The Railway Viaduct (11 page)

‘Would they?’ said Filton.

‘What better way to take suspicion off themselves than by accusing someone else of the crimes? It’s an old trick, Mr Filton.’

‘Cunning devils!’

‘We played a trick on them tonight,’ recalled Brassey. ‘It was all your doing, Inspector. You’ll have to meet my wife. Her French is almost as fluent as yours. Have dinner with us some time.’

Colbeck smiled. ‘That’s very kind of you, Mr Brassey.’

‘Sergeant Leeming can join us as well.’

‘Only when he’s finished the task he was set.’

‘He was very brave to take it on.’

‘Victor has already proved his worth. I just hope that he’s not the victim of his own success.’

‘In what way?’ said Filton.

‘Those men we turned back earlier on will know that they were betrayed by someone,’ said Colbeck. ‘They’ll want his name.’

‘Then I hope they never discover it.’

‘No,’ said Brassey with a shiver. ‘I wouldn’t like to be caught out in the middle of all those Irishmen. They have hot tempers and they don’t take prisoners.’

‘Sergeant Leeming will have to be careful.’

‘Extremely careful, Aubrey.’

‘He’s done this kind of work before,’ said Colbeck, ‘though he’s never dealt with navvies. As you told me earlier, Mr Brassey, they’re a race apart. My hope is that Victor doesn’t stick out too much. After tonight, some of those men will be desperate for revenge.’

‘It must have been you, Father Slattery,’ he said, glowing with rage.

‘It was not, Pierce – on my word of honour.’

‘You betrayed your own fucking countrymen.’

‘That’s something I’d never do,’ vowed the priest, ‘and I’m insulted that you should even suggest it.’

‘They knew we were coming.’

‘And I’m eternally grateful that they did. Otherwise, you and your drunken ruffians would have committed the most unholy crime.’

‘We were fighting on Mr Brassey’s behalf.’

‘Try telling him that.’

‘We were,’ said Shannon, vehemently. ‘The Frenchies are trying to wreck this railway so that we lose the contract. That way, they can take over. The bastards want us all out of their country.’

‘If you conduct yourselves as you did tonight, I’m not surprised. When drink is taken,’ said Slattery, ‘you turn into wild beasts. You don’t belong in civilised company. Truly, I
was ashamed of you all.’

They were in the Irish camp, talking by the light of a lantern outside one of the shacks. Most of those who had marched with Pierce Shannon had either gone off to bed or started drinking again. Shannon himself had waited until Father Slattery had reappeared. It was all he could do to keep his hands off the priest.

‘I still say that it was you, Father,’ he accused.

‘Then you’d best bring a Holy Bible so that I can swear on it. That won’t mean much to you, godforsaken heathen that you are, but it means all the world to me.’ He put his face close to that of the other. ‘I did not tell a soul about your plan.’

‘But you did know about it.’

‘Of course – thanks to you. To get support, you told everybody you could. That’s how it must have leaked out. The person to blame is you and that jabbering mouth of yours. It never stops. Someone overheard you and reported it straight away.’

‘Is that what Mr Brassey told you?’

‘Yes,’ replied Slattery. ‘He called me to his office and said that he’d received information that there was to be an attack on the French camp. He asked me if I knew who was behind it.’

Shannon was disturbed. ‘Did you tell him?’

‘Of course not.’

‘How do I know that?’

‘Because I give you my word. If I’d named you and the other ringleaders, you’d all have been on the first boat back home. If nothing else does, that should prove my loyalty to my nation.’

There was an extended pause while Shannon pondered.

‘Thank you, Father,’ he mumbled at length.

‘I named no names,’ said Slattery. ‘Tell that to the others.’

‘I will.’

‘And don’t invent any more hare-brained schemes like this.’

‘It wasn’t me that thought of it.’ Shannon lowered his voice. ‘What else did Mr Brassey say?’

‘Only that you were mad to turn on the French. It could’ve meant him losing the contract altogether. As it is, the delays have cost him a lot of money. Did you know that there are time penalties of five thousand pounds a month if work is behind schedule?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘Well, there are. Mr Brassey showed me the contract.’

‘Did he give you the name of the traitor?’

‘No, but I still think he was called Pierce Shannon. You opened your mouth once too often.’

‘Everybody knew that something was afoot tonight,’ said Shannon, ‘but only those who were coming knew the fucking time and place. Somehow, Mr Brassey got hold of those details.’

‘God works in mysterious ways.’

‘This was nothing to do with God. We’ve got a spy in our ranks.’

‘Then you should thank him – he saved your jobs.’

‘And what if these bloody raids go on, Father? What if we get another explosion or some more damage in the tunnel? What if someone starts a real fire next time? What would happen to our fucking jobs then? Answer me that.’ Shannon was breathing heavily. ‘And while you’re at it,’ he continued, angrily, ‘you can answer another bloody question as well.’

‘If you could phrase it more sweetly, maybe I will.’

‘Since
you
didn’t betray us, who, in the bowels of Christ, did?’

Victor Leeming had never spent such an uncomfortable night before. He was, by turns, appalled by what he saw, nauseated by what he smelt and disgusted that human beings could live in such a way. The Irish camp consisted of ragged tents, rickety wooden huts and ramshackle cottages built out of stone, timber, thatch and clods of earth. In such dwellings, there was no trace of mortar to hold things together. Gaps in the roof and walls would, in due course, let in wind, rain and snow. Vermin could enter freely. It was grim and cheerless. Leeming had seen farmyard animals with better accommodation.

When he had been invited to go to the flimsy shack where Liam Kilfoyle slept, he did not realise that he would be sleeping on flagstones and sharing a room with five other people. Two of them were women, and Leeming was shocked when the men beside them each mounted their so-called wives and took their pleasure to the accompaniment of raucous female laughter. It was worlds away from the kind of tender union that Leeming and Estelle enjoyed. Simply being in the same room as the noisy, public, unrestrained rutting made him feel tainted. Kilfoyle, by contrast, was amused by it all. As he lay beside Leeming, he whispered a secret.

‘The fat one is called Bridget,’ he said, grinning inanely. ‘I have her sometimes when Fergal goes to sleep. You can fuck her as well, if you want to.’

Leeming was sickened by the thought. ‘No, thank you.’

‘It’s quite safe. Fergal never wakes up.’

‘I’m too tired, Liam.’

‘Please yourself. I’ll have Bridget later on.’

Leeming wondered how many more nights he would have to endure such horror. During his days in uniform, he had raided brothels in some of the most insalubrious areas of London but he had seen nothing to equal this. He could not understand how anyone could bear to live in such conditions. What he did admire about the navvies was their brute strength. After one day, his hands were badly blistered and he was aching all over, yet the others made light of the exhausting work. Navvies had incredible stamina. Leeming could not match it for long. To take his mind off his immediate discomfort, he tried to probe for information.

‘Liam?’

‘Yes?’

‘What if we were wrong?’

‘Wrong about what?’

‘The French,’ said Leeming, quietly. ‘Suppose that it wasn’t them who set off that explosion?’

‘It had to be them, Victor.’

‘Yes, but suppose – only suppose, mind you – that it wasn’t? If it was someone from this camp, for instance, who’d be the most likely person to have done it?’

‘What a stupid question!’

‘Think it through,’ advised Leeming.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, it has to be someone who knows how to handle gunpowder, for a start. It’s very easy to blow yourself up with that stuff. Is there anyone here who’s had any experience of blasting rock before? I heard that the gunpowder was stolen from near here.’

‘It was.’

‘Who could have taken it?’

‘Some bleeding Frenchie.’

‘It’s a long way to come from their camp.’

‘Yes,’ said Kilfoyle slowly, as if the idea had never occurred to him. ‘You’re fucking right, Victor.’

‘So who, in this camp, knows how to handle gunpowder?’

‘Not me, I can tell you that.’

‘Somebody must have had experience.’

‘So?’

‘I just wondered who it might be, that’s all.’

‘He needs catching, whoever the bastard is.’

‘Have you any idea at all who it could be?’

‘No.’

‘Think hard, Liam.’

‘Don’t ask me.’ He fell silent and cupped a hand to his ear so that he could hear more clearly. A loud snore came from the other side of the room. ‘That’s Fergal,’ he said with snigger. ‘Fast asleep. I’m off to shag his wife.’ He sat up. ‘Shall I tell Bridget you’ll be over to take your turn after me?’

Leeming’s blushes went unseen in the dark.

Caleb Andrews was late getting home that night. When he came off duty at Euston, he went for a drink in a public house frequented by railwaymen and tried to bolster his confidence by beating his fireman at several games of draughts. His winnings were all spent on beer. As he rolled home to Camden, therefore, he was in a cheerful mood. His supremacy on the draughts board had been restored and several pints of beer had given him a sense of well-being. He let himself into his house and found his daughter working by the light of an oil lamp.

‘Still up, Maddy?’ he asked.

‘Yes, Father,’ she replied. ‘I just wanted to finish this.’

He looked over her shoulder. ‘What is it – a portrait of me?’

‘No, it’s the Sankey Viaduct.’

‘Is it? Bless my soul!’

Since his vision was impaired after so much alcohol, he needed to put his face very close to the paper in order to see the drawing. Even then he had difficulty picking out some of the pencil lines.

‘It’s good, Maddy.’

‘You’ve been drinking,’ she said. ‘I can smell it on your breath.’

‘I was celebrating.’

‘Celebrating what?’

‘I won ten games of draughts in a row.’

‘Are you ready for another game with me?’

‘No, no,’ he said, backing away. ‘I’ll not let you take advantage of your poor father when he can’t even see straight. But why are you drawing the Sankey Viaduct? You’ve never even seen it.’

‘Robert described it to me.’

‘I could have done that. I’ve been over it.’

‘Yes, Father, but you were driving an engine at the time. You’ve never seen the viaduct from below as Robert has. According to him, it was a painting rather like this that will help to solve the murder.’

‘I don’t see how.’

Madeleine put her pencil aside and got up from her chair. She explained how Ambrose Hooper had witnessed the body being hurled over the viaduct, and how he had duly recorded
the moment in his watercolour of the scene. She felt privileged that Colbeck had confided the information to her. What both she and the inspector knew was that the murder victim had been on his way to an assignation, but it was something she would not confide to her father. Caleb Andrews would have been alarmed to hear that she had been involved in a police investigation. More worrying from Madeleine’s point of view was that fact that he was likely to pass on the information over a drink with his railway colleagues. Discretion was unknown to him.

‘Why do
you
want to draw the Sankey Viaduct?’ he wondered.

‘I was just passing an idle hour.’

‘You’re never idle, Maddy. You take after me.’

‘Robert told me so much about it that I wanted to put it down on paper. It’s not something I’d ever expect to sell. I was just trying to do what Mr Hooper did and reconstruct the crime.’

‘The real crime was committed by the guard on that train,’ said Andrews with passion. ‘He should have kept his eyes open. If he’d seen that body being thrown from the train, he could have jumped on to the platform at the next stop and caught the killer before he could sneak away.’

‘But the guard didn’t see a thing, Father.’

‘That’s my point.’ Swaying uneasily, he put a hand on the back of a chair to steady himself. ‘I’m for bed, Maddy. What about you?’

‘I’ll be up soon.’

‘Next time you speak to Inspector Colbeck, tell him to consult me. I’ve got a theory about this crime – lots of them, in fact.’

‘I know,’ she said, fondly. ‘I’ve heard them all.’

Madeleine kissed her father on the cheek then helped him to the staircase. Holding the banister, he went slowly up the steps. She returned immediately to a drawing that she had embarked on in the first instance because it kept Robert Colbeck in her mind. It was not meant to be an accurate picture of the viaduct. Madeleine had departed quite radically from the description that she had been given. She now added some features that were purely imaginary.

Using her pencil with a light touch, she removed the brook and canal that ran beneath the viaduct by drowning them completely in the foaming waves of the English Channel. On one side of the viaduct, she drew a sketch of a railway station and wrote the name Dover above it. On the other, she pencilled in a tall, elegant man in a frock coat and top hat. England and France had been connected in art. The drawing was no longer her version of what had happened to Gaston Chabal. It was a viaduct between her and Robert Colbeck, built with affection and arching its way across the sea to carry her love to him. As she put more definition and character into the tiny portrait of the detective, she wondered how he was faring in France and hoped that they would soon be together again.

Thomas Brassey did not only expect his employees to work long hours, he imposed the same strict regimen on himself. Accordingly, he arrived on site early that morning to discover that Robert Colbeck was there before him. The inspector was carrying a newspaper.