Eye of the Needle - Ken Follett [63]
The police-inspector said, “Your man’s hopped it, then.”
“Almost certainly. You’ve looked in every toilet, and the guard’s van?”
“Yes, and on top of the train and under it, and in the engine and the coal tender.”
A passenger got off the train and approached Bloggs and the inspector. He was a small man who wheezed badly. “Excuse me,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” the inspector said.
“I was wondering, are you looking for somebody?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Well, if you are, I was wondering, would he be a tall chap?”
“Why do you ask?”
Bloggs interrupted impatiently. “Yes, a tall man. Come on, spit it out.”
“Well, it’s just that a tall chap got out the wrong side of the train.”
“When?”
“A minute or two after the train pulled into the station. He got on, like, then he got off, on the wrong side. Jumped down onto the track. Only he had no luggage, you see, which was another odd thing, and I just thought—”
The inspector said, “Balls.”
“He must have spotted the trap,” Bloggs said. “But how? He doesn’t know my face, and your men were out of sight.”
“Something made him suspicious.”
“So he crossed the line to the next platform and went out that way. Wouldn’t he have been seen?”
The inspector shrugged. “Not too many people about this late. And if he was seen he could just say he was too impatient to queue at the ticket barrier.”
“Didn’t you have the other ticket barriers covered?”
“Afraid I didn’t think of it…well, we can search the surrounding area, and later on we can check various places in the city, and of course we’ll watch the ferry—”
“Yes, please do,” Bloggs said.
But somehow he knew Faber would not be found.
It was more than an hour before the train started to move. Faber had a cramp in his left calf and dust in his nose. He heard the engineer and fireman climb back into their cab, and caught snatches of conversation about a body being found on the train. There was a metallic rattle as the fireman shoveled coal, then the hiss of steam, a clanking of pistons, a jerk and a sigh of smoke as the train moved off. Gratefully, Faber shifted his position and indulged in a smothered sneeze. He felt better.
He was at the back of the coal tender, buried deep in the coal, where it would take a man with a shovel ten minutes’ hard work to expose him. As he had hoped, the police search of the tender had consisted of one good long look and no more.
He wondered whether he could risk emerging now. It must be getting light; would he be visible from a bridge over the line? He thought not. His skin was now quite black, and in a moving train in the pale light of dawn he would just be a dark blur on a dark background. Yes, he would chance it. Slowly and carefully, he dug his way out of his grave of coal.
He breathed deeply of the cool air. The coal was shoveled out of the tender via a small hole in the front end. Later, perhaps, the fireman would have to enter the tender when the pile of fuel got lower. But he was safe for now.
As the light strengthened he looked himself over. He was covered from head to toe in coal dust, like a miner coming up from the pit. Somehow he had to wash and change his clothes.
He chanced a look over the side of the tender. The train was still in the suburbs, passing factories and warehouses and rows of grimy little houses. He had to think about his next move.
His original plan had been to get off the train at Glasgow and there catch another train to Dundee and up the east coast to Aberdeen. It was still possible for him to disembark at Glasgow. He could not get off at the station, of course, but he might jump off either just before or just after. However, there were risks in that. The train was sure to stop at intermediate stations between Liverpool and Glasgow, and at those stops he might be spotted. No, he had to get off the train soon and find another means of transport.
The ideal place would be a lonely stretch of track just outside a city or village. It had to be lonely—he must not be seen leaping from the coal tender—but it had to be