I left 16A on the Humber at six-thirty, wearing the bad suit, and with the glass-less specs in my top pocket. I had the Chief to see, and I was due at the Grapes in the evening, so I would make a day of it in town.
The smoke smell was thin in York station at seven o'clock, for there were long intervals between the trains. The bookstall was open, with the stout party still in place. It was weird, given his full figure, that those books he sold that were not about murder concerned the suppression of fat. There were about fifty souls in the station proper, every one of them on Platform Ten: an excursion party, heading for Scarborough most likely, for a bit of a blow. I wondered if it could possibly matter that some of them were looking on as I walked into the Police Office. I was not yet wearing the glasses, not yet Allan Appleby. The Chief was waiting at his desk with the Police Gazette photograph of Valentine Sampson or Joseph Howard Vincent before him. I saluted, and the Chief winced. There's no need to do that, you know.' he said. He sat back looking at me; he had a different suit on – a little better than his regular one, and wore a diamond stick-pin in his neckerchief. It seemed that he became half-gentleman come Sunday. But he was still too big and wild-looking, cut out for desperate deeds, not Sunday visiting. He moved forwards, saying: 'It's much like when you go into a Church of England service… You don't need to cross yourself.' 'Oh,' I said. 'But you do need to take your hat off.' 'What the heck's that got to do with it?' said the Chief, who seemed quite put out. He shook his head for a space before picking up the page I'd sent him. 'Now this scoundrel's been cropping up in the Gazette for donkey's years, always the same photograph, always the shooting of the two detectives mentioned. I think they put him in at slack times, fill up space.' He held up the page featuring the photograph for us both to see. 'I've spoken on the telephone to the right fellow at the Met,' he continued. 'And they know him only as Joseph Howard Vincent, not… whatever you said.' 'Valentine Sampson, sir,' I said, adding rather sharply: 'It's a hard name to forget.' The Chief gave me a warning look. 'How did they come by the picture?' I asked. 'It was taken by his fiancee.' 'Where?' 'Not known,' said the Chief. 'Some holiday ground. He's at the start of a pleasure cruise by the looks of it. The fiancee sent it to the police with a note: this is the fellow you want for that shooting at Victoria. She kept her name back but offered to make a statement, and so a time and a place was set, but she never turned up.' 'Why would she make an offer then withdraw it?' 'There can be no great mystery there,' said the Chief, kicking his chair back, and putting his arms behind his head, like a man preparing to go to sleep in a play. 'She knew he'd done it, perhaps witnessed the crime; he then chucked her over, which sets her thinking: blimey, he really is a rotter, this one.' The Chief shook his head. 'Stupid bloody cow,' he said. 'Why were the detectives after him in the first place?' 'Attempted robbery of a bank.' 'Is it known how he was attempting to rob it?' (Of course, I was thinking of the cylinder). 'Was there any machinery involved?' 'Yes,' said the Chief, 'a revolver.' 'Well, I think it's my man, and I'm going to meet him this evening at the Grapes on Tanner Row.' 'Convenient, is that,' said the chief. 'Why, it's just around the corner.' 'Convenient for an ambush,' I said. The Chief said nothing. 'Am I not to have any support from fellow officers?' I said, and I couldn't help but give a quick glance behind, through the open door towards the general office beyond, which was, as always, quite empty. 'If I get in much further with this lot' I continued, 'I'm going to have burnt my ships with the law.' 'How do you mean?' said the Chief, and I surprised myself by what I said next. 'I was given the shove by the Lancashire and Yorkshire' I said, 'but what happened wasn't my fault. I was always up to the mark with the work. Given a job to do, I'll do it well, whether it be firing an engine or robbing a bank.' The Chief was grinning at me. He seemed to like this talk. 'You want me to save you from yourself,' he said. He took out a cigar and lit it. 'You hungry?' he said. I knew straightaway that he meant to take me over to the hotel. 'I'd best change my suit,' I said, shocked. 'That's right,' said the Chief. 'Can't go in your knockabout clothes.' 'It's my disguise,' I said. The Chief nodded, mind elsewhere once more. I dashed off to Left Luggage (which had just opened for business), took out my best suit, changed into it in the gents, and replaced it with the bad suit, all at the cost of a tanner. 'Natty' said the Chief, when I returned to the office, and five minutes later we were aiming for the dining room of the York Station Hotel or rather, one of the three dining rooms. The one we were after lay on the second floor, and, as we approached along a corridor wide as a road, I heard a droning noise to the right: there was a housemaid, alone in a ballroom and pushing an electrical cleaner. The Chief grinned at me as we passed her, and the sound of the machine was gradually replaced by a mighty rising tingle-tangle. We turned a corner, and doors opened on to something resembling a great wedding feast or banquet: Sunday breakfast at the Station Hotel.
A man in livery approached us, and led us towards a bonny serving girl. She said, 'Do you wish to view the breakfast?' You'd have thought it was a work of art, and in fact it was – all laid out on three sideboards before the high windows overlooking the hotel pleasure gardens. I noticed for the first time that Sunday, 11 February had become a fine winter's morning, and this feast required nothing less. At the sideboards, well- to-do folk were eyeing bacon, scrambled eggs, sausages, devilled kidneys, haddock, hams and cold meats and roasts, all on silver plates and warmed by spirit lamps. We took our seats, informed a waitress of our selections; she brought the preliminaries of coffee, toast, pots of marmalade, honey, unknown imported jams. She smiled often as she worked and it was a very good smile indeed; you didn't tire of it.
'This keeps you going until dinnertime, you know,' said the Chief, and his face could not contain his twisted, half- embarrassed smile. He was thinking of the morning he'd left me in the cold Police Office with nothing but a cold kettle. But I was wondering whether we ought to be in the hotel at all. It was the Chief himself who'd made all those rules about our not being seen together, after all.
'You're not a dog, lad,' said the Chief, as he poured coffee, 'a creature trained to absolutely obedience at all times. You must operate in two minds. What most folk – most policemen especially – don't understand about police work is that it's brain work of the most confoundedly difficult sort.'
As he said this, the swell sitting opposite a woman at the next table turned to face us, and it was like a field gun swinging on its pivot. He was a bastard – I could see that right away.
'You must go along with your bad lads,' said the Chief, 'but stop short before the point of no return.'
'And what then?' The Chief spooned a lump of marmalade on to his toast. It fell off. He spooned it on again. 'Remember,' he said, 'that you will not have brought the business to that point. It would have arrived there anyway, and when it does come, if there's no help to hand, you must do your best to face down 'Face down what?' I asked after a while, but the Chief was eating his toast and marmalade. 'Evil,' he said, when he'd finished. 'But I have no means of giving the alarm.' Our neighbour, the toff, was prodding at bacon with a fork. He seemed very down on the whole show. This was not a very good breakfast as far as he was concerned. He looked up at the woman sitting before him: 'Want fruit?' he said, in a dead voice. I did not hear her reply. The Chief picked up another bit of toast. It was fascinating to watch him eat, and also quite off-putting. I suddenly remembered what the Police Gazette had said about Howard or Sampson: 'Will probably be found in hotels'. 'Look,' said the Chief, 'we must net these lads, and we must net them finely. And that means an ambush, yes, but at the right time. At the moment what've we got? Theft of a cylinder of some sort?' Was the aristocratic misery alongside us listening? He was looking at the woman. It was hard to say. 'It'll be used to cut metal, sir,' I said quietly, 'as I've already mentioned.' 'Theft of a cylinder,' repeated the Chief, 'pick-pocketing within the station; an assault. Other minor matters possibly. It's very thin pickings, and yet you suspect this scoundrel – the number one man – of all sorts.' 'I'm su
re he killed the Camerons' I said, in an under- breath. 'They were in his way somehow.'
'Add to that,' said the Chief, who continued loud, in spite of my whispers, 'the fact that you say the next meeting is not the actual doings, but more in the way of… plotting?'
I nodded, although I wasn't quite sure of that. As I tried to recall exactly what had been said on the cart coming away from the goods yard, a question came: why would Sampson want Allan Appleby involved in the planning of the great doing?
'We'll meet tomorrow in the Police Office at six in the morning,' the Chief was saying. 'No, meet at five. I've to be in Newcastle at half-past seven. We'll talk over whatever happens tonight and see if we have a better understanding of their final object.'
I asked the Chief: 'Any news on Richard Mariner?'
'Mariner?' said the Chief, a strange look on his face.
'The night porter here who did away with himself.'
'I asked about him. Spoke to the general manager. Nothing in it. The fellow always was a miserable sort – he'd had the morbs for years…'
The girl came up again, with the bacon and eggs and related matters. She served very daintily, but clumped off when she'd set it all out, which made her even more charming somehow. The Chief watched her as she walked away
'One curious thing about Mariner though…' the Chief continued. 'He'd worked in the housekeeper's office, later with the banqueting staff… knew all about glass, linen and silver.'
'That fits the bill' I said, and I thought of the riches of the Company. The glasses on our table, the cruet, the cutlery, the cloth – all carried the North Eastern insignia. I was sure that Sampson had got at Mariner somehow.
'I've hours to kill until I go along to the Grapes,' I said. 'Might I go back to the Police Office for another look at the particulars in the occurrences file?' 'There've been no occurrences since you last looked,' said the Chief. 'None in that line, I mean.' He appeared to be thinking; he pulled out his pocket watch, saying, 'It's eight o'clock turned.' He then took out of another pocket a silver key, which he handed to me. 'I want you out of there at eight-thirty sharp,' he said, passing me the key. 'Should I lock up when I'm finished?' 'Leave the door open and put the key in my desk,' he said, 'Shillito will be in at nine.' He was calling for more coffee as I walked away.
Chapter Eighteen
The breakfast had fairly dazed me, and I walked back into the station wondering who I ought to be: myself or Allan Appleby. I worked it out by degrees as I strolled along Platform Four, and I saw the Lad, the telegraph boy, watching me from the footbridge, as if he was trying to puzzle it out at the same time. I stopped before the Left Luggage Office, where I collected my bad suit. I changed into it in the gentlemen's, and took my good one back, receiving the ticket in lieu, which I placed in my trouser pocket.
In the Police Office, I picked the 'Occurrences – Large Theft' file out of the cabinet near the door. I read again the first one: 'Attempted (possible actual) burglary at office of goods superintendent, York Yard South… Mr Cambridge (Goods Super) will endeavour to ascertain losses.' The writer of that was a great one for brackets. When would Mr Cambridge make that endeavour? Or was the setting down of the intention the end of the matter? I wondered which of the absent sportsmen had written this: Shillito? Langborne? Wright? If I hung on, I'd be able to ask Shillito directly, but no, that was not permitted; I must be kept from him, and all the other railway coppers of York.
I turned over the leaf, and read again of the assault on the wagons – also in the South Yard. I knew all about that, and had a fair idea who'd replaced the broken seals – Valentine Sampson's tame little goods clerk. They'd tried the Acetylene company van on the same night but given up because they couldn't put their hands on the right cylinder, as I supposed. Well, they had it now. I turned over again, and read of the robbery at the Station Hotel on 16 December, only this time the list of missing items went on to another sheet, and seemed to run on too long. I was reading of 'silver cigarette cases (two), silver snuff boxes (two), gold Alberts (three), good jewelled bracelets (two), cash (estimated?200)', and more besides until the penny dropped. This latest sheet did not belong to the account of the hotel robbery. I went backwards through the pages, and saw that there was another stray mixed in with the papers to do with the burglary at the office of the Goods Super. The two went together and the second one I'd found was meant to be read as the first of the two. I looked to the top of this page: the date was 21 December 1905, the occurrence detailed as follows: 'Theft from Lost Luggage Office'.
I stared at the words while an engine pulled out of the station, somewhere on the down side. The rising bark from its cylinders ought by rights to have ended in some mighty explosion, but instead the engine simply left the station. Silence returned, and I had the great perplexity of this new occurrence before me. There were no more details – only the list of items stolen. Had no statements been taken for this or any of the thefts?
If this matter was part of the series then it was an inside job, and there were only two blokes on the inside of the Lost Luggage Office: Parkinson and Lund. I bundled up the file again, and returned it to its cabinet. Why had I not seen those papers before? Had I simply missed them? It was not out of the question. I'd first looked at them on my first day in the job, and I'd been in a tearing hurry. It was very important to find out how Lund was connected to Valentine Sampson and his band – and that before I met Sampson at the Grapes. I could do with knowing about Parkinson too but I had no address for him whereas I had a street name at least for Lund: Ward Street, Layerthorpe. The sun was doing its work, even in Layerthorpe. The shadow of a cloud moved faster than me along Fossgate and, running on ahead, it rolled easily up and over the silos of Leetham's Mill. The same breeze made cigar and cigarette stumps tumble along the cobbles at my feet. Although I wore the Appleby suit, I did not sport the fake spectacles. Some of the pubs had their windows open; they were getting an airing, and the voices that floated out of them were still at this time of the day normal voices, kept low. In between the pubs were the tiny alleyways and side-streets where the constables walked in twos. Ward Street was one of them, or connected to one.
I turned into one of the entries, and saw two men standing in the doorway of a little broken-down hotel called Hem- ming's. One was peeling an orange, and throwing the peel at the other as he did so. It might have been a lark, but neither one was laughing. I turned again, and was facing the curved wall with the posters on it – the one I'd seen after quitting the Garden Gate on my first meeting with Miles Hopkins and Mike. The gas lamp was there but, not being lit, looked different. The advertisements for the pantomime remained, and if they'd survived this far, I reckoned, they'd probably see out the year.
On this occasion I obeyed the order: 'Turn right for Capstan's Cigarettes', and I was now into a new part of Layerthorpe, walking along a terrace where there was not enough window, so that the people in the houses had not been accommodated so much as bricked up. From somewhere, one voice was screaming out 'Dad!' over and over, and a dog barked after every cry. Eventually the voice gave up, but the barking continued, the loneliness of the sound driving the dog itself crackers. I didn't know the number of Lund's place and, as I walked, I realised that the matter was complicated by the fact that the dull, brown doors came irregularly. Some in the terrace were shuttered so that two houses were turned into one, and there were intervals of wall in between the houses, as though the builder's meagre supplies of glass had run out completely while his abundance of bricks had continued or increased. But the real surprise came at the end of the terrace where the last two houses had collapsed, or been demolished, with the rubble remaining, so that the terrace was like a cigar which had been smoked up to a certain point. On the facing terrace, the opposite numbers of the fallen houses remained and one carried a sign, not proudly but against its will as it seemed to me: 'Ward Street.'
But which was Lund's place? I turned around, and there was a man approaching one of the doors. I walked tow
ards the man.
'How do?' I said, and he smiled.
He'd looked all right until he did that, but the inside of his mouth was a calamity: too-many-teeth and no-teeth all at once.
'How do?' I said again, for the sight of the mouth had knocked me. 'I'm looking for a fellow called Lund.'
The man pushed at the door, and walked in, motioning me to follow, which I did with no time to prepare for the second shock: the reek of the room. The man did not explain himself, but just sat down on a broken-down sofa next to a broken- down woman. Half a single curtain at the window, no fire; poker in the middle of the bare wooden floor, tab rug hard up against the wall. It was as though a wind had lately blown through. The pair in the room were canned, and I was somehow sure they were drinking at that moment, too but I could see no bottles. The man leant forwards, slowly revealing a worn spot on the top of his cap, like a bald patch.
Silence until the woman spoke up:
'You must take us for what we are,' she said.
Was this Lund's mother? The person in want of a linoleum?
'I'm after a word with Lund,' I said, 'Edwin Lund.'
It was as if the man had forgotten what I was about but, now remembering, he rose to his feet, and caught up the poker that lay in the middle of the floor.
'Cold is cruel, en't it?' said the woman as he did so.
The man continued forwards, holding out the poker, making towards the fireplace, where something smoked in the blackness of the grate. He pushed the poker up the chimney, and rattled it against the flue. As he leant over to perform the action, a ripped part of his coat slipped, taking with it a portion of ripped shirt, so that I could see clear through to his white, washboard ribs, and what might have been the beginnings of a scar. Soot came down into the grate as the poker rattled, and then, behind me, something else that was coloured black settled quietly into the room: Lund. He wore a black suit, old and not pressed. His kerchief was something special, but not elegant; he held two black books in his hand. He nodded slowly at me; he didn't seem put-out, as I'd hoped, and he suddenly looked to me like a crafty, secretive fellow. He might have been about to say something – it was impossible to guess what – when the man holding the poker righted himself with a loud groan. The woman on the sofa was looking towards him; she then nodded at me, saying, 'Weakened insides, Mister.' 'I went under an operation,' said the man, sitting back down on the sofa. 'He has a want of strength on the insides,' said the woman, as if that added anything to the general understanding. All the Lunds had this in common: riddled with illness, and very vague about it. The man was smiling at me again, as though he knew I was looking without success for the spirit bottle that lay somewhere to hand. Lund, at the foot of the stairs, was holding his hand in an unfamiliar way: moving it across his mouth, as though feeling the flesh after a narrow shave. He wanted to be out of the house, I could tell. He offered no greeting, but said, while moving across the room: 'I'm off to chapel – want to walk along with me?' I nodded to the pair on the sofa and stepped out of the door after Lund, closing it behind me. It was a relief to be back in the open air, although the street looked worse, now that I'd seen the inside of one of the houses. 'No one comes to visit our house,' said Lund, walking along in the direction from which I'd come. 'You must have had all on to find the place.' 'You told me the street once, if you remember' I said, 'and then I saw your dad.' He shook his head as he walked on. 'That's not your dad?' 'That's Mr Pickering. He's Mother's friend.' 'Do they work?' 'Not over much.' 'Then yours is the only wage coming in?' 'We have a little from the Chapel Poor Fund besides…' We were back in Fossgate now, and there was a little life both inside and outside the pubs. A kid on the opposite side of the road who was wearing boots that were far too big for him (or just had outsize feet) was waving his cap at me. I tipped my own back at him, and he did a little dance with an evil expression on his face, as if saying: 'I've just bagged another idiot.' Looking away from him, I saw a man barring our way while nodding his head, thoughtful-like, as if to say: 'Now what do we have here?' There were tattoos on the backs of his hands, the leftovers of long-lost high spirits. We skirted around him easily enough, but Lund said: 'You're a little out of the tourist track here, you know. You should keep your eyes open.'
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