Lost baggage porter

Chapter Twenty-eight

The journey passed in a daze of questions. Was Mike up to making a clean sweep? What was the character of the man? And who was the splitter? If Lund was the culprit… why would he try to check an investigation he'd started? Could it be his governor, Parkinson? Could it be the Chief… if he'd been left alive after the shooting? I thought of the little clerk: Roberts. Had he worked out that I was a policeman? He'd certainly made me jumpy with his questioning. And was he still somehow in with the gang, despite having the skin of his hands flayed off with burning metal and then being shot at? No, he was finished; he'd been too free of his patter; had talked himself into an early grave. He was shot -1 was quite sure of it.

We had now entered a great ravine five times higher than the train. A giant white arrow painted on the left-hand wall showed the way out. Off to the right was an illuminated shed lifted up on piers, so that the engines could go in from underneath. I saw a white, shining church on a hill far above it, and shortly afterwards we were into blackness. I looked down at the Metropolitain ticket that I'd not given in. It said 'Aller et Retour', but I never meant to make the return journey.

I thought of Edwin Lund. All that religious blather, forever talking goody-goody, and going round the houses. He would never act for himself but do all his work by an agent, with little insinuations here and there… But to what purpose?

To think of the wife in the same room as Mike was impossible… and with all the copies of the reports to hand. How was Mike described in those? Not favourably. The wife had thought she was only marking time by her typewriting: it was something to be going on with before her brain could be really put to some good use. She'd talked at times of turning schoolmistress, which was possible, at a stretch. There were courses to be taken, dragging on for years.

I thought again of the wife, now walking towards me along a sunlit empty street in Halifax… only she'd spied me too early, and didn't know where to look, and there hadn't been a great deal else to look at in that street, so she'd been in a fix. Well, she had coloured up beautifully by the time we'd come close to.

Whatever had gone on in that hotel room, Sampson would be heading back to the homeland now; coming after me. The gracious white-hatted lady in Gare du Nord had said there was no further boat train until… four o'clock was it? I had stolen a march on him at least. But just then the train stopped, hard.

I looked at the Victorian party, and she said: 'Strange.'

There was nothing at all to be seen beyond the windows.

After five minutes, I made out a man walking slowly along the tracks with a pipe in his mouth. He carried a lamp, and rain whirled around him. I pointed him out to the lady, who called down something in French, to which he shouted up a reply.

I asked: 'What's the cause of the delay?'

'Oh… France,' she said with a sigh.

'The boat'll have to wait though, won't it?'

'It will not,' she said. 'They've passengers to collect on the other side… Not that they care for those any more than they do for us.'

The train waited, and when half an hour had passed I began to think of Sampson beating me to Thorpe-on-Ouse, leave alone Mike. After three quarters of an hour I began pacing the carriage. I could not sleep, think, stop thinking. Presently, a whistle came from the engine, and the train began to roll forwards, and it continued making twenty miles an hour at the most until a great railway works came in sight, with ranks of half-made engines illuminated by little fires burning about the place. This seemed to give heart to our train, for it at last picked up speed for the run to a spot called Rouen, which was sunk into a stonewalled cutting between two long tunnels. The train stopped here to change engines, and I could see nothing of Rouen but a clock: quarter to four in the morning. The deadest time of all. Within forty-five minutes, Sampson would be able to begin his journey to England if he was so minded.

I believe I slept during the next stretch, and when I woke we were crawling through the town of Dieppe, making for the sound of seagulls in a thin grey light. It took an age but we reached the harbour where a single steamer waited. I climbed down on to a platform that said 'Dieppe – Gare Maritime' and smelt of fish. There was a fish market to the right. I watched a motor taxi crawl through it as I took my place in the queue for the customs house. Nobody ahead of me was being searched, but I was sure I would be stopped, and some contraband found causing new delay.

I came out of the customs house ten minutes later, walking underneath a sign reading: 'Aux Paquebots'. I was quickly aboard. After an hour at sea in clearing light and what might have been moderate rain or spray, I began looking out for the coast of England, and sat there doing so for a further three hours. The crossing was much longer by this route.

I may have slept again, lulled by the thunder of the paddle – in which case I was woken by the snap of a triangular sail unfurled at the bow to bring the boat into what proved to be Newhaven Harbour station, which was entirely made of wood, and in want of a roof. The London Brighton and South Coast Railway took me, in a dream, to Victoria where, if I'd been feeling brighter, and thinking better, I would have sent a telegram to the post office at Thorpe-on-Ouse, telling the wife to leave the house and not return; instead, I rode the inner Circle to King's Cross where, at midday, I boarded the Scotch Express for York and Edinburgh. Every mile, the swooping telegraph wires told me of the course I ought to have taken. At 3.30,1 glimpsed a finger post by the line reading 'York', and just then the first spatterings of rain fell against the window glass, as if the very word had brought it on.