Murder At Deviation Junction (34 page)

    'You
were saying about your report?' said Bowman.

    I sat
back.

    'Small
David cannot be on this train, can he?'

    Bowman
frowned. I did not wait for his answer, but stood up, saying, 'I mean to go and
take a look.'

    'But
you have no ticket, Jim. Let me buy you a sleeping berth.'

    Evidently,
Bowman had gone north with plenty of gold about him, which was only sensible in
the circumstances.

    'The
warrant card will just have to serve,' I said. 'You turn in now.'

    I
stood up. Bowman did the same, and we shook hands.

    'You
must make out your report, Jim,' he said. 'I will answer for anything I've done
wrong, which is a good deal, I know.'

    I
almost walked to York, considering that I was back and forth along the dark
corridors of that train many times before arrival. Small David was not aboard,
as far as I could tell with most of the compartment blinds drawn down. He could
not have been - he'd have had to have ridden the slow plough with us in order
to make the connection for Inverness at Helmsdale.

    I
stepped down at York feeling light as a feather from want of sleep. I was one
of only four to climb down there. It was six o'clock, and the station was
coming to life in a series of crashes, and in the barking of the exhaust on the
first passenger train of the day for Hull, which was pulling away from Platform
Thirteen. I stood on Platform Four. A cold wind was sweeping along under the
roof, and I could not contemplate removing my hands from my coat pocket.

    I
walked towards the door of the police office. It ought to be open by now. The
Chief was often the first man in, filling the place with the sour smell of his
cigar smoke as he read the night's telegrams and the first of the post. But it
was locked, and a notice was pasted to the door glass: 'Monday 20 December.
Closed. Police training day. Passengers seeking urgent assistance please find
Stationmaster's Office by the booking hall.'

    I had
forgotten this was a training day.

    In
fact, training days were a species of holiday and generally ended in the bar of
the Railway Institute. There were sometimes physical jerks directed by the
Chief, sometimes lectures on dry subjects such as 'effecting arrest' or
'railway trespass'. The Chief was required to lay them on, but he didn't really
hold with them, and wouldn't mind if you missed one, providing the cause was
anything other than bone idleness.

    I
looked at the notice again. It annoyed me that anything as normal as a training
day should be allowed to go on after all that I'd been through. Still, at least
I couldn't be stood down on a training day.

    I
walked on. It was too early to go back to Thorpe-on-Ouse. I'd only wake the
wife and Harry, and the boy needed his sleep. I picked up a
Yorkshire Post
at the bookstall and the fat man who ran it said, 'First one away today, mate.'

    On
the front page, I read 'Leap from an Omnibus' and 'Hull Soldier's Bad
Behaviour'. Nothing had happened, but the paper had to come out all the same.

    I
walked out of the station, and saw that the snow had gone, leaving only the
ancient city of York and a little rain. I went into town, and breakfasted at
the Working Men's Cafe by the river at King's Staith. It was the cheapest
breakfast going: fried egg, two rashers, tea or coffee and bread and butter all
in for a bob. All of yesterday's Yorkshire papers were lying about on the
tables, and it turned out that nothing had happened
yesterday
either,
except that the snow had been expected to stop, which it obviously had done. It
would apparently be returning, however.

    I
came out of the cafe and watched the river blokes take a load of coal off a
barge until they began to shoot me queer looks, at which I went off into the
middle of town.

    Should
I make a report on my investigation? Bowman wanted me to drop it. He felt he
was owed this, having rescued me from the house at Fairy Hillocks. But I would
at the least be required to give an account of where I'd been if I wanted to
keep my job.

    I
pushed on. The shop blinds were rolling up, like the weary opening of a
person's eyes on a day of cold. The narrow streets were full of the delivery
drays, and the shouts of the early morning men. In St Helen's Square, a great
consignment of Christmas trees rested against the front of the Mansion House.

    I
would
be willing to put the thing on ice, but for Small David. There were
more murders left in him, and that was a certainty. He had to be run in.

    I
looked up. I had found my way to Brown's, the toyshop that lay just off St
Helen's Square. I walked through the door and the ceiling seemed to be sagging,
but it was only the hundreds of paper chains stretched across. I turned and saw
a great multi-coloured house. It had been built from Empire Bricks. All around
it were boxes of same, and some of the smaller ones contained only half a dozen
bricks, but I didn't care to look at the price ticket even on these. Beyond the
books were dolls - and they were all lying down, so that their part of the shop
looked like a mortuary. Then came the narrow spiral staircase that led up to
more toys. This was the feature of Brown's: it was helter-skelter-like, almost
a toy itself, and it was now all wrapped in green tinsel. I climbed it, feeling
an ass at having to turn so many times in order to go up such a little way.

    The
second floor of Brown's seemed at first one great parade ground of miniature
soldiers. A man moved along fast by the far wall - he looked almost guilty at
being full-sized. I walked on and the soldiers gave way to trains. The
clockwork engines were in the North Eastern style - well, they were painted
green at any rate. Small, leaden railway officials stood among them. The
engines had keys in their sides, and some were much smaller than the key that
operated them, and looked ridiculous as a result. I put my hand on the smallest
engine that was not dwarfed by its key, and looked at the price: seven and six.
Many a York citizen kept house for a week on that. I took out my pocket book
and fished out one ten- bob note. I knew it was the last, but I still had some
silver in my pocket and that might make another ten bob.

    I
paid for the engine, and then walked to Britton's in Gillygate. I stood under
the sign looking in the window for a while. The sign read: 'Britton: Coats,
Skirts, Furs', and it worried me that the gloves in the window were only draped
about to offset the articles mentioned on the sign, and were not really of any
account in themselves. But only the gloves had prices in shillings rather than
pounds. Besides, the wife had especially mentioned that she wanted a new pair.
I went inside and asked the assistant about one particular pair, and they were
ten bob exactly. I pulled all the loose change out of various pockets, and it
turned out I had enough, although I coloured up in the process of bringing it
to hand.

    'I'm
sure the lady will enjoy them, sir,' said the assistant, and I thought there
was something a bit off in that 'sir'. A gentleman ought not to buy his wife a
present out of loose change.

    For
some reason, when the gloves were all wrapped up and ready to be taken away, I
asked the assistant, 'What are they made of, by the way?'

    'Deerskin,
sir.'

    Well,
I couldn't take them. It was seeing that herd in the Highlands that had done
it; and then dreaming about them. I had to take a calfskin pair, which cost
another bob again.

    I walked
back to the station, picked the Humber off the bicycle stand and rode to the
edge of York, and then past the six wide fields to Thorpe-on-Ouse. As I walked
along the garden path, I heard the wife typing in the parlour, and so left the
gloves in their parcel in the saddlebag while pocketing the clockwork engine. I
opened the front door and the wife's greeting rang out. She was happy. She'd
got the job, I was certain of it. The two telegrams I'd sent were on the
mantelpiece, together with some Christmas cards, and a letter in an envelope
addressed to the wife - there was nothing from John Ellerton at the Sowerby
Bridge shed.

    We
kissed, and the wife, looking at my sodden suit, said, 'It's rained just in
time for Christmas' - adding, 'Mrs Gregory- Gresham has written to confirm the
appointment.'

    'Very
good,' I said. 'How's Harry?'

    'Much
better. He's gone back to school.'

    It
was all very good, but again I felt strongly my own unimportance. I produced
the little engine from my pocket.

    'He'll
adore that,' said the wife. 'He'll think he's got the moon.'

    He
would have a few other things besides, but not much: a top, a ball, a bag of
chocolates. We walked through to the kitchen now, where a pot of tea was on the
go. A seed cake stood on the table in brown paper.

    'That
looks an expensive item,' I said.

    'The
Archbishop's man brought it,' said the wife.

    The
Archbishop of York had his palace at Thorpe-on-Ouse. At Christmas, one of his
servants went around the village houses in a coach delivering cakes and
sweetmeats cooked in the Palace kitchens. Given that we didn't have any money
to speak of, this felt a little too much like receiving charity.

    'You
don't mind taking it?' I asked the wife.

    'I
like the Archbishop,' she said.

    'Why?
You wouldn't have charity from any other sort of gentry.'

    'The
Archbishop is different.'

    'How
come?'

    'Because
he's religious ... well, sort of.'

    She
grinned at me. I liked that; she looked smaller when she grinned.

    'Did
you trace out any murderers in Scotland?'

    'Several,'
I said.

    'But
did you find who'd killed the men in the picture?'

    'Yes.'

    'Then
you will have your promotion ...'

    'There
are complications,' I said.

    'Such
as?'

    'None
of the guilty men has yet been taken into custody, for one.'

    'Where
are they then?'

    I
shrugged.

    'They're
all over the shop.'

    She
looked at me narrowly.

    'But
you made progress?'

    'Yes.
Do you want the detail of it?'

    'No,'
she said, walking over to the larder and pulling back the thin curtain that
hung there.

    'I've
been quite housewifely over the past two days,' she said.

    There
were some new items in the larder: in pride of place were about a dozen plums
and four tins of pineapple rings. The wife explained that the plums were all
for Harry. A vegetarian diet was recommended for a weak chest. Everything that
cost
money
was recommended for it

    'As
for the pineapple,' said the wife, 'I thought we'd have it on Christmas Eve,
Christmas Day, Boxing Day and the day after Boxing Day. What do you think of
that as a plan?'

    'I
would like them with custard,' I said.

    She
ignored that (for she couldn't make custard, and refused ever to learn), saying
instead, 'I'm dead set on making jam roly-poly.'

    I
pictured her about it. She would start enthusiastic, and then turn silent. It
was best to be out of doors when the wife cooked. She was looking at me.

    'You're
all in, our Jim. You'll have to go to bed.'

    'I
don't think I'll get off,' I said. 'I've too much on my mind.'

    She
was still smiling. She had no inkling that I might be out of a job by the end
of tomorrow.

    'I'll
bring you up a bottle of beer if you like.'

    'I'll
tell you what - I haven't had a fuck for a little while,' I said.

    'I
should think not,' said the wife. 'You've been in
Scotland
for a little
while.'

    She
stepped back and leant against the cold kitchen wall, saying, 'What were the
women like up there?'

    'I
didn't really
see
any women.'