Andrew Martin - Murder At Deviation Junction

I heard the driver say something that might have been: 'All right then.'

At any rate, the whole man-machine started working around me. The driver looked ahead to the plough man; he then put on full reverse and took us backwards as I carried on shovelling.

I said, 'Shall we take a longer run this time, mate?' and he didn't answer but kept us rolling back fifty yards beyond the last distance.

As we came to rest prior to the charge, I was at the injector, operating the two valves to bring water into the boiler. I just wanted to be 'doing', but the driver said, 'Don't carry the water so high,' so I checked the flow. Being a little rusty, I had to think for a while about why he'd said that, but it came to me after a couple of seconds that each run at the snow made a rolling wave of water in the boiler. If the water slopped too high, it would carry over into the cylinders, the engine would prime and we'd be done for.

Beyond the driver's shoulder, the snow was increasing; the shadows were moving and the Highland ghosts were walking again. I looked at the fire, which was good and even, then back at the heather, where a black shape was flowing over the hillside. Could it be deer? The driver was leaning out, signalling to the bloke in the plough. The shadow on the hillside was not flowing as I had thought; it was moving in a rocking motion - on two legs only.

The driver was engaging forward gear.

'All set?' he said.

He was looking hard at the crocked fireman, who was now braced on the sandbox with his one good hand grasping the cab- side hard. It was a sight too late, but he'd learnt his lesson.

I stepped two paces from the fire to look out of the cab as the driver laid his hand on the regulator. Instead of looking forwards at the plough, I looked backwards. Small David was on the snow- dusted track, thirty yards behind. He walked with arm outstretched, as if that arm was a battering ram to clear a way through the snow-filled air. I pulled myself in and the first shot came as our acceleration began. Whether anyone besides myself noticed that first one over the roar of the engine noise ... well, I do not believe they did. As we gathered speed, I moved again to the cabside.

'Keep still, would you?' said the driver.

Another shot came, followed directly by what sounded like a third. Or was it the first bullet striking the engine? When would we hit the snow? I pulled myself in. Had we made such an easy job of cutting through it that I had failed to even -

The smash came, and the great backward bounce - which just kept on. The wave of snow was made on both sides. We were enclosed in white walls, and I did not dare breathe as those walls held. We were slowing all the while, but still the snow was going up.

After ten seconds, the walls did begin to droop, though, and we were about at a stand as I looked out again through the low rolling snow and watched Small David running through the gloaming with arm still outstretched, just as though that gun of his was something we had dropped, and that he meant to return to us.

I pulled myself in and looked at Bowman. He was rocking forwards as the engine slowed.

'We're not in the clear yet,' I said.

But as I looked at Bowman he began to rock the other way.

'What?' I believe I said. Or maybe I just gave a gasp, for it seemed to me that our engine was now fairly floating - all thirty- odd tons of it.

'We're through?' I said to the driver.

He nodded, as much to himself as to me.

PART FOUR

Christmas

Chapter Thirty-one

That engine leaked steam like a bastard, not least because of the badly fitting smokebox door; as the driver told me under questioning. I asked him its class, and he said, 'E Class', 'D Class' or, for all I knew, 'declassed'. I didn't like to ask again, for he seemed to find speech rather a strain. The good thing was that he didn't ask too many questions, or in fact any. I told him I was a detective on a case, but whether he took that, I don't know. I was certain, though, that he was not aware of having been fired on; nor was any man in that cab. They'd have mentioned it, after all, if they had noticed.

I felt sorry for them in a way, for I knew the danger I'd been in, and was able to weigh the value of freedom and life, and the best sort of life at that: the engine-driving life.

We made good running after the snow block and pulled into Helmsdale twenty minutes after. A train there was fairly itching to get to Inverness, having been kept back by the weather all day, and we were in luck again at the Highland capital, being just in time for the east-coast sleeper, which would take me directly to York and Bowman on to London, but we were not quite so pressed that I couldn't go to the telegraph office in the station, and wire the wife to say I'd be back next day. The telegram cost two and four - which was a bit of an eye-opener.

We happened to board the train in the restaurant car, and Bowman said we deserved some proper grub. I had a good sluice- down in the WC, but we were no doubt the filthiest pair that ever sat down to a railway dinner, and a Christmas railway dinner at that. Bowman couldn't read the menu, so I read it out to him - turkey and all the extras was practically forced on you.

The wine list came separately, and Bowman said, 'Jim, when I was lying in that damned barn, I said I'd never touch spirituous liquor again, didn't I?'

'Aye,' I said.

'Did you believe me?'

'You sounded as if you meant it,' I said.

'You did believe me, then?'

'Yes.'

'You were quite wrong to do that,' he said, and he passed me the wine list.

As I poured out the wine he'd asked for, he gave a grin, saying, 'Up to the top of the church windows!' His face was back to its usual colour, but perhaps, looking at his reflection in the window, he felt that it needed a little touching up here and there. He then clinked glasses with me when the wine was poured, which he had never done when all those gallons had gone down at Stone Farm and in Fleet Street, and which I think is a foreign habit that they've picked up in London. He continued in good spirits throughout the first two of the three courses we put away, his observations coming with a twinkle rather than the world-weary, sighing tone I'd been used to, whereas my own mood was now a dangerous lightheadedness rather than happiness. I'd been jerked out of my tedious groove by the whole business, but jerked out of my income as well. Once I'd paid my half of the present supper bill, I would have next to no money - perhaps a quid or so, I dared not look to see.

And in about ten hours' time I would walk into the York police office and be given the boot, for I had belted Shillito and I had not settled the matter of the Travelling Club. I kept returning in imagination to the day I was stood down last from the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway. There'd been a bit of money owed, and I'd been called into the wages cabin alone to receive it. That was the worst bit - to receive my wages alone, and at an odd time, whereas normally there would be such a press of cheerful, shouting blokes in that office.

Then again, though, it was as if another man was in all that bother. I could not quite believe it was me, for I had come out of my Scottish adventure with a whole skin, and if a fellow is spared he is spared for a reason, isn't he?

At first, the two of us had plunged into technicalities. Marriott, according to Bowman, had to be lying dead somewhere between the cottage and the railway line. He thought it doubtful that Small David would go to the bother of hiding the body; it would suit him for it to be found, if it really had been a suicide.

'But is he telling the truth about that?' I asked.

'Why would he lie?' Bowman replied.