'All I'll need to show you.' Roy gave a big grin, as if he really was a boy who got to become an engine driver.
Bruce shivered, the heat drained from him by the cold metal surrounding them. 'Get on with it, Stephenson.' Roy looked blank at the reference. 'Stephenson's Rocket? Oh, just fire her up.'
Roy began to fuss with the controls. 'The throttle's not working. Odd.' Then he remembered. 'There's a dead man's pedal somewhere. Here!'
He stomped down on a metal plate and the diesel gave a jerk forward. Roy hooted with pleasure. 'Easy, see?'
They crept down the track, gathering speed on the incline.
'OK, you can stop now.'
The dumpy shunter carried on accelerating, the power unit thumping with urgency. It was moving at faster than walking pace now.
'Roy. You can stop the train now.'
Roy began to look at his book, flicking through the pages with a rising sense of panic. 'This should be the fucking brake.' He waggled a lever back and forward. He remembered there were two brakes, one for the engine and one for the actual wheels, but nothing he pulled or pushed made much difference.
'Step off the dead man's thing.'
'I have,' shouted Roy. They were rolling down a slope, he realised. Gravity was in control now. He squinted ahead into the night, to see if he could spot any obstacle on the track. 'Bruce, put that handbrake on. Bruce?'
He turned. Bruce was nowhere to be seen.
'Oh, Jesus.'
Roy grabbed his manual, stepped out onto the side of the loco, feeling the wind tugging at his hair as the speed increased. Then he closed his eyes and launched himself off.
He hit the gravel awkwardly, felt his ankle go, and rolled down an incline. Behind him the rails were humming as the engine rolled on.
'Come on.' Bruce appeared out of the night, grabbed Roy under the arms and pulled him to his feet. 'You all right?'
Roy put weight on his left ankle. There was a twinge, but it would hold.
'The runaway train came down the track and she blew…' Bruce sang softly.
'Shut up,' Roy snapped, limping away.
As they moved back towards the fence there came the sudden screech of metal on metal, a loud bang, then more tortured groans, followed by silence. Roy could smell burning. A flicker of white flame flared, searing his retina, then died.
They increased their pace, Roy ignoring the pain in his leg. As they reached the fence, he turned to Bruce. 'You know what?'
'What?' Bruce asked.
There was a loud bang behind them as something detonated, and both ducked through the fence. There was smoke in the air, thick and oily. 'I think we'd better give Biggsy a call about that train driver. It's not as easy as it looks.'
'Her name was Eliza Dunwoody. Liz Dunwoody to her friends of which there were very few, by all accounts. She was from Birmingham.'
'Birmingham?' Police Constable Simon Trellick repeated, as if the thought baffled him.
They were in a borrowed office at the police station at Newquay. Hatherill was seated behind the desk, Trellick was standing in front of him, while Billy was positioned near the door, out of the Constable's field of vision. It was a technique designed to disorientate. Whenever Hatherill asked a question of Billy, Trellick wanted to turn but, at attention, could not.
'People do come from Birmingham, you know, Constable. Quite a number, so I hear. Just because she came from a landlocked city doesn't mean she never went near the sea. What else do we know, DC Naughton?'
'That she was on board the Empress of Canada, out of Liverpool to Montreal. At Montreal, she was considered too "distressed" to enter the country and was returned on the ship. At Liverpool, it was discovered that her cabin was empty. However, there was a suspicion that she had simply wandered off the ship, down the gangplank and into the city.'
'Now we know different,' said Hatherill. 'It was a bad return crossing, by all accounts. Plenty of storms. A distracted person might easily have been swept over.'
'Or a disturbed one might have jumped,' added Billy.
'Indeed.'
The Police Constable's shoulders relaxed a little. 'Well, I'm glad that is cleared up. The family will claim the body, I suppose.'
Hatherill nodded. 'With some reluctance, I might add. Seems she was not the best-loved member of the Dunwoodys. There is some bickering over who will pay for the burial.'
Billy watched the PC's head shake back and forth in disbelief. 'Charming.'
'Well, yes, absolutely. Charming.' Hatherill lit one of his cigarettes. He didn't offer them around. He waited until he blew his first, satisfying cloud of blue smoke before continuing. 'Some might say it was charming that her body was left on the beach to be tossed around like a piece of driftwood. To be defaced by the seagulls and crabs, like carrion. Some might say that was very charming indeed.'
Billy could see that the copper's neck had coloured above his white shirt. 'Sir, you have to understand people around here…'
Hatherill banged the desk with his free hand. A photo frame fell onto the floor and its glass cracked, but he ignored it.
'You don't have to understand "people round here" to smell greed when it gets into your nostrils. Yes, greed. Not compassion or otherwise, but greed. How else do you explain the fact that the Bones family serve a claret that wouldn't disgrace White's or Simpson's?' He paused, as if he really expected an answer. 'Well?'
Trellick shuffled. 'I don't know, sir. Relatives-'
'The same relatives who supplied the pub with the identical claret? If we were to search your mother's house, would we find a bottle or two? Well – would we?'
'I don't know.'
'I think you do. I think you know that the storms dislodged cases and cases of the stuff, destined for the warehouses of Bristol. And they ended up here – on the same beach as that poor woman. And if you reported the body, then the beach would have been sealed off and any further bonanza confiscated by the authorities. It was like, what's that film?'
' Whisky Galore,'' Billy offered, having been primed to do so.
Hatherill smoked on for a while, his face set into a mask of annoyance and disappointment. Trellick's neck was glowing crimson and glistening with sweat now. Billy almost felt sorry for the young PC.
1 Whisky Galore,' Hatherill finally repeated. 'Although in the film, I don't believe there is a body to get in the way. So in Claret Galore, the body becomes invisible. A kind of collective blindness grips the whole village. "Body? What body?" Then, once the locals are certain that all the cases that are coming their way have been washed ashore, the scales fall from their eyes. "Oh look, it's not a shop-window dummy, after all. Or a seal. It's a person. Somebody's daughter. Perhaps somebody's wife." Marvellous. "Let's call the authorities." Is that what happened, son?' He didn't wait for a reply. 'I think it was.'
'Sir…'
'No, don't say anything. You'll just dig yourself in deeper. I suspect you are not a bad local copper. I think that in five years' time, if some landlord leans on you to turn a blind eye, you'll tell him to fuck off. Even if he is your uncle. Oh, aye. A tight-knit community all right. Too tight-knit. I tell you what I am going to do. I'm going to write my report about the woman, and I will not mention my suspicions about the wine.'
'Thank you, sir.' The young officer's voice shook with relief.
'At the same time, you are going to put in for a transfer. You are going to say you need wider experience and I am going to agree. Bristol, perhaps. See what big city coppering is about. How does that sound?'
The reply was flat. 'Very good, sir. Thank you, sir.'
'I think you could show a bit more enthusiasm, son. After all,' Hatherill stared at Billy, to emphasise that his words weren't only aimed at Trellick, 'I'm giving you a second chance.'
The Night Mail screamed by, its distinctive maroon livery a blur, the porthole-like lower lights above the bogeys one continuous streak of silver. The horn sounded its double-note warning and dopplered into the night. Five feet from the train, the slipstream tugging at his clothes and distorting his face, Bruce Reynolds checked his watch, the hour he had spent crouched in the damp chill of the dead hours of the early morning forgotten.