The Railway Viaduct

CHAPTER SEVEN

'Navvies are a race apart,' said Thomas Brassey. 'I've never met anyone like them for sheer hard work. I respect them for their virtues but I also condemn them for their vices.'

'They've caused so much trouble in England,' observed Robert Colbeck. 'When they've set up camps there, they've terrorised whole communities.'

'You can see why, Inspector. Ordinary, decent, law-abiding people are horrified when they have huge gangs of hooligans on their doorstep. In their place, I'd be scared stiff.'

'Yet you seem to have less problems with your navvies, sir.'

'That's because I won't employ known troublemakers. If I find someone trying to stir up mischief, I get rid of him at once. I also try to reduce friction by keeping different nationalities apart,' he went on. 'The Irish and the Welsh don't always see eye to eye, so I make sure they are never together. It's the same with the French. I never put them shoulder to shoulder with British navvies.'

'Yet you've now got a potential riot on your hands.'

'Only because we're in an unusual position.'

'Have you never faced this situation before, Mr Brassey?'

'No – thank heaven!'

They were travelling through the French countryside in a trap. The horse was moving at a steady trot across the uneven ground and they were shaken up as the wheels mounted the frequent bumps and explored the deep potholes. It was a clear night with a half-moon looking down dolefully from the sky. Behind them were two other traps and a couple of men on horseback. Most of them carried a firearm of some sort.

'What's the worst that could happen?' asked Colbeck.

'That we get there too late.'

'We'd have heard the noise of battle before now.'

'True,' said the other. 'I suppose that the very worst thing that could happen is that news of any violence would get out, and that would surely happen if the French are involved. Activities on this railway would then be reported in the newspapers.'

'You've had bad publicity before.'

'And plenty of it, Inspector, especially in this country.'

'But I understood that you were on good terms with the French government. Mr Filton told me that you'd had dealings with Louis Napoleon himself.'

'A businessman should always cultivate his employers. That's sound commonsense. Not that I ever expected to be accountable to a man called Napoleon,' he added with a rueful smile. 'It's a name that conjures up too many ghosts for any Englishman. But I've had to put all that aside. As it happens, on the few occasions when I've met him, I've found him an amenable gentleman.'

'How amenable would he be if French navvies were badly wounded in a fight with the Irish?'

'I hope that I never find out, Inspector Colbeck. That's why I was grateful for your advice. The plan might just work.'

'I've dealt with angry crowds before.'

'I'm sure.'

'Facing a Chartist march was a sobering experience,' admitted Colbeck. 'There were thousands of them and, if truth be told, I had a lot of sympathy with their cause. But I was there to police them so my personal views were irrelevant. Fortunately, no real violence erupted.'

'I pray that we have the same outcome tonight.'

'So do I, Mr Brassey.'

'It's not just the future of this railway that's at stake,' said the contractor, 'the next one would also be imperilled.'

'The next one?'

'Linking Mantes to Caen is only the first half of the project. The next stage is to build a railway from Caen to Cherbourg. We would be bidding for the contract to extend the track for that extra ninety miles or so. If we blot our copybook on this venture,' he said with a frown, 'then our chances of securing that contract will be slim.'

'Caen to Cherbourg?' asked Colbeck.

'Yes, Inspector.'

'That would provide a direct link between Paris and the dockyard at Cherbourg.'

'More than the dockyard – they have an arsenal there.'

'That's exactly what I was thinking.'

'Of course, it will take time to build,' said Brassey. 'At a rough guess, we'd not even be starting for another three years. The engineer I'd most liked to have had on the project was Gaston Chabal.'

'Why?'

'His surveys were brilliant and, being French, he got on well with local people while he was there. Gaston's preparatory work on the current railway helped us to land the contract and – because of its accuracy – saved us a lot of money in the process.' Colbeck seemed to have gone off into a reverie. 'Did you hear what I said, Inspector?'

'Every word, Mr Brassey, every single word. I was also reminded of a remark you made a little earlier.'

'Oh – and what was that?'

'You told me that you never expected to be accountable to a man called Napoleon.'

'Well, we fought for so many years against his namesake.'

'Precisely,' said Colbeck. 'Imagine how much more danger we would have been in if Napoleon Bonaparte had had a rail link between Paris and a huge arsenal on the tip of the Normandy peninsular. In that event,' he went on, stroking his chin reflectively, 'you and I might well have been having this conversation in French.'

Victor Leeming was afraid. He was so accustomed to physical violence that, as a rule, it held no fear for him. Most criminals resisted arrest and it was necessary to overpower them. It was an aspect of his work that he enjoyed. But he was now locked into a very different kind of struggle, one in which he had no place to be. Along with over two hundred wild Irishmen, he was trudging across the fields toward the farm where the French navvies had set up their camp. Leeming had sent warning of the attack to Thomas Brassey but he could not see how the contractor could possibly stop it. Carried along by its own momentum, the drunken mob was bent on what it saw as justified revenge. Leeming felt as if he were trapped on a runaway train that was heading at top speed towards a fatal collision.

'Isn't this wonderful?' said Kilfoyle alongside him.

'Yes, Liam.'

'We'll teach them a lesson they'll not bloody well forget.'

'Whose idea was it?' asked Leeming.

'Eh?'

'Launching this attack on the French. Who first thought of it?'

'What does it matter?'

'I was interested, that's all. Was it Shannon?'

'Pierce is one of the leaders,' said Kilfoyle, 'but I fancy it was someone else who made the decision. Pierce just went along with it like the rest of us.' He let out a cackle. 'Oh, we need this so much, sure we do. We've not had a proper fight for months.'

'What will Mr Brassey do?'

'He can't do anything, Victor.'

'I don't want to lose my job over this,' said Leeming, worriedly. 'I've got a family to feed back in England.'

'Your job is safe – and so is mine. That's the reason we stick together. Mr Brassey knows which bloody side his bread is buttered. He can't sack all of us, or the rest of the Irish would walk out.'

'Safety in numbers, eh?'

'Only for us, Victor – not for the French.'

'How many of them are there?'

'Who cares? One Irishman is worth four of the buggers.'

'What about me?'

'You're the fella who knocked Pierce to the ground,' said Kilfoyle, admiringly, 'and I've never seen anyone do that before. You'll have to be in the front line. Pierce wants his best men at his side. Get yourself a weapon, man.'

'Why?'

'Because the French won't be fighting with bare hands, that's why.' He thrust the pick handle into Leeming's palm. 'Here – have this. I'll use my knife instead and poke out a few eyes with it.'

There was no turning back now. Victor Leeming was part of a ravening pack of Irish wolves that was closing in on their prey. They could smell blood. Shannon pushed through the crowd.

'Come on, Victor,' he urged. 'We need you for the first charge.'

'I'm here,' said Leeming, holding up his pick handle.

'Let's see who can open the most French skulls.'

'Where's the camp?'

'Just over the brow of the hill. In a few more minutes, we'll be haring down on them to massacre the bastards.' He punched Leeming on the shoulder. 'Are you ready for a fight?'

'Ready and willing, Pierce.'

Leeming spoke with more confidence than he felt. He was not merely facing the prospect of injury, he was taking part in a criminal act. If the superintendent ever discovered that he had been party to an affray, he would chew Leeming's ears off. The sergeant was glad that he was well out of Edward Tallis's jurisdiction.

Shannon took him by the arm and dragged him to the front of the marchers. As they went up the hill, Leeming began to have more and more misgivings. He rarely criticised Colbeck's methods but this time, he believed, the inspector had been mistaken. In making his sergeant work as a navvy, he had exposed him to dire hazards. Yet Leeming could not break ranks now. The brow of the hill was only thirty yards away. Once they were over it, there would be carnage.

Then, out of the dark, three figures appeared on the top of the hill. Silhouetted against the sky, they were an imposing trio. Even in the half-dark, Leeming recognised Colbeck, standing in the middle, with Thomas Brassey beside him. He could not identify the third man. Colbeck took out a pistol and fired it into the air. The Irishmen stopped in their tracks.

'That's as far as you go tonight, gentlemen,' said Brassey.

'Why?' demanded Shannon.

'Because I say so – and so does Father Slattery.'

'Yes,' said the priest, stepping forward and raising his voice so that all could hear. 'It's a pity that some of you don't come to a church service with the same kind of enthusiasm. When you want a fight, there's no holding you. When I tell you to join me in fighting the Devil, then it's only the bravest who show their faces.'

'Out of our way, Father!' shouted Kilfoyle.

'I stand here as a representative of Roman Catholicism.'

'I don't care if you're the bleeding Pope!' cried someone.

'The French are Catholics as well,' returned Slattery. 'Would you attack your own kind?'

'Go back to your camp,' ordered Brassey. 'There'll be no brawl tonight. The French are not even here,' he lied. 'They were forewarned to pull out of their tents and shacks.'

'Who by?' called Shannon.

'Me. And I didn't do it to save your skins. Some of you deserve to take a beating – it's the only way you'll see sense. I did it so that you could keep your jobs. This gentleman here,' he went on, pointing at Colbeck, 'is M. Robert, assistant to the Minister of Public Works.' Colbeck raised his hat to the mob and produced a barrage of jeers. 'Before you taunt M. Robert, let me tell that he's empowered to revoke our contract if he decides that we are not able to fulfil it peaceably. I don't think anyone could construe an invasion of the French camp as a peaceful act.'

'Had you firebrands insisted on a fight,' said Slattery, taking over, 'you'd not only have been sacrificing your jobs and those of all the other navvies from across the Channel. In your wisdom, you'd also have been handing over the work to a French contractor who would refuse to employ a single one of you.'

'Think on that,' said Brassey. 'You'd have been letting me, yourselves and your families down. You'd have had to sneak home in disgrace without any money in your pockets and no work awaiting you in England. Is that what you really want?'

'No, sir,' bleated Kilfoyle.

'What about the rest of you?'

In response came a lot of shamefaced muttering. The fight had suddenly been taken out of the navvies. Several began to slink away at once. Alone in the crowd, Leeming was delighted. A calamity had just been averted by the intervention of Thomas Brassey and Father Eamonn Slattery. But it was the presence of M. Robert that had tipped the balance. Fear of losing their jobs, combined with the certainty that Brassey would never hire any of them again, brought them to heel. More of them turned round and left. The danger was over.

The contractor and the priest had prevented a bloodbath, but Leeming knew that they did not deserve all the credit. The ruse had worked well because Robert Colbeck had devised it. Not for the first time, Leeming had been rescued by the inspector's guile.

As soon as they got back to his office, Thomas Brassey lit a few oil lamps then he unlocked a cupboard and took out a bottle of whisky and three glasses. He poured a generous amount into the glasses then gave one each to Robert Colbeck and Aubrey Filton. The contractor raised his own glass with a smile.

'I think we're entitled to toast a job well done,' he said.

'I never thought that you'd pull it off, sir,' confessed Filton after taking his first sip. 'I thought someone might call your bluff.'

'That's why I suggested that we involve Father Slattery,' said Colbeck, impressed by the quality of the whisky. 'I felt that he would give credence to the whole exercise. I'm still troubled by guilt at having had to deceive an ordained priest like that.'

'He really thought that you were M. Robert.'

'In a sense, of course, that's what I am.' He adopted a French accent. 'M. Robert Colbeck.'

'You spoke the language so well, Father Slattery was taken in.'

'The main thing is that the mob was as well,' said Brassey. 'I shudder to think what chaos would have followed if they'd reached the French camp. They hadn't withdrawn at all.'

'I had a very good reason to make sure that the two parties didn't meet,' Colbeck explained. 'Victor Leeming was in that crowd somewhere. I need him to remain in one piece.'

'He deserves my congratulations for what he did, Inspector.'

'Save them until he delivers the real culprits up to us.'

'Are you sure they're part of the Irish contingent?'

'Yes, Mr Brassey. Their camp is almost adjacent to the railway, so it would be easy for someone to slip out at night to cause damage. The French are nearly a mile away and none of them would be aware of how you deployed your nightwatchmen. The same goes for the Welsh and the rest of your navvies,' said Colbeck. 'They're too far away. No, I believe that the men we're after might well have been in that mob tonight.'

'Would they?' said Filton.

'What better way to take suspicion off themselves than by accusing someone else of the crimes? It's an old trick, Mr Filton.'

'Cunning devils!'

'We played a trick on them tonight,' recalled Brassey. 'It was all your doing, Inspector. You'll have to meet my wife. Her French is almost as fluent as yours. Have dinner with us some time.'

Colbeck smiled. 'That's very kind of you, Mr Brassey.'

'Sergeant Leeming can join us as well.'

'Only when he's finished the task he was set.'

'He was very brave to take it on.'

'Victor has already proved his worth. I just hope that he's not the victim of his own success.'

'In what way?' said Filton.

'Those men we turned back earlier on will know that they were betrayed by someone,' said Colbeck. 'They'll want his name.'

'Then I hope they never discover it.'

'No,' said Brassey with a shiver. 'I wouldn't like to be caught out in the middle of all those Irishmen. They have hot tempers and they don't take prisoners.'

'Sergeant Leeming will have to be careful.'

'Extremely careful, Aubrey.'

'He's done this kind of work before,' said Colbeck, 'though he's never dealt with navvies. As you told me earlier, Mr Brassey, they're a race apart. My hope is that Victor doesn't stick out too much. After tonight, some of those men will be desperate for revenge.'

'It must have been you, Father Slattery,' he said, glowing with rage.

'It was not, Pierce – on my word of honour.'

'You betrayed your own fucking countrymen.'

'That's something I'd never do,' vowed the priest, 'and I'm insulted that you should even suggest it.'

'They knew we were coming.'

'And I'm eternally grateful that they did. Otherwise, you and your drunken ruffians would have committed the most unholy crime.'

'We were fighting on Mr Brassey's behalf.'

'Try telling him that.'

'We were,' said Shannon, vehemently. 'The Frenchies are trying to wreck this railway so that we lose the contract. That way, they can take over. The bastards want us all out of their country.'

'If you conduct yourselves as you did tonight, I'm not surprised. When drink is taken,' said Slattery, 'you turn into wild beasts. You don't belong in civilised company. Truly, I was ashamed of you all.'

They were in the Irish camp, talking by the light of a lantern outside one of the shacks. Most of those who had marched with Pierce Shannon had either gone off to bed or started drinking again. Shannon himself had waited until Father Slattery had reappeared. It was all he could do to keep his hands off the priest.

'I still say that it was you, Father,' he accused.

'Then you'd best bring a Holy Bible so that I can swear on it. That won't mean much to you, godforsaken heathen that you are, but it means all the world to me.' He put his face close to that of the other. 'I did not tell a soul about your plan.'

'But you did know about it.'

'Of course – thanks to you. To get support, you told everybody you could. That's how it must have leaked out. The person to blame is you and that jabbering mouth of yours. It never stops. Someone overheard you and reported it straight away.'

'Is that what Mr Brassey told you?'

'Yes,' replied Slattery. 'He called me to his office and said that he'd received information that there was to be an attack on the French camp. He asked me if I knew who was behind it.'

Shannon was disturbed. 'Did you tell him?'

'Of course not.'

'How do I know that?'

'Because I give you my word. If I'd named you and the other ringleaders, you'd all have been on the first boat back home. If nothing else does, that should prove my loyalty to my nation.'

There was an extended pause while Shannon pondered.

'Thank you, Father,' he mumbled at length.

'I named no names,' said Slattery. 'Tell that to the others.'

'I will.'

'And don't invent any more hare-brained schemes like this.'

'It wasn't me that thought of it.' Shannon lowered his voice. 'What else did Mr Brassey say?'

'Only that you were mad to turn on the French. It could've meant him losing the contract altogether. As it is, the delays have cost him a lot of money. Did you know that there are time penalties of five thousand pounds a month if work is behind schedule?'

'No, I didn't.'

'Well, there are. Mr Brassey showed me the contract.'

'Did he give you the name of the traitor?'

'No, but I still think he was called Pierce Shannon. You opened your mouth once too often.'

'Everybody knew that something was afoot tonight,' said Shannon, 'but only those who were coming knew the fucking time and place. Somehow, Mr Brassey got hold of those details.'

'God works in mysterious ways.'

'This was nothing to do with God. We've got a spy in our ranks.'

'Then you should thank him – he saved your jobs.'

'And what if these bloody raids go on, Father? What if we get another explosion or some more damage in the tunnel? What if someone starts a real fire next time? What would happen to our fucking jobs then? Answer me that.' Shannon was breathing heavily. 'And while you're at it,' he continued, angrily, 'you can answer another bloody question as well.'

'If you could phrase it more sweetly, maybe I will.'

'Since you didn't betray us, who, in the bowels of Christ, did?'

Victor Leeming had never spent such an uncomfortable night before. He was, by turns, appalled by what he saw, nauseated by what he smelt and disgusted that human beings could live in such a way. The Irish camp consisted of ragged tents, rickety wooden huts and ramshackle cottages built out of stone, timber, thatch and clods of earth. In such dwellings, there was no trace of mortar to hold things together. Gaps in the roof and walls would, in due course, let in wind, rain and snow. Vermin could enter freely. It was grim and cheerless. Leeming had seen farmyard animals with better accommodation.

When he had been invited to go to the flimsy shack where Liam Kilfoyle slept, he did not realise that he would be sleeping on flagstones and sharing a room with five other people. Two of them were women, and Leeming was shocked when the men beside them each mounted their so-called wives and took their pleasure to the accompaniment of raucous female laughter. It was worlds away from the kind of tender union that Leeming and Estelle enjoyed. Simply being in the same room as the noisy, public, unrestrained rutting made him feel tainted. Kilfoyle, by contrast, was amused by it all. As he lay beside Leeming, he whispered a secret.

'The fat one is called Bridget,' he said, grinning inanely. 'I have her sometimes when Fergal goes to sleep. You can fuck her as well, if you want to.'

Leeming was sickened by the thought. 'No, thank you.'

'It's quite safe. Fergal never wakes up.'

'I'm too tired, Liam.'

'Please yourself. I'll have Bridget later on.'

Leeming wondered how many more nights he would have to endure such horror. During his days in uniform, he had raided brothels in some of the most insalubrious areas of London but he had seen nothing to equal this. He could not understand how anyone could bear to live in such conditions. What he did admire about the navvies was their brute strength. After one day, his hands were badly blistered and he was aching all over, yet the others made light of the exhausting work. Navvies had incredible stamina. Leeming could not match it for long. To take his mind off his immediate discomfort, he tried to probe for information.

'Liam?'

'Yes?'

'What if we were wrong?'

'Wrong about what?'

'The French,' said Leeming, quietly. 'Suppose that it wasn't them who set off that explosion?'

'It had to be them, Victor.'

'Yes, but suppose – only suppose, mind you – that it wasn't? If it was someone from this camp, for instance, who'd be the most likely person to have done it?'

'What a stupid question!'

'Think it through,' advised Leeming.

'What do you mean?'

'Well, it has to be someone who knows how to handle gunpowder, for a start. It's very easy to blow yourself up with that stuff. Is there anyone here who's had any experience of blasting rock before? I heard that the gunpowder was stolen from near here.'

'It was.'

'Who could have taken it?'

'Some bleeding Frenchie.'

'It's a long way to come from their camp.'

'Yes,' said Kilfoyle slowly, as if the idea had never occurred to him. 'You're fucking right, Victor.'

'So who, in this camp, knows how to handle gunpowder?'

'Not me, I can tell you that.'

'Somebody must have had experience.'

'So?'

'I just wondered who it might be, that's all.'

'He needs catching, whoever the bastard is.'

'Have you any idea at all who it could be?'

'No.'

'Think hard, Liam.'

'Don't ask me.' He fell silent and cupped a hand to his ear so that he could hear more clearly. A loud snore came from the other side of the room. 'That's Fergal,' he said with snigger. 'Fast asleep. I'm off to shag his wife.' He sat up. 'Shall I tell Bridget you'll be over to take your turn after me?'

Leeming's blushes went unseen in the dark.

Caleb Andrews was late getting home that night. When he came off duty at Euston, he went for a drink in a public house frequented by railwaymen and tried to bolster his confidence by beating his fireman at several games of draughts. His winnings were all spent on beer. As he rolled home to Camden, therefore, he was in a cheerful mood. His supremacy on the draughts board had been restored and several pints of beer had given him a sense of well-being. He let himself into his house and found his daughter working by the light of an oil lamp.

'Still up, Maddy?' he asked.

'Yes, Father,' she replied. 'I just wanted to finish this.'

He looked over her shoulder. 'What is it – a portrait of me?'

'No, it's the Sankey Viaduct.'

'Is it? Bless my soul!'

Since his vision was impaired after so much alcohol, he needed to put his face very close to the paper in order to see the drawing. Even then he had difficulty picking out some of the pencil lines.

'It's good, Maddy.'

'You've been drinking,' she said. 'I can smell it on your breath.'

'I was celebrating.'

'Celebrating what?'

'I won ten games of draughts in a row.'

'Are you ready for another game with me?'

'No, no,' he said, backing away. 'I'll not let you take advantage of your poor father when he can't even see straight. But why are you drawing the Sankey Viaduct? You've never even seen it.'

'Robert described it to me.'

'I could have done that. I've been over it.'

'Yes, Father, but you were driving an engine at the time. You've never seen the viaduct from below as Robert has. According to him, it was a painting rather like this that will help to solve the murder.'

'I don't see how.'

Madeleine put her pencil aside and got up from her chair. She explained how Ambrose Hooper had witnessed the body being hurled over the viaduct, and how he had duly recorded the moment in his watercolour of the scene. She felt privileged that Colbeck had confided the information to her. What both she and the inspector knew was that the murder victim had been on his way to an assignation, but it was something she would not confide to her father. Caleb Andrews would have been alarmed to hear that she had been involved in a police investigation. More worrying from Madeleine's point of view was that fact that he was likely to pass on the information over a drink with his railway colleagues. Discretion was unknown to him.

'Why do you want to draw the Sankey Viaduct?' he wondered.

'I was just passing an idle hour.'

'You're never idle, Maddy. You take after me.'

'Robert told me so much about it that I wanted to put it down on paper. It's not something I'd ever expect to sell. I was just trying to do what Mr Hooper did and reconstruct the crime.'

'The real crime was committed by the guard on that train,' said Andrews with passion. 'He should have kept his eyes open. If he'd seen that body being thrown from the train, he could have jumped on to the platform at the next stop and caught the killer before he could sneak away.'

'But the guard didn't see a thing, Father.'

'That's my point.' Swaying uneasily, he put a hand on the back of a chair to steady himself. 'I'm for bed, Maddy. What about you?'

'I'll be up soon.'

'Next time you speak to Inspector Colbeck, tell him to consult me. I've got a theory about this crime – lots of them, in fact.'

'I know,' she said, fondly. 'I've heard them all.'

Madeleine kissed her father on the cheek then helped him to the staircase. Holding the banister, he went slowly up the steps. She returned immediately to a drawing that she had embarked on in the first instance because it kept Robert Colbeck in her mind. It was not meant to be an accurate picture of the viaduct. Madeleine had departed quite radically from the description that she had been given. She now added some features that were purely imaginary.

Using her pencil with a light touch, she removed the brook and canal that ran beneath the viaduct by drowning them completely in the foaming waves of the English Channel. On one side of the viaduct, she drew a sketch of a railway station and wrote the name Dover above it. On the other, she pencilled in a tall, elegant man in a frock coat and top hat. England and France had been connected in art. The drawing was no longer her version of what had happened to Gaston Chabal. It was a viaduct between her and Robert Colbeck, built with affection and arching its way across the sea to carry her love to him. As she put more definition and character into the tiny portrait of the detective, she wondered how he was faring in France and hoped that they would soon be together again.

Thomas Brassey did not only expect his employees to work long hours, he imposed the same strict regimen on himself. Accordingly, he arrived on site early that morning to discover that Robert Colbeck was there before him. The inspector was carrying a newspaper.

'You've read the report, I daresay,' noted Brassey.

'Yes, sir.'

'I got my wife to translate it for me. I'm glad that they described Gaston as an outstanding civil engineer because that's exactly what he was. My only concern is that the report of his murder will bring droves of people out here to bother me.'

'I doubt it,' said Colbeck. 'Since the crime was committed in England, reporters would have no reason to visit you. The police, on the other hand, may want to learn more about the deceased so I am sure that they will pay you a call at some time.'

'I hope that you're on hand when they come, Inspector.'

'Why?'

'I need an interpreter.'

'What about your wife?'

'Maria doesn't like to come to the site. And who can blame her?' he said, looking around at the clamorous activity. 'It is always so noisy, smelly and dirty here.'

'Building a railway means making a mess, Mr Brassey.'

The contractor laughed. 'I've made more mess than anybody.'

'All in a good cause.'

'I like to think so.'

Brassey unlocked the door of his office and the two of them went in. Various people began to call to get their orders for the day from the contractor. It was some time before Colbeck was alone again with him. Meanwhile, he had been studying the map of northern France that was on the wall.

'Compared to us,' he remarked, 'they have so few railways.'

'That will change in time, Inspector. Mind you, they've been spared the mad rush that we had. Everyone wanted to build a railway in England because they thought they would make a fortune.'

'Some of them did, Mr Brassey.'

'Only the lucky ones,' said the other. 'The crash was bound to come. When it did, thousands of investors were ruined, credit dried up and everything ground to a standstill. The Railway Mania was over.'

'You survived somehow.'

'We still had plenty of work on our books, in France as well as England. Many of our rivals went to the wall. It was the one good thing to come out of the disaster – we got rid of a lot of crooked promoters, incompetent engineers and contractors who gave us all a bad name. It stopped the rot, Inspector.'

'Is that why you prefer to work in France?'

'My partners and I will go wherever railways need to be built,' said Brassey. 'We've contracts in Canada, Italy and Denmark at this point in time.'

'But this one is your major concern.'

'At the moment.'

'I can understand why,' said Colbeck, glancing at the map. 'If you can secure the contract for the extension of this line from Caen to Cherbourg, you'll have work in France for years to come.'

'That's why nothing must jeopardise the project.'

'We headed off one big threat last night.'

'When will the next one come?'

'I hope that it won't Mr Brassey.'

'But you can offer no guarantee.'

'No, sir. I fear not. What I can tell you is this. Gaston Chabal was murdered in England for reasons that are connected to this railway. As you pointed out to me,' Colbeck went on, 'he was much more than an engineer. He obviously had a pivotal role to play here.'

'He did, Inspector. He was a sort of talisman.'

'In more ways than one, it seems.'

'I knew nothing of Gaston's private life when I took him on,' said Brassey. 'Even if I had been aware of his adulteries, I'd still have employed him. I'm a contractor, not a moral guardian.'

'That's clear from the vast number of navvies you employ.'

'Quite so, Inspector Colbeck. All sorts of irregularities go on in their camps but it's none of my business. As long as a man can do the job he's paid for, he can have three wives and a dozen mistresses.'

'I don't think that Chabal went to that extreme.' Colbeck moved away from the map to look through the window. 'I fear that it will all have come as a great shock to Victor.'

'What?'

'The moral laxity in the camp. He's a married man who tries to lead a Christian life. Some of the antics here will shake him to the core. He won't have seen anything like this before.'

'It's one of the reasons I encouraged Father Slattery to join us.'

'He's a courageous man, taking on such a task.'

'And so is Sergeant Leeming,' said Brassey, a chevron of concern between his eyebrows. 'As a priest, Father Slattery is not in any physical danger. Your sergeant certainly is.'

'Police work entails continuous danger, sir.'

'I just wonder if you have him in the right place.'

'The right place?'

'Well, I agree that the people we are after may be somewhere among the Irish but we've hundreds and hundreds of those. The villains could be bricklayers or quarrymen or blacksmiths. Why do you think they are navvies?'

'Instinct,' replied Colbeck. 'Instinct built up over the years. I feel that it was endorsed last night when that mob went in search of a fight. That was another attempt to disrupt this railway and to put you out of business. The villains used the same device as on the previous night, Mr Brassey.'

'In what way?'

'On the first occasion they used gunpowder. On the second, they used an equally deadly device – human gunpowder. Those Irish navvies were set to explode by the time they reached the French camp. No,' he decided, 'Victor is definitely where he needs to be. He won't thank me for putting him there, but he's in exactly the right place.'

Working so hard left him little time for detection. Victor Leeming had to take on a convincing camouflage and that forced him to toil away for long hours with a shovel in his hands. There were breaks for food and times when he had to satisfy the call of nature. Otherwise, he was kept busy loading spoil into the wagons for hour after fatiguing hour. He talked to Liam Kilfoyle and to some of the others labouring alongside him but they told him nothing of any real use. It was only when the shift finally ended, and the men trooped off to the nearest tavern, that Leeming was able to continue his search. Since he had joined in the march on the French camp, he was accepted. It made it easier for him to talk to the navvies. With a drink in their hands, they were off guard.

Yet it was all to no avail. Most of them refused to believe that an Irishmen could be responsible for the outrages, and none of them could give the name of someone with expertise in using gunpowder. At the end of a long evening, he abandoned his questioning and started to walk back towards the camp with a group of navvies. He braced himself to spend another night in the shack with Kilfoyle and the others, hoping that he would soon be released from that particular torture. The notion of coupling with Bridget, a big, buxom, shameless woman in her thirties, made his stomach heave.

So preoccupied was he in fearful thoughts of what lay ahead that he did not notice he was being followed. When they reached the railway, the men struck. Grabbing him by the shoulders, they pushed Leeming behind a wagon then one of them hit him on the back of the head with something hard and unforgiving. He had no chance to put up any resistance. He fell to the ground like a stone. Sinking into oblivion, he did not even feel the repeated kicks that thudded into his body. In a matter of seconds, it was all over.