Slow Train

by Jack Benton

  With a distressed Theresa banished upstairs, her threats to call the police quelled by a few calming words from Robert, Slim faced Holdergate’s former station master across the room, a collection of crumpled prints in his hands brandished like weapons.

  ‘You can be straight and tell me what happened, or I can present my findings to the police, and we’ll see how you fare under official interrogation,’ Slim said, playing his prosecution threat card early, hoping Robert fell for it rather than questioned the depth of Slim’s evidence. Such bullying tactics against an old and gentle man left a sour taste on his tongue, but Slim remembered he was facing a probable murderer.

  ‘You were alone there that night,’ Slim said. ‘I had a friend dig out an old staff roster, and after seven p.m. the station had only one man on duty. That’s what caused so much trouble. You were dealing with a station full of people without assistance, and when you realized someone had seen your boy, you panicked.’

  ‘My boy….’ Robert wiped away a tear. ‘Can’t you please leave him out of this?’

  ‘Not when he’s the center of everything.’

  Robert slumped into his recliner. Behind him, on the dresser shelf, Slim saw again the photograph he’d barely registered last time: no more than five centimetres high, it sat nearly tucked away behind the large, colourful wedding photo.

  A view from behind of a boy kneeling down, hugging a little white dog against his knees.

  ‘Your son, Thomas Edward Downs.’

  Robert sniffed. ‘I loved that boy like nothing else in the world. I was the only one who did, but even I couldn’t bear to photograph his face. It was as though if I couldn’t see it, I could imagine it the way I wanted it to be.’

  ‘He was born in 1973,’ Slim said, pushing across a photocopy of a birth certificate Don had obtained for him. And your wife, Julie, died in December 1974. Suicide by hanging.’

  Robert closed his eyes as tears streamed down his face. ‘Why do you have to bring all this up?’

  ‘She couldn’t deal with a child with Thomas’s deformities.’

  Robert sighed and nodded, holding his head in his hands. ‘She wanted him sent away to a special home, but I refused. It was the shame killed her in the end, the neighbours’ glances, the words she’d not quite overhear. After she was gone, I kept the boy with me all the time, because he wasn’t just my boy, but my link to her.’

  Slim nodded. ‘While you were working, you hid him in that shed in the goods yard, by the fence, didn’t you? I managed to get in contact with a couple of your younger colleagues. They told me no one was allowed in that shed, and when you were off duty it was kept padlocked. Only you had a key.’

  Robert nodded. ‘I put a heater and a light in there, and filled it with toys and magazines. He would never stay put, though. He was always wandering around the goods yard. That boy loved two things in life, the little dog I bought him and trains. He later started wandering up and down the line while I was working. That was when he died. His little dog had passed away the day before. The last time I ever saw him he was carrying a box across the goods yard toward the main line. I think he carried it along a way to a pretty place, then left its body on the tracks. Some kind of ritual of his own devising.’

  Slim wished he had more to drink. ‘Tell me about the night of the blizzard. A friend’s mother recognised your picture. You saw the boy taking the photograph. And if you were close enough, it’s my belief you saw Jennifer, too.’

  Robert massaged his brow. ‘It breaks my heart to think it, but no one would have run like that unless they saw my boy.’

  ‘What was he doing in the park? That’s where I believe he was that night.’

  ‘He was still a little boy, despite everything. While I was working the late shift, I would take his dinner out to the shed, but once he was done he would sneak out, climb over the wall and go up to the park when it was deserted and he could play by himself. And that night it was snowing, of course.’ Robert sighed again. ‘Because of the blizzard, I told him to stay in the shed where I knew he’d be safe, so when I saw her run through the station in the direction of the platforms, I went to check.’

  ‘You followed her?’

  Robert gave half a shrug. ‘I wondered where she had gone, but she wasn’t my concern. By the time I made it to the platform she was nowhere to be seen. I did wonder if she’d got back on the train, but the lights were on and I saw no one inside. I headed for the goods yard and then out to the shed, but as I reached it she appeared out of nowhere. She had been inside. I had never seen a woman look like that. She looked like the devil was after her.’

  ‘I think she thought that it was. What did you do?’

  ‘She came at me with such fury that I panicked. I grabbed her and threw her against the fence. She … hit her head.’ Robert lowered his. ‘On one of the support pillars.’

  As Slim watched, the old man began to sob. Still drunk, he felt his anger rising. ‘And what did you do then, Robert? Come on, no more lies. Where did you take her?’

  ‘She was cold, I could feel no pulse. I panicked, and the first thing I thought about was that no one would be able to look after my boy if I went to prison. I had to get back to the passengers waiting inside, or someone might come looking for me, so there was only one thing I could do. I dragged her body to the freight train. The closest freight wagon was beside the shed, the door unsecured. I dragged her body inside, shut the door, and then went back to the station office.’ Robert fell quiet. He closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. His chest shook with a sudden gulping sob, and Slim wondered if he would be able to say anything else.

  ‘What did you do, Robert?’ he asked in barely more than a whisper. ‘Tell me.’

  Robert sighed. ‘As soon as I possibly could, I gave the order for the freight train to depart.’

  56

  Charles Bosworth looked no happier to see Slim at such a late hour than Slim felt having walked, with a growing headache, halfway across Holdergate, but the old man opened the door and let him in anyway.

  ‘What’s going on, Slim? You don’t look well. Do you have any idea what time it is? Christ, you look like I used to feel on Monday mornings.’

  As a smirk appeared on Bosworth’s lips, Slim lost it. He swung a fist into the old man’s face and stepped back as Bosworth crumpled at his feet.

  ‘There’s more evidence to convict you of assaulting a former police officer than there is for pulling Robert Downs up for murder,’ Bosworth said, scowling as he pressed a bag of frozen peas to his face. ‘I thought you were ex-military? You punch like a pansy.’

  Slim shrugged. ‘I sank a bottle of whisky before I went round to see that murdering bastard.’

  ‘Well, if you screw as badly as you fight, I can see why your wife left you.’

  The clock read ten past midnight. Both men had a glass of amber in front of them, Bosworth’s significantly larger, ‘To help with the pain.’

  ‘You told me you didn’t know the boy’s name. I got told Tom Jedder, which confused him with an unfortunate figure from local history. But Tom Edward said by someone with a speech impediment can come out sounding that way, can’t it? The boy suffered from a facial deformity, so he might have had one, and an old man who used to put out food for Thomas’s dog had one, too. You must have known, but you lied to me.’

  Bosworth rubbed his eyes. ‘Come on, Slim, give me a little leeway here. Bob Downs is an old friend, one of the oldest I’ve got. And he’s a good man, despite what you might think. Bob went through hell and back when his wife topped herself, and he was as good a father as anyone could have been to that poor little boy. People not close to Bob, tourists, commuters, and the like, knew the boy as Tom Jedder, and that kept him disassociated from Bob’s family. Bob had to put up with enough whispers behind his back already, yet he looked after that lad and he worked his backside off as station master. Out of respect for him I kept Thomas’s death low-key. Despite what rumours and lies
might have floated around at the time, it was an accident, witnessed both by the train driver and the guard. It had to go to the press, but I managed to keep the details quiet. Even if what you say is true, I still can’t believe Bob had anything to do with Jennifer’s disappearance.’

  ‘He confessed to killing her.’

  Bosworth shook his head. ‘He’s an old man, not in the best of health. Perhaps he made a mistake. You said he put her on the freight train? Impossible. We searched that freight train the following day, Slim. It was in a goods yard at Stafford station. There was no sign of Jennifer’s body or that one had ever been on board.’

  Slim sat back, frustrated. ‘Then what happened to her? Where did she go?’

  Bosworth waved the bag of peas in the air like a flag of surrender. ‘That’s what we’ve been wondering for the last forty-two years.’

  57

  Slim’s bags were packed. Charles Bosworth had told him to call if he ever found a body, but they had parted on less than amiable terms after their abrasive final meeting. Having been seen to the door by Robert Downs with a regretful but confident, ‘It was a long, long time ago. If the police wanted me, they’d have come by now’, he prepared to leave Holdergate feeling more angry and frustrated than ever. He had come so close, but at the very last, Jennifer Evans’s fate had eluded him.

  With his head aching from a lingering hangover, Slim walked to Holdergate Station. On the way, he tried to call Lia, but the girl didn’t answer. Slim was quietly glad; he wasn’t sure what he’d say to her. She knew he was leaving and he had planned to call her from his office when he returned, to see if there was some way they could continue their relationship. An hour and a half by train between them was less than many commutes, but it wasn’t the only barrier. There was the difference in age, and Slim’s drinking. Lia might be better off without him after all.

  He boarded a train, then got off at Manchester Piccadilly half an hour later and made his way through the station to catch his connecting train. Looking up at the departures board, though, something caught his eye.

  His own train was delayed, not due to arrive for another forty five minutes. However, a smaller commuter train was due to leave in just five minutes’ time. The name of the destination station was like a tingle of hope, like finding a last drop at the bottom of a bottle.

  Stafford.

  It wasn’t the direction he needed to go, but it wouldn’t hurt to go a few stops out of his way, just to have a look. It might give him closure of a certain kind to see where Jennifer’s trail finally went cold.

  He made his way through the station to the correct platform and climbed on to the waiting train. There were few passengers. Slim took a seat near the back, his case pulled into the spare seat beside him. Despite his excitement, he was dozing when the train pulled in to Stafford, sleeping off the last of his hangover. He disembarked the train and made his way out onto the concourse where he sought out the information desk.

  Announcing himself as a train enthusiast, it wasn’t hard to find a member of staff willing to take him out to the goods yard for a look at some of the trains. Like the old man at Manchester Piccadilly, the amiable worker was more than happy to lead Slim across the tracks to the area where freights would have waited until the main platform was clear for unloading. Soon, Slim was standing within a few yards of what might have once been the end of Jennifer’s personal journey. The trail for a pretty young nurse, wife, and mother ended here, among metal rails, gravel, and wooden sleepers.

  ‘What happened to you?’ Slim wondered aloud, just out of hearing range of the station worker. He kicked at some weeds, frustrated that after everything he had no final, conclusive answer to tell Elena, who had put so much faith in his ability. He lifted his head, looking skyward for inspiration.

  And paused, frowning.

  Surely not, it was impossible.

  But what if…?

  He stared, unable to believe his eyes. Suddenly everything made sense.

  ‘I’m sorry, I have to go,’ he called to the office worker, and then turned and ran for the station.

  58

  Lia drove. Slim hadn’t even known she had a car, but now that he did, he was amazed it wasn’t a scuffed mess with her violent, wayward style of driving. In the back, he hung on for all he was worth as she roared through blind hairpins and around overgrown corners, taking a route of her own making rather than following the one he had suggested on the map that now sat discarded on the seat beside him.

  In the front passenger seat, Elena cried the whole way. Even when they pulled up at their destination, and despite Slim’s assurances that it wasn’t all a cruel lie, she held a handkerchief all the way to the top of the steps leading into St Mary’s Priory, enclosed community for women. The crucifix positioned on its upper reaches was visible above the graffiti-laden wall that lined the goods yard at Stafford station.

  Slim and Lia watched through the side windows as a woman in a grey and black nun’s habit appeared from a door at the top to meet her. After a brief consultation, the woman waved Elena through the door, and the pair of them disappeared inside.

  ‘It’ll be all right now, won’t it?’ Lia asked, wiping a tear from her eye as she turned to Slim.

  He nodded. ‘I think so, yes.’

  Lia smiled and gave a little shake of her head. ‘Excuse my French, but how the hell did you manage to pull that off?’

  Slim shrugged. ‘A little bit of luck, I think.’

  ‘Well, however you figured it out, you’ll never cease to amaze me. Coffee?’

  He nodded. ‘Make it two. They’ll need a while, I think.’

  Elena, understandably, had looked uncertain when she opened the door to find Slim standing on her doorstep, soaking wet after the heavens had suddenly opened during his walk over to her place. Even so, it was hard to keep a smile off his face as he asked if she could spare him a couple of minutes.

  ‘Mr. Hardy … every time I see you I expect it to be the last time … and then you show up again to disappoint me one more time.’

  ‘Mrs. Trent, I apologise for everything that’s happened, but this time I really do have some news. I’ll get straight to the point. I’ve found your mother.’

  Elena’s face changed from shock to elation then to sorrow.

  ‘Oh. Well, I’m really … I’m not sure what to say. You’ve found her body?’

  Slim had wanted to deliver the news somberly, because there was still much to uncover, but he couldn’t stop himself breaking out in a wide smile.

  ‘No,’ he said, shaking his head, feeling a little tear of happiness beading in his eye. ‘Your mother is very much alive, and considering her age, in very good health.’

  ‘She must have literally thought the devil had come for her,’ Slim said, wincing as he sipped the cinnamon latte which had been Lia’s recommendation. ‘She saw Bettelman and Thomas Downs peering through the fence. She ran back through the station, out into the goods yard where she found that shed and decided to hide. When she heard Robert approaching she thought she had been found. She attacked the figure as it opened the door, but got knocked unconscious. Robert was no medic and Jennifer was cold from being outside, so I can kind of understand why he thought she might be dead. However, I can only imagine what was going through her head that night as she lay in the dark, perhaps concussed, perhaps still unconscious. And when she crawled out of that freight carriage the next morning, the first thing she saw was the crucifix high on the wall of the priory outside the goods yard.’

  Lia took a deep breath. ‘Do you think they can create a new relationship?’

  Slim shrugged. ‘When I visited the priory I found myself face to face with an old woman who resembled the pictures Elena gave me. I called her by her name and I knew from her reaction I was right. She tried to deflect my questions at first, but when I produced a picture of Elena she relented. We talked a while. She said she always planned to go back, but a week became a month, then a year, then it became too late. She gave her
life over to the church, but understood she had a past which might one day find her. She was open to meeting her daughter, and I think that the passage of years might have changed her somewhat. As for Elena, I think at this stage, she’ll take what she can get.’

  Lia nodded. She stared at Slim until he looked away.

  ‘It’s remarkable, that’s all I can say. And you, Slim … you don’t give up easily, do you?’

  ‘No. It’s proved a curse on more than one occasion. There are still a few things I need to do, though. I have to talk to Toby, explain a few things I found out. Whether he’ll believe me or not, I don’t know, but it might help him come to terms with a few things. And I’m looking forward to making a phone call to Charles Bosworth. Robert Downs might be off a murder charge, but he certainly obstructed justice during the original investigation. Believe it or not, I don’t wish the old man ill. I think he made a bad mistake, but there’s no doubting his actions altered the course of someone’s life. However, I’d like to think both Jennifer and Elena would be forgiving.’

  Lia nodded. She looked away for a moment, then looked back and gave Slim a small smile. ‘And what about something else … what about us?’

  Slim met her eyes. ‘Well, you know I don’t give up easily, and I think you’ve proved you don’t give up easily either. If it’s okay by you, I’d like to see what happens.’

  ‘And enjoy whatever that is,’ Lia said.

  Slim reached across the table to take her hands in his. ‘I think that’s as good a place to start as any,’ he said.

  THE TOKYO LOST SERIES

  Chris Ward

  Waiting for the next Jack Benton book?