Murder At Deviation Junction

by Andrew Martin

  'He's only going to Wimbledon,' he said. 'He'll take up station outside my house again.'

  'It makes no odds,' I said. I had my topcoat in my hand, and the office was waking up to the agitation in our voices; I was through the door and down the stone stairs in an instant. In Bouverie Street, I looked north towards Fleet Street. The man had made the junction, where he wheeled his wide body to the left. I followed him, as snowflakes fell in the darkening sky - and it was something dangerous now, like the first flaking of a ceiling.

  I stood at the junction with Fleet Street. Bowman was coming up - a lonely man struggling to join the crowds. I shouted 'Run!' and he did his best, but I thought his hot head would explode.

  I pointed left so that he would know the way, and set off directly. I was fifty yards behind the man, keeping him in sight without difficulty. Most people on Fleet Street wore plain black and were thin; but this man was a tweed-coated cube. He never once looked back, and did not seem in any hurry. He walked with the swinging step of the outdoorsman. Where was he heading? I tried to put up in my mind the Underground map. Was he heading for a station that could take him to Wimbledon? I hoped not, for I knew about his Wimbledon connection, and I did not want to go there. I did not like the place: high, thin red houses like guardsmen in a row - a fucking prison of a place. No, this one would surely be making somehow for the ironlands of Yorkshire.

  I looked behind. Still Bowman came on, though with a few pavement collisions on the way. I struck the billboard again: 'Doctor Killed and Eaten by Natives of Nigeria'. The man ahead had not given it a glance, but kept his great head tilted upwards, as though to receive the refreshment of the snow.

  Gaslit advertisements flashed as we came towards the Strand; a huge church stood in the road, blocking traffic. I did not remember it being there in my Waterloo days. My eyes flickered back towards the path ahead, and the man had gone.

  Bowman came panting up beside me.

  'Lost the bastard,' I said, but Bowman was shaking his head, gasping out a word I couldn't hear and pointing directly left, to one of the theatres. No, it was a new Underground station - Aldwych - that he was indicating. We walked into the booking hall followed by a blow of snow. All the signs in the place showed arrows, but which one to follow?

  The man was in the lift looking out - one of half a dozen occupants. The attendant drew the steel mesh across, and down they all went.

  My eyes moved right: there were two lifts and the second was ready to go. The attendant had the mesh dragged half across, but I stopped him and pushed my way in, dragging Bowman behind.

  'Ticket,' said the liftman in a sour voice.

  As we went down, I held up my warrant card - he might make of it what he liked. Bowman he ignored.

  'Did this fellow ever get a good look at you?' I said.

  'I don't believe so,' said Bowman. 'I had my comforter up and cap down every time I saw him - at first just on account of the weather, later on by design.'

  The doors clashed open at the bottom, and I was out of that lift like a rat out of a drainpipe, with Bowman panting along behind. The sight of the man in tweed slowed us, though. He was only ten feet ahead in the passageway, walking slowly, checking the people behind him like the church in Fleet Street. He certainly seemed to have no notion that he might have been followed, for he'd never once turned about. He was gazing up at a swinging sign that hung before the point at which the passageway split into two. The sign was an electrically lit glass box, and it showed two hands, each with a pointing finger. One was marked 'North', the other 'South'. He slowed further, approaching it. He did not know London, and that was because he came from the ironlands of the Cleveland Hills. Or was it simply that he hadn't decided where to go?

  He hadn't quite stopped by the time he made his decision. He chose the northern passageway, and we followed at a distance of twenty feet. You couldn't get to Wimbledon this way.

  There were perhaps fifty people in between the man and Bowman and me as we all lined up on the platform. The adverts on the tunnel wall were for Lipton's tea, but, looking sidelong, I saw that the man was looking above them all, gazing at the tunnel roof.

  The train came in, and we boarded the carriage behind the one into which the man stepped, but we could see him clearly through the windows at the carriage end, and the bright electric light seemed to bring him too close. I turned away from him, towards Bowman, who had removed his sporting cap and was wiping his head, dragging the few hairs on his head hard to the left.

  'I'm in need of a dose of wine,' he said. 'Where do you think he's heading? The Cross?'

  He meant King's Cross.

  'Must be,' I said. 'He's going north.'

  If we stuck with the man, we would end back in Yorkshire, and that was fine.

  As we came crashing into Russell Square station, I tried to picture the place he might run to earth: one of the little iron-getting towns on the Cleveland cliffs - Loftus or some such. The carriage doors opened. A third of the passengers got off; a new third got on. The man remained, and it seemed to me that the new third avoided standing near him, just as the old third had. It was his great width, and that strange rig-out with the yellow stockings - a challenge to all-comers. The train started away again with a jerk, and it jerked a thought into my head: I knew the man.

  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 obviousl
y 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.

  He was there—in the last compartment of the last carriage. Nobody stranger would be joining him in there, I thought. He took up the best part of two seats, with stout legs spread wide, and yellow socks bristling. As before, he seemed to gaze at vacancy, with head tilted upwards. For all his size, he seemed to live on air. There was no food or drink with him, and he carried no bag. It was seven hundred miles to Inverness. Would he sit like that all the way?

  I had just stepped beyond his compartment when a bang and a violent jolt sent me stumbling against the window. Righting myself, I stepped down once again, and saw that the train's engine had coupled on at the 'down' end, and an assisting engine was backing on to that. We would be double-headed to Edinburgh. The first of the two blew off steam as the second one hit, and the great white column was like a flag of distress. Snow flew about beyond the engines, beyond the platform glass, as if it too was in distress; but the line ahead was evidently clear.

  I looked again at the engines. Two 4-4-0 compounds they were, fitted with both high- and low-pressure cylinders for fuel economy and better torque. They were handsome too: the 'Crimson Ramblers' to the Midland men. I saw the fireman of the first working the injector with what seemed like a look of fury, but when he saw me watching, he gave a grin. He wouldn't go all the way to

  Edinburgh. There'd be an engine change at Leeds or thereabouts.

  I walked back along the platform, glancing quickly into the last compartment. The man sat there as before, looking ahead. He didn't have to go as far as Inverness; he might have favoured that carriage simply because it was the emptiest. He was a very independent unit.

  'Don't tell me,' said Bowman, when I re-entered our compartment. 'Inverness.'

  'Bang on,' I said, sitting down.

  'It's the law of sod,' said Bowman. 'And I'm sure he'd go further north if he could - just out of pure spite.'

  'He might well be doing,' I said. 'Inverness is the connection for the Highlands, don't forget.'

  'He's Scots, I suppose,' sighed Bowman. 'Something about those bloody socks of his should have told me that.'

  'I can't see any Scottish connection in the whole business,' I said. 'I mean, Paul Peters wasn't Scottish, was he?'

  'Londoner,' said Bowman, shaking his head. 'Born in some tedious spot like - I don't know - Pinner.'

  Bowman had moved into the corridor, and was leaning out of the window, looking along the platform.

  'Where's the dammed tea wagon?' he was saying.

  'I'll fetch you a tea,' I said. 'I'm just off to the telegraph office.'

  'You've called my bluff,' he said, turning around and almost smiling. 'I'm after a bottle of red, to be perfectly honest.'

  There were fifteen minutes before departure. I jumped down next to a gang of porters who were all pasting labels on trunks and jabbering about the weather. The tea wagon was rolling up, so Bowman would have his wine.

  I strode over to the telegraph office, where I took up a form and joined the queue. While queuing I wrote 'HAVE PROCEEDE
D TO SCOTLAND', but when my turn came for the clerk I realised that was ridiculous, so I changed it to 'GONE TO SCOTLAND'. I was going to add something, but the clerk was agitating for the form, and there were half a dozen people behind me so I handed it over as it was, together with the fee of one and six.

  I climbed up into the Third Class Edinburgh car again, and Bowman said, 'Sent the wire?'

  'Aye.'

  'What did you put?'

  'Gone to Scotland,' I said.

  'Little peremptory,' he said. 'That was to your wife, I suppose,' he said after a space. 'Did you not telegraph your governor?'

  I shook my head - but now that he'd mentioned it, I started fretting about whether I ought to have. Bowman had at last removed his hat, and he was now unbuttoning his topcoat. There was a certain delay in his movements, which told me to look about for a bottle of wine, and I spied it on the compartment floor, just below the window, with two glasses alongside and nearly half of the stuff already gone.