The Last Train to Scarborough (4 page)

I'd
had the solving, after a fashion, of three murders, while the constables'
quarry was of the order of fare evaders, card sharpers and makers of graffito
on carriage windows. I had a wife who went out to work, and who thought herself
superior. She was one of those suffragettes, very likely a bomb thrower in the
making, and on top of all that I was practically a solicitor already, and the
lawyers were the enemy. They decided on who we could or could not go after, and
in the serious cases they took the prosecution - and the victory, if it came -
all for themselves.

I
thought again of Parker and his office. It commanded a view of the old station,
which was now used as an overflow siding for coal wagons, but it was a world
away from those wagons, with the oil paintings on the wall, the thick carpets,
the law books as heavy and handsomely bound as bibles. There were rows of silent
ledger clerks, who recorded the decisions of the office brains, and everything
flowed smoothly and silently on a river of black ink.

Behind
me, Whittaker and Flower, who'd fallen silent on first seeing me, had regained
their pep and were bickering after their usual fashion.

'How
many drinks have I stood you over the years?' Flower was saying (or maybe
Whittaker, but it hardly mattered).

'I've
no idea,' came the reply,'... Not many.'

'No,
no, think about it. Tot it up.'

'I
should say it comes to about exactly half the amount
I've
bought you.'

'I
should say it does
not.'

There
hadn't been a single cross-grained individual in that law office; every face had
smiled at me at every turn. But when I got out of there I was relieved ... in
which case how would I stand a lifetime of it? The money I'd be earning after
five years would smooth the way, of course: I would eat luncheon at dinner
time, and ride in cabs. Or I saw myself atop my own Beeston Humber, with a
gearing to meet every condition of road.

And
I would be James, not Jim.

I
looked up at the window, and thought:
Lightning!
but it
was the conductor flashing the electric lights and bellowing up, 'Terminus!' I
looked back: Flower and Whittaker had bolted. They would already be inside the
hotel, the name of which filled the top deck windows on the left side:
BEESWING. Just the one word. The letters were green, and seemed to glow in the
blustery night even though they were not illuminated. For some reason, I knew
they meant trouble.

As
I stepped off the tram, I gave the conductor a cheery enough 'Good night!', but
I was thinking that we ought not to have been dragged out all this way for the
'do'. It ought to have been held at the Railway Institute, which was hard by
the station and our office, but the Chief had had a falling out with Dave
Chapman, who ran the bar and booked out the social rooms there. Chapman had
found the baize scraped and a little torn after a billiards session involving
some of the men from the Rifle League. He had sent the bill for repair directly
to the Chief, who was one of the high-ups of the League. Well, there'd been a
hell of a row. The Chief wouldn't pay the bill. He made out that Chapman was
down on all shootists because his flat was right next to the shooting range,
and he was kept up at all hours by the firing. The Chief had turned on Chapman
even though the two had been great mates, which was how the Chief had come to
know the whereabouts of Chapman's flat and so on. He had a habit of turning on
people, especially lately, and I marvelled at the way I managed to keep in his
good books, and wondered how long it would last.

The
Chief had set about trying to get Chapman stood down, and meanwhile started
looking out for another venue for the 'do'. Favourite was the Grapes in Toft
Green next to the railway offices, which was really called Ye Grapes, but not
by the railway police blokes, who preferred it to all the nearby Railway Taverns
and Railway Inns, and pubs named after locomotives, perhaps because the new
landlord of it had been in the railway police himself before my time. But he
hadn't had a licence for functions, or was short-handed or something. So that
was out, and the Beeswing was in.

The
place was brand new but meant to look old; handsome enough, but more of a pub
than a hotel . . . and where the wings of bees came in, I couldn't guess.
Fastening up my Macintosh, I decided to take a turn down the road rather than
going straight in. This was the edge of York, and my way led me first past a
muddy building site. A sign read: 'Construction by Walden and Sons', and I
wondered why anyone would want to lay claim to what presently looked like a
battleground. Further, I came to a children's park. One loutish-looking kid
went back and forth in the gloom on a brand-new swing that creaked even so. He
had an unpleasant look of not being content with the swing but waiting for
something else to happen. I walked on beyond the limit of the York lights, and
walked past cows standing stock still in fields, as though for them too time
had stopped.

I
turned and went back towards the hotel. The tram that had brought me up was
rocking away into the distance, and another Number Nine was drawing up, about
as thinly patronised as the previous one. I watched as one man climbed down:
the Chief. I tipped my bowler at him (saluting had somehow long since gone by
the board between the two of us), and he lifted his squash hat clean off his
head, at which the wind made his few strands of orange hair rise up as well, in
a kind of double salute.

'Evening,
sir,' I said.

'Don't
stand out here nattering, lad,' he said. 'The beer's gratis until nine
o'clock.'

As
we entered the hotel by a side door, I unbuttoned my topcoat, and the Chief
saw my smart rig-out. He looked taken aback for a second. He hadn't been in the
police office himself that day - he was in it less and less often - but he knew
I'd been away from it too, and he knew why. He didn't mention my interview with
Parker, however. He'd never either encouraged me or discouraged me in the plan
to turn solicitor. But I knew he didn't like it, and this because he couldn't
stop it. The Chief liked to control people - he was like the wife in that way -
and now he was losing control of me. The Chief said, 'I've a spot of business
to mention to you, lad.'

'I
know,' I said.

I
followed him over to the bar, where, instead of talking to me, he fell in with
Langbourne, the charge sergeant, so I was left dangling.

We
railway coppers had been kept apart from the Beeswing regulars (if such a class
existed) by being put in what might have been the function room. It smelt of
new wood varnish, and I half expected to see pots of the stuff lying around.
There was a stage, and a new piano, but there would be no turns. There would
just be free beer, followed by cut-price beer, and that would be quite
sufficient. There were about a dozen from the police office, and a few station
officials and hangers-on besides. The fellow at the bar gave me a glass of ale
without needing to be asked, and old man Wright, the Chief Clerk, came up. He
looked rather canned already.

'You're
off, then?' he said, wavering slightly.

'Very
likely,' I said, 'but not yet a while.'

He
took a belt on his drink, and cocked his eye at me.

'When’
he enquired, quite sharply.

Old
Man Wright was inquisitive to a fault, which was indecent somehow in a man of
his age.

'It's
not settled yet,' I said.

'How's
your missus?' he said.

'All
right,' I said. 'Yours?'

Our
wives both worked part-time for the Co-operative Women's Union, and were both
strong in their feminism.

'They're
opening a new store, Acomb way,' he said.

'I
know,' I said.

Silence
for a space.

'And
that little lass of yours,' said Wright, 'what's she called again?'

'She's
called Sylvia,' I said, taking a belt on my beer and grinning at Wright. 'I
don't suppose I need explain why.'

Wright
frowned down at his pint.

'Why?'
he said, looking up.

'Sylvia
Pankhurst,
I said. 'It was the wife's doing. But it's a pretty name.'

Another
silence, in which I drained my glass. Wright drifted off, and I asked the
barman the time of the last tram.

'Ten
thirty,' he said.

'Because
I don't want to be stranded here.'

'You
do
not,'
he said, 'take it from me.'

'Are
there any sandwiches laid on?' I asked him.

'Laid
on
what?’
he said, and I knew he was not a York lad.

I
decided that I would be on that last tram, and that I might as well put away a
fair few pints beforehand. I sank a couple more in the company of Shillito, the
uniformed sergeant, and Fred Thomas, who was not a copper at all but the deputy
night station manager. The talk wasn't up to much. Trams came periodically
crashing up beyond the windows. They made more noise and vibration than was
needful, and each time I thought some disaster was in the offing.

The
Chief was now talking to a fellow called Greenfield, who'd come up specially
from the Newcastle railway police office. I watched the Chief's face as he
spoke. It had been scorched by the sun in the Sudan, pounded by heavyweights in
his army boxing days, and set about by whisky and baccy smugglers in the docks
of Hull, where he'd had his start on the force. Consequently the Chief's face
was irregular: no two photographs of it looked the same, and it would have been
hard to draw.

Presently,
Wright came wobbling back over, and he was not only drinking but munching at
something. I saw the carton in his hand: liver capsules.

'You
ought not to be drinking if you've liver trouble,' I said.

No
reply from Wright, who just eyed me for a while.

'Here,'
I said, 'any idea what the Chief's got in hand for me?'

He
looked sidelong, and I knew he knew; but to old man Wright, information was valuable,
which is why he was forever asking questions and why he hardly ever answered
them.

'Why
do you want to know?' he said presently. 'Do you have the wind up?'

Behind
him, the Chief was approaching with papers in his hand.

The
Chief handed me one of his small, bitter cigars, which meant 'down to
business'. He never gave a cigar to any other man in the office. He lit his,
and lit mine. As he did so, I eyed the documents he'd put on the bar top. The
top-most ones were cuttings from newspapers.

'Why
are you mentioning this to me now, sir?' I said. 'Nothing else for it,' he
said, and gave a quick grin - a
very
quick one. 'I
want you on to it day after tomorrow.'

That
meant Sunday. The wife would just love that, what with all the work we had to
do about the house. But this was the Chief all over. He liked to keep his men
on their mettle. He had many times taken me for a drink-up in the middle of the
working day, so I ought not to have been surprised that he should talk shop in
the middle of a 'do'. But there was a look on his face I didn't much care for:
a kind of excitement. How much beer was he shipping? He passed over the first
cutting. It came from the 'Public Notices' page of a Leeds paper.

MISSING,
Mr Raymond Blackburn of Roundhay, Leeds. Aged 30, 5ft Win high, medium-large
build, brown eyes, dark hair. Last seen at the Paradise Guest House,
Scarborough, on 19 October last, and has not since been heard of. Any information
to be addressed to the Inspector of Police, Roundhay, and the informant will be
suitably rewarded
.

'Know
the name?' said the Chief.

'No.
Why do you ask?'

Old
man Wright was lying down on the stage. It looked pretty final.

'The
same notice has been posted in the
Police Gazette
the
last few months ... Have you not seen it?' The Chief was rocking a little back
and forth, eyeing me quite nastily. 'Blackburn was a fireman,' he said.

'On
the North Eastern?' I asked, because other companies ran into Leeds besides
ours.

The
Chief nodded.

'On
19 October last year, he fired a passenger train into York from Leeds New
Station. It was meant to be taken on to Scarborough by another crew, but the
fireman booked to take over from Blackburn was off sick, so Blackburn stayed
with the engine and took it all the way through with the second driver. It was
a Sunday, and Blackburn's train was about the last one into Scarborough
station. The engine was needed next day in York, so the driver ran it back that
night with another York bloke who was waiting in Scarborough after an earlier
turn.'

'Why
didn't Blackburn go back with them?'

'Because
he knew he wouldn't get into York in time for the last Leeds connection.'