know said, 'That's what we all heard.' 'No,' said a voice that could have been the first one, 'we heard the shooter and the fog bomb blowing off together.' Another said, 'There was no shooter. He just came off the bloody engine.'
I looked up. Arthur Hunt was leaning against the Jubilee's tender and staring at me as if he'd never left off doing it from that time I'd first seen him in the half-link's mess. The dirty business done, the fog was clearing all the time, racing away. Barney Rose was at the other end, next to the cylinder casing. He had his pipe going, but looked rattled all the same, and I knew I should have left him alone, but I couldn't. I had come to a place that was full of hatred. One man had disappeared and another had died, and this last was a good deal more popular than myself. It wasn't bravery that made me walk towards Rose; it was something like what they call the life force itself.
The fog may have been lifting but the Jubilee was giving out whiffs of steam, and there was Rose's pipe smoke to add to the morning ghostliness. When he spoke he looked away from me. 'I was under orders from the Governor to let Mike take her off-shed,' he said, 'just while I walked along her and took a good look at the motion… something a bit queer about the noise it was making…' He left a long pause, then he started again, still looking away: 'He was like Taylor and like you: a very ardent lad.'
He gave a funny little sideways smile that made me feel ill, and I said, 'What do you mean?' I suppose I was shouting, but the fog seemed to require it.
'No holds barred,' said Rose, shaking his head and seeming nearly to laugh. Another bloke came up to us, and Rose carried on talking, still with that hateful half smile. 'Well, Mike being new to the regulator, and a little heavy- handed with it, I got left behind. I never saw him hit the fog bomb, only heard it, and when I got nearer he was flat out by the track, with the engine heading away for bloody Bournemouth at ten miles to the hour. He'd come off the footplate and hit the next rail.' He looked up at the two of us, then down again. 'Talk about beginner's luck,' he said.
Beyond and above us, on the footplate of the engine, I could make out that they were still holding Mike, still turning him this way and that as if he might somehow come back to life if they got him at the right angle. 'How did he come off?' said a voice. 'Tripped on coal, if you ask me' said Rose.
I remembered that I had seen Mike's messy ways with the shovel for myself.
A lantern was coming towards us; behind it was a man coughing – the Governor. 'It's Florence fucking Nightingale' said a sharp voice – the voice of Arthur Hunt. Mike was being brought down off the footplate, and somebody was shouting, roaring angrily. The Governor yelled something to Rose, then leapt onto the footplate of the Jubilee. Rose followed him up more slowly, looking completely all in. Two minutes later the engine began rolling backwards towards the shed. Rose was at the regulator, and the Governor was looking out at all the blokes. 'The impedimentia of illusion are being removed from the stage!' he roared, by which he meant get back to our duties.
A shout went up – many intemperate words, and all against the Governor. I wasn't one of the shouters but it made me feel good to be part of the crowd. For the first time I was a Nine Elms man. Well, I mean… it was for once not myself but another who was the object of hatred. 'Get that fucking slave driver off there' said a voice from the crowd of men, which could have been Hunt again, but I could not be sure. Then I saw the swinging bulls' eyes of the constables coming up, and I thought: it is very like the end of the shows in the music halls with the chuckers-out coming in, and I remembered Mike's legs hanging off the side of the cab, and how they were like Mr Punch's little broken legs that would sometimes flop over the front of the small stages in the seaside booths, making you sorry for him in spite of all. But Mike was a good fellow to begin with, in my eyes at least; Taylor had been another by all accounts, and maybe that was part of the killer's programme, to get the nice ones, in which case I had better stop playing the milksop.
The coppers took the numbers of the blokes around the loco, and asked everybody what they'd seen. Two hours later a detective with a white beard who looked like a sea captain, accompanied by the Governor, came to see me while I was ripping rags on my own in the rag store, and I told them everything I knew and nothing of what I thought – because I could have given them quite a bit to chew on.
The Governor called me a good lad, and started coming on strong about the half-link blokes right in front of the detective. He said that Rose was not up to the mark, that there would be an inquiry, and it would be the finish of him. He also said that Rose had overrun in the yard at the start of August, which I'd already heard from Vincent, who'd said somebody had split over it, and now the Governor, working up to boiling point in the rag store, came out with the name. 'It was that poor sod Henry Taylor who spilled the beans to me – it was his job to do it, but look what happened to him. He was a good lad too – would have been up on the footplate in double-quick time.'
By now his colour had reached the danger level, and he started coughing, as the detective, who seemed to know of all this anyway, smiled, and told him to calm himself.
I had one question burning to be asked: 'Where's Vincent today?' 'On leave,' said the Governor.
'So he's not about?' I said, and the Governor said nothing, but looked across at the detective.
As I went back to tearing rags, I fell to thinking – because I had to think about everything – how Mike was careless with coal. On the footplate, he was one of those clumsy fellows whose boots always seemed too big. But it did look as if he'd been jacked in, and with him went the best hope of finding out what had really happened to Henry Taylor. Why would Barney Rose not look at me? And why had Arthur Hunt been off-shed with no engine underneath him? And then Vincent, who was certainly no friend of Mike's… that mysterious little fellow had five days holiday a year, and had taken one of them on this foggy November day… And then why had Arthur been off- shed with no engine underneath him?
One thing seemed certain: with Mike gone, the half-link was left with nothing but relief firemen. Vincent would have to go up. At the same time, though, there were 500 men at Nine Elms Loco Shed, and any one of them could have been the killer. Come to that, there were thousands of fellows in London who were off their boxes, and the wall around Nine Elms was low enough to let in any of them. Bob Crook, after all, was no sentry – you did not need to see him unless you were booking on.
When I'd finished thinking all these things – all destined for the back of the diary, to be mulled over for hours – my mind emptied for a while, except for the small part of it needed to keep me tearing rags. I did not quit the work but in due course a feeling of stark terror came over me, and with it thoughts of the shadows in the courtyard, moving and growing.
I had seen the devil of violence and yet I knew it was only the start.
Chapter Twelve
Thursday 3 December
I did not see Vincent until that Thursday. He was in the cleaners' mess eating his snap, and as I entered he walked out straight away, leaving some onion skins behind. That was probably because he'd heard I'd been on the footplate of Thirty-One, or because he was still not firing on the half despite the death of Mike; or just because he had his knife into me the same as everyone else. I didn't have the opportunity to tell him what I thought about Mike, which was just as well, because Vincent was the fifty-face man, and you couldn't tell him your innermost thoughts.
At the end of that day I kept a new promise I had made to myself (for I had nobody else to make it to): I went into the Turnstile, the pub just outside the engine-shed gates, and I dare say I was one of the few fellows ever to have stepped in there alone and with no prospects of a chat. It was a bare, blank place with two bars separated by a screen: there was no difference between the two, but one was for footplate men, the other for all the rest of the blokes. I don't know why, but I liked it; I thought it was the heart of something – and it was packed out.
I had only seen pubs from the jug-and-bottle doors, where Dad would send me from time to time, but as I said, he did not hold with taking a drink inside a pub. He wasn't church and he wasn't chapel or anything at all in the religious line; I suppose it came down to this: that a pub was a place where smart boots cut no ice.
I had stepped into the part that was for 'the rest'. Fighting my way to the bar, I got myself what the fellow in front had asked for: a glass of 'half and half. I didn't know what either half was, but after one sip I knew I'd better go carefully with it. The engine men, on the other side, took their ale in pewters. I looked all about me, watching
