The Lost Luggage Porter (12 page)

'Any idea who it might turn out to be, sir?'

'Have
I
any idea?' he said, quite amazed to be asked.
'Me?'

He fished a stack of newspapers out of his desk.

'A few of the local lot have picked out Shillito,' he said, pitching across to me a heap of newspapers tied up in brown paper. They were all
Police Gazettes.
'Commit the faces to memory, and you might find you recognise one tonight. Chuck 'em away when you've done. We have more than enough copies of each edition. Remember,' he added, walk­ing towards the door, 'keep your mouth shut as far as possi­ble and your eyes and your ears open.'

I could have done with some advice of a more specific nature.

'If my lot do nothing more than make a plan this evening, then that's conspiracy, isn't it?'

'It is,' he said, nodding, 'and it will be open to us to indict them for that.'

'And will we?'

'Reckon we'll get 'em for the
act,
eh?' he said. 'That gener­ally goes better in court.'

It was the answer I deserved. I had been trying to bring the matter to an early end, and had been doing so out of funk, but the chief didn't seem to have noticed. He didn't seem to have noticed
anything,
really. Only now he was giving me a good, hard look up and down. 'It really is a shocking suit,' he said, from by the door.

I put the glass-less spectacles on.

'And they set it off to a tee,' he added. 'They make you look like a fellow whose woodcut was circulated to us just before Christmas: Herman van . . . summat or other. He'd come over by steamer from Rotterdam.'

'Oh yes, sir?' I said.

'Fellow was a sodomite,' said the Chief, scratching his wisps of hair. 'Still is probably, because we never caught him
...
I'd bring you into the hotel for bacon and eggs, lad, only it wouldn't do for us to be seen in company.'

'Not to worry sir,' I said, 'there's plenty of dining rooms along the river'll see me right.'

He was about to make his breakaway, so I said:

'I wanted to ask you about the Camerons, sir - the pair that were done in by the goods yard.'

He looked at me without any trace of expression.

'That's Tower Street,' he said at length.

'Do you
want
it to be Tower Street, sir?'

He looked at me steadily for a while, and for a moment I thought his temper would give way. But he just gave a sigh, walked around to the mantelpiece and lit a cigar. Leaning on

the mantelshelf he began smoking, still looking at me direct­ly and saying: 'Do you realise how much work we have on here?'

'No,' I said.

'Make believe for a minute that our job is just the policing of this railway station. Now, there are fourteen platforms and it is the biggest railway station in the country. It is also the busiest. Besides the engines of the North Eastern, it receives those of six other companies, and if our duties as an office were just confined to crimes committed within the sta­tion we would be over our ears in work ...'

Ash was falling from the cigar on to the Chief's open coat, on to the suit beneath. He paid it no mind. The suit wasn't up to much, but he wore gentleman's boots. He turned at the mantelpiece - a giant of a man really, and case hardened.

'...
The next thing to imagine,' the Chief continued, 'is that we are responsible solely for the railway matters carried on within York as a city. York is the administrative centre of the Company, it's also the geographical centre; the Company is the biggest employer of its men by far, and the city has its racecourse, its market, and is a holiday ground in its own right. Shall I name you one thing in York that's not to do with the railways?'

'Go on then,' I said.

'Go on then?'
he said. '"Go on then,
sir",
you mean.'

'Go on then, sir.'

'Well I can't,' he said quietly, 'which just proves my point.'

'What about York Minster, sir?' I said, but he ignored me, saying: 'York alone would stretch us to the very limit and beyond, but it's not just the station, and it's not just York. You see, lad, in theory we cover about a third of the Company territory but in practice, should any affair begin on our part or finish up in it, then that's very likely to be ours as well.

The fact is, we look to the whole of the North Eastern railway for our work, and this is the biggest railway in the country in geographical extent and it's the biggest carrier of goods and people ...'

He pitched his cigar into the cold grate, and began moving his arms.

'...
Berwick to the north, Hull to the fucking east, Carlisle to the west, Sheffield to the south. Five thousand route miles of track, seventeen docks; sixty-eight million passengers car­ried in the last year alone ...'

'There's one more thing I think we should be looking into,' I said.

'Oh, for crying out loud,' said the Chief.

'Richard Mariner. He was night porter at the Station Hotel here, and he committed suicide.'

'How do you know about that?' he said sharply.

'It was on the front page of the
Yorkshire Evening Press,
sir. He was a railway employee - so was one of the Cameron brothers and I'm wondering whether what happened to them was to do with the matter that I'm investigating.'

'But we don't
know
what you're investigating,' said the Chief. 'That's why you're bloody investigating it.'

'The Camerons were shot near the goods
yard ...'

'Outside it,' he said, 'and don't you forget.'

'Two bits of business in the file that you gave me were car­ried on in the goods yard. Richard Mariner worked at the hotel, where another of the jobs was done.'

The Chief said nothing.

'Can I go to the hotel, and ask questions about Mariner?'

'I'll do it,' he said, very quickly and surprisingly as he adjusted his coat. He was striding towards the outer door of the Police Office now. 'Come on,' he said, 'time you were out of here - bring those papers.'

On Platform Four, I was saying good morning to the Chief under the finger-pointing sign reading To the Hotel' as a short train pulled away alongside us. There was a shout, and a bloke came running from the ticket gate, hailing the train. Somebody in a carriage opened a door for the bloke, and the bloke was up on the footboard and in.

The Chief turned to me:

'Offence, is that,' he said sharply.

'I know, sir,' I said. 'It contravenes a railway by-law but I can't quite remember the number.'

'By-law ten, section (a),' said the Chief.

Well, he knew
that,
and he'd come up with the goods yard pass as requested. Maybe he wasn't completely barmy, after all, I thought as I walked off with the
Police Gazettes
wrapped in brown paper under my arm.

It turned out the sunniest day for weeks.

To my right, as I made my way from the station into the city centre, battalions of clerks flowed into the new North Eastern Company head office, the company badges glinting gold on its balconies. It was said the North Eastern was six months in arrears with its accounts, which no doubt explained the great rush. I walked across Lendal Bridge, freezing cold in my bad suit in the golden light. Nobody stopped for this moment of sun. On the south side of the river, Rowntree's factory was making its cocoa smell, which somehow made you want to pay a call of nature. The river barges fitted underneath the bridge but the smoke they put out didn't, and clouds came up from either side as two farm­ers' carts rolled over the top. These were followed by a hearse, and I watched the horse - a fast trotter - bringing its glass box with a coffin inside, the sight a warning to all.

Scurrying down the stone steps on the south side, I thought of the dead Camerons, and how they'd had all the energy needed to commit a felony just days before. I took a little turn through the Museum Gardens, past the peacocks, the ladies in white with baby carriages. I bought a sausage in bread and a billy full of coffee from the barrow parked near the Abbey ruin and sat down at a bench with the bundle of
Police Gazettes
given me by the Chief.

There were half a dozen of them. I turned the pages secret­ively, for they gave my profession away. Mostly, they were just lists of people wanted or missing. Usually there were photographs or woodcuts, and remarks as to appearance: 'scar at eyebrow', 'scar at bridge of nose', 'fourth left finger crooked'. And the tattoos of course: crossed hands, ship, flower. Certain of the portraits had been ringed in pencil as Weatherill had said, the local lot: a man wanted in Malton for stealing from his lodgings; a man wanted in York for stealing gold rings, pendants and medals from a jeweller's. He looked a respectable sort. It was stated that he had a Union Jack tattooed on his chest, and I wondered whether that was meant to go in his favour or against.

I read on at the bench for a while, then, after returning my billy to the barrow, pitched five of the six
Police Gazettes
into a dustbin outside the Yorkshire Museum. The sixth - which I hadn't got round to -1 put in my inside coat pocket, holding it in reserve for later in the day. A vicar watched me at the dustbin, and I tipped my cap at him. I then walked out through the back gates of the Gardens into Marygate, where I entered St Olave's church for a bit of a kip on the back pew.

I was woken by the tower bell ringing eleven, and went out again into the bustling streets, trying to walk off cramp and dampness, and thinking of Allan Appleby, my other self, lying in his dark lodge over at Holgate, listening to the crash­ing of the trains over the great tangle of Holgate Junction. He might be getting up about now, thinking about taking a drink, putting on his glasses ... I lifted those very same from my pocket, settling them on my nose in Duncombe Street, opposite the West Door of the Minster, spying, as I did so, a prime candidate for the
Police Gazette,
although not in the 'Wanted' columns, but the 'Missing': it was Edwin Lund, sit­ting on the steps of the war memorial on the patch of green

that faced the Minster. I removed the glasses, and watched the fellow for a while.

The memorial was to those soldiers of the Yorkshire Hus­sars killed in the war with the Boers. It was like a church steeple standing on its own, and there were three steps around its base. Edwin Lund was sitting on the middle one, looking down at his boots, and looking blue - glummer even than the last time. As I approached, he lifted his head, and watched two carts going along Duncombe Street. His little valise was alongside him. He turned his head, saw me, and left off chewing for a second. I sat down near to him on the cold stone, and he rubbed his sleeve across his nose, which I took to be his 'Good morning.'

'Dinner break?' I said.

'Aye,' he said.

'You look done in,' I said, really meaning something else.

'Been on since six,' he said.

'What time will you book off?'

'Six again,' he said. 'Well, half past.'

There was a copy of the
Press
in his pocket - early edition.

'Long day, is that,' I said.

He nodded for a while, presently adding:

'I've put in for overtime.'

'Why?'

'Mother wants a linoleum.'

'Do you mind the work?' I asked him.

'Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might,' he said slowly, looking down at his boots.

Well, he'd told me he was chapel, and that lot were all Bible bangers. Besides the Minster, there were three church­es in sight, and they had the look of giant tombs even in the brightness of the day, but still the carts and horse trams flowed on.

'How do you pass the time in the Lost Luggage Office’ I
said '...
at
slack times, I mean?'

'Searching the Gospels.'

'Searching for what?'

'The light.'

A few pigeons came up, but Edwin Lund was screwing up the brown paper. The bread was gone.

'Do you read owt else, Edwin?'

'Oh aye’ he said, stuffing the paper into his valise. 'I read a good deal.'

'What though?'

'Lost books’ he said, and he might have laughed, only I couldn't make out his face, the monument being half in between us. If he was at twelve on a clock face, then I was at four. Ought I to have been speaking to him in the middle of the town, in full view of anyone passing? And if so, ought I to have been doing so as Allan Appleby or as Detective Stringer? I should've had it all calculated out, but I hadn't.

'By rights I shouldn't be speaking to you in a public place’ I said, 'since I'm a detective operating in secret, and you've supplied me with information. Do you want me to push off?'