Free The Lost Luggage Porter by Andrew Martin Page A

with the beer.
    'What's your game then, mate?' said the Blocker, after necking most of his ale.
    'Well, I've seen you operating up the station,' I said, 'and I liked the look of it. You know, steal from folks before they get on a train then don't get on yoursen . . . And I was wonder­ing whether I could lend a hand.'
    'Put 'em up,' said the Blocker suddenly, and I made two fists thinking: is he going to lam me again?
    Then the Brains was shaking his head.
    'Fingers held out straight, like,' he said, and I did as he said. The Brains looked at my fingers, looked away.
    'You've the right-shaped hands for a hoister,' he said, star­ing into the fire. He turned to me once again, saying: 'Ever done the work?'
    Before I could tell another tale, the Blocker was reaching out towards my glasses.
    'Let's have a skeg through those gogglers, mate,' he said, and I swayed back away from him.
    'Leave off’ I said. 'I don't like other folk . . . looking through 'em.'
    The Brains laughed.
    'Well, we're all cranky some way’ he said.
    He stood up; the Blocker stood too.
    'Finish up,' said the Brains, looking down at my beer.
    'What's the programme, lads?' I said.
    'Little stroll,' said the Brains,'... maybe look out for a soft mark while we're at it. Look slippy now.'
    I downed the beer, picked up my bag, and followed them out into the street. I was very glad to be out into the cold and rainy air .. . and my bad eye was now giving less trouble. It had simply gone to sleep. Directly we turned the first corner, the Blocker said, 'Bears.'
    As Chief Inspector Weatherill had told me, there were two of them - two coppers, thin men in capes, walking fast with their dark lanterns in their hands. They passed us by without a glance. I was next to the Brains. The Blocker had fallen in behind - he was the owl, keeping eyes skinned to protect the Brains. As we walked, the Brains put his long hand out to me. 'Miles Hopkins,' he said. 'Glad to meet you, Allan.' He had a good grip, and shook my hand hard as I hazarded his age (he was perhaps thirty-five, a good ten years older than me at any rate).
    We came to a rare gas lamp. It illuminated a curved wall covered with posters - a great, glowing bay of advertise­ment, with nobody about to read the words: 'Aladdin at the New Theatre Royal', 'The Yorkshire Gazette - for the Farmer, the Sportsman, the Fireside', 'Turn Right For Capstan's Cig­arettes.'
    But we turned left, striking a row of pubs - a good hundred- yard run of pubs or jug and bottle shops before the cobbled road rose, becoming a little bridge over the River Foss. Some light leaked from the pubs, which were mostly ordinary terraced houses that had a different life at night. The front windows were low, and Miles stooped to look through some of them as the wind and rain picked up. He looked with an expert eye into those parlour bars. The first few were silent, but desperate shouts came at intervals from the fourth or fifth one, as if orders were being passed among the crew of a ship. Some of the houses had names: the Full Moon, the Ebor Vaults, the Greyhound. Others didn't run to names.
    I thought my nerves would either get set or get shattered, but they did neither, and all I could do was wait, trying to disguise fast breathing in the meantime. On the little bridge, Miles Hopkins and the Blocker stopped for a conference. I looked down at the river. The Foss was not more than five foot wide, compressed by factories, and darker than the night. I thought of my bike, waiting in High Ousegate to carry me back to Thorpe-on-Ouse and the wife. It was a breakaway I could not easily imagine making.
    The conference was over. Miles Hopkins touched my arm, and we crossed the bridge to see a stubby little street of crumbling bricks blocked at the far end by a high wall, as if somebody had tried to cross it out, a mistake having been made. In the street stood one house, one shop - 'Todd for Meat' - and three pubs, all bigger than the earlier ones. Going by their