Murder At Deviation Junction (38 page)

    'Yer
brain's too wee, de ye ken that?' said Small David.

    My
mistake had arisen because I had not been able to think of him as suffering at
the hands of another man, but only as the
cause
of suffering. I looked
down at his yellow socks - there was blood on them too, and sweat and filth,
and all the horrible leakage of his great body.

    'Smart
eh!' he said, and I saw that he had no teeth, just like a great baby. Had they
been lately knocked away by his own brother? I saw through the window a
summerhouse in a garden of snow coming fast by the window - that was all wrong.
I turned again to face Small David.

    He
said, 'Ye'll alight the train in a wee while.' 'Willi?'

    'Aye,
ye wull.'

    'It
was the brother that was shot by the police -'

    'Aye,
gone for ever.'

    'He
gave you a good battering.'

    'Och,
he could nae batter a fish.'

    'Why
didn't
you
shoot him, Small David?'

    'I
was savin' the bullets for yersel'.'

    'Where's
Marriott?'

    'Hum?
Stull deed.'

    'The
son, Richie?'

    'He's
awae tae France.'

    'But
you've taken all of his father's money.'

    'A
guid deal of it, aye.'

    He
looked away from me and he looked back.

    
'My
fair share
,'
he said.

    We
were both being rocked as the train slowed. I looked to the left and down. At
Flat Scar mine, the endless rope still turned, sending the swinging buckets out
towards the mine station, where a mineral train waited with a fuming engine at
the head. The flywheel turned inside the wheelhouse, and the sea smashed
against the little jetty beyond. It was Christmas for some, the telegram lad
had said, but not for the blokes of Flat Scar, and not for me. Snow had been
scraped away and piled up all around the mine, like so much white slag.

    There
came a fluttering from beyond the right-hand window, and I thought at first
that another seabird was flying close by, but it was the rattling wind gauge
that marked the start of the Kilton Viaduct. The train noise was different now,
as we slowed and ran on to the viaduct, and it galvanised Small David, who rose
to his feet, motioning with the revolver for me to do the same.

    As I
stood facing the man, I realised that I stood taller than him; but he held the
gun. He drew open the door of the compartment and motioned me into the
corridor, which was empty. I had the feeling that we were the only men aboard.
Small David pushed the gun into me, indicating that I should walk along the
corridor.

    The
corridor went on for ever, but we slowly closed on the carriage door. As we did
so, he spoke:

    'I
was no quite comfortable while ye were left alive.'

    'How
did you know I'd be in Middlesbrough?'

    'Yon
bottle man told me.'

    'Spoken
to him recently, have you?'

    'I
have nae.'

    I knew
then what the telegram had been: a warning from Bowman that he had at some
early stage let slip the fact that I had an appointment at Middlesbrough.

    We
were now at the door.

    'I wull
be calling upon the bottle man presently, but ye have the honour of being the
first tae dee.'

    Small
David opened the door, and the snowy gravel was flowing along beneath our
boots. On the other side of it stood the low wall of the Kilton Viaduct, and
beyond that lay the long drop to the beck and the mineral line.

    'Oot,'
he said.

    I
jumped, and he followed directly after.

    We
were alongside the carriage bogies, and the wheels themselves were horrific and
merciless when seen close to. The carriage walls towered above us, and they
came on, and came on.

    'Stir
yersel,' said Small David. He meant me to walk to the middle of the viaduct,
and there he would make me leap.

    I
leapt early.

    One
hand on the viaduct wall and I was gone. From the middle of air, I saw the
mine, the endless rope turning under the darkening sky. My bowler was falling
in advance of me; it was disloyal, abandoning ship. Well, a bowler was a
ridiculous article in any case. My limbs were just so many floating things, and
by slow degrees it seemed that my boots were becoming higher than my head. I
wondered whether I would make a full somersault before I smashed. I was no
detective sergeant; it was not meant to be. I was an engine man who had missed
his way, and that was all about it.

    It
ended neatly enough, for I landed in a perfect grave - a grave of snow. I lay
in it, and thought about what had happened. The fall had not ended with the
smash, but had continued for a little while after with a sort of dark, burning
roar, and the notion that the word 'Chute!' was being shouted very loudly into
my ears.

    Above
the top of my snow-grave I could see the side of the viaduct. I had leapt from
the point at which it began, and fallen perhaps only thirty feet on to the top
of the valley side. I began an upwards crawl out of the snow, and my hands
seemed small and very red, and my back was ricked. It was easier to move to the
left than to the right. But I came out all right, and stood up, a little bent
over. A sea wind was coming up at me; it blew the snow through the legs of the
viaduct. The sky had a look of dangerous dark blue against the whiteness all
around, and I knew this was the coldest day I had seen, but I could not feel
it. The snow was my friend now, even though I had fought it all my life.

    I
seemed to be very high as I stumbled forwards. I was on a high ridge of snow -
it had been made when a track to my left had been cleared. The track ran down
to the beck, and the zigzag mineral line. The mine itself lay far below, and an
echoing rattle was coming up the valley from there. The mineral train was
leaving the mine station, or attempting to do so. The ironstone wagons were all
hitched. The train was jerking back and forth, as if it was trying to unfreeze
itself.

    I climbed
the bank side for a little way, and was quickly underneath the viaduct at its
lowest point. I moved underneath it. My back was all right as long as I held it
in a certain position, but I had to move a little way crabwise. I climbed on to
the eastern side of the viaduct top (whereas I had jumped from the western
side). I crouched against the viaduct edge, and the wind gauge was there: one
small, mad windmill. No, it was like a trapped bird, and it was frightening to
be near it. The thing's arms turned at a furious rate, and the thing
itself
was spinning bodily. Small David stood fifty yards beyond me, and on the
opposite side of the single track. In the gathering dark, he was peering over
the western viaduct wall, looking down at the zigzag line where the iron train
had stopped - looking for me. I began walking towards him. I did not care if he
saw me. I did not know what would happen if he did, because I was not thinking.
Instead, I walked, with the line beside me. No trains would come, I knew that -
we were quite safe from interruption.

    Small
David was now moving along a little way - going away from me. But I kept up my
steady, bent-over advance. There was now a steadier clanking coming from below
the viaduct. The mineral train was moving.

    I veered
to my left and gave it a glance. It was coming up to the legs of the viaduct.
Small David looked down at it too, but he did so from a stationary position in
the middle of the viaduct. I looked to the right. It hurt to do it, but there
was the Rectory Works. The fires leapt from the kiln tops, more beautiful than
any Christmas decoration, and it was the strength of
purpose
that made
them so.

    In
the middle of the sound of the sea, and the sea wind, and the clanking train, I
stood to the rear of Small David. He was leaning over the viaduct wall. It was
hardly decent, but I reached forwards and took hold of the tweed of his topcoat
where it lay over his arse. I lifted it and I pitched him away into the wind. I
had done with him.

    I
leant over and watched him go.

    In
the middle of air Small David looked like a frog I had once seen making a leap:
too thick about the middle, arms and legs of no account, although these did
move about a little as he flew. He hit a middle wagon of the iron train, and then
- thank Christ - he stopped moving. I could not have stood the sight of him
squirming on the ironstone, but then again, what would have happened if that
sight had indeed met my eyes? I looked along the viaduct wall to the wind
gauge. It operated a signal that checked trains in any really strong blow, and
it was still thrashing away for all it was worth, not aware that the disaster
had in fact already occurred.

    I
turned about again and looked at the kilns of the Rectory Works. A strange red
spirit crawled upwards from the top of each one. On the gantry that ran along
the tops stood a single man. I remained for an hour on the Kilton Viaduct, and
I watched every wagon from the train rise to the point where it was tilted by
automatic process. Sometimes the gantry man was visible in his upper world,
sometimes not. He came and went from a metal shack attached to one end of the
gantry platform. Whatever he was about up there, he did not pay attention to
what was being pitched into the kilns. Anything that came up with those wagons
was for burning and no questions asked.

    Presently,
a train came along the viaduct. It would be at about five p.m. - I could not
have said at the time. I stopped it with my hand. I believe that I made the driver
aware of my warrant card, but it may be that he'd said, 'Let's have you in,
mate,' before seeing it.

    I was
taken up on to the footplate, and I took up a position directly before the
fire, causing the fireman, as I seem to remember, to curse all the way to the
terminus. But I believe that I was magnetised by that fire, for the driver had
to shift me bodily away from it at Whitby West Cliff, explaining that here they
must pitch it away, having reached the end of their turn.

    I made
my way out of the station with my new, bent walk, but I felt that I was
straightening up by degrees.

    The
town of Whitby was freshly covered in snow, which was ruffled by great gusts
coming in from the sea. The black water was low in the harbour, and the ships
and boats were all a little skew, as if drunk, which their owners very likely
would have been at that moment. The pubs and hotels around were all ablaze with
light as I walked first around the grand new buildings on the west side.

    I was
trying to walk off the effects of having killed a man.

    A car
was turning outside the front of the Metropole, and half the guests - in their
finest clothes - had turned out to watch the manoeuvre. They looked like the
most innocent people in the world.

    I
went across the harbour bridge to the east side, and walked along the road on
which stood the offices of the
Whitby Morning Post.
They were closed
now, and I squinted inside at the heap of back numbers on the long table. Old
papers made a litter. You ought not to look back. But still I turned - or was
it the wind racing in from the sea that
made
me turn? - towards the Bog
Hall sidings, spread out beyond the station, where all the wagons and carriages
were arranged in neat lines for their Christmas rest. One of them had been
something special once, for the saloon built to the instructions of the
Whitby-Middlesbrough Travelling Club was doubtless still in there. The wind
rose again, stirring the boats and lifting the snow crystals from all the
rooftops, and the high graveyard of St Mary's church. I didn't quite like to
look towards the church, for I had hardly turned the other cheek back there on
the viaduct.

    I
looked instead towards the town of Whitby in general, Amid the flying white
particles, I saw a softer, rising whiteness from beyond the station roof. It
was Christmas Eve, and the men at the controls of that steaming engine would be
anxious to be away. I made towards them.

    I
boarded the last train of the evening for York with seconds to spare. Another
man came into the compartment just as I had settled myself. He was a tall, pale
man and wore a good, fur-trimmed topcoat. He leant over my outstretched legs
and yanked down the leathern strap that controlled the window. He knew it was
not quite correct behaviour on such a night, but he required the refreshment of
the cold air. As he sat down, and as the train began drawing away out of the
station, he eyed me, challenging me to speak out.