prospects at the Garden Gate. At midday, I bought an Evening Press in Museum Street, and there were precious few details added to the story, only that the bodies might have been lying on the cinder track for a day or more before discovery. Otherwise it was all windy stuff: the case appeared to contain features of strong dramatic interest… a certain vicar meant to make mention of it in a sermon to be given in the Minster on the following Sunday. It was also pointed out that this was the first year in living memory in which two murders had occurred in the city. The previous year, there'd been none at all.I turned around and saw the West towers of the Minster, the great bull horns, black against the grey sky. The shilling novels on the station bookstall had three-colour wrappers, but there were only two colours in central York at that moment. I folded my paper into the pocket of my new suit. A metal panel was nailed to the scrap of city wall that overlooked Museum Street: it said 'Uzit: The Ointment for All Occasions'. Beneath it stood a rough-looking bloke, smoking a cigar in the rain, watching me. I turned tail and rode the Humber along past the rattling carts of Coney Street, turning at the end into High Ousegate, where I propped the bike beneath a board that stuck out from a tobacconists reading 'CIGARS', the letters going round almost in a circle. I was not interested in baccy but the sign signified the start of an alleyway at the bottom of which was the office of a coal merchant, and a tiny rag shop that was half underground. The sign above the window read 'Clark' in very small letters – whispered it. You walked through the door, and immediately down some steps, as if a floor was too pricey a luxury. Inside was a small old man who'd shaved only in parts. 'I'm after a suit' I said, since the old fellow had said nothing but just looked at me.
The place was dark and sour-smelling; the suits behind the man were like a pile of flat dead bodies.
'Suit for every day?' asked the old fellow, without removing the cigarette. Smoke came up with each word, so that he communicated by puffs of it, just as the Red Indians are said to do.
'Yes. The one I've got on is my Sunday suit,' I added, to make a straight story of it. 'Might I have a look?'
He turned away from me with his hands in his pockets, which was the signal that I should fall to on the clothes heap.
After a couple of minutes, I found a suit that was a sight worse than any I'd ever seen before. I put on the coat, and the old man turned back towards me, smoking out the words:
'Best class work, that is. You're well away with that. Couldn't ask for a better.'
I held the trousers up against my legs. The cost was sixpence, and as I paid the fellow, I leant into his smoke, and across some tins he kept full of dusty trinkets. One of these held a tangle of old spectacles. I picked out one pair, put them on.
'How much are these, mate?' I asked, standing before a fragment of looking glass that hung from the wall, but hardly able to see a thing.
The word 'tuppence' came in two puffs of smoke.
I handed over the coin, took off the eye-glasses, and pushed out the lenses. I put the specs back on, and my reflection came clear. It was a regular marvel: there was no difference between the look of glasses with lenses and glasses without. The old fellow, looking on, had at last removed his cigarette.
'More to your liking now, are they?'
'Aye,' I said.
'You're nuts,' he said, very firmly and definitely. Then the cigarette went back in.
I walked out of the shop with the glass-less glasses and the suit bundled into my portmanteau on top of the magazines. I walked towards the gentlemen's lavatory in Coney Street, down the steps to where the wash-and- brush-up man waited. I knew him to be a sensible fellow in a white coat (every one of the dozen or so hairs on his head very carefully Brilliantined), and he did not blink an eye at the sight of me in my spectacles. It was a test, and he – or I – had passed it.
I put a ha'penny in the door slot, and locked myself in one of the WCs, where I put the old suit on, laying my good one on top of the magazines in the bag. Then I pulled the chain for good measure. As I stood there amid the roaring York waters, I tried to tell myself: my blood is up; this is all quite a lark, and on better wages than I earned on the footplate. But I kept wondering: ought I not to have been given a police whistle or some other method of giving the alarm? I was too much at large in the world; I wanted the rules and protection of the railwayman's life.
I stepped out of the WC, and the wide looking glass was before me. The sight checked me for a second. I was Allan… Allan something, late of Halifax. Factory turns and work in the fields – that had been my lot; and a spell in the workhouse at Bradford. I saw myself as Allan, approaching York on foot from Leeds, alone in the wide fields, with a griming of snow on the soil. Plainly I was in want of a tattoo but otherwise I fancied I looked the part.
I now trudged miserably on, killing time around the narrow ancient streets, where the rain raced along the wide stone gutters, and the houses were kept up by force of habit alone. The York citizens, with their derby hats and celluloid collars, had the care of the city for a little while, but before long there'd be a new lot, with different hats and collars. I remembered a scrap of history about York from the schoolroom at Baytown: 'Here history is almost the history of Britain.' What were the deaths of two brothers when set against that?
I walked on, thinking about the wife at home typewriting behind the long garden with the washing line too high, like a telegraph wire. How could my work be kept secret from her? It seemed unimaginable, with her brains.
The stiff, damp suit wanted to walk in a different way to my way – or to lie down and die, just as its late owner had certainly done. At getting on for 3 p.m., I crossed over Lendal Bridge, went past the new North Eastern office – that great riverside stack of railway clerks – and through the arch in the Bar Walls towards the station. Walking through the portico, past all the shouting carters and cabmen, I thought: I should not be showing my face here. I was too close to the Police Office, base of my operations, but I had to stow my good suit.
This I did in the Left Luggage Office, a far brighter and cheerier spot than the Lost Luggage Office, full of whistling blokes and light. I made sure the warrant card and the Derbies were in the pocket of the suit I handed over; I held on to the Railway Magazines though. As I turned away from the office, clutching the ticket I'd been given in return for the suit, I saw the Lad, rushing along with his telegraph form. 'How do… Cheerio' he said, laughing as he shot past. I walked quickly off the platform. It was then that I saw, over on Platform Six, which was generally the one for Leeds, an engine belonging to my former employers, the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, the black paint with red piping. It was a 0-6-0 Class, one of the Wigan Bashers, good for any kind of work, from pick-up goods to main line. The Wigan Basher had four coaches on, and it was heartbreaking to see it pulling away, not tied down to rain, cocoa smell and dreary York ways.
I took my dinner at the bargeman's cafe on the King's Staith, walked about a bit more; took a pint at the Ouse Bridge Tavern, then stepped out into lamplight and dark rain shine.
It was nigh on four o'clock when I struck out for Layerthorpe.
Chapter Eight
Carmelite Street I knew to be somewhere in the shadow of Leetham's Flour Mill, which was nigh-on five times higher than the terraces roundabout. Evening was coming down fast as I walked towards the mill, which had three silos, like cricket stumps, connected at the top by the conveyor, which was like the bails. On its other side, the mill looked onto, and dropped things into, the River Foss, which ran along as best it could between the little terrace houses of Layerthorpe. No trippers came this way; the Illustrated Guides had nothing to say about Layerthorpe, except maybe to warn strangers off.
Carrying my bagful of Railway Magazines, I entered a dead-end street. At the bottom of it was a wall covered in an advertisement for boot polish. It held a picture of a bootblack calling 'Shine, sir?' then, in bigger letters 'SHINE, SIR!' Wouldn't take no for an answer, that one.
I turned right down an alleyway between two houses, just in time to see a kid boot a dead rat along the road. Above his head, a wooden sign stuck between the two walls read: 'The Tiger'. That was another pub to be found somewhere in this maze, but it was a couple of minutes more before I came on the one I wanted.
There was no garden and there was no gate, and there was hardly any pub come to that. It was just one thin house in the terrace. Above the door and to the right, a tiny tin sign said 'ALES', like a stamp on a letter. The
