Murder At Deviation Junction

coal, vociferating away for a good half-minute, as Bowman finished off his beer bottle.

    'Rather wearing, the company of a chap like that,' he said, leaning forward on his perch, and pushing his spectacles up his nose.

    When he'd finished bawling at the kid, Crystal furnished some sort of explanation, and although I couldn't make out the whole scene through the ticket window, the lad must have been permitted a look under the blanket, for he exclaimed, in a voice loud enough to be clearly heard beyond the ticket office, 'Hold on, I know that bloke!'

    This checked Bowman, who was setting about another beer bottle. He froze with the opener in his hand, all ears. I was on my feet straightaway, and into the ticket office. 'You don't ruddy know him,' Crystal was saying, as he put on his topcoat. (Having worked all night, he was about to be relieved by a spare man from Loftus up the way). He eyeballed me for a moment, then relented.

    'Best talk to him if that's your fixed idea,' Crystal said to the lad, nodding in my direction.

    I took out my notebook and indelible pencil, and asked the lad to say what he knew about Paul Peters.

    'Bloke came through here about this time last year; stepped down off the one-thirty stopping train to Whitby. Only a young fellow, and he'd a camera slung over his shoulder - camera on legs, it was. No, wait, he had two, now that I think on - just like this here.'

    The kid looked at the camera I wore; looked at me.

    'I'd just finished me dinner,' he went on, 'and I was scraping snow and laying down sand as per instructions from Mr Crystal. Bloke came up to me. He said, 'Would you mind putting some of the snow back down on the platform?' I said, 'Come again, mister?' Bloke said, 'Could you put some of it back, as it makes for a better picture?' I said, 'It might be pretty, but it en't safe.' He looked a bit put out, so I said, 'Can you not take a picture of sum- mat else?' 'Such as what?' he said, and I said, 'We have a passing loop here, you know.''

    'Marshalling yard,' rapped Crystal.

    Bowman was at the doorway, listening hard.

    'Well, bloke re-slung his camera, and went off to have a look. About ten minutes after, he came back and said, 'I think I'd better be off up to Middlesbrough. When's next train?' I said -'

    'Hold on a moment,' I cut in. 'Had he taken a picture of the loop or marshalling yard or whatever it's known as?'

    'I can't say,' said the lad porter, 'but I reckon he might well have. I mean - he was loony. Any road, like I was saying -'

    But he'd forgotten what he was saying.

    'You said the bloke was after going to Middlesbrough,' I prompted him.

    'That's it. I said, 'If it's views you're after, you'd be better off in Whitby.' He said he didn't want 'views' but railway interest, anything out of the common for a magazine, so I said, 'If you take the next Middlesbrough service you'll get there in time to see sum- mat a bit that way.' And he said, 'What?' and I said, 'Why, the Club Train.''

    'Club Train?' I said, and there came a fearful crashing from the station yard.

    'Milk cart's here,' said Crystal. 'You,' he continued, pointing to the kid, 'stop yarning and get to work. I'm off home.'

    And he pushed his way past Bowman, at which point the lad porter seemed to take in the journalist for the first time. 'You all right, mister?' he said. 'You don't half look seedy.'

Chapter Five

    Behind the lad porter, I spied the steam jets of the day's first train.

    'Bloke boarded the train for Middlesbrough,' continued the kid. 'I closed the door behind him myself. He was after photographing the Club Train.'

    He and the bloke in the milk cart had the churns lined up on the platform ready for loading. As the engine came past the snow-crowned signal box, the kid was leaning on a churn, going over his tale as I made notes in my book with my indelible pencil. The lad held a long ladle in his hand. He'd lately dipped it into the churn, and he kept looking down at it rather than drinking from it.

    'But as soon as you'd done so, you realised you'd made a bloomer over the time?'

    'Aye,' he said. (He seemed very happy to admit the fact.) 'I worked out that he wouldn't get there in time to see the Club Train. It would have left Middlesbrough before he arrived.'

    'Can you recall the date?'

    He shrugged. 'Run-up to Christmas time.'

    'Why was he so dead set on seeing the Club Train?'

    'It's a swanky thing, en't it? Luxury carriage set aside for the toffs. All modern conveniences carried. Newspapers, hot drinks, ice refrigerator - that's for the champagne, you know.'

    The train was beside us now, adding its steam to the whiteness of the air, but the lad didn't stir himself.

    'Why don't you drink that milk?' I said.

    'I like to watch it,' he said, still gazing down at the bowl of the ladle. 'I like to see the cream rising to the top.'

    He pitched the milk on top of the platform, and made ready to load the train.

    'That's what's going to happen to me,' he said, as the train guard jumped down from the brake van, ready to give a hand. 'I'll rise to the top.'

    'I started under Crystal myself,' I said. 'I was his lad porter for a while at Grosmont.'

    The milk train was in now. Thirty tons of engine stood alongside the kid - a B16 class 4-6-0, very nice motor, and he paid it no mind. Instead, he was thinking over my remark.

    'And what are you now?' he asked, giving me a level look.

    'Detective,' I said. 'Detective . . . sergeant,' and of course it was a lie. 'You'll be hearing from me again,' I said, re-pocketing my notebook.

    I had in that moment determined to investigate the matter of Paul Peters, and not leave it to others. I was bored in my work and in need of distraction. I found myself thinking: if this is suicide, there will be nothing to plunge into, and I will be straight back to hunting up ticket frauds and petty hooligans. But as my thoughts ran on, I found that I was trying to picture whoever had done for the boy and made it look like suicide.

    Why would a man come all the way to Stone Farm to make away with himself? Peters was a young fellow doing work that he enjoyed and with everything before him. He had not committed suicide. He had been killed - I was on the instant certain of it - and Stephen Bowman was mixed up in it somehow, or knew more than he let on. He was standing by the milk train now, having stepped across from the station building, camera once again over his shoulder. Why had he come to this station on this day? But no - he hadn't made the choice to come. We had all been turfed off the train against expectations. And as for the reason for his being on the line . . . well, he was staying at Whitby. But there was more to it than that.

    Crystal, ready to depart for his bed, stood in the booking office doorway. I would show him what I was made of - him and Shillito both. I would search for the truth about Peters, and if I made enough headway before Christmas Eve, I might be DS by New Year.

    I climbed into the one passenger carriage with Bowman. We were railway rovers, him and me both. Any man who wanted to make his way in the modern world had to be. We stowed our cameras on the luggage racks. Bowman, not looking at me, said, 'Your wife said you were detective grade. But you gave out to the boy that you were detective sergeant.'

    I coloured up while removing my topcoat. He didn't miss much, for all the booze he put away. He must have a head like cast iron.

    'I have the grade 'detective sergeant' on the brain,' I said, 'what with forever thinking about this interview