Andrew Martin - Murder At Deviation Junction

'You know my missus, don't you?' I said. 'Will you go back to the Ebor Hall and tell her I've gone to London in connection with a case - with the case, for she'll know what you mean - and that I'll most likely be back tomorrow?'

'Most likely!' exclaimed Wright. 'You've belted your superior officer, and now you're making off without permission.'

There was nothing to say to that. Above our heads, the great minute-hand of the station clock shuddered to the mark of half past ten.

It was a shame I had to go to London with my suit in such a state, for they were all dapper dogs down there. Further along the platform, a lass in a cape stood singing 'God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen'. I'd seen her on the station before; she sang with a toy dog on a decorated box at her feet with an upturned straw hat placed alongside. By rights she was loitering and liable to a forty- shilling fine. Wright looked on as I walked up to her and put a shilling in the hat.

'Why d'you do that?' he said, as I returned to where he stood at the platform edge.

'For luck,' I said

'I'd say you'll need it,' said Wright, as the London train came into view behind him.

PART THREE

The Railway Rover

Chapter Nineteen

As I took my seat in an empty Third, I realised that I had boarded the London train partly in order to get properly warm. Even with my topcoat on, it took a good half-hour for the steam heat turned to maximum to thaw me out. Wherever there were lights beyond the window, they showed snow scenes, but the track was clear - at least the main line along which I travelled was. I saw gangers just before Doncaster, burning rags in the points of the branch lines, fighting the ice. On the platform at Doncaster, a tea wagon pulled up alongside my compartment. I opened the window and bought a cheese roll, a long bottle of water and a basket of chocolate biscuits off the boy, and these together killed the last of the Chief's rum punch. Then I cleared the stuff under the seat, kicked off my boots and stretched out. I watched the telegraph wires rise and fall against the dark blue of the night sky.

What were the chances that I would be returning the following day with the whole thing knocked and the case closed? Nil. For a start, I was most likely heading in the wrong direction. This was a northern matter, somehow tangled up with the iron-mining industry of the Cleveland Hills; it was in the slice of moon over Stone Farm; the lonely pit tops; beacon fires burning on the cliffs; the mineral train going between the legs of the Kilton Viaduct like a mouse between table legs. I watched the telegraph wires rising and crashing into the telegraph poles at an ever greater rate as we sped towards Peterborough, and somewhere on that stretch I fell asleep, waking on arrival at London King's Cross.

I walked along Platform One, going by a long line of trolleys piled with mailbags. A barrier had been erected around the parcels office so as to make extra space for working through the Christmas rush. Everybody who worked in that station looked in need of a good night's sleep, and the ones not moving about were shaking with cold. I stepped across the road from the station. The constant flow of traffic had turned the snow into black slush, but some remained on the pavements. I bought an orange from a bloke with a white beard who sold oranges and chestnuts - he looked very Christmassy, but wouldn't have thanked you for pointing it out. I looked along the Euston Road: it roared with life. I glanced upwards, at the giant white face of the clock on the Midland Grand Hotel, and it looked wrong for a moment. One hand had fallen off. But no - midnight.

I would not be spending fifteen bob on a night in the Midland Grand. Instead, I walked north to the small house-sized hotels that served King's Cross. The first was called the Yorkshire Hotel. Well, London was anybody's, and this place got custom by reminding folk of the places the nearby railways went to. A notice on the door of the Yorkshire Hotel read 'Respectable Persons Only', and I wondered whether that included me. For instance, I was probably out of a job at that very moment, but I'd brushed most of the loose mud off my suit, and it passed muster with the not very respectable customer who ran the place. He showed me to a sooty room at the top that had no fire, but two beds, and he advised me to take the bedclothes from one and pile them on top of the other. That was the Yorkshireness of the place, I thought: the bitter cold. But after putting my boots to air on the windowsill, I got my head down and slept through until ten o'clock, when I pulled back the curtains to see a bright, bitter day.

I was too late for the serving of breakfast in the Yorkshire Hotel, so walked to a stall near the station and drank a cup of Oxo and ate a bacon sandwich. I then rode the Inner Circle line to Charing Cross. There were faster ways of getting to Fleet Street, but I had time to kill until my midday meeting, and I liked the Inner Circle. They'd put on electric trains since I'd seen it last, but it was still a railway in a coal cellar; you were still looking up from below the streets at the towering, blank backs of the buildings, many of them covered with giant posters for Lipton's tea.

I stepped out of Charing Cross Underground into muddy snow, and the black shadow of the Hungerford railway bridge. Having taken my bearings, I put up my collar and walked north up Villiers Street, turning right on the Strand. I was under the clock a quarter of an hour before time and I felt a proper ass for standing still in that weather. Nobody else in Fleet Street stood still. They pushed on fast in their good suits, clicking canes and highly polished boots - all the dapper dogs, with many straw hats worn even in the extreme cold. Everyone walking was really working; there were no loafers in Fleet Street.

And the ones in the shiniest boots and hats were the lawyers - the thoroughbred black horses among the London nags. They were an exquisite lot, which made you suspicious of them. As I watched, they came and went from the ancient alleyways opposite in capes or fur-collared coats, and I thought of Marriott, the barrister of the Travelling Club who was known to the Chief. Every brief in the country came from that ancient place opposite - from it or other, similar places near by. They came to York for the Assizes, and I pictured them riding into the city like a pageant.

At twelve o'clock, about a dozen clocks struck, driving the people on to faster walking, and the vibration of the air seemed to bring on snow, for it started again now - just the odd, accidental snowflake, escaping from the dark, moving clouds above. Where was Bowman? I tried to recall his looks: the red, ridiculous face, the nose at once too big and too small. His head put me in mind of a teapot, somehow. He was strange-looking - and as a clever man, he knew it. He didn't like to be stared at and would seldom meet your eye. It would be wrong to take against him on that account.

I watched the road. I had the feeling that Bowman would cross it to get to me. Fleet Street contained as many cabs as the pavement did people, and they could only fit on to the road as long as they all kept moving - if one of them stopped, they all would. None did stop, though. Anybody in a cab in this weather would be inclined to stay in it, while the omnibuses, being open to the snow, ran empty.

A hand touched my shoulder and I whirled around.

He'd already had one or two, I could tell. The cold had made his face extra-red. Same green topcoat, same flat sporting cap, which was like a saddle on a donkey, for he was not at all the sporting type.

'Good to see you,' he said, and his eyes settled on mine for longer than at any moment during our time at Stone Farm, but even so, not for very long.