Strike a Match (Book 1): Serious Crimes (4 page)

“They taught you that, did they?” Mitchell asked. Again, Ruth felt she’d failed another unknown test.

She grabbed ten paper evidence bags from the box, stuck them in the crime-kit, balanced the sign on top, and hauled the trolley to the door. It clattered into a desk and then the wall as she hurried outside. Mitchell and Riley were waiting patiently at the foot of the cabin’s ramp. The sergeant gave her a long, thoughtful stare.

“Let’s go,” he said, setting a brisk pace as they left Police House and headed towards the train station. “Riley, what do we know?”

“The note informs us that a body’s been found two miles north of Ringwood Junction,” Riley said. “It was spotted just after dawn by a guard on a goods train heading north. Word was telegraphed back when the train reached its next stop, and then passed along, up, and around, until it reached us.”

Riley finished at about the same time as one of the trolley’s small wheels got caught in an old steel grating. Ruth heaved it back onto the road and then had to run a few paces to catch up.

“Any thoughts, cadet?” Mitchell asked.

“I suppose the obvious one is why are we involved. Is this something Serious Crimes is meant to handle?”

“I told you before, Serious Crimes isn’t meant to handle anything,” Mitchell said. “We’re to sit in our cabin, file paperwork, and neither be seen nor heard.”

“Then why are we going?” she asked.

“Good question. Who signed the note, Riley?”

“R.C.,” Riley said.

“You know who that is?” Mitchell asked.

“No, sir,” Ruth said.

“That’s Rebecca Cavendish. Or
the
Railway Company as she likes to think of herself. She’s one of the original drivers who brought the engines down from the museums during the first few weeks after The Blackout. You know that story?”

Ruth shook her head.

“What did they teach you?” Mitchell muttered. “The old power stations were destroyed during The Blackout. What little oil there is in Britain was too deep for us to drill. The few solar panels and wind turbines that still worked were too large to be moved. But there’s coal. Rebecca, and people like her, kept old steam engines running for fun. If you can maintain a century-old locomotive, you can build a new one. They became the blueprints for our new engines, and for the coal-fired power stations. But the coal is in the north, in Wales, Scotland, and Northern England, and the food was here in the south. The roads were made impassable by millions of stalled cars, so the railways became our lifeline. We’d all be dead if it wasn’t for her, and some of us honour our debts. When she asks, we do, because there’s probably a reason why she sent for us.”

“Oh.” Ruth tried to think of a polite way to frame her next question, but there really wasn’t one. “What I meant,” she said, “was why aren’t the railway police dealing with the crime.”

“Probably because Rebecca thought Mister Mitchell could do with some fresh air,” Riley said.

Mitchell gave a grunt halfway between agreement and annoyance as he nimbly sidestepped a delivery cart. Ruth managed to haul the trolley out of the way just before the horse lashed out with an angry hoof. The working day had long since begun, but the roads were far from empty. There were carts delivering to the market, messengers taking mail and telegrams to the homes and businesses in the centre of town, and labourers hurrying to construction sites.

A woman wrestled a squeaking old-world pushchair out of the door of a greengrocer’s and threw the police officers a glare when they didn’t stop to help. Next to it was a bookstore with a sign out front reading ‘New stock from Hay now in.’ Beyond that was a clockmaker, the window full of mostly new timepieces, all of which told her that…

“Sir, it’s been nine minutes. Shouldn’t we run?” Ruth asked.

“They’ll hold the train,” Mitchell said.

“They will?” Ruth was genuinely surprised. The railway timetable was considered as reliable as the winter sugar ration was scarce.

“Rebecca wouldn’t have sent us the note if she wasn’t prepared to keep the train waiting for us,” Mitchell said.

Ruth doubted anyone was that powerful but, when they arrived at the station seven minutes after it should have left, the train was still waiting for them. The driver saw them, raised a hand, and stepped into the cab of a highly polished engine. There was a whistle, a burst of steam, and the sixteen old-world carriages started to move.

“Passenger cabin’s the third car from the end,” Mitchell said, and he finally broke into a run. Riley bounded after him, easily keeping pace. Ruth gripped the handle of the trolley and hauled it along in their wake. She kept her eyes fixed on the guard standing in the open doorway. Mitchell stepped on board. Riley jumped in after him. The train began to accelerate.

“Hurry!” the guard yelled.

Ruth put on a burst of speed, heaving the trolley in front of her, and holding it out towards Riley. The constable leaned out further, grabbed Ruth’s collar and bodily hauled her, trolley, and crime-kit, onto the train.

“Thank you,” Ruth hissed, as the guard slid the door closed.

It was a refurbished old-world carriage with scratched windows that hadn’t been designed to open. There were seats at the rear and front, but they’d been removed in the middle section and replaced with a set of narrow cages either side of an equally narrow walkway.

“Is that the mail?” she asked the guard.

“It is,” he said. “The telegraph’s good for letting the mine know the train’s on its way, but it can’t send a pair of socks to someone working an open seam. Vital work, the railways, it’s what’s kept our country going.” He turned to Mitchell. “We’ll get to Ringwood Junction in about half an hour. We’ll slow there, but we won’t stop. You’ll have to jump.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Mitchell said.

The guard walked down the swaying carriage, past the cages and the handful of other passengers, and disappeared through the door at the end.

Mitchell and Riley had taken up station at the pair of window seats nearest the door. She had her book out, he had his eyes closed. Ruth stayed standing for a moment taking in the passengers at the far end. She wondered who they were, and how far they were going. If she hadn’t been assigned to Serious Crimes, she could have been sitting there with them, on her way to somewhere exotic. Or just to somewhere far, far away from Twynham. She sighed and sat down.

“Describe them,” Mitchell said, without opening his eyes.

“Who?” Ruth asked.

“The other passengers,” he said.

She glanced along the aisle. Now seated, she could only see the back of one head and the front of a different knee. “There are seven people,” she said. “Two men with a boy and a girl. I would say they were both around fifteen years old. From the luggage nearby they’re relocating to the north.”

“And?”

“And a man in a dog collar sitting opposite, with two women in the chairs behind.”

“And?” Mitchell prompted again.

Ruth thought. “The two women are of a similar height, hair colour, and have similar features. I’d say they were sisters, perhaps cousins, but they are related. About twenty-five to thirty years old, maybe a little older. The man, woman, and two children don’t look like a family.”

“They don’t?” Mitchell asked.

“Well, they don’t look alike, not that that means much, but the children aren’t sitting close. They’re more… sort of upright. Like they’re sitting at attention. I think the man and woman are two masters, the children are their apprentices.”

“Which would make them how old?” Mitchell asked.

“Right, of course, so they’re at least seventeen. Probably tailors, going by the clothing.”

“Probably. Anything else?”

“Um…” she hesitated and did it too long.

“The priest is wearing a crucifix around his neck, not a cross,” Mitchell said, opening his eyes and fixing them on hers. “But he
is
wearing it around his neck. The green book on the seat next to him is a Latin primer. Taken with the fact there was a conference at the New Priory last weekend, I’d say he’s a Catholic. The two women are miners. You can tell that from the coal dust that’s embedded under the skin. It makes them appear older than they are. I’d say they were in their early twenties. From their clothing you can tell they’re returning to work after a short stay in Twynham. It’s comfortable clothing, not showy. If they were in mourning they’d be wearing black. Since they’re not, they didn’t come here for a funeral. However, travel is expensive unless you get a warrant. Miners get those for births, deaths, and marriages of immediate family. It’s unlikely to be a wedding, as who has enough free time to get married in the middle of September? Therefore it’s a birth. Probably of a niece or nephew. Taking in their age, and that they’ve chosen to work in the mines, that tells us that the family was recently in need of money. The mines are dangerous, but they pay well. I would say that they chose to change careers due to the imminent arrival of the child.”

“How do you know they changed careers?” Ruth asked.

“Riley?” the sergeant prompted.

“It’s the clothes,” Riley said, lowering her novel. “They’re very good quality and handmade. It suggests they were tailors, or training for it.”

“They could have bought the clothes,” Ruth suggested.

“Not when you consider the looks they were giving the two master tailors and their apprentices,” Riley said. “They’re not looking at the people, but what they represent. It’s wistful regret at the life that they could have had. But it’s not resentful, and that suggests that out of whatever tragedy has forced their change of career, something good has come out of it. A child.”

“That’s impressive,” Ruth said.

“It’s a theory based on observation,” Mitchell said. “Didn’t they teach you that in the academy? They should also have taught you that I could be completely wrong. Perhaps they’re a couple sent to the mines as part of a prison sentence who came to Twynham on a compassionate furlough. The priest might be a vicar, and the crucifix an heirloom. We look at people, and weave a story around that which we can see, but you must remember that it remains a story until facts confirm it as truth.” He closed his eyes. “Or not.”

Ruth had heard something similar from one of her instructors at the academy. At the time she’d filed it away as interesting but not important. Mathematics, geography, history, English, and everything else had to be learned by rote and was tested on a weekly basis. Failure in those tests led to expulsion. By contrast, the lectures on policing were seen as an opportunity to doze as much by their instructors as they were by the students.

She fixed her gaze on the landscape beyond the scratched windows. They’d long since passed the sheds and loading yards around Twynham. The view now was of fields filled with cows, interspersed with occasional abandoned houses. But they sped by too quickly for her to tell if the roofs had been broken by missiles during The Blackout, or by weather and time in the years since.

“It’s so fast,” she murmured.

“You think this is fast, you should have tried flying,” Mitchell said. “Have you never been on a train before?”

“Once,” Ruth said, her eyes glued on the trees rushing by. “In the academy.”

It had been during their survival training, and that journey had been made at night. The recruits had been dropped in the middle of nowhere and told to find their way back before breakfast. Ruth had, but five of the other recruits were still missing by lunchtime. When they were found, they were dismissed. That was her lasting memory of the academy, of one person being expelled after another.

The fields gave way to a hamlet where smoke belched from chimneys tacked onto houses built in the age of central heating, and then to woodland. They passed a horse and cart on the wide road that had been dug along the railway line. Then a trio of bicycles, laden with… but they went by too fast for her to tell.

“It’s about another mile,” the train’s guard said, interrupting her reverie ten minutes later. “We’ll slow the train, but we won’t stop.”

“Yes, you said.” Mitchell stood. “And coming back?”

“When we stop to take on water and Marines for the journey north, we’ll have word passed along the line. Just signal a train and get ready to jump on.”

A few minutes later, the train gave a sudden violent jolt. The whistle blew, the train slowed, and Mitchell opened the door.

“Keep your knees bent,” he said as he jumped out.

“Don’t forget the trolley,” Riley said as she followed him.

The trolley clutched awkwardly in one arm, Ruth jumped from the train. She remembered to keep her knees bent, but staggered as she landed. Riley caught her collar, pulling her away from the accelerating train.

“Thank you,” Ruth coughed through a mouth full of smoke.

There was a woman standing by the side of the tracks, wearing the green livery of the Railway Company.

“The driver of the 06:34 spotted the body,” she said, speaking quickly, and backing away from the three police officers. “I was on the 07:10. I’ve been with the body ever since. That path through the grass to the south is the one I used to check he was dead.” And with that, she turned, grabbed the handrail of the rearmost car, and pulled herself onto the departing train.