Read Chapter 34: The Last Run

Arthur Phelps stood in the shadow of a shuttered tobacconist's on Commercial Road, watching the rain polish the cobbles to a black gleam. The warehouse loomed fifty yards ahead, its corrugated iron roof bleeding rust into the gutter. Inside that warehouse, in a green ammunition box wrapped in oilcloth, sat the truth of what he'd done and what the Baron had been.

Eddie shifted beside him, hopping from foot to foot against the cold. "You sure about this, Arthur? Walking straight into the arms of the law?"

Arthur checked his watch. Eleven minutes to midnight. "Not the law. The bank. I found an honest man." He pulled the folded letter from his coat pocket, the one he'd spent two days composing, and tapped it against his palm. "Mr. Cartwright at the South Eastern. Handles the railway pension fund. Every penny accounted for, every signature verified. He's the sort who'd report his own mother for tax evasion."

"Fine. But how do we get past the filth watching every crossing from here to the City?"

"We don't go through the City." Arthur pointed east, past the warehouse, toward the old goods yard where the rails still ran, abandoned since the Beeching cuts. "The tunnel under the yard leads to the bank's rear loading bay. I worked that line for twelve years. I know every sleeper, every signal, every patch of shadow."

Eddie's face cracked into a grin. "The signalman's road."

"The signalman's road." Arthur clapped him on the shoulder. "Come on. We move fast, we move quiet, and we move now."

They crossed the street in a crouch, hugging the walls. The warehouse door surrendered to Arthur's pick with a click that felt louder than a gunshot. Inside, the smell of dust and old rope filled his nose. He found the ammunition box exactly where they'd left it, under a tarpaulin in the northeast corner. The locks were untouched. The oilcloth was dry.

Eddie lifted one end. Arthur took the other. The box was heavy but not so heavy that a man couldn't carry it if his life depended on it. His life did. So did Eddie's.

They slipped out through the rear door and into the yard. The rails shone dull under the quarter moon. Arthur's boots found the rhythm without being told—one sleeper, two, three, each spaced the way he'd measured them a thousand times when he'd had nothing else to do but think about the debts piling up and the wife he'd let down.

The tunnel mouth yawned ahead, black as ink. Eddie stopped.

"Arthur. Light."

Arthur turned. Two figures had emerged from behind a stack of abandoned sleepers, thirty yards back. Then two more from the other side. Four silhouettes, shotguns glinting, Victor's men come to finish what the Baron had started. The man in front cupped his hands to his mouth.

"Mr. Phelps! You've got something of ours. The boss wants it back."

Arthur's stomach dropped to his boots. He looked at the tunnel mouth, then at the four men spreading out to cut off any retreat. The box dragged at his arms. There was no way through them and no way around.

"No way under," he muttered.

Eddie's whisper was urgent. "What?"

Arthur's gaze fell to the signal post at the tunnel's edge. The lever box was rusted, the glass long shattered, but the mechanism beneath was still intact, tied to the siding points where the old freight line split. His hands remembered the weight of that lever before his mind caught up. He was a signalman. Signals could be set and signals could be broken.

"Eddie. Get the box into the tunnel. Ten yards in, no further. Then cover your ears."

"Arthur, what are you—"

"Just do it!"

Eddie scrambled. Arthur lunged for the lever box, throwing it open. The mechanism was crusted with years of neglect, but the wire was still there, and the points below the yard were still connected to the main running line where the last scheduled freight of the night was due in forty-one minutes. He grabbed the lever and hauled.

The old iron shrieked, fighting him, then gave with a clang that echoed across the yard. Somewhere beneath his feet, steel points slid across the rails, diverting the track into a siding that had been dead for six years and ended in a buffer stop backed by a brick wall.

Victor's men were running at him now, boots thundering on the sleepers. The front man raised his shotgun.

Arthur dived into the tunnel mouth just as the ground began to shake. The freight was early. No—the freights ran on time on this line. It was always on time. That was the one thing he'd never doubted.

The locomotive hit the points at full speed. The lead wheels caught the diverging route, slewed, and the engine plowed into the siding, tearing up sleepers with a scream of tortured metal. The wagons behind accordioned, derailing in a succession of thunderclaps that shook the yard like an earthquake. Steel wheels sparked against stone. The sound was immense, a metal world coming apart.

Arthur pressed himself against the tunnel wall, Eddie beside him, both of them shielding their heads as debris rattled past the mouth. The shotgun fire that followed was lost in the roar. When the last wagon settled, groaning, the air was thick with dust and the smell of hot iron.

Arthur pulled himself up. Through the haze, he saw the freight train crumpled like a discarded concertina, blocking the entire yard. Somewhere beyond it, Victor's men would be digging themselves out of heaps of splintered sleepers. They'd still be alive—Arthur hadn't wanted to kill anyone, not even them—but they'd be slow.

"Now," he gasped. "Run."

They ran through the tunnel, the box between them, stumbling through the dark until a faint glimmer appeared ahead: the grating that opened into the bank's loading bay. Arthur pushed it up, hauled the box through, and helped Eddie out into a service alley where a Bedford van waited, engine already running.

Cartwright stepped out, tall, silver-haired, wearing a bowler and an expression of pure rectitude.

"You look like you've been through a war, Mr. Phelps."

"Close enough." Arthur set the box down at Cartwright's feet. "The ledger's in there too. Names, dates, payments. The whole ugly history of the Baron's business. You'll know what to do with it."

Cartwright nodded and pried open the lid, checking the contents with a practiced eye. "It was never about the money for you, was it?"

Arthur shook his head. "It was about my father. And about a signal that was never meant to be given."

Cartwright closed the lid. "I'll see it reaches the right hands. The honest ones."

From far off came the droning of police sirens, growing closer. Arthur glanced at Eddie, who was already looking back toward the tunnel.

Their time was up.