Andrew Martin - Murder At Deviation Junction

I went through the pages again, heading backwards this time.

'What time's this milk train due?' Bowman asked, after a while.

'Twenty to five,' I said.

We were to go on to Whitby by the first train of the day. It was the morning milk, but one passenger carriage was carried along behind the vans.

'Can't think why we've hung on here after all,' said Bowman.

Why had he stayed? He could've told me what he knew about Peters in good time to re-board the Whitby train. But I reserved that particular question - along with about a hundred others.

'Will you be investigating the matter yourself?' Bowman asked.

'Shouldn't think so,' I said, and I lifted my eyes from The Railway Rover to think of Detective Sergeant Shillito. That bastard would put the kybosh on any independent action on my part. Besides, this was a matter for the Northern Division of the railway force, whereas we in York belonged to the Southern Division.

Crystal was eyeing me once again through the ticket pigeonhole.

'What are you reading?' asked Bowman.

'An item called "The Railways in Spain".'

'They fall mainly on the plain,' said Bowman, leaning back on his bench. He kept silence for a minute, before muttering 'Fawcett' and shaking his head. The article was, I saw, by B. R. M. Fawcett.

I took it up again. The clock ticked.

'I'm surprised at your sticking with that, quite honestly,' said Bowman. 'I mean to say, do you not find the style rather antiquated?'

I read on, while Bowman watched me.

'"We must advert to—",' he said, after a space. 'That's Fawcett all over. I will not "advert".'

'He knows his stuff on the railways of Spain,' I said.

'Yes,' said Bowman. 'Well, he's better up on train matters than I am.'

'How do you mean?' I said, looking at him. 'That's the whole subject of the journal.'

Bowman shrugged.

'You have no interest in railways?' I asked him.

'I started penny-a-lining around Fleet Street after school - got afloat on railways, that's all. Railway topics were the easiest ones to get rid of.'

'Did you not play trains as a boy?'

'Must've done, I suppose. I really can't recall.'

He took another pull on the beer bottle.

'I'm done, I don't mind telling you,' he said. 'I was up all hours last night as well.'

'Up at Gateshead, weren't you?'

This had come out earlier on.

Bowman nodded.

'Function at the Railwaymen's Institute there,' he said, yawning. 'Presentation of a cabinet gramophone to a fellow who'd done fifty years of service. I thought it might make an item in "Queer and Quaint".'

'And will it?'

'If I'm desperate come press day,' he went on, walking over to the window that gave on to the station yard. 'When a function bores the daylights out of me I'll generally put "Several interesting speeches were made", and leave it at that.'

Bowman had spotted something through the window, for he fell away from his speech and craned closer to the glass. I joined him at the window. In the light of dawn there was a bike half-buried in a drift, and a young lad picking himself off the road. It was me six years ago: Crystal's lad porter, arriving for his day's work.

He lifted the bicycle and started pushing it through the snow, kicking the stuff up as he went.

He walked through the station door, the left side of his uniform covered with snow. I nodded at him, and he shot me a funny look - 'Morning, mister' - before blundering through into the ticket office and closing the door behind him.

I heard his cry of 'What the bloody hell's that, Mr Crystal?' and then Crystal came down on him like a ton of coal, vociferating away for a good half-minute, as Bowman finished off his beer bottle.

'Rather wearing, the company of a chap like that,' he said, leaning forward on his perch, and pushing his spectacles up his nose.

When he'd finished bawling at the kid, Crystal furnished some sort of explanation, and although I couldn't make out the whole scene through the ticket window, the lad must have been permitted a look under the blanket, for he exclaimed, in a voice loud enough to be clearly heard beyond the ticket office, 'Hold on, I know that bloke!'

This checked Bowman, who was setting about another beer bottle. He froze with the opener in his hand, all ears. I was on my feet straightaway, and into the ticket office. 'You don't ruddy know him,' Crystal was saying, as he put on his topcoat. (Having worked all night, he was about to be relieved by a spare man from Loftus up the way). He eyeballed me for a moment, then relented.

'Best talk to him if that's your fixed idea,' Crystal said to the lad, nodding in my direction.

I took out my notebook and indelible pencil, and asked the lad to say what he knew about Paul Peters.

'Bloke came through here about this time last year; stepped down off the one-thirty stopping train to Whitby. Only a young fellow, and he'd a camera slung over his shoulder - camera on legs, it was. No, wait, he had two , now that I think on - just like this here.'

The kid looked at the camera I wore; looked at me.

'I'd just finished me dinner,' he went on, 'and I was scraping snow and laying down sand as per instructions from Mr Crystal. Bloke came up to me. He said, "Would you mind putting some of the snow back down on the platform?" I said, "Come again, mister?" Bloke said, "Could you put some of it back, as it makes for a better picture?" I said, "It might be pretty, but it en't safe." He looked a bit put out, so I said, "Can you not take a picture of sum- mat else?" "Such as what?" he said, and I said, "We have a passing loop here, you know.'"

'Marshalling yard,' rapped Crystal.

Bowman was at the doorway, listening hard.

'Well, bloke re-slung his camera, and went off to have a look. About ten minutes after, he came back and said, "I think I'd better be off up to Middlesbrough. When's next train?" I said -'

'Hold on a moment,' I cut in. 'Had he taken a picture of the loop or marshalling yard or whatever it's known as?'

'I can't say,' said the lad porter, 'but I reckon he might well have. I mean - he was loony. Any road, like I was saying -'

But he'd forgotten what he was saying.

'You said the bloke was after going to Middlesbrough,' I prompted him.

'That's it. I said, "If it's views you're after, you'd be better off in Whitby." He said he didn't want "views" but railway interest, anything out of the common for a magazine, so I said, "If you take the next Middlesbrough service you'll get there in time to see sum- mat a bit that way." And he said, "What?" and I said, "Why, the Club Train.'"

'Club Train?' I said, and there came a fearful crashing from the station yard.

'Milk cart's here,' said Crystal. 'You,' he continued, pointing to the kid, 'stop yarning and get to work. I'm off home.'

And he pushed his way past Bowman, at which point the lad porter seemed to take in the journalist for the first time. 'You all right, mister?' he said. 'You don't half look seedy.'

Chapter Five

Behind the lad porter, I spied the steam jets of the day's first train.

'Bloke boarded the train for Middlesbrough,' continued the kid. 'I closed the door behind him myself. He was after photographing the Club Train.'

He and the bloke in the milk cart had the churns lined up on the platform ready for loading. As the engine came past the snow-crowned signal box, the kid was leaning on a churn, going over his tale as I made notes in my book with my indelible pencil. The lad held a long ladle in his hand. He'd lately dipped it into the churn, and he kept looking down at it rather than drinking from it.

'But as soon as you'd done so, you realised you'd made a bloomer over the time?'

'Aye,' he said. (He seemed very happy to admit the fact.) 'I worked out that he wouldn't get there in time to see the Club Train. It would have left Middlesbrough before he arrived.'