Read Chapter 35: Aftermath of the Run

The holding cell stank of damp wool and yesterday's tea. Arthur sat on the bench with his back against the cold brick, watching the single bulb buzz above him. His hands were steady now, which surprised him. He'd expected the shakes to come on once the running stopped, but they hadn't. Maybe he was too tired for shakes.

The door clanked open. A sergeant with a face like a boiled ham beckoned him out. "You're free to go, Mr. Phelps. Statement's been taken. Your friend's waiting."

Arthur stood slowly, working the stiffness from his knees. "Friend?"

"Bloke named Eddie Moran. Says he's known you twenty years and you couldn't plan a bank robbery if your life depended on it, which apparently it did. Gave us a right earful about the whole affair."

Arthur followed the sergeant down the corridor, past desks where constables pretended not to watch him, past a window that showed grey morning light over the rooftops. The world had kept turning while he'd been underground. He found that remarkable.

Eddie was waiting in the front lobby, jammed into a wooden chair too small for him, nursing a cup of tea he wasn't drinking. When he saw Arthur, he stood so fast the chair scraped backward.

"There you are, you daft bugger. I thought they'd keep you."

"They let me go."

"That's what I said. Let you go." Eddie's eyes searched Arthur's face. "You all right?"

Arthur considered the question. He was breathing. He was standing. He was no longer being chased through tunnels with police sirens at his back. By recent standards, he was splendid.

"I need my things," Arthur said.

The desk sergeant handed over a brown envelope containing Arthur's personal effects. Arthur tipped them out onto the counter: his wallet, empty of anything useful, a pencil stub, three keys he didn't recognize anymore, and the watch.

His father's watch.

The case was dented where a bullet had grazed it during the chaos at the bank—or maybe earlier, during the derailment. Arthur couldn't remember precisely when it had saved his life. He only knew that it had. He turned it over in his fingers, feeling the familiar weight of it, the worn winding stem.

"I thought you'd lost that," Eddie said quietly.

"Almost did." Arthur slipped it into his pocket. "Let's go."

They stepped out into a damp London morning. The street was ordinary—a newsagent rolling up his shutters, a woman pushing a pram, a milk float rattling past—and Arthur found he couldn't quite reconcile it with everything that had come before. The manor. The tracks. The tunnel. The gunfire. All of it reduced to a few paragraphs in a police file, and him standing here with nothing but a dented watch and the smell of the Underground still in his clothes.

"There's a café on the corner," Eddie said. "I need something that isn't police tea."

They sat at a window table. Eddie ordered eggs, beans, toast, and a pot of strong tea. Arthur watched him eat in silence, his own cup untouched.

"So," Eddie said around a mouthful of toast. "You want to tell me what happened in there?"

"Not much to tell. They asked questions. I answered them. Your statement helped."

"That's not what I mean." Eddie put down his fork. "I mean what happens now. The money's delivered. The bank bloke's got the ledger. Lestrange is in custody. The case is closed, they say."

"They say."

Eddie squinted at him. "You don't believe it."

Arthur turned his cup on its saucer. The tea inside was dark and still. "I believe Lestrange is in custody. I believe the money's where it belongs. But the ledger—Cartwright has it. And there's a name on page forty-seven that I never got to see."

"You think someone's still out there."

"I know someone's still out there." Arthur met Eddie's eyes. "Victor had a handler. Someone above Lestrange. Someone who thought he was untouchable. Lestrange was just the instrument. The man who signed off on the plan—he's still walking around."

Eddie pushed his plate aside. "You don't know that for certain."

"I know the ledger went straight from the Baron's desk to Cartwright's vault without me ever seeing the last pages. And I know the inspector who was supposed to be clean turned out to be dirty. How many more like her do you think there are?"

Eddie was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, "What are you going to do?"

Arthur looked out the window. A train rumbled past on the elevated line beyond the rooftops, trailing grey smoke across the sky. He watched it until it was gone.

"Nothing," he said. "I'm going to do nothing."

"That doesn't sound like you."

"It's the honest answer. I'm a signalman, Eddie. I move trains from one place to another. I don't investigate corruption. I don't bring down conspiracies. I was a hostage and a witness, and I was lucky to walk away." He picked up his cup and drank. "The case is closed. I should let it stay closed."

"Even though you know—"

"Even though I suspect." Arthur set the cup down. "But suspicion isn't proof. And I've done what I can with what I had. The rest"—he spread his hands—"it belongs to people above my station."

They finished their breakfast in silence. Eddie paid. Arthur thanked him.

"What will you do now?" Eddie asked as they stood on the pavement.

Arthur took out the watch and looked at it. The glass was cracked, but the hands still moved. His father had kept it running for forty years, winding it every night before bed, checking it against the station clock every morning. Arthur had never understood that devotion to punctuality until he'd spent his life on the rails, where a minute's delay could mean a collision.

He wound the watch now, feeling the spring tighten beneath his fingers. The mechanism caught. The second hand resumed its sweep.

"I'm going to fix this," he said. "And then I'm going to leave London."

"Leave?" Eddie's brows went up. "Where would you go?"

"I don't know yet. Somewhere quiet. Somewhere with fewer tunnels." Arthur smiled faintly. "Somewhere I don't have to look over my shoulder every time I hear a siren."

"What about your job? The railway?"

Arthur considered that. The railway had been his life for thirty years. But it was also the place where he'd been recruited to stop a train, where he'd rigged a derailment, where he'd nearly died in a tunnel that smelled of coal dust and fear. The signal box held too much of it now.

"I'll resign," he said. "Properly. One last shift to hand over my routes, then done."

"You sure about this?"

Arthur weighed the watch in his palm. It was heavier than he remembered. Or perhaps he was lighter.

"I'm sure of very little," he said. "But I'm sure I need to go."

Eddie nodded slowly. "You know where to find me if you change your mind."

"I do. And Eddie—" Arthur paused. "Thank you. For the testimony. For everything."

Eddie waved a thick hand. "Don't get sentimental. You'd have done the same for me."

"Would I?"

"Course you would. You're the only honest man I know." Eddie grinned, then his face softened. "Take care of yourself, Arthur."

He clapped Arthur on the shoulder and walked away down the street, his bulk disappearing into the morning crowd. Arthur watched until he was gone.

The watch ticked against his palm.

Arthur found a watchmaker on a side street off the Commercial Road. The shop was cramped and dim, filled with clocks of every size, their pendulums swinging in ragged unison. An old man with jeweler's loupe looked up from his bench.

"Can you repair this?" Arthur asked, setting the watch on the counter.

The old man picked it up, turning it over. "Dented. Cracked glass. Movement's still running." He peered through the loupe. "Good piece. English make. You want it cleaned and serviced as well?"

"Yes. And a new glass."

"Two days."

Arthur paid half in advance. The old man wrapped the watch in tissue and placed it in a drawer labeled "Waiting."

Arthur stood on the pavement outside, hands empty for the first time in days. The watch had been his constant through everything, a small weight in his pocket, a reminder of his father. He'd grown used to its presence. Its absence felt like a missing step.

What else did he have to do?

He walked to a newsagent's and bought a railway timetable. He flipped through it standing at the counter, the pages soft and familiar under his fingers. He could go anywhere the lines ran. Wales. Cornwall. Scotland. Some small station where no one knew his name, where the only drama was a late goods train or a broken signal.

He chose a village in the Cotswolds. He'd passed through it once, years ago, on a day trip with his late wife. She'd loved the honey-coloured stone and the quiet lanes. He'd loved the signal box at the edge of the village, a neat brick building with a vegetable garden and a view over the valley.

It seemed as good a place as any to disappear.

Arthur folded the timetable and slipped it into his coat pocket. Then he turned his steps toward the station, ready to go back to his signal box one last time.

The message from Arthur's daughter: her words were just "Come if you can. I need to see you, Father."

He didn't know what to make of it. He tucked it in his pocket and walked toward the signal box. The trains ran regardless. His was a small part. And this was the last time. The watch went in the drawer; the diary stayed in his pocket. Between the two, he had enough company. He walked out the gate, heard the rattle of a goods train below, and did not look back.