Murder At Deviation Junction (29 page)

    My
mind raced on in the darkness, and I fell to thinking that it was highly
convenient they should have had a spare bed for me, and I wondered whether it
was meant for Moody, the chimney sweep made good, who had perhaps survived for
a while after the first killings, but had then threatened to speak out. Perhaps
his son in Pickering knew all.

    But
many mysteries remained. How had Bowman fallen into the clutches of the band?
He was kept there, I knew, by fear of Small David, but how had the thing begun?
The connection was Peters, obviously, but exactly how? And where had Marriott
dug Small David up from? My guess was that he was somebody he'd defended in a
court of law.

    Small
David had done a good job with the stove, and it came to me presently that J
was properly warm for the first time in days. I thought of little Harry, and I
hoped that he was warm. I thought of how he would stand in the road at
Thorpe-on-Ouse for minutes on end, and then suddenly go skipping off, as if
he'd at last got hold of the answer to some very troublesome question. He was
eccentric, like his mother.

    Well,
they would go on in their own way. It was better that I should die in the
course of an important investigation than lose my job through my own
foolishness and leave them with a loafer at the head of the family. I turned
over on the narrow bed many times, back and forth until finally I knew that
sleep would come. I was certain on that point, and I believe I spoke out loud
the words, 'I have lost all my doubts', but there must have been the
complication of a dream somewhere, for I now heard those words repeated
directly into my ear by another.

    'I
have lost all my doubts.'

    I
felt the firm press of a hand on my shoulder and opened my eyes to see Bowman
leaning over me.

    He
was changed.

    'We're
going to make off,' he whispered; and for the first time since I'd known him,
he smiled. If he'd had any hair to speak of, it would have been tousled; his
glasses were askew on his nose, but I could see by the one remaining lamp that
there was more purpose about him than ever there had been before. He wore his
topcoat; he held his sporting cap tightly bundled in his hand.

    'Collect
up your boots,' he whispered as I rolled upright. 'I know where Small David
stows the key.'

    The
other men were still rolling and groaning in the darkness, like a restless sea.
I picked up my boots, and followed Bowman into the scullery, where the air was
just as cold as if we'd been outside. As I stepped into my boots, I could just
make out that Bowman was kneeling at the grate. He came up with the key in his
hand.

    'Still
warm,' he whispered. 'He keeps it in the ash pan.'

    He
walked over towards the heavy front door, and there came a great cymbal crash
as he did so. All the breath stopped on my lips, as I looked towards the other
door, the one leading into the sitting room, which we had left ajar behind us.
It did not move.

    'Kicked
the damned ash pan,' said Bowman, who now placed the key in the front door.

    He
was straining at it.

    'Won't
turn,' he said, a little too loudly.

    I
looked again towards the living-room door.

    'Can't
get the trick of it,' he was saying.

    I
went towards him, stepping carefully, for I didn't know where the ash pan had
been kicked
to.
I motioned him aside, leant hard on the door and turned
the key.

    Nothing
doing.

    I
pulled it towards me by the handle - again nothing.

    'Take
the key out and try again,' said Bowman.

    I did
so, and the key went in further this time - it had not been properly lodged by Bowman.
But as I turned the key, the wrong door was moving. With every degree of twist
that I gave it, the
sit- ting-room
door was moving inwards. The key gave
a click as I continued to look over my shoulder, at the door behind. A figure
stood there: Richie, the son. A blanket was around him like a cape, and he
might have been sleepwalking, or he might have been thinking hard. Above the
blanket, his face shone white in a new light. The key had done its work as I
looked at him. Before me, the door was open, and the Highlands seemed to rise
like a drop scene at the theatre: the valley falling away before me; white
clouds moving across the tops in succession, like a train, and all lit by a
magical grey light. The snow had stopped, for all its work was now done.

    We
were through the door, and crashing through the drenching, snowy heather in an
instant. I looked back at the house. Richie Marriott had not emerged from it,
and nor had anybody else.

    We
moved with long, comical strides, stepping out, and then down and nearly
over-toppling at every stride. We could not afford to take the track by which
we'd come up in the cart - that was too slow and twisty. 'Had to get out, and
had to take you along,' Bowman was panting behind me. 'I couldn't dodge it,
having brought you up here.'

    He'd
shown himself a man at last, and it gave him new life.

    I
looked back at the house - still no sign of life.

    'I'm
obliged to you,' I said.

    We
crashed on, but the ground did not play fair. The snow and heather sometimes
hid black, brackeny water; we might at any moment be stepping on to heather
that hid a twenty-foot rocky gulf, and there were many streams running down
towards the one that had made the valley. Over the next five minutes of
headlong descent Bowman fell over twice behind me. After the second fall, he
said, 'Glasses gone.'

    I
turned around, and saw that his small eyes seemed to have sunk further into his
head, as if in retreat from the job of looking out at the world unaided.

    I
felt around in the heather near his feet.

    'Give
it up,' he said.

    'Try
to step in my tracks,' I said, and we carried on.

    'How's
your boots?' I asked after a while.

    'Pretty
well sodden,' he said, and it struck me that he had said it happily.

    'Good
old moon,' he said, after a couple more falls.

    'The
boy saw us,' I said.

    'He
might not let on,' Bowman panted out behind me.

    'He's
great pals with Small David, though,' I said.

    'Small
David's taken a fancy to him,' said Bowman. 'I don't know how far it works the
other way. The boy's the one I feel sorry for in all this - apart from myself,
of course,' he added, laughing.

    'What
does he work as?'

    'Solicitor
- only been at it a couple of years.'

    'Up
in Middlesbrough?'

    'That's
it.'

    'I
think I have the matter straight now,' I said, as we battered on through the
drenching heather. 'The rudiments of it, anyway.'

    'Well,
Marriott's given you most of the tale. He has some kink in the brain that makes
him always talk of it.'

    But
it seemed to me that Bowman's own kink was straightened out.

    He
was fairly skipping down the hill, in between falls. And he was not juiced,
either.

    'Marriott
crowned Falconer,' said Bowman. 'And of course the whole Club knew it directly.
It happened in the saloon, and half of them saw it. The body was put off the
train at a spot near Marske, which is a little way north of Saltburn - it was
just pitched into the snow at trackside, but they were lucky over the weather
because the stuff was coming down fast, and Falconer would have been covered
over in minutes. It bought them time,' Bowman continued, righting himself after
another tumble. 'Well, you can imagine the discussion that went on in that
carriage as it neared Middlesbrough - the
heat
of it. I think it would
have been like a courtroom on wheels, with Marriott making out that it had been
an accident, that he didn't deserve to swing for it or do thirty years, or
whatever the turn-up might be if the police were called in . ..'

    Something
was moving along the hillside towards us; like a great brown cloud, only it
came with a fast and dangerous rustling noise. It stopped twenty feet off, and
the picture composed.

    'Deer,'
I said.

    We both
stopped and watched the herd for a second. Their eyes shone like new shilling
pieces.

    'Rum,'
I said. 'They're looking at us as if there's something
wrong
with us.'

    'That's
because we're not firing on them,' said Bowman.

    We
crashed on.

    'Richie
stood by his father,' Bowman was saying. 'It was his notion of honour, and
would be a lot of other people's too. Moody -'

    'The
old chimney sweep.'

    'He
was just scared. Scared and greedy - rather like me, in fact, but we'll come to
that presently. Marriott struck a deal with him immediately. Moody would keep
silence in return for gold.'

    'But
they did for him too - pushed him under a train.'

    'I'm
not sure about that,' said Bowman, stopping briefly on the hillside. 'I believe
the whole business affected the old boy very badly . .. He might've jumped, you
know.'

    He
stopped on the hill behind me, getting his breath. The heather was up to his
waist; the cottage, our late prison, out of sight behind him.

    'I
thought I heard something,' he said.

    There
was a hidden roaring, as though of something under the ground.

    'We're
near the river,' I said, and we carried on.

    'George
Lee was different,' Bowman said, as we moved off again,' . . . would not be bought.
At the same time, he couldn't quite bring himself to go to the coppers. There
were days of . . . negotiations, I suppose you'd say, during which the Club
carried on. They carried on using the saloon for a good week after the murder
of Falconer; I believe. But I think that Lee eventually got wind of what had
happened to Peters, and that decided him to go to the police. He made the
mistake of
stating
his intention, though.'

    'But before
Lee could split,' I put in, 'Marriott sent Small David after him.'

    'Small
David and the horse,' said Bowman, 'Gilbert Sanderson's horse. The plan was
Small David's, I believe. Marriott resisted it at first, but Small David worked
his will. You know, I sometimes wonder whether he went to the lengths of
removing his yellow socks, the better to impersonate Sanderson. That would have
been a big sacrifice for him, I think. After it was done ... well, the club was
finished, of course. Moody gave out that he was simply retiring from his
business. Marriott wrote to the railway to explain that as a result of an
extraordinary series of misfortunes, the special carriage would no longer be
required.'

    'Where
did Marriott find Small David?'

    'It
seems that Small David has a brother,' said Bowman, still stumbling along in my
wake. 'You might want a go at hazarding his profession -'

    'Villain,'
I said.

    'Lately
released from gaol. He killed four men in a street fight in Newcastle and
Marriott got him off the capital charge - sentence of ten years' hard instead
of the drop. He argued that it was an accident - the same accident four times
over. Didn't know his own strength, you know the line of contention ...'

    'Small
David was paying Marriott a debt of honour then?'

    'It
would be nearer the mark, Jim,' Bowman gasped out, 'to say that Small David
immediately started robbing Marriott blind. He has nearly all his money now,
and the less money Marriott has, the less power he commands in the whole set-up
- I miss my specs,' he ran on breathlessly. 'It's not so much being able to see
that I miss as taking them off to rub on my sleeve.'

    He
was alongside me now and he was all in: sodden, and quite
white
in the
face, for once.

    'It's
interesting about Small David's brother,' he panted. 'He lives in
Middlesbrough, or somewhere that way. Small David sees him pretty regularly but
he'll never speak of him - not that he speaks of anything very much, of course.
The brother's a maniac from what I can gather. You might say that of Small
David too, but he's quite careful. You can see that in the yellow socks.'