The Lost Luggage Porter (10 page)

I kicked the bag over towards the Brains, who stood up, plucked out one of the magazines, leaving a page dangling on which we both read the words 'British Locomotive Prac­tice and Performance.'

From over by the door, the Blocker said: 'What's this rub­bish?'

'Railway Magazines,'
I said.

'Short of arse wipe are you?' he said, striding over, taking that particular number from the Brains and pitching it on to the fire, where it just lay in the smoke for a while. Presently,

though, it began to burn, signifying as it did so the end of all my railway hopes for ever. I did not want to be in this smoke hole, I did not want to be in the Pantomime Police, and the anger came up in me all at once.

'You're a fucking rotter,' I said to the Blocker.

I heard the Brains say something surprised-sounding as the Blocker closed on me. His fist went back, and I fancy that I said out loud, 'Here we go, then', just before spinning back under the blow, feeling the bar floor come up towards me like something carried on a wave.

------- ----

I put my finger towards my eye, and it touched my eye too early. Some things had happened. The fire was smoking even more strongly, and the place was becoming like a damned kipper house. I put my hands to my eyes again. Of course . . . the fake spectacles were not there. It was all up with my disguise. I was propped against the bar, and the Brains had swapped places with the Blocker.

'You in the York workhouse?' he said, in a kindly sort of tone, with folded arms.

'No,' I said, and I saw the specs on the floor beside me, good as new. The want of glass in them might not have been noticed after all. I picked them up, and put them back on my nose.

I was all right really, refreshed somehow by the thought that the worst had passed for the moment. My eye was swollen. I could force it open, but it wanted to be closed so I left it be. As the water from the stinging smoke rose within it, I wiped it away with my coat sleeve.

'I'm in a lull just at present,' I said, 'but I'll turn me hand to outdoor portering . . . handyman . . . spot of cow walloping now and again on market days. You can get half a crown a day at that lark.'

'Who maintains you in between times?' asked the Brains.

I looked at the fire, where the magazine number was one big cinder under the flowing smoke.

'Me old man has a bob or two put by. It's him I lodge with
...
over Holgate way.'

'You'll take a pint?' said the Brains, and he stepped back and nodded at the Blocker, who stood up and walked around the bar, to draw the pints himself. Of the landlord there was now no sign. The fossil at the bar had pushed off, too. The Brains jabbed at the fire, reached into the chimney and moved the flue, and an orange glow was revealed in the grate.

He pulled two more chairs from the far side of the room over to the hearthside, and we all sat down as the Blocker came back with the beer.

'What's your game then, mate?' said the Blocker, after necking most of his ale.

'Well, I've seen you operating up the station,' I said, 'and I liked the look of it. You know, steal from folks before they get on a train then don't get on yoursen . . . And I was wonder­ing whether I could lend a hand.'

'Put 'em up,' said the Blocker suddenly, and I made two fists thinking: is he going to lam me again?

Then the Brains was shaking his head.

'Fingers held out straight, like,' he said, and I did as he said. The Brains looked at my fingers, looked away.

'You've the right-shaped hands for a hoister,' he said, star­ing into the fire. He turned to me once again, saying: 'Ever done the work?'

Before I could tell another tale, the Blocker was reaching out towards my glasses.

'Let's have a skeg through those gogglers, mate,' he said, and I swayed back away from him.

'Leave off’ I said. 'I don't like other folk . . . looking through 'em.'

The Brains laughed.

'Well, we're all cranky
some
way’ he said.

He stood up; the Blocker stood too.

'Finish up,' said the Brains, looking down at my beer.

'What's the programme, lads?' I said.

'Little stroll,' said the Brains,'... maybe look out for a soft mark while we're at it. Look slippy now.'

I downed the beer, picked up my bag, and followed them out into the street. I was very glad to be out into the cold and rainy air .. . and my bad eye was now giving less trouble. It had simply gone to sleep. Directly we turned the first corner, the Blocker said, 'Bears.'

As Chief Inspector Weatherill had told me, there were two of them - two coppers, thin men in capes, walking fast with their dark lanterns in their hands. They passed us by without a glance. I was next to the Brains. The Blocker had fallen in behind - he was the owl, keeping eyes skinned to protect the Brains. As we walked, the Brains put his long hand out to me. 'Miles Hopkins,' he said. 'Glad to meet you, Allan.' He had a good grip, and shook my hand hard as I hazarded his age (he was perhaps thirty-five, a good ten years older than me at any rate).

We came to a rare gas lamp. It illuminated a curved wall covered with posters - a great, glowing bay of advertise­ment, with nobody about to read the words:
'Aladdin
at the New Theatre Royal', 'The
Yorkshire Gazette
- for the Farmer, the Sportsman, the Fireside', 'Turn Right For Capstan's Cig­arettes.'

But we turned left, striking a row of pubs - a good hundred- yard run of pubs or jug and bottle shops before the cobbled road rose, becoming a little bridge over the River Foss. Some light leaked from the pubs, which were mostly ordinary terraced houses that had a different life at night. The front windows were low, and Miles stooped to look through some of them as the wind and rain picked up. He looked with an expert eye into those parlour bars. The first few were silent, but desperate shouts came at intervals from the fourth or fifth one, as if orders were being passed among the crew of a ship. Some of the houses had names: the Full Moon, the Ebor Vaults, the Greyhound. Others didn't run to names.

I thought my nerves would either get set or get shattered, but they did neither, and all I could do was wait, trying to disguise fast breathing in the meantime. On the little bridge, Miles Hopkins and the Blocker stopped for a conference. I looked down at the river. The Foss was not more than five foot wide, compressed by factories, and darker than the night. I thought of my bike, waiting in High Ousegate to carry me back to Thorpe-on-Ouse and the wife. It was a breakaway I could not easily imagine making.

The conference was over. Miles Hopkins touched my arm, and we crossed the bridge to see a stubby little street of crumbling bricks blocked at the far end by a high wall, as if somebody had tried to cross it out, a mistake having been made. In the street stood one house, one shop - 'Todd for Meat' - and three pubs, all bigger than the earlier ones. Going by their names, these pubs did not seem to know they were in Layerthorpe: the Cricketer, the Fortune of War, the Castle Howard.

With Miles Hopkins leading the way, we made directly for the Castle Howard. It was one wide, low room, half full, and with a wooden framework in the middle that made it look like a barn loft. Just inside the door, a man stood drinking slowly, with his glass held horizontally at his face as he turned back and forth, like Admiral bloody Nelson with his telescope. He broke off from this performance as we entered, grabbing the Blocker's sleeve and pulling him away into a corner. I heard one word from the two of them before Hop­kins pushed me gently towards the bar: the word was 'Cameron', and I was running again through the engine shed at Sowerby Bridge, riding a locomotive with no brakes.

On a trestle behind the bar sat a row of big barrels, like cannon. Three men crossed back and forth, working the taps. A dozen men stood at the bar, and one sat on a high chair. Hopkins was pointing towards this fellow, but my mind was on the Camerons.

'Who's whatsisname talking to?' I asked Hopkins.

He looked quickly backwards.

'Never mind him,' he said, and he gave a grin, adding: 'He's alius boozed.'

Whether he meant the man with the glass or the Blocker I couldn't have said. Hopkins was nodding now towards the one man sitting at the bar, and I too looked at the fellow with my remaining usable eye. The fellow was all wrong for this pub: youngish, fresh-looking, cap neatly doubled over by his pint glass - not a working man but a clerkly sort, I guessed. He was the soft mark, at any rate.

'That cove there,' Miles Hopkins was saying, 'has a box of choice cigars in his left-hand coat pocket. Let's 'ave 'em, shall we?'

'You want me to lift 'em?' I said, wondering, If you com­mit crime to prevent crime is that a crime? I did not believe the answer to that lay in my
Police Manual.

'It's not really my game, you know,' I said to Miles Hopkins. 'I'm bound to make a bloomer, and then we'll have a scrap on our hands.'

'Got the collywobbles, have you?'

It was the Blocker; he was right behind me.

I was thinking of the Camerons, but I was supposed to be concerned with a different matter. I spoke up again:

'Something more in my way’ I said, 'might be lifting arti­cles from the goods yards. I know a deal about what goes on there. Done a spot of portering you see, and ...'

I looked at Miles, who looked at the Blocker, who said, 'Stop monkeying about, you daft bugger.'

I had no choice. I would never get the goods on this pair otherwise. I walked up to the bar, and formed a tale in my mind. If I bungled the theft of the cigars I would say that the owner had whipped them off me earlier on. I moved next to the man, next to his
pocket.
I was within range of the smell of his hair oil, and I could feel his breath on my raised left hand. But the fellow was a regular dolly daydream, staring straight ahead towards the barrels at the back of the bar. Looking in the same direction myself, I sank the fingers of my left hand into his pocket, and straightaway my heart beat slower. There seemed a whole world in there - many articles rolling between my fingers in the slowness of the new world I had entered. There was certainly more than just a packet of cigars in there. There was a solid article besides: bone - and I imme­diately knew it for the handle of a clasp knife, and a good, weighty one at that. I caught it up, and as I swivelled away from the fellow I couldn't help grinning at Miles Hopkins, who was grinning back at me.

'It's a wonder that bloke can
live
with no nerves at all down one side of his body,' he said, as I walked up to him, with the trophy in my hand.

'You what, mate?' I said, and I realised that I was bathed in sweat.

'When that bloke gets off his perch, you'll probably see that he's immobile all down that half of him.'

He looked at the knife.

'Think I've got the makings?' I said, in a kind of breathless whisper I had not meant to use.

'You've a little ground to travel,' he replied. 'Come on.'

We stepped outside with the Blocker in tow. He took up position on one side of the little bridge, with his back to the lamp that sprouted from its low wall. The cold air made my sweat turn colder. I stood with Miles Hopkins on the other. It seemed that Hopkins's opinion of my abilities had slipped a notch, because he said to the Blocker:

'Our friend will never be a hoister as long as he's got a hole in his arse.'

'Might be good for some other business, though?' said the Blocker.

No reaction at all from Miles Hopkins.

We all three had our hands in our coat pockets. I waited; something was on its way.

'I know all the railway territories around York,' I said.

The rain fell; still nothing was said, so I went further: 'Reckon I can put my hands on a goods yard pass, n'all.'

At this, a look went between the two.

'I heard you speaking of the Camerons,' I said to the Blocker. 'I've seen those two about. .. One of 'em's nuts.'

The Blocker said:

'That bastard's in the morgue.'

'Which one?'

'The York morgue, you fucking idiot.'

'Which
brother
?' I said. 'They both caught it from what I heard.'

'They both caught it,' repeated Miles Hopkins.

Suddenly, he looked up at me:

'There's a job on,' he said.

I nodded back at him.

'I'm on for any mortal thing,' I said.

'There's a fellow you've to meet first’ said Hopkins. 'Big Coach, Nessgate. You know it?'

'I do that’ I said.

'Quarter to six day after tomorrow suit?'

'OK’ I said in a trembling tone, and the two of them walked off back the way we'd all come.

Standing there on the bridge, I realised that what had just passed matched firing an express for excitement. The differ­ence was that with this business, you were glad when it was over.

I looked back at the door of the Castle Howard, and the man whose knife I'd lifted walked out. He came up the bridge towards me, and it was his fifth step (which went more to the side than forwards) that told me he was canned.