Death on a Branch Line

by Andrew Martin

  ‘You’re one of them,’ the gunman said, addressing the Chief, but nodding towards the two roughs. ‘They know you. When you came up, they said, “It’s Weatherill.”’

  ‘And did they look pleased about it?’ asked the Chief.

  The Chief took two steps towards the gunman, and there was now not more than a yard’s distance between him and the revolver.

  ‘So now then,’ the Chief said, and he advanced again.

  The gunman looked down at his bag, then up at the Chief.

  ‘One more step and I’ll fire,’ he said.

  The Chief took one more step; he removed the revolver from the hand of the gunman, who stared at the Chief amazed.

  ‘That was painless, wasn’t it?’ said the Chief, smiling, and I winced at that for I knew what was coming: the fast blow that sent the man to the ground.

  It was then that the two roughs made their breakaway. I turned and scarpered over the bridge after them. In the middle of the bridge, I was ten feet behind the slower of the pair; then seven feet, five, closing … But the five became seven again, and he had ten yards on me by the time he reached the ticket barrier, where he went out through the ‘in’ gate, clattering against the pole that supported the sign: ‘Please show your own ticket’.

  I nearly gave up the pursuit just then, but I saw that the second one had crocked himself on that pole, and that I was gaining on him again as we pounded through the cab shelter.

  We came out from under the glass roof of the shelter and ran on hard under the great heat of the blaring sun, but we were both slowed by it, as was the man in the lead, who was also back in my sights now.

  I was separated from the first bloke by seventy yards’ distance, from the second by thirty. As we went along by the dying gardens of the Royal Station Hotel, pink-cheeked, bewildered women in white dresses came and went; black-suited, sweltering railway clerks were presented to us in a steady stream, and were pushed aside or dodged if lucky. To my left, I saw Leeman Road, and the central post office of York, with a dozen vans queuing up before it to deliver the letters that people would insist on writing in spite of the suffocating heat.

  Under the arch of the Bar Walls, and the headquarters of the North Eastern Railway came up. Beyond the offices was the Cocoa Factory, hard by the river, and I was now running under the raying sun and the smell of burning chocolate combined. At the river’s edge, the first man ran right, heading along the road that ran between the two towering buildings of the cocoa works, while the second man ran straight – gaining Lendal Bridge ten seconds before me. I was keeping on the tail of this second man, since I knew that he was in the same state as me: half-dead. Under the bridge, the river was low and dirty, over-crowded with pleasure cruisers that puffed out bad-tempered black smoke. In Museum Street, the man dodged right. Was he in the doorway of the Conservative Club? Half-fainting, I stopped and verified that he was not … and I gave up the chase.

  When I returned to the station and to Platform Five, with my shirt sweat-soaked and the whole place re-awakening, the man who’d held the gun was only just righting himself.

  The chief was holding the man’s valise – which was locked.

  ‘What’s in here, then?’ the Chief asked the bloke.

  ‘Specie,’ he muttered, as he sadly collected up the wreckage of his spectacles.

  Chapter Three

  Four twenty-two by my silver watch.

  The Chief sat at his desk, and I sat on the chair opposite with my suit coat on my knee. The gas hissed like a jungle snake, for the Chief’s office – which was an enclosed part of the police office – was windowless. On the green wall behind him was a plan of the whole of the territories of the North Eastern Railway. The station beyond was still quieter than normal.

  ‘It’ll be like this when the strike comes, sir,’ I said.

  Everyone knew the railwaymen would be the next lot to be out. They wanted recognition for their union. Could I count myself a railwayman? I had certainly been one once, in my days firing on the footplate, and I could still find myself checked by the beauty of a locomotive, but I was a copper now, a passenger not a pilot on the iron road, and I would not be coming out even if the true railwaymen did. The Chief did not normally speak about politics but he had once said of the strikers that it was ‘our job to keep those fellows down’. I’d kept silence at that.

  The Chief was side-on to me, hardly listening but smoking a cigar and fretting about the gunman. He’d taken him into the holding cell and given him a bit of a braying, while I’d stood outside the cell door feeling spare – and guilty with it. I’d put a stop to the rough-house by rapping on the door, and asking the Chief if he wanted a cup of tea. I’d brought one for the prisoner as well, and taken a good look at his face. He’d come off lightly compared to some, and I handed him a bottle of carbolic and a cloth as the Chief stepped back into the office.

  ‘You’ll stand witness to this,’ the bloke had said, pointing to his cuts and bruises.

  ‘Pipe down, mate,’ I’d said, ‘and you’ll be out of here directly.’

  After coming out of the cell, the Chief had consulted his filing system, and had for once turned up the right paper. There was the bloke, set down in cold print as an employee of the Yorkshire Penny Bank, certificated to carry arms when transporting specie – and there’d been over five hundred pounds’ worth of sovereigns in the valise: the week’s wages for Backhouse’s nurseries, the York General Draperies and half a dozen other places.

  ‘I half-recognised the fellow,’ said the Chief, putting his boots on his desk. ‘But why did he not come out and say he was running cash for the bank?’

  The Chief’s neck was red where his collar rubbed, but that collar could rub his head right off before he’d notice anything amiss.

  ‘Because he thought you were out to rob him, sir.’

  Train smoke floating in from outside, cigar smoke inside; the strikes; the scrap that was brewing with the Kaiser … A fellow wanted to get away and breathe. But I knew I’d lost my chance to make a late booking in Scarborough.

  ‘He was in a funk, sir, not thinking straight.’

  I liked the Chief and didn’t like to see him worried – not that he was ever really worried about anything. If you read the Police Manual, it was all very careful: ‘In exercising the power of arrest, officers must use the greatest caution and discretion …’ But the Chief never had read the Police Manual, and it was too late for him to do so now that he was just a few months short of his retirement. I would have said that getting on for half the things he did were unlawful, but it seemed to me that he always had the right end in view. I thought of him as being at once modern and old-fashioned: modern in that he fostered ‘initiative’ in his men, old-fashioned in that he didn’t hold with paperwork and would clout a ruffian as soon as look at him. I supposed that I covered up for him too often in this. I knew I’d got a name in the office for being the Chief’s favourite, and despite being less than half his age (twenty-seven to his sixty-four), I was the only one he’d take a pint with.

  ‘You might have shown him your warrant card,’ I said, and the moment I let fall the words, I regretted them. The Chief could be set off at a touch, so I put in a belated ‘… sir’.

  The Chief turned towards me and blew smoke. He’d tramped for hundreds of miles across the boiling deserts of Africa; he had a slash mark from a dervish spear across his chest. A newspaper report existed of an army boxing match of about ’79 in which the Chief had been described as a useful heavyweight of the ‘rushing’ type, which was a polite way of saying that he went nuts in a scrap.

  ‘Come again?’ he said, by which he meant, ‘Let’s see if you’ve got the brass neck to repeat those words.’

  ‘The thing of it is, sir … How do you let folk know who you are if you don’t show your warrant card?’

  A beat of silence.

  ‘That’s their look-out,’ said the Chief.

  He ought not to have given the bank’s man a pasting. Banks were
rich and powerful. They could fund legal actions for assault.

  ‘If that bugger does put up a complaint,’ said the Chief, who seemed to have read my mind just at that moment, ‘I’ll bloody mill him.’

  By which the Chief meant that he would see him gaoled, but I wondered on what charge. The company solicitors might be able to dream something up. Had the bank’s man not impeded the Chief in the execution of his duty? And had his actions not allowed the escape of the two York roughs who’d been eyeing the money bag?

  My next question was designed to get points with the Chief.

  ‘How did you know the fellow wouldn’t fire on you?’

  The Chief threw open his desk drawer and pitched the weapon – which he’d confiscated – onto his desk top.

  ‘Pick it up,’ he ordered, and I did so. Guns were always heavier than you expected.

  ‘It’s a Luger,’ he said. ‘Single action.’

  ‘Right-o,’ I said. ‘So that when you pull the trigger …’

  ‘… Nothing happens,’ said the Chief, taking back the gun. ‘You must cock the hammer first.’

  ‘And the bloke hadn’t done that?’

  The Chief shook his head.

  ‘What if he had done, sir?’

  The Chief stood up.

  ‘I dare say I’d have been a little more cordial. Fancy a pint, lad?’

  On Platform Four, I gave good evening to the Chief. We’d just returned from the Station Hotel, where we’d put the peg in after a quick two pints. It was the Chief’s wife’s birthday, and he had to get off.

  I looked up at the great clock: five to five. I thought about wandering over to the booking office, where they kept some sea-side brochures. It might be worth pitching up in Scarborough and calling in on a few places in hopes of a vacancy. The heat had barely abated, but the station light was yellow, signifying the start of evening – yellow with floating specks of soot plainly visible.

  A fair quantity of passengers stood on the platform, and they were not excursionists but business types, for a London train was about due.

  I turned to my right, and the train was approaching under the far gantry where the signals were once again various, looking like a rabble rather than a disciplined army. But it was a ‘down’ train coming in across the way that held my attention. The on-coming engine was one of the Great Northern company’s 0-6-0s, and its fire was for some reason not in good nick, so that thick black smoke was brought towards the platforms by such little breeze as existed.

  I watched the stuff roll past the open door of the First Class Tea Rooms, where ladies ate strawberries and cream with long-handled spoons and pretended they were in a nicer place. The smoke came on, and was now combined with a few drops of moisture from the chimney of the engine, so that it seemed as though we were in for an electrical storm. There seemed to be an epidemic of bad firing that day. The firebox must be fairly smothered in coal to give that much smoke.

  I walked over the footbridge to Platform Nine where the engine came to rest – and where the driver was down from his cab, and talking to the platform guard, who looked agitated. The guard then broke away and came dashing past me as I approached.

  ‘What’s up?’ I said.

  ‘I’m to fetch an ambulance team,’ he called out, and he began bounding up the stairs of the footbridge.

  ‘Railway police,’ I said to the driver, as I gained the engine.

  ‘It’s my mate,’ said the driver. He held a rag in his hand, and he used it to draw sweat and coal dust from one side of his face to another.

  I swung myself up on the footplate, and the fireman seemed curled up asleep in front of the fire door – just like any cat on a tab rug before the hearth. Only he was lying in half an inch of coal dust.

  The fellow stirred as I stepped up, and the driver said, ‘Heat sickness.’

  I could quite credit it, what with the great heat of the day, and the white, rolling fire of the engine.

  ‘We’re up from London,’ he said. ‘Passed Retford in very fair time,’ he said, ‘but I knew summat was up. He hadn’t said a word since Peterborough, and he’s normally a great one for nattering, is Bob.’

  I leant over the fireman, and shut the fire door to save him from a roasting – at which he rolled over a little, and looked up at me, saying, ‘No, no, the fire needs air. Must keep up the steam, you see.’

  ‘… Fired her in myself,’ said the driver.

  I didn’t like to see the man lolling down there in the dust, so I said, ‘Let’s have you up, mate.’

  The driver gave a hand, and we sat him on the sandbox, and he sat there rocking, and looking too white. An inkling of trouble told me to step back just as the great wave of stuff came out of his mouth. Half a minute later, the driver was playing the water hose over the footplate, and the fireman was saying, ‘Reckon I’ve shovelled ten ton of coal today … and it’s not the bloody weather for it.’

  The spray of boiling water was moving the last of the stuff off the footplate. It wasn’t a very manly colour, being yellow and bright pink.

  As the stuff rolled away, the fireman said, ‘I don’t know what that is,’ just as though he was trying to disown it. ‘I en’t eaten all day,’ he said.

  ‘Bob forgot his snap,’ said the driver, and he turned a lever to stop the hose, which caused the whole engine to judder. ‘Bloody cursed, is this run,’ he said, looping the hose and setting it back on its hook.

  I looked down, and there was a whole press of blokes on the platform by the engine. First, there was the ambulance team – four blokes in queer hats. I stepped aside, and they came pouring up. One of them began questioning the fireman, and it was more like an interrogation than a medical examination. The driver stepped down to make room, and I followed him. He began talking to two men in dark suits. They’d evidently just climbed down from one of the carriages.

  ‘Will we be held here, or what?’ asked one of the two blokes.

  ‘We’ll need a relief,’ said the driver.

  ‘I’ll send a lad over to the firemen’s mess,’ I said. ‘Should turn one up in no time.’

  As I spoke I raised my eye to the small clock that hung above the team rooms on Platform Nine. It was dead on five. The clocks would be clanging all over York.

  ‘And who are you?’ asked the first of the blokes.

  ‘Railway police,’ I said.

  He was being short with me, and he’d get likewise in return.

  ‘We’re Met boys,’ said the second of the two blokes, meaning the Metropolitan Police. He had boggly eyes, which made him look as if he was trying to burst out of himself.

  Beyond this pair, I saw a man step down from one of the carriages, and another came down after him, or more like with him. They were too close. The first wore an official-looking moustache; the second had long hair, and had not lately shaved. Well, I knew what was going off all right.

  ‘Prisoner under escort,’ I said.

  The first of the two blokes standing directly before me gave me the evil eye. He would’ve denied it if he could.

  ‘Who is he?’ I said, indicating the prisoner, who was now being fairly dragged towards us by his guard.

  The boggly-eyed man looked at me, and I watched his eyes. It was like waiting for Bob the fireman to chuck up his guts.

  ‘Now that’, he said, indicating the man under escort, ‘is what you might call perishable goods.’

  Chapter Four

  Pending the arrival of a new fireman, the prisoner was stowed in the holding cell of the station police office. The hard-looking Met man stood smoking on Platform Thirteen along with the guard who’d brought the prisoner down from the train. They both stood within hailing distance of the boggle-eyed man, who was evidently junior to both of them. He stood in the doorway of the police office, which Wright had now vacated.

  I was the only man in the office, and I sat at my desk looking at the bread and cheese. It was a quarter after five. The question of the time seemed to press on me rather; had done a
ll day. The hot weather was like a clock ticking.

  ‘His name’s Lambert,’ said the boggle-eyed man, turning in the doorway and entering the police office. ‘Hugh.’

  He meant the prisoner, of course.

  ‘From the quality he is,’ he went on. ‘Brought up in a country mansion – old man lord of the bloody manor. Adenwold. Heard of it?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Went to all the best schools, Cambridge University – nothing wanting at all, and then what does he go and do?’

  He took out a leathern wallet and began making a cigarette out of the stuff inside it.

  ‘Shoots his old man.’

  He eyed me over the top of a cigarette paper.

  ‘Ungrateful,’ he said.

  ‘He’s for the drop, then,’ I said.

  ‘Monday morning,’ said the boggle-eyed bloke. ‘Eight o’clock sharp.’

  Holding up the baccy pouch, he looked a question at me.

  ‘… Obliged to you,’ I said, and he lobbed the whole thing over, whereas I’d been banking on him rolling me one.

  As I caught it, I said, ‘Hold on – this is the Moorby Murder.’

  Moorby was immediately south of the Yorkshire Moors, and a place just waiting for a murder to happen so that all the papers could speak of ‘The Moorby Murder’, which rolled so easily off the tongue, and looked eye-catching in print. But Adenwold, which was near to Moorby, was where it had actually happened. I had read of the trial, which had been held about three months since, down in London – a regular Old Bailey sensation. But I could not recall the details of the case beyond the striking fact that a son had killed his father.

  ‘I don’t understand why you’re shifting him,’ I said, as I set to work with the baccy. ‘It en’t regular to move a condemned man.’

  (It’s adding insult to injury, I thought, that’s what it is.)

  ‘Well now,’ said the boggle-eyed man, ‘we’re taking him to Durham. Reason being, the scaffold at Wandsworth nick’s busted. The drop mechanism …’

  And he violently mimed the pulling of what might have been a signal lever.