David Ashton - End of the Line

Waverley Station lay quiet, the locomotives heaving softly like a herd of animals, flanks steaming as midnight struck.

Two figures emerged in the lamplight, clanking towards the recently arrived Newcastle train. Their clothes proclaimed them to be railway cleaners, stoical and stocky, metal buckets bumping together as the two old women, Margaret Reid and Jenny Dunlop, reflected upon life, as they knew it.

‘Ye wonder why folk come and go,’ Margaret announced in the stillness.

‘I’ve never left Edinburgh,’ was the response.

‘Some folk though,’ Margaret winced at a sudden ache; the dampness played merry hell with her bones at times. ‘All over the world, camels and ships and the Lord knows what.’

‘I wouldnae put trust in the sea,’ said Jenny, and then let out a shriek. ‘My God, look at the size of it!’

A large black rat picked its way carefully up the platform, oblivious to the disquietude it was creating.

Margaret shook her head in remonstrance. ‘The place is rampant with the beasts — all these years and you’re still kicking up a fuss. If it doesnae have a ticket Mister Pettigrew will see it far enough.’ She had spotted the trim figure of the guard down at the front engine of the train and frowned for a moment. ‘That’s funny.’

‘Whit is?’

‘Nothing. Come on — all aboard!’

They clambered into the rear carriage and with an ease born of long practice picked their way in the semi-gloom, eyes flicking left and right to register the state of the compartment and the necessary cleansing thereof.

‘These late-night trains, dirty devils!’

Margaret smiled grimly at the other’s remark.

‘Wisnae for the dirt, we’d have no living — oh, oh.’

Her nose wrinkled at the whisky and tobacco fumes, plus she had also spotted a figure slumped in one of the corner seats. ‘There’s always the one, eh?’

‘A disgrace tae mankind,’ observed Jenny piously.

‘Just inebriated.’ Margaret shook the figure roughly by the shoulder. ‘End of the line, sir. Rouse yourself!’

A moment and then the entity slowly fell to land with a thud on the floor where it lay ominously still, the face staring up, eyes wide open and sightless.

‘His neck is livid, see the mark!’ gasped Jenny.

‘I see well enough,’ replied Margaret bleakly. She wrenched down the carriage window, stuck her head out and bawled down the platform.

‘Mister Pettigrew — I think we have a dead body in Waverley Station!’

‘That’s against regulations,’ came the prim response. ‘Don’t move a muscle!’

A piercing whistle blast signalled bureaucratic alarm and Margaret sighed as she looked back to where Jenny was staring disapprovingly down at the corpse.

‘It’s going tae be a long night, Jenny.’

Her companion nodded, then a random thought struck. ‘D’ye think they’ll pay us extra?’ she asked.

* * *

Thomas Pettigrew was a worried official as he escorted the two police officers through the stale air of the railway carriage. A dry stick with small features and erect bearing, the very embodiment of a railway man.

‘We had it moved to a siding,’ he remarked, moustache twitching unhappily. ‘But it’s played havoc with the timetable.’

‘The timetable, eh?’ said Inspector James McLevy.

‘Havoc.’

By now they had reached the corpse where it lay covered over by a white sheet.

‘Abracadabra!’

McLevy whipped off the covering with a flourish and the two policemen bent over the cadaver.

They made a strange contrast. The inspector grizzled, thickset, muffled up in his dark coat, low-brimmed bowler sitting on his head like a chimney pot, and Constable Mulholland a tall lanky figure, his cape billowing with the stooping motion.

Two pairs of eyes stared down. Slate-grey and wolfish, clear Irish blue.

‘A handsome brute,’ said McLevy. ‘Save the wee blemish round his neck.’

‘A straight line,’ Mulholland noted. ‘Wire?’

‘Wire would cut deep.’

‘Not with cloth wrapped round. A garrotte!’

‘Or a length of cord. Strip of leather.’

They seemed to find great relish in these homicidal musings. Pettigrew indicated some envelopes scattered on the table where the man had sat.

‘These would seem to be his. . property. Business letters. Name and address. In Leith. Why we sent to your station.’

‘Aye, we’re always open for murder,’ said McLevy, delving into the man’s pockets as Mulholland scrutinised the scattered papers.

‘All addressed to one Count Borromeo,’ the constable announced. ‘Italian, I’ll wager — that would explain the garrotte.’

‘Uhuh?’ McLevy grunted sceptically at this flight of fancy. ‘One thing for sure — there’s no wallet to hand.’

‘Theftuous murder?’

‘Possible. My surmise is that he was drunk as a lord when it happened, didnae feel a thing.’

After a sardonic laugh at that idea the inspector abruptly straightened up, eyes boring into Pettigrew as if he were a sudden suspect.

‘Where did the corpse get on the train?’

‘I’m not rightly sure.’

‘You must be. You’re the guard. You have a whistle round your neck!’

Pettigrew pursed his lips in thought.

‘Newcastle — I am almost certain.’

The little man stiffened his back under their gaze.

‘I like to be certain,’ he said firmly.

‘Any luggage?’

‘I could not swear — but I think not.’

McLevy sensed that Pettigrew was mulling over something — a timetable mentality grinds slow but sure.

‘Anything else come tae mind?’

‘When I inspected tickets it was obvious the man had drink taken though he was. . civil enough. But one other presence in the compartment caught my attention. I’m not certain I should point the finger though.’

Both policemen smiled. A movement of the lips that indicated the onset of appetite.

* * *

‘A giant of a fellow. With ginger hair. In the same carriage!’ reported McLevy to Lieutenant Roach who sat under the portrait of his dearly beloved Queen Victoria in the commander’s neat and tidy office at Leith Station.

The lieutenant had an expression of distrust upon his face though that was only natural.

‘And a man of such description shoved past the collector at the ticket barrier,’ added Mulholland.

‘Plus we found an empty wallet jettisoned upon the railway tracks — expensive leather, surely the corpse’s.’

‘Robbery with death thrown in, sir!’

To the constable’s enthusiastic assertion, Roach said nothing but twitched his long and lantern jaw. He was aware that things had been quiet recently and these two were growing restless, like slavering hounds without a deer carcass to gnaw upon.

‘I’m not sure this is even our case,’ he demurred. ‘What about the Railway Police?’

‘Couldnae find a goods wagon if it ran over their big toe,’ McLevy dismissed. ‘Only too pleased for us to take over the mortal remains.’

Mulholland chipped in support. ‘And he lived in MacDonald Street, our parish, sir.’

‘Who found the body?’ Roach asked while he pondered.

‘The cleaners. Two old biddies, Margaret Reid and Jenny Dunlop.’

‘Nothing to add though,’ said Mulholland.

‘But by God, could they talk.’

‘Not unusual for the species,’ muttered Roach.

McLevy detected an unwonted brooding in his lieutenant’s bosom and signalled Mulholland to the door.

‘Away tae the desk, constable, and arrange cadaver collection from Waverley Station,’ he declared. ‘The police surgeon will want to justify his existence.’

A complicit nod and Mulholland was out the door, leaving McLevy to work his rough magic.