Slow Train

by Jack Benton

  11

  ‘That’s right,’ Charles Bosworth said. ‘We did find her bag. It was dusted for fingerprints. However, the only ones found belonged to Jennifer herself. We were able to match them to those found on other personal items provided by her husband. The bag was open, and the clasp was broken. However, her purse was inside, untouched. The way the ice had frozen without affecting the contents made this clear. Quite high science for the time.’

  ‘I read nothing about it in the newspaper reports.’

  Charles Bosworth nodded. ‘That’s because, rightly or wrongly, we didn’t consider it of importance.’

  ‘But why not?’

  Bosworth smiled. ‘Let’s see if you can figure that out, young Slim.’

  ‘Are you testing me?’

  Bosworth smiled. ‘It might be interesting to see if you have the mettle for a case such as this. I’ve met a lot of private investigators over the years, and they were dilettantes, every last one. Here. Take a look. Tell me what happened.’

  He pulled the copy of the case file out from a shelf under his coffee table and withdrew a file of photographs showing Jennifer Evans’ bag and the items found inside.

  The bag, closed with a snap clasp, had been opened. Parts of the leather had been scratched, a semi-circle of small depressions around the clasp area, some deeper than others.

  Slim looked at the photographs of the contents. A small purse containing approximately seventeen pounds in used notes and coins. A hospital staff card. A local bus pass and a train commuter ticket. A lipstick and a pot of blusher. Half an opened pack of Wrigley’s spearmint chewing gum. A pack of Lucky Strikes, with three cigarettes remaining.

  And a torn piece of plastic wrap.

  ‘That was found a couple of metres to the left,’ Bosworth said. ‘But it matched a smaller piece still inside the purse. Figured it out yet? No footprints.’

  Slim looked up. ‘A sandwich wrapper, isn’t it?’

  Bosworth gave a slight nod. ‘The rest?’

  Slim pointed at the picture of the bag. ‘These depressions. They’re teeth marks.’

  Bosworth looked like the sun had just emerged from behind a cloud. ‘There’s something to you after all, Mr. Hardy. Tell me more.’

  ‘No tracks because the bag was taken by an animal. The snow would have covered animal tracks quicker than it would a person’s, particularly if a wind had been blowing. If the snow had blown into drifts deep enough to stop a train, it’s safe to assume that it was.’

  Bosworth nodded. ‘We found small traces of processed ham. The animal would have smelled it and likely ripped the bag open. It also means it could have been picked up anywhere around the station area, at any time on the night in question.’

  ‘Has the animal been identified?’

  Bosworth shook his head. ‘We believe it was a fox, and comparisons with a fox’s jaws backed us up. The marks are approximately the size of a fox’s jaw.’

  ‘But it could have been a dog?’

  Bosworth nodded. ‘A small stray, possibly.’

  Slim frowned. ‘Do villages like Holdergate have a lot of stray dogs?’

  ‘No, hence the belief that it was a fox.’ Bosworth sighed. ‘It was an interesting find, but unfortunately it came to nothing.’

  ‘Do you still have the bag?’

  Bosworth shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not. After Jennifer was declared legally dead, the physical evidence was destroyed. We have just these photographs left.’

  ‘A shame.’ Slim looked up. ‘I would really like to take a look at it.’

  ‘I’m sure you could learn nothing more. It was thoroughly examined.’

  Bosworth went to gather the photos, but Slim put a hand on the one showing the front of the bag. He looked up and their eyes met.

  ‘I was in the army for nine years,’ Slim said. ‘We always had some dogs on the bases, pretty vicious things if you didn’t know how to handle them.’ He pointed at the depressions on the photograph. ‘It’s impossible to be sure without seeing the bag itself, but from the way these marks seem heavier on the outer side rather than the inner, it seems that this fox or dog had quite a battle to claim this bag.’

  Bosworth rubbed his chin and frowned. He nodded slowly as he watched Slim, saying nothing.

  ‘See, how it appears to me, this bag was wrestled out of someone’s grip. I’m aware foxes are nervous creatures, so I don’t know how desperate one would have to be to wrestle a bag out of a woman’s hands.’ He tapped the tabletop. ‘Not unless she was already dead.’

  12

  ‘They told me about the bag,’ Elena said, sitting in the cafe across from Slim. ‘The investigation believed it was most likely found by a fox and dropped on the path after the food had been taken. It was like a little tease really, something but also nothing, if you know what I mean.’

  Slim nodded. He hadn’t told Elena his suspicions because it was not something he could prove, nor did he want to get her hopes up on something that was a tenuous clue at best.

  From his bag he pulled out a sheet of paper and passed it across the table to Elena. ‘My assistant came up with this list of staff from the Manchester Royal Infirmary around the time that your mother worked there.’ Elena looked stunned, mirroring how Slim had felt when Kim faxed him the list.

  ‘How did you get something like this?’

  Slim smiled. ‘I employ someone far brighter than me. Obviously it’s been a long time, and many of these people will be elderly or may even have passed away. My intention is to talk to as many as possible, but to save time I’d like you to have a look at these names and tell me if there are any whom you recognise, any you heard your mother mention, anyone who was a known friend.’

  Elena frowned as she squinted at the list. Slim wondered how reliable her memory would be.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘there were a couple of names I remember she mentioned … ah, here. Tim Bennett. He was a consultant on her ward. And this one, Majorie Clifford. I recall hearing my mother say her name on more than one occasion. It sounded like they were friends.’ She looked up and shook her head. ‘I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful. It was a long time ago. And I was reaching that age, you know, where I talked to my mother as little as possible.’

  Slim smiled. ‘I’ll be making my own enquiries in any case,’ he said. ‘I’ll be in touch again as soon as I have anything to tell you.’

  They parted outside the cafe, Elena lingering as Slim walked away, her reflection caught in the windows of a couple of shops he passed. He prayed he wasn’t raising her hopes too much.

  Back at his guesthouse, Slim went through the contacts he had acquired so far and sat down at a corner desk to begin making calls. Kim had done an incredible job in compiling information on Jennifer’s work colleagues, but unfortunately so much time had passed that many possible leads were gone. Tim Bennett, for example, had died in 1994 at the age of 76. Marjorie Clifford, however, was possibly still alive, but Kim had only been able to locate a postal address. Slim had written her a letter, but he wasn’t hopeful of a reply.

  He was about to start making calls when his phone abruptly rang.

  ‘Hey, Slim,’ Donald Lane said. ‘That person you were asking about? I think I’ve tracked him down.’

  ‘Fantastic. Do you have any contact details?’

  ‘Kind of. They guy’s name is Tobin P. Firth.’

  Slim frowned. ‘That sounds vaguely familiar.’

  ‘It would be if you had children, or if you if you spent much time in the book aisle in Tesco’s. The guy’s a bestselling children’s author. He wrote the Night Assassin series. My daughter’s a massive fan.’

  Slim nodded, recalling the last time he had been in the supermarket and somehow wandered into the books section on the way to the frozen meals. A colourful stand had been advertising a new release in Firth’s series.

  ‘Did you get a contact number?’

  ‘Only of his publicist. That was the best I could do. The guy’s pretty famous, it
seems.’

  13

  Fourteen books in an ongoing series. Slim bought the first from the local bookshop and took it to an adjacent cafe to read.

  Within a couple of pages he knew it wasn’t going to be his thing: kids with magic powers fighting all manner of hideous fairytale creatures while running about a fantastical country on a quest for something Slim doubted he would read long enough to identify, but the coffee was too tepid to drink in one swallow so he snuggled down into a sofa seat and forced himself to read on.

  According to the sign above the display, Firth was a “bestselling local author”. A sticker on the front of the book took it up a level with “Sunday Times Bestseller”, which even Slim understood meant the author had reached the upper echelons of literary society, at least where sales and profits were concerned.

  Half an hour and two coffees later, Slim had decided once and for all that he wasn’t a reader of children’s books, although on a subjective level he could see why they were popular. The lead character was a girl called Claire Wilkins who woke up one day with the ability to see nether creatures, whatever that meant, because the supporting cast was a series of oddball creatures Slim had to keep skipping back pages to recall. It all felt very pseudo-Harry Potter to Slim, except one thing.

  The central character had an uncanny ability to teleport.

  Much as Slim liked the concept and would have enjoyed its use to get out of a few previous tricky situations, young Claire had the unfortunate problem in that whenever she teleported, the magic it required would attract undesirables like flies to a honeypot, leaving her to battle her way out of a difficult situation each time.

  Reading to the end of the tenth chapter, Slim finally closed the book and headed back for his lodgings, wondering absently whether Jennifer had somehow teleported out of existence. It would certainly explain a few things, but it would do nothing to help Elena come to terms with her grief.

  After a bag of fish n’ chips for lunch, Slim got to work doing the kind of drudge work he wished he could employ someone to do. Under the dubious guise of Mike Lewis, BBC researcher, he door-knocked along the rows of houses which faced the railway line, repeating a preposterous story about researching for a documentary. In particular, he told anyone who answered the door, he was on the hunt for information about a little dog which had achieved a certain level of fame during the late seventies.

  Unsurprisingly, most people answered with a shrug or a suspicious frown. A couple of people, perhaps suspecting this man with fake glasses and a clipboard was sizing their house up for a burglary, told him in no uncertain terms to get lost and not come back.

  But, as often happened with you sifted through enough muck, he finally came up with a little glimmer of something which showed promise.

  The gum-chewing man smelled so strongly of liquor Slim had to take a step backward; not because it repulsed him but because it made him want to run for the nearest pub. He held up his clipboard like a shield and read out his list of pretend questions.

  ‘Yeah,’ the man said, nodding and frowning at the same time. ‘I remember a little tyke who fits your bill. Not sure he was much of a local legend, but he was a yappy bastard, nonetheless.’

  ‘It was your dog?’

  The man shook his head. ‘Oh no. I lived across the street in a council house with my mother and two brothers. Dog would show up in the garden from time to time. Kept getting through the fence, no matter how we patched it. I remember Ted—my older brother—picked it up once to throw it back over the fence and it bit his hand. Drew blood. Ted gave it a smack and chucked it back. Bloody thing still kept coming back.’ He smiled as though recalling a fond childhood memory. ‘We were poor, but we weren’t trash, you know? Mother went over there and bollocked that old bastard who kept feeding it. Laid right into him. I remember we cheered when she came back, then we all went out for chips.’

  ‘The owner lived across the street?’

  ‘Don’t know if he was the owner or if it were a stray he were feeding, but yeah. Old codger lived a couple of doors down. Fourteen or sixteen, one of those.’

  ‘Do you remember the man’s name?’

  The man frowned. ‘Nope, but it began with an L. We all called him Lichen, because he had a skin condition, made him look all scaly. Hated that old bastard, we did. Funny thing is, he probably wasn’t that old. Younger than I am now, but back then as kids he might as well have been a hundred years old.’

  Slim didn’t like to ask for the man’s age straight out, so he looked him up and down, took an educated guess and then subtracted the ten years of weathering added by the booze and cigarettes the man stank of. He was left with an age of around ten years old when Jennifer had disappeared.

  ‘Thanks a lot,’ he said, then handed the man a fake BBC business card Kim had reluctantly printed for him. ‘If you think of anything else, please give me a call.’

  Retreating to a small park overlooking the railway line, Slim called Kim.

  ‘How can I help, Mr. Hardy?’

  ‘Ah, I need you to find out anything you can about an old man who lived at number fourteen or sixteen, Stickwood Grove, Holdergate,’ he said. ‘I know it’s not much to go on, but his surname begins with L and might have something to do with lichen,’ he said.

  He could almost hear Kim laughing. ‘Okay, Mr. Hardy, with that limited information I’ll see what I can do.’

  14

  Standing in a goods yard, staring at a set of buffers, Slim felt like his own investigation had reached a similar stopping point. Waiting on return calls from a dozen or more people, most of whom he doubted would have any recollection of the strange case of Jennifer Evans, he was coming up to a beehive-kicking point. He had always found the best way to open up a case was to cause some trouble, ruffle the waters, crack open the egg of mystery and tread its contents all over the road. Unfortunately, he had always taken his inspiration from a skinful of booze, and having been dry for several weeks now he was reluctant to head back in that direction.

  Across the street from Holdergate’s goods yard, a pub stood on a corner next to a travel agent. Even though the booze house had once provided answers to questions he didn’t know he had, on occasions it had shed light on questions of his own. In a mood to flirt with his demons, he climbed over a fence and crossed the street.

  The Station Master was brighter than the kind of pub Slim had once haunted like a stumbling, lost wraith, with large skylights in a raised ceiling that revealed the cloudless blue sky. The pub was empty except for a couple of tourists leaning over a map with a pair of lattes beside them. Slim waited at the bar, and after a moment a young girl emerged through a door into a back office.

  The girl was young and attractive, but even so, Slim felt disappointed. He had hoped for some grizzled old-timer steeped in local knowledge. The girl looked like a college student working a part-time job, but she smiled kindly enough and asked for his order.

  The rows of liquor bottles felt like an audience at a freak show, mocking him.

  ‘Coffee,’ he muttered. ‘Black. As black as it comes.’

  The girl offered half a smile. ‘Are there shades?’

  ‘When you get to my age there are all sorts,’ Slim said. ‘If you have any from last night still in the filter, don’t throw it away. Add a heaped spoonful of instant and shove it in the microwave for about thirty seconds longer than necessary.’

  The girl laughed. ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ she said.

  She returned a couple of minutes later with a cup of congealed gunk that was actually pretty close to how Slim liked it. She watched him take a sip, then, as he failed to hide an approving smile, asked, ‘You’re a tourist?’

  ‘I’m a trainspotter.’

  She lifted an eyebrow. ‘Like the Ewan MacGregor type?’

  ‘No, the orange anorak type. Except I prefer black. It fits my personality.’

  ‘Does it now? Shouldn’t you be spotting ghost trains in that case?’

  ‘Well, in a wa
y I am. From 1977. I’m trying to track down a train that used to run on this line.’

  ‘What on earth for?’

  Slim took a sip of the coffee. ‘I’m a nerd. And a completist.’

  ‘And single?’

  ‘How did you guess?’

  The girl cocked her head and lifted an eyebrow. ‘Could you be anything but?’

  Slim shrugged. ‘Believe it or not, I was married once.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘She left me for a butcher.’

  The girl looked surprised. ‘No jokes about meat, right?’

  Slim smiled. ‘Been vegetarian ever since.’

  ‘I bet.’

  ‘So, are you really a trainspotter or are you just winding me up?’

  ‘I’m a private detective, but that’s a secret.’

  ‘Wow, you’re really ticking off the surprise boxes now,’ the girl said. ‘Next thing, you’ll be telling me you’re a secret agent.’

  ‘Not quite, but I was in the army. I served during the Gulf War.’

  The girl lifted an eyebrow. ‘Wow, that must have been interesting.’

  Boots in the sand. Suddenly the coffee wasn’t strong enough, but Slim swallowed down the urge to ask for something stronger and forced a smile. ‘It was.’

  ‘Good job you got him.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Saddam.’

  Slim shook his head. ‘We didn’t. I served in the first Gulf War.’

  The girl stared. ‘You don’t look that old.’

  Slim couldn’t help but laugh. ‘I was straight out of school. Even so, you’re literally the only person who’s ever said that. I got asked if I had a bus pass once, cheeky sod.’

  The girl smiled. ‘I tell you what. Buy me a drink and I’ll tell you how I can help you track down that old train.’

  Slim held her gaze, wondering if she were really flirting with him or just idling away boredom.

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I’ll have two more coffees, please. One from the same place this dirt came from, and one nice one, for you.’