Mr Campion's Fault

by Mike Ripley

  ‘Happens all the time on muck stacks when fires break out; men climb up with shovels and put the fires out. What’s not very likely is how you knew he’d be here.’

  ‘But I didn’t,’ pleaded Campion. ‘Honestly, I had no idea.’

  ‘But you just said …’

  ‘I said I should have expected it, but I was referring to young Master Braithwaite, who is down there in the pit yard doing a bit of detective work off his own bat as we speak.’

  ‘Roderick? Bloody hell! Can’t let him see any of this.’

  ‘I quite agree. Haydon Bagley, if that is he, isn’t going anywhere, at least not until we get the police here.’

  Exley pulled Campion away from the edge and made sure he was steady on his feet by placing a hand on each shoulder and pressing down, as if planting him.

  ‘Can you make it down by yourself, Albert?’

  ‘I’m sure I can,’ said Campion. ‘It won’t be quick and it probably won’t be dignified, but I’ll make it.’

  Exley looked down the slope towards the pit yard.

  ‘You’re sure you saw Roderick down there?’

  ‘Yes, by one of those iron-framed hangar-like buildings. Can’t see him now, though. Try these.’ Campion offered the binoculars which Exley barely glanced at.

  ‘I don’t need opera glasses,’ he said gruffly. ‘I’ll find him. Pit yard’s not safe for a young lad. You come down at your own pace.’

  They exchanged silent nods as two men do when neither is prepared to show weakness or sentiment, and Exley launched himself into a sliding run down the hill, his hips at right angles to the slope.

  Campion geared himself to follow with much more care over his footing and far less speed. One foot in front of the other and lean backwards not forwards. If anything goes wrong, it is better to reach the pit yard on one’s backside than on one’s head. Albert and Arthur went up the hill … to find a dead body … Arthur ran down like a gazelle while poor old Albert came tumbling after … No. Don’t think like that. Go down on your hands and knees if need be; there’s no one around to see you make a fool of yourself.

  Except there was somebody around – somebody coming up the haul road to the colliery. Campion did not need the binoculars to see them as he could hear the sound of their motorbike engines quite clearly.

  Arthur Exley did not look behind him until he careered off the muck stack, stumbled into the pit yard and paused, doubled-over, to catch his breath. Only then did he check on how his unlikely ally and implausible friend was managing his descent. To be fair, the old boy was game enough going up there in the first place. Exley was half Campion’s age, and had been forged (he considered) from much stronger metal, but even he was feeling the strain on his thighs and calves. Still two-thirds back up the slope the mild-mannered southern toff was making a brave fist of it, coming down in a staggering side-to-side motion, arms flapping and hair flying and mouthing something Exley could not hear. Was he cursing? Shouting a warning? Or singing Jerusalem?

  Exley shook his head. The old man had to look after himself; Roderick was his priority now, and when the blood stopped pounding in his ears he heard the noise of motorbike engines echoing off buildings and then cut out. He began to run.

  Campion had lost sight of the motorbikes approaching the pit on the haul road, being far more concerned to keep his balance. He had tried to shout a warning but realized that it must have sounded like a drunken hunt master shouting ‘View-halloo!’ and possibly in Romanian.

  He decided to concentrate on getting down the slope in one piece. With a broken leg or a twisted ankle he would be no good to Roderick or Exley, and with a broken neck no good to anyone.

  Below him – still a long way below – he saw Exley bend over and turn his face up towards him. He shouted breathlessly ‘Go, just go!’ but had no idea whether he was heard or understood. Clearly Exley had no intention of waiting for him as he set off diagonally across the yard towards the desolate office buildings and the metal hangars. Exley was strong, he was fit and, more to the point, knew his way around a colliery. If young Roderick needed protecting from anything he was the man to do it and he had a personal stake in doing so. What could Campion do but limp along bringing up the rear too late to do any good, providing only tea and sympathy?

  Perhaps that was all he had to offer now.

  Exley paused at the corner of the building that had once served as the lamp room, where miners coming off shift had checked in their lights and batteries before getting undressed in the attached shower block, which had been thoroughly stripped of all its useful fitments and copper piping.

  There was no sign of any motorbikes or of Roderick. Had Campion imagined seeing him?

  He jogged along the front of the Manager’s Office, noting that at least one door seemed to be still in place and properly locked, and hurried in the direction of the winding rig over the main shaft. That shaft, which went down at least eight hundred feet, was surely the most dangerous place in a landscape of dangers. A waist-high square skirt of iron panels formed a protective fence around the shaft, one side of which was split in two as a gate to allow access to the cage which used to lower men into the bowels of the earth and bring the coal they ripped, hacked and shovelled up to the sunlight. The cage was in place and the iron gates guarding it secured with a hasp and heavy padlock, which ruled out the possibility that Roderick had accidentally plunged to his death. The knowledge gave him some comfort. The pit had already taken one Braithwaite; he would not allow it another.

  He ran on across the yard to the large corrugated-iron sheds which had acted as garages and workshops, one of which had been equipped as a blacksmith’s shop, something Exley remembered fondly as every child in Denby Ash had probably had a snow sledge made there as a Christmas present; their runners forged from off-cuts of sheet metal courtesy of the National Coal Board.

  The sliding door of the nearest shed was half open and Exley could see the dim outline of a coal lorry inside – one of the smaller ones, a low-sided Atkinson four-wheeler. More disturbing were the two BSA Bantam motorbikes parked outside the shed, each with a black crash helmet resting on the seat.

  There was no sign of the riders of the bikes and, more to the point, there was no sign of the duty watchman. Arthur knew that the watchman’s duties were rarely onerous, especially during daylight, being on hand basically to deter kids from vandalizing the place even more and the scrap dealers from helping themselves to copper wiring and piping and any old iron that had been deemed surplus to requirements by the NCB. Yet neither old Tom Townsend nor that idiot Adrian Elliff, who alternated the day and night shifts, seemed to be on hand, and even if they were sleeping off a hangover they would surely have heard the bikers arrive. They had no right to be there and, come to think of it, neither had that lorry. As a union official, Exley reasoned, he had every right to know what was going on and he did not falter or break stride, but continued running full pelt into the shadows of the shed’s interior.

  His vision had not even begun to adjust to the gloom of the shed when a pick-axe handle was swung into his stomach with considerable force.

  TWENTY-THREE

  The Dark Place

  Campion reached the bottom of the stack and hobbled into the pit yard. His lungs as well as his leg muscles burned and his ankles felt like bags of marbles. There was no sign of Exley or Roderick Braithwaite and no sound of motorbike engines. He felt totally alone, though he knew he was not for he was conscious that behind and above him was a dead body, most likely that of Haydon Bagley, and he could not help but wonder why whoever had killed him had gone to the trouble of carting the body up to the top of the muck stack for a burial of sorts when there was a perfectly good mineshaft nearby.

  Such things were matters for the police and if Campion could somehow summon them, he would be making a useful contribution to events. If Roderick was in danger, Arthur Exley was more than capable of protecting him; of that Mr Campion was certain. Exley was younger, stronger and clearly passio
nate about the boy’s well-being. Roderick could not have wished for a more ferociously loyal surrogate father.

  Discovering that he was sweating profusely, he unbuttoned the NCB donkey jacket, reached into his trouser pocket for his handkerchief and mopped his face. His great white flag of a handkerchief came back streaked with black, sooty smears. He risked wiping the lenses of his glasses and was relieved to find that his vision improved marginally, though he was convinced he was shedding a fine mist of coal dust with every movement and that he could taste it on the back of his tongue. He felt extremely old, filthy, exhausted and lame, and desperately in need of a hot bath or an ice-cold gin-and-tonic – preferably both – but they would have to wait.

  Campion raised his head and looked around until he located an intact wire hanging at roof height. If there was a watchman to watch over the premises, surely they would have supplied him with a telephone.

  He sighed and said aloud, ‘Come on, old bones, no peace for the wicked’ and followed the line of the wire across the yard to where it disappeared into the Manager’s Office.

  Only when he was a yard away from it did Campion realize that the upper half of the office door comprised six square panes of glass so coated with black dust that they looked like solid mahogany. Using his sleeve, Campion cleaned one of the panes and peered in. He could make out a desk and a captain’s swivel chair and – yes – a telephone. All he had to do was get through the door which was secured with a Yale lock.

  Had there been a time when a more dashing, confident Campion would have picked that lock in three seconds with a borrowed hairpin? Perhaps, but this was no time to dwell on the past.

  There were large lumps of coal dotted around the yard, several of which he had stumbled over. He picked up the nearest, a piece as big as a small loaf of bread, smashed in the glass pane nearest the lock and then reached in and turned the knob on the lock.

  The telephone, an ancient black Bakelite affair, offered a reassuring dialling tone and Campion dialled the number he had memorized early that morning, though in truth he had not the faintest idea where Cudworth was. He spoke briefly and clearly then replaced the receiver and went to find Exley.

  The first blow made Arthur Exley double over; the second landed across his shoulders and propelled him into an enforced forward roll across the oily concrete floor which ended as he collided painfully with the front offside wheel of the lorry.

  ‘Tha’d no need to belt ’im like that!’

  ‘The booger come chargin’ in like a bull in a china shop. What else was there to do?’

  ‘’E was allus trouble, that one.’

  As Exley’s head cleared he discerned three distinct voices and recognized them all.

  ‘You bunch of bastards!’ he spat, tasting blood from where he had bitten his tongue and oil from where his face had met the floor of the hangar. ‘I’d say you were keeping bad company Adrian, but I reckon you and the Booths deserve each other. Now just what the bloody hell are you up to?’

  Of the three men standing over him, only the spindly Adrian Elliff, hopping lightly from foot to foot, seemed disturbed by Exley’s outrage. The two men in biker leathers, the cousins Fred and Colin Booth, remained confident and menacing as each held a pick-axe handle in their right hands which they slapped in unison into the palms of their left.

  ‘Didn’t know you couldn’t count, Arthur,’ said Fred, the elder Booth. ‘There’s three of us ’n’ just the one of you, so you tell us what you’re doin’ here.’

  ‘And stay down there,’ snarled Colin Booth, jabbing Arthur with his wooden baton as Exley moved to stand up. ‘You’re not speakin’ at a union meeting now, Arthur. Any road, tha’d be out-voted, three-on-one.’

  But Arthur Exley had participated in much tougher negotiating situations than this in his career and was not to be cowed.

  ‘Now listen here, Fred Booth, as area convenor I’ve got every right to be here, which is more than I can say for you.’ Exley spoke slowly and deliberately, with an authority which hardly fitted his ungainly position. ‘I’m checking up on this daft so-and-so’ – he nodded towards Adrian Elliff – ‘and it seems it’s about time somebody did. You’re in trouble, lad, big trouble. There’s more than muck out on that muck heap.’

  The Booth cousins flashed urgent, rodent looks at each other. Adrian Elliff continued to quiver nervously, his thin legs clearly shaking through his greasy blue jeans.

  ‘What’s he talking about, Colin?’ Adrian squawked in a high-pitched voice.

  ‘No idea, Adrian, no idea,’ Fred Booth answered.

  ‘So they haven’t told you, have they, Adrian?’ said Exley, taking his chance. ‘Haven’t told you about Haydon Bagley lying dead up there on top of the stack. How long since you put him there? Didn’t count on it raining so much recently, did you? If it hadn’t he might have stayed up there until spring. As it is, he’s come back to haunt you, lads, so you might as well give it up now.’

  ‘What’s he talking about, Colin?’ Adrian squealed again.

  ‘Oh, change the record, will yer?’ snapped the younger Booth, lunging with the axe handle at Exley, stabbing as if with a foil or an épée.

  ‘You said you were just here to get rid of the lorry.’

  ‘Well, they would, wouldn’t they,’ Exley blustered, ‘because it’s evidence. Are you really that stupid, Adrian?’

  ‘You can shut your mouth, Mr High-and-Mighty Exley!’ Fred Booth shouted.

  ‘Let’s shut it for him!’ Colin joined in and the pair raised their wooden clubs and lunged at Exley.

  Arthur instinctively protected his head with his arms and brought his knees up to his stomach, at the same time attempting to press himself backwards under the wheel arch of the lorry so that the first strikes by the Booths clanged off metal rather than thudded into his body. But then the pair doing the beating adjusted their aim and the blows began to count. With a loud, hysterical giggle, Adrian Elliff joined in with some wild and mostly ineffective kicks at Exley’s legs.

  Then, above the grunting and the yelps of pain, a new voice rang out inside the hangar. ‘Leave him alone, you big bullies!’

  And Roderick Braithwaite, covered from head-to-toe in coal dust, rolled and then fell over the side gate and out of the back of the lorry.

  Campion saw the motorbikes outside the hangar-like shed and immediately changed direction across the yard so that he could approach it from an angle out of sight of whoever was inside. When he reached the shed, he pressed his shoulders against the corrugated-iron frame and edged sideways towards the open sliding door.

  When he was level with the two bikes he could hear the unmistakeable sounds of violence coming from within and he inched closer to the edge of the door, straining without success to make sense of the babel of voices. He knew he had to risk a look inside so about-faced and inched towards the open door, his face pressed into the rusty troughs of the corrugated iron.

  It took him several seconds for his brain to work out the choreography of the disturbing drama on a stage he was now, as it were, observing from the wings. Arthur Exley was on the ground in a foetal position being beaten by two figures in leather trousers and jackets wielding clubs of some sort. At first, Campion thought Arthur was trying to edge himself under the lorry parked there to protect himself from the blows raining down on him, but then Campion felt his heart in his throat as he realized that Arthur was crawling, or trying to crawl, not to safety but to help Roderick Braithwaite, who lay face down on the concrete three long yards away. Roderick was pinned by virtue of the thin, gangly youth kneeling on his back and repeatedly slapping him on the back of the head. Everyone – the hitters and the ones being hit – were howling in anger and pain.

  Campion had to help; he knew that instantly, just as he knew he was old and slow and weak. He could not do much but he must try and whatever he did he had to do it quickly. He looked around frantically for a distraction or a weapon and found both.

  The two BSA Bantam bikes were almost within ar
ms’ reach and, uncaring whether he was seen or not, Campion grabbed the crash helmet balanced on the seat of the nearest and placed it near the door. Then he turned back to the bike, twisted off the petrol cap on the top of the tank and gently pushed the machine back and forth on its stand until he heard the gratifying slosh of petrol.

  Tearing at the buttons, he pulled open his donkey jacket and took his handkerchief from his trouser pocket, feeding it into the tank then extracting it halfway, draping it, soaked and stinking, along the tank. He fumbled his cigarette lighter from his blazer pocket, flicked it into life and touched the flame to the edge of the handkerchief.

  He picked up the crash helmet and swung a practice swing holding it by the chinstrap, then with a deep breath he summoned up the last dregs of his energy, raised a leg and kicked out to knock the first bike off its stand and into its companion, sending both machines crashing noisily to the ground.

  He was back, flattened against the corrugated-iron shed when he heard the first angry shout from inside, and then the Bantam’s tank exploded with a whoosh rather than a bang, making him think of a wet firework in the rain.

  It wasn’t much of a diversion or a rescue, he thought, but it was the best he could do.

  Colin Booth was a rebellious youth, or so he liked to think, who had never seen the need to respect person or property unless, of course, they were his. When he heard, and then saw, his precious BSA lying on the ground in a heap, flames and smoke licking from it and embracing its twin, he let out a howling obscenity, flung down the axe handle and raced towards the hangar door.

  He reached the entrance in four or five rapid strides and then his face met the crash helmet swung at precisely the optimum height and with all the strength Mr Campion could muster, who suddenly appreciated the expression ‘stopped in his tracks’ as Colin Booth came to an abrupt halt and sank to the ground as his legs crumpled beneath him.

  Unbalanced from the effort of launching the ambush, Campion staggered and almost fell over his victim. He was breathing heavily, his heart pounding, his head swimming and he desperately wanted to sit down and rest for just a minute, but he forced himself to enter the shed where there were two more opponents to deal with, though he doubted he would be able to present much of a threat. Campion’s actions, however, had sown confusion among his enemies and given inspiration to his allies.