Authors: Edward Marston
As soon as he entered the room, Robert Colbeck knew that a serious crime must have been committed. The air was thick with pungent smoke and Superintendent Edward Tallis only reached for his cigar case when he was under severe pressure. Seated behind his desk, the older man was scanning a sheet of paper as if trying to memorise important details. Colbeck waited patiently for the invitation to sit down. Tall, slim and well-favoured, he was impeccably dressed in a dark brown frock coat, with rounded edges and a high neck, well-cut fawn trousers and an Ascot cravat. Catching the light that streamed in through the window, his black leather shoes were shining brightly. In the prosaic world of law enforcement, Inspector Robert Colbeck stood out as the unrivalled dandy of Scotland Yard.
Tallis tossed him a cursory glance then waved a podgy hand.
‘Take a seat,’ he barked. ‘We have much to discuss.’
‘So I understood from the urgency of your summons,’ said Colbeck, lowering himself onto a chair. ‘I came as soon as I could, sir.’
‘And not before time. We have a robbery on our hands.’
‘What kind of robbery, Superintendent?’
‘The worst kind,’ said Tallis, putting the sheet of paper aside. ‘A mail train was ambushed on its way to Birmingham. It was carrying a large consignment of gold sovereigns for delivery to a bank in the city. The thieves got away with every penny.’
‘Was anyone hurt in the process?’ asked Colbeck with concern.
‘Only the driver, it seems. He was foolish enough to offer resistance and suffered for his bravery. The fellow is in a sorry state.’
‘Poor man!’
‘Save your sympathy for me, Inspector,’ said Tallis, ruefully. ‘All hell broke loose when word of the crime reached London. I’ve been hounded by the commissioners, harried by the railway company, hunted by the Post Office and badgered by the Royal Mint.’
Colbeck smiled. ‘I thought I caught a whiff of cigar smoke.’
‘Anybody would think that
I
was the culprit.’
‘Only a bold man would ever accuse you of breaking the law, sir.’
Tallis bristled. ‘Are you being facetious, Inspector?’
‘Of course not.’
‘I’ll brook no disrespect.’
‘I appreciate that, sir.’
Tallis glared at him. The Superintendent was a stout, red-faced, robust man in his fifties with a military background that had deprived him of his sense of humour and given him, in return, a habit of command, a conviction that he always made the right decisions and a small scar on his right cheek.
Tallis had a shock of grey hair and a neat moustache that he was inclined to caress in quieter moments. A lifelong bachelor, he had no family commitments to deflect him from his work in the Detective Department of the Metropolitan Police Force.
‘This is no time for drollery,’ he warned.
‘I was merely making an observation, Superintendent.’
‘Keep such observations to yourself in future.’
Colbeck bit back a reply. There was an unresolved tension between the two men that came to the surface whenever they were alone together, and the Inspector had learnt to rein in his urge to provoke Tallis. The Superintendent had a violent temper when roused. Colbeck had been at the mercy of it once too often. He probed for information.
‘What exactly happened, sir?’ he asked, politely.
‘That is what I’m endeavouring to tell you.’
‘I’m all ears.’
Clasping his hands together, the Superintendent recited the salient details of the case, stressing the importance of prompt action by Scotland Yard. Colbeck listened carefully to the account. Several questions raised themselves and he put the obvious one to Tallis.
‘How did they know that the train was carrying so much money?’
‘That’s for you to find out, Inspector.’
‘They must have had help from an insider.’
‘Track him down.’
‘We will, sir,’ promised Colbeck. ‘What interests me is that the locomotive was forced off the tracks and badly damaged.’
‘It will be out of service for weeks, I’m told.’
‘Why on earth did they do such a thing? I mean, the gang
had got what they wanted from the train. There was no need to derail the engine like that. What was the intention?’
‘Ask them when you catch up with them.’
‘The other thing that worries me,’ said Colbeck, reflectively, ‘is the ease with which the security arrangements were breached. The money was loaded in boxes that were locked inside Chubb safes. I read an article about those safes when they were installed. They were reckoned to be impregnable.’
‘Two keys are needed to open them.’
‘As well as a combination number, Superintendent.’
‘Only one key was carried on the train,’ noted Tallis. ‘The other was in the possession of the bank to whom the money was being sent.’
‘Yet, according to you,’ Colbeck pointed out, ‘the safes were opened and emptied within a matter of minutes. That could only be done with a duplicate key and foreknowledge of the combination number. There’s collusion at work here.’
Tallis heaved a sigh. ‘This robbery was extremely well-planned, Inspector. I deplore what was done but I have to admire the skill of the operation. We’ve never had to deal with anything on this scale before. That’s why we must solve this crime quickly and bring the malefactors to justice,’ he went on, banging a fist on the desk in exasperation. ‘If they are seen to get away with such a daring exploit, there’ll be others who will surely try to copy them.’
‘I doubt that, Inspector. Most criminals, fortunately, have no gift for organisation and that’s the essence of this robbery. Several men were involved and their timing must have been excellent.’
‘Yes,’ conceded Tallis, grudgingly. ‘They knew what they
wanted and took it – including the mail bags. The Post Office is hopping mad about that.’
‘It’s the people whose correspondence has gone astray who should be really alarmed,’ said Colbeck, thinking it through. ‘Those mail bags were not taken out of spite. Some envelopes will contain money or valuable items that can be sold for gain, and – by the law of averages – there’ll be letters of a highly sensitive nature that may give the villains opportunities for blackmail.’
‘That never occurred to me.’
‘I’ll wager that it occurred to them.’
‘The scheming devils!’ said Tallis, extracting a cigar case from his pocket. ‘Robbery, blackmail, wanton destruction of railway property – these men must be rounded up, Inspector.’
Colbeck rose purposefully to his feet. ‘The investigation will begin immediately, Superintendent,’ he said, firmly. ‘What resources do I have at my disposal?’
‘Whatever you ask for – within reason.’
‘I presume that the railway company will be offering a reward?’
Tallis nodded. ‘Fifty guineas for anyone who can provide information that will lead to an arrest,’ he said, selecting a cigar from the case. ‘This is a poor advertisement for them. It’s the first time their mail train has been robbed.’
‘I take it that I’m to work with Victor Leeming on this case?’
‘Sergeant Leeming is on his way here, even as we speak.’
‘Good,’ said Colbeck. ‘When he arrives, we’ll take a cab to Euston Station and catch the next available train to the scene of the crime. I want to see exactly where and how it all happened.’
‘You’ll need this, Inspector.’ Tallis picked up the sheet of paper. ‘It has all the relevant names on it – except those of the criminals, alas.’
Colbeck took it from him. ‘Thank you, Superintendent.’ His eye ran down the list. ‘The driver is the crucial person – this Caleb Andrews. I hope to speak to him in due course.’ Tallis lit his cigar. ‘You may need to have a clairvoyant with you.’
‘Why?’
‘Mr Andrews is still in a coma, and not expected to survive.’
The table in the stationmaster’s office at Leighton Buzzard was not the most comfortable bed but the patient was quite unaware of that. Lying on the bare wood, with a blanket draped over him, Caleb Andrews seemed to have shrunk. His head was heavily bandaged, his face pallid, his breathing laboured. One arm was in a sling, one leg in a splint. He looked as if he were hanging on to life by the merest thread.
Keeping vigil beside the makeshift bed, Frank Pike was torn between fear and guilt, terrified that his friend might die and filled with remorse at his inability to protect the driver from attack. There was another dimension to his anguish. With a pistol held over him, he had been forced to drive the locomotive off the track, something that was anathema to any railwayman. It was no consolation to him that Caleb Andrews had not been able to witness the awful moment when their engine plunged into the grass verge and shed its load of coal and water. Pike winced as he recalled it. His employers were bound to blame him.
He reached out a hand to touch the patient’s shoulder.
‘I’m sorry, Caleb,’ he said. ‘I had no choice.’
The older man’s eyelids flickered for a second and a soft murmur escaped his lips. Pike needed no interpreter. Caleb Andrews was reproaching him. The driver had been in the same situation as him and he had shown that there was, in fact, a choice. It was between refusal and compliance. While one man had the courage to refuse, the other had opted for compliance. It made Pike feel as if he had betrayed a dear friend and colleague. He drew back his hand involuntarily, no longer entitled to touch Andrews.
Covered in blood, the body had been carried all the way back to the station so that a doctor could be sought. The fractured leg and the broken collarbone were not the real cause for concern. It was the head injuries that made the doctor pessimistic. All that he could do was to clean and bind the wounds. Given their severity, he could offer no hope of recovery. Whatever happened, Pike realised, he would come in for censure. If the driver lived, he would be sure to admonish his fireman for cowardice. If he died, there would be many others who would point an accusatory finger at Frank Pike. Among them was Caleb Andrews’s daughter, a young woman whom Pike would not hurt for the world. As an image of her face came into his mind, he let out a gasp of pain.
‘Forgive me, Madeleine!’ he begged. ‘It was not my fault.’
‘What about the railway policemen who should have patrolled that line?’ asked Victor Leeming. ‘Why were they not on duty?’
‘Because they were bound and gagged,’ explained Colbeck, brushing a speck of dust from his sleeve. ‘Apparently, they were found behind some bushes in their underwear. The
robbers had borrowed their uniforms.’
‘What about their shoes?’
‘Those, too, were missing.’
‘Along with the shoes from all the people on board the train,’ said Leeming. ‘Are we looking for criminals with a passion for footwear?’
‘No, Victor. We’re searching for people who know that the simplest way to slow someone down is to make him walk in stockinged feet. By the time one of the guards reached the station to raise the alarm, the robbers were miles away.’
‘With all that money and several pairs of shoes.’
‘Don’t forget the mail bags. They were a secondary target.’
‘Were they?’
Sergeant Victor Leeming was puzzled. His brow wrinkled in concentration. He was a stocky man in his thirties, slightly older than Colbeck but with none of the Inspector’s social graces or charm. Leeming’s face had a benign ugliness that was not helped by his broken nose and his slight squint. Though he was not the most intelligent of detectives, he was always the first choice of Robert Colbeck, who valued his tenacity, his single-mindedness and his capacity for hard work. Leeming was a loyal colleague.
The two men were sitting in a first class carriage of a train that rumbled its way through Buckinghamshire. When it passed Leighton Buzzard Junction, it slowed by prior arrangement so that it could drop the detectives near the scene of the crime. Colbeck peered through the window as the wrecked locomotive came into sight.
‘They’ve repaired the line,’ he said, pointing to the track that curved ahead of them, ‘but I suspect it will take a lot longer to mend the engine and the carriage. They’ll need a
crane to lift them.’
‘There’s no shortage of railway policemen,’ said Leeming, studying the knot of people beside the line. ‘I can count a dozen or more.’
‘All with their shoes on.’
‘What sort of reception can we expect, Inspector?’
‘A hostile one. They resent our interference.’
‘But we’re here to solve the crime.’
‘They probably feel that it’s their job to do that.’
Colbeck waited until the train shuddered to a halt then opened the door of the carriage. Taking care not to snag the tails of his coat, he jumped down nimbly on to the track. Leeming descended more slowly. Having deposited two of its passengers, the train chugged slowly off towards the Linslade Tunnel.
The newcomers took stock of the situation. Several people were gathered around the stricken engine and carriage. Others were standing in forlorn groups. Colbeck sought out the man whose name has been given to him as the person in charge. Inspector Rory McTurk of the railway police was a huge individual with a black beard and shaggy eyebrows. When he was introduced to them, McTurk was patently unimpressed by Colbeck’s tailored elegance and by Leeming’s unsightly features. He put a note of disapproval into his gruff voice.
‘So you’ve come at last, have you?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ replied Colbeck, weighing him up. ‘I trust that we can count on your full cooperation, Mr McTurk.’
‘
Inspector
McTurk,’ corrected the other.
‘I beg your pardon.’
‘We’ll give you all the help you need – and some guidance.’
‘Do you think that we’ll need guidance, Inspector?’
‘Yes,’ said McTurk, brusquely. ‘Railway lore is a complicated thing. You’ll need someone to take you through it. As for the robbery,’ he continued with an air of complacency, ‘I’ve already made preliminary enquiries among those who were on board the train, and I’m in a position to tell you exactly what happened.’
‘I’d prefer to hear it from the lips of the witnesses,’ insisted Colbeck. ‘That way we eliminate any narrative flourishes you might feel impelled to introduce.’