Andrew Martin: Death on a Branch line

‘You might have shown him your warrant card,’ I said, and the moment I let fall the words, I regretted them. The Chief could be set off at a touch, so I put in a belated ‘… sir’.

The Chief turned towards me and blew smoke. He’d tramped for hundreds of miles across the boiling deserts of Africa; he had a slash mark from a dervish spear across his chest. A newspaper report existed of an army boxing match of about ’79 in which the Chief had been described as a useful heavyweight of the ‘rushing’ type, which was a polite way of saying that he went nuts in a scrap.

‘Come again?’ he said, by which he meant, ‘Let’s see if you’ve got the brass neck to repeat those words.’

‘The thing of it is, sir… How do you let folk know who you are if you don’t show your warrant card?’

A beat of silence.

‘That’s their look-out,’ said the Chief.

He ought not to have given the bank’s man a pasting. Banks were rich and powerful. They could fund legal actions for assault.

‘If that bugger does put up a complaint,’ said the Chief, who seemed to have read my mind just at that moment, ‘I’ll bloody mill him.’

By which the Chief meant that he would see him gaoled, but I wondered on what charge. The company solicitors might be able to dream something up. Had the bank’s man not impeded the Chief in the execution of his duty? And had his actions not allowed the escape of the two York roughs who’d been eyeing the money bag?

My next question was designed to get points with the Chief.

‘How did you know the fellow wouldn’t fire on you?’

The Chief threw open his desk drawer and pitched the weapon — which he’d confiscated — onto his desk top.

‘Pick it up,’ he ordered, and I did so. Guns were always heavier than you expected.

‘It’s a Luger,’ he said. ‘Single action.’

‘Right-o,’ I said. ‘So that when you pull the trigger…’

‘… Nothing happens,’ said the Chief, taking back the gun. ‘You must cock the hammer first.’

‘And the bloke hadn’t done that?’

The Chief shook his head.

‘What if he had done, sir?’

The Chief stood up.

‘I dare say I’d have been a little more cordial. Fancy a pint, lad?’

On Platform Four, I gave good evening to the Chief. We’d just returned from the Station Hotel, where we’d put the peg in after a quick two pints. It was the Chief’s wife’s birthday, and he had to get off.

I looked up at the great clock: five to five. I thought about wandering over to the booking office, where they kept some sea-side brochures. It might be worth pitching up in Scarborough and calling in on a few places in hopes of a vacancy. The heat had barely abated, but the station light was yellow, signifying the start of evening — yellow with floating specks of soot plainly visible.

A fair quantity of passengers stood on the platform, and they were not excursionists but business types, for a London train was about due.

I turned to my right, and the train was approaching under the far gantry where the signals were once again various, looking like a rabble rather than a disciplined army. But it was a ‘down’ train coming in across the way that held my attention. The on-coming engine was one of the Great Northern company’s 0-6-0s, and its fire was for some reason not in good nick, so that thick black smoke was brought towards the platforms by such little breeze as existed.

I watched the stuff roll past the open door of the First Class Tea Rooms, where ladies ate strawberries and cream with long-handled spoons and pretended they were in a nicer place. The smoke came on, and was now combined with a few drops of moisture from the chimney of the engine, so that it seemed as though we were in for an electrical storm. There seemed to be an epidemic of bad firing that day. The firebox must be fairly smothered in coal to give that much smoke.

I walked over the footbridge to Platform Nine where the engine came to rest — and where the driver was down from his cab, and talking to the platform guard, who looked agitated. The guard then broke away and came dashing past me as I approached.

‘What’s up?’ I said.

‘I’m to fetch an ambulance team,’ he called out, and he began bounding up the stairs of the footbridge.

‘Railway police,’ I said to the driver, as I gained the engine.

‘It’s my mate,’ said the driver. He held a rag in his hand, and he used it to draw sweat and coal dust from one side of his face to another.

I swung myself up on the footplate, and the fireman seemed curled up asleep in front of the fire door — just like any cat on a tab rug before the hearth. Only he was lying in half an inch of coal dust.

The fellow stirred as I stepped up, and the driver said, ‘Heat sickness.’

I could quite credit it, what with the great heat of the day, and the white, rolling fire of the engine.

‘We’re up from London,’ he said. ‘Passed Retford in very fair time,’ he said, ‘but I knew summat was up. He hadn’t said a word since Peterborough, and he’s normally a great one for nattering, is Bob.’

I leant over the fireman, and shut the fire door to save him from a roasting — at which he rolled over a little, and looked up at me, saying, ‘No, no, the fire needs air. Must keep up the steam, you see.’

‘… Fired her in myself,’ said the driver.

I didn’t like to see the man lolling down there in the dust, so I said, ‘Let’s have you up, mate.’

The driver gave a hand, and we sat him on the sandbox, and he sat there rocking, and looking too white. An inkling of trouble told me to step back just as the great wave of stuff came out of his mouth. Half a minute later, the driver was playing the water hose over the footplate, and the fireman was saying, ‘Reckon I’ve shovelled ten ton of coal today… and it’s not the bloody weather for it.’

The spray of boiling water was moving the last of the stuff off the footplate. It wasn’t a very manly colour, being yellow and bright pink.

As the stuff rolled away, the fireman said, ‘I don’t know what that is,’ just as though he was trying to disown it. ‘I en’t eaten all day,’ he said.

‘Bob forgot his snap,’ said the driver, and he turned a lever to stop the hose, which caused the whole engine to judder. ‘Bloody cursed, is this run,’ he said, looping the hose and setting it back on its hook.

I looked down, and there was a whole press of blokes on the platform by the engine. First, there was the ambulance team — four blokes in queer hats. I stepped aside, and they came pouring up. One of them began questioning the fireman, and it was more like an interrogation than a medical examination. The driver stepped down to make room, and I followed him. He began talking to two men in dark suits. They’d evidently just climbed down from one of the carriages.

‘Will we be held here, or what?’ asked one of the two blokes.

‘We’ll need a relief,’ said the driver.

‘I’ll send a lad over to the firemen’s mess,’ I said. ‘Should turn one up in no time.’

As I spoke I raised my eye to the small clock that hung above the team rooms on Platform Nine. It was dead on five. The clocks would be clanging all over York.

‘And who are you?’ asked the first of the blokes.

‘Railway police,’ I said.

He was being short with me, and he’d get likewise in return.

‘We’re Met boys,’ said the second of the two blokes, meaning the Metropolitan Police. He had boggly eyes, which made him look as if he was trying to burst out of himself.

Beyond this pair, I saw a man step down from one of the carriages, and another came down after him, or more like with him. They were too close. The first wore an official-looking moustache; the second had long hair, and had not lately shaved. Well, I knew what was going off all right.