Death on a Branch Line(82)

‘Why do you have these soldiers?’

‘To set an example,’ he said. ‘Help me play a brave man’s part.’

He sighed.

‘To bring me up to –’

‘A confession?’ I put in. ‘Well, you’ve left it rather late, but will you own to it now? The boy will stand to what he saw in court, you know.’

(Would he really? I hadn’t put the question to Mervyn, and he evidently went in terror of police and courts.)

‘I’d have been on the stones, you see,’ said Hardy. ‘Sir George said I was helpless to manage, and that I ought to go.’

Hardy moved as he spoke – wobbled a little way to the left – giving me a view of the clock on the wall. Five to five.

‘A man like that can get what he wants, and he meant to have me dismissed no matter what.’ Hardy breathed a shuddering breath: ‘And I couldn’t stand Woodcock down – there was never any question of it. He’d made himself a devil to me as things were.’

‘And he came to know you’d done it?’

‘Oh, he knew,’ said Hardy.



‘You told him yourself, I shouldn’t wonder – thinking to put the frighteners on him, make out that he’d get the same treatment … Only you were under his thumb from then on.’

I advanced a little way into the booking office.

Hardy was at the wall cabinet.

‘I’ll come along with you,’ he said, ‘but let me find my greatcoat.’

He opened the door, turned and there was a rifle in his hand.

‘Oh,’ he said, facing me, as though surprised to find himself holding the thing. ‘This is the same as the lads have.’ He indicated the board with a nod of his head. ‘It’s a Martini-Henry.’

The gun looked ridiculous compared to the inch-long ones on the display – just as if Hardy’s gun was over-sized rather than the others being under. But he levelled it at me, and his fat hands weren’t shaking as he did so, either. I listened to the rain, which seemed to come down with hysterical heaving breaths – a whole summer’s worth falling all at once. Why had I not brought Mervyn’s shotgun out of The Angel? An evil voice came from the doorway behind me.

‘In a fix now, en’t you, copper?’

Woodcock. He’d come down from his crib in the signal box. I ought to’ve known he’d be somewhere about. I’d seen him in the pub earlier and there’d been no train to take him away. Still under the gun, I half-turned to him. He was making some motion with his hand in the region of his fly-hole.

‘What’s your game?’ I asked, at which Hardy gasped out, ‘No talking now.’

‘What’s my game?’ repeated Woodcock. ‘I’m scratching me fucking love apples – any objection?’

There was a beat of silence.

‘I swear there’s fucking fleas in that bench,’ Woodcock said.

He’d perhaps been kipping in the waiting room then, not the signal box.

‘Didn’t think you were a journalist,’ he said. ‘They’re quite clever.’

I said, ‘Lambert hangs at eight.’

‘Here,’ said Woodcock, ‘do you know why the trains ran through? Why were the wires cut?’



I made no answer.

‘In the end,’ said Woodcock, ‘I just thought I’d see how it fell out. I’m in the clear anyhow.’

‘The boy knows you were in on it,’ I said, ‘… covering up a murder. That’s why you shot his dog – warn him off. How do you know he won’t speak against you?’

I indicated Hardy.

Silence in the booking office.

‘Now look here …’ I began again, but Woodcock cut me off, saying, ‘Shut it, I’m thinking.’

Another beat of silence, and then Woodcock looked at me as if to say: I’ve made my decision.

He took his hands out of his pockets, and began moving forward, coming past me, advancing on Hardy.

‘Give that over, you soft bugger,’ he said.

Hardy stared at him for a moment, then handed him the rifle just as though he’d been mesmerised. There was now a good deal of shuffling of boots on the wooden floor as Woodcock took Hardy’s position before the clock, and Hardy – wheezing away – skirted the military display and eased out into the rain, with Woodcock calling after him: ‘That’s right, clear off, you double-gutted bastard.’

Woodcock put the shooter on me.

‘It is loaded, you know,’ he said. ‘Old Father Hardy kept it ready at all times. Know why? He meant to blow his own lamp out, only he couldn’t screw himself up to it, so he was in a bind: too scared to live and too scared to die. The wonder is that he ever pulled the bloody trigger in the first place. Do you know what I think?’