Murder At Deviation Junction

    'He's not going on,' said Bowman. 'He's done with trains.'

    He cut diagonally across the square that lay beyond the station, and walked into the Station Hotel. A five- second battering from the icy wind, and we were in the hotel ourselves - soft carpets, soft fires, beautiful warmth. There was a bar or lounge directly opposite the reception desk. The man who looked like Sanderson was carefully folding his coat, and draping it over the arm of a chair. As we looked on, a waiter approached and asked to take his coat. The man refused with a quick headshake. He then said one very short word to the waiter, which, as I worked out a moment later - when the waiter returned with a silver tray - must have been 'tea'. When the waiter placed the tea before him, the man did not seem at first to notice it, but then he took the silver tweezers, and moved four sugar cubes from the sugar bowl to the cup. He drank one cup, stockinged legs akimbo. There was more in the pot, but he left it. He did not smoke.

    He then repeatedly shot his cuffs while sitting in the seat: left, right, left again. There must be just the right amount of shirt linen extending beyond his country coat sleeve. His clothes were not quite of the best quality, I thought. He was not, by his looks, a rich man, and there was something tired about his clothes, as if he tyrannised over them.

    He now fell to stroking his moustache, coaching it forward, as though conjuring for himself an ever-longer top lip. Suddenly he stood up, put some silver on the table and walked smartly out of the hotel. Another blow in the square - where stood the snow-topped statue of some kilty fellow from times past - and we followed the man once again through the booking hall of the station, and on to a bay platform. Here another short train waited - but there was a powerful engine at its head. I sent Bowman to buy biscuits and water bottles and climbed up. As I did so, the man looked for the first time directly at me. He sat right by the door. His head was tilted back, and he inhaled slowly through his white 'tache as he saw me, as if to say, 'Now you're a bit over-familiar. What's your game?'

    I took a seat two along. It was a Highland Railway carriage, flimsy as a cricket pavilion, and with no compartments but open seating - and with no beating either. Bowman came up by the same door, and gave not a glance at the man but coloured up even more deeply as he brushed past him. He carried a paper bag in which were bottles of mineral water, bread and cheese.

    'You might've picked up a couple of footwarmers,' I said with a grin, to which Bowman made no reply. He had barely spoken since Edinburgh. Only two other passengers joined the carriage - two men. They were discussing church matters but were not vicars. Their accents made them sound mechanical, as though driven by clockwork: the words 'rector' and 'kirk' came round again and again. I could only see the backs of their heads, and it bothered me that they did not move more.

    We came out of Inverness by a great grey stretch of water. A single ship sat miserably in the middle of it. The line was single, and there were many pauses for other trains to pass, and many stations. We heard them before we saw them, for we approached to the sound of a bell rung by hand by the stationmaster. I recall the strangest of the names: Beauly, Muir of Ord, Foulis, Nigg. It was odd to see ordinary-looking - by which I mean English-looking - working people standing about near such station nameplates. Not that there were many outdoors in the sideways-flying sleet. All the stations were church-like, made of heavy stone. They had what looked like low fonts projecting from the station houses, and I fancied these must be for the dogs to drink from. The stations were not meant to look beautiful; they were meant not to be blown away.

    One of them would come up, and it was as if the town supposed to go along with it had been mislaid. Or there might be a few buildings - more of a camp than a town. There was a sawmill by one station; a blacksmith's by another; sidings here and there, with horses being loaded; some wagons with a word written in a giant letters - 'HERRING'; great tanks of lamp oil. Well, the people went to where the fuel was. Every platform showed a simple sign with one arrow pointing in a direction marked 'Inverness', and another marked 'Wick and Thurso'; no 'up' or 'down' here. We were way beyond all that.

    At most stations, one or two climbed up into our carriage, and one or two got off. Our man remained; the two ministers remained. I wanted as many up as possible, for every person aboard was a guarantee against the man loosing off a bullet from his pistol.

    We were now somewhere beyond a spot called Dingwall. When would the bloody man get off, and what would I do when he did? I had no notion. We'd been on the go for more than an hour. I looked at Bowman, and he seemed to be asleep. Had he even noticed the great mountains to our left? You could mistake them at first for great banks of clouds, until you worked out that they were not moving. I peered forwards: our quarry sat still as before. I could see the top of his wide cap.

    One of the ministers was saying, 'It's all to the guid, it's all to the guid . . .' and I cursed his ignorance. It was not all to the good.

    I turned again to the window. The sound came of another bell floating through the sleet, another station rolling into view. A curiosity on the platform: a smoking stove attached to the base of a water tower - against ice, as I supposed.

    There came a clattering of a door in the next carriage as I read a poster on the station wall: 'Further North! Further North! Fortnightly Passes for Visiting the Northern Highlands', and then, underneath, in smaller print: 'Summer Only'.

    I looked at the seat opposite; Bowman was eyeing me from the depths of his coat. The turned-up collar had skewed his glasses.

    'Who comes up here in winter?' I asked him.

    'Juggins like us,' he muttered.

    Huddled in his coat, he did not meet my eye; he had hardly the will to speak. He hadn't taken on alcoholic fuel for a long while, and he had now reached the point of being made tired by the cold - which was a dangerous point. He belonged in an office, not a Highland train; an office or a pub, of course.

    I looked out at two winter diehards in the fields, following a hay wagon as we moved on.

    I was almost asleep myself when a jolt of the train brought me up sharply. Bowman was eyeing me again.

    'The wild sea disclosed,' he murmured, and he nodded to the right. Great grey waves were rising and coming at us. The line was practically on the beach.

    'When will he bloody get off?' I said, nodding along towards our friend; but Bowman had gone back into his own world.

    I had hoped the man might step down at Helmsdale. This was a seaport with a slightly larger station. For once, grey houses blocked the view of fields and sea. But while everyone bar the two ministers got off there, our bastard sat tight.

    After Helmsdale we were rocking along in a valley by a fast black river - one-sided trees and tumbledown cottages, all snow- covered. It seemed a great impertinence for the engine, which was green, and its carriages, which were greener still, to intrude upon this white world, which was a kind of fairyland, not real, not Britain. I could not believe they had the Royal Mail here; or even newspapers. There were telegraph poles and wires, but they were all askew and snow-loaded.

    We stopped at a place called Kildonan, and hastened down on to the platform. I needed a piss, and there was no WC on the train.

    A man in railway uniform stood before the station house.

    'Good day,' I said.

    (That was a laugh, with the wet snow flying at us.)

    'Could I use the jakes in the station house?' I continued.

    'The whit?' he said, making the sound of a cane going swish through the air.

    'The station lavatory,' I said.

    'Aye, aye,' he said, and jerked his thumb at the open door behind him. It was half booking hall, half living room with a good fire going and three pot dogs on the mantelpiece. The lavatory was in a door leading off. I pissed and came out, lingering by the fire. I then turned, nodded at the man and climbed up into the train as he blew his whistle. The ministers had gone, and Bowman was standing up at his seat.

    He was talking in low tones to the man we had been pursuing.

    The stationmaster slammed the door behind me, and the train jerked into motion as the man we had been pursuing turned towards me, gun in hand. With perhaps the beginnings of a smile, he motioned me towards him, motioned me into my seat. He sat down opposite me, and Bowman sat down beside him.