The Blackpool Highflyer

Chapter Seventeen

Cicely Braithwaite was waiting for us outside the front of the Joint, with all the cab drivers eyeing her. She kissed the wife, saying: 'It was you sent him up to the mill, wasn't it dear?'

'It was,' said the wife.

'Of course, you know what did for the old man?' she said to us both. 'His heart.'

'Go on,' I said.

'Well,' said Cicely, 'it stopped.'

'And it was on account of a motorcar, wasn't it?' I asked her.

Cicely nodded. 'Frightened the life out of the old man,' she said, and then she coloured up. 'You know, it's the first time I've said that when it's actually been true.'

'Did the motorcar do anything?' I asked.

Cicely shook her head. 'Barley, that's the old man's man… He said it just came too close as it passed by… and it was going at a fair rate of course, as they all do.'

I could hear Knowles, the stationmaster, shouting at a porter: something about an out-of-date auction poster and how it wanted taking down sharpish. I looked at the clock over the station. 'If I nip up fast for our tickets,' I said, 'we should be in time for the one thirty-two – stopping train for Blackpool. Hebden's first stop.'

'Does he have Bradshaw off by heart?' Cicely said to the wife, as I climbed the steps to the ticket office.

As I waited at the ticket window, I thought about motorcars. The one that had run alongside us before the smash had looked like a giant baby-carriage, and so had the one on Beacon Hill. And so did they all, except for a certain other kind that looked like boats. I'd asked the wife, and she'd said that her Mr Robinson owned a motorcar.

The Courier was always going on about how they were the terrors of the countryside, I knew that much, and it was said they should be taxed. I didn't believe the Socialist Mission could run to one, even though old Hind might have been in their sights as an operator of wage slavery.

Dick served me at the ticket window. I could see Bob in the office behind him. I tried to remember the difference between them. Dick was the one who could write with two hands; Bob was the one that couldn't.

'George about?' I asked.

He was not; day off.

'I can't understand Bradshaw's,' Cicely was saying, as I returned. 'Whenever I find the train I need, I look down the page and there's a note saying "Only on Weekdays", and it never is a weekday that I want to take a train.'

'There's worse than that,' said the wife. 'Only go on Thursday afternoons, half of them.'

The train came in on time, pulled by one of Mr Aspinall's 060s, but that was lost on the ladies. We found an empty compartment in Third. I sat next to the wife on one side, Cicely sat on the other. As the whistle was blown, Cicely said, 'I suppose Mr Hind will have to break off his sailing holiday. He'll be awfully cut up to hear the news.'

'Rubbish,' said the wife, and Cicely frowned as the engine started away.

'Well, it's a shame that the poor old -'

'Fossil,' put in the wife.

'The poor old gentleman', said Cicely, 'did not get to a hundred, because then you receive a telegram from the… Oh, now that reminds me.' And Cicely began telling a story about Hind's Mill. 'Before he went off sailing, Mr Hind asked me to take a letter, which always gets me in a tiz. He's so fast, it's very hard to take him down verbatim, although I'm sure you can do it, love.' She touched the wife on her knee.

'He usually writes out the letters he wants me to send,' said the wife. 'I've only taken one from him verbatim.'

'How did you get on?'

'I asked him to talk more slowly.'

Cicely went wide-eyed and forgot all about her story for the moment, looking the spit of Young Leonard, the doll of Henry Clarke. 'Well he must be dead keen on you then,' she said, 'or you'd have been stood down in a moment.'

The wife was smiling, looking out of the window and kicking her foot, smiling at the flashing sunshine and the smokeless Saturday-afternoon mills going by. I pulled down the window strap and lit one of the last of the 'B's that I'd bought with George Ogden. A man went past in the corridor, and I thought: now by rights he'll be envious seeing me sitting here with two beauties. Though I'd lain awake most of the night as usual, trying to make a connection between the death of old Hind and all else, I was now feeling a little better about things: I would just go on searching until I knew the name of the person who'd put the stone on the line. Meanwhile I was dead set on having a pleasant afternoon.

'Do carry on with your story, Cicely,' I said, and I put on a bit of a swell's voice for that, so the wife gave me a funny look.

'Mr Hind had me into his room,' Cicely went on, 'and after a bit of doing his usual -'

The wife was frowning at her; we were rattling past Sowerby Bridge.

'You know,' Cicely said, 'the funny…'

'Funny what?' I said, puffing out smoke.

'The funny-osity. He never says anything, but just puts his hands -'

The wife shook her head, as if to say: not in front of a man, which was a shame, because I'd have liked to hear more about the funny-osity.

'Anyway,' Cicely continued, 'Mr Hind said, "I would like you to take a letter." I said, "Who to, Mr Hind?" and he said, "To the King!'"

'He never did!' I said, and the wife gave me another look.'I've not told you this, dear,' said Cicely, grinning all around her head, 'because I was saving it up for today. Anyway it was a very long letter, and it was to go with six suits that we were sending His Majesty.'

The wife rolled her eyes.

'The letter was saying, you know, please find herewith six suits, only in a smarter way, and was all about how they were made from the finest woollens. I never knew this, but Hind's Mill has been sending the Royal Family six suits for the staff at Balmoral every year for forty-seven years, and when we send off the fiftieth lot of six, we're to be in the Halifax Courier, Mr Hind says.'

'You'd think he'd want to keep quiet about such a daft scheme,' said the wife.

'Why six?' I said.

'I don't know,' said Cicely. 'Nobody knows.'

'To think what it must cost,' said the wife, 'and Hind laying people off in their dozens over the light suiting.'

'The letter was to go to the King's Secretary,' Cicely continued, 'who's the Right Honourable Lord… something, with a lot of letters after his name – more letters after his name than in it. I have the letter by heart if you want to hear.'

She looked across the carriage at the two of us; again she was dividing us, because I wanted to hear, and the wife, I knew, didn't care to.

'Go on, Cicely,' I said, blowing smoke.

'My Lord,' said Cicely. 'We would be grateful if His Majesty would be so gracious -'

'Makes you quite sick,' said the wife.

'- so gracious,' Cicely continued, frowning at the wife, 'as to receive this gift of six suits for the royal staff at Balmoral.'

But such a frost had been created by the wife that Cicely just said, 'Eee, Lydia,' and gave a very Yorkshire sort of sigh. Then she perked up, saying: 'Oh, talking of letters…' And she passed an envelope over to me.

I didn't have time to picture my worst fears before they were actually there on the page. It started straight in with: 'I saw you yesterday at the mill with Cicely, who says your wife is the new one in the office. This letter is in case you want to know more about Maggie Dyson, the lady you killed.'

Cicely and the wife were talking. I read on, but not every word. I kept my eyes half turned away, as if looking at the sun.

There was something about Dyson's husband, how his heart had given out at a young age; something about the boy, who was so quiet where his mother was lively, but still she doted on him: 'No living child was better fed or clothed.' There was another part about the boy's dog, which was quiet too, and didn't need looking after, 'even on railway stations'. It seemed to be good that the dog was quiet, but a worry that the boy was so silent.

It ended: 'To think that in her hour of need she had you. It must be a judgement upon her, but why only God knows.'

There was a looking glass on the opposite side of the carriage: I saw in it a boy smoking a cigar, trying to be something he was not.

'Who on earth is writing to you?' asked the wife.

Cicely answered: 'It's from Mary-Ann Roberts, love, one of the weavers. She saw Jim at the mill yesterday and stayed behind to write a letter. She asked me to give it him. What it's about I don't know, I'm sure.'

'It's just about the smash,' I said.

'What about it?' said Cicely. And I was sure the tears were coming again.

'Oh, nothing to speak of,' I said.

I stood up and pitched the letter through the window, sending my cigar flying after it. The girls looked at me strangely for a moment; then carried on with the chatting. On top of everything, I felt a coward for covering things up.

‹o›--

We climbed out at Hebden Bridge and stood before the notice on the platform: 'for hardcastle crags: an ideal spot for picnic parties'. The sound of our train departing gave way to the clattering of the weir by the station. The town was a little way to the west, with woods coming down to it from the hills on all sides. There were mills at Hebden, but they were small ones: house-sized, family goes, putting out thin trails of smoke instead of black fogs.

As we set off walking, I picked up the wife's basket with the blanket on top. 'This is a rather light picnic,' I said.

'We'll pick up a bite in the town,' she said. 'It's on the way, and there's a Co-operative Stores.'

We crossed the river Calder by a bridge called the Victoria Bridge. We walked in a line, dawdling, Cicely in front twirling her sunshade, calling out that this spot could be just as good as Blackpool, if only there were afternoon dances to be found, and me cursing Mary-Ann Roberts. There was a swan going along underneath us, with cygnets following behind, like a train.

Then the wife caught sight of a baker's van heading into the town, and said we must follow it because it had the words 'hebden bridge co-operative society' on the side. We followed it into Commercial Street, and the wife got excited over the store having a butchery as well as a bakery. It was funny how easily people could enjoy life when they didn't have a death to answer for.

'If they can lay their hands on the coin for that,' she said, 'there must be hundreds of members.'

The wife picked up bottles of cola, Eccles cakes, apples and eggs. But when she came out with our divvy number, the shopkeeper shook his head and said, 'That's a Halifax number.' The wife believed you should be able to use a Halifax divvy number in a Co-op at Hebden Bridge or anywhere else, and told the man so, but he didn't seem bothered either way. Even though he had a butchery and a bakery, he was not go- ahead.

He told Cicely that some of the eggs she was looking over were pre-boiled, all ready for picnicking. Cicely laughed, and said, 'Shall we take them and drop them to test it?' and the man said, 'You can do what you bloody want after you've paid for and taken them away.'

'You've a hope of getting new members if that's how you talk to customers,' said the wife.

'I'll not have people cracking eggs on my floor,' he said.

As we were leaving, though, the shopkeeper walked out from behind his counter and, throwing one of the eggs towards Cicely, shouted, 'Catch!'

Cicely did catch it, going very red in the process. 'Well,' she said, as we walked down the road with our full basket, 'he was all right in the end.'

We walked up to a cluster of finger posts on a pole. They showed the way to Granny Wood, Common Bank Wood, Owler Bank, Wood End, Hardcastle Crags.

'What's at Hardcastle Crags?' asked Cicely, a little anxiously.

'Rocks,' I said.

'Do they do teas?' said Cicely.

'Do who do them?' I asked.

'Lonely spot, is it?'

'Except for the hundreds of trippers,' said the wife.

'It's known as Little Switzerland, or England's Alps,' said the wife. 'I read about it in the library. There's a mill up there that's now a tea room, but was in full cry until only a few years ago, working dozens of little weaving girls half to death.'

'It is very pleasantly situated, though,' I said.

We walked along Lees Road, which was in the valley of Hebden Water, and, after passing Nut Clough Mill, fell in with a line of trippers trooping on one another's heels up to the Crags. Occasionally a gig would come along with some toffs on board, and fairly bulging with up-to-date patent cookers and whatnot.

It was scorching hot, and because of what Cicely had said the day before, I fell to thinking about my good suit, which was probably twenty-eight ounces like my work ones. Well, it was too much. I wore it every single Sunday, but for half the year I'd be far better off without it.

We walked on, and after a mile of hard going Cicely's sunshade had stopped twirling, and she'd fallen behind.

'Clog on!' called the wife, turning and grinning at her.

That's proper Yorkshire, that is!' Cicely called back, but she didn't pick up the pace.

We knew we'd come to Hardcastle Crags when we began to see oak trees on the hillsides. Underneath them, the light and shade was all criss-crossed. There were lots of signs telling you not to use patent cookers, and lots of people using them. Each little group would look up and scowl as you went past, just in case you were thinking of sitting near. It was the valley of a stream that was out of sight below, but noisy with it. We sat down next to a party that was just leaving. They looked well-to-do, and had managed to have a knife-and-fork dinner. They were now cleaning the knives by sticking them straight into the ground and yanking them out again. Cicely was quite hypnotised by this. 'I'll bet it doesn't work with the forks,' she said after a while, as if coming out of a dream. Then, looking all about, she said, 'The forget-me-nots are all on the go.' She sighed, adding, 'Oh, they're so viewsome. They've always been my favourites.'

We stretched out our blankets and ate our dinner, which took about five minutes flat. What I'd have liked was a bottle or two of beer, but instead I said, 'Who'd like to walk a bit further up?'

'What happens up there?' asked Cicely.

'You hit the tree line where all the vegetation gives out.'

'Doesn't sound so exciting,' said Cicely.

A few minutes later, the wife spotted a little sign reading 'flower office', and pointing up. This was a round hut where flowers were explained. It was very close inside and smelt strongly of plants, although there were only pictures of plants on show, with the parts – roots, flowers and stems – shown separately like the parts of a machine. In the middle was a glass case containing books open at certain pages and showing maps of the Crags. Everybody shuffled around in a circle, boots making a din on the floorboards.

There was an old lady standing in the hut. Everybody had to keep dodging around her, but it turned out she was there to be asked questions. A couple of smart sorts came out with a few, speaking the Latin names of the plants for swank.

Cicely asked the old lady: 'Is it allowed to pick any of the flowers round about?'

'It is not,' said the old lady. 'And there is a ten-shilling fine for those that do.'

Cicely walked directly out, and the wife followed her.

A minute after, I came out myself, and the sun had suddenly swung away. Well, it was not completely gone. There were floating shadows and patches of light in the trees; then would come a surge of cool wind and rattling leaves. I saw the wife walking through some yellow flowers with her skirt lifted almost to the knee.

'Where's Cicely?' I asked her.

'I don't know. I've looked all about. The way she was spoken to, and it's the second time today -' And here she raised her voice so that it might carry to where we'd just been: 'If that woman was not standing there everyone would be able to walk around the hut properly. Has anybody thought of that?' She was now looking down at the ground. 'All the flowers are labelled with little tickets,' she said, 'it's like a shop.'

'I thought you liked shops,' I said.

'I would rather find out about the flowers by myself.'

'How?'

'I would save up for a book which had pictures and explanations, and I would match those up with the ones I see growing.'

'You'd be walking about all day,' I said.

'I might very well be.'She took off her hat, and, keeping it in her teeth, changed her hair at the back. She asked me if I would pass her the shawl that was in the basket. She pulled it around herself and put both her arms around my waist.

'I'm froz,' she said, practising her Yorkshire again.

Rain came with the next gust of wind, and you could hear the cries from the trees all around as picnics were brought to an end. I picked up the basket and we walked up, away from the stream towards the dining room in the old mill. When we got there, we saw a big sign on the wall saying 'teas and dances', and we knew Cicely would be inside.

She was eating chocolate and drinking tea at one of what seemed like hundreds of tables. Even so, the old mill looked empty. They hadn't put as much back in as they had taken out.

When Cicely saw us, she shouted: 'Oh do come on, or else I shall finish all this chocolate cake!'

'She seems quite herself again,' said the wife.

'The dancing starts shortly,' said Cicely when we reached the table. 'And there's a programme.'

'Do they run to a waltz?' asked the wife.

She passed over a piece of paper. The wife read it and, sitting down, said to Cicely: 'The two of us shall have a waltz, dear.'

The wife was a good dancer.

In short order, the floor was full of people waiting for someone to walk over to the piano. I looked up at the roof. Brackets that had held machinery were still stuck out from the tops of the walls like gibbets, and there were flowers jammed in at odd places. When I looked down again there was a man at the piano.

The waltz began, and, as Cicely and the wife walked hand in hand to the dance floor, I decided to take a turn outside. It was raining more heavily, but the sun was out once again. Two minutes later, I was walking in the woods in the rain and the sun, when I heard a crashing noise that shouldn't have been made by any picnicker. I stood still, and the noise was followed by a crack and a shout.

Down below, the stream was racing on as before. I heard another cry. Walking smartly towards the sound, I struck a rock that had been broken in two by a tree that had been growing up through the middle but was now dead, and itself broken, and, beyond these, making up the complete set, was a broken man.

I knew him, even without his gold coat: it was Martin Lowther, the ticket inspector. He lived in Hebden Bridge. His head was half beard, half blood. He was in shirtsleeves, with cuffs undone and no gold on his clothes to protect him. Without his coat he looked like a tortoise without its shell. And both his legs were in the wrong positions, as if they'd swapped sides. It was the impossible before my own eyes; the sun and the rain together; engine number 1418 half off the tracks.

As I crashed down through the bracken towards Lowther, I saw a long, thin man down at the beck. He was running hard along its banks, leaping the water as clear flat grass for running came up on either side: long feet, big strides, like Little Titch in flight, with legs as wings, and head going backwards and forwards like a pump. It looked as if he was racing the water itself. He was nobody that I knew.

Letting my coat slide off my shoulders, I tumbled down the little mountain and fell in behind him.

The long fellow scarpered up a bank and struck the valley road, Lees Road. But as I went up the bank to follow, a thorn scraped through my bandage and touched my burn. I stopped for a moment to stare as the red line came alive with blood; then, smearing the bandage back round as best I could, I set off again.

There were not many on the road, just a few half-hearted stragglers: tardy sorts, and now they were all in my way. They'd seen one man running, now they saw another. They didn't connect us – at least no one called out any encouragement.

The trees seemed to be rolling in a light wind. This was blowing the rain away, and the sun was coming out with a violent force. It had got a taste for shining that summer, and was out to cause a sensation. I forced myself on like a human hammer, boot segs clattering on the stony road. I could not see the killer but when the road twisted in the right way, I'd see the oncoming crowds part and come together, as if someone was going through them at a lick. Ahead of me, shaking in my line of sight at the bottom of the valley, was Hebden again. A rainbow was over the top of the town, and beyond that was a second rainbow, fainter but bigger – for Mytholm- royd further along the valley.

I came into Hebden, and the sound of my boots changed to a ringing echo in the streets.

The place was full of happy excursionists: the skylarking, drink-taking sort who didn't fancy the hike up to the Crags. They roved between the pubs, or stood crowding pavements near the jug-and-bottle doors. I skidded into half a dozen streets about the main square, seeing nothing, and came to rest in front of the town chapel. But the sound of one desperate fellow's boots clattering continued. The runner, with his jerking head, was five hundred yards off, the only man on Burnley Road, and he was going hard for the right turn that'd take him over the canal and river, and into the railway station.

He was on the bridge as I came onto Burnley Road. As I hit the bridge, the railway station swallowed him up. I shot past the booking office and onto the down platform. The light changed, got brighter and darker all in a moment. Light rain was coming down all around the station, but I was under the canopy. I could see the rain but it was not real to me. I was far too hot for anything, and the platform did not seem to be quite level.

I turned and turned. There was a porter standing next to me on the down. A clerk was coming out of the General Room. There were four passengers on the down, more in the waiting room. All my thoughts were of the down. A train came in, blurring everything. Very short train, three rattlers on. The porter shouted 'Rochdale train!' The four on the platform looked at him and got on, as if they were obeying him. The engine began to blow off steam – bad driving – and as the steam turned to rain there was another noise from beyond and behind. I turned and saw the finger-pointing sign to the footbridge and the 'up'. In my mind the sign was saying, Hurry up to the up! There was another train in – already in and waiting on the up. I was over the bridge, and onto the platform and into the train.

A bloody rattler. No corridor. The last of the doors was slammed and I heard the tail end of the guard's shout of 'Manchester train!' As we moved out of the station and began shaking through fields, I threw off my waistcoat, but the sun soon found my compartment and ran alongside the train, roasting me all the same. I could not cool down in the compartment, which I had to myself. I sat on the seat, and a lot of dust came slowly up, sucking the breath from my lungs. There was no longer any possibility of any more rain ever. I was on the same train as the running killer, and we were going towards Manchester, the London of the North, the city where the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway had sprouted from.

I stayed sitting, leaning forwards on my seat, which somehow seemed the best way of coping with the burning, falling feeling. We came to some little station on the Lanky that I'd never been in: I caught the name as we went through slowly: Littleboro. One proud stationmaster in shirtsleeves, viewing miniature trees in tubs. More hot, lonely fields came up, sheep moving away with short, bumpy runs – couldn't be bothered to do more. We rolled into Smithy Bridge station, going slowly along the length of a poster showing a row of happy faces: it was an advertisement for Blackpool. But our three-carriage train did not stop, and we were into fields again, smaller ones, rising and falling beside us like waves. I could not picture in my mind the route from Hebden Bridge to Manchester that I was now following, and I could not remember the direction, could not move my thoughts.

I got to my feet in the carriage and turned a slow circle to help me get my bearings. I then recalled that I had boarded the train on the up. The direction we were moving in was south. I wanted to put my head out of the window to see whether the killer was looking out from his own compartment, but I could not rise.

I knew that a big town lay between Hebden Bridge and Manchester, but could not remember its name, was too hot to remember its name. Directly we stopped, I would put my hands on the other fellow, then shout for the nearest constable. But why? I clean forgot for a moment. It came back to me in a blue flash, like electricity. He had killed Lowther, the ticket inspector. He had done it for some reason to do with the stone on the line.

What would be the first stop? Looking up, I saw a mighty advertisement for Victory V lozenges go rocking past. I heard the friendly echoing of a station, and I knew this was Rochdale, but I also knew I had brain fever from the heat. I grasped the window strap to pull myself up, but our driver was proving very tardy in shutting off steam. If he doesn't push that regulator to the home position in a minute, I thought, there'll be no station left. But the exhaust beats continued, steady as the ticking of a clock. Our train may have been short, but it was very determined. I sat back down with the notion that if we weren't going to stop at Rochdale, we weren't going to stop anywhere until the end of the line.

I fancy that I may have slept before Manchester. I do not recall approaching the station: Manchester Victoria.

When we arrived, I stumbled out of the compartment, and saw the illuminated display revolving in the hot dirty air: 'visit the Ardennes'; Visit… somewhere else; 'visit the ardennes' again. I turned to look at the platform gates, and there was the long thin man going through fast, leaving money in the hand of the ticket collector.

I broke into a run, but it came out wrong, all wobbly, like, and I knew I was being marvelled at by a lot of people coming down off a train that had pulled up on the opposite platform. I had my waistcoat in my hand, but no jacket and no pocket book. I had left them behind in Little Switzerland, England's Alps.

The ticket collector was coming up to me – 'Where's your ticket, mate?' but he didn't say it, I was only imagining him saying it. There seemed to be some difficulty in my head as to what was happening, and what I thought was happening, for although they were mostly the same, they were sometimes not.

I got past the ticket collector because he'd seen somebody he knew. Somebody was walking towards the fellow and putting his hand to his cap, ready to raise it and say 'Now then'. So the collector forgot his business for a moment, and I was through the gates and in the clear. But there was another revolving sign that delayed me: 'England'… 'continent'… 'England'… 'continent'. I dragged my eyes away. I was in the great hall of Manchester Victoria station, which was all white tiles, like a giant washroom. The offices of the Lanky were hard by, I knew, tacked on to the station.

There was no air. Close to the entrance was a refreshment room, where a man was drinking a glass of water. I saw the silver sparkle of it, and that delayed me too, but the drinking of water was something that went on in another world.

I stepped out of the station. The cathedral might have been carved from coal, and there was a river smell floating up around it. In the mystery of Manchester, I was keeping my eye out for anyone moving away fast from the station, but there were dozens doing that, even though it was early evening on Saturday. All along the steaming wet roads they went, for it had lately rained; under the hot orange sky they went, under the mighty gas lamps, the size and shape of diamonds.

On all sides enormous words were being carried across streets by viaducts and bridges: 'gramophones below cost', 'umbrellas re-covered'. It seemed to be a city of policemen with slowly turning heads, and everybody a winner or a loser and nothing in between. There were great statues in the streets, controlling the people, and the trams were like moving spiral staircases, everybody walking towards them full of mean thoughts, not really walking but pushing on grimly. It was hard to credit that only one train could bring a fellow from Little Switzerland to here.

The sun was sinking, but still I could not get cool. I thought I might raise a breeze by walking fast so tried that for a while. It didn't work, so I sat down in a coal yard near the cathedral. There was a grindstone there, and a fellow lifting sacks of coal onto a cart. I stared at the grindstone, and the coalman looked at me for a longer time after every heave, until I walked over the road to a pub which turned out to be tiny – just a dark, tiny box of hot air, with dusty pictures of soldiers all around the walls. I bought a glass of beer, handing over what I realised, too late, was my last shilling. Then I bought another because the damage was done. Besides the barman, there was one other fellow in the pub. He was smoking a clay pipe. He was one of those old men with eyes that are frightening because too young and lively: the kind that haven't done enough in life.

'I saw you,' he said, 'sleeping in a coal yard.'

'Was not,' I said. I might have been five years old.

'Hard on, you were. You're barely awake now.'

'It's not a crime is it?' I said.

'So you admit it? You'd better watch him,' he said to the barman; 'turn your back for a minute, he'll be out like a light.'

He turned to me again as I tried to tuck my hand bandage back into place. 'What are you up to?' he said.

'Looking out for a murderer,' I said.

The old boy just muttered something very quietly to himself at that, and went back to his pipe, disgusted that there was somebody even stranger than himself about the place.

I came out of the pub and immediately saw a very promising sign reading 'ice station'. But then a tram moved and it was 'police station'. I thought about walking in and saying I believed a man who had done a murder at Hebden Bridge was now at large in Manchester. It would be like saying that I believed him to be 'in the world'.

I decided to do it, though.

As I walked into the copper shop, it was hot, but in a different way again, which turned my head. I realised that my bandage was dangling down from my wrist like a dog lead with no dog on the end.

I started to tell my story at the long desk, and a man who was something between a policeman and a clerk said the smart thing would be for me to sit down on a bench. He talked to somebody else about me, and the only words I heard were 'no effects', which he said with a laugh. But it was all songs and whistling in the copper shop because a man was fitting an electrical fan into the ceiling.

I sat still for a while, working on my breathing. The trouble was that I was unable to take in as much air as I was breathing out. Other people who were waiting to be seen, I noticed, were taken off to special rooms, and I couldn't work out whether it was good or bad that I was kept on the bench. I told at least three policemen that I wanted to make a statement in connection with a crime, and nothing was done, but glasses of water kept coming for me, and I would watch the scenes at the desk. Mostly it was people with complaints that came in, and mostly the complaints were about horses.

Presently, a fourth or fifth copper came up, saying: 'How about a spot of grub?' He gave me a menu chart, divided up according to different times of day. I looked up at the clock, thinking it was about six, when bread and butter and tea came to an end going by the chart, and pea soup started, but somehow it was quarter to eight, when hotpot was nearly finished; and the fan, although not turning, was quite fitted into the ceiling with the stepladder below it, and I knew then that I must have been asleep. Manchester had been so large, and now it was so small: just this police station and the question of the fan.

The pea soup was brought on a tray, with suet pudding and syrup and half a pint of tea. As I started to eat it my bandage, which I had tried to fix, came unwound again and dropped into the soup, so it became green, but it became sticky too, so that when I wound it back – which everybody in the copper shop saw me do – it stayed put.

The copper who came to collect the pots when I'd finished had a sideways sloping face, and teeth going backwards. I reminded him that I had a statement to make, and he said, with eyes to the floor: 'Yes, you've taken a funny turn, but we mean to get it down.'

But I did not believe him because he wouldn't look at me.

He finally took me into one of the writing rooms, using more pushing and shoving than I cared for. I said, 'I've had a fair wait, you know,' and he said, 'Well, we wanted to take a look at you for a while.'

'Why?'

'You seemed a bit steamed up… bit of a beer smell coming off you…'

He was looking away all the time, so there was no telling if this was the real reason.

'I have been running for miles,' I said. 'So I have taken a glass of beer.'

The policeman nodded.

More water came from somewhere, so I drank it. 'You boys must have had me down as loony,' I said, 'a loafer.' I knew you ought not to call policemen 'boys'. It was asking for trouble.

The policeman smiled very uncertainly while producing a pen and a ledger from the drawer in the desk. He said: 'All right now, you've come here on the train from Switzerland but you don't even have a coat…'

It was a long statement, starting with an explanation of the difference between Switzerland and Little Switzerland, which I became better at as I went along. I told the policeman all, and he wrote it down. Well, mostly. I told him about the stone on the line, and my notions concerning it, including that it could have been the first attempt by the runner of today to get Lowther, but even as I spoke, I remembered that nobody could've known Lowther would be on the train. I myself had seen him decide to get on it.

The copper came in with: 'Why would a fellow wreck a whole train on the off-chance of doing for one man on it?'

That was my question too, but I said: 'Well, it has been known.'

'When has it?'

I thought of all the Railway Magazines I'd ever read, all the reports of smashes and inquiries but nothing came of it.

'I couldn't say for certain' I said, feeling that this was throwing away all the work I'd put in to make him think I was of strong mind.

'What happened today' said the policeman (and I knew that he was thinking 'If it happened'), 'might very well have started out as an argument over a fare. Ticket inspecting can be a dangerous line to be in, you know.'

Yes, I wanted to say: if you were canned, or just the violent sort, you might crown a ticket inspector if your blood was up. But you wouldn't follow him on his private Saturday afternoon jaunts, when he was minding his business and not wearing his gold, and do him then.

The policeman ended by saying he'd be sending a letter to Hebden Bridge Police, and writing me out a chit that would see me from Manchester Victoria station back to Halifax.

Well, he had to get out of it all somehow.

When I walked out of the police station, Manchester was all aglow in the hot, soft darkness, and the river air was spreading, yet somehow I was feeling stronger. To stand at shoulder height like the statues in the streets would be nothing. As I approached the booking office with my chit, I wondered whether I needed to explain how I had come by it, or did they see a hundred roughy reds a day in possession of police 'specials'? Another fancy came to me as I approached the booking office: If the murder of Lowther was not to do with one ticket, it might very likely be to do with hundreds. George Ogden had told me tickets had gone missing. And George Ogden was on the fly.