Andrew Martin - The Last Train to Scarborough

'Bloody hell,' he said, when I walked up to him, 'I'm surprised to see you. I thought you'd be dead.'

'Well, you didn't seem too upset about it,' I said, as we walked away from the bookstall. 'Where did you put up?'

'Place called the Rookery or the Nookery, or something.'

'Did you have a sea view?'

'Did I fuck. Anyhow, I was hardly in the room. I came by your place twice in the night, you know. First at midnight, then at five.'

'Five o'clock? Not with the guns?'

'Of course.'

'I appreciate that, Tommy. But there was no need.'

'The house was all right then, was it?'

He seemed quite disappointed.

'It was very interesting,' I said. 'Now I'd better see if the Chief's sent the case papers.'

'I have 'em here,' said Tommy.

He'd evidently collected the envelope from the station master just before I'd arrived. It had come up in the guard's van on the first train of the day from York, and the Chief had marked it, 'For the Attention of Nugent and Stringer, York Engine Men'. It was better than seeing 'Detective Stringer' written there, but then again the Chief hadn't troubled to seal the envelope, and it turned out that it held no case report but just witness statements from the residents of Paradise. This was the Chief all over: rough and ready, not letting a fellow relax.

Til have a read of these later,' I said.

'Aye,' said Tommy, 'we've to collect our engine. It's all ready according to the SM.'

'It might be,' I said, 'but I'm staying on.'

'But you said the house was all right.'

'Well, it is and it isn't.'

'I'm coming back with you, then.'

'No, Tommy.'

'Why not?'

'They've no more rooms going today than they had yesterday,' I said, and he began protesting and questioning me over the sound of a train that was materialising out of the rain beyond Platform One. Behind Tommy, pasted onto the station building that housed the ladies' and gents' lavatories, was a poster showing what had been on at the Floral Hall six months before. Alongside it was a post card machine. I must've seen it

dozens of times before but I'd never remarked it until now. Was it one of the ones filled by the firm of Fielding and Vaughan? The words 'Post Cards' went diagonally up the front of it; underneath was written '2d, including Vid postage'. You put the coins in a slot and I said, 'pulled out a little drawer indicated by a picture of a pointing finger. You couldn't select your card but had to take pot luck. I fished in my pocket for a couple of pennies.

'You can get yourself a relief fireman and run the engine back,' I told Tommy. 'But I'm not coming.'

'You were meant to be a relief, if you remember, Jim,' he replied. 'They'll think I'm poisoning my bloody firemen… Who are you sending a post card to?'

'Nobody,' I said, dropping in the coins and telling myself that whatever was on the card would be a clue to the goings-on at Paradise. I pulled the drawer and the card showed a country station scene, hand coloured. All that was written on it was 'Complicated Shunting'. A tank engine, running bunker-first, was pulling a rake of coaches away from one side of an island platform; another two carriages waited on the other side. This activity was being watched by a schoolboy. A few feet beyond the rear end of the engine, a man who carried his hat in one hand and a bunch of bright red flowers in the other, and whose hair had been coloured a greenish shade, was crossing the line by barrow boards. Nobody looked out from the engine, so the bloke appeared to be in mortal peril.

The picture made me think of Mr Buckingham: 'While crossing the tracks at a country station, Mr Buckingham was run over by a reversing tank engine. He survived the accident, but it was necessary to amputate his legs…'

A flicker of an idea about the Paradise mysteries came to me but it was lost beyond recall when Tommy said, 'You're buying a card for no reason? It's turned you a bit bloody nuts, this bloody business.'

The train had come in, and stopped with the sound of a great sneeze from the engine. I looked to my right, and saw the guard stepping down. It was Les White, with his leather bag over his shoulder and his glasses in his hand. He was polishing the lenses with his handkerchief, and he looked lost without them on, but when he set them back on his nose and swivelled in our direction… well, it was like the beam of the bloody Scarborough lighthouse. He nodded at Tommy, who said a few words about the state of our engine. White then set off along Platform One. I was glad he hadn't been the guard who'd brought in the witness statements; glad that a fellow could only come in from York to Scarborough once in a morning. As I watched him go through the ticket gate, another idea about the case broke in on me, and it made me very keen to get to the engine shed.

'Come on, Tommy,' I said, and a couple of passengers who'd stepped down from the York train looked on amazed as we went beyond the end of the guard's van, and jumped onto the tracks. You could do that if you were a Company man and to ordinary folk watching, it was as though you'd stepped off a harbour wall into the sea.

The engine simmered outside the Scarborough shed like a prize exhibit, freshly cleaned and with not a whiff of steam coming from the injector overflow. The tall fitter, who stood by it with the Shed Super alongside him, explained that he'd left the steam pressure from yesterday's run to decline overnight and then, first thing in the morning, he'd replaced the valve, having by a miracle had exactly the right part lying about in the shed. Steam had then been raised again; the Super had telephoned through to Control, who'd told the signalmen along the line to expect to see the engine running back light to York very shortly, and meanwhile some lad had gone at the engine with rape oil so that the boiler fairly gleamed.

'But we can't take it back today,' I said.

The Super had a white flower in his top pocket; the fitter had a mucky rag in his. The fitter was twice the size of the Shed Super and half the thickness, but they both now folded their arms and looked knives at me. Tommy was up on the footplate. On the way over to the engine shed, I'd told him all about the goings-on at Paradise and he'd accepted that he couldn't come into the house himself but he still held out against finding a relief fireman and running back to York on the J Class. He wanted to stay in Scarborough for as long as I did.

Suddenly, I'd had enough of the pantomime; I decided to

get down to cases with the two blokes.

'Look here,' I said, 'the fact is, I'm a copper.'

'You sure?' asked the Super, and I produced my warrant card from my suit-coat pocket.

He inspected it closely, and the fitter had a good look as well.

'You're not a fireman then?' the Shed Super enquired presently.

'I'm on a bit of secret police work,' I said, returning the card to my pocket, 'or at any rate, I was. If you want the chapter and verse, you can telephone through to Chief Inspector Saul Weatherill at the York railway police office – and your opposite number at York North Shed's in on it as well. Best thing is if you ask them to send a new crew.'

'Here,' shouted Tommy, who'd now climbed up onto the footplate, 'you've sorted out this fire hole door!'

'Cylinder oil!' the fitter called up, then he went back to eyeing me.

'Can I have a read of your ledgers?' I asked the Shed Super.

He looked dazed as I explained: 'I want to know how many times a Leeds bloke called Ray Blackburn fired engines into Scarborough.'

'Name rings a bell,' said the Shed Super.

But it did more than that with the fitter.

'Blackburn?' he said. 'He's dead.'

'He is,' I said, 'but how do you know?'

'Scarborough Mercury,' he said, as we turned and entered the shed.