Murder At Deviation Junction (37 page)

    Try
not to talk like a copy book, I told myself.

    'Now
you came to us from footplate work -' said Captain Fairclough.

    I nodded,
thinking guiltily of the letter I'd written asking for a return to it.

    'I
have a good general knowledge of railway working, sir,' I said. 'I find it
comes in handy to know the business of a marshalling yard or engine shed.'

    That was
a little better.

    'You
had the solving of a murder; I believe.'

    He
meant the business of my first weeks on the force. I began telling him all
about it, but after five minutes he checked me and I coloured up at that.

    'The tale
does you great credit,' he said, but not over-enthusiastically, and I wondered
whether he considered me boastful.

    After
a little more rather strained conversation, I noticed that Captain Fairclough
was looking down at a few pieces of paper.

    'I
have good accounts of you from your superior officers,' he said. Now I'd
expected it of the Chief, but it was quite a turn-up to hear that I'd got a
recommendation from Shillito. I'd really fixed him with that blow.

    Captain
Fairclough now fell to thinking about something, and turned to give me the
benefit of his profile as he did so. But I was looking beyond him. The snow was
coming down again, and it didn't seem to make much difference to Ironopolis
until you looked closely and saw that the men were now moving through it as
though blind. I looked back towards Fairclough. I had not convinced him that he
ought to promote me, that was a certainty, and if I didn't manage it soon then
Lydia would not be able to take up her own position. There was nothing for it.
I would have to trust to the new-found good intentions of Detective Sergeant
Shillito.

    'I
think dogs might do a good deal in police work given a little more experience,'
I said.

    I had
made my shot; there was no going back. Captain Fairclough turned sharply
towards me.

    'Dogs?'

    'Yes.'

    'Did
you say "dogs"?'

    I was
sitting in tight boots now.

    'A
fine body of trained dogs, yes.'

    He
turned away from me and looked through his window, taking it all in right
across to the Tees with one great intake of breath. Had Shillito been guying
me? The pages he'd given over had been from a journal of the Great Western
Railway, of which Fairclough had been governor before he'd come north. They had
been an account of the use of dogs in police work. It was an idea that had not
caught on very widely, as the writer of the article admitted. In fact it had
caught on only in Belgium, at a spot called Ghent, which had a dock that needed
a lot of guarding. A single sentence in the article was to the effect: 'It is
believed that the chief officer of our railway force, Captain Fairclough,
favours putting dogs to work in this way,' and I had trusted my whole future to
those words.

    'A
canine police, now ...' Fairclough said, turning back around slowly. 'What gave
you the idea?'

    I had
what I thought a good lie ready for this.

    'Just
forever walking past signs reading "Beware of the dog", sir. And I
thought - why not for police purposes?'

    'What
breed would you favour for the work?'

    The
ones in Belgium had been Airedales. An Airedale was the biggest sort of
terrier, as I'd discovered in the reference division of York Library. But I
ought not to look as though I'd got the whole thing from the article.

    'A
big enough breed to put fear into a villain,' I said. 'But the animal must be
intelligent with it.'

    'Would
the dogs be on a leash?'

    'Yes,
and muzzled.'

    That
was how they had them in Belgium.

    'I
believe that other forces use them,' I said.

    'Where?'

    He
had me now. I kept silence, hoping he'd put another question.

    'Well
then,' he said, '
where
? Are you aware of any area of operation?'

    'Belgium,
maybe?'

    That
might easily have queered the whole thing, for it surely proved that I'd
cribbed the notion of dogs from the article, but perhaps Captain Fairclough had
never
read
that particular article, even though he'd been mentioned in
it, for he rose to his feet saying, 'I will not keep from you that I have been
thinking on remarkably similar lines myself. For thief-taking, or simply as a
deterrent, it strikes me that dogs must have a place in our work.'

    And I
knew from his 'our' that I had done it; or that Shillito had done it for me.

    'Imagine
some loafer in that goods yard of yours at York,

    Detective
Stringer - pockets bulging with pilfered whisky bottles and baccy. You approach
him with a dog leashed; you ask him to come along quietly ... Now I'd say he'd
do it, but let's imagine he refuses your request. You threaten to unleash the
beast. You warn him it is trained to attack every man not wearing a police
uniform... He'd come along then, wouldn't you say?'

    'He'd
come along all right, sir . . . why, like a lamb I should think.'

    Captain
Fairclough laughed a little at that.

    'Now,'
he said, when he'd stopped, 'any other suggestions?'

    'I
think there ought to be a special class of men to do things like ticket
inspections and lost luggage reports,' I said.

    'I
see.'

    'I
believe this is not a good use of the detective mind.'

    'And
who would do the work instead?'

    'Men
developed from the grades of clerks,' I said, thinking: let's give Wright some
bloody work to do; get his nose out of other folks' affairs. What Captain
Fairclough made of my idea I don't know, but he made a note of it. He then
strode around his desk to shake my hand.

    'I
have enjoyed our talk very much, Detective Stringer,' he said. 'You need have
no apprehension as to the outcome of it. A very happy Christmas to you.'

    'A
very happy Christmas to you too, sir.'

    Well,
I was on velvet. My job was safe, and I had secured my promotion, which in turn
meant that Lydia could take up the job of her dreams. Our money troubles were
at an end. And the case seemed to have resolved itself beautifully. It was like
a mathematical problem that had looked very involved but that, after a long,
head-racking while, was discovered to come out at zero. Marriott had killed
himself or been killed by Small David, and there was some justice in either
outcome. If it had not been suicide then it would have been made to look like
it, for Small David seemed to be a great hand at that. There need be no
questions asked.

    The
inquest into Peters would return a verdict of suicide. It was a shame that
Peters should be set down for ever as having done away with himself - but then,
how could that ever have been disproved except by confession of Small David,
which had never been likely?

    As
for Lee and Falconer - Lee was deemed to have been murdered and he had been.
The wrong man had swung for it; but not, by all accounts, an entirely
innocent
man. Falconer was put down as disappeared, and no injury was done
to his name and reputation as a result. It was perhaps a more dignified fate
than the one that he had met in reality. Small David had got his deserts just
as surely as Marriott himself, and the men who'd deserved to come out of it
with unstained characters had done so: Richie Marriott was on the Continent,
where he would no doubt remain, and only he and I knew of Bowman's involvement.
We in fact were the only three who knew the cause of the Travelling Club's
disappearance, and it seemed to me fitting that only three
should
know,
for there was no rightness or dignity in the explanation. A word from my
schooldays came to me: the business had been a
shameful
one from start
to finish.

    But
it was now played out.

    I
walked in a happy haze about the snowy streets of central Middlesbrough, where
the shops were all either full to bursting or closing early - nothing in
between. I had half an eye out for the Middlesbrough Brown's. I would buy Harry
a lead man to go with his clockwork loco - a guard with arm raised, forever
giving the 'right away' to the little engine. It struck me that I could also
run to a scarf to go with Lydia's gloves. Of course, the situation called for a
pint as well, but it would be a risk to slip into a pub so close to Captain
Fairclough's office. In the end, I decided to put it all off to York: I would
take an early train back.

    I
hurried up the steps at the back of the station that gave on to the 'up'
platform. In the parcels office they were still stamping and labelling like
mad. At the platform ends, salt was going down, and I had a moment of alarm
about the weather. If there'd been drifting, I might be kept on the coast for
Christmas, and that really would be a calamity.

    I
could not stop thinking of all the things I might do being once again in funds
and, happening to give a glance in the direction of the telegraph office, I
remembered Bowman. It was half past midday. I had another ten minutes until
train time, so I darted in to send a wire, which took longer than I'd expected
because of a queue full of people sending their love to all points of the
compass, whereas if they'd really meant it, they'd have posted Christmas cards
long since or gone to see the love objects in question.

    I
climbed aboard the Whitby train with seconds to spare - no time to look at the
engine. I fretted that it might be pushing a snow plough of some kind. We
rocked away and, as Ironopolis came into view, I saw that only a few furnaces
remained in blast, and that all the strange little wagons had been tidied away
into sidings. Our train was only a quarter full; the light was fading already,
and I felt that most people had already gone to their Christmas places. I had a
compartment to myself, and I looked at first to the seaward side, where the
holiday town of Redcar soon came up, with the black sea crashing beyond the
lonely 'Tea' flag. A few minutes later, the snow was coming down slantwise
again on Marske. There was a sudden crashing to my right, and I turned and saw
a full-sized snow plough being taken on the 'down' line between two ordinary
engines, as though the Company was trying to smuggle the thing through to
Middlesbrough. We were in and out of Saltburn in very short order. The platform
lights blazed, and I watched half a dozen muffled-up people hurrying away to
Christmas.

    For a
moment there was nothing but the swinging station sign.

    We
pulled away and were soon flying through Stone Farm, where I thought I saw
Crystal standing stock still on the platform and being snowed upon. I made a move
towards the window, meaning to drag it down and call out 'Happy Christmas!' to
the miserable old fossil.

    Next
thing we were in the town of Loftus, gliding along the high street in the same
direction as the snow. From the platform there came nothing but a few throat
clearances out of sight. We pulled away into the country and a seabird flew
alongside the window - and then suddenly it was taken higher, as if yanked up
on a wire.

    I
turned the other way and the door of the compartment opened. Small David sat
down over opposite me with his tweed coat spread wide, a smile on his face and
a revolver in his hand.

    But
it could not be Small David. Small David was shot.

    'Are
you . . . Sanderson?'

    'Och,
ye've sniffed me oot.'

    He had
addressed the top of my head, with his own great head tilted back.

    But
he couldn't be Sanderson either - Gilbert Sanderson was hanged.

    There
was some bloody complication: a mass of dried blood under his flat sporting cap
- the cap was welded to the head by the stuff, and yet he was grinning. It was
Small David all right; he hadn't crowned his brother. He had been crowned
by
his brother.

    'I
can see ye're thinkin' hard.'

    I was
thinking how the police had taken him for Sanderson, and now
I
had
confused him with his
brother,
with the same disastrous consequences. He
gave a glance towards the window: the white fields rolled on under the
blackening sky. There were farms and what looked like farms but with flames
rising above, farms on fire - and these were the mines.