Read Chapter 15: Old Tom's Secret

The wardrobe smelled of mothballs and stale perfume. Arthur pressed himself against the back panel, his breath shallow, his ribs screaming. Through the slatted door he could see the police officers moving through Lila’s flat—two of them, both in plain clothes, one tall with a notebook, the other squat and balding.

“She was a low-level fence,” the tall one said. “But the bloke who did this knew what he was doing. Professional.”

“Cigarette burns?” The squat one crouched by the body, and Arthur closed his eyes. He’d seen enough already. The blood had pooled dark and thick beneath the kitchen table, and the smell—copper and something else, something sweet—had followed him into the bedroom.

“And the paper.”

“What paper?”

The tall one flipped a page in his notebook. “Half-burned note, looks like a list of names. One of them’s crossed out. Phelps, A.”

Arthur’s blood went cold.

“Any relation to the train job?”

“That’s what I intend to find out. But the name that interests me more is this one.” He pointed at the notebook. “Eddie Marsh. Professional acquaintance of Lila’s, known associate of Victor Kane’s crew. Except Marsh was supposed to be dead.”

The squat officer straightened. “Was supposed to be?”

“Disappeared three months ago. No body, no trace. And now this list here—” he tapped the page, “—has him marked as ‘disappeared’ too. Which means someone’s keeping track of who’s been dealt with and who hasn’t.”

Arthur’s hand closed around the half-burned note in his own pocket. He’d taken it from the floor just before they’d arrived. Eddie Marsh wasn’t dead. He was out there somewhere, alive, maybe the only crew member Victor hadn’t managed to kill.

But the police were in the way of any search.

The squat officer let out a low whistle. “So whoever killed Lila is working through a list. Cleanup crew.”

“Seems that way. And if Marsh is still alive, he’s either next or he’s the one doing the killing. Either way, we need to find him before the wrong side does.”

They moved toward the door, and Arthur felt the breath catch in his lungs. Another minute. Just another minute and they’d be gone.

But the tall officer stopped. Looked back at the bedroom.

“Check the wardrobe.”

Arthur’s heart seized. The singed sack of cash—all four hundred pounds of it—was stuffed under a loose floorboard he’d found beneath the wardrobe’s base. But if they opened the door, they wouldn’t need to search the floor. They’d have him.

The squat officer’s footsteps approached. Heavy. Deliberate. Arthur gripped the wardrobe’s inner handle, ready to burst out and make a run for the window—

A siren wailed in the street below.

The squat officer paused. “That’s the warrant team. They’ll want the scene ours.”

“Fine. Let’s meet them downstairs.”

The footsteps retreated. The front door closed. Silence.

Arthur waited. Counted to sixty. Then another minute for good measure. He pushed open the wardrobe door and slid out, grabbing the sack of cash from under the floorboard, and slipped through the flat’s back window onto the fire escape.

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Old Tom’s lock-up was a brick shed behind a railway arch in Deptford, crammed with brass fittings, signal lamps, and the accumulated detritus of thirty years on the Southern Region. Tom was retired now, eighty if he was a day, but he maintained his old signal box as a hobby and kept a kettle perpetually on the boil.

He didn’t seem surprised to see Arthur. Just looked at him over his spectacles, took in the torn coat, the bloodstained shirt, the wild eyes.

“You look like a man who’s been through the wars, Arthur.”

“Close enough.” Arthur slumped into a wooden chair by the potbelly stove. The ribs on his right side throbbed with every breath. “I need your help, Tom. And I need you not to ask too many questions.”

Tom poured two cups of tea from a chipped pot. “The train job. I thought that might be you, when I heard the news. They didn’t name anyone, but they said a signalman’s box was used. I told myself it couldn’t be you. Then I saw your picture in the evening paper—blurred, but it was you.”

Arthur took the tea. His hands shook as he raised it to his lips. “I didn’t mean for any of it to happen.”

“I know.” Tom sat opposite him. “You’re a lot of things, Arthur Phelps, but you’re not a killer. So what happened?”

So Arthur told him. Not all of it—he left out the gambling debt, the threat against his daughter—but enough. Victor’s crew. The red light. Scar’s gun at the driver’s head. The treeline, the lantern, the flame that caught Scar’s coat.

He left out the part about the money under Lila’s floorboard. Tom didn’t need to know that.

When Arthur finished, Tom was quiet for a long moment. Then he reached into the pocket of his oil-stained waistcoat and pulled out a key. Small. Brass. The kind that opened a station locker.

“You know a man named Eddie Marsh?”

Arthur’s hand tightened around the tea. “From the list. Victor had his name marked as ‘disappeared.’ Lila kept the record.”

“Eddie worked the Southern Region for a time. Up on the Brighton line. He was a good signalman—steady hands, quick mind. But he had a habit of asking too many questions about the mail trains.” Tom held the key out. “He gave this to me two months before he vanished. Told me that if anything happened to him, I should pass it on to the one man in the region he trusted. He didn’t say your name, but he described you well enough.”

Arthur took the key. It was warm from Tom’s pocket. “What does it open?”

“Victoria Station. Locker bank near platform 3. He said there was something in there that would make sense of everything, if only he had the chance to explain it.” Tom’s eyes were sharp. “Eddie Marsh wasn’t what he seemed, Arthur. He was working for the police. Undercover. Had been for over a year, trying to build a case against Victor Kane—the mail train job, a dozen others, all of it. But he was found out.”

Arthur stared at the key. “If Victor knew he was police, why didn’t he kill him?”

“Because Eddie disappeared before Victor could get to him. The crew thought he’d been dealt with, but the body was never found. I checked with the railway police—off the record—and they confirmed he was one of theirs. They claimed they pulled him out before he was compromised, but I don’t believe it.” Tom leaned forward. “I think Eddie ran. And I think what he left in that locker is the reason why.”

Arthur turned the key over in his palm. The metal was worn smooth, the edges rounded with age. “You think he knew something about Victor that got him killed?”

“I think he knew something about the crew that stayed quiet after he disappeared. And I think whatever’s in that locker might be the only thing that can save your neck.”

Arthur pocketed the key. The weight of it was small, insignificant. But it felt heavier than the sack of cash under his arm.

“Victoria Station,” he repeated.

“Platform 3. The locker bank’s at the far end, past the newsagent. If anyone’s watching it, I don’t know about it—but I’d check your tail before you go in.” Tom stood, taking Arthur’s empty cup. “And Arthur? If Victor sent his men after Lila, he’ll have sent them after you, too. Don’t trust anyone you meet on the way. Not even the police.”

Arthur stood, wincing as his ribs protested. “Thanks, Tom.”

“Don’t thank me yet.” Tom’s voice was solemn. “Eddie Marsh told me one other thing before he disappeared. He said there was more to this job than anyone knew. That the money wasn’t the real prize.”

“What was?”

“The manifest. The one that got left behind in the rush. He said it wasn’t a list of cargo—it was a list of names. Names of people who were supposed to die in the chaos. At least one of them was a member of the crew who'd betrayed Victor. But Eddie never got a chance to say who.”

Arthur felt the cold crawl up his spine. The manifest. The one Victor thought he had and the one Arthur was certain he’d dropped in the treeline. It wasn’t just a document of the train’s contents.

It was a death list.

And someone had given it to Victor to execute.

He left Old Tom’s lock-up and stepped into the grey London drizzle. The key was in his pocket, the cash under his arm, and the name Eddie Marsh was burning in his head. Victoria Station was an hour’s walk away, but every step he took felt like a step toward a truth he wasn’t sure he wanted to find.