Channel ports' the Chief added, just as if the drink had given him the idea, which it might well have. 'There'll be new notices put in the Police Gazette, and I'll have a quiet word at Tower Street about the copper you mentioned.' 'I would have Mike run in while you're at it… before he comes looking for me again. He works at the Black Swan, Coney Street… outdoor porter, I think.' 'Right you are,' said the Chief.
'Can I start to book in at the office as normal?'
'Best not' said the Chief,'… not with the bad lads still at large, but I'll see you there at the usual time tomorrow. Meanwhile start your report.'
He leant back against the tunnel wall, breathing heavily through his moustache before taking another couple of brandy goes. He looked ill.
'I'll give you this: you've stuck with it, lad' he said, which made me feel worse about my secrecy over Lund.
There came at that moment a scuffle of boots at the far end of the tunnel. The figure approached in the gloom, with all the strange, station sounds overhead. They might have been underwater. As he came by lamp number one, I saw that it was the Lad, the telegraph boy, grinning all around his head as usual, and carrying telegram forms. When he was passing under lamp number two, the Chief called to him, 'Know all the dodges, don't you?'
The Lad said: 'Have you seen the weather, sir? Tippling down, it is.'
'There's a roof on this station, you might have noticed' said the Chief. 'There is,' said the Lad, 'but it leaks.'
Chapter Thirty-two
Walking back towards the Humber, I caught sight of Lund walking between the booking offices, carrying a tiger-skin trunk. Was I looking at a killer? It was very hard to credit, but I believed so. Ought I to risk a word? I wore my bad suit, but not the glasses. I said his name in an under-breath while walking a little way to the right- hand side of him. He looked towards me, sad as before. 'You spoken to your governor yet?' he said. 'Aye,' I said. 'He'll call you in for an interview.' He stopped dead. Behind him was another new Company poster: 'North Eastern Railway to the Yorkshire Coast: Breezy, Bracing.' There was a picture of a ship, half sunk, as it seemed, in rough seas. 'But what proof is there that you did it?' I said. 'I have the gun,' said Lund, although he did not have the valise with him, 'and the bullets will be shown to match.' 'You might need the bloody thing again if Mike comes after you.' 'I'll never lay hands on it again, though I have it stowed away safely.' 'Does Mike know where you live?' He shrugged. 'Reckon not. 1 en't bothered either way.' I read the label on the tiger-skin trunk: 'Dawkins, NewMaiden'. What earthly fucking use was that? Some folk deserved to lose things.
Lund said: 'The Chief Inspector means to come over to the office, does he?'
'Aye,' I said.
'When?'
'Today,' I said. 'Today or tomorrow.'
He frowned, as well he might've.
I said: 'It's a queer going-on, you know…?'
'I must seek my peace,' said Lund, walking on with the trunk, and leaving me behind. I drifted over towards the Humber, revolving the now familiar questions: did I believe Lund's confession to be true? Yes. Did I think he ought to swing for the murder of the Camerons? No. Would I be in the shit if it came out that I had kept from the Chief knowledge of Lund and his doings? Yes. Was Lund determined to carry on with his confession, taking it out of my hands if necessary? Yes. Was not Sampson, rather than God, the true cause of all Lund's affliction and the true cause, besides, of the Cameron killings? He was.
I biked about York in aimless fashion, passing the Big Coach in Nessgate, passing along Clifford Street with the Tower Street copper shop to the right, slowly skirting the twenty-foot black wall that bounded Clifford's Tower, the Castle, Court House and Prison. It seemed a cheek to ride such a comical machine as a bicycle in the shadow of that wall, although the Yorkies rattled back and forth quite happily in their traps and wagonettes. The sky was white, and the brown river was up. It wasn't raining at that moment but it would do soon. I had every confidence that it would do soon. I biked over Skeldergate Bridge watching the smoke coming out of the glass-works chimneys and falling away to the right. Then I doubled back over the bridge, hitting Clemen- thorpe, and the smell of Terry's, the second confectionery works after Rowntree's: they might make sweets in there, but it was a factory all right, with its due allowance of red brick and smoke.
I pedalled into Thorpe-on-Ouse keeping my eyes skinned, but I could tell that this was how the village looked when all was well: empty. I was at the Backhouses' place in time for dinner – not that there was any dinner. Two coppers sat in the scullery, and they'd finished the lot. They were playing cards; looked decent sorts. Peter wasn't at home, so I had Lillian to contend with. She said the wife was asleep with the baby upstairs, and I looked in on them even though Lillian had said I mustn't.
Returning to the scullery, I asked the general company, 'No one's seen any strange men about, I take it?' and Lillian Backhouse said, 'Not 'til you pitched up.'
I was not sure whether she believed I stood in any danger at all, and I wondered whether the coppers did either. What did they know of my adventures? They took pride in not letting on.
I walked out of the house, and climbed back on the Hum- ber. I dawdled about near the gateway to the Archbishop's Palace, turning the bike in ever tighter circles, thinking, until I locked the front wheel, and came off. I picked myself up – no harm done – and pedalled off to the Fortune of War.
Peter Backhouse was in there, and he stood me a pint. Beyond the window, one of the masters at the village school was leading a class out towards a river ramble; they were meant to be walking sober-sided crocodile fashion, but it was a little cavalcade going past. I chatted to Backhouse for a while, and as I did so, I worked out that Dixon was exchanging a few words from behind the bar with a bloke drinking in the parlour. I stood up, pushed through the door of the smoking room, and looked hard at the stranger in the parlour. He had a spirit glass in his hand; he was nobody I knew.
I sat on with Backhouse, drinking Smith's, and the beer did its work of lessening my nervousness by degrees. Backhouse then returned to his graft in the churchyard, and I to his home – where the coppers were now roaming about the garden, each in a world of his own – and the wife let me pick up the baby. Little Harry cried as soon as I did so, and I wondered whether I would be out with him for ever, having missed his first hours. He was small, as Dad had feared, and this was on account of him coming early, but that didn't bother me. To my mind the trouble with most babies was that they were a sight too big. I watched his hands; you'd think that somebody had paired and polished his nails, they were so dainty.
I slept a little in the afternoon, patrolled the village come nightfall in the soft rain with my cap pulled low, keeping on the kee-vee, and feeling a confounded twit, before returning to the Fortune with Backhouse. That night, I hardly slept again, what with the worry of all, the night-time movements of the many Backhouse children, the baby refusing to settle, and the coming and going of the police guards, who changed shifts in the small hours.
At four in the morning I dressed and walked back to 16A. Opening the front door, I whispered 'Sampson? Hopkins?' For I was now of a mind that they might have reached an accommodation, and remained together. If so, would they bother travelling hundreds of miles to settle my hash? And as for their confederate, Mike… I was not quite so vexed about him. I had him down as a man for a nasty assault, but killing was not his line.
The thing was the left-luggage ticket though. They would come for the ticket, which I would not be able to hand over.
Feeling like a burglar in my own home, I put on my good suit, collected up the Swan pen that Dad had given me, some of the blank papers I'd had from the Chief, and the book I'd lifted in Calais: Paris and its Environs. In the low gaslight, I opened a page haphazardly: 'The stranger visiting Paris for the first time, and anxious that his first impression of the city should be as striking as possible, cannot do better than a walk from the Louvre to the Place de la Concorde.' I closed the book and looked at the gold lettering on the cover. It was like a souvenir from a dream.
I stepped out of the house, locking the door behind me, and rode the Humber through the blue darkness to the station. There was nobody at the barrier. A long black coal train was rolling through, and when it had passed, I
