Andrew Martin: Lost baggage porter

'Arrested them, did you?'

I shook my head.

'They ran off.'

'What're you going to do about it, then?'

'Make out a report,' I said.

'That'll settle 'em,' said the wife, grinning.

She might tease me but the wife was pleased that I'd joined the police. It was one of the few things she had in common with my dad: they both wanted me to get on. Dad, of course, was an out-and-out snob with about as many aspirations as any comfortably retired butcher could run to, while the wife… Well, she was something of a snob too, for all her belief in the woman's cause and Co-operation.

I had suffered alone after being stood down from my job on the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway To the wife, it was simply a great thing that the tin tub was not now needed every night. Then again, she came from money herself in a modest way. Her mysterious, lonely-looking father had owned several properties in and about the viaducts of Waterloo, and the wife had come into a bit when he'd died, with the result that she was plotting the purchase of a house to replace the one we'd lately sold in Halifax. This, she said, would be equipped with a thirty-shilling walnut bureau 'for our correspondence' and a five-pound pianoforte for 'musical evenings' which I had spent hours trying, and failing, to imagine. (Neither of us could play a note, to begin with.) These were the fixed aims of her domestic life, and housework could go hang in the meantime.

I had supper of boiled bacon, pickles and tea, and read a little more of my Police Manual, telling myself I would keep at it until the biggest log on the fire burnt away, but it didn't seem to burn, only to turn black. There was a lot of it left by the time I got up to 'Fraud' and quit the book.

I went up to bed with the wife at a little after ten. Before pulling the lace curtain of the bedroom to, I peered past the fern that stood on the window ledge. Nobody about in Thorpe. I thought for some reason of the Archbishop sleeping in his Palace, the river flowing slowly by; and it was impossible not to imagine him looking like one of those statues found on church tombs. The Palace would bring a few trippers to Thorpe in summer (I'd been told) but it was a sleepy spot, all right. After Halifax, it was like being left behind by the world. Yet, two weeks before we'd arrived there'd been a windrush through the village – not occurring anywhere else – and forty-nine objects, according to the vicar, had been overturned, including the oak next to the Old Church, which stood marooned by the river.

The wife came into the room carrying her raspberry tea, recommended for those in her condition. Her nightdress hung about one foot higher than usual, because of the baby bulge beneath, and her travel around the bed put me in mind of the orbit of the planet Mercury. Her due date was two months away. If the idea bothered her, it didn't stop her sleeping, and she was quickly off. I wanted a boy – tell him about engines. Except that I was done with them myself. I could hardly think about locomotives now, without going back in my mind's eye to Sowerby Bridge Shed, 12 November 1905. To think that at the start of that day, I'd still been able to see my way clear to a life on the footplate. What with memories of that calamity, and wondering whether I'd be put to chasing murderers come six o'clock in the morning I couldn't sleep, so walked down to the kitchen for a bottle of beer. But we were all out.

The Garden Gate

It was 5.55 a.m and raining hard when I pedalled up to the bike stand just outside the forecourt of the station and dashed inside. I raced past the bookstall, where the placards of the Yorkshire Post (a morning paper) read 'York Horror', but also 'Terrific February Gales at Coast'. The bookstall was long and narrow like a carriage that never moved, and I didn't care for it. The stout party in charge was laying out his murder library. As a kid, I'd been warned off light literature by my dad, with the result that I read little in the way of fiction at all, having no real liking for the heavier stuff. I had read always of the railways, and railwaymen were the ones I'd looked up to, not detectives, but it would be something to settle the Cameron business, and for the first time in weeks I was entering railway premises with some of the excitement, and some of the fear, of my engine-firing days. I felt lean, forward-thinking, useful again as I strode towards the Police Office.

One man stood at the ticket gate. He was jumping to keep warm. I showed him my warrant card, and he said, 'OK,' still jumping. I turned left at the ticket gate thinking about Chief Inspector Weatherill. It wouldn't just be me and him. There'd be others present no doubt: Shillito, the Detective Sergeant, who was to be my governor – I'd met him shortly after being taken on. Langborne was the Charge Sergeant, and then there was Wright the Chief Clerk… I'd yet to meet this pair.

I hurried along under the clock on Platform Four, with the Police Office now in sight. It had two main frontages in the station: one looked westerly, facing out onto Platform Four; the other faced south, and overlooked the buffers of a bay platform, number three. The door (set into the southerly facade) was unlocked, which it hadn't been the evening before; so somebody had pitched up. I walked in. The gas was lit, but not the stove. The big desks and cabinets were like islands, and no two faced the same way.

A few feet from the cold stove stood the cold fireplace: two chances for heat spurned, making me feel colder still. Above the mantel, instead of a painting, there was 'By-Laws and Regulations of the North Eastern Railway Company', and on the mantelshelf below stood a photograph: 'Grimsby Dock Police Football Team 1905'. I thought I recognised one of the players: Shillito, the DS. It was him all right, for the names were written along the bottom. He must have transferred from Grimsby.

Grimsby was in the Eastern Division of the Company force, whereas York was the headquarters of the Southern Division, and Chief Inspector Weatherill was the governor of the Southern Division. The only man senior to him was Superintendent somebody or other, who was quartered at Newcastle, and boss of the whole show.

Opposite me was a solid blue door. This led to the holding cells, I knew, of which they were two. Nobody was kept in overnight. If charged and remanded they were taken over to the regular copper shop at Tower Street, in a station hansom if need be. At the far end of the office was another blue door: Chief Inspector Weatherill's office. I walked up to it, and yanked it open just to make sure that the fellow wasn't in there.

But he was.Salute? Yes, no. Yes.

I saluted but might as well not've. Weatherill was sitting side on to me, looking up at his cold mantelshelf. He seemed to be gazing at a little silver cup, and I could make out the words 'TUG OF WAR' engraved on it. They were nuts on sport, this lot.

Chief Inspector Weatherill was a big, untidy man who looked as though he'd done a lot in life. He wore a long green coat – of decent cloth but none too clean – buttoned right up to his head. He had only scraps of hair; they were of an orangey colour, and swirled about his big head like a dog chasing its tail. His nose wandered down from his eyes to his mouth by a very winding route, which made me think he might've been a prize fighter in his day. He'd been through it all right.

'It's a good suit,' he said, turning slowly about to face me, 'nicely damped and pressed, 'n' all.'

He stood up, walked around the desk towards me. He had his hands in his pockets, which somehow gave him a look of being about to do absolutely anything. He took his hands out of his pockets and pulled open my coat, looking at the lining. Steam came from his mouth, and a sharp smell. There was all sorts wrong with his face when seen close-to: scars, lumps, burn marks maybe. His nose seemed to have tried out lots of shapes, and settled on none in particular. His one perfect feature was his moustache, which was darker than his hair, and stretched out widely like a spirit level or the governor of a steam engine. It was there for balance.