Lost baggage porter

Chapter Twenty-one

Whatever had happened to his hands, the clerk could run, and he could scream, and it was as if this scream was the particular cause of an event that had been inevitable all along: the clerk running out of the shed mouth, and Sampson calmly making towards the shed mouth while shooting the revolver at the clerk.

I ran at Sampson as one, two, three shots were fired. As the fourth bullet was loosed, I crashed into the side of Sampson roaring 'Police!'

Sampson went down with the gun in his hand, and before any expression could come over his features, I heard Miles Hopkins calling, 'He's fucking right n' all!'

From down on the ground, I saw a figure walking along the tracks towards us from the southerly end of the station. As I watched, the man's thin hair blew upright in the breeze that had come with the dawn, and then it fell again. What I had said had miraculously turned out to be the truth, for it was the Chief. He wore his long overcoat, and was carrying a walking stick, except that this stick never touched the ground. It was no stick but a rifle. Somebody had noticed the disturbance in the shed, and he had been sent for. A call boy would have gone out from the station. The clerk was between us and the Chief. He was a dark, low shape crawling along one of the tracks towards the station, and then he was just a dark low shape. The Chief was hard by him now, crouching down. After a moment, he stood up and walked on. Valentine Sampson was frozen into a firing position, gun pointed at the Chief. It seemed impossible that Sampson would ever move. He was like a signpost, and Miles Hopkins was next to him, talking fast, reasonable-like, saying: 'Put the gun down, we can take the readies and be out of here…'

Sampson seemed to think it over for a second.

'I'll fire once more; see us right,' he said, and immediately did so.

The Chief went down.

Sampson and Hopkins were straight into the office, pulling money out of the hole in the safe, and putting it into the sack that the clerk had been made to carry. I looked out again. The clerk was still down; the Chief was still down. Behind them, the station was making its own dawn: a few more gas lamps lit as work started; a few men moving about. Had they heard the shots? One engine was in – standing at one of the bay platforms on the 'down' side, and so looking the wrong way. I looked sidelong to Sampson and Hopkins, still stowing money in the bag. Of the young bloke, I could see no sign. I started to run for the shed mouth, and the Chief rose to his feet from down on the tracks; as he did so, his hair rose too, and he lifted his gun.

'Chief!' I bawled, but the shot came anyway, and it checked me at the shed mouth. Sampson was by my side now. If he'd heard the shout of Chief, and taken it amiss… well, there was no sign of that in his face. He was back in his gun-firing pose, only this time with the money sack over his shoulder. He tilted his head backwards a couple of times, as though aiming with his sharp beard. He looked like Robin Hood. He fired. I looked out again, and couldn't see the Chief.

'Chief'1 said to Sampson, so as to make him think I'd been calling for him in the first place, 'let's away.'

He clean ignored me. He was still in his firing pose, but he relinquished it a moment later, with a look of irritation. Hopkins was by his side once again. They were both going into a kind of crouch.

Sampson gave a roar, and they ran off to the right, out through the shed, skirting the tracks of the 'up' side. I ran a little way with them, keeping low, as they were, but as we came towards the carriage sidings where the joint stock sleeping cars were berthed, I thought: 'What am I about?' and stopped dead.

My body was perfectly still in the freezing darkness, and my mind in a whirl. If the Chief was alive, then…

Sampson was facing me, the joint stock carriage behind him. His gun was facing me, too.

'You come along with us, Allan,' he said.

'I'm just thinking on'1 said, for want of anything else to say.

I fell in behind them as they walked quickly over the tracks through the carriage sidings and towards the disused Queen Street loco erecting shop. No further shots came. The Chief had approached us alone. I thought of him striding south out of the station with his gun in his hand. There was more to him than breakfast, and that was fact… But he was crazy, as I'd suspected all along. He'd put me in this fix, and given me no way out.

We were into the Rhubarb Sidings once again. Two blokes stood by the wagons of the night before, but there was no engine in sight. They watched us as we passed. Had they heard the gunshots? If so, they might have taken them for fog detonators, because the darkness of the day was clearing too slowly, and it would be a misty morning. We pushed on up Queen Street, on to Station Road, and then turned right into Blossom Street, running now, away from railway lands.

Sampson, walking fast beside me, had the revolver still in his hand, although somewhat disguised by the money sack, which was half wrapped round his fist, like a bandage. We were on Tadcaster Road; trees and big houses to our right, Knavesmire and the racecourse to our left. A carriage or cart came past every couple of minutes, appearing from, or disappearing into, the rising mist. Lights were glowing in some of the grand houses, as the servants started them up, like fire lighters in an engine shed.

Sampson was crossing the road now, me and Miles Hopkins following. I wanted to think about many things, but the only thought that would come: I had failed in police work as I had in engine driving. I had failed (as I saw it) because of others, but was it right to be always throwing blame? Did the case not come down to this: that the world was more full of difficulty than I had ever imagined?

Sampson was climbing over the railings separating the road from the Knavesmire. I followed; Hopkins followed.

'Well then, little Allan,' Sampson was saying, as we strode through the wet grass, 'that's oxyacetylene cutting for you. Think it'll catch on?'

I made no reply; I was walking by his side, and that was as much as I would do to accommodate him. He seemed very keen that I should be by his side, and Hopkins too, who was lagging behind slightly in the mist. He kept checking on the two of us, with sidelong or rearward glances, and the message was clear: we are in a box over this, and we were to stay together. After all, anyone free of Sampson was free to talk.

'Well that was nice,' said Hopkins, 'two men fucking dead.'

'Trust you to bring that up,' said Sampson. We'd stopped now, under a dripping tree, deep in the mist of the Knavesmire.A cow walked out of the fog towards us. 'Fuck off out of it,' said Sampson to the cow. It turned around and walked away. 'Who was that bloke firing on us?' said Sampson. 'That's what I want to know.' He looked at me. 'Search me,' I said. 'You said it was a copper,' Hopkins said to me. He was dead-eyed now, all that mischievous sparkle put out. 'Aye,' I said, 'and you agreed.' 'Where did he get the bloody gun from?' said Sampson. 'Likely he was an old soldier,' I heard myself saying. 'The police ought not to be armed,' said Sampson. 'I don't bloody hold with it… And who alerted him?' 'Well let me make a hazard,' said Hopkins. 'Perhaps it was the sight of the sparks through the window, or the shot that rang out when you played your little game with the lantern; or the bloody great raging fire that broke out in the end.' 'I suppose you think you could have managed it better?' said Sampson. He dropped the revolver into the sack, and slung it over his shoulder. In his countrified suit he looked quite at home, like a sort of gentleman poacher. He was shaking his head, saying: 'Some bugger split on us…' 'At least it wasn't the bloody Camerons,' Sampson continued, 'and that's for certain.' Silence for a space. 'Well, we've got the money, and that's the main thing,' said Sampson, who was now pissing against a tree. 'I'm beastly hungry,' said Hopkins. The carts and traps and wagons were going along Tadcast- er Road towards town at a greater rate now, the rattle and jingle of them was making itself heard even if they were still out of sight.

'Reckon we head back to the station' said Sampson.

The cow reappeared from out of the mist, just as if it had been thinking over what Sampson had said, and decided it was owed an apology. Sampson looked at the cow and said: 'We must stay out of Yorkshire for a little while.'

I thought of the wife, waiting for me, and the sudden possibility of my travelling further away from her rather than towards. Sampson was now leading us back in the direction of the station as Miles Hopkins said: 'What makes you think it won't be ringed with bloody coppers?'

'It's the last place they'll expect us,' said Sampson.

I noticed that he kept his hand in the sack, where it rested (no doubt) upon the gun.

All along Tadcaster Road, workpeople were now filing into town, through the rising mist and falling rain. We walked faster than them, weaving in and out of the column.

We turned left into Railway Street, and there was a copper leaning against the inn that stood on the corner there. I turned my face towards him as we approached and, in my mind's eye, pictured my breakaway. I would cry out to him, 'These are the blokes you're after!' and he would take on Hopkins, while I…

No, because sacking does nothing to check the travel of a bullet.

I looked again at the copper. It was the well set-up copper from the Grapes; the one who'd been fixed, Mr Five Pounds. As he looked at Sampson there were about as many questions packed into his expression as I'd ever seen on one face, but nothing was said until, twenty yards further on, Sampson turned to Hopkins, remarking: 'That was money well spent.' We marched through the station portico, amid the confusion of cabs and horses, and then we were into the smoke- smelling, reluctant grey-blue light of Monday morning in the world of work. We were still walking fast, the crowded booking halls on either side. We were not going to buy tickets, at any rate.

We walked through the ticket gate, and Sampson said to the fellow there, 'We're meeting someone in,' as if we looked like the sort of blokes who greeted people alighting from trains. We were on Platform Four now. I looked up at the footbridge, and saw the Lad, the telegraph messenger, but he was walking away to the 'down' side, thank Christ, because one cheery 'Good morning' from him could have caused more questions from the ever-watchful Hopkins than I could safely answer.

We turned left, and pushed along to the south end of Platform Four, where about a score of people, widely spaced, stood waiting miserably for a train.

At the very southern tip of the platform, where it sloped down on to the cinders, stood an abandoned baggage trolley. Hopkins climbed up on to it, and looked towards the southern sheds; two trains were rocking towards the station from that direction. It struck me for the first time that railwaymen were traitors in a way, for they took all the other workpeople to their factory and office prisons.

Sampson sat on the baggage trolley, facing the tracks before him rather than south. The sack rested by his side as he lit a cigar, saying, 'How many bodies do you see, then, mate?'

'None,' said Hopkins, who was still peering towards the engine shed, scene of our late adventure. He too now sat down on the cart.

Had the little clerk and the Chief been carried away, or had they walked away? I was gazing in a northerly direction along the platform – towards the door of the Police Office, and there was no sign of life there at any rate. It was coming up to six o'clock, too early in the day for Shillito and the other sportsmen to be in there. I saw instead a porter making towards us. I'd seen him about in the station, and he'd seen me, possibly wearing, and possibly not wearing, the glasses I was now lumbered with… But he gave no sign of knowing me. He stood before the three of us, saying 'What are you blokes after?'

We'd attracted his attention by sitting so far towards the end of Platform Four.

'Waiting for a fucking train, what d'you think?' said Hopkins.

'Any particular one?' asked the porter.

'Anything London way,' said Sampson, looking up at him, the sack once more in his hands.

The porter nodded, while I thought, I will not be carried away to London. I was no better than a leaf in the wind, blown in any direction.

The porter said: 'Six-eleven, this platform.'

He then turned and walked away, and Sampson said, 'I thought we might've had bother from him.'

'You don't know he en't run off to fetch a copper,' said Hopkins, but even as he spoke the bell rang, and the London train came around the curve at the station north end, driving through the rain with unstoppable force. I could not help but notice that it was one of the Class J singles, with one mighty driving wheel in either side. I waited on tenterhooks, thinking that something surely must come along to prevent me climbing aboard.

But nothing did.