Andrew Martin - Murder At Deviation Junction

For a moment there was nothing but the swinging station sign.

We pulled away and were soon flying through Stone Farm, where I thought I saw Crystal standing stock still on the platform and being snowed upon. I made a move towards the window, meaning to drag it down and call out 'Happy Christmas!' to the miserable old fossil.

Next thing we were in the town of Loftus, gliding along the high street in the same direction as the snow. From the platform there came nothing but a few throat clearances out of sight. We pulled away into the country and a seabird flew alongside the window - and then suddenly it was taken higher, as if yanked up on a wire.

I turned the other way and the door of the compartment opened. Small David sat down over opposite me with his tweed coat spread wide, a smile on his face and a revolver in his hand.

But it could not be Small David. Small David was shot.

'Are you . . . Sanderson?'

'Och, ye've sniffed me oot.'

He had addressed the top of my head, with his own great head tilted back.

But he couldn't be Sanderson either - Gilbert Sanderson was hanged.

There was some bloody complication: a mass of dried blood under his flat sporting cap - the cap was welded to the head by the stuff, and yet he was grinning. It was Small David all right; he hadn't crowned his brother. He had been crowned by his brother.

'I can see ye're thinkin' hard.'

I was thinking how the police had taken him for Sanderson, and now I had confused him with his brother, with the same disastrous consequences. He gave a glance towards the window: the white fields rolled on under the blackening sky. There were farms and what looked like farms but with flames rising above, farms on fire - and these were the mines.

'Yer brain's too wee, de ye ken that?' said Small David.

My mistake had arisen because I had not been able to think of him as suffering at the hands of another man, but only as the cause of suffering. I looked down at his yellow socks - there was blood on them too, and sweat and filth, and all the horrible leakage of his great body.

'Smart eh!' he said, and I saw that he had no teeth, just like a great baby. Had they been lately knocked away by his own brother? I saw through the window a summerhouse in a garden of snow coming fast by the window - that was all wrong. I turned again to face Small David.

He said, 'Ye'll alight the train in a wee while.' 'Willi?'

'Aye, ye wull.'

'It was the brother that was shot by the police -'

'Aye, gone for ever.'

'He gave you a good battering.'

'Och, he could nae batter a fish.'

'Why didn't you shoot him, Small David?'

'I was savin' the bullets for yersel'.'

'Where's Marriott?'

'Hum? Stull deed.'

'The son, Richie?'

'He's awae tae France.'

'But you've taken all of his father's money.'

'A guid deal of it, aye.'

He looked away from me and he looked back.

'My fair share ,' he said.

We were both being rocked as the train slowed. I looked to the left and down. At Flat Scar mine, the endless rope still turned, sending the swinging buckets out towards the mine station, where a mineral train waited with a fuming engine at the head. The flywheel turned inside the wheelhouse, and the sea smashed against the little jetty beyond. It was Christmas for some, the telegram lad had said, but not for the blokes of Flat Scar, and not for me. Snow had been scraped away and piled up all around the mine, like so much white slag.

There came a fluttering from beyond the right-hand window, and I thought at first that another seabird was flying close by, but it was the rattling wind gauge that marked the start of the Kilton Viaduct. The train noise was different now, as we slowed and ran on to the viaduct, and it galvanised Small David, who rose to his feet, motioning with the revolver for me to do the same.

As I stood facing the man, I realised that I stood taller than him; but he held the gun. He drew open the door of the compartment and motioned me into the corridor, which was empty. I had the feeling that we were the only men aboard. Small David pushed the gun into me, indicating that I should walk along the corridor.

The corridor went on for ever, but we slowly closed on the carriage door. As we did so, he spoke:

'I was no quite comfortable while ye were left alive.'

'How did you know I'd be in Middlesbrough?'

'Yon bottle man told me.'

'Spoken to him recently, have you?'

'I have nae.'

I knew then what the telegram had been: a warning from Bowman that he had at some early stage let slip the fact that I had an appointment at Middlesbrough.

We were now at the door.

'I wull be calling upon the bottle man presently, but ye have the honour of being the first tae dee.'

Small David opened the door, and the snowy gravel was flowing along beneath our boots. On the other side of it stood the low wall of the Kilton Viaduct, and beyond that lay the long drop to the beck and the mineral line.

'Oot,' he said.

I jumped, and he followed directly after.

We were alongside the carriage bogies, and the wheels themselves were horrific and merciless when seen close to. The carriage walls towered above us, and they came on, and came on.

'Stir yersel,' said Small David. He meant me to walk to the middle of the viaduct, and there he would make me leap.

I leapt early.

One hand on the viaduct wall and I was gone. From the middle of air, I saw the mine, the endless rope turning under the darkening sky. My bowler was falling in advance of me; it was disloyal, abandoning ship. Well, a bowler was a ridiculous article in any case. My limbs were just so many floating things, and by slow degrees it seemed that my boots were becoming higher than my head. I wondered whether I would make a full somersault before I smashed. I was no detective sergeant; it was not meant to be. I was an engine man who had missed his way, and that was all about it.

Chapter Thirty-eight

It ended neatly enough, for I landed in a perfect grave - a grave of snow. I lay in it, and thought about what had happened. The fall had not ended with the smash, but had continued for a little while after with a sort of dark, burning roar, and the notion that the word 'Chute!' was being shouted very loudly into my ears.

Above the top of my snow-grave I could see the side of the viaduct. I had leapt from the point at which it began, and fallen perhaps only thirty feet on to the top of the valley side. I began an upwards crawl out of the snow, and my hands seemed small and very red, and my back was ricked. It was easier to move to the left than to the right. But I came out all right, and stood up, a little bent over. A sea wind was coming up at me; it blew the snow through the legs of the viaduct. The sky had a look of dangerous dark blue against the whiteness all around, and I knew this was the coldest day I had seen, but I could not feel it. The snow was my friend now, even though I had fought it all my life.

I seemed to be very high as I stumbled forwards. I was on a high ridge of snow - it had been made when a track to my left had been cleared. The track ran down to the beck, and the zigzag mineral line. The mine itself lay far below, and an echoing rattle was coming up the valley from there. The mineral train was leaving the mine station, or attempting to do so. The ironstone wagons were all hitched. The train was jerking back and forth, as if it was trying to unfreeze itself.

I climbed the bank side for a little way, and was quickly underneath the viaduct at its lowest point. I moved underneath it. My back was all right as long as I held it in a certain position, but I had to move a little way crabwise. I climbed on to the eastern side of the viaduct top (whereas I had jumped from the western side). I crouched against the viaduct edge, and the wind gauge was there: one small, mad windmill. No, it was like a trapped bird, and it was frightening to be near it. The thing's arms turned at a furious rate, and the thing itself was spinning bodily. Small David stood fifty yards beyond me, and on the opposite side of the single track. In the gathering dark, he was peering over the western viaduct wall, looking down at the zigzag line where the iron train had stopped - looking for me. I began walking towards him. I did not care if he saw me. I did not know what would happen if he did, because I was not thinking. Instead, I walked, with the line beside me. No trains would come, I knew that - we were quite safe from interruption.