Edward Marston - The Railway Detective

‘The only man I’m interested in is William Ings. Will you help me?’

‘As long as my name never reaches Mr Tallis.’

‘It won’t,’ said Colbeck, ‘I can assure you of that.’

‘Then I’m your man.’

‘Thank you, Brendan. I appreciate it. Though I’m afraid it won’t be easy to find Ings in this rabbit warren.’

Mulryne was confident. ‘If he’s here — I’ll find the bastard!’

Polly Roach was much older than she looked. By dyeing her hair and using cosmetics artfully, she lost over a decade but her body was more difficult to disguise. She had therefore placed the oil lamp where the spill of its light did not give too much away. As she lay naked in his flabby arms, she made sure that the bed sheet covered her sagging breasts, her spindly legs and the mottled skin on her protruding belly. She nestled against his shoulder.

‘When are you going to take me away from here?’ she asked.

‘All in good time.’

‘You said that we’d have a home together.’

‘We will, Polly. One day.’

‘And when will that be?’

‘When it’s safe for me to leave here,’ he said, unwilling to commit himself to a date. ‘Until then, I’ll stay with you.’

‘But you told me that I didn’t belong in the Devil’s Acre.’

‘You don’t, Poll.’

‘You promised that we’d live together properly.’

‘That’s what we are doing,’ he said, fondling a breast and kissing her on the lips. ‘I left a wife and children for you, remember.’

‘I know, Bill.’

‘I changed my whole life just to be with you.’

‘I simply want you to get me out of the Devil’s Acre.’

‘Be patient.’

William Ings was a plump man in his forties with large, round eyes that made him look as if he was in a state of constant surprise, and a tiny mouth that was out of proportion with the rest of his facial features. It was lust rather than love that had drawn him to Polly Roach. She offered him the kind of sexual excitement that was unimaginable with his prudish and conventional wife and, once she had a hold on him, she slowly tightened her grasp. During the first few days when he moved in with her, he was in a state of euphoria, enjoying a freedom he had never known before and luxuriating in sheer decadence. It was worlds away from the humdrum routine of the Post Office.

The shortcomings of his situation then became more apparent. Instead of having his own house, he was now sharing two small rooms in a fetid tenement whose thin walls concealed no sounds from the rest of the building. Ings soon learnt that his immediate neighbours, an elderly man and his wife, had ear-splitting arguments several times a day and he had been shocked when he heard the prostitute in the room above them being beaten into silence by one of her more brutal customers. In the room below, a couple had made love to the accompaniment of such vile language that it made his ears burn. In the past, paying an occasional brief visit to Polly Roach had been exhilarating. Living with her in a place of menace was beginning to have distinct drawbacks.

‘What are you thinking, Bill?’ she asked, gently rubbing his chest.

He sat up. ‘I’ve decided to go out again.’

‘ Now ? It must be almost midnight.’

‘There are places that never close.’

‘You don’t want to play cards again, surely?’

‘Yes, Poll,’ he said, easing her away from him. ‘I feel lucky.’

‘You always say that,’ she complained, jabbing him with a finger, ‘yet you always manage to lose somehow.’

‘I won this week, didn’t I?’ he said, peevishly.

‘That’s what you told me, anyway.’

‘Don’t you believe me?’

‘I’m not sure that I do.’

Anger stirred. ‘Where else would I have got so much money from?’ he said. ‘You should be grateful, Polly. It enabled me to leave my job and move in here with you. Isn’t that what you wanted?’

‘Yes, Bill. Of course.’

‘Then why are you pestering me like this?’

‘I just wanted to know where the money came from,’ she said, putting a conciliatory hand on his arm. ‘Please don’t go out again. I know that you feel lucky, but I’d hate you to throw away what you’ve already earned at the card table. That would be terrible.’

‘I only play to win more,’ he insisted, getting up and reaching for his clothes. ‘This is my chance, don’t you see? I can play for higher stakes.’

‘Not tonight.’

‘I must. I have this feeling inside me.’

Her voice hardened. ‘How much have you given to her ?’ she asked, coldly. ‘I don’t want you wasting any of our money on your wife.’

‘That’s a matter between me and Maud.’

‘No, it isn’t, Bill.’

‘I have responsibilities.’

‘ I’m your only responsibility now,’ she said, climbing out of bed to confront him in the half-dark. ‘Have you forgotten what you promised? You swore that I was the only person who mattered in your life.’

‘You are, Poll.’

‘Then prove it.’

‘Leave me be,’ he said, fumbling for his trousers.

‘Prove it.’

‘I’ve already done that.’

‘Not to my satisfaction.’

‘What more do you want of me?’ he demanded, rounding on her. ‘Because of you, I walked out on my wife and children, I gave up my job and I started a whole new life. I tried my best to make you happy.’

‘Then take me away from here.’

‘I will — in due course.’

‘Why the delay?’ she challenged. ‘What are you hiding from?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Then why this talk about it not being safe to leave here?’

He pulled on his trousers. ‘We’ll talk about this in the morning,’ he said, evasively. ‘I have other things on my mind now.’

She glared at him. ‘Are you lying to me, Bill?’

‘No!’

‘There’s something you’re not telling me.’

‘You’ve been told everything you need to know, Poll.’

‘I’m your woman. There should be no secrets between us.’

‘There are none,’ he said, irritably. ‘Now stand out of my way and let me get dressed. I have to go out.’

Polly Roach had played the submissive lover for too long now. She decided that it was time to assert herself. When she got involved with William Ings, she had seen him as her passport out of the squalor and degradation that she had endured for so many years. He represented a last chance for her to escape from the Devil’s Acre and its attendant miseries. The thought that he might be deceiving her in some way made her simmer with fury. As he tried to do up the buttons on his shirt, she took him by the shoulders.

‘Stay here with me,’ she ordered.

‘No, Polly. I’m going out.’

‘I won’t let you. Your place is beside me.’

‘Don’t you want me to make more money, you silly woman?’

‘Not that way, Bill. It’s too dangerous.’

‘Take your hands off me,’ he warned.

‘Only if you promise to stay here tonight.’

‘Don’t make me lose my temper.’

‘I have a temper as well,’ she snarled, digging her nails into his flesh. ‘I fight for what’s mine. I’m not going to let you sit at a card table and lose money that could be spent on me. I’ve been in this jungle far too long, Bill. I want to live somewhere respectable .’

‘Get off me!’ he yelled.

‘No!’

‘Get off!’

Stung by the pain and annoyed by her resistance, he pushed her away and lashed out wildly with a fist, catching her on the chin and sending her sprawling on to the floor. Her head hit the bare wood with a dull thud and she lost consciousness. Ings felt a pang of guilt as he realised what he had done but it soon passed. When he looked down at her, he was repelled by her sudden ugliness. Her mouth was wide open, her snaggly teeth were revealed and he could see the deep wrinkles around her scrawny neck for the first time. Her powdered cheeks were hollow. Ings turned away.