Murder At Deviation Junction

reserved for late evening and handed me my bicycle clips.

    'Buy a paper at the station bookstall, our Jim,' she said. 'One of the cleverer sort, you know. Then go into the interview with it under your arm.'

    'To create the illusion of intelligence, you mean.'

    'No, Jim, you are intelligent.'

    I put on the bike clips.

    'Please try to remember that, Jim,' said the wife.

    I went down the side alley, where the Humber was covered by a tarpaulin against the shocking weather. As I walked it along the front path, the wife called, 'And if you get the promotion . . . I'll think on about the boots.' Harry stood behind her, grinning fit to bust, just as though he knew exactly what she meant.

    The six wide fields were all piled with a smooth whiteness like well-made beds. I made the bicycle stand at York station after twenty minutes; I then stood there for a further three, blowing on my hands to make them work again. As I blew, I thought of Captain W. R. Fairclough, formerly of the 5th Lancers. Under this gentleman, whose acquaintance I would be making very shortly, the North Eastern Railway Police had grown from sixty-seven men of all ranks to three hundred and forty-two. He was all plans, and I'd been made privy to what was surely the strangest of them by Shillito; or at least, that seemed to be the case, but I could not quite dismiss the thought that it was all a great jape designed to pay me out for hitting him.

    I had brought the papers along with me. They were in the side pocket of my topcoat as I approached the bookstall, where I bought both the Manchester Guardian and The Times. Brainpower in journalism did not come cheap, I decided as I handed over the coin, but having learnt that I would be keeping my job, and that there would be another payday after all, I'd been a little freer with the loose change I had remaining. I stuffed the papers into my pocket, and walked over to the police office, where Wright and Constable Baker were the only men about.

    Wright turned towards me and gave me my wages: three pounds and seven for the past week, and a pound Christmas bonus. I was so relieved to be in funds that I almost tipped him - almost went back to the bookstall for another clever paper as well. Wright also handed me a telegram along with the wage packet. It came folded, so I didn't read it just then, but walked over the footbridge to take the train for Whitby, where I would, as usual, change for Middlesbrough. Wright had been civil enough, but he'd barely looked at me as he'd given over the wages and telegram. He'd lost interest in me now that I was no longer in bother with my superiors.

    As I crossed the footbridge, the telegraph lad came bounding along.

    'Morning, squire!' he shouted.

    'What are you doing here?' I said. 'It's Christmas, en't it?'

    'It is for some,' he said. 'You had a wire from London, you know. Come in just now.'

    'I've got it, thanks,' I said.

    The message had evidently come first into the main telegraph office rather than the police office - but that was often the way.

    There were many distractions on the Whitby train, and they took my mind off the wire in my pocket. There were more kids about than usual and the adults were a sight livelier than on any normal day. It was Friday and it was Christmas Eve - as a combination it was nigh-on unbeatable.

    All the corridors were blocked by giant trunks and going-away portmanteaus and brown paper parcels, and it took me a good ten minutes to find a seat. When I sat down I took the newspapers out of my pocket: 'To-Day's Speeches,' I read on the front page of The Times. I then put my hand in my pocket to get out the telegram, but it wasn't there. I hunted through all my pockets, under the wondering eyes of every person in the compartment, but it was nowhere to be found. I had somehow mislaid it.

    It could only have been from Steve Bowman, for he was about the only man I knew in London. I didn't want him waking up the whole case of the Travelling Club now that I'd seen my way clear to dropping it, but it was not in his interests to do that. I then remembered that he still didn't know I'd dropped it. As far as he was concerned, he had a gaol term in prospect, and no doubt the telegram had been expressing anxiety on that score, and looking out for my answer.

    I would try to reach him by telephone before the day's end. There was no sense leaving him stewing all over Christmas.

    I couldn't quite get on with the clever newspapers, and so passed the rest of the journey looking at the white landscape beyond the window, and reading again over the papers given me by Shillito, which seemed no less weird now than they had at first sight in the Punch Bowl tavern.

Chapter Thirty-six

    Stepping off the train, I walked past the Middlesbrough police office, hoping not to run into the two-faced Detective Sergeant Williams who'd dished me to Shillito; or attempted to. It seemed that Shillito, having been soundly belted, had come round to me and removed the bar he'd placed on my way to promotion. There was no great mystery involved. He was a double-fisted man himself, and I'd spoken to him in the language he understood.

    The police office was separate from the police headquarters, which lay on Spring Street, the very place in which Paul Peters's camera had been lifted. It was not a long street, and so the camera must have been taken practically on the doorstep of railway police headquarters - a fact it might be better, all considered, not to mention to the head of the force. (I also made a mental note not to bring up the matter of the shooting of Small David, for I was sure it had not been a planned event, and that the force would count it an embarrassment.)

    The Spring Street offices had only been taken temporarily for just as long as it took to do up the ones at Newcastle, and the desk that had been placed in the hallway of the building at the foot of a staircase had a lonely look of not belonging. The same went for the bloke sitting at it - he wore a police uniform with a topcoat over, and pointed up the staircase when I told him I had an appointment with Captain Fairclough.

    'Third floor,' he said, and his voice echoed against the cold stone, which made me more nervous than I was already.

    I climbed the stairs and a black door with the words 'Capt. Fairclough' painted on it in scruffy white letters stood before me. I knocked, a voice called out and there he was.

    He was a handsome man; looked the part of a leader, with grey- black hair and a grey-black beard. He sat at a sizeable desk in a room otherwise more or less empty, and it held the wide-awake smells of coffee and paint. It was freezing too, for behind the wide desk was a wide window, with the sash propped open.

    But it was all on account of the view, for Captain Fairclough's window looked clean across the Company rows to Ironopolis. Standing before the desk, I took it all in: the great red clouds coming out of the blast-furnace tops, like slowly blossoming flowers; the trains of all shapes and sizes rolling through the snow; the wagons being hauled and lowered; and the tiny, lonely-looking men by the rails, or on the gantries of the blast furnaces or crossing the wastes in between, where, for the present, the snow had killed the ash.

    'Sit down, Detective Stringer,' said Captain Fairclough.

    I did it - and too quickly. I still wore my topcoat, and the clever papers, folded in my side pocket were sticking into me. They could not be seen by Captain Fairclough, and so had proved a waste of money.

    'Do you know Middlesbrough?' he asked by way of preliminary.

    It was good that he'd asked, for it meant he'd not heard of my troublesome investigations into the Travelling Club. But then again: what was the correct answer?

    'I am not very closely acquainted with it, sir,' I said.

    Try not to talk like a copy book, I told myself.

    'Now you came to us from footplate work -' said Captain Fairclough.

    I nodded, thinking guiltily of the letter I'd written asking for a return to it.

    'I have a good general knowledge of railway working, sir,' I said. 'I find it comes in handy to know the business of a marshalling yard or engine shed.'