Lost baggage porter js-3

by Andrew Martin

  Sampson was climbing over the railings separating the road from the Knavesmire. I followed; Hopkins followed.

  'Well then, little Allan,' Sampson was saying, as we strode through the wet grass, 'that's oxyacetylene cutting for you. Think it'll catch on?'

  I made no reply; I was walking by his side, and that was as much as I would do to accommodate him. He seemed very keen that I should be by his side, and Hopkins too, who was lagging behind slightly in the mist. He kept checking on the two of us, with sidelong or rearward glances, and the message was clear: we are in a box over this, and we were to stay together. After all, anyone free of Sampson was free to talk.

  'Well that was nice,' said Hopkins, 'two men fucking dead.'

  'Trust you to bring that up,' said Sampson. We'd stopped now, under a dripping tree, deep in the mist of the Knavesmire.A cow walked out of the fog towards us. 'Fuck off out of it,' said Sampson to the cow. It turned around and walked away. 'Who was that bloke firing on us?' said Sampson. 'That's what I want to know.' He looked at me. 'Search me,' I said. 'You said it was a copper,' Hopkins said to me. He was dead-eyed now, all that mischievous sparkle put out. 'Aye,' I said, 'and you agreed.' 'Where did he get the bloody gun from?' said Sampson. 'Likely he was an old soldier,' I heard myself saying. 'The police ought not to be armed,' said Sampson. 'I don't bloody hold with it… And who alerted him?' 'Well let me make a hazard,' said Hopkins. 'Perhaps it was the sight of the sparks through the window, or the shot that rang out when you played your little game with the lantern; or the bloody great raging fire that broke out in the end.' 'I suppose you think you could have managed it better?' said Sampson. He dropped the revolver into the sack, and slung it over his shoulder. In his countrified suit he looked quite at home, like a sort of gentleman poacher. He was shaking his head, saying: 'Some bugger split on us…' 'At least it wasn't the bloody Camerons,' Sampson continued, 'and that's for certain.' Silence for a space. 'Well, we've got the money, and that's the main thing,' said Sampson, who was now pissing against a tree. 'I'm beastly hungry,' said Hopkins. The carts and traps and wagons were going along Tadcast- er Road towards town at a greater rate now, the rattle and jingle of them was making itself heard even if they were still out of sight.

  'Reckon we head back to the station' said Sampson.

  The cow reappeared from out of the mist, just as if it had been thinking over what Sampson had said, and decided it was owed an apology. Sampson looked at the cow and said: 'We must stay out of Yorkshire for a little while.'

  I thought of the wife, waiting for me, and the sudden possibility of my travelling further away from her rather than towards. Sampson was now leading us back in the direction of the station as Miles Hopkins said: 'What makes you think it won't be ringed with bloody coppers?'

  'It's the last place they'll expect us,' said Sampson.

  I noticed that he kept his hand in the sack, where it rested (no doubt) upon the gun.

  All along Tadcaster Road, workpeople were now filing into town, through the rising mist and falling rain. We walked faster than them, weaving in and out of the column.

  We turned left into Railway Street, and there was a copper leaning against the inn that stood on the corner there. I turned my face towards him as we approached and, in my mind's eye, pictured my breakaway. I would cry out to him, 'These are the blokes you're after!' and he would take on Hopkins, while I…

  No, because sacking does nothing to check the travel of a bullet.

  I looked again at the copper. It was the well set-up copper from the Grapes; the one who'd been fixed, Mr Five Pounds. As he looked at Sampson there were about as many questions packed into his expression as I'd ever seen on one face, but nothing was said until, twenty yards further on, Sampson turned to Hopkins, remarking: 'That was money well spent.' We marched through the station portico, amid the confusion of cabs and horses, and then we were into the smoke- smelling, reluctant grey-blue light of Monday morning in the world of work. We were still walking fast, the crowded booking halls on either side. We were not going to buy tickets, at any rate.

  We walked through the ticket gate, and Sampson said to the fellow there, 'We're meeting someone in,' as if we looked like the sort of blokes who greeted people alighting from trains. We were on Platform Four now. I looked up at the footbridge, and saw the Lad, the telegraph messenger, but he was walking away to the 'down' side, thank Christ, because one cheery 'Good morning' from him could have caused more questions from the ever-watchful Hopkins than I could safely answer.

  We turned left, and pushed along to the south end of Platform Four, where about a score of people, widely spaced, stood waiting miserably for a train.

  At the very southern tip of the platform, where it sloped down on to the cinders, stood an abandoned baggage trolley. Hopkins climbed up on to it, and looked towards the southern sheds; two trains were rocking towards the station from that direction. It struck me for the first time that railwaymen were traitors in a way, for they took all the other workpeople to their factory and office prisons.

  Sampson sat on the baggage trolley, facing the tracks before him rather than south. The sack rested by his side as he lit a cigar, saying, 'How many bodies do you see, then, mate?'

  'None,' said Hopkins, who was still peering towards the engine shed, scene of our late adventure. He too now sat down on the cart.

  Had the little clerk and the Chief been carried away, or had they walked away? I was gazing in a northerly direction along the platform – towards the door of the Police Office, and there was no sign of life there at any rate. It was coming up to six o'clock, too early in the day for Shillito and the other sportsmen to be in there. I saw instead a porter making towards us. I'd seen him about in the station, and he'd seen me, possibly wearing, and possibly not wearing, the glasses I was now lumbered with… But he gave no sign of knowing me. He stood before the three of us, saying 'What are you blokes after?'

  We'd attracted his attention by sitting so far towards the end of Platform Four.

  'Waiting for a fucking train, what d'you think?' said Hopkins.

  'Any particular one?' asked the porter.

  'Anything London way,' said Sampson, looking up at him, the sack once more in his hands.

  The porter nodded, while I thought, I will not be carried away to London. I was no better than a leaf in the wind, blown in any direction.

  The porter said: 'Six-eleven, this platform.'

  He then turned and walked away, and Sampson said, 'I thought we might've had bother from him.'

  'You don't know he en't run off to fetch a copper,' said Hopkins, but even as he spoke the bell rang, and the London train came around the curve at the station north end, driving through the rain with unstoppable force. I could not help but notice that it was one of the Class J singles, with one mighty driving wheel in either side. I waited on tenterhooks, thinking that something surely must come along to prevent me climbing aboard.

  But nothing did.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  I boarded the train because of Sampson's gun. A second thought – a little more creditable – only came along later: that unless I stuck with this pair, they would very likely never be caught. A new sky was coming: dark blue and rain-lashed over the wire works at Doncaster, twenty miles south of York. It was a non-corridor train, so we were all together in a first-class compartment. There was no one else in it. Doncaster was a run-through, and as we rolled out of the station, Sampson was sitting by the window with his revolver, pointing it at people in the terraced streets. He caught my eye as I watched him, and he laughed, more embarrassed than ashamed, I reckoned. 'You could just go about on trains shooting people,' he said,'… if you were that way inclined.' 'Which you are,' said Hopkins, from his seat. I'd thought he was asleep up to that moment. Sampson winked at me. 'Don't mind him,' he said. 'He's better with a drink in.' As he returned the revolver to the sack, he was still eyeing me, so to distract him from any dangerous thoughts, I asked: 'What if a ticket inspector gets up?' 'Well, I've
at least two thousand pounds and a gun in this sack, little Allan, so one way or another we should be all right.'

  Hopkins gave a smile at that. He was a little more at ease now. As for me… I was half-dreaming of the great black cathedral at York, and the smallness of the carters and pedestrians who walked to and fro in its shadow. Many had gone before and many would come after. We were just the present-day lot. Anything we did or did not do… it came to naught.

  I looked at the money sack on Sampson's knee, and I thought of the London line. A ticket inspection could only happen at Peterborough, for I reckoned that would be our only other stop…

  At Peterborough the rain blew crazily around that city's own cathedral – which lay just beyond the station – as we all trooped over first to the gentlemen's and then to the bar on the platform. We drew a lot of glances as we stepped back up into our first-class compartment holding a bottle of beer apiece, and I had not the energy to look back at those who gawped. In addition to beer, Sampson carried a paper bag full of railway pies. He'd paid for this breakfast by pulling a tenner out of the sack, and I wondered about the denominations in there. There didn't seem to be a great bulk of money… but what engine man earned a tenner in a week? There would have to be a good many pound notes in the bundle. What was not in there was silver and copper, for the sack seemed easily carried and it did not jingle.

  We made a slippery start away from Peterborough, the rhythm of the engine all wrong, but we were soon making seventy, eighty miles an hour through the rain, and I pictured those mighty driving wheels up ahead, racing on to London in spite of the mixed feelings or feelings of dread that anyone aboard might entertain.

  We came into Platform One at King's Cross, and the moment we stepped down, Sampson put his arm about my shoulder. I wondered: is this a show of friendliness, or more of a manacle? We stepped out of the station, and the London day – crowds, rain, buildings three times the size of any in York – opened and closed quickly, for within a minute we were inside a hansom.

  'Charing Cross,' Sampson called to the driver, and I thought: What are we about? A tour of the mainline stations?

  This life was insane… but I had to know.

  'What's the programme, lads?' I asked after a couple of minutes.

  'We're off to Paris, little Allan,' said Sampson, and he leant forwards and grabbed my knee, adding: 'It's an elopement, mate!'

  I pictured the wife in her best white dress, fading into the distance and into the past, becoming no larger or more significant than a portrait of a lady that might be found inside a locket. Hopkins did not seem the least surprised at the news of our destination, and I doubted whether it was news to him. I imagined that the pair of them might run up to Paris pretty often. I recalled what the Police Gazette had said of the man who'd shot the two detectives: 'Will likely be found in hotels.'

  He'd shot two detectives in Victoria; would he add a third in Charing Cross to his collection? A new thought came, and not a happier one: wouldn't France be a better killing ground? As the cab rattled along, gaining speed along unknown streets, I hardly cared.Sampson reached into his sack again to pay the cab driver, and once again he kept me close as we walked into the station. We entered past a kind of little bank, and I turned to look again: 'Bureau de Change'. I wondered how you said those words. I thought of the bit of French I could fairly pronounce: 'Au revoir'. They said that every time they said goodbye, two words instead of one. Going round the bloody houses.

  There were two coppers in the station: they were standing in the middle of the lobby, and rain made them shine. But seconds after we'd walked in they walked out, and I thought what a dull article the average copper is.

  At the bookstall there were foreign newspapers, and I saw a small man in a cut of coat that was out of the common. A Frencher, I thought. The rain thundered down on the glass roof above, and half a dozen trains waited beyond the ticket gates, pressing in on the station, waiting to pluck us away. Like the rain on the roof, they seemed to be saying: why not leave this bloody country? Try your luck elsewhere, for God's sake.

  Sampson was holding my arm, moving towards the booking office.

  'Why must you be always mauling me,' I said. 'Do you think I'm going to do a shit?'

  He took his hand off my arm, looked at me: 'Don't lose your hair, boy,' he said, in a tone that stopped a little way short of menace. 'We'll be free and easy in Paris, but just till then…'

  Hopkins was walking behind, looking about: looking at pockets, perhaps. We were at the ticket window by now.

  'Three singles to Paris,' said Sampson.

  I did not hear the clerk's response, but Sampson said one further word: 'Deck.' He was an old hand at this boat train business.

  We then marched through the station crowd across to the Bureau de Change, where more money was picked from the bag and handed over: tenners again, but some pound notes too, and it looked as though the colours had run on the money that came back. The French currency was the French franc. You read of its doings in the paper – it was always in bother but the notes were pretty enough, I had to admit. I looked on the whole exchange like a holidaymaker in a dream.

  Our next call was at the newspaper stall, where Sampson bought a racing paper and Hopkins… some London paper. We then all walked to the centre of the concourse, and stood underneath the great clock. Sampson and Hopkins held a conference here, muttering low, so that all I could hear was Sampson saying: 'But the one after's the express', and Hopkins saying, 'You ought to send it by mail.'

  At the end, a decision was evidently reached, and Sampson put his arm around me in a more friendly way: 'You wait until we're over the water, little Allan: hot coffee, cognac, roast fowls… And pay day. You been to France?'

  I shook my head.

  'I have not,' I said.

  'Thinking about the girl you're leaving behind, are you, lad?'

  'Don't you need a paper with a royal stamp on it to quit the country?' I said.

  'Passport?' he said. 'Get away. What do you think you're in? A fucking prison?'

  I found a little comfort in the signs behind him for 'Telegrams' and 'Telephone' in the knowledge that those methods of communication would be open to me all the way, if I ever got the freedom to use them. Meanwhile, Miles Hopkins was strolling off somewhere.

  Sampson walked me over to Left Luggage, where we hung about until Hopkins joined us ten minutes later, carrying two small kitbags. Had he nicked the bloody things or bought 'em? These items you could easily come by in the shops around Charing Cross. Hopkins stood over Sampson as that gentry took bundles from the sack, and stuffed them into the first kitbag; what remained in the sack (a smaller amount) went into the second kitbag, and Sampson then pitched the sack away. The first kitbag was tightly fastened up, and presented to a Left Luggage clerk by Sampson, together with a handful of coins. The clerk gave change and ticket to Sampson while Hopkins looked on closely. We then all went into the gentleman's for a sluice down.

  Sampson had not wanted to travel with all the stolen money about him. But I wondered about the gun – where had it got to? Our next call was the station bar, which smelt of cigar smoke and rain-sodden overcoats. There were pictures around the walls of little boats braving high seas, while the blokes in the bar did nothing of the sort, but just supped ale steadily. The boats all looked the same but they were all different, and all belonged to the South Eastern and Chatham Railway. Just inside the door sat a bloke with a greasy brown bowler on his knee, and a suit out at the elbows. At his feet was a box marked 'Haut'. He had no doubt just returned from France. You could go there, and you could come back, and it wasn't so very great an undertaking. This thought, too, brought a small glimpse of hope. Sampson bought three pints and Hopkins, with a little of his former anxiety returning, asked him:

  'Reckon you did for those two blokes?'

  'Tell you what,' Sampson replied, 'you'd best hope they did take the bloody shots because we're buggered if not. See, mate, I only did what needed to be done. It wa
s the necessary.'

  Hopkins asked: 'Why was it necessary to do Roberts?'

  (Roberts, I realised, must be – or must have been – the clerk.)

  'Roberts?' said Sampson, in a thoughtful sort of way, just as though he'd almost forgotten the fellow already. 'Well now let's see… because he was a fucking pill? Look, mate, he would've ratted, wouldn't he? And might still if he's not done for. I mean to say, he's taken the tip, but it wouldn't quite cover…'

  'The knackering of his hands,' said Hopkins. 'He was all right until you pitched the burning metal at him.'

  Sampson said nothing to that, but saw off his pint, ordered the second round of drinks and lit a cigar.

  'Let's change the subject, mates,' he said… which he proceeded to do himself: 'Tim,' he said, blowing out smoke, 'now, he's all right. We'll have no trouble from that quarter, I can promise you. White as they come, that lad.' Sampson now turned to me: 'You n' all, mate. Some blokes… they'd take fright having seen what you've seen; have a brainstorm, crack wide open, do you take my meaning?'

  He handed me my fresh pint, saying:

  'Fact is we've taken the fucking kettle, boys. Not two but more like three grand. None of us will ever have to do a hand's turn again.'

  'Not that we ever did,' said Hopkins.

  I supped my pint, thinking: I could take my share of that, break free of the wife and the future child, and just give up on normal life as a bad job. I would simply continue to be Allan Appleby – make a real go of lounging about and spectacle-wearing. I looked at Sampson as he drank, and I had to admit that I admired the fellow after a fashion: I couldn't help feeling that he'd treated me better, all in all, than the brass of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway and Chief Inspector Weatherill both. I found myself pleased that he did not suspect me of being anything so low (and that was the very word that came to me) as a copper, but rather of being likely to go to the police and confess in hopes of avoiding a charge of accessory to murder.