Murder At Deviation Junction

Chapter Nine

The Cape of Good Hope was a corner house looking over a wide road. On the other side, high metal gates opened on to an empty stretch of scrub that made a clear channel between two congested parts of the ironworks. The scrub led to the docks and the sea, where stood another infant of the north: a mighty, gleaming steamship, backwards-sloping chimneys giving a great impression of sleekness and speed even though it stood stationary.

I pushed through the door of the Cape, which was not at all the smokehole I'd expected but a wide, peaceful place, church-like with a window of red and green painted glass on three sides.

I was closely watched, as I crossed the threshold, by half a dozen blokes who all had their backs to the bar. Three sat on high stools, three stood. They were arranged somewhat like a football team posing for a photograph, and I reckoned this was half of Middlesbrough Vulcan Athletic standing before me. But they looked just as much like hospital patients as footballers: coats worn askew, shirts buttoned up anyhow or not buttoned . . . and the giant in the centre with the bandaged hand was Clegg.

'Here's trouble,' one of the men said, as I stepped over to the bar.

None moved as I fished in my pockets for gold, and for my warrant card. As I held up the card, one of the blokes cut away from the bar, and he was off - out through the front door. I watched him go. Well, I was a sneak and a spy, the enemy of working men.

I asked for a pint, and the barman broke from the gang to serve me. He was friendly enough, but my ale came in a glass where all the other blokes had pewters.

'Donald Clegg,' I said to the centre forward, removing my bowler and holding up my warrant card. 'There's a complaint of aggravated assault laid against you.'

'Aggravated now, is it?' He stood, and walked over to give me his right hand, which was the one bandaged.

'Go easy,' he said, as I gave him my own.

It was not normal to shake hands with a man you were about to arrest.

'How did you come by that, Mr Clegg?' I asked him, and he was unwinding the none-too-clean linen as I spoke. He showed me the wound, as the other blokes drank on thoughtfully behind. The back of Clegg's wide hand was a black mass.

'Boot studs,' he said. 'Football-boot studs. The knuckles are cracked n'all. I was nearly bloody well stood down from work over it.'

'Whose boots, mate?' I enquired, but of course I knew the answer before he spoke.

'Shillito's fucking boots.'

'Turns out he's a copper,' said one of the blokes from the bar - he wore a beard, whereas all the others had moustaches. You didn't reckon to see footballers with beards.

'If it was Shillito came at you,' I said, 'why did you crown his mate?'

Clegg lifted his shirt: more blackness.

'That was courtesy of their number six. So I belted him with my left. If I'd used my right, he'd have known about it.'

'You've put him in hospital any road,' I said.

'Hospital? Is he buggery!'

'His head had to be sewn.'

'Don't believe it.'

'We'll swear to what happened,' said the bearded player, 'every one of us.'

'It'll come to court,' said another, 'and it'll be the fixture all over again, only with swearing in place of ball skills.'

'That's just about what it was before,' said beard, who gave me a grin as I took out my notebook.

'Shillito's a cunt,' said one of the blokes.

I looked up, but couldn't make out which one had spoken. It wasn't Clegg.

I said, 'That's—'

'That's what?' put in beard.

'— That's as maybe.'

A sort of shimmer went through the football team. One of the blokes said, 'Stand you another pint, mister?'

I nodded.

'Won't say no,' I said, and one of the tall stools was pushed my way.

As the pint was poured, I asked, 'Who was the bloke that just bolted?'

It was Clegg who answered.

'Alf Wood.'

'Where's he gone?'

'Don't know, mate,' said Clegg.

I nodded thanks as the second pint was passed over.

'He went just as soon as I held up my warrant card.'

'Happen he doesn't like warrant cards,' said the long-haired bloke.

Clegg was grinning. 'Never mind him,' he said. 'What about the business in hand?'

I had made up my mind not to take Clegg in. The situation did not call for immediate arrest, and Shillito could go hang.

'I'll take statements,' I said, 'starting with you, Mr Clegg.'

With pint and notebook in hand, I removed to a table under the window and Clegg followed me over. He sat down, and told me of the fight. He was about of an age with me, and I liked him, and I believed his account. After Clegg, I took statements from three other blokes, who wandered over one by one. Each man, when speaking to me, was out of earshot of his confederates, and each said the same, or as near as made no difference. As the third man spoke, i reasoned that Shillito might want to make an end to this investigation, for it was becoming obvious that he ought to be the one charged. I was just stowing away my indelible pencil when the pub door opened, bringing a freezing wind, and sight of the bloke who'd scarpered a minute earlier.

'Hi!' I shouted. 'I'd like a word, mate.'

He stood his ground this time, and one of the team said, 'You're all right, Alf. He's white as they come, this lad.'

Alf Wood stepped into the Cape of Good Hope. Judging by the speed with which he'd made off, he was certainly a vagabond - which might prove useful.

'You'll take a pint?' I asked him.

He nodded, and I called for the drink with a flash of anxiety at the amount I was spending. If I made no arrest, Shillito would not permit me expenses. The football group stood in a somewhat looser arrangement now, but they all watched as one man as I turned towards Wood, saying, 'Would you mind answering a couple of questions?'

'Why me?'

'I think you know this town.'

'I bloody don't.'

'But you've lived in it all your life?'

Long silence on this point.

Presently, Wood said, 'Two questions only?'

'Aye.'

'I'm saying nowt about the business at Langton's place, mind.'

'What's Langton's place?' I said.

Wood looked at me for a space.

'I'm saying nowt about it.'

'You've one question left,' one of the football blokes called out to me.

'Mr Wood,' I said, 'have you heard of any operator in this town - any man who might at some time last year have had away a good- quality camera?'

'Camera? What for?'

'How do you mean, "What for?" The camera was taken from a professional photographer in a street robbery this time last year. It happened in Spring Street near the railway station.'

'Camera?' Wood said, making a question of the word again. 'Never heard of any such article being taken.'

'Then do you have any idea where a good camera might fetch up having been taken?'

I was nearer the mark with this, for one of the footballers said, 'You give him the tip, Woody, and he'll do all right by us over the little bit of bother we had in York.'

He didn't have this quite right, but I kept silence.

'Let's be right,' Wood said to me. 'I'll take you to a likely spot, but the bloke there - he doesn't want any bother from you lot.'

'I'm after the camera,' I said, 'and that's all.'

Wood nodded, and fixed his cap back on his head.

'We'll take a walk then.'

I picked up my hat and notebook. Turning to Clegg and his mates, I said, 'I'll show these statements to Detective Sergeant Shillito, but I'm going to recommend the matter goes no further.'

Clegg nodded at me.

'Obliged to you, mate,' he said. I then turned and followed the little bloke, Woody, into the street.

Woody pushed on ahead, red-faced from anger or shame at helping out a copper; or just from the bitter cold. It was washday in Middlesbrough, and we moved under great glowing white banners of towelling and sheets suspended across the streets. Turning a corner in the half-light, I fancied that I saw two great snowflakes swooping down towards us, but they were seagulls. We were on the edge of the town centre, and rows of shops began to appear amid the red houses, but the place that Woody found was something between a shop and a house. The door was ajar; there were words painted on it that I did not have time to read, because Woody pushed it open directly and then, saying something in an under- breath, he was off down the street like greased bloody lightning.

A man in a dusty topcoat stood by a small fire looking thoughtfully at a great mix-up of goods, as though he'd lately bought it as a job lot and was wondering whether it had been a good investment. There were bits of bicycles, gramophones, sticks of furniture, a tangle of overmantels, with the ornamental items that might once have stood on them - and that might, but probably wouldn't, do so again - tumbled into wooden boxes hard by. There were a lot of clocks, some of which turned out to be barometers, and a whole corner was given over to musical instruments, including half a dozen fiddles, one of these being labelled 'violin' as though it was a cut above the others. I nodded at the man, holding up my warrant card.

'Detective Stringer,' I said. 'Railway force.'

The man stood up straight.

'You wouldn't have taken delivery of a camera, I suppose, some time over the past year?'

The man looked at his boots for a while, then up.

'Hold on,' he said, and turned on his heel. He disappeared into a back room, and after a couple of minutes of scuffling and cursing, came back carrying a camera.

'That was quick,' I said.

'Don't hang about when you lads come calling,' he said.

He wanted me off his premises, just like most of the folks I met in the course of my work.

He handed it over to me. It was the same as the one that had dangled from Bowman's shoulder, and the one that had been found in the brook near Peters's body: the Mentor Reflex. But this time the changing box that held the exposures - or might do - was fixed in place at the side. If the doings was all inside there . . . that could only mean that this camera had not been stolen by people interested in what Peters had photographed. It must, in that case, have been taken by the common run of street thief, a man interested only in the value of the camera. Why else would the camera have been brought to the man standing before me?

If the exposures proved to be in place, the villains concerned in the Middlesbrough theft must have been a different lot from the ones who did for Peters at Stone Farm - that was my first thought, at any rate.

'Have you had this off, mate?' I asked the man, pointing to the changing box.

He shook his head.

'And I don't believe the bloke who brought it in had done either.'

'Why not?'

'He didn't look my idea of a whatsname - photographic artist.'

'Who was he?' 'Reckon I'd let on if I knew?'

'Er, no,' I said.

'That's just where you're wrong,' he said. 'I'm not bent, though you might think it from the looks of this place. A bloke came in, sold me a stack of stuff for a tanner. I took it sight unseen, granted. But that en't a crime now, is it?'

'Would you recognise the bloke again?'

'Big cap ... thick muffler ...' said the shopkeeper.

'That's narrowed it down to about thirty million.'

'I can't help that, mister,' he said.

I believed him, just as I'd believed Clegg and the men of Vulcan Athletic. They seemed to be part of an honest network - or had they been guying me from start to finish?

'Mind if I take it?' I said. 'It's evidence.'

'You're the boss,' he said.

Anything to get shot of me.

I carried the Mentor Reflex into the middle of town. The wide, new streets were all in straight lines, and the trick was to avoid the ones along which the sea wind raced. The streets were prettily lit, for all the cold, and the shops crowded with Christmas tomfoolery. There was a clear-cut line between the sexes: the men were moving fast, thinking of business, the women moving slow, thinking of Christmas. I was turning a corner in the locality of the railway station when I was checked by the sight of a small fir tree from which dangled little medicine bottles of coloured glass. 'Milner,' read the sign above the window. 'Druggist.' The important notice was in the corner of the window: 'Photographs Developed'.

I pushed open the door, entering a sort of warm, chemical Christmas. Approaching the counter, I removed my gloves and loosened the catch that held the plates on to the camera. A man waited at the counter: white-coated and clean - struck me as a doctor who'd missed his mark, like all druggists.

'Can you do these for me express?'

'Two hours,' he said, and whether that was express or no, I couldn't have said from his tone.

'How many exposures in here?' asked the man, taking the tin from me.

'Well, there'd be two at most, wouldn't there?' I replied. 'Or there might not be any.'

He looked at me narrowly, saying, 'If there aren't any, it won't take two hours.'

I requested the largest print size, and then went off for a bite and a warm, eventually walking into Hintons, although not the select parts used by Steve Bowman and his wife, but a smoke-filled, publike part of it, where I ate fried eggs and drank a cup of cocoa.

It was five o'clock when I returned to Milner, the druggist.

'Anything doing?' I asked, and by way of reply he handed over an envelope, saying, 'Two and fourpence.'