Signal Red (22 page)

'A key?'

'Like a car. But they always leave them lying around.' He began to run a hand over the metal shelves and surfaces. 'Here we are.' He fetched a bunch of keys from the top of the black metal control box, placed one in the ignition slot, then a second, until he had the right one and it turned freely. He pressed the starter button. The diesel coughed twice and rumbled into life.

Bruce felt the vibration through his feet. 'That it?'

'No, we got to wait for the air pressure to hit about sixty pounds.' Roy tapped a dial. 'Or none of the controls work. Release the handbrake, will you?'

Bruce looked around the cab. 'Where?'

'Behind you.'

Bruce turned to find a metal disc with projecting handles on its perimeter that looked like a shrunken steering-wheel from an old sailing ship. Stamped on the wall above it was an arrow with Off in one direction, On in the other. He heaved it towards Off.

'Right, we're at pressure. Track ahead clear?'

Bruce swung his head out of the open-sided cab. There seemed to be a decent length of shiny clear rail, but then darkness shrouded the far end, masking whatever lay farther on. 'For a few hundred yards.'

'All I'll need to show you.' Roy gave a big grin, as if he really was a boy who got to become an engine driver.

Bruce shivered, the heat drained from him by the cold metal surrounding them. 'Get on with it, Stephenson.' Roy looked blank at the reference. 'Stephenson's Rocket? Oh, just fire her up.'

Roy began to fuss with the controls. 'The throttle's not working. Odd.' Then he remembered. 'There's a dead man's pedal somewhere. Here!'

He stomped down on a metal plate and the diesel gave a jerk forward. Roy hooted with pleasure. 'Easy, see?'

They crept down the track, gathering speed on the incline.

'OK, you can stop now.'

The dumpy shunter carried on accelerating, the power unit thumping with urgency. It was moving at faster than walking pace now.

'Roy. You can stop the train now.'

Roy began to look at his book, flicking through the pages with a rising sense of panic. 'This should be the fucking brake.' He waggled a lever back and forward. He remembered there were two brakes, one for the engine and one for the actual wheels, but nothing he pulled or pushed made much difference.

'Step off the dead man's thing.'

'I have,' shouted Roy. They were rolling down a slope, he realised. Gravity was in control now. He squinted ahead into the night, to see if he could spot any obstacle on the track. 'Bruce, put that handbrake on. Bruce?'

He turned. Bruce was nowhere to be seen.

'Oh, Jesus.'

Roy grabbed his manual, stepped out onto the side of the loco, feeling the wind tugging at his hair as the speed increased. Then he closed his eyes and launched himself off.

He hit the gravel awkwardly, felt his ankle go, and rolled down an incline. Behind him the rails were humming as the engine rolled on.

'Come on.' Bruce appeared out of the night, grabbed Roy under the arms and pulled him to his feet. 'You all right?'

Roy put weight on his left ankle. There was a twinge, but it would hold.

'The runaway train came down the track and she blew . . .' Bruce sang softly.

'Shut up,' Roy snapped, limping away.

As they moved back towards the fence there came the sudden screech of metal on metal, a loud bang, then more tortured groans, followed by silence. Roy could smell burning. A flicker of white flame flared, searing his retina, then died.

They increased their pace, Roy ignoring the pain in his leg. As they reached the fence, he turned to Bruce. 'You know what?'

'What?' Bruce asked.

There was a loud bang behind them as something detonated, and both ducked through the fence. There was smoke in the air, thick and oily. 'I think we'd better give Biggsy a call about that train driver. It's not as easy as it looks.'

'Her name was Eliza Dunwoody. Liz Dunwoody to her friends of which there were very few, by all accounts. She was from Birmingham.'

'Birmingham?' Police Constable Simon Trellick repeated, as if the thought baffled him.

They were in a borrowed office at the police station at Newquay. Hatherill was seated behind the desk, Trellick was standing in front of him, while Billy was positioned near the door, out of the Constable's field of vision. It was a technique designed to disorientate. Whenever Hatherill asked a question of Billy, Trellick wanted to turn but, at attention, could not.

'People do come from Birmingham, you know, Constable. Quite a number, so I hear. Just because she came from a landlocked city doesn't mean she never went near the sea. What else do we know, DC Naughton?'

'That she was on board the Empress of Canada, out of Liverpool to Montreal. At Montreal, she was considered too "distressed" to enter the country and was returned on the ship. At Liverpool, it was discovered that her cabin was empty. However, there was a suspicion that she had simply wandered off the ship, down the gangplank and into the city.'

'Now we know different,' said Hatherill. 'It was a bad return crossing, by all accounts. Plenty of storms. A distracted person might easily have been swept over.'

'Or a disturbed one might have jumped,' added Billy.

'Indeed.'

The Police Constable's shoulders relaxed a little. 'Well, I'm glad that is cleared up. The family will claim the body, I suppose.'

Hatherill nodded. 'With some reluctance, I might add. Seems she was not the best-loved member of the Dunwoodys. There is some bickering over who will pay for the burial.'

Billy watched the PC's head shake back and forth in disbelief. 'Charming.'

'Well, yes, absolutely. Charming.' Hatherill lit one of his cigarettes. He didn't offer them around. He waited until he blew his first, satisfying cloud of blue smoke before continuing. 'Some might say it was charming that her body was left on the beach to be tossed around like a piece of driftwood. To be defaced by the seagulls and crabs, like carrion. Some might say that was very charming indeed.'

Billy could see that the copper's neck had coloured above his white shirt. 'Sir, you have to understand people around here . . .'

Hatherill banged the desk with his free hand. A photo frame fell onto the floor and its glass cracked, but he ignored it.

'You don't have to understand "people round here" to smell greed when it gets into your nostrils. Yes, greed. Not compassion or otherwise, but greed. How else do you explain the fact that the Bones family serve a claret that wouldn't disgrace White's or Simpson's?' He paused, as if he really expected an answer. 'Well?'

Trellick shuffled. 'I don't know, sir. Relatives—'

'The same relatives who supplied the pub with the identical claret? If we were to search your mother's house, would we find a bottle or two? Well - would we?'

'I don't know.'

'I think you do. I think you know that the storms dislodged cases and cases of the stuff, destined for the warehouses of Bristol. And they ended up here - on the same beach as that poor woman. And if you reported the body, then the beach would have been sealed off and any further bonanza confiscated by the authorities. It was like, what's that film?'

' Whisky Galore,'' Billy offered, having been primed to do so.

Hatherill smoked on for a while, his face set into a mask of annoyance and disappointment. Trellick's neck was glowing crimson and glistening with sweat now. Billy almost felt sorry for the young PC.

1
Whisky Galore,' Hatherill finally repeated. 'Although in the film, I don't believe there is a body to get in the way. So in Claret Galore, the body becomes invisible. A kind of collective blindness grips the whole village. "Body? What body?" Then, once the locals are certain that all the cases that are coming their way have been washed ashore, the scales fall from their eyes. "Oh look, it's not a shop-window dummy, after all. Or a seal. It's a person. Somebody's daughter. Perhaps somebody's wife." Marvellous. "Let's call the authorities." Is that what happened, son?' He didn't wait for a reply. 'I think it was.'

'Sir...'

'No, don't say anything. You'll just dig yourself in deeper. I suspect you are not a bad local copper. I think that in five years' time, if some landlord leans on you to turn a blind eye, you'll tell him to fuck off. Even if he is your uncle. Oh, aye. A tight-knit community all right. Too tight-knit. I tell you what I am going to do. I'm going to write my report about the woman, and I will not mention my suspicions about the wine.'

'Thank you, sir.' The young officer's voice shook with relief.

'At the same time, you are going to put in for a transfer. You are going to say you need wider experience and I am going to agree. Bristol, perhaps. See what big city coppering is about. How does that sound?'

The reply was flat. 'Very good, sir. Thank you, sir.'

'I think you could show a bit more enthusiasm, son. After all,' Hatherill stared at Billy, to emphasise that his words weren't only aimed at Trellick, 'I'm giving you a second chance.'

The Night Mail screamed by, its distinctive maroon livery a blur, the porthole-like lower lights above the bogeys one continuous streak of silver. The horn sounded its double-note warning and dopplered into the night. Five feet from the train, the slipstream tugging at his clothes and distorting his face, Bruce Reynolds checked his watch, the hour he had spent crouched in the damp chill of the dead hours of the early morning forgotten.

'Two minutes late,' he said, once silence had descended, broken only by the groan and click of the steel tracks.

'Terrible,' said Charlie, looking down the line at the intense green lights and, beyond them, the fuzzy glow of Cheddington station. 'What's the average?'

Bruce had sent someone up to Sears Crossing every night for the nine previous nights, making him sit in the bushes, waiting for the Up train to roar by. 'Never more than fifteen minutes either side of three-ten.'

'It's high, isn't it? Off the ground.'

'We'll need ladders, short ones. I'll get some measurements.'

Charlie pointed to the spidery gantry that straddled the tracks. 'And that's the light Roger will fix?'

'Yes.'

There was a beat. The overhead lines hummed with unheard conversations. 'You happy with the crew we have?'

'The new faces? Well, Bobby's all right.' They knew Bobby Welch as a man who dabbled in crime, although not usually anything on this scale. He was, as Bruce liked to say, small beer, but he wouldn't have anything too challenging to accomplish. 'Tiny Dave did well enough at the airport. Jim Hussey is solid enough. What about you?'

'Beggars can't be choosers.'

'Yeah, well,' said Bruce, zipping up his jacket and turning away from the tracks. 'Maybe we won't be beggars after this.'

Charlie gave a low, rueful laugh. 'I think we said that before Heathrow.'

'Yeah. Well, maybe this is our second bite at the cherry, eh?' But his words were drowned out by another fast-moving train, punching through the night.

'What?'

'Nothing. We move it along to the next stage.'

'What's that?' asked Charlie.

'Getting the grub in.'

Thirty-eight

Battersea, South-west London, June 1963

'I do not know why I am doing this, Tony. I pay people to do this for me.'

Janie Riley sat in the passenger seat of the Hillman Husky, arms folded, her lower lip jutting out in a display of serious petulance. She had her hair backcombed and it had been dyed blonde. She looked like the singer out of the Springfields. Yet the voice coming out of her mouth was one he hadn't heard before. It was posh, refined, with all the vowels and consonants present and correct.

Tony turned off the engine. 'I don't know why I'm doing it either. As Bruce said, horses for courses.'

'Well, why can't he use that cheap whore Mary Manson?'

Mary Manson was not a cheap whore. She had, however, begun to nudge out Janie as Bruce's 'companion', turning up in the pubs and clubs where Janie once held sway. Janie wasn't sure what she had done to rock the boat. Was it her fault that Colin had rubbed Bruce up the wrong way with some hare-brained scheme about old Greek marble?

'Janie, I don't like shopping any more than you do. But everyone has a job to do. Today, yours is to help us out here.'

'Like some fishwife.'

'Don't you mean housewife?'

She glared at him. 'Fuck off.' It was, he thought, strangely attractive to be sworn at in a cut-glass accent.

She climbed out of the car, slamming the door with hinge-threatening violence, and clattered off towards the cash and carry in high heels.

Tony pulled out the handwritten shopping list and the wad of cash Bruce had given him. He guessed it was best if he didn't mention that Mary Manson had drawn up the items to be bought. Fifteen or sixteen men staying for a week in a farmhouse were going to need food and essential supplies. He locked the Husky and scanned the list as he went. Twenty-four tins of luncheon meat, four packets of Oxo, four bottles of Bovril, Campbell's soups, various flavours, corned beef, Shippam's paste, ketchup - lots of ketchup - Fairy washing-up liquid - he could imagine the fuss over who would do the bloody dishes - Maxwell House coffee, catering size, Kellogg's cornflakes, Weetabix, Ready Brek, Typhoo tea, lots of sugar, crackers (Ritz and Jacobs both specified), baked beans, tinned peas and potatoes, jam, sardines, Lifebuoy soap. The list went on, covering, it seemed, everything except booze, which Bobby Welch, the club owner, was taking care of. It looked as if Bruce was planning to feed and clean an army. Well, in a way, that was what it was. An army of villains.

Who would have thought that robbery, with or without violence, would be fuelled by two dozen cans of Spam?

He finished reading and looked back at the squat little van. It was the first time he had found a use for the Husky - none of his customers had expressed any interest in such a humdrum machine, and he was thinking of offloading it - but already he wondered if it was going to be big enough for the supplies.

Tony reached the entrance where Janie was leaning on a shopping trolley. The cash and carry was like a vast cathedral of consumerism. Instead of pews, there were rows of goods on pallets, piled high, most of them Brobdingnagian-sized 'extra-value' packets or smaller items in multiples of a dozen or a gross. You could shop for surviving a nuclear strike here, Tony thought. Maybe people did just that. Those bloody Civil Defence ads on TV would make anyone panic.