Chapter Text
They worked Wednesday to clear the slow line, and through the night. Harry Mack’s Black Five took the first service. Harry actually had her whistle, right below the Euston Railway Police Office. It made Inspector Percy Suter start.
When the kettle sang, at the end of the day, Percy remembered that.
He had swilled the pot and, as he spooned in fresh leaf, the stairs creaked outside. A shadow fell across the frosted pane of the office door.
Sergeant Warner slipped in. He hung his cap by the door and slapped a pair of gloves on the desk.
“You fancy a brew?”
“Yer! Perishing it is. I thought you’d be gone, Perce.”
“I need to see a man, Sid.”
“Mabel at yer daughters’ then?”
Percy Suter filled the pot and pictured, at his back, Sid’s sidelong glance. A match was struck, and Sid made sibilant intake of smoke.
“She may be,” said Percy. “At least she weren’t home when I called. It’s not like I’ll be late. And if my chops get burnt, that’s nothing I’ve not seen before.”
Percy had a phone at home because he was a Policeman. Mabel hated the raucous interloper, but she would have answered it in case it was her daughter. She was at Jean’s.
He sat down at his desk and made a mental note of the first job in the morning. Sid subsided into the battered old chair in the corner. He was a jowly man, his nose jutting out as far from his face as the cigarette pinched between his lips, leaning back, eyes closed. Percy glanced beyond, to his own coat, hung between Sid’s cap and the clock. Six thirty-five.
Sid moved his fag from his lip and spoke a silent grey cloud, for the all world like a caricature in the back of a grubby paper. He caught Percy’s eye, dug into his pocket, and offered up the packet.
“You know I’ve had to cut em out, Sid.”
Sid nodded absently. He cast about for an ashtray, then leaned back to flick his fag toward the fire-bucket. “You’d think we’d seen it all in the war, wouldn’t you Perce? In yourn case, one war or the other.”
“Cheers for the reminder, Sid. Three years to go. I’m counting.” Percy thought: two minutes for the brew, then another ten of Sid. That left a quarter of an hour trudge to Camden. Or he might squeeze on a bus. He better get away again pronto; Mabel didn’t approve of public houses. She weren’t that fond of young Sandie, neither.
“They got the slow line is working then. I wouldn’t have believed it. There were this carriage, atop of the wreckage, thirty foot up. Thirty foot, Perce!”
“I seen it.” Percy marveled at the irritation Sid sparked in him. It meant nothing really, he reminded himself: an inconvenient side-show invented by the part of his brain not yet tracing his route to The Mother Red Cap. But when wouldn’t Sid spill over with the prospect of a captive audience? Percy should humour him. “They done a good job,” he admitted. “Herbert Eccles knows what he’s about.”
“It took too long, Perce. Not just the poor bastards they didn’t get to in time; there’s them in hospital.”
Percy considered telling Sid how it had been quick enough for the driver of the up express, once he’d seen the inner home signal. Christ! How long were those seconds? Not much more than five, at a mile a minute, then there it would be: the guard’s van of the local train. Percy assumed Driver Jones had seen that final signal. How had he missed the others?
“Bill Evans never made it in. He’d be on the seven thirty-one.”
Percy glanced at the cigarette-stained ceiling. “A lot of railwaymen never made it. Getting the slow line clear is one thing. We need more crew on the line.”
“They got a list yet?”
The question almost made Percy start. “The Super has a copy. It ain’t complete: just survivors accounted for, bodies identified. It's with the ministry. No one’s compared it with them who’s missing. Not yet. I assume someone’s doing that.” He got up again, found the tea strainer, and examined it acutely.
“You been up The Office, then?”
They kept the milk bottle cool in a pail of water hung on a rope outside. Percy opened the window and hauled it through.
“I popped me head round the door.”
He sniffed the milk. Was it about to turn? His sense of smell was dulled by Sid’s smoke. Tea went in before the milk. Percy was well drilled. Mabel couldn’t abide milk first. That was quite as bad as drinking from the saucer. He poured the brew and found curdled spots floating on the surface.
“What they say then?”
“Who?”
“In The Office. The Super.”
“I didn’t see him. No-one said much, not to me. The phones were ringing off the wall.” He gave Sid his cup and it rattled in the saucer. “We won’t hear much for a while yet.”
“Must have been the fog, though. You reckon?”
“How should I know?”
“They ran double block working earlier in the morning.”
“Who told you that?”
Sid frowned and dropped his fag-end into the bucket. “I asked what the conditions were like. In Harrow.”
“Right! Until we see the report, that’s hearsay. Don’t go repeating it.” Sid stared at Percy, then looked away with a kind of petulant shrug. “Conditions changed all through the morning.” Perce rammed his point home. “It'll be in the signalman’s log. I ain’t seen that, right?”
“I ain’t going to the bleedin papers, Perce!”
“Well… just be careful.”
Percy slurped his tea. That milk was definitely on the turn. And they had no sugar to smother the taint.
Sid dug into his coat pocket and fished out a paper. Fine, thought Percy. Sit there and sulk.
Christ! He could have done without that call from Sandie.