The Lost Luggage Porter (31 page)

'You didn't want to speak of it directly . . . but you meant that I should find out, didn't you?'

'After a fashion.'

'Who was behind it?'

'Don't know, but I should think the Brains and the Block­er. They're a bad lot; they haunt the railway, and there've been other robberies similar.'

'Well, I reckon it
was
them,' I said, 'but they're not inde­pendent units, those blokes. Their names are Miles Hopkins and Mike ... summat. . . And they have a governor.'

'Big fellow? Well turned-out?'

'That's it.'

'I've seen him. He must be smarter than the Brains, even.'

'No. He leads by force of character . . . And he works by buying blokes off. Servants of the railway; put-up jobs, do you see? If you didn't have a hand in the lost-luggage theft, then it must have been your governor, Parkinson.'

Lund shook his head again.

'He was all out to find who had done it, because he knew he was suspected of the business himself . . . Parkinson's God-fearing. He wouldn't have done it.'

'You're God-fearing,' I said, 'and you did worse.'

Lund looked keenly at the fire, searching there.

'Parkinson takes a drink,' I said. 'He's church, not chapel. They have a freer hand there.' 'And he's not over-friendly to you.'

'We haven't passed a word since the robbery.'

'You're just trying not to throw blame. Parkinson's crooked, and that's all about it; otherwise how would they have opened the safe?'

'That safe came to us six month back from another place.'

'Where?'

Lund looked at me once again.

'Station Hotel.'

I thought of Mariner, the suicide. Perhaps he had a differ­ent connection to Sampson, another reason to regret his own actions.

Lund sat further forwards, watching the action of the wind on the fire. Did he suppose I lived here alone? He'd never asked after my wife, leave alone any child. But wives and children were nothing in his way. The wind was increasing outside, and I thought: we might be in for another windrush, and I knew that somehow all of this - the rising wind and the story that Lund was telling - was all the baby's doing.

Lund was saying to the fire:

'Parkinson knew me for a watchful sort; knew I had by heart the numbers that open the safe. He put word out that I'd done it; told all comers, and he honestly believed it, too.'

'And the Camerons got wind?'

'They let on they thought that I'd been involved somehow ... And they would ask me for money; said they would go to the Company brass or to the police if I didn't pay it over.'

'How much did you give them?'

'A good deal. They would follow me home after work, and they would have ten bob off me every time ... I couldn't risk losing my position.'

I looked at the cap beside him, at the space where the badge ought to have been. He'd be on rather less than a pound a week wages.

'That night, 26 January, I went down Leeman Road - try and throw them off. But they came after me, and at last I said I would give no more money.'

'And what did they say to that?'

'It was the straight-haired one did the talking. The other was . . . queer. The straight-haired one said, "Well then, it comes down to a fight." The other one, the mental-case... he grabbed me, started fairly strangling me, and the other pitched in. I reached into the bag, and the gun was in my hand. I saw the flash in the sky.'

'It was the planet Mercury,' I said, 'what did you think? Star in the bloody East?'

That checked him.

'You're over-keen on tales from the Scriptures,' I said. 'Have you ever thought that you might find an argument for owt in the Bible ... I mean, it
is
rather a jumble.'

'It is God's book,' said Lund, looking directly at me once more.'... It's the word of God, and if you want to call that a jumble, that's your look-out. I fired once, and that was the weird one settled, but then the other was at me with a knife.'

'You fired again?'

He nodded.

Half a mile off, another train went past but in the opposite direction, York-bound; the wind in reverse.

'Well,' I said, 'what do you reckon on doing now?'

'I must atone, and bear all the consequences.'

'You mean to own up?'

'Mean to?' he said. 'I've just done it.'

I shook my head.

'I'd best talk to the Chief about it. Chief Inspector Weather­ill, who's my governor ... Have you spoken with a minister?' 'We don't hold with confession’ he said. 'You should know that’ and for the first time since I'd known him, he seemed angry.

'I'm not chapel,' I said. 'I'm not anything in particular.'

'The minister would say I must admit to it. He could do nothing but.'

'You may very well swing for it.'

'I dare say. That's part of the penalty.'

'I'd have thought it was the whole of it.'

He shook his head.

'Only part - and the least part.'

'Why did you take me along to see the pick-pocketing on the London Express ... It would have been the Monday after, wouldn't it?'

'It was a start, but only half measures - because I could not quite see the way to go.'

'You knew I'd come to the lost-luggage business, and you knew I'd come to the Camerons' murder. You were setting me to trace out a crime that you'd committed.'

'Well’ he said. 'I thought you might get to it in time, but in the end, I've brought you to it myself.'

Silence for a space.

'Listen,' I said. 'You'll have heard about the robbery in the roundhouse. That was more of their doing. I fled to Paris with Sampson and Hopkins - had to do it to keep cover. While I was over there, Mike - the Blocker - spoke by tele­phone to Miles Hopkins, giving me away as a copper. Now who let on to Mike?'

'Parkinson.'

Silence again.

'He
must
be a wrong 'un,' I said. 'He saw me talking to you outside the Central Chapel. His church is St Saviour's, a little further along in the same street. He already knew you for a detective

'How?'

'Not sure of that. Did they know in the Institute?'

'The barmaid knew; I'd just had a set-to with the Camerons myself in there ... ended by cautioning the pair of 'em.'

Lund stood up from the sofa, cap in hand.

'Parkinson believed I was making complaints to you against him, letting on that he'd been behind it all. Monday last, he thought I was out on the platforms, but I was in the back of the office. I heard him telephoning the police station.'

'Tower Street?'

Lund nodded.

'"The proper lot", as he thinks. He wanted to know if he was being investigated, asked to speak to Constable ... can't recall the name. He's the copper who patrols past the police station.'

'That's the Five Pound Man ... and he's fucking bent.'

'Aye,' said Lund. 'I know he's not right.'

'That's why you're here,' I said.

'Later that day,' Lund went on, 'Parkinson had a confab with him. I reckon that's how your name was given out.'

'Name
and
address.'

'That's in the lost-property ledger as well. Parkinson would've seen no harm in passing it on.'

I tried to reason it out. On Sunday, Parkinson had seen me talking to Lund in St Saviourgate, and he knew I was a detective. On Monday, he telephoned Mr Five Pounds, the bent copper (although Parkinson did not know he was bent), in order to ask outright whether he was being hunted up for the lost-luggage burglary. Mr Five Pounds would then have asked him for all details of the detective men­tioned - meaning myself. He must then have spoken to the one member of the band left in York, namely Mike, who in turn spoke over the telephone to Miles Hopkins, when Hop­kins was in Calais.

Hopkins had then kept back from Valentine Sampson what Mike had told him. I wondered whether Mike and Hopkins had immediately connected the name Stringer with Allan Appleby. Perhaps not. Any description of me passed on by Parkinson would not have included the eye-glasses, for Parkinson had to my knowledge never seen me in them. Perhaps there had remained in Hopkins's mind a little doubt about the identity of Appleby and Stringer. He was not sure of this until he put his long finger clean through the specta­cle frames on the train to Paris, and by then he had decided to somehow make use of me.

I looked again at Lund; he was staring at me with bright eyes.

'Your missus is quite safe, is she? And the bairn? I saw you all trooping off to the house near the church.'

He missed nothing. Had he placed my
Railway Magazines
beside my bicycle to keep me away from Parkinson - the man ever on the lookout for treachery?

A thought came to me.

'Did Mike see where we all went?

Lund shook his head.

'Reckon he was long gone by then.'

Mike's heart had not been in the business. He was not one to act alone, in any case.

We waited, listening to the wind, neither with the energy to speak.

At last, Lund said: 'Is there a divinity shaping life?'

'Well, you ought to know, mate.'

Silence in the parlour; wind running on outside.

'... Hold on a tick,' I said, and I darted into the kitchen tofetch the bottle of beer I'd been in need of for some little while past. When I returned, Lund was gone, and the gun with him.

When I came to the station at eight the next morning (after my usual hour) I shot the Humber hard into the bicycle rack, for I had seen the Chief heading past the booking halls in his long coat. He looked, all of a sudden, like a music-hall turn: two men under a single giant coat, the one on the shoulders of the other.

We quickly fell in step together without any greeting, although I might have said, 'Sir', and the Chief might have said, 'You'll have had a time of it, then.' I started directly in on my story, having sat awake all night in the Backhouses' parlour (with the baby crying overhead, like a new variation on the sound of the wind), there working out a version that excluded Lund and his confession, because I had decided I would not see him hanged for the killing of the Camerons.

'The job happened directly, sir,' I said, as we went on to Platform Four, the Chief showing his warrant card to the ticket man, '. . . straightaway on the Sunday night with no further plotting.'

'Don't I bloody know it,' said the Chief, turning left, so that we were approaching the Police Office. The Chief's big, prize-fighting face looked raw. His nose was
not
the same as when I'd seen him last, although his 'tache was perfect as ever - the one part of his features to have been drawn with a ruler.

'You were sent for, I know. I saw you shooting at us.'

'What about the bastard shooting at
me?
He has it coming, I bloody tell you. Where is he this bloody
minute?'

The Chief walked on fast, and we were now passing the Police Office. The bay platform, number Three, was empty in front of it, the Fish Special having long since come and gone.

'The one firing was Valentine Sampson.'

'Joseph Howard Vincent,' said the Chief, striding on, not at all surprised. Evidently the two were one, as far as he was concerned.

'I never knew you were passed to use a gun, sir,' I said. 'Do you have a special certificate?'

'What I have is the key to the bloody armoury cupboard.'

'I saw you lying down in the four-foot, sir - thought you were done for.'

No reply to that from the Chief, for of course he'd lost dig­nity by playing dead in the soot and muck that lay between the rails. I wondered what had become of his moustache during that episode. We walked on. Beyond the south end of the platform stood the roundhouse, where the whole thing had gone off two days before. An engine in steam stood out­side, like a peaceful cottage with a fire in the grate, and it was as though nothing that had happened there mattered in the least.

'What became of the goods clerk? Roberts?'

'He's said a little.'

'Rum is that,' I said, 'because he did nothing
but
talk beforehand . .. How are his hands?'

'Burnt,' said the Chief. 'What happened there?'

We had changed course to the left, and were now going down the stone staircase next to the Left Luggage Office.

'Sampson pitched hot metal at him,' I said as the weak light of the station left us,'.. . from the cut safe. ''Right’ said the Chief. It was just another occurrence to him.

The sound of our boots changed as we came off the stairs and began walking along the rough, dark passage that led to the underneath of Platform Fourteen, the furthest limit of the station. Only three gas lamps lit the way, and they were for some reason numbered 1, 2 and 3.