Andrew Martin - Murder At Deviation Junction

I turned to Bowman, who was fixing his cap back on his head.

'It's Sanderson,' I said, as the black brickwork thundered away beyond the windows.

'Who?'

'The man we're following is Gilbert Sanderson,' I said. 'He was hanged last year for the murder of George Lee.'

Bowman gave me a narrow look.

I fished in my pocket for the Club photograph, pointed to Lee. 'This man was done in as I told you. It happened in the course of a robbery committed by Gilbert Sanderson. It's him,' I went on, tipping my head back to indicate the man in the next carriage. 'I've seen his woodcut.'

Bowman was shaking his head as the train seemed to gain speed before suddenly seizing up. It had stopped at the Underground station called King's Cross St Pancras. And here of course the man who was Sanderson, or the spitting image of Sanderson, turned and stepped off.

'Identical twin?' asked Bowman, as we again fell into line twenty paces and twenty people behind the man. 'Or is he a ghost?'

We stepped off the train behind the man, merging into the moving crowd. He was through the ticket gate. I held my warrant card up to the ticket checker, who said, 'What the hell's this?' as we went by, but he was grinning as he said it. In the passageway beyond the barrier, the man was slowing once again. His choice now was King's Cross or the passageway connecting with its rival, St Pancras.

'It's King's Cross for my money,' I said. 'He's heading for Yorkshire.'

But the man followed the St Pancras direction, his open coat swinging.

'That's rum,' I said. 'What the devil is he up to?'

I tried to think it out: the man had come to Bouverie Street half- intending to do something - and then had decided not to do it. Had he seen me at the window, and suspected I was a copper? Or then again, had he seen Bowman there, and decided, looking at his terrified expression, that he had succeeded in putting the frighteners on, and that his job was therefore done? But Bowman had told me that the man didn't know him; that he wouldn't necessarily be able to pick him out away from his known haunts.

And who had told the man of Bowman's haunts? Who had put the man-who-looked-like Sanderson on to Steve Bowman?

He walked along the passageway, up another flight of stairs and out into the great wide roaring of St Pancras Station. On the pillars and roof arches, the red colourings of the Midland Railway looked like Christmas decorations. The man paused again, and turned right around in the circulating area, taking sights, or just letting everyone have the benefit of his biscuit-coloured suit and bright yellow woollen socks.

'The glass of fashion, isn't he?' muttered Bowman.

It would have been a comical sight but for the brute power that obviously rested in the man. He walked towards the booking hall, and we followed. We stood away from him as he queued at the window marked 'Bedford and All Stations North Thereof.'

'He's not going to Kentish Town, then,' said Bowman. 'I rather hoped he would be.'

Kentish Town was the next stop on the line.

As the man moved towards one of the pigeonholes to make his ticket purchase, I looked at the tile map of the Midland territories that was fixed to the booking-office wall. You could go to York from St Pancras and other points immediately north of York. You could do it, but this wasn't the regular London station for Yorkshire. I pictured the man alighting at Derby, Trent, the Midland towns. But they were not in the case.

He was buying his ticket now, but we could not risk moving closer to hear the destination stated. He gave his request in the shortest amount of words possible, I could tell that much. Having done so he stood back, looking upwards again. It was as though his moustache was a false one, held on with gum and in danger of falling off unless he held his head in that particular grand and arrogant way.

The ticket was pushed out under the window, and the man paid over his gold: pound notes - at least two by the looks of it. This was a bad lookout. At Third Class rates, each of those pound notes represented about three hundred miles' distance, and I did not think my North Eastern warrant card would pass muster with a Midland ticket checker.

The man came out of the ticket hall, and swung away towards the waiting trains.

'We've struck a trail here all right,' I said.

'Why don't we just let him go?' said Bowman. 'He's given up hounding me, at any rate.'

'Then we'll be left with the mystery,' I said.

'Yes,' said Bowman, 'and left alive as well.'

As we stepped out of the booking hall, we saw the man take up position once again in the middle of the circulating area. He was gazing towards the trains this time, then glancing at his watch.

'If I were him, I'd go for a stiffener just now,' Bowman said at length, and the fellow was indeed within striking distance of the refreshment rooms, but he didn't so much as glance that way.

I looked to the left: the platform behind the ticket gate at that extreme - Platform One - was beginning to fill with people. A line of baggage trolleys waited there. A pageboy was towing a heavily loaded tea wagon across the circulating area towards it. The wagon flew a small flag that bore the word 'Sustenance'. As I watched, a red tank engine came wheezing into view on that line, drawing more carriages than it could easily manage.

'It's the bloody sleeper,' I said. 'The bugger's off to Scotland.'

Chapter Twenty-one

I ought to have guessed. What other ticket would have set someone back two quid? The man was approaching Platform One, coat swinging as he strode behind the tea wagon, feet splayed wide.

I looked at Bowman.

'The missus is not expecting you to go off on a jaunt, I suppose?'

He made no reply, but adjusted his specs in a nervous fashion.

We followed the man to Platform One; there was no ticket checker at the barrier but we were delayed by the people ahead - a party of a dozen or so, struggling with trunks and portmanteaus. When we stepped on to the platform, our quarry was gone from sight.

'Well, he's got to be on the train,' I said. 'You get us two seats and I'll walk along.'

Bowman was standing forlorn next to the little tank engine that had drawn in the rake of carriages, and was now continuing to simmer, pumping out the steam-heat for the carriages.

'Maybe he'll get off at Trent,' he said.

Trent was the first stop of the sleeper, not more than a hundred miles from London.

The first carriage was the dining car: there were only railway chefs in there, making their preparations. We climbed up into the next carriage - an ordinary Third Class marked, like most, for Edinburgh - and Bowman took a seat in an empty compartment. Telling him I'd return once I'd located our man, I carried on down the corridor.

I did not see the man in that carriage, so I walked on, pushing through the press of people boarding the train, gazing in at the compartments and trying to look like an interested tripper rather than a policeman. All were either Firsts or Thirds, for the Midland had dropped Second. Most of the passengers would sleep sitting down; there was only one carriage with bunks. It was First Class, and I came to it next. My footfalls were muffled, the red carpet being thick, hotel-like. A man stood in the open door of one of the sleeper berths, smoking in shirtsleeves. Inside, on the red blanket of the bed, his things were all a jumble - but it was an expensive jumble. He eyed me narrowly as I went past, as if to say, 'You're never First, clear off out of it.'

I approached the final two carriages with a fast-beating heart. Here, the labels pasted on the windows read 'Inverness'—a fresh engine would carry them to that far northern point from Edinburgh. I began walking slowly along the corridors of these, which were not bustling like those of the others.