The Baghdad Railway Club

by Andrew Martin

  The station was a building of rough grey stone with pointed, church-like windows and a church-like bell hanging from a little arch at one end of the pitched roof. There were two platforms and two tracks running between them. There was not enough in the station: no ticket gates, no posters on the walls, not even any nameplate saying ‘Baghdad’, and certainly no people. But between the tracks stood a Janus-faced clock on an iron stand. The clock said half after ten, so it was about right. The platforms were low, and dirty booths of glass and iron ran along the left-hand one, all in a line like compartments of a carriage: waiting rooms or ticket offices, and one must be the Salon de Thé. I recollected that I was supposed to say, ‘It is closed.’

  Well, I’d look a bloody idiot saying that. Looking again at the walls‚ I saw that the station name was indicated, in that the word ‘BAGHDAD’ had been written on the right-hand wall in tall, shaky letters of red paint. There was a nightmare quality to the work, the long thin letters seeming to be formed of dripping blood. I began to make out through the gloom other scrawlings on the walls, in a different shade of red. I first thought these were all in a foreign language, but I made out the word ‘Tommy’. I looked harder . . .

  I heard a footfall coming from beyond the far end of the station. Through the soft, green gloom, a man approached. I believed he had stepped out of one of the blockhouses set amid the broken tracks. He wore a long black coat, and it became clear that the small hat he wore was red – a fez. I had thought all Arabs would wear a fez, but here was the first. He held a lamp, and as he came under the station roof, the swinging white light illuminated the scrawl on the walls: ‘One Tommy – 100 Askari’, I read, and ‘Tommy, where is your Lon . . .’ and then, some way off, ‘. . . don.’

  I tried my ‘Salaam alaikum’ on the man as he approached. The collar of his coat was braided with gold.

  ‘Hello‚ my dear,’ he said, which knocked me rather. He was a thin, handsome chap with a deeply lined face – but then most of the Arabs were. His coat made him look priest-like, but I thought I knew what the braid signified.

  ‘Are you the station master?’ I said.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘of course.’

  ‘When is the next train?’ I said, since that was the kind of thing you asked a station master.

  ‘Next train?’ he said. ‘Next day.’

  ‘Who wrote this?’ I said, indicating the scrawl on the walls.

  ‘Turk, my dear,’ he said, and he grinned; then his grin faded rather rapidly. ‘Next train, next day,’ he repeated, ‘God willing.’

  This next train was getting less likely by the minute.

  ‘I help you?’ he said.

  I shook my head. ‘No thanks,’ I said, and he turned on his heel. I watched him walk along the platform, then step down into the territory of the sidings. He was a station master at arm’s length from his station. He seemed to be heading back towards a certain blockhouse when the darkness enclosed him; perhaps he lived there; or perhaps he would walk beyond it and go to some other place entirely. I was glad he was gone, not so much because he would get in the way of my meeting Boyd as because I was about to be sick. I did not want to be sick in the station, however.

  I was halfway back towards the engine shed when the stuff came out in a yellow fountain. Well, it missed my boots; and I immediately felt better, getting – for the first time since my arrival in Baghdad – a hint of coolness about me. I sat on the ground savouring the feeling for a while; I then pursued my way back into the engine shed and found a lamp there. I lit it, and turned up the wick. I looked at my watch – ten to eleven.

  ‘Next train, next day . . . God willing’: I revolved the words. Why would God will it, given that it could only be a British Army train, an organisation not over-full of Mohammedans? Or had the station master meant that God might favour the return by rail of the Turks? Was he one of the pro-Turkish Arabs? Which side, in fact, was the fellow really on?

  I turned back towards the station, going by the blockhouse from which the station master seemed to have emerged. By the light of the lamp, it appeared locked and shuttered. There was no window in it. If I’d come across this sort of brick bunker in the railway lands of York, I’d have said it held lamps, lamp oil, track shoes, not a person, and certainly not a station master. The deputy station master at York had a chandelier in his office.

  I was under the station roof again at dead on eleven, and there was unquestionably no sign of any Captain Boyd on the platforms. In the light of my lamp, the ‘B’ of ‘Baghdad’ danced as I closed on the glass and iron booths. The door of the first was ajar. I pushed, and saw a jumble of rubbish, iron chairs and tables, photographs with scenes of Baghdad on the walls. I held up my lamp and it revealed a counter bearing two kettles, assorted kitchen clutter, and the dusty remains of what might have been a spirit stove. A dead palm also lay on the counter, and the soil that had come out of the pot was scattered everywhere. There was a kind of sideboard against the wall. No – a shallow display cabinet of sorts, with broken glass doors. My lamp showed – pinned to cork board – photographs of engines near buildings that looked more like castles than stations, but which I knew to be stations. Above the photographs was pinned a blue tin strip with white lettering: ‘Die grosse Berlin–Baghdad Eisenbahn’. On a shelf lay a whistle with a green and red tassel, and two copper medallions, also with tassels. I picked one up, moved it near the lamp. On one side was an engraving of a locomotive surrounded by a circle of laurel leaves; on the other was an inscription in Arabic, perhaps Turkish Arabic. The whole display was a celebration of the Berlin–Baghdad railway, but whoever had put it up had jumped the gun, for the line, as I had discovered, was incomplete north of Baghdad.

  Captain Boyd was not here.

  I walked towards the counter, set my lamp down there. What I thought had been soil was not soil. I licked my finger and dabbed at it: coffee. And the kettle was not a kettle either, but a coffee pot, and there were a couple more nearby. If this was the Salon de Thé, then where was the Thé?

  I walked back on to the platform, and held my lamp up the next booth along, seeing in the glass only the reflection of an ill-looking British Army captain with lamp in hand. I could do with a shave. As I pushed at the door, another dead potted palm swung into my lamp beam. The place was full of flies. I heard a sudden shuffling from low down in the corner, and I thought: snake; I am in a reptile house. While transferring the lamp to my left hand, I took the Webley from its holster. I saw white-painted wicker chairs heaped at one end, iron tables at another. Cutlery was scattered over the floor. On the counter I saw several dusty spirit burners with silver kettles sitting on them with all the spouts pointing the same way – a kettle train. I moved a little way forward on the gritty floorboards. Many parchment-coloured moths danced around my lamp. They avoided the flies, but the flies did not avoid me.

  I saw that there was a particular concentration of flies on the floor, and that they were all coming from or going to the same place: the mouth of a man. I turned away and then looked back, trying for a fresh start, but I had no luck: still the flies, and still the mouth. I was looking at a dead captain. The man was not dissimilar in appearance to me: regular sort of face, dark hair, dark eyes wide open with flies taking it in turns to settle upon them. I set down the lantern and closed the eyelids.

  . . . Shirt and tie, with Wolseley sun helmet rolled a little way; three pips on tunic sleeve; Sam Browne belt, holster and ammunition pouch, but no gun to be seen. Beneath the belt, and below the ribcage, the man’s shirt went into his body. He’d been stabbed.

  The face was grey, with lavender-coloured bruising about the cheek. I touched the face. There was some stiffness, but his eyelids had closed easily, so he had come through the phase of rigor mortis. He gave off a sweet smell – a garden smell. Not too bad. The gut not yet exploded.

  The captain had been dead for something in the region of twenty-four hours.

  I heard again the heavy shuffling from the corner, but the s
nake (if snake it be) fell silent again. I hunted in the pockets of the dead man’s tunic and quickly turned up identity card and paybook, both in the name of Captain C. J. Boyd. Whoever had done for him had taken his gun, but not troubled about his papers – or not thought to look for them.

  The flies and moths were besieging me, and the shuffling was renewed in the corner. I walked fast out of the Salon, sat down on the edge of the platform and waited, revolver in hand, the unbreathable air closing about me. I leant forward, and the yellow stuff landed on the track gravel between my boots. I had not meant to chuck up in the station, but there was no help for it. Immediately a cool breeze seemed to come down the tracks towards me. I lit a cigarette. I had for the minute forgotten why I’d been hanging about alone in Baghdad railway station, and now I recollected. Boyd had evidence against Shepherd, evidence of the fellow being in hock to the Turks; evidence that would have seen Shepherd shot if proven. If Shepherd had somehow got to know of this . . . then it would be practically odds-on that Boyd should come a cropper. Had the body been put in this particular spot to make it look as though I had killed him? In which case the killer must have known of my arrangement to meet him. But if Manners at the War Office was to be believed, the communications between his office and Boyd were absolutely secure. Had Boyd let on to anyone he was coming here? I thought of the other intelligence man on the side in Baghdad, the one Boyd had been advised by Manners to contact.

  . . . And who had been witness to my arrival at the station? I thought of the ferryman, the knife-grinder and his assistant or customer; I thought of the station master. He had shown not the slightest sign of knowing that his station harboured a body, still less of being responsible for the killing. I had told Jarvis I was coming to this side of the river, but that was all I’d said . . .

  I threw my cigarette stump on to the tracks, and stood up. A minute later, I was striding fast over the flat rocky waste, under the dark trees. I came to the place where the knife-grinder had been, and entered one of the dark alleys leading back to the water. I came to the river-beach, and there was less of it than before, but quite enough for me to walk along, while inhaling the petrol smell of the river. There were quiet encampments on the flat roofs of the riverside houses: people sleeping under makeshift canopies, or no canopies at all. Not only did they sleep on top of their roofs, they also slept on top of their bedclothes from the looks of things. After ten minutes, I came to the bridge of boats. An Indian soldier saluted as I stepped on to it – one of a guard of four men. There were half a dozen loungers on the bridge: Arab insomniacs, as I supposed – and they did look to be wearing nightshirts. They watched the black river flowing fast away, or listened to it, for it sounded cool at any rate. The bridge moved as I walked across it, and I saw the reflections of the city moving in the water at the same time: the dark silhouettes of the music halls dancing.

  Once on the east bank, I entered the labyrinth, and – walking beneath the roof sleepers – became lost for a while, and lost in thought. If any report should put me in the vicinity of the murdered man, and I came clean about the mission I was on, would Manners back me up? I might say I’d been in the station to look at the trains. I was a corresponding member of the Railway Club, after all. ‘But there are no trains,’ the answer would come. ‘I know that now,’ I would say. It was certain that I would now have to communicate with Manners anyway – and by the ridiculous method he had instructed me in.

  I regained the Hotel by skirting the river until I came to the place where Mantis had docked. The lobby was nearly empty. All the cloths on which were written the names of the political departments had been rolled up scroll-wise and placed on the table tops. One new cloth was unfolded, however: it read ‘Boiled Water’, and there were glasses and jugs. I poured one out, and drank it off, then took another two. It had been only lately boiled, but I didn’t mind a bit.

  From my room a minute later, I looked down into the square, and watched, in the half-light, an Arab going along one of the alleyways over opposite. At first I thought he was riding a slow and wobbly bicycle, but then he went under a giant gas lamp in which a tiny blue flame burned – just enough to see that he rode a donkey, his bare feet almost touching the ground on either side. I knew I felt better, for I wanted a bottle of beer and a sandwich, and the fact that I was on the mend outweighed the thought of Boyd, I must admit. Sluicing down in the bathroom, I wondered whether half the corps would be sleeping on top of the hotel roof. No, I thought, letting down the mosquito net that hung over my bed . . . because the roof consisted of domes. The people would slide off.

  And I believe I was asleep at the moment I lay down.

  Chapter Five

  I had forgotten to close the shutters after looking at the square, and the splitting sun woke me at six – or perhaps it was the closing of the door. A breakfast of coffee, flatbread, yoghurt and honey was on the table by my bed, and the coffee was hot. Jarvis had also left a neat map – drawn, I supposed, by himself – giving directions to my living quarters: Rose Court, off Park Street. It sounded a pretty enough spot‚ if not very Arabic. Jarvis would be waiting for me there at six o’clock in the evening with my kit.

  I dressed, and walked downstairs to work. Lieutenant Colonel Shepherd’s room was 226. On the door was a notice: ‘Railways (Strategy)’. I knocked – no answer. I pushed open the door. The room was dark – sun shutters closed – and Shepherd was not in it. His empire also extended to room 227, however, and here I found a bluff, blond fellow, a Captain Mike Stevens of the Hampshire Regiment who, it appeared, was a second assistant to Shepherd. He walked out the instant I entered, saying he was going to fetch tea. The bed had been removed from room 227, and two cabinets and two desks put in; otherwise, it was similar to the room in which I’d passed the night: Persian rugs on a wooden floor, views of Baghdad on the walls, shutters with the same mosque-shaped holes cut in them. In the square, a team of Royal Engineers was working on the telegraph wires, with long ladders running up the poles. I was glad my office faced this way. A sight of the river would have reminded me of the other side of it, of the station, and Captain Boyd decaying in the Salon de Thé.

  Stevens returned, and set out the tea things on his desk. He had a touch of the West Country in his accent and his face, which was wide and pink, and offset by straw-coloured hair. He wore shorts, and round wire glasses.

  ‘So you’re the railwayac?’ he said, a ‘railwayac’ being a railway maniac. But he said it in an offhand way; it did not promise to become a theme of his. He asked, ‘Do you understand book routine?’ but didn’t seem the least bit interested in my answer. Lieutenant Colonel Shepherd, he continued – still offhand – was not in room 226, but would be there from about lunchtime. He suggested I might like to ‘make a fair copy’ of a map showing the railway line running north from Baghdad up to Samarrah. This would involve combining the details from two separate maps, and after handing me a small glass of tea with sugar lumps in the saucer – the whole arrangement looked tiny in his hands – he went over to one of the cabinets, and produced these maps. He directed me to some pencils and coloured inks in the second cabinet, and sat back at his own desk as I contemplated the maps. On the bottom of both was written, ‘Prepared in the historical section of the Committee of Imperial Defence’. One map left the ‘h’ off ‘Samarrah’. Both maps petered out a little way beyond there, although one had an arrow pointing north and reading ‘To Tikrit’. Well, the Turks were up that way.

  Both maps were hard to read, for a variety of reasons. In one, the names of the stations kept running into the blue-shaded River Tigris. According to the scale of this map, Samarrah lay about sixty miles north of Baghdad, whereas according to the scale on the other it was more like eighty.

  I regarded Stevens, whose desk was directly opposite to mine. He was writing letters, from what I could see, and kept looking for addresses in a directory he kept at his elbow. Every so often, he’d jerk his shoulders about in a peculiar manner.

  ‘The scale o
n these maps—’ I said, but he cut me off.

  ‘Just split the difference,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry too much about scale or anything, but it’s for Cox himself, so you might, you know . . . make it look pretty.’

  I had already determined on that. I didn’t want to make ‘a bad start’ or do anything to convince Shepherd that I was here for any reason but to help him with railway work – and that went double if he was a killer as well as a traitor.

  Stevens’s glasses made him look rather schoolboyish. Well, only at first. Throughout the morning, he seemed to expand, filling out his thin cotton shirt, and when he stood and walked over to one of the cabinets, at about ten o’clock sort of time, I saw that he had the legs of a circus strongman.

  Seeing me eyeing him, he seemed rather put out, so I made a start in earnest on the maps. The line to Samarrah ran in parallel with – and to the west of – what I had decided to call ‘R. Tigris’, since that seemed more correct than just ‘Tigris’. ‘River Tigris’ might have been better still, but I wouldn’t have been able to fit those two words into any of the innumerable bends in the river, of which I was taking an average from the two maps, and which I was tracing in a turquoise ink very far from the actual colour of the river. Towards Samarrah, I lost patience with all the bends of the river, so it tended to get a bit straighter up there. Also, drops of sweat kept falling from my brow, and threatening to smudge the river. I broke off to wipe my face with my handkerchief.