by Ann Purser
“Of course I am,” Lois said. “But thanks, Dot. Anyway, who did you think it was? Had you seen him before, like you said?”
“Oh yes, I know who he was,” Dot replied. “At least, I’m almost a hundred percent sure, though he’s tried to disguise himself. I tell you what, though, I never saw such a messy mustache!” Her face more serious now, she said that they were definitely on the right track and if that hadn’t been Clive Mowlem, she’d eat her hat. Then she began to laugh, and Lois, much encouraged, relaxed and joined in.
The vicar appeared, and said it was such a treat to hear laughter in the church, and he was sure our Lord would approve. “Not to mention that splendid knight of old,” he added. “Quite a lad, according to all reports. Now, let me give you a few tips on how to find the best that Pickering has to offer. And do please come in again! Lots more to see in our church, including another knight in chain mail, with his legs crossed, apparently a sign that he was a Crusader. We’ve had lots of other suggestions, of course, and not all of them devout!”
TWENTY-SIX
“HOW MUCH LONGER ARE WE GOIN’ TO STAY ON THIS BLOODY godforsaken moor? I bet the sun is shining in Pickering.” Clive Mowlem looked out of the dusty window at the rain driving across the gloomy landscape. He had just reported to Gerald that he’d seen the two women in Pickering, first at a distance and then close up after he had followed them into the church.
“One of ’em, the little one, was that nosy Dot Nimmo, friend of Mum. I’m sure it was her.”
“And who was the other one? Queen Elizabeth the Second?”
“You can laugh, Gerald, but you’ll laugh on the other side of yer face when the cops come knocking on the door. I tell you it was Dot Nimmo! An’ she half recognised me, I reckon!”
“All right, if you say so. Keep yer hair on, brother. But why should the Nimmo woman be in Pickering, sodding miles from home? An’ anyway, if it was her, and even supposing she is looking for us, she’ll never find us up here on the moor. No, Clive, I got plans, and no Nimmo woman is goin’ to scupper them.”
There was complete silence for a minute or so, and Clive resumed his post at the window. Then from the outbuildings came the sound of the bull, bellowing angrily. “Poor bloody animal needs a bit of the other,” Clive said sadly. “All that stonking great tackle and nothin’ to do with it.”
Gerald laughed nastily. “Thinking of the ole bull, or your own self, Clivey boy? Just have patience. When we do the really big job, we’ll be out of here afore you can say knife, an’ off to Tenerife. Topless girls on every beach. Change our identity and live happily ever after.”
“What about Mum?” Clive said. “Is she coming, too?”
“Good God no. She’d never keep her mouth shut. Give or take a couple of hours and the whole of the Canary Islands would know what we’d done and where to find us.”
“Anyway,” said Clive sceptically, “what big job? All we done so far is a few bits of old statues from people’s gardens and the small change from an honesty box in the church. That wouldn’t get us nowhere!”
“I got a plan,” Gerald said in a hushed voice. Harry was in his room, and sometimes he turned off his television so that he could overhear the conversation in the kitchen.
“What plan?”
“It’s not finished yet. I’ll tell you when I got it properly sorted. But believe me, it’ll make headlines in the paper.”
“What, the Pickering Beacon?”
“Ha ha. Very funny. And yes, it’ll be in the local paper, but probably the nationals as well.”
“Well, go on, what is this master crime?” Clive had heard it all before. The big one that was going to make their millions never happened, and when Gerald had come down off his high place, he sank into a deep depression and then God help all his friends and relations.
“You remember Ronnie Biggs?” Gerald said.
Clive nodded. “One of the great train robbers, wasn’t he? Don’t tell me you’re planning to rob a train? That’ll be difficult round here. There ain’t no trains to Pickering.”
“Think, Clive, think. Haven’t you seen all the posters and signs to the steam railway that goes from Pickering to Whitby? Well . . .”
“Well what?”
Gerald tapped the side of his nose. “All will be revealed,” he said. “But first I have to go for a ride on Pickering’s finest tourist attraction.”
“Can’t I come, too?”
Gerald shook his head. “No, no chance. Two of us’d be suspicious. Two blokes going on a jaunt together. Well, need I say more?”
Clive said nothing for a few minutes. What on earth was Gerald planning? What could possibly be gained from a train-ful of families on holiday? He looked across at his brother, who was sitting in Harry’s favourite armchair, with his feet propped up against the fireplace. Had he finally lost his marbles? He was often scared by Gerald’s mercurial moods, especially when he was at the top of the scale. But none of his plans had ever sounded as ridiculous as this one. Was he planning to dress up as a highwayman and hold up the train with a couple of pistols from a museum? He sighed. He had no alternative but to go along with the plan, but he wished he could make the trip, too, just in case Gerald went too far.
“When are you going, then?” he asked, but Gerald again shook his head. “That’d be telling,” he said in a mock-mysterious voice.
HARRY COULD HEAR THE BROTHERS TALKING IN THE NEXT ROOM, but could not decipher the words. He had noticed recently that his hearing was not as acute as when he could hear the slightest sound out on the moor. In the end, he gave up and turned up his television. He planned a long trek with Jess tomorrow, and was content to have his thoughts diverted by a new comedy show.
TWENTY-SEVEN
LOIS AND DOT WALKED ALONG EASTGATE INTO THE CENTRE OF Pickering town. They had had a leisurely breakfast, so substantial that Lois said they’d not need anything else to eat all day. Mrs. Silverman had given them a timetable for the North York Moors Railway, and sung its praises for a marvellous way of seeing the countryside in comfort.
“Might be just the job, Mrs. M,” Dot had said. “We could watch the woods and moors go by, and who knows, we might catch sight of those two thugs on the way. I’d know that old lorry anywhere. Gladys was moaning about it and wishing they’d get a decent car she could use.”
Lois looked away from a window of fishing tackle, complete with life-size heron. She tried hard to dispel the thought that Derek would love this place, with its winding streets and mysterious passages between shops, inviting the curious.
“I don’t reckon they’ll still have the lorry,” she said. “They’re much too fly for that. No, they’ll have dumped it and be using a vehicle bought from one of their dodgy associates. You know the form, Dot, used twenties and no questions asked. Still, we might very well pick up some information on the way about a couple of strangers seen loafing about suspiciously.” She privately doubted this, but was determined to take a train journey that they could enjoy and describe to Derek when they got home. It would be a real tourist thing to do.
“We’ll get the eleven o’clock easily,” Dot said, marching along purposefully. “Should we get sandwiches for a picnic? Or rely on local catering?” Dot gave the impression that nothing north of Watford could be relied on. But Lois had read the leaflet, and said they would go as far as Grosmont, about an hour’s journey, and find a place to eat before returning in the afternoon.
“We can get into conversation with people in a café and see if anybody’s seen a couple of scruffs loitering about. We can say they’re our long-lost relatives.”
“We could say they’ve come into money from a will, and we’re helping to find them. That should smoke them out!”
Dot was pleased with herself for this refinement of their plan, and Lois hadn’t the heart to discourage her. Besides, knowing Dot’s easy way of buttonholing strangers and discovering anything she might want to know, on consideration she thought this might be a productive idea.
They arrived at the station, now lovingly restored over several years into the heartwarming kind of station Dot used to know in her youth. Her eyes were everywhere as Lois bought the tickets. “Look, Mrs. M! See that big ad for Virol? ‘School-children need it.’ Do you remember Virol? My mum used to give it to us by the spoonful! Used to swear by it, she did . . .”
Lois’s eyes were also everywhere, but she looked swiftly along the lines of people filling the platform. It was the tail end of the holiday season, and many young families had taken this Sunday to have an outing in the autumn sun. There were tables and chairs outside the refreshment room, and her heart lurched as she saw two men, one tall and heavily built, and the other small and weasely. But then they were joined by cheery blonde wives and several small children. Not our Mowlems, then, she told herself. But she continued to check down the platforms on both sides of the lines.
“Let’s walk up to the end of the platform and watch the train approaching,” she said to Dot, who was peering longingly into a shop full of railway memorabilia and other eminently buyable souvenirs. “We shall get a good view of the whole station from there.”
“How’s about going up onto the footbridge over the tracks?” Dot said. “We’ll get an even better look from there.”
“You go up there, and I’ll go to the end of the platform. Then we can get together and find a seat.”
Dot disappeared and then, above the heads of the crowds, reappeared, athletically mounting the steps of the bridge. She waved gaily to Lois, who walked slowly towards the end of the platform. She passed the end of a wall and the beginning of a wooden fence, and leaned over to look down. Some distance below, a fast-running shallow stream glinted through leaves, and a sudden thought occurred to her. If you were wanting to escape unseen, you could easily leap the fence and splash across to freedom.
Her attention was taken by a mellow whistle from the approaching train, and she watched it appear, marvelling at the drama of the big locomotive belching out smoke and steam. Just think, she told an invisible Derek, every journey in the old days must have felt like an adventure.
“Mrs. M! Over here!” Dot yelled. Lois made her way through groups of tourists and joined Dot at the door of a coach. “I thought you’d want a corridor one,” Dot said breathlessly. “Come on, here’s an empty compartment. We can have a window seat each. Keep our eyes open!”
The wood-panelled compartment soon filled up, and in minutes Dot was deep in conversation with a middle-aged woman, clearly the grandmother of the family party. “So you live round here, d’you? I expect you know what’s going on in Pickering, then!”
“Not so easy when the tourists are in town,” the woman said. “But off-season is different. There’s still families in Pickering who’ve lived here for generations, and we have what we call an information network.”
“Or gossip shop, more likely,” her husband said. “Can’t get away with much in Pickering.”
Lois could see exactly what Dot was up to, and decided to join in. “Do you get much crime with all these strangers around? Burglaries an’ that?” she asked.
“Not bad, considering,” the woman answered. “We’ve had one or two thefts from gardens lately. Statues and birdbaths, that kind of thing. Stupid really. Nobody’s going to be fool enough to leave anything worth money in their gardens. All of it was that reproduction stuff made out of concrete or some such.”
“Any clues as to who did the thieving?” Dot asked casually.
The woman shook her head. “The police can’t be bothered with such trivial stuff. But my husband—him sitting next to me here—reckons he saw a susupicious-looking couple of men carrying one of them concrete nymphs with no clothes on. You saw them, didn’t you, Jim?”
Jim, grateful for being allowed to speak, smiled seraphically and said yes, he saw the men carrying the nymph upside down and watched as they put her in the boot of a car. “Scarpered quickly when they saw me,” he said. “Shot off up the road to the moor.”
“Well,” said the woman disapprovingly, “if that’s the only woman they can get, I wish them joy of it!”
Dot looked meaningly at Lois, and they joined in the hearty laugh from all in the compartment, and then the train drew slowly to a halt in Levisham station.
“‘Our 1912-style station,’” Dot read out from a leaflet, “‘accessible by one solitary hill road and surrounded by the magnificent North York Moors.’” She looked out of the window and saw an old railway coach adapted for camping holidays. A woman came out of it and draped some washing over the steps up to the door. Dot lowered her voice, and said to Lois that this would be just the ticket for the Mowlem men for a hideaway. “Who would ever track them down to this place?” she said.
“Probably the police, if they were looking for them. And maybe us, if we catch sight of them. But it’d be like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack, I daresay. They’d have worked out an escape route through those woods where nobody could follow.”
Dot was not discouraged. “You can never tell, Mrs. M. I don’t always believe in coincidence. Sometimes I think we get a helping hand, ’specially if it’s in a good cause. Just keep your eyes peeled. You look left an’ I’ll look right. They’ll be disguised, but any two fellers together, one big and one small and shifty-looking, could be them. Might be doin’ a bit of bag snatching in stations, or shopliftin’ from souvenir shops. Just keeping their hand in.”
Lois smiled at Dot’s stage whisper, which was perfectly audible to all. The woman from the information network leaned forward conspiratorially. “You looking for somebody, you two?” she asked. “You’re not—” She stopped and shook her head.
“Not what?” said Dot.
“Um, er, you’re not plainclothes policewomen?” The woman’s voice had become a hiss, and now everybody in the compartment was listening. Lois could see that Dot was preparing herself for a speech, and so she stepped in at once.
“Good gracious me, no!” she said. “No, we were talking about people we used to know. They had two sons and moved up to a farm in this part of the world. But I don’t think it was this station they told us about. No,” she continued, turning to Dot, “it began with a G, didn’t it.”
“Grosmont,” said the woman. “We’re getting off there, so you’ll know when you’re there. Hope you find them! We know most people in Grosmont, but I don’t remember any newcomers, d’you, Jim?”
Jim agreed that no people of that description had moved in lately. “But if you don’t mind my saying so, them two I saw thieving could’ve been the ones you’re looking for. I should try somewhere on the moors. Only be careful. Easy to get lost, if it’s a farmhouse you’re looking for.”
“Thanks,” said Lois. “We’ll have a drive round.”
She and Dot continued to stare out of the window as they puffed through deep ravines, woods in dappled sunshine, and fast-flowing streams, and stopped at picturesque small stations, Newton Dale Halt, Goathland. Then it was Grosmont, and they got up to alight.
“I need the loo, Mrs. M,” Dot said, making a beeline for green-tiled toilets, sparkling clean and smelling of disinfectant. Lois said she would wait outside. “Like a camel, me,” she said, not entirely accurately. “I can go for hours.”
Lois wandered along the platform towards the level crossing, where the gates were shut against cars, in order to let the train travel on its way to Whitby on the coast. A small crowd of people had gathered to watch the train go by, and as she watched a small girl crying because her ball had gone between the train lines, her eye was caught by a small, thin figure wearing a railwayman’s hat, sweeping up ice cream wrappers and empty cans from the platform. From under his hat she could see, as he turned away from her, a skimpy ponytail sticking out. There was something furtive about the way he did not look up from his job as the train passed by, huffing and puffing and blowing its whistle to the cheers of the watchers.
Dot’s voice called from behind her, and she turned. “Here, Dot! Quick!”
“That railway chap there, sweeping up—isn’t he the one we saw in the church?”
Dot looked towards the figure, who, for a moment, raised his head and seemed to search them out. As soon as his eyes fixed on them, he shoved his brush into his little cart full of rubbish, and made off rapidly round the back of a shed.
“It was that Clive! I’d swear it was him! Come on, Mrs. M, let’s follow him.”
Lois put a restraining hand on Dot’s arm. “Hey, not so fast, Dot. He’ll be out of sight now anyway. He recognised us, didn’t he? You anyway. No, now we know where he’s working—did you see the hat?—we can find out more. Come on, we’ll go and get something to eat and have a look around, then come back here and sniff out somebody who knows him. He’ll be miles away by now. We need to know where they’re living, and it’s probably that farm of the man your friend Gladys knew.”
Dot stopped, disappointed at Lois’s instructions. “Well, okay, Mrs. M. But what are you going to do when an’ if we find out where they are and what they’re up to?”
“Send a message to our mutual friend,” Lois said.
“What? Hunter Cowgill, superman detective of Tresham cops?”
“That’s right,” answered Lois. “No point in a couple of weak and feeble women having a go at them. It’s a police job, an’ I shall convince ’em that two thugs who can knock my Derek unconscious deserve a little attention.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
CLIVE ARRIVED BACK AT THE FARM, PUFFING AND PANTING like the steam train he had just seen chuffing away along the valley.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” Gerald said. He was sitting in the kitchen with his feet up, reading the sports pages of the Sunday paper.
Clive sank down onto a hard kitchen chair, and with elbows on the table, he put his head in his hands and groaned.
