Strike a Match (Book 1): Serious Crimes

by Tayell, Frank

  “Hurry!” the guard yelled.

  Ruth put on a burst of speed, heaving the trolley in front of her, and holding it out towards Riley. The constable leaned out further, grabbed Ruth’s collar and bodily hauled her, trolley, and crime-kit, onto the train.

  “Thank you,” Ruth hissed, as the guard slid the door closed.

  It was a refurbished old-world carriage with scratched windows that hadn’t been designed to open. There were seats at the rear and front, but they’d been removed in the middle section and replaced with a set of narrow cages either side of an equally narrow walkway.

  “Is that the mail?” she asked the guard.

  “It is,” he said. “The telegraph’s good for letting the mine know the train’s on its way, but it can’t send a pair of socks to someone working an open seam. Vital work, the railways, it’s what’s kept our country going.” He turned to Mitchell. “We’ll get to Ringwood Junction in about half an hour. We’ll slow there, but we won’t stop. You’ll have to jump.”

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Mitchell said.

  The guard walked down the swaying carriage, past the cages and the handful of other passengers, and disappeared through the door at the end.

  Mitchell and Riley had taken up station at the pair of window seats nearest the door. She had her book out, he had his eyes closed. Ruth stayed standing for a moment taking in the passengers at the far end. She wondered who they were, and how far they were going. If she hadn’t been assigned to Serious Crimes, she could have been sitting there with them, on her way to somewhere exotic. Or just to somewhere far, far away from Twynham. She sighed and sat down.

  “Describe them,” Mitchell said, without opening his eyes.

  “Who?” Ruth asked.

  “The other passengers,” he said.

  She glanced along the aisle. Now seated, she could only see the back of one head and the front of a different knee. “There are seven people,” she said. “Two men with a boy and a girl. I would say they were both around fifteen years old. From the luggage nearby they’re relocating to the north.”

  “And?”

  “And a man in a dog collar sitting opposite, with two women in the chairs behind.”

  “And?” Mitchell prompted again.

  Ruth thought. “The two women are of a similar height, hair colour, and have similar features. I’d say they were sisters, perhaps cousins, but they are related. About twenty-five to thirty years old, maybe a little older. The man, woman, and two children don’t look like a family.”

  “They don’t?” Mitchell asked.

  “Well, they don’t look alike, not that that means much, but the children aren’t sitting close. They’re more… sort of upright. Like they’re sitting at attention. I think the man and woman are two masters, the children are their apprentices.”

  “Which would make them how old?” Mitchell asked.

  “Right, of course, so they’re at least seventeen. Probably tailors, going by the clothing.”

  “Probably. Anything else?”

  “Um…” she hesitated and did it too long.

  “The priest is wearing a crucifix around his neck, not a cross,” Mitchell said, opening his eyes and fixing them on hers. “But he is wearing it around his neck. The green book on the seat next to him is a Latin primer. Taken with the fact there was a conference at the New Priory last weekend, I’d say he’s a Catholic. The two women are miners. You can tell that from the coal dust that’s embedded under the skin. It makes them appear older than they are. I’d say they were in their early twenties. From their clothing you can tell they’re returning to work after a short stay in Twynham. It’s comfortable clothing, not showy. If they were in mourning they’d be wearing black. Since they’re not, they didn’t come here for a funeral. However, travel is expensive unless you get a warrant. Miners get those for births, deaths, and marriages of immediate family. It’s unlikely to be a wedding, as who has enough free time to get married in the middle of September? Therefore it’s a birth. Probably of a niece or nephew. Taking in their age, and that they’ve chosen to work in the mines, that tells us that the family was recently in need of money. The mines are dangerous, but they pay well. I would say that they chose to change careers due to the imminent arrival of the child.”

  “How do you know they changed careers?” Ruth asked.

  “Riley?” the sergeant prompted.

  “It’s the clothes,” Riley said, lowering her novel. “They’re very good quality and handmade. It suggests they were tailors, or training for it.”

  “They could have bought the clothes,” Ruth suggested.

  “Not when you consider the looks they were giving the two master tailors and their apprentices,” Riley said. “They’re not looking at the people, but what they represent. It’s wistful regret at the life that they could have had. But it’s not resentful, and that suggests that out of whatever tragedy has forced their change of career, something good has come out of it. A child.”

  “That’s impressive,” Ruth said.

  “It’s a theory based on observation,” Mitchell said. “Didn’t they teach you that in the academy? They should also have taught you that I could be completely wrong. Perhaps they’re a couple sent to the mines as part of a prison sentence who came to Twynham on a compassionate furlough. The priest might be a vicar, and the crucifix an heirloom. We look at people, and weave a story around that which we can see, but you must remember that it remains a story until facts confirm it as truth.” He closed his eyes. “Or not.”

  Ruth had heard something similar from one of her instructors at the academy. At the time she’d filed it away as interesting but not important. Mathematics, geography, history, English, and everything else had to be learned by rote and was tested on a weekly basis. Failure in those tests led to expulsion. By contrast, the lectures on policing were seen as an opportunity to doze as much by their instructors as they were by the students.

  She fixed her gaze on the landscape beyond the scratched windows. They’d long since passed the sheds and loading yards around Twynham. The view now was of fields filled with cows, interspersed with occasional abandoned houses. But they sped by too quickly for her to tell if the roofs had been broken by missiles during The Blackout, or by weather and time in the years since.

  “It’s so fast,” she murmured.

  “You think this is fast, you should have tried flying,” Mitchell said. “Have you never been on a train before?”

  “Once,” Ruth said, her eyes glued on the trees rushing by. “In the academy.”

  It had been during their survival training, and that journey had been made at night. The recruits had been dropped in the middle of nowhere and told to find their way back before breakfast. Ruth had, but five of the other recruits were still missing by lunchtime. When they were found, they were dismissed. That was her lasting memory of the academy, of one person being expelled after another.

  The fields gave way to a hamlet where smoke belched from chimneys tacked onto houses built in the age of central heating, and then to woodland. They passed a horse and cart on the wide road that had been dug along the railway line. Then a trio of bicycles, laden with… but they went by too fast for her to tell.

  “It’s about another mile,” the train’s guard said, interrupting her reverie ten minutes later. “We’ll slow the train, but we won’t stop.”

  “Yes, you said.” Mitchell stood. “And coming back?”

  “When we stop to take on water and Marines for the journey north, we’ll have word passed along the line. Just signal a train and get ready to jump on.”

  A few minutes later, the train gave a sudden violent jolt. The whistle blew, the train slowed, and Mitchell opened the door.

  “Keep your knees bent,” he said as he jumped out.

  “Don’t forget the trolley,” Riley said as she followed him.

  The trolley clutched awkwardly in one arm, Ruth jumped from the train. She remembered to keep her knees bent, but stag
gered as she landed. Riley caught her collar, pulling her away from the accelerating train.

  “Thank you,” Ruth coughed through a mouth full of smoke.

  There was a woman standing by the side of the tracks, wearing the green livery of the Railway Company.

  “The driver of the 06:34 spotted the body,” she said, speaking quickly, and backing away from the three police officers. “I was on the 07:10. I’ve been with the body ever since. That path through the grass to the south is the one I used to check he was dead.” And with that, she turned, grabbed the handrail of the rearmost car, and pulled herself onto the departing train.

  “Could it be a coincidence?” Mitchell said, as Ruth cleared the last of the smoke from her lungs. “Such things do exist, though they’re not as common as most people think.”

  “Is this where…?” Riley asked.

  “It is,” Mitchell said.

  Ruth followed their gaze. Both officers were staring at the twisted wreckage of an aeroplane. To her eyes, it looked no different from any of the dozens that littered the landscape near the city. No, she realised, they were looking past the plane at the forest beyond.

  “Sir?” Ruth asked, unsure how to frame the obvious question.

  “I remember this spot, cadet,” Mitchell said. “I’ve been here before.” He walked over the stained asphalt and crossed onto the tracks, peering at one tie, and then the next. “They all look the same now,” he said. “But it could be this one. Perhaps not.” He straightened. “I helped lay this railway line, many years ago. The old tracks run through the New Forest, and that was controlled by bandits. That’s what we called them. Slavers would be closer to the truth. Cannibals wouldn’t be far wrong. We lost a lot of cargo, and two locomotives, before the Prime Minister decided that it would be too costly trying to dislodge them. Instead we built a new line, here along this old road.” He stepped off the tracks and back onto the asphalt. “I wasn’t the only one to disagree with her, but we were, and are, a democracy. In the end she was proved wrong. We had to go in and clear the forest, and then we came back to bury the bodies that had been on the plane. What was left of them.” He shook his head as if ridding it of an unpleasant memory.

  “Of course,” he continued, slightly more loudly than necessary, “these roads weren’t built for the constant weight of all these goods trains. The tracks have to be constantly re-levelled. Take that as a reminder that the path that seems easiest usually isn’t.” He paced another step along the tracks, bent to look at another rail, and then stood and faced her. “Now, cadet,” he said, “the first lesson is gloves. The second is to take stock of where you are.”

  Ruth pulled the kidskin gloves from her belt and put them on.

  “There’s blood here,” Riley said, kneeling eight feet further down the road. “Not much. A few drops. Direction suggests he came from the tracks.”

  “Any sign of a fight?” Mitchell asked.

  “Not on the road. I think he was on a train and got off here. But speaking of signs,” Riley added, “where do you want to put that one up, cadet?”

  Ruth picked up the blue and white police sign and looked for a suitable spot to place it. Then she understood. They were in the middle of nowhere.

  “If you put it by the tracks you could arrest anyone on a passing train,” Riley said.

  Ruth blushed and put the sign back on the trolley. Trying to cover her embarrassment, she looked along the train tracks, at the road running alongside them, and finally at the fields on either side. The only sign of life, or at least of human life, was the disappearing plume of smoke from the train. There were no farms, no houses. The fields had grown wild and were choked with weeds, long grass, and occasional saplings. It wasn’t quite the middle of nowhere, but it was close. She looked at the two sets of tracks leading down the embankment. Both the slightly curving path taken by the railway guard and the other, more erratic route, ended at the body of a man. He wore a dark suit and lay on his back with his eyes open. It was almost as if he was looking up at the sky.

  “It was at night,” Ruth said.

  “What was?” Mitchell asked.

  “That he died,” Ruth said. “If the driver of the first train this morning saw the body, and if it was here before dusk, then surely someone would have seen it yesterday evening.”

  “Good. Keep your eyes on the ground,” he said, and headed down the embankment, towards the corpse.

  Ruth tried to follow his instruction, but as she drew nearer, and the smell grew more pronounced, she found her eyes drawn to the body. She’d seen corpses in the autopsy lectures, but those had been more about anatomy than forensic pathology, and the smell had overwhelmingly been one of disinfectant. Before that, the only bodies she’d seen, or that she remembered having seen, were two withered skeletons found in the basement of a house a mile from her home. The building had been destroyed during The Blackout, and the couple had been found as the rubble was finally being removed. That had been just before nightfall, so the bodies were left there, to be taken away for burial the next day. That evening, curiosity had got the better of sense, and Ruth had snuck back to the ruined house. It was the scratch marks carved in the cellar wall she remembered most clearly. Some were thin lines, others deep gouges from where the couple had tried to dig their way out, first with scraps of metal, and then their own fingernails. Those bodies had been almost mummified, the skin a papery leather, the odour dark but not as pronounced as the copper and earth smell coming from this victim.

  “Male,” Mitchell said as he reached the body and waved at the flies hovering around the corpse’s slightly open mouth. “Twenty-four. Twenty-six. Not much older, nor younger.” He picked up a hand. “Blood on the palm, from where he held the bandage in place. From the pattern of callouses, he wielded a shovel or axe, but not in the last few months. No bruises on the knuckles or on the face. Cadet, tweezers. Cadet? The tweezers; they’re in the box.”

  Ruth was grateful for the excuse to turn her back on the body. She opened the crime-kit. There were some instruments she recognised, but a lot she didn’t. They all must have some purpose, but as a whole it looked like a collection of junk. She found the tweezers and passed them to the sergeant.

  “It’s not a bandage,” Mitchell said, pulling a red-stained swatch of cloth from the man’s side. “It’s a handkerchief. Bag?”

  Ruth pulled a paper evidence bag from the kit and held it open as the sergeant dropped the handkerchief in it.

  “Doesn’t look like a knife wound,” Riley said, peering over the body.

  “No,” Mitchell said. “It’s a bullet wound. Small calibre. Perhaps a revolver.”

  “You don’t think…?” Riley began and again stopped with the question half asked.

  “Possibly,” Mitchell said. “Cadet, have you seen a bullet wound before? Step closer.”

  She did, glancing at the wound, but found her gaze drawn to the man’s face. With his eyes open, his expression was oddly serene. “He must have died looking at the stars,” she said.

  “And there are worse things to have as your last sight on Earth,” Mitchell said, turning to look at her. “But he could have had another forty years looking up at the night sky. We have to find out why those were taken away from him. Remember the face, but don’t dwell on it. Look at the wound, the body, find the evidence that will lead us to his killer.”

  “There’s something else there,” Riley said. “Under his shirt. A belt?”

  “Let’s see… yes, a belt. Of a sort. A money belt, I think, and well concealed.” He gently peeled the shirt back, revealing a stained belt with a blood-clogged zip. Mitchell tugged the zip until the pocket opened. He reached inside and pulled out…

  “Banknotes,” he said. “They all seem to be twenty-pound notes.” He passed them to Riley. Mitchell ran a hand along the man’s waist before rolling the body onto its side. “No exit wound,” he muttered. “A bullet will tell us the calibre, and we can run it against the guns. Perhaps it’s a match.” More loudly h
e added, “Cadet, hold him.”

  Swallowing, she reached down.

  “Not his arm, his side. Here,” Mitchell said, pointing. Ruth adjusted her grip. The body felt disconcertingly warm and soft. She told herself that was because of the sun, but found herself once more looking at those lifeless eyes. The victim wasn’t that much older than her though, being born before The Blackout, he would have had a very different childhood. Perhaps he remembered the old world. He would certainly have remembered the years after. The hunger and suffering, the fear and despair that Maggie had told her about. A wave of sorrow washed over her, lasting until a bluebottle fly landed on the man’s eye, when it was replaced with an equally strong wave of nausea.

  “There,” Mitchell said. “Got it.” He unclasped the money belt and pulled it free. “Six pouches in total,” he said, pulling open another zip. “Twenty-pound notes in this one, too. And… and if you’re going to throw up, cadet, don’t do it on the body! Let him go. Take a step back.”

  Gratefully, she did, turning her back on the corpse as she sucked in huge mouthfuls of air.

  “Twenty-pound notes in each one,” Mitchell said.

  “There’s about ninety in this stack,” Riley said.

  “That means there’s over ten thousand pounds here,” Mitchell said. “That’s an absurd amount of money. Nearly five years’ salary.”

  It was more than five years of Ruth’s salary. As a cadet, she would be paid one hundred pounds a month. In three months, at the earliest, she might qualify as a probationary constable, and it would rise to a hundred and thirty. A detective like Riley was on two hundred. Mitchell earned around two hundred and fifty.

  “The belt looks handmade, and very crudely done,” Mitchell said. “White canvas. Probably hemp. Each pouch is just large enough for the stack of notes. Or, to put it another way, each pouch is full of as many notes as it will hold. Cadet, what do you make of his clothes?”