The Lost Luggage Porter (20 page)

'I went under an operation,' said the man, sitting back down on the sofa.

'He has a want of strength on the insides,' said the woman, as if that added anything to the general understanding. All the Lunds had this in common: riddled with illness, and very vague about it. The man was smiling at me again, as though he knew I was looking without success for the spirit bottle that lay somewhere to hand. Lund, at the foot of the stairs, was holding his hand in an unfamiliar way: moving it across his mouth, as though feeling the flesh after a narrow shave. He wanted to be out of the house, I could tell. He offered no greeting, but said, while moving across the room:

'I'm off to chapel - want to walk along with me?'

I nodded to the pair on the sofa and stepped out of the door after Lund, closing it behind me. It was a relief to be back in the open air, although the street looked worse, now that I'd seen the inside of one of the houses.

'No one comes to visit our house,' said Lund, walking along in the direction from which I'd come. 'You must have had all on to find the place.'

'You told me the street once, if you remember’ I said, 'and then I saw your dad.'

He shook his head as he walked on.

'That's not your dad?'

'That's Mr Pickering. He's Mother's friend.'

'Do they work?'

'Not over much.'

'Then yours is the only wage coming in?'

'We have a little from the Chapel Poor Fund besides ...'

We were back in Fossgate now, and there was a little life both inside and outside the pubs. A kid on the opposite side of the road who was wearing boots that were far too big for him (or just had outsize feet) was waving his cap at me. I tipped my own back at him, and he did a little dance with an evil expression on his face, as if saying: 'I've just bagged another idiot.' Looking away from him, I saw a man barring our way while nodding his head, thoughtful-like, as if to say: 'Now what do we have here?' There were tattoos on the backs of his hands, the leftovers of long-lost high spirits. We skirted around him easily enough, but Lund said: 'You're a little out of the tourist track here, you know. You should keep your eyes open.'

The sound of church bells, calling from the centre of the city, was being ignored by everyone except Lund. They acted on him like a capstan, winding him in. He was walking with an elastic stride, and not coughing. He seemed surer of him­self than before though he still looked like a scarecrow - a stick in a suit, and the blackness of his suit made his thin head look whiter. He was the undertaker and corpse all in one.

'I've read about the robbery at your place,' I said, 'at the Lost Luggage Office, I mean.'

Lund walked on, saying nothing.

'Do you know anything of that?' I asked.

'It might have been done by the lot you're after,' he said.

'Why did you not bring the matter up, though?'

'Because I know nowt about it.'

'You must have known I'd get round to it, though.'

'I thought you'd get to it in time,' he said, and I had the idea that he was baiting me.

'When you gave me the little tour of your office, you never showed me the safe,' I said.

'It's kept out of the way,' he said. 'I'm asked not to show it to strangers. By rights, anybody who's lost valuables must wait on the other side of the counter.'

'Whoever did it knew the combination of the safe’ I said. 'I reckon it's a put-up job like all the others, which is a bad look-out for you and your governor Parkinson.'

Lund said nothing.

'Were you not questioned over it?'

'There were some questions, aye.'

'And what did they amount to?'

'Nowt.'

'Who asked 'em?'

'Station Police Office bloke.'

'Name of Weatherill?'

'Shillito’ said Lund, turning about to face me.

We were at the top of Fossgate by now, just by the Blue Boar.

'I may have to run you in’ I said, 'you and Parkinson both.'

Lund moved his hand to his face in that new way of his.

'But to do that,' he said, 'you must first... come out of hid­ing, so to speak.'

One idea was strong on me: this was a threat.
Could
it be? Lund had pitched me into this secret work, and by his knowledge of what I was about, he had power not only over my investigations but also - at a stretch - over whether I lived or died. Across the road, a happy crowd was forming before the mighty pillars of the Centenary Chapel: ordinary- looking York folk revealed at that moment as Wesleyan Methodists. All across the crowd, hats were being lifted in greeting like flaps on the tops of organ pipes; and still more came, all on foot - there were no carriages, as you might expect to see outside a church of a Sunday morning. There might have been hundreds in the street, waiting not just for the Centenary Chapel, but the other chapels - and the one church - that stood in St Saviourgate besides.

'Go
every
Sunday, do you?'

'Every
day,'
said Lund. He was directly opposite me, but looking away. 'Past ten year . . . only missed once in all that time.'

He hurriedly looked away, just as a gust of wind struck us. Then, with his head still averted, he added:

'Went again next morning, mind you.'

'The prodigal son,' I said, glancing down at the book in his hand, and added, 'What's that?' pointing at it.

He looked down at the book. 'Prize for regular atten­dance.'

I read the title on the spine:
The Great If, and Its Greater Answer.

'Looks rather dry,' I said.

'It asks for a little thinking,' said Lund, looking up, and meeting my eyes for an instant.

Behind him, the doors of the chapel were opening.

'Read it in the services, do you?' I said.

'Get away,' he said, and now there might just have been a small smile. After a short pause, he said: 'I could have had
A Historical Geography of the Holy Land
but decided against.'

'I en't bloody surprised,' I said.

His eyes flickered and closed again and for a longer time, which seemed to seal the whiteness of his face, making him look for an instant like a white pole, a ninepin. He was, per­haps, keeping a cough down.

When he opened his eyes again, he said:

'We must be born again, you know.'

I made no reply, but wondered whether it was the church bells ringing out all across the city that had brought this on.

Lund said, 'Well, I'm off in now,' and moved away, begin­ning to make his way through all that stack of folks, still coughing, and the cough seemed to take all his attention,

requiring him to remain outside, leaning against one of the mighty pillars, as everybody else filed in through the doors. Presently, he mastered his cough, but for all his chapel-going ardour of five minutes before, he just stayed leaning against the pillar and looking down at his boots. I watched until he entered the chapel, which he did just as the first hymn struck up, and with a half-glance in my direction.

'The Great If,' I thought, finally walking away from the top of Fossgate . . . that was just about right.

It was getting on for ten o'clock; I was in Coney Street. I touched the eye-glasses resting on my nose, and once again pictured Allan Appleby. He'd taken his dinner-time pint, maybe at the Fox Inn on Holgate. It being a Sunday, he might've been the only solitary drinker in there. He'd have drunk while looking down at his boots, adjusting his specs occasionally; he'd have gone back for a couple more after his tea. Then he'd have walked over Holgate Bridge, staring down at the tracks as they divided towards passenger station or goods station. On a Sunday there wouldn't be much action: the odd engine dawdling along with a rake of empties, its col­umn of steam toppling forwards rather than flowing behind. And if an engine had gone underneath the bridge just at that moment, and Allan had caught a belt of smoke and steam, he wouldn't have flinched, but just walked on, being a man used to small setbacks of that nature.

He would turn left at the end of Blossom Street, entering Station Road, with the Institute and the Lost Luggage Office to his left, and he would walk up the incline that took him over the sidings leading into the Old Station. He would be a little anxious on approaching Tanner Row, but quite resigned to going along with whatever desperate scheme was being got up in there. He had nothing else in prospect, after all.

By the time I brought my thoughts of Allan Appleby to a close I was at the door of the Grapes, where I was confront­ed with three further doors. The decorated glass in the panel of the first read 'Snug', the second 'Sitting Room', the third 'Smoking Room'. Where would Valentine Sampson and Miles Hopkins be? They'd want to be
snug,
they'd want to be
sitting,
and Sampson at least would want to be
smoking.
I tried first the Snug, and there they were - it was quite a thrill to have guessed right first time, like winning a prize in the tombola.

I joined them at the table, to be greeted with nods. The three of us were the only ones in the Snug. Red leather benches ran around the white walls; brass table legs shone in the half-dark. The place was like a courtroom or a first-class railway compartment of the best sort. There were many empty glasses on the table before Sampson and Hopkins. Sampson still looked like a fashion plate in his kingly way, but was canned, or on the way at least. As for Hopkins, some of his hair seemed to have fallen out since last time - making me feel that I wanted to pull the remainder out, have done with it - but his eyes danced as before. He was a man always in the middle of some game I didn't quite understand. He was fiddling with a pocketbook - I could guess how he'd come by it - for he always had to be using his marvellous hands. But things were different this time somehow. I hadn't been offered a drink, for a start.

'Where's Mike?' I said.

Nothing was said, and I thought: they've done the bugger in.

'Mike has to watch how he goes,' said Miles Hopkins slowly. 'He's not fancy-free like the rest of us, you know.'

'How come?'

Sampson was staring straight ahead, not smiling.

'He's just come off ten years hard. He can't be pulled again.'

Didn't stop him assisting in the taking of pocketbooks from Platform Fourteen, I thought. Was he scared? I didn't like the thought of being on for something that he'd jibbed at.

Sampson's face was changing. A smile coming from far away.

'Well, Allan old lad,' he said when it had finally arrived, 'it's a go.'

Miles Hopkins was watching me very carefully.

'The great doing?' I said.

'The very thing.'

'You said there were more movables to collect first,' I said in a very peevish little voice, because the rough sort of plan I'd made with the Chief was now destroyed.

'So I did,' said Sampson, 'and they've
been
collected. You see, mate, we were waiting for a particular circumstance before we could set to.'

'Waiting for the circumstance to
stop,
that is,' said Hopkins, who then took a drink, one laughing eye watching me over the rim of his glass.

'What?' I said.

'The strike,' said Sampson. 'You'll have read of it in the
Press
or heard of it somehow.'

'You having such a good knowledge of railways,' put in Hopkins.

'I
have
heard of it,' I said.

'Unofficial-like, it was,' said Sampson. 'Some blokes in the Associated ... Amalgamated Society of summat or other. The tough nuts, the diehards. Some bloke was reduced in position for no good reason, and they stuck by him. Good socialists, those fellows are, and I raise my fucking glass to 'em.'

He did not do that, however. Instead, he sat back in his chair, and said:

'But I'm still going to steal all the silly fuckers' money.'

Miles Hopkins was still watching me as Sampson rose to his feet and, striding across the room, collected his overcoat from the door back. We were done with the Grapes, I realised, although not done with drinking, because there was a bottle of whisky rolling in Sampson's pocket.

Hopkins was rising to his feet too, his coat already on.

I thought: I can stop this. Three words will stop it: Joseph Howard Vincent. Or perhaps only two: Edwin Lund. But I don't say them, and was instead swept along behind Hopkins and Sampson. We were striding through the door and now we were out into York, dark, rain and cold. It could not have been any other way.

'It's coming on to rain,' said Sampson, walking on in his jaunty way. I hurried to keep up, even though I'd rather have put a hundred miles between myself and him.

You could forgive Sampson remarking on the state of the weather - it had evidently been some time since he'd been out of a public house. Inside the Old Station, on the other side of Tanner Row, an engine was in steam, like a memory, moving goods into or out of one of the stores built on top of the long- dead passenger platforms. They were secret, shameful exchanges carried on in the Old Station. Just then, it struck me that Hopkins wasn't with us. I looked back, and he was fifty yards behind, talking to a stranger: youngish and well set-up. Only... I'd a suspicion I'd seen that stranger's face before. As I looked back, so did Samspon, and Hopkins broke away from the stranger, walking fast to catch us up.