Murder At Deviation Junction

    The Scotsman snorted.

    'But others have gone the same way,' I said. 'He was not the only one killed.'

    The boy Richie was in the doorway.

    'The kitbags are packed and stowed on the cart, father,' he said. 'All ready for the morning . . . but we must leave your books behind.'

    Small David was drawing the bed that the boy had sat on closer to the stove; he then did the same with his own. He opened the door of the stove, and began putting on logs. There seemed to be a deepening of the darkness beyond the window.

    'You're pushing off tomorrow?' I said to the room in general.

    'Aye,' said Small David at the stove, 'and so are ye.'

    'Planning on taking me with you, are you?'

    The Scotsman paused about his work.

    'A little o' the way, aye.'

    'Another big snow's coming, you know?' I said, and Small David rotated his wide body to face me.

    'It'll nae matter either way to yersel',' he said.

Chapter Twenty-seven

    We all stepped out into the blizzard for a piss. This seemed to be a nightly routine around the house, for each man went to his own wall nook to perform. Small David pointed his gun at me as I unbuttoned my fly and kept it on me as I tried to start.

    'Y'are awfy slow at this,' he said.

    'Fuck off,' I said.

    '—as y'are at everythin' else,' he added, and as I cursed him again and turned towards the wall, I realised that I could see the outline of his wide shadow very clearly against the stones, and that the falling snow was lit by a grey glow.

    The moon was full.

    In the living room, Small David fed the stove again, and set the draught for a slower burn. He then walked into the scullery, and I could hear him locking the front door. He might then have had a sluice-down in the great sink, for I could hear the swishing of water. He returned to the living room and put out one of the two lamps. A moment later every man was lying in his bed - each, as far as I could make out, with all his day clothes still on.

    Whether any man slept, I don't know, for there were constant shiftings and half-muffled groans that put a kind of electricity into the atmosphere of that terrible smoke hole. I thought of Marriott, and how he had lost all by one moment of anger. The cane had been there in his hand in the photograph at the start of the journey. He had made no attempt to hide it. This crime was made ridiculous by the simple fact that half an hour before, or in fact one second before it had occurred, it had not been meant to happen. There was a double shame to it on this account, it seemed to me, and I was sure that Marriott thought of it in the same way. His crime had not been a manly one; and now he and his son were members of a different club. It seemed that I had joined this one.

    My mind raced on in the darkness, and I fell to thinking that it was highly convenient they should have had a spare bed for me, and I wondered whether it was meant for Moody, the chimney sweep made good, who had perhaps survived for a while after the first killings, but had then threatened to speak out. Perhaps his son in Pickering knew all.

    But many mysteries remained. How had Bowman fallen into the clutches of the band? He was kept there, I knew, by fear of Small David, but how had the thing begun? The connection was Peters, obviously, but exactly how? And where had Marriott dug Small David up from? My guess was that he was somebody he'd defended in a court of law.

    Small David had done a good job with the stove, and it came to me presently that J was properly warm for the first time in days. I thought of little Harry, and I hoped that he was warm. I thought of how he would stand in the road at Thorpe-on-Ouse for minutes on end, and then suddenly go skipping off, as if he'd at last got hold of the answer to some very troublesome question. He was eccentric, like his mother.

    Well, they would go on in their own way. It was better that I should die in the course of an important investigation than lose my job through my own foolishness and leave them with a loafer at the head of the family. I turned over on the narrow bed many times, back and forth until finally I knew that sleep would come. I was certain on that point, and I believe I spoke out loud the words, 'I have lost all my doubts', but there must have been the complication of a dream somewhere, for I now heard those words repeated directly into my ear by another.

    'I have lost all my doubts.'

    I felt the firm press of a hand on my shoulder and opened my eyes to see Bowman leaning over me.

    He was changed.

    'We're going to make off,' he whispered; and for the first time since I'd known him, he smiled. If he'd had any hair to speak of, it would have been tousled; his glasses were askew on his nose, but I could see by the one remaining lamp that there was more purpose about him than ever there had been before. He wore his topcoat; he held his sporting cap tightly bundled in his hand.

    'Collect up your boots,' he whispered as I rolled upright. 'I know where Small David stows the key.'

    The other men were still rolling and groaning in the darkness, like a restless sea. I picked up my boots, and followed Bowman into the scullery, where the air was just as cold as if we'd been outside. As I stepped into my boots, I could just make out that Bowman was kneeling at the grate. He came up with the key in his hand.

    'Still warm,' he whispered. 'He keeps it in the ash pan.'

    He walked over towards the heavy front door, and there came a great cymbal crash as he did so. All the breath stopped on my lips, as I looked towards the other door, the one leading into the sitting room, which we had left ajar behind us. It did not move.

    'Kicked the damned ash pan,' said Bowman, who now placed the key in the front door.

    He was straining at it.

    'Won't turn,' he said, a little too loudly.

    I looked again towards the living-room door.

    'Can't get the trick of it,' he was saying.

    I went towards him, stepping carefully, for I didn't know where the ash pan had been kicked to. I motioned him aside, leant hard on the door and turned the key.

    Nothing doing.

    I pulled it towards me by the handle - again nothing.

    'Take the key out and try again,' said Bowman.

    I did so, and the key went in further this time - it had not been properly lodged by Bowman. But as I turned the key, the wrong door was moving. With every degree of twist that I gave it, the sit- ting- room door was moving inwards. The key gave a click as I continued to look over my shoulder, at the door behind. A figure stood there: Richie, the son. A blanket was around him like a cape, and he might have been sleepwalking, or he might have been thinking hard. Above the blanket, his face shone white in a new light. The key had done its work as I looked at him. Before me, the door was open, and the Highlands seemed to rise like a drop scene at the theatre: the valley falling away before me; white clouds moving across the tops in succession, like a train, and all lit by a magical grey light. The snow had stopped, for all its work was now done.

    We were through the door, and crashing through the drenching, snowy heather in an instant. I looked back at the house. Richie Marriott had not emerged from it, and nor had anybody else.

    We moved with long, comical strides, stepping out, and then down and nearly over-toppling at every stride. We could not afford to take the track by which we'd come up in the cart - that was too slow and twisty. 'Had to get out, and had to take you along,' Bowman was panting behind me. 'I couldn't dodge it, having brought you up here.'