Bowman's arm. He was shaking very violently with
cold, and I thought his face was becoming the same colour as his eyes: a pale
blue. I fumbled the gloves back to him as we pressed on.

    'Wear
these, and you'll be able to pick up snow,' I said.

    'What
time is it?' I asked, and he held up his watch for me to see.

    It
was coming up to five o'clock, which was, perhaps, no more surprising than any
other time. It must be five in the evening; we had passed the entire day - a
full twelve hours - in the deer shack. I looked down and saw a railway signal,
with a small gangers' hut nearby.

    'We've
struck the line,' I said.

    But
the track was invisible under the snow, so that the signal, which was giving
the all-clear to nothing, looked a very ridiculous article. In both directions,
the line curved away into rolling whiteness.

    Bowman
stood at my side, breathing steam; and then I saw to my left, beyond him, what
seemed to be snow whirling upwards - snow making a ghost of itself, and rising
for a haunting.

    Instead,
it was an engine.

    'See
that, Steve?' I said, but the engine was in earshot now.

    It
was doing its beautiful work in a world of whiteness: white steam, white snow.
It ran over tracks only dusted with snow, and was now, as we watched, running
at the thicker stuff. The soft crash of the snow plough was almost silent, and
then the plough ran on, through the snow, looking for a marvellously exciting
few seconds like a boat moving through rough water. But then the snow checked
it, and it began to reverse, ready for the next go.

    We
were stumbling down towards it now.

    'It's
the first time I've seen a proper snow plough at work,' I said to Bowman, who
gasped out, 'I'm thrilled for you, Jim.'

    I had
before only seen the small wooden ploughs attached to the buffer bars of
ordinary engines. This engine - of some Highland make unknown to me - pushed a
snow plough
vehicle:
a hollow steel wedge on wheels, a great metal
arrowhead - and there was a man inside, I saw now, for he was leaning out of it
and waving, calling on the engine driver and fireman for another try. That man
was part lookout, part team captain, for what he gave was
encouragement.

    I was
moving ahead of Bowman now.

    'Push
on!' I called back to him. 'I want to be up there for the next run. If they
break through, we'll be clear away from that Scots bastard!'

    The
driver and fireman first noticed our approach; then the caller-on who rode in
the plough spied us.

    'We
need to come up!' I called, wading on through the snowy heather.

    We
approached the beating warmth of the engine, and driver and fireman stepped away
for us to climb up, and just gawped at us for a while. The man in the plough
was hanging out of his cab, monkey-like, watching us. Bowman warmed himself by
the open fire door, and then he turned about, and said, 'I need to sit down.'

    The
driver pointed to the sandbox, where Bowman perched. He still looked very
seedy.

    'There's
a lunatic on our tail,' I said to the driven while glancing over his shoulder
to the darkening hill beyond.

    But
he didn't seem to take what I said.

    'Where
are you
for
?' he asked, just as though we were ordinary passengers

    'We
want to connect for Inverness,' I said. 'Do you reckon that's on? Tonight, I
mean?'

    'Don't
ask me,' he said. 'Our job's to break through to Helmsdale.'

    'Is
it drifted all the way?'

    He
shook his head.

    'We're
at the worst of it now. Couple more goes and we should be through.'

    He
was a small, pale bloke, and he seemed to speak without force, and then the
reason came to me: he was not Scots. He spoke with an English accent of no
particular sort. Also, he seemed in a baddish temper. At first I thought this
must be on account of our arrival, but he now turned and addressed his fireman,
saying, 'Front damper's closed now, is it?'

    If
you left the front damper open while charging at snow - why, you'd put the
bloody fire out. The fireman was not up to snuff, and the driver was out with
him.

    The
snow plough man was calling to us from up front.
He
was Scots all right,
to the point where I couldn't make out a word he said, but his meaning was
clear enough. We were to get on with it.

    The
driver put on full back gear, and we reversed a little further; the fireman was
labouring away all the time, swinging with his shovel between tender and fire
door like a clock mechanism. A good thick layer of coal was needed, for each
charge would suck a great hole in the fire. By the paraffin lamp that hung
behind the gauge glass, I saw that we had our 220 lbs of steam pressure. The
light was going fast, and it was already too gloomy to make out the height of
the snow wall a hundred yards off that we were about to charge at.

    The
driver held on to the cabside; I gripped the mighty wheel of the hand brake,
and motioned Bowman to do the same. The driver gave a tug on the regulator and
we began to steal away, then there came a shout from the front man; the driver
pulled harder, and we began to fly. We swayed backwards with the force of the
speed. I tried to predict the moment of impact, but the smash came a couple of
seconds later than I bargained for.

    We
were all thrown forwards, and we all checked the movement of our bodies, but
the fireman flew on, and smacked into the fire- hole door; which he had
(luckily for him or he'd have been clean through it) closed before the charge.
He was down on the cab floor. I tried to give him a hand up, but he wouldn't
have it. He sat bolt upright in the filthy cold dust and said, 'I've cracked my
arm.'

    I
knew it was true, for he was dead white. The driver sat him on the sandbox that
Bowman had lately occupied.

    'Want
me to take a look?' said the driver. He was not overly sympathetic.

    The
fireman shook his head. 'I can feel the bone - it's out. I don't want to see
it.'

    All
the horror was under the sleeve, and that's where he wanted to leave it for the
present. He just sat tight holding his right arm with his left.

    'I
can fire an engine,' I said to the driver.

    He
looked from me to Bowman, who said, 'And I can
write
about it, if that's
any use.'

    He
gave a little grin, and tried to push his specs up his nose, only they weren't
there. He'd had a couple of secret swigs from the driver's tea bottle, I'd
noticed, and some of his high colour was now returned.

    What
the driver made of the pair of us, I couldn't have guessed, but I tried to put
his mind at rest by taking up the shovel and opening the firehole door. The
fire was thin at the middle, and the top left.

    I
turned and put the shovel into the coal, and took a long breath.

    Then
I was into it: the clockwork motion at twice the rate of the other fellow. The
coal was flying off in a flat line straight to the points needed.

    I
heard the driver say something that might have been: 'All right then.'

    At
any rate, the whole man-machine started working around me. The driver looked
ahead to the plough man; he then put on full reverse and took us backwards as I
carried on shovelling.

    I
said, 'Shall we take a longer run this time, mate?' and he didn't answer but
kept us rolling back fifty yards beyond the last distance.

    As we
came to rest prior to the charge, I was at the injector, operating the two
valves to bring water into the boiler. I just wanted to be 'doing', but the
driver said, 'Don't carry the water so high,' so I checked the flow. Being a
little rusty, I had to think for a while about why he'd said that, but it came
to me after a couple of seconds that each run at the snow made a rolling wave
of water in the boiler. If the water slopped too high, it would carry over into
the cylinders, the engine would prime and we'd be done for.