'What about the photograph?' I said.
But Shillito had gone back to his work.
I stood before his desk with my arms folded, photograph in hand, feeling like an ass. Shillito looked up at me, saying, 'I've done with you for the present, Stringer.'
I said, 'Do you want me to go back for Clegg?'
At this he gave a mock laugh, and set down his pencil.
He leant back in his chair and looked at me.
'Now that beats all,' he said. 'Do you honestly think I'm going to send you back so you can sup another few pints with your pal Clegg? Why, you'll be turning out for his blinking football team next.'
Nobody would be arresting Clegg, for Shillito had now realised that he would be in bother if the matter went any further.
I walked back to my desk, where I collected up the papers on Lee and Falconer, preparatory to posting them back to Middlesbrough.
'That photograph of yours,' Shillito called across. 'What does it signify? You might have a picture of any lot of men - the Institute Billiard Club for the matter of that - and if you came to look at it again a year on you might see that some of them had come a cropper. It's called damned bad luck, Stringer.' He said this last with impressive force, as if he really knew something of damned bad luck - and perhaps he did. After all, he'd missed his way in life, as I'd missed mine. My goal had been the footplate, his playing football as a professional.
I could not prove the importance of the photograph, and I had staked my future on inadequate data. Well, that was too bad. As Shillito got his head down again, for another hour of loud breathing and effortful writing, I got out my own pen, and composed, not a flash report, but a letter to a good fellow called John Ellerton. He was the shed superintendent for the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway at Sowerby Bridge where, four years ago, I had driven a locomotive through a wall after a day of firing that engine in the company of an old boy called Terry Kendall.
Kendall, my driver and therefore my governor, had asked me to stable the engine at the end of the turn. It had been quite in order for him to do so, but he had also told me that the engine brake had been warmed, which it had not. As a result, the steam by which it worked condensed in its tubes instead of putting the brakes to the wheels.
It ought by rights to have been Kendall who was jacked in and not me. I had always known this, but had held off saying it. I would not say it now either, but it was the conclusion that I hoped would be drawn from my letter. In any case, Father Kendall, as he had been known, would be out of consideration by now, superannuated long since.
My letter began: 'My dear John, You will be surprised to read my name after such a long time . . .' and went on to ask whether he might see his way clear, if he could do so without entrenching on his own convenience (which expression was used, as far as I could see, by all police letters of a non-threatening nature), to inquire as to the possibility of my appealing against the decision to dismiss me, which I had always felt was unjust, and which over time might have come to seem so within the motive power office. With Shillito labouring away at his letters before me, I went on to say that my heart was not in railway police work, and that my experience in the force had only confirmed my decided inclination for the life of the footplate.
I closed with a few friendly remarks, and news of the birth of my son. I used police-office paper, but crossed out that address and wrote in my own at Thorpe-on-Ouse. I did not look over the letter on finishing it, because I knew that I might not have the brass neck to send it if I thought too hard about what I'd put. In fact, I was in such a rush to get it off that I swept my arm across my ink pot as I reached for an envelope, sending a tide of blue across the green leathern top of my desk, and towards the photograph of the Travelling Club, which I automatically tried to protect by making a barrier with my arm - with the sleeve of my good suit coat.
'Fuck!' I shouted, and Shillito's head rocked upwards.
I turned to see Wright, who, instead of shaping to help me mop the ink, was tapping the swear box with his pencil. I ran off into the jakes with the idea of soaking my coat sleeve, and when I returned, Wright was now blotting the ink, and Shillito had left. It was as though there could be fellowship in the office, but only with Shillito out of it.
'I'm obliged to you, mate,' I said to Wright.
'No harm done to your precious picture,' he said, handing it over to me.
It was on account of the picture that I had ruined the coat (for it was ruined), and I began to think the damned picture cursed. Perhaps it brought ill luck to every man connected with it.
My letter had escaped the ink flood, and I gave it for posting to Wright, who was pointing at the picture.
'I know this one,' he said.
He was indicating the distinguished-looking cove in black. But he was frowning at the same time.
'Can you put a name to him?'
He closed his eyes for a space, which, Wright being very old, made him look dead.
'No,' he said, opening them again. 'But I have a mental picture of him here in York - somewhere about the town.'
I looked again at the gent in the picture, contemplating the blank wall of mystery.
'Everyone thinks they know this bloke,' I said, at which Wright looked a bit put out, so I said, 'But thanks anyway.'
'I'd drop it if I were you,' he said, and he glanced at Shillito's empty chair, adding, 'Never mind missed promotion - he means to have you stood down.'
A mental picture came into view: the high wall that ran around the York Workhouse.
'That would be a shame, wouldn't it?' I said. 'I know what a lark it is for you to watch our battles.'
Then Wright knocked me by saying, 'It would be more of a lark if you stood up to him.'
I nodded.
'I always mean to,' I said, 'but when it comes to the touch -'
The thought of my own weakness shamed me, so I changed tack, saying to Wright, 'I'd like to telephone London again. Could you put me through?'
Wright took my letter for posting and wound the magneto for me.
A moment later, I was speaking this time to a very cheery bloke who worked on The Railway Rover.
'Editorial,' he said.
'Is Mr Bowman about?' I asked.
'Not presently,' I think he said, which was followed by something that might have been: 'He's been out of the office a good deal lately, and I haven't seen him all day today.'
The sound of what seemed like a gale blowing down the line took all expression out of his voice, so that he might have been delighted by Bowman's absence or greatly worried by it. I said I would call back; but the idea was growing on me that Bowman had bloody well disappeared too.
Chapter Fifteen
'Where's the Chief?' I asked Wright.
'Don't you know?' he said. 'He's at a shooting match.'
I struck out along Platform Four with the photograph in my hand.
A couple of dozen people waited there, huddled into their comforters under the station's sky - the great frosted-glass canopy. Passengers always looked lonely until the train came. A sort of Christmas lean-to, hung with tinsel, had been put up by the side of the Lost Luggage Office for the sale of nuts and sweetmeats. It was an assistant from the bookstall who'd been put to working inside.