Andrew Martin: Death on a Branch line

I sat down at the chair of the desk that Constables Whittaker, Ward and Flower spent most of the day arguing over. The noises of the station beyond gave way to the ticking of the office clock, and I looked at the time: 3.30 p.m. The clock chimed — you never thought it was going to, but it always did — and the significance of that chime to me just then was that I had two hours forty-five minutes left in which to book accommodation for the week-end away I’d promised the wife (for I would be meeting her at our usual spot in the middle of the footbridge at 6.15 p.m.).

Looking back later on, though, it seemed to me that the three-thirty chime marked the start of one of the most sensational periods ever to pass in York station.

It all began at three thirty-one, when the telephone rang in the police office, the sound clashing with that of running feet from beyond the office door and the cry: ‘The gun… There’s a gun in his hand!’

It wasn’t logical, but I arrested my dash towards the door to answer the phone.

‘You are not, repeat not…’ I heard the voice on the line saying before I replaced the receiver with a crash. It had been Dewhurst, governor of the York station exchange. Evidently he’d got wind that I’d been using a company telephone for private business.

I was through the office door in the next instant — out into the muffled sunlight, and the black sharpness of the station atmosphere, the smell that makes you want to travel. Everywhere people were running and screaming. The very trains seemed to have scattered, for I couldn’t see a single one.

Only three people were not moving and they stood on the main ‘down’ platform — number five — amid abandoned portmanteaus and baggage trolleys. I stood on the main ‘up’ — number four. One of the three held a gun out before him and the other two faced him; it was plain that not one of them knew what the gun would do next.

The new footbridge stretched between the main ‘up’ and the main ‘down’, and a steeplechase was being run over it, what with everyone fleeing the gun. But one bowler-hatted man was running the opposite way, and battling through the on-rushing crowd: the Chief. I knew he’d been knocking about the station somewhere.

I bolted for the footbridge, and began fighting my way through the crowds in the wake of the Chief. A succession of ladies in summer muslin seemed to be pitched at me, and some wide-brimmed hats were scattered as I fought my way to the main ‘down’ where the Chief was closing on the three blokes.

As soon as we made the platform, the Chief slowed to a walk, gesturing me to stay well behind him. The gunman swung his revolver towards the Chief, saying, ‘Are you another of them?’

‘Another of what?’ asked the Chief.

‘Another of these bastards,’ he said, indicating the two roughs facing him.

This was not the common run of shootist. For a start, he wore spectacles. He was also decently spoken and smartly turned out — and alongside his polished boots rested a good-quality leather valise. The two standing before him — blokes of a lower class — neither moved nor spoke, but watched the gun, which was a revolver of the American type.

‘We’re all staying right here until the police come,’ said the man with the gun.

‘I am a policeman, you fucking idiot,’ said the Chief, and that was him all over — rough and ready.

‘Well, you don’t look like one,’ said the man with the gun.

‘I happen to be in a plain suit,’ said the Chief, and I wondered why he did not hold up his warrant card. I would have come forward and shown my own, but it was in the pocket of my suit coat in the police office.

‘Plain suit?’ said the gunman, eyeing the Chief. ‘ Dirty suit, more like.’

The Chief, as usual, looked like nothing on earth. His trousers did not match his top-coat, and they were both of a winter weight — it almost made you faint with heat sickness to look at them. In York, people were jumping into the river off Lendal Bridge to get cool, but the Chief didn’t give tuppence about the weather. He’d been in the Sudan, where 95 degrees was counted a rather chilly spell, and he’d worn a thick red coat throughout that show, which was perhaps why he wore his winter coat now. His bowler was greasy and dinted, and stray lengths of orange hair came out from underneath it so that a stranger might have been fascinated to lift the hat off his head and see the way things stood with the rest of the Chief’s hair. A man who’d served in the colours ought to have been smarter, I always thought.

But you knew the Chief had been a soldier by other signs.

In the greenhouse heat of the station, he was moving towards the man with the gun. I watched the Chief make his advance — and then a noise made me turn around. The great mix-up of lines and signals beyond the south end wavered in the heat, and a train was there in the hot, shimmering air. Here’s trouble, I thought.

The train bent like a flame or a fever vision as it came on and, as I watched, it slid to the right with a high whine, so that it was heading for our platform.

The Chief, still advancing on the gunman, was making great windmilling movements with his right arm. He meant to wave the train through, as if it was a horse and trap approaching a partial blockage in a country lane (and the Chief did walk with a farmer’s plod).

The engine driver could see that something was up, and he hung off the side of his cab to get a better look — one tiny scrap of humanity clinging onto thirty tons of roaring machine. The train seemed to frighten the gunman, for he yelled, ‘I’ll shoot, I’ll shoot!’ The Chief was roaring too, and waving as the train came rolling alongside us. I imagined the riot among the passengers on board. Their train was giving the go-by to York, principal junction of the north!

As the train rolled away, I heard the Chief say to the gunman:

‘Now give it over.’

No reply from the gunman, and no movement from him either.

The five of us stood amid the abandoned bags and the posters for ‘Sailor Suits — Young Boys Will Appreciate Them This Weather’ and ‘Ebor Lemonade — The Drink That Refreshes’.

A half-minute passed.

‘I said give it over,’ repeated the Chief, and his voice echoed about the brick arches, the fourteen platforms and the like number of lines. I heard a distant clunk, and, looking towards the great signal gantry beyond the north end, I saw that all the levers had been set at stop. To my knowledge, they had never all said the same thing before, and it meant word had reached the mighty signal box that controlled the station and hung suspended over the main ‘up’. The signallers would all be in there, but moving about on their knees, below the line of the windows.

I looked again beyond the station end. The signals resembled so many soldiers with shouldered arms. Out there in the great unroofed world, passing trains were setting cornfields ablaze, signal boxes were catching fire for no good reason and all kind of trouble was brewing: the miners were out, the dockers were out and the great heat had been given as the cause of many suicides. The ancient city of York itself had become a kind of Turkish bath.

The gunman was in fits now, pointing and repointing the revolver at the Chief. He looked the part of an ink-spiller — it ought to have been a fountain pen and not a revolver that rested there in his hand. The Chief stood three feet before him, one ruffian to either side of him.

The Chief repeated his request:

‘Hand it over.’

The gunman shook his head, and sweat flew. The stuff was rolling down from underneath his hat all the time.

One of the ruffians spoke up:

‘He reckons you’re after his bag.’