The Last Train to Scarborough Read online

  The place was brand new but meant to look old; handsome enough, but more of a pub than a hotel . . . and where the wings of bees came in, I couldn't guess. Fastening up my Macintosh, I decided to take a turn down the road rather than going straight in. This was the edge of York, and my way led me first past a muddy building site. A sign read: 'Construction by Walden and Sons', and I wondered why anyone would want to lay claim to what presently looked like a battleground. Further, I came to a children's park. One loutish-looking kid went back and forth in the gloom on a brand-new swing that creaked even so. He had an unpleasant look of not being content with the swing but waiting for something else to happen. I walked on beyond the limit of the York lights, and walked past cows standing stock still in fields, as though for them too time had stopped.

  I turned and went back towards the hotel. The tram that had brought me up was rocking away into the distance, and another Number Nine was drawing up, about as thinly patronised as the previous one. I watched as one man climbed down: the Chief. I tipped my bowler at him (saluting had somehow long since gone by the board between the two of us), and he lifted his squash hat clean off his head, at which the wind made his few strands of orange hair rise up as well, in a kind of double salute.

  'Evening, sir,' I said.

  'Don't stand out here nattering, lad,' he said. 'The beer's gratis until nine o'clock.'

  As we entered the hotel by a side door, I unbuttoned my topcoat, and the Chief saw my smart rig-out. He looked taken aback for a second. He hadn't been in the police office himself that day - he was in it less and less often - but he knew I'd been away from it too, and he knew why. He didn't mention my interview with Parker, however. He'd never either encouraged me or discouraged me in the plan to turn solicitor. But I knew he didn't like it, and this because he couldn't stop it. The Chief liked to control people - he was like the wife in that way - and now he was losing control of me. The Chief said, 'I've a spot of business to mention to you, lad.'

  'I know,' I said.

  I followed him over to the bar, where, instead of talking to me, he fell in with Langbourne, the charge sergeant, so I was left dangling.

  We railway coppers had been kept apart from the Beeswing regulars (if such a class existed) by being put in what might have been the function room. It smelt of new wood varnish, and I half expected to see pots of the stuff lying around. There was a stage, and a new piano, but there would be no turns. There would just be free beer, followed by cut-price beer, and that would be quite sufficient. There were about a dozen from the police office, and a few station officials and hangers-on besides. The fellow at the bar gave me a glass of ale without needing to be asked, and old man Wright, the Chief Clerk, came up. He looked rather canned already.

  'You're off, then?' he said, wavering slightly.

  'Very likely,' I said, 'but not yet a while.'

  He took a belt on his drink, and cocked his eye at me.

  'When’ he enquired, quite sharply.

  Old Man Wright was inquisitive to a fault, which was indecent somehow in a man of his age.

  'It's not settled yet,' I said.

  'How's your missus?' he said.

  'All right,' I said. 'Yours?'

  Our wives both worked part-time for the Co-operative Women's Union, and were both strong in their feminism.

  'They're opening a new store, Acomb way,' he said.

  'I know,' I said.

  Silence for a space.

  'And that little lass of yours,' said Wright, 'what's she called again?'

  'She's called Sylvia,' I said, taking a belt on my beer and grinning at Wright. 'I don't suppose I need explain why.'

  Wright frowned down at his pint.

  'Why?' he said, looking up.

  'Sylvia Pankhurst, I said. 'It was the wife's doing. But it's a pretty name.'

  Another silence, in which I drained my glass. Wright drifted off, and I asked the barman the time of the last tram.

  'Ten thirty,' he said.

  'Because I don't want to be stranded here.'

  'You do not,' he said, 'take it from me.'

  'Are there any sandwiches laid on?' I asked him.

  'Laid on what?’ he said, and I knew he was not a York lad.

  I decided that I would be on that last tram, and that I might as well put away a fair few pints beforehand. I sank a couple more in the company of Shillito, the uniformed sergeant, and Fred Thomas, who was not a copper at all but the deputy night station manager. The talk wasn't up to much. Trams came periodically crashing up beyond the windows. They made more noise and vibration than was needful, and each time I thought some disaster was in the offing.

  The Chief was now talking to a fellow called Greenfield, who'd come up specially from the Newcastle railway police office. I watched the Chief's face as he spoke. It had been scorched by the sun in the Sudan, pounded by heavyweights in his army boxing days, and set about by whisky and baccy smugglers in the docks of Hull, where he'd had his start on the force. Consequently the Chief's face was irregular: no two photographs of it looked the same, and it would have been hard to draw.

  Presently, Wright came wobbling back over, and he was not only drinking but munching at something. I saw the carton in his hand: liver capsules.

  'You ought not to be drinking if you've liver trouble,' I said.

  No reply from Wright, who just eyed me for a while.

  'Here,' I said, 'any idea what the Chief's got in hand for me?'

  He looked sidelong, and I knew he knew; but to old man Wright, information was valuable, which is why he was forever asking questions and why he hardly ever answered them.

  'Why do you want to know?' he said presently. 'Do you have the wind up?'

  Behind him, the Chief was approaching with papers in his hand.

  Chapter Five

  The Chief handed me one of his small, bitter cigars, which meant 'down to business'. He never gave a cigar to any other man in the office. He lit his, and lit mine. As he did so, I eyed the documents he'd put on the bar top. The top-most ones were cuttings from newspapers.

  'Why are you mentioning this to me now, sir?' I said. 'Nothing else for it,' he said, and gave a quick grin - a very quick one. 'I want you on to it day after tomorrow.'

  That meant Sunday. The wife would just love that, what with all the work we had to do about the house. But this was the Chief all over. He liked to keep his men on their mettle. He had many times taken me for a drink-up in the middle of the working day, so I ought not to have been surprised that he should talk shop in the middle of a 'do'. But there was a look on his face I didn't much care for: a kind of excitement. How much beer was he shipping? He passed over the first cutting. It came from the 'Public Notices' page of a Leeds paper.

  MISSING, Mr Raymond Blackburn of Roundhay, Leeds. Aged 30, 5ft Win high, medium-large build, brown eyes, dark hair. Last seen at the Paradise Guest House, Scarborough, on 19 October last, and has not since been heard of. Any information to be addressed to the Inspector of Police, Roundhay, and the informant will be suitably rewarded.

  'Know the name?' said the Chief.

  'No. Why do you ask?'

  Old man Wright was lying down on the stage. It looked pretty final.

  'The same notice has been posted in the Police Gazette the last few months ... Have you not seen it?' The Chief was rocking a little back and forth, eyeing me quite nastily. 'Blackburn was a fireman,' he said.

  'On the North Eastern?' I asked, because other companies ran into Leeds besides ours.

  The Chief nodded.

  'On 19 October last year, he fired a passenger train into York from Leeds New Station. It was meant to be taken on to Scarborough by another crew, but the fireman booked to take over from Blackburn was off sick, so Blackburn stayed with the engine and took it all the way through with the second driver. It was a Sunday, and Blackburn's train was about the last one into Scarborough station. The engine was needed next day in York, so the driver ran it back that night with another York bloke who
was waiting in Scarborough after an earlier turn.'

  'Why didn't Blackburn go back with them?'

  'Because he knew he wouldn't get into York in time for the last Leeds connection.'

  'Well then ... he could overnight in York.'

  'But he chose to do it in Scarborough.'

  The Chief was eyeing me; I glanced down at the newspaper clipping.

  'Paradise,' I said at length. 'It's a good name for a rooming house.'

  'It might be,' said the Chief, blowing smoke and grinning at the same time, 'and it might not be. It just depends what it's like.'

  'And you want me to find out?'

  The Chief looked away, saw Wright on the stage, looked back.

  'Of course it's odds-on he made away with himself,' he said. 'All his belongings were left in his room except the suit he wore. He was a gloomy sort, by all accounts. He probably just went off in the night and jumped in the sea.'

  'But then the body would have been washed up?'

  'Not everything that falls in the sea off Scarborough is washed up,' said the Chief,'. . . thank Christ. Now our lot in Leeds have been looking into the matter with the Scarborough Constabulary.'

  'And what have they found out?'

  'Fuck all,' said the Chief, who then removed a bit of tobacco from his front teeth and said again, 'Now ...'

  But this was followed by silence, as the Chief again eyed old man Wright, who was sitting up on the stage now, looking somehow like a little boy. The Chief was looking daggers at Wright; he then fixed me with the same evil stare, as though Wright's behaviour was somehow my responsibility.

  'It struck the Leeds blokes', the Chief continued, 'that they ought to send a man to stay over at this house, and see how things stand, and to do it on Sunday so as to get the Sunday lot of guests.'

  'Why have they not done it then?'

  'Well, they've been a bit short-handed.'

  The Chief had softened his tone now. He was so variable in his speech that you did wonder whether fifty years of hard drinking and blows to the head might not be catching up with him.

  'I see,' I said. 'And that's why they've taken five months to get round to the idea?'

  'What brought it on was that the house has started advertising for railway men again.'

  'Where?'

  'In the engine shed at Scarborough. Other places beside.'

  'If they're posting adverts in the engine shed they must be on the List.'

  There was a list of private boarding houses close to stations that had been approved by the Company for taking in railway men on late turns. Sometimes the Company paid the boarding houses directly; sometimes the railway blokes paid out of their own pockets and claimed the money back later.

  'They were on it all right,' said the Chief, 'and they've never been taken off it.'

  'How many engine men had gone there before Blackburn?'

  'None. He was the first.'

  'So you might say that, so far, no railway man has gone to the Paradise guest house and survived to tell the tale?'

  'Well,' said the Chief as once again the smoke spilled from the sides of his grinning mouth, 'I'm hoping you'll be the first. You see, the Leeds blokes thought it'd be quite a clever stroke to send a copper who could make on he was a North Eastern fireman - just to see if there was anyone in the house who might have a grudge against the Company, or against railway blokes as a breed. Only they don't have any men who can fire an engine.'

  Silence between the Chief and me; he dropped his cigar and stood on it.

  'You're a passed fireman, aren't you?' he said at length. 'You fired engines until you ran that loco into the shed wall.'

  I was not having that.

  'It was my mate who ran it into the wall. He'd jiggered the brake. I just happened to be standing up there when the consequences of his error became manifest.'

  'I like your way of putting that,' said the Chief. 'You'll turn up at the house with just the right amount of coal dust and muck on you, just the right engine smell.'

  'It's customary for engine men to have a wash when they've finished a turn, sir.'

  'Yes, well don't be too thorough about it. I've a driver all fixed up for you,' said the Chief. 'He's just the man for the job.'

  'Why? Is he the man who drove the engine that Blackburn fired?'

  'No, that bloke's out of the picture - taken super-annuation, retired last month. I have in mind a bloke called Tommy Nugent.'

  But he would say no more about this Nugent apart from the fact that he knew him through the North Eastern Railway Rifleman's League, which the Chief practically ran. Blackburn had also been in the League, and both the Chief and Nugent, it seemed, had said the odd word to him at inter-regional shooting matches.

  'Will Nugent be staying at the house too?'

  'Could do,' said the Chief. 'You might be glad of a mate ... Some pretty queer types in this house, apparently.'

  'They've all been questioned, I assume. Statements have been taken.'

  'They have, lad.'

  'Answers not satisfactory?'

  'They en't,' said the Chief.

  The Chief was grinning at me. I was growing anxious, and he liked that.

  'Do you have the case papers to hand, sir?'

  But I somehow knew he wouldn't have. Clerking was no part of real police work, at least not to the Chief's mind.

  'Well now, there's been a mix-up over that,' he said. 'They were meant to've been sent but they've not come. The earliest I can get them now is Monday morning, but it'll do you good to go in there blind. You'll bring a fresh pair of eyes to it all.'

  'I think that's what's called a mixed metaphor,' I said, and I left off the 'sir', which I would generally add, as an insurance policy, when talking to the Chief.'... Or maybe not,' I said, seeing the way he was eyeing me.

  'When do you start in that fucking solicitor's office?' he said.

  'It's not decided yet, if you recall... sir.'

  'It's already rubbing off on you.'

  The Chief took a pull on his beer. More was coming, I knew.

  'Bloody infected, you are.'

  Was this Scarborough job his way of penalising me for leaving the force? Of course it was. The Chief was down on all lawyers. In court, they had a habit of asking him, 'And what accounts for the injuries sustained by the accused in your custody, Chief Inspector Weatherill?'

  I asked, 'Was Blackburn married?'

  'He was not,' said the Chief, 'but he was engaged - had been for ages.'

  'Might be an idea to talk to her.'

  'I think the Leeds blokes have had a word. She's a bit flighty, moved about a lot, very different from Blackburn.'

  'What was he like?'

  'Grave bloke,' said the Chief. 'Quiet. Bit of a lone wolf. . .

  Big Catholic, as a matter of fact.'

  I tried to figure him in my mind: a big, quiet, dark bloke. But the picture that came was of a big, quiet, dark Catholic church I'd seen hard by a railway line in Leeds. St Anne's, I believed it was called.

  'Tell you something else about him,' said the Chief. 'He was a bloody good shot.'

  I bought another pint, and the Chief climbed onto the stage and made a speech. Well, it was more a reading of notices. The office was doing creditably well. More crimes solved than last year. A collection would shortly be taken for the North Eastern Railway super-annuation fund. The Riflemen's League was always looking out for new members, ditto the York Territorials. A fellow ought to be able to fire a rifle - he never knew when it might not come in. Vote of thanks to the landlord of the Beeswing, and that was that. The drinking was carried on for another hour, and then we all piled on the last tram back to York.

  I sat next to Shillito, the other sergeant, and behind Flower and Whittaker.

  'My cousin's six foot seven,' Whittaker was saying.

  'You en't half a spinner,' said Flower.

  'You reckon7.'

  'Don't ask rhetorical questions.'

  'Are you bloody well accusing m
e of asking rhetorical questions?' Whittaker asked Flower.

  'There, you've just asked another,' said Flower. 'You don't even know what one bloody is.'

  Wright was kipping on the front seat.

  'Is Wrighty okay?' I asked Shillito.

  'He has his troubles just now,' he said, which was a very

  Wright-like reply.

  My head reeled a little, and I felt it best to avoid looking through the windows, for the street lamps would rush up rather fast. As the tram jolted and jerked its way, I felt the motion to be unnatural. It was a heartless machine - no fire burning in its innards. I closed my eyes, and then we were at the railway station and piling off. The Chief was first down, and straight into the cab shelter. I watched him amid all the rattling of horses' hooves and cab wheels, and the loud, echoing goodbyes of all the blokes. The Chief was walking fast towards a bloke coming out of the station. He looked behind and saw me as he advanced on this bloke. The Chief collared him by calling out, A word...!' and then a name I didn't catch. The two closed, and began talking, the Chief twice more looking around in my direction, which was not characteristic of him, since he didn't usually bother about other people. Was the Chief going down the hill? He was too often juiced; too often out of the office; too careless of his paperwork; too old. I eyed the bloke the Chief was talking to. The bloke glanced my way once, and then looked down, rather shamefully I thought, as though I was the subject under discussion. Who was he? I knew him from somewhere.

  I walked away towards the bike rack, which was under the cab shelter. I was taking the front lamp from the saddle bag, prior to fixing it on, when old man Wright walked up.