“You’re not a quitter, Keith. I have every confidence you’ll reach D for Day Care before you draw your pension.”
They were in the Lock Keeper, one of the two Keynsham pubs they’d decided was worth the short drive. In the summer, the beer garden overlooking the Avon would be good, but today in a north wind and with sleet pinging against the windows, everyone was inside except a couple of desperate smokers.
Diamond picked up the previous conversation while waiting for his burger and chips. “The good thing about modern technology is that you can do more than one thing at a time.”
“Such as?” Halliwell asked, frowning. He’d known his boss long enough to suspect something lay behind the statement.
“Your research into care agencies. You can do it on a laptop anywhere you like.”
“If you have wifi.”
“This afternoon you’ll be joining me on a mission to Frome. Nothing to stop you using the laptop in idle moments.”
“Frome? What for?”
“Miss Hill sent me the guest list for Max’s funeral. There are two members of the GWR group we haven’t caught up with-the only two who aren’t dead or brain dead. Jake and Simon Pool.”
“Brothers?”
“No. They’re married and they live in a signal box.”
The driving rain and sleet kept the wipers working at double speed most of the way down the A30 and Diamond was repeatedly telling Halliwell to slow down.
“Do you know where this signal box is?”
“Beside the railway.”
“I can work that out for myself,” Halliwell said, under stress. “Which side of the town?”
“I phoned ahead to find out.”
“So do I head left or right?”
“It’s not simple. I was given a potted history. Originally there were four boxes. It was a busy junction, with trains serving the Somerset coalfield as well as the passenger routes. This one is known as Frome Middle.”
“Yes, guv, but where is it?”
“We’d better ask at the station.”
No one at the station seemed to have heard of the place, but when Diamond mentioned it was in use as a house occupied by a gay couple, everyone knew. It was a reconstructed signal box a mile out of town.
They found it without more difficulty along a stretch of disused track, a smart, two-storey building with red bricks to halfway and a wooden superstructure painted in the chocolate and cream colours of the GWR, all topped with a pitched, tiled roof and chimney. The name was displayed in brown lettering. Above this, a long row of brave, buffeted daffodils in window boxes made a stirring sight on this dismal day. End-to-end windows upstairs are a necessary feature of a signal box home.
The small garden had more daffodils and some late snowdrops. Railway sleepers had been used to make the raised flowerbeds.
Halliwell parked beside a Toyota on the gravel.
The door at ground level didn’t look like the official entrance, so they went up the stairs and were greeted by an open door and a booming, “Come in, whoever you are. Heard you coming.”
A large man, rather too large for a signal-box existence, showed them inside. Probably not much older than Diamond, he was positively youthful by comparison with the rest of Pellegrini’s friends. He was in a T-shirt, jeans and carpet slippers. The room was invitingly warm. “I’m Jake Pool and my other half, Simon, is downstairs making tea. You are the police, I take it?”
Diamond explained who they were. “I expect everyone asks you: did you build this yourselves?”
“Yes, it’s a cheat, I’m afraid, only a replica. The 1875 building was demolished in 1933 when they made major changes and opened a new line between the junctions at Clink Road and Blatchbridge so that the expresses and much of the goods traffic could bypass dear old Frome Station. If you want to see a genuine version, go to Didcot Railway Centre. In 1983, when we were rather more spry than we are now, we helped remove the box at Frome Mineral Junction and rebuild it there with the original materials. And already I see your eyes glazing over, so I’ll spare you further suffering.”
Difficult to follow up a remark like that. “I don’t know about you,” Diamond said to Halliwell for politeness’s sake, “but I’ve never been in a signal box before.”
“It’s an experience,” Halliwell said.
“We’re juvenile enough to like it,” Jake Pool said. “Everything you see in here except the sofa beds is ex-railway. We didn’t have room for the signalling equipment, more’s the pity. The kitchen, shower and loo are downstairs, which originally would have housed the interlocking mechanism, the signal-wire wheels and the point-drive cranks. Speaking of cranks, I’ve been called one myself for going on about railway engineering. I’d better shut up. Please take a seat on the first-class upholstery from the Cornish Riviera express.”
“There’s someone at the door.”
“That’ll be Simon with the tea. We keep saying we should have built interior stairs. It’s no fun having to go outside in weather like this. Would you mind letting him in?”
Halliwell opened the door to a small windswept man holding a tray of tea things.
“Has he been boring you?” Simon asked. “Relief is at hand.” He set the tray on a polished table that was probably from some Pullman dining car. Neither visitor enquired.
“The crockery is genuine GWR from the 1940s,” Jake said, “now becoming rare.”
“But the tea is Lipton’s English Breakfast,” Simon said. “I’m not sure which brand they used on trains in those days. And the scones aren’t 1940s either. I made them myself this morning. I must have had a premonition we’d have visitors.”
“Or that the law would catch up with us eventually,” Jake said with a grin. “Do make yourselves comfortable, gentlemen.”
Cream tea in a signal box. Policing is never predictable.
“You must have heard about Ivor Pellegrini’s accident,” Diamond said when the cups were filled. “We’re following up. He’s still in a coma unfortunately, so he can’t tell us what he was doing out so early on his tricycle.”
“Poor fellow, yes,” Jake said. “We were shocked when we heard. Our little branch of the Great Western Society has suffered terribly over the past two years.”
“We’re the only members still standing,” Simon added. “There were seven of us at one stage. I know we’re getting on in years, but four deaths and an accident is a bad run, to say the least.”
“You meet in each other’s houses and discuss the great days of steam, we were told.”
“And there’s the occasional excursion. It’s as harmless as the girl guides. I can’t think why the gods decided to inflict such losses on us.”
“The deaths were natural, weren’t they?”
“Yes, but so many. The latest was only last May.”
“Max Filiput?”
“I can see him sitting in that chair where you are now, a grand old boy, over ninety,” Jake said. “He looked forward to coming here when it was our turn to host the meeting. It was the experience he came for.”
“And my sausage rolls,” Simon said.
“You went to his funeral,” Diamond prompted them.
“As fine a send-off as I can remember. Good hymns, nice music and the man who gave the eulogy really had done his homework and yet managed to work in some amusing asides. He wasn’t a railway buff either.”
“He and Max once taught together at that big college in Salisbury,” Jake said.
“I know who you mean. His name was Cyril,” Diamond said. “Cyril Hardstaff. I learned this week that he, too, has died.”
They almost dropped their precious teacups.
“I find that incredible,” Jake said.
“Extraordinary,” Simon said.
Jake shook his head. “He was in sparkling form at the funeral, regaling us all with his stories. Witty, fully in command, unlike poor old Max.”
“You can’t be witty from inside a coffin,” Simon said.
“That isn’t what I meant. Max was definitely losing it towards the end.”