Read Chapter 13: Aftermath of Fire

The bell tower stairs ended in a rusted ladder, and Arthur climbed with the sack of cash thumping against his hip. Each rung sent a shudder through the metal, and each shudder sent a spike of pain through his ribs where he'd hit the ground running from the treeline. He'd lost the lantern somewhere. He'd lost a shoe too, somewhere in the fields between the railway and this godforsaken church.

The bell chamber was small, maybe eight feet across, with a single arched window open to the night. The bell itself hung dead above him, a great iron shape swallowed in shadow. A few old nesting crates sat pushed against the wall, and the floor was thick with decades of droppings and dried leaves. It smelled of rot and cold stone.

Arthur dragged himself to the corner, out of sight of the window, and let the sack fall. The cash spilled out—a mess of crumpled notes, some singed at the edges from the fire that had almost cooked him alive. He'd grabbed it blind in the chaos, a fistful of banknotes torn from some mail bag while Scar screamed and rolled in the grass.

He didn't count it. Counting implied a future where it mattered.

He sat with his back to the stone wall, knees pulled up, and breathed. In. Out. The air tasted of smoke. His hands were still shaking, though whether from fear or adrenaline he couldn't tell anymore. The cut on his side had stopped bleeding, but the shirt was stuck to it, and when he shifted, the fabric pulled and he hissed through his teeth.

The city hummed below him. London at three in the morning was not silent, not really. There were always engines, distant laughter, the clatter of milk bottles somewhere. But here, in the church, the world felt muffled, like pressing your ear to a closed door.

He must have drifted, because the next thing he knew, grey light was creeping through the window. Dawn. And somewhere below, a voice—a real voice, not the murmur of his dream—cut through the quiet.

"—police have confirmed the robbery of the Glasgow-bound mail train near Aldermaston in the early hours."

Arthur went still. The radio. Someone had a radio on down in the street, a transistor held to an ear, or a shopkeeper setting up for the day. The words drifted up, fragmentary, brutal.

"…scenes described as chaotic… multiple carriages breached… estimates of the haul have not been officially released, though sources suggest…"

He crawled to the window, staying low, and peered through the iron grate. Down below, on the pavement outside a newsagent, a man in a flat cap stood with his head bent to a small radio. He was nodding, as if the news confirmed something he already suspected.

The voice continued: "…no arrests have been made. Police are appealing for witnesses. Early reports that a body was found at the scene have been denied. No fatalities have been confirmed."

No bodies. Arthur let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding. Eddie Marsh's body wasn't there. Scar wasn't dead. And Victor—Victor was out there, somewhere, believing Arthur had the manifest and the cash both.

The man with the radio turned it off, pocketed it, and walked on. Arthur watched him go, then pulled back from the window and sat down hard.

He had no idea what the news bulletin didn't say. It didn't say the police had any leads. It didn't say the crew had been caught. And it didn't say anything about Arthur Phelps, the signalman who'd stopped the train, because Arthur Phelps didn't exist to them yet. Just a witness. Just a body that wasn't there.

But Victor knew. Victor had watched him vanish into the trees with the sack. And Victor, being Victor, would assume the manifest was in the sack too. Arthur had seen the way Victor's face had twisted in the lantern light when Arthur had run—that look of calculation, cold and fast. Victor would burn the city down looking for him.

Arthur felt the laugh bubble up before he could stop it—a short, hollow thing that echoed off the stone. The irony was almost unbearable. He'd been marked for death because they thought he was in the way. Now he was being hunted because Victor thought he had stolen the very thing that could clear his name. The manifest. The list of stolen securities, bonds, and valuables that Victor was meant to fence through a dozen crooked dealers across Europe. If Arthur had that list, he could prove the crew's guilt. He could hand it to the police and vanish, let Victor and Scar and the rest burn for the robbery while he slipped away to somewhere calm. Somewhere that didn't have signal boxes and secret members and names crossed out in pencil.

But he didn't have the manifest. He had a sack of cash that was already half-burned and a body that hurt with every breath.

He needed to find the manifest. Before Victor found him.

Arthur worked through it the way he'd worked through a stalled freight schedule in fog. Methodical. Step by step. The manifest had been in the mail carriage, in a locked dispatch bag that Victor had cut open with a crowbar. Arthur had seen him pull out the papers, that single folded sheet with the engraved letterhead. Victor had held it up to the carriage light, checking it was there, then placed it in his inside coat pocket. That was the last Arthur had seen of it.

So either Victor still had it—in which case Arthur was dead in the water—or it had fallen in the chaos. The fire. The scramble in the treeline. Victor had dropped something, maybe in the panic when Scar started burning. Arthur had seen a dark shape tumble to the grass as Victor had scrambled backward.

The shape could have been the manifest. It could have been anything.

Arthur closed his eyes and tried to remember. The sequence was jumbled, full of adrenaline and fear. Scar screaming. The smell of kerosene and burning wool. Victor shouting something—he couldn't hear it, just the shape of rage—and then the dark shape fluttering down like a bird with a broken wing.

He wanted it to be the manifest. He needed it to be. Because if it wasn't, if Victor had kept it, then Arthur's only chance was to walk into the police station with a story so wild it would sound like the ravings of a madman.

He also knew, with the bone-cold certainty of a man who'd spent twenty-five years reading signals and comprehending dire situations, that the police wouldn't listen. He was a signalman with a gambling problem, a man who'd been seen in the company of criminals, and a witness to a robbery that had gone spectacularly wrong. He'd be a suspect before he could get the first word out.

The manifest was the only proof. The manifest was his life.

But going back to the treeline was impossible. By now, the place would be crawling with police, with Victor's men, with eyewitnesses and railway foremen who knew Arthur Phelps had been on shift that night. Arthur Phelps, the signalman who'd been meant to stop the train. The signalman who'd set fire to a man.

He couldn't go back.

He could only go forward.

He looked at the cash. It was a lot of it, even singed—maybe four hundred pounds, maybe more. Enough to buy a train ticket north, a room for a week, a new coat. But not enough to vanish forever. And not worth a thing if he couldn't clear his name.

The newsagent below was opening his shutters now. The morning felt too bright, the city too awake. Arthur pulled back further into the shadows of the bell chamber and pressed his hand to the stone wall, feeling the cold seep into his palm.

There was one other thread left to pull. A name. A possibility. The note he'd found in his coat the day before, so mysterious he'd wondered if he'd imagined it. Mr. Bell. No address, no explanation, just a name and the suggestion that help could be found. He'd dismissed it as a trap—too convenient, too easy.

But now he had nothing else.

And somewhere below, in the city that was waking up to the news of the greatest train robbery in decades, Victor's men were fanning out. They'd be at the railway. They'd be at his flat. They'd be watching his daughter's school.

They would not think to look in an abandoned church tower. That was the only thing Arthur had in his favor.

He took a breath, and then another, and watched the light grow brighter through the grate. The cash sat heavy and warm against his leg.

Mr. Bell. It was a name, at least. And names, Arthur had learned, were how you found people—and how you knew who to trust.

He had less than nothing to lose.