'Where's that hardened villain Clegg, then?' he enquired, grinning. 'We have a very comfortable cell waiting for him.' And he pointed towards a stout door at the end of the room, indicating at the same time an old fellow surrounded not by a wooden screen but by a barricade of filing cabinets. I knew him straightaway for the Middlesbrough equivalent of Wright, the chief clerk.
'Clegg's known to this office, is he?' I said, removing my cap.
Ralph Williams smiled slowly. 'Well, I can't say he is.'
'I'm expecting to run into him come opening time at the Cape of Good Hope,' I said.
'The Cape?' he said, thoughtfully. 'An ironman, is he?'
'Aye,' I said. 'Works at Hudson's.'
'You'll be wanting a constable to go with you,' he said, which was exactly what I'd been hoping he wouldn't say. 'I think we have a man spare, if you'll hold on a moment.'
But before he could turn around and call to one of the uniformed men, I heard myself say, 'No bother. I'm sure I'll manage.'
'You'll have your whistle about you, I suppose?'
Once more that slow smile - which made it very difficult for me to gauge the true level of any danger waiting in the Cape of Good Hope.
Having spared the Middlesbrough office the inconvenience of lending me a constable, I felt entitled to ask a favour.
'I'm curious to know whether a photographer reported a camera stolen about this time last year. It might have happened somewhere on the railway territory.'
'And this is touching on -?'
Williams was making circles with his right hand, as though winding up his memory.
'- Paul Peters,' I said.
'Yes, the body turned up at Stone Farm,' he said, nodding.
'He was a photographer,' I said. 'He generally carried two cameras, but suddenly he had one, and I think he'd been in Middlesbrough in the meantime. I'm told somebody had one of his cameras away while he was up here, just before he copped it in the woods.'
Williams kept silence for a second, before saying:
'They're all luck, some blokes, aren't they? Billy's the man for that,' he added, pointing towards the clerk at the far end. 'We'll ask him to hunt up the crime reports for last year.'
But old Billy was listening with ears cocked, and by the time I'd walked down to his end of the office, he was already at it. He was the Middlesbrough equivalent of Wright, but he smoked pipes instead of eating oranges. There were two on his desk and one in his mouth as he fished the right file out of a drawer. It was labelled 'Crime Reports, December 1908'.
I looked through 'Stolen Albert', 'Stolen pony', 'Assault', another 'Assault', 'Damaged fencing', 'Trespass' and then about ten 'Drunk' or 'Drunk and Riotous', all threaded together with green string. 'Stolen Camera and Assault' came right after, as I'd somehow known it would, in this most obliging office. Complainant: Paul Peters, professional photographer.
In the afternoon of Thursday 3 December, Peters had been set upon by two men at Spring Street, which was evidently close to Middlesbrough station. He had not been badly hurt - that would come later - but one of two cameras he carried had been stolen. It was noted that Peters had been unable to provide a useful description of his assailants except that they wore dirty working men's clothes. The report had been made out by a Constable Robinson. I pointed to the name, and asked Billy if the man was about. He shook his head.
'Patrolling the line just presently,' he said.
Well, at least he wasn't dead, as everybody else connected to the Peters business seemed to be. I thanked Billy and signalled thanks to DS Williams, who was now working the office telephone; I then quit the station bounds for Middlesbrough town centre.
The streets were all at right angles, as though built quickly to the simplest plan, and all carried very honest and straightforward names: Council Street, Corporation Road, New Street. All was new-looking and spruce in the bright winter light, for the sun had emerged at last, but a price had been paid for the forcing of this town, and I saw it in the shape of the giant, red-smoking blast furnaces to the east. It was heaven and hell, with the station and the high-level lines leading in and out the barrier between the two.
As I headed away from the station and its viaducts, the sound of a very majestic arrival made me turn back around.
It crossed the viaduct like bloody royalty: the Gateshead Infant, so called because of its incredible, titanic size. There'd been twenty of the beauties built - V Class Atlantics. You never saw them south of Darlington. For ten seconds in imagination, I was up there on the footplate, closing the regulator for the cruise into the station. I tried to recall from my firing days the braking procedure for an engine of that size, and realised in panic that I could not.
I turned about to face the river wind, the Cape of Good Hope and the man Clegg.
Chapter Nine
The Cape of Good Hope was a corner house looking over a wide road. On the other side, high metal gates opened on to an empty stretch of scrub that made a clear channel between two congested parts of the ironworks. The scrub led to the docks and the sea, where stood another infant of the north: a mighty, gleaming steamship, backwards-sloping chimneys giving a great impression of sleekness and speed even though it stood stationary.
I pushed through the door of the Cape, which was not at all the smokehole I'd expected but a wide, peaceful place, church-like with a window of red and green painted glass on three sides.
I was closely watched, as I crossed the threshold, by half a dozen blokes who all had their backs to the bar. Three sat on high stools, three stood. They were arranged somewhat like a football team posing for a photograph, and I reckoned this was half of Middlesbrough Vulcan Athletic standing before me. But they looked just as much like hospital patients as footballers: coats worn askew, shirts buttoned up anyhow or not buttoned . . . and the giant in the centre with the bandaged hand was Clegg.
'Here's trouble,' one of the men said, as I stepped over to the bar.
None moved as I fished in my pockets for gold, and for my warrant card. As I held up the card, one of the blokes cut away from the bar, and he was off - out through the front door. I watched him go. Well, I was a sneak and a spy, the enemy of working men.
I asked for a pint, and the barman broke from the gang to serve me. He was friendly enough, but my ale came in a glass where all the other blokes had pewters.
'Donald Clegg,' I said to the centre forward, removing my bowler and holding up my warrant card. 'There's a complaint of aggravated assault laid against you.'
'Aggravated now, is it?' He stood, and walked over to give me his right hand, which was the one bandaged.
'Go easy,' he said, as I gave him my own.
It was not normal to shake hands with a man you were about to arrest.
'How did you come by that, Mr Clegg?' I asked him, and he was unwinding the none-too-clean linen as I spoke. He showed me the wound, as the other blokes drank on thoughtfully behind. The back of Clegg's wide hand was a black mass.
'Boot studs,' he said.
'Whose boots, mate?' I enquired, but of course I knew the answer before he spoke.
'Shillito's fucking boots.'
'Turns out he's a copper,' said one of the blokes from the bar - he wore a beard, whereas all the others had moustaches. You didn't reckon to see footballers with beards.
'If it was Shillito came at you,' I said, 'why did you crown his mate?'
