Andrew Martin: Murder At Deviation Junction

'Where does he work, mate?' I asked, and the bloke craned his head up towards the over-world at the top of the furnaces, where tiny men moved silently along gantries amid the snow. What was put into blast furnaces to make iron? I tried to think. Ironstone, coke and ... something else. Limestone.

I joined the bloke in looking again at the high gantries. Had this been Shillito's programme all along? To get me sent up there? But the bloke tipped his head down again, his gaze now roving between the roaring sheds behind us.

'You'll find him over yonder,' he said.

I nodded thanks and turned on my heel.

In the heart of the shed, four men were pacing about in front of a strange and mighty vessel. It looked like a forty-foot-high brick head that pivoted on its own ears, these being formed of two mighty steel wheels held in place by giant iron stays. As I approached, the head tipped upwards, as if to say, 'Who is this come to visit?' And the men stepped back from it.

A bloke came at me from the darkness. 'Look out, mister,' he said, indicating behind. I turned around and a huge ladle of molten iron was rattling towards me, suspended from a moving crane. I tore my eyes away directly, for the sight burnt them. I stood aside as the ladle passed. It was like a piece of the sun put into a bucket, and it was approaching the great swivelling head, which was turning again, ready to receive its drink of hot iron. This was steelmaking.

The roof had been cut away above the thing's head, and some snowflakes that fell through the gap escaped melting, and swirled towards the watching blokes. I fixed my eye on a particular one of the four: the tallest. His right hand was bandaged. He was Clegg, I was sure of it, but the only light I had to go on was that from the iron in the ladle, which had now stopped short of the blokes. It swung in the cold wind that came through the open roof, making weird shadows.

I turned to the bloke who'd warned me of its coming.

'Is that fellow Clegg?' I said, pointing to the one I'd been eyeing.

The man's glance travelled from my warrant card to the four blokes. He said nothing, but I could tell I'd hit the mark. I stepped over towards the blokes and the head somersaulted so rapidly that I thought it might leave its moorings. At that moment, the one behind called:

'Look out, Don - he's a copper!'

I turned about to see the man sprinting to the mouth of the shed. I started after him, running hard over the hot cinders. At the shed mouth, the bloke turned left. I did the same, and one of the red iron streams was right before me. I leapt it and, in the middle of the air, saw another just where I was about to land. I tried to make my leap into a dive, and cleared the second stream with inches to spare. I rolled away from it and lay still for a moment, feeling its warmth all along my left side. I stood up and looked across the territory of Ironopolis. The men who worked in it were made tiny by the size of the blast furnaces; and Clegg could have been any one of the hundreds of tiny blokes in view. I stood up, and tried to brush the red dust off me. One false move in this bloody place, and you were done for. I had no chance of running in an ironworker in the ironmen's own stronghold. If Shillito wanted the job done, he could bloody well ride the train north and do it himself.

I walked back towards the bloke who'd warned Clegg.

'What's your game?' I asked him.

'You could have been anyone, walking to him. He'd have jumped out of his skin if he'd turned round to see you - and that's not safe in a spot like this.'

He looked me up and down

'...big fellow like you.'

I was half his size, and getting on for a quarter of his thickness.

'It's obstructing a police officer that's what.'

'I don't think so.'

'Look, I'm telling you. Don't make an argument of it or I'll run you in as well.'

'As well as what?' he said, and a slow grin spread across his blackened face.

Mastering myself for the cold, I headed back towards the mouth of the mill, where snowflakes were swooping about in confusion. I picked my way back through the towers and smoking ore rivers of the iron district, presently hitting Vulcan Road where once again things were human-sized: snow floating down on motor cars, carts and traps; people pushing on grimly, heads down. This was the town that iron had made. I saw a woman at some factory gates over opposite. She was all folded in on herself, quite motionless under accumulating snow. She looked like Lot's wife, and I thought: this party is frozen solid, I must do something - but as I approached, she lifted up her head and smiled, as though it was quite a lark to be snow-coated.

Chapter Two

In the middle of town, Queen's Square was a white ploughed field, the ruts made by the cartwheels stretching away towards the railway station, where I saw the wife waiting in her woollen cape and best winter hat. She held her basket with one hand, and young Harry's hand with the other. She'd come up to Middlesbrough with me, and she'd told me she would be at the station for the mid- afternoon York train, should I be able to finish my business with Clegg earlier than expected. (The plan had been for me to take him into the Middlesbrough Railway Police office, for questioning and possible charge.)

'It's snowing, our dad!' young Harry bawled out, as soon as he saw me.

Lydia stooped down and said something to the boy - 'our dad' being a vulgar expression he was forever being told not to use. I looked again at the wife's hat, and I was glad to see that it was the same one as she'd been wearing that morning. She'd come up to Middlesbrough because she'd fancied a look at the new millinery department in the town Co-operative Store, and I'd been fretting that she might have gone on a bit of a spree.

'You've got a bit frozen, Jim,' she said, when I walked up.

Harry asked, 'Where's tha bin, dad?' and Lydia corrected the boy: 'Where have you been, father ?' She was a kind of echo to Harry, who generally paid her no mind at all.

'I've been to see a man about a dog,' I said.

It was something when your business was unmentionable to your own son.

'We had spice cake,' Harry said.

'As if your father couldn't guess,' said the wife, leaning down to brush a scattering of crumbs off Harry's coat.

'And was it nice?'

'It was expensive ,' he said.

The wife laughed, looking for my reaction as she did so. The topic of money had been a delicate one between us of late.

'And what else did your mother tell you?'

'Eh?'

'To keep your muffler up to your chin.'

I tried to make from his muffler and coat a seal against the snow. Then we turned and made towards the station, which was a curious mix-up: made of about four churches by the looks of it, with one great hump in the middle. Steam and smoke leaked out from the seams and rose upwards.

'You didn't lay hands on the man then?' said the wife.

'He scarpered.'

She sighed.

'He's a footballer, isn't he?'

'Aye,' I said, 'amateur.'

'And you know which team he plays for?'

'We do.'

'It's pretty easy to track down football teams, you know. They're generally to be found on football pitches.''

'His lot dodge about a fair bit.'

'Give over. It's all league and cup, league and cup.'

'There's friendlies as well,' I said. 'That's where he split the goalie's skull - in a friendly.'

'It's a queer town, is this,' said the wife as we walked on towards the station. 'There's red dust everywhere . .. especially on you.'

She lifted her hand up towards my bowler hat.

'It's iron,' I said. 'The air's full of iron. Puts most of the populace into an early grave.'

'I like it!' said Harry from behind.