France?'
I shook my head.
'I have not,' I said.
'Thinking about the girl you're leaving behind, are you, lad?'
'Don't you need a paper with a royal stamp on it to quit the country?' I said.
'Passport?' he said. 'Get away. What do you think you're in? A fucking prison?'
I found a little comfort in the signs behind him for 'Telegrams' and 'Telephone' in the knowledge that those methods of communication would be open to me all the way, if I ever got the freedom to use them. Meanwhile, Miles Hopkins was strolling off somewhere.
Sampson walked me over to Left Luggage, where we hung about until Hopkins joined us ten minutes later, carrying two small kitbags. Had he nicked the bloody things or bought 'em? These items you could easily come by in the shops around Charing Cross. Hopkins stood over Sampson as that gentry took bundles from the sack, and stuffed them into the first kitbag; what remained in the sack (a smaller amount) went into the second kitbag, and Sampson then pitched the sack away. The first kitbag was tightly fastened up, and presented to a Left Luggage clerk by Sampson, together with a handful of coins. The clerk gave change and ticket to Sampson while Hopkins looked on closely. We then all went into the gentleman's for a sluice down.
Sampson had not wanted to travel with all the stolen money about him. But I wondered about the gun – where had it got to? Our next call was the station bar, which smelt of cigar smoke and rain-sodden overcoats. There were pictures around the walls of little boats braving high seas, while the blokes in the bar did nothing of the sort, but just supped ale steadily. The boats all looked the same but they were all different, and all belonged to the South Eastern and Chatham Railway. Just inside the door sat a bloke with a greasy brown bowler on his knee, and a suit out at the elbows. At his feet was a box marked 'Haut'. He had no doubt just returned from France. You could go there, and you could come back, and it wasn't so very great an undertaking. This thought, too, brought a small glimpse of hope. Sampson bought three pints and Hopkins, with a little of his former anxiety returning, asked him:
'Reckon you did for those two blokes?'
'Tell you what,' Sampson replied, 'you'd best hope they did take the bloody shots because we're buggered if not. See, mate, I only did what needed to be done. It was the necessary.'
Hopkins asked: 'Why was it necessary to do Roberts?'
(Roberts, I realised, must be – or must have been – the clerk.)
'Roberts?' said Sampson, in a thoughtful sort of way, just as though he'd almost forgotten the fellow already. 'Well now let's see… because he was a fucking pill? Look, mate, he would've ratted, wouldn't he? And might still if he's not done for. I mean to say, he's taken the tip, but it wouldn't quite cover…'
'The knackering of his hands,' said Hopkins. 'He was all right until you pitched the burning metal at him.'
Sampson said nothing to that, but saw off his pint, ordered the second round of drinks and lit a cigar.
'Let's change the subject, mates,' he said… which he proceeded to do himself: 'Tim,' he said, blowing out smoke, 'now, he's all right. We'll have no trouble from that quarter, I can promise you. White as they come, that lad.' Sampson now turned to me: 'You n' all, mate. Some blokes… they'd take fright having seen what you've seen; have a brainstorm, crack wide open, do you take my meaning?'
He handed me my fresh pint, saying:
'Fact is we've taken the fucking kettle, boys. Not two but more like three grand. None of us will ever have to do a hand's turn again.'
'Not that we ever did,' said Hopkins.
I supped my pint, thinking: I could take my share of that, break free of the wife and the future child, and just give up on normal life as a bad job. I would simply continue to be Allan Appleby – make a real go of lounging about and spectacle-wearing. I looked at Sampson as he drank, and I had to admit that I admired the fellow after a fashion: I couldn't help feeling that he'd treated me better, all in all, than the brass of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway and Chief Inspector Weatherill both. I found myself pleased that he did not suspect me of being anything so low (and that was the very word that came to me) as a copper, but rather of being likely to go to the police and confess in hopes of avoiding a charge of accessory to murder.
Sampson also got points with me for the way that all his foul actions seemed to leave no trace upon him. Where Hopkins was bedraggled, his boots still clarted with mud from the Knavesmire and ash from the engine shed, Sampson's were clean and – on account of his kingly grey beard – he never appeared in need of a shave. His great success, now that I came to think of it, was that he was able to kill folks then clean forget about the fact. It also went to his credit that he seemed to have no fear.
And yet he would hurt folk for sport and fly into a paddy when up against it on a job, and I meant to make him pay on all counts.
Chapter Twenty-three
It wasn't until getting on for three o'clock that we boarded the train, and the South East and Chatham did us proud: best bogie coaches with lavatory accommodation; green Morocco chairs, metal reading lamps, dressing case in the compartment. We pulled out at twenty past three, into the roaring rain and the roaring city: London putting on swank – the river below, Parliament to our right. Sampson was leaning forwards, looking between me and the carriage corridor, half grinning.
I had been invigorated somewhat by the station drinks; and I meant to call his bluff.
I stood up.
'Well,' I said, 'I must visit the jakes; there's no help for it.'
I stepped out of the compartment, and was not followed. If the WC hadn't been directly before me as I stepped into the corridor – if we hadn't been in the last compartment, that is – then something different might have happened in that instant. I might have rapped for help. But the door was there, and nature called. When I stepped out again, Hopkins was standing right outside the door.
'Can you speak French?' I asked him, mindful of the notice I'd read above the sink: 'Eau non potable'.
He stared at me for a while, before giving a shrug.
'Sampson?' I asked.
'He's a demon at it' Hopkins said. 'They loved to hear him. They just lie on their backs and wriggle their legs in the air.'
He gave me one of his smiles, and stepped in to pay his own call.
As I returned to the compartment Sampson was reading his racing paper, the kitbag beside him, and we were just on the edges of London. I sat down over opposite; he did not look up. At the end of it all there'd be a great reckoning: a trial, an inquiry, and I would be judged on whether I made my move or not. Therefore, I had to make it.
Hopkins re-entered the compartment, sat down and closed his eyes. I listened to the engine. It was a noisy bugger, and I tried to work out the speed: the number of rail joints in forty- one seconds gave the miles per hour. Get the answer right and you knew more than the driver himself, but you needed a watch for the business really. At the final reckoning I might be given a medal or I might be stood down; I might, at the outside, be imprisoned but I doubted that I would be hanged. The thought of imprisonment checked me: who knew that I was a police agent in all this apart from the Chief? And the Chief might very well be dead.
When I next thought to look out of the window we were dashing through Ashford, Kent, and Sampson was standing in the corridor, fiddling with… well, it had to be the gun. He stood with his broad back to me, but I craned about, and saw that he was once more inspecting the bullets – putting new ones in perhaps, or just admiring the ones already there; I couldn't see which from where I was. I closed my eyes for a space, and when I opened them again, Sampson was grinning at me through the compartment window, making the sleeping sign, with head rested on hands.
Not long after, we were threading in and out of tunnels at Folkestone. The difference between being in and out of the tunnels was not so very great, for, while the rain continued as before, the sky was now quite dark.
