The Secret Life and Curious Death of Miss Jean Milne (18 page)

“Are you downright fastidious about that too?” Mr Sempill said.

“When I’m working, yes.”

“Working!” Mr Sempill was a quiver of outraged whiskers.

“What I do is as much work as what you do. Persecuting world travellers and scraping old drunks off the road doesn’t count as work in my book.”

“Listen to me, you blackguard . . .”

But Mr Trench decided to intervene. “Just go to sleep, Warner. Go to sleep. I’ve done my best to make things comfortable for you, but, if you prefer, I can just as easily cuff your hands behind your back.”

Warner showed his golden shark grin again, but he said nothing in reply. And that was how they passed the night: saying nothing more. The guard came in some time after ten and asked permission to turn down the gas. Mr Trench agreed. It left them with no more than a glow of blue round the edge of the blinds onto the corridor, faint and milky like those worn bits of sea glass you find tumbled on the beach, and, at the other side, sometimes suddenly wiped away by the startling lightning-flash clatter of a passing train, only a rain-streamed sheet of black where the orange tip of Warner’s cigarette reflected back at them.

Trench sprawled on his chair like a saloon bar bully, his legs stretched out to block the door, just in case Warner moved in the night. It was far from silent. The rain. The steam whistle howling like a lost beast in the darkness calling to its kin. All the shaking, rattling, thumping, creaking, squeaking noises of a moving train. The clickety-clack sound of the wheels moving over the tracks. Mr Trench had schooled himself to sleep whenever he got the chance and he might have slept through all of that, but there was something else too, very quiet and almost imperceptible so that sometimes he had to struggle to listen, as if to reassure himself that it was still there on the other side of the railway carriage and not right there on the seat beside him. It was Warner sucking and blowing through his golden teeth, not quite a whistle but more than a breath, and that tune: “Who were you with last night, out in the pale moonlight?” over and over again.

THE RAILWAY LINE passes through broad farmlands on its way north and then, briefly, into a tight cutting that contains and magnifies all the noise of the engine and then out again into open air along the edge of the Tay before launching itself onto the bridge. It was early in the morning – barely five o’clock – in late November and still as black as midnight with a heavy mist swirling about the train and clinging to the windows, but Mr Sempill could tell at once that they were almost home. The sound of the train changed and softened when they left the shore and went out onto the high bridge; everything became fainter, almost gauzy, as the roaring of the furnace, the screaming of great metal wheels turning on iron rails, the rattle of chains, the thump and bump and crash of carriages was carried up, out and down, warning them that they were now suddenly hanging over nothing with only the surge of black water waiting to swallow them if they fell.

The sound of the train changed again as it slowed on its approach to the other side, then on the long curving bend that was still, officially, “bridge” but now, at least, safely over land. Looking through the window they could see almost nothing – a few uncertain lights along the streets and, here and there, a lamp in the windows of a town waking to another day of misery and hard labour that only drunkenness could soften.

“Up,” said Mr Sempill.

They went through the tiresome business of disconnecting Warner’s chain, locking and unlocking, unfixing and refixing his handcuffs, and when it was done and his wrists were once again manacled together, Mr Trench stood, holding the chain that linked them in a fist the size of a ham.

“Don’t try to run,” he said.

Warner looked at him with cool contempt.

“I mean it. Believe me, you won’t get far with the cuffs on. It’s surprising how tying a man’s hands interferes with his legs, and you’ll have the whole city after you. You will be caught and it would look worse for you.”

“I’m not running,” Warner said. “I’ve got nothing to fear.”

The train stopped, so gradually and so slowly that, for a moment, they were unsure if it had actually happened. Trench got down first. Warner was waiting on the step of the railway carriage, Mr Sempill’s restraining hand on his shoulder. Trench turned and gripped the handcuff chain again, urged him forward, and put his free hand on Warner’s elbow to help him down. It was a kind gesture and Warner, who was unused to kindness, looked down and smiled.

On the platform, everything smelled of smoke and hot machine oil. There was the sound of heavy wooden doors banging shut along the length of the train. The engine released a gigantic fart of steam as they passed. It curled up and backwards from the concrete lip of the platform and was lost in the fog, disappearing among the billion drops of water already hanging in the air. Mr Sempill led the way, carrying his cane like a club, ready to bring it down on Warner’s head if he tried to break away. Behind him came Mr Trench, one hand gripping Warner’s chains, the other carrying his overnight bag with his umbrella – always his umbrella – securely buckled to the side of it with leather straps.

They went past the little wooden book stall with its bales of newspapers dumped by the door, up the stairs, through the abandoned turnstiles and out into the street. It was like walking into the midst of a cloud or seeing what the divers see when they are screwed into their huge, heavy brass helmets and dropped off the side of a ship. Everything was softened by the mix of darkness and mist and weary gaslights that made blobs of yellow in the air and shone no further than their own shadowed feet. Behind them there was the workaday brick of Tay Bridge station. Off to their right, the pier for the ferries that went back and forth across the Tay. To the left, the mad, baronial, Italianate fantasy of the West station, and across the road, silent but for an early coal cart, the Parisian grandeur of Mather’s Temperance Hotel with, beyond that, the lights of the ships tied up along Victoria Dock.

“I see they have failed to provide a police van,” said Mr Sempill. He made no complaint. It was as if he were pleased to be disappointed and let down by the City of Dundee Police. “They insist on us keeping him here, though God knows what’s wrong with our own cells. The very least they could have done was send the van on time.”

“They knew we were coming?” said Mr Trench.

“I sent the telegram myself.” He fished in his coat pocket. “Look, there’s the receipt. Every penny properly accounted for.”

Warner gave a throaty laugh. He held up a stub of cigarette in two cuffed hands for Mr Trench to light. He had a look in his eye that said: “Oh, you can just bet every penny is properly accounted for.”

“I could have the stationmaster call, if you like, sir.”

“We’ll give them a moment.” Mr Sempill knew the pleasure of calling Dundee Police headquarters would be all the sweeter if he could complain he had been forced to wait in soaking, freezing fog for a time.

But Warner’s cigarette had not burned down before they saw the lamps of a horse van approaching down Union Street, and not very long after that, it was rolling and clattering over the worn and broken cobbles in front of the station.

The man in front knuckled his hat and said: “Chief Constable Sempill?”

“You’re late,” he said, although it was clear he wished the man had been later.

The driver got down from his seat and unbolted the door at the back of the cab.

“Good God, man, what is that stench?” Mr Sempill was horror-struck and he clamped a handkerchief to his face.

“Last customer, sir. Boaked in the back. There wisnae time fer tae tak a bucket tae’t. But ah can pit a blanket ower it.”

“Please don’t trouble yourself,” said Mr Sempill. He slammed the door shut. “We’ll walk.”

“Gee whizz,” Warner said. “It’s mighty generous of you, Chiefy. I will say that. Real white of you, but please don’t trouble on my account. I’ve been in places that stunk worse, believe me. Last night, for example.”

Mr Trench said: “Shut up.” He took a key from his pocket, then released Warner’s left handcuff and fixed it round his own right wrist. “Now walk.”

They made an odd sight, the three of them, trudging through the waking town: Mr Sempill, quietly satisfied to have been so spectacularly let down, Mr Trench with his case and his umbrella in one hand, and Warner balancing the other side while the stinking police van rolled along beside them, back up Union Street, up Tally Street, through the Overgate with its tiny shopfronts and its verminous closes and its tenements piled high to the dark and dripping sky, up Lindsay Street and then to the Police Chambers, just across the lane from the new burial ground with its mortuary, where Miss Milne had lain for a little while.

It was, without a doubt, considerably more impressive than the modest little station of Broughty Ferry. There were magnificent gates that led through to a courtyard and, beyond that, a great stone building fitting for a body of the power and majesty of Dundee City Police, with much in the way of polished brass work, gleaming mahogany and carved folderols. The police offices formed one wing of a massive monument to justice. In the centre there was the court, with its pillared entrance portico under the royal arms. Here were the offices of Mr Procurator Fiscal Mackintosh – no friend of Broughty Ferry Burgh Police – and the Sheriff Clerk. Here were several magnificent and terrifying court rooms, in one of which, Mr Sempill devoutly hoped, Warner would shortly be condemned to death, and, at the far side of the building, in a wing which mirrored the police station with a perfect Grecian simplicity, the city jail. It was a matter of deep regret to Mr Sempill that hangings were no longer permitted in Dundee prison. The authorities, in their great wisdom, had ruled that, for reasons of decency and dignity, His Majesty’s Prison at Perth was more fitting for such events. Still, as he signed the necessary papers consigning his prisoner to Dundee, Mr Sempill decided that a trip to Perth was not too severe an imposition. It would take no more than half an hour on the early train. He could arrive in plenty of time for an eight o’clock appointment. Or might it be wiser to stay overnight? The George? An ideal spot for a celebratory lunch. You could get an excellent steak pie at the George and a bottle of Guinness to wash it down. Mr Neaves would like that. It would make the whole thing into a jaunt and well worth the trouble of the visit. You couldn’t ask a man to come all the way from Kent for a hanging and not give him a bit of a feed too. Mr Sempill signed his name with a flourish.

“Thank you, sir,” said the desk sergeant. “Now, if you’d care to bring the gentleman along, sir, we’ll get him tucked up with a nice bit of breakfast.”

Mr Trench left his case and his umbrella on the front counter and walked along the white-tiled corridor, leading Warner to the first cell with an open door. It was clean and tidy and, all things considered, it hardly stank at all. He led Warner inside and unlocked the cuffs.

“Maid’s day off?” Warner said.

“You’ve had worse,” Trench said. “You told me yourself.”

“Indeed I have. Like last night.” But the joke was as stale as the air in the cell.

Warner sat down on the bed, but the desk sergeant said: “Up!” as if he meant it. “Get up. You go to your bed after lights out and you don’t get back in your bed until lights out. In the daytime, you sit there.” He motioned to a hard wooden chair beside the table in the corner.

“I sit there?” Warner got off the bed and sat down where he was told. “All day?”

“Not if you don’t want to,” said the sergeant. “If you don’t want to sit—”

“No, don’t spoil it. Let me guess. If I don’t want to sit, I can stand.”

“I can see you and me are going to get along like a house on fire.” The sergeant turned to Mr Trench. “Anything else, sir?”

“He needs his breakfast.”

“Coming along shortly, sir. We never stint on a breakfast here, sir. Take a pride in that, so we do.”

“Very good. I have some cash I want to sign in to the prisoner’s account. Ten pound one and fourpence.”

The sergeant raised his eyebrows. “A handy sum. I’ll make out a receipt.”

“Thank you.”

Mr Trench turned to go, but Warner said: “Wait a minute. What am I supposed to do?”

“Sit on that chair and have your breakfast.”

“And then what? You can’t just throw me in this lousy hole and keep me here.”

“You’re going into another identity parade. The witnesses who did not travel to Kent.”

“You mean the ones you couldn’t buy with a trip to the Hippodrome!”

“There are more than a dozen witnesses who saw a man answering your description, either in company with the dead woman or lurking around her house or both. Over a dozen, Warner. We will hear what they have to say. Then their testimony will be put before the Sheriff. He will decide if there is a case for you to answer. If he agrees that there is, you may be committed. If you are committed, you will be held in prison until your trial.”

“And how long will that be?”

“Not more than one hundred and ten days.”

“So you say, copper.”

“It’s the law.”

For the first time, Warner seemed concerned about his predicament. “I think I need a lawyer.”

“I think you do.”

“Will you help me? Please?”

Mr Trench looked up at the roof for a moment and huffed out a big breath from under his moustache. “I’ll do what I can. It’s a good job you got that money order.”

“A tenner won’t get me through a murder trial.”

“Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.” Mr Trench started for the door again.

“Could you spare me another cigarette?”

Trench tossed him the broken pack. “It’s half full. All right for matches?”

Warner nodded and the cell door clanged shut with an echo. As Mr Trench went back down the corridor he heard the sound of a man singing – singing in a nervous, shaky voice, singing to keep his courage up – “Who were you with last night, out in the pale moonlight? It wasn’t yer sister, it wasn’t yer ma – ahh ah ah ah aha aha.”