Murder At Deviation Junction

    That was a little better.

    'You had the solving of a murder; I believe.'

    He meant the business of my first weeks on the force. I began telling him all about it, but after five minutes he checked me and I coloured up at that.

    'The tale does you great credit,' he said, but not over-enthusiastically, and I wondered whether he considered me boastful.

    After a little more rather strained conversation, I noticed that Captain Fairclough was looking down at a few pieces of paper.

    'I have good accounts of you from your superior officers,' he said. Now I'd expected it of the Chief, but it was quite a turn-up to hear that I'd got a recommendation from Shillito. I'd really fixed him with that blow.

    Captain Fairclough now fell to thinking about something, and turned to give me the benefit of his profile as he did so. But I was looking beyond him. The snow was coming down again, and it didn't seem to make much difference to Ironopolis until you looked closely and saw that the men were now moving through it as though blind. I looked back towards Fairclough. I had not convinced him that he ought to promote me, that was a certainty, and if I didn't manage it soon then Lydia would not be able to take up her own position. There was nothing for it. I would have to trust to the new-found good intentions of Detective Sergeant Shillito.

    'I think dogs might do a good deal in police work given a little more experience,' I said.

    I had made my shot; there was no going back. Captain Fairclough turned sharply towards me.

    'Dogs?'

    'Yes.'

    'Did you say 'dogs'?'

    I was sitting in tight boots now.

    'A fine body of trained dogs, yes.'

    He turned away from me and looked through his window, taking it all in right across to the Tees with one great intake of breath. Had Shillito been guying me? The pages he'd given over had been from a journal of the Great Western Railway, of which Fairclough had been governor before he'd come north. They had been an account of the use of dogs in police work. It was an idea that had not caught on very widely, as the writer of the article admitted. In fact it had caught on only in Belgium, at a spot called Ghent, which had a dock that needed a lot of guarding. A single sentence in the article was to the effect: 'It is believed that the chief officer of our railway force, Captain Fairclough, favours putting dogs to work in this way,' and I had trusted my whole future to those words.

    'A canine police, now ...' Fairclough said, turning back around slowly. 'What gave you the idea?'

    I had what I thought a good lie ready for this.

    'Just forever walking past signs reading 'Beware of the dog', sir. And I thought - why not for police purposes?'

    'What breed would you favour for the work?'

    The ones in Belgium had been Airedales. An Airedale was the biggest sort of terrier, as I'd discovered in the reference division of York Library. But I ought not to look as though I'd got the whole thing from the article.

    'A big enough breed to put fear into a villain,' I said. 'But the animal must be intelligent with it.'

    'Would the dogs be on a leash?'

    'Yes, and muzzled.'

    That was how they had them in Belgium.

    'I believe that other forces use them,' I said.

    'Where?'

    He had me now. I kept silence, hoping he'd put another question.

    'Well then,' he said, 'where? Are you aware of any area of operation?'

    'Belgium, maybe?'

    That might easily have queered the whole thing, for it surely proved that I'd cribbed the notion of dogs from the article, but perhaps Captain Fairclough had never read that particular article, even though he'd been mentioned in it, for he rose to his feet saying, 'I will not keep from you that I have been thinking on remarkably similar lines myself. For thief-taking, or simply as a deterrent, it strikes me that dogs must have a place in our work.'

    And I knew from his 'our' that I had done it; or that Shillito had done it for me.

    'Imagine some loafer in that goods yard of yours at York,

    Detective Stringer - pockets bulging with pilfered whisky bottles and baccy. You approach him with a dog leashed; you ask him to come along quietly ... Now I'd say he'd do it, but let's imagine he refuses your request. You threaten to unleash the beast. You warn him it is trained to attack every man not wearing a police uniform... He'd come along then, wouldn't you say?'

    'He'd come along all right, sir . . . why, like a lamb I should think.'

    Captain Fairclough laughed a little at that.

    'Now,' he said, when he'd stopped, 'any other suggestions?'

    'I think there ought to be a special class of men to do things like ticket inspections and lost luggage reports,' I said.

    'I see.'

    'I believe this is not a good use of the detective mind.'

    'And who would do the work instead?'

    'Men developed from the grades of clerks,' I said, thinking: let's give Wright some bloody work to do; get his nose out of other folks' affairs. What Captain Fairclough made of my idea I don't know, but he made a note of it. He then strode around his desk to shake my hand.

    'I have enjoyed our talk very much, Detective Stringer,' he said. 'You need have no apprehension as to the outcome of it. A very happy Christmas to you.'

    'A very happy Christmas to you too, sir.'

Chapter Thirty-seven

    Well, I was on velvet. My job was safe, and I had secured my promotion, which in turn meant that Lydia could take up the job of her dreams. Our money troubles were at an end. And the case seemed to have resolved itself beautifully. It was like a mathematical problem that had looked very involved but that, after a long, head- racking while, was discovered to come out at zero. Marriott had killed himself or been killed by Small David, and there was some justice in either outcome. If it had not been suicide then it would have been made to look like it, for Small David seemed to be a great hand at that. There need be no questions asked.

    The inquest into Peters would return a verdict of suicide. It was a shame that Peters should be set down for ever as having done away with himself - but then, how could that ever have been disproved except by confession of Small David, which had never been likely?

    As for Lee and Falconer - Lee was deemed to have been murdered and he had been. The wrong man had swung for it; but not, by all accounts, an entirely innocent man. Falconer was put down as disappeared, and no injury was done to his name and reputation as a result. It was perhaps a more dignified fate than the one that he had met in reality. Small David had got his deserts just as surely as Marriott himself, and the men who'd deserved to come out of it with unstained characters had done so: Richie Marriott was on the Continent, where he would no doubt remain, and only he and I knew of Bowman's involvement. We in fact were the only three who knew the cause of the Travelling Club's disappearance, and it seemed to me fitting that only three should know, for there was no rightness or dignity in the explanation. A word from my schooldays came to me: the business had been a shameful one from start to finish.

    But it was now played out.

    I walked in a happy haze about the snowy streets of central Middlesbrough, where the shops were all either full to bursting or closing early - nothing in between. I had half an eye out for the Middlesbrough Brown's. I