The Highland Falcon Thief Read online

  ‘Shh.’ Lenny put her finger to lips.

  ‘You didn’t even wobble.’ Hal rubbed his elbow.

  ‘Rail legs,’ she said knowingly. ‘It’s like sea legs, but on trains.’

  ‘Is that a real thing?’

  ‘Dunno.’ Lenny shrugged. ‘Bend your legs like you’re standing on a skateboard. It helps.’

  Hal bent his knees and waddled after her.

  ‘Not that much.’ Lenny giggled.

  The corridor opened out into a compartment filled with storage boxes. A loading trolley was fixed to the wall beside two uniform jackets on hooks. A man in a blue suit and a cap with gold trim was sat on a wooden stool next to a switchboard, polishing a pair of shoes with a brush. Hal recognized him as the guard with the whistle from King’s Cross. Lenny put her arm out, so that Hal stayed back.

  ‘Psst! Graham,’ she whispered. ‘Close your eyes.’

  The train guard smiled, closing his eyes while continuing to polish the shoe.

  ‘You haven’t seen me,’ Lenny said in a whisper, waving at Hal to tiptoe with her across the carriage.

  ‘I haven’t seen anything.’ Graham chuckled. ‘I don’t even know you’re on board.’

  ‘Most of the train staff know I’m here,’ Lenny explained, as they marched on, ‘but Dad’s asked them to turn a blind eye.’ She glanced at Hal. ‘I’m not supposed to talk to passengers though.’ They passed a pair of compartments with three-tiered bunkbeds closely stacked together. ‘And passengers are definitely not allowed in the service cars. The train staff don’t like it. They work hard to give the passengers a magical experience, and a magician never reveals how they do their tricks.’ She pointed ahead. ‘That’s where they go when they’re off duty. They can’t relax if passengers are bossing them about asking for things.’

  Hal thought about the way Mr Pickle had spoken to Gordon Goulde, and how Lady Lansbury wandered around demanding things, and he completely understood.

  The next carriage was an open space with two tables and benches. Amy was standing at a counter in the far corner, making a cup of tea with her back to them.

  ‘Hi, Amy,’ Lenny said as they entered.

  ‘What are you doing out of your room? You promised to stay hidden –’ Amy turned around and went stiff. ‘Oh. Master Beck.’ She glared at Lenny, and Hal shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other.

  ‘Now, don’t get mad!’ Lenny said cheerfully. ‘Harrison found out where I was hiding. He said he wasn’t sure if he likes steam trains, so I’m going to take him to—’

  ‘Marlene.’ Amy’s voice was serious. ‘This isn’t a game. I could lose my job.’

  ‘I’ve sworn not to tell,’ Hal said. ‘I know I’m not allowed back here, but I promise to keep everything secret.’

  Amy sighed and turned back to the counter to add milk to her tea. ‘Your dad’s shift started an hour ago.’

  ‘Thanks, Amy – you’re the best.’

  ‘I’m a mug, is what I am,’ Amy said to more to herself than anyone as they scampered past her.

  A door with a sign that said GENERATOR next to a yellow triangle with a black lightning bolt inside it was emitting an alarming electric hum. Beside it was a giant cage with a padlocked door and no windows, only a skylight in the roof.

  ‘The luggage cage,’ said Lenny hurrying past. ‘Your bags will be in there somewhere.’

  ‘I don’t have bags,’ Hal replied, peering into the cage, stacked high with cases and holdalls. ‘I only brought a rucksack. I wish Mum had helped me pack though. I brought all the wrong stuff.’

  ‘Why didn’t she?’

  ‘One day, everything was normal; the next, I get told I’m going on a train with my uncle. Mum was too busy packing for hospital to help me. I think they’re worried about my baby sister.’

  ‘I’ve got three younger sisters. One time, when Nutan was born, I had to spend a whole afternoon with our next-door neighbour Mr Tyrell. He’s a bit strange. Doesn’t go out during the day. Goes out at night to collect dead stuff for his taxidermy. But it turned out OK because he taught me how to skin a squirrel.’

  Hal grimaced. ‘I’d rather be on the Highland Falcon than skinning squirrels.’

  ‘I’d rather be on the Highland Falcon than anywhere else in the world.’ Lenny smiled. ‘Are you looking forward to being a big brother?’

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.’

  ‘You don’t think about much, do you?’ Lenny laughed. ‘It’s tough being the eldest. You get ignored. You have to share everything, and you’re always told you’ve got to set an example.’

  ‘Like stowing away on a royal train?’ Hal laughed.

  ‘I’m serious.’ Lenny gave him a playful shove. ‘You’ll see – everything will change once your sister arrives. She’ll nag you to play with her all the time. Mine do, anyway.’

  ‘I’m not playing girls’ games.’

  ‘What’s a girl’s game?’

  Harrison shrugged. ‘Princesses?’

  Lenny thumped him on the arm.

  ‘Ow!’

  ‘My sister Priya and I play princesses all the time. She makes me dress as a prince and fight her. Guess who wins?’

  ‘You?’ Hal’s eyes flickered down to Lenny’s tool belt.

  ‘Priya, because she takes dance classes, so her legs are super strong. She can take you down with a blow to the backs of your knees before you’ve swung a fist. She calls it combat ballet.’

  ‘Right.’ Hal nodded. ‘I’ll remember to stay away from her then.’

  Lenny laughed, grabbing the handle of the door at the end of the carriage and twisting the lock below it. She yanked it open. Hal was hit by a blast of cold air. His head rang at the clattering sound of the train travelling at speed. Facing him was the claret metal of the locomotive. Lenny nimbly leaped over the gap between the carriage and the tender, opened a metal door, and disappeared inside.

  Hal gripped on to an iron handle on the outside of the carriage and looked down. It was only a small jump. Railway sleepers rushed beneath him in a hypnotic blur.

  Lenny’s head popped back out of the metal door. ‘C’mon, slowcoach.’

  ‘I c-can’t,’ Hal stammered.

  ‘Imagine you’re a ballet dancer!’ Lenny shouted, disappearing again.

  Taking a deep breath, Hal let go of the handle and jumped. He felt like he was falling but landed with a thump in the tender corridor, stumbling to his knees, his heart hammering in his chest as the roar of the locomotive shook the metal walls. He stood up on his feet unsteadily. It was dark, and the ceiling was low. The place stank of soot and smoke. As he stepped out on to the engine’s footplate, the wind whipped his hair back from his face and he gasped at the vivid panorama of hedgerows, trees and sky flying past the engine cab.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE FOOTPLATE

  Hal found Lenny standing beside the engine driver, who was leaning out of a glassless window, eyes on the track ahead. She grinned, yanking her dad’s arm.

  ‘Dad, this is my friend Harrison.’

  The engine driver turned. His head was covered with a navy turban. He had kind brown eyes, a weathered forehead and he was wearing blue dungarees – like Lenny – with a light-blue shirt underneath.

  ‘Friend? What friend?’ He looked at Hal and frowned. ‘I told you to stay away from the guests, Lenny.’

  Lenny smiled at her dad sweetly. ‘He looked lonely.’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ Hal protested.

  ‘He found my hiding place,’ Lenny admitted with a shrug.

  The engine driver sighed. ‘Marlene Singh, you’ll be the death of me.’ A warm smile broke out of his neat salt-and-pepper beard. ‘Good to meet you, Harrison. I’m Mohanjit Singh, father to the most disobedient girl ever to be born. And this –’ he patted the shoulder of a man bent double behind him – ‘is Joey Bray, the Highland Falcon’s fireman.’

  Joey Bray nodded at Hal as he thrust his shovel into the coal chute, turning and dropping the bl
ack rocks into the blazing furnace. Hal felt the heat against his cheeks and forehead.

  ‘Lenny, love,’ her dad said. ‘I want you to sit in the fireman’s chair while Joey’s shovelling. And keep Harrison out the way too. We’re about to take on water.’

  Springing across the footplate, Lenny pulled herself up on to the stool. ‘Isn’t it brilliant?’ she hissed at Hal.

  Hal nodded, pulling out his sketchbook and biro. He leaned on the metal of the cab to draw the spaghetti of silver tubes in front of him, as Lenny’s dad pulled on a red lever.

  ‘That’s the regulator,’ Lenny said in his ear. ‘It controls the amount of steam going into the pistons.’

  ‘Coming up on the water trough in three miles,’ Lenny’s dad said over his shoulder to Joey.

  Joey nodded. ‘Righto.’

  Hal looked up at Lenny. ‘Can you drive this?’ She shook her head. ‘You have to have years of experience before you’re allowed to drive a train like this one.’ She raised her voice. ‘And to be the driver of the royal train, you have to be the best engine driver in the world.’

  ‘It takes practice and team work,’ Lenny’s dad said over the roar of the engine. ‘Joey builds a white-hot fire, evenly spread. Water from the tender travels over the fire in pipes, turning into steam, which is pushed down those pipes and bends back for a double heating. Reheated steam is more powerful. That steam is driven down to a chamber at the front of the train with such great pressure, it pushes back the pistons, which turn the wheels.’

  ‘It’s a blimmin’ great kettle,’ said Joey, shovelling another load of coal into the furnace.

  ‘Do you have to feed the fire all the time?’ Hal asked.

  ‘I shovel about a tonne of coal every hour,’ said Joey, ‘but I ain’t just dumping it in anyhow. You have to spread it about so the air passing through gets heated evenly.’

  ‘Joey gives her power, and I drive,’ said Lenny’s dad. ‘This lever is the regulator, which makes the engine go faster or slower. And these are the brakes, if we need to slow her quickly. It takes a long length of track for a steam engine to stop dead.’ He tapped a gauge above Hal’s head. ‘I have one eye on the pressure inside the boiler at all times, and I keep track of how much water is left in the tender so that we don’t overheat and blow up.’

  ‘Steam engines blow up?’

  Lenny’s dad nodded. ‘If the pressure gets too high. But we don’t let that happen. There are ways to let the steam out.’ He pointed at a chain in the middle of the tangle of hissing pipes. ‘Pull that.’

  Hal yanked the chain, and a high, jubilant musical note drowned out the chuffing of the engine for a moment as a jet of steam rushed through the whistle. He looked at Lenny with delight and pulled the chain again.

  Mr Singh looked up the track, then glanced at his watch. ‘The trough’s coming up,’ he called to Joey.

  The fireman nodded, knocking shut the fire hole doors with the side of his shovel and passing the handle to Lenny. ‘Hold this, will you?’

  Lenny took it, proudly, as Joey dusted off his hands and walked to the corner of the footplate.

  ‘Half a mile!’ Lenny’s dad shouted.

  Joey readied himself by a large crank in the corner, knees bent.

  ‘Watch this, Hal!’ Lenny’s eyes were wide. ‘They’re going to refill the tank. Look!’

  She leaned out of the cab and pointed ahead. Hal looked down the streamlined nose of the engine as it huffed steam and smoke into the air.

  ‘That’s the tank where the water from the tender gets boiled into steam!’ Lenny shouted. ‘Once the steam’s pushed the pistons, it goes out the chimney. Gradually the water in the tender gets used up, and we have to refill it.’

  ‘You ready?’ Mr Singh cried.

  ‘Aye!’ Joey yelled.

  Hal saw the rhythmic pattern of approaching railway sleepers change. Stretching ahead, between the rails, was a shimmering trough of water.

  ‘DROP!’ shouted Lenny’s dad.

  Joey furiously span the giant crankshaft round and round with both hands. A loud splash and an earthquake of a roar came from underneath their feet. Torrents of water sluiced out from either side of the locomotive as if they were driving through a pond.

  ‘Wahooooooo!’ Lenny yelled into the wind.

  Hal whirled around, trying to take everything in, his eyes wide and heart thundering. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘There’s a big scoop underneath the tender.’ Lenny pointed down. ‘Joey lowers it with the crank as we drive over the water trough. The speed of the engine forces the water up into the tender.’ She pointed at the tender water level gauge. ‘Look!’

  Hal saw a needle rising steadily. Joey’s eyes were glued to a pipe, which began to spit water into an overflow.

  ‘She’s full!’ Joey shouted, winding the crank handle the other way to lift the scoop back up. The sound of gushing water subsided as the train chugged on, her belly full of water. Joey wiped his forehead on his sleeve, and Mr Singh smiled.

  ‘We just picked up three thousand gallons of water,’ said Lenny. ‘That’s about twelve tonnes in ten seconds.’

  Hal looked at Lenny’s dad and Joey in awe.

  Joey winked and patted the engine. ‘She’s a thirsty girl.’

  Lenny held out the shovel, and Joey returned to his rhythmic routine of delivering coal into the furnace.

  ‘The Highland Falcon is brilliant!’ Hal declared loudly.

  Lenny grinned. ‘Told you.’

  ‘I don’t understand. If the engine works so well, why are they getting rid of her?’

  ‘She’s old … and expensive to run.’ Mr Singh looked out along the snaking track. ‘We need two crews for this journey. Daniel and Kerry, who did the night shift, are asleep. There are more efficient engines now.’ He shook his head. ‘But none of them has the majesty of steam.’

  ‘But the Highland Falcon is better than normal trains,’ Hal said. ‘People should know about it. I’ll bet everyone would want to go on a steam train if they knew how great they are. I mean, look how fast they go.’ He sniffed the air.

  ‘Is it me, or can anyone else smell baked beans?’

  ‘Time for second breakfast,’ Joey said, reaching for a spanner. He jemmied three balls of silver foil from behind the pipes, knocking them on to his shovel. ‘These are piping hot,’ he said, tugging back the edges of the foil.

  ‘Baked potatoes?’ Hal said.

  Lenny bent down by a small cupboard in the tender, taking out three tin plates and laying them on the floor for Joey to put the potatoes on. The crispy parchment skins had split and were hissing and steaming. Hal’s mouth watered as Lenny used a Swiss Army knife from her tool belt to score a deep cross in the top of each potato into which she pressed a chunk of butter.

  Mr Singh unscrewed a clamp, grabbed a rag and – using it to protect his fingers – lifted down an open can of baked beans from the top of the boiler. The gloopy orange sauce inside bubbled and frothed. ‘The boiler gets up to fifteen hundred degrees,’ he said. ‘Pity to waste the heat.’

  Joey took a clean shovel from the cupboard, wiped it with a cloth, opened the furnace and held it over the fire. Lenny passed him three eggs, which he cracked on to the shovel. They sizzled, their translucent innards turning white. A perfectly fried sunny egg landed beside the potatoes and beans on each plate.

  ‘You can share mine,’ Lenny said, sitting down with her back against the tender. She pulled a fork out of her Swiss Army knife and offered it to Hal.

  Hal sat down next to her, certain he’d never been so excited to eat a meal. He scooped potato and beans, dripping with egg yolk, into his mouth, gasping at the heat. It was the most delicious food he’d ever tasted.

  ‘Now do you understand why I stowed away?’ Lenny said.

  Hal nodded, yolk dribbling down his chin.

  Lenny beamed, taking the plate from him and leaning in. ‘So, how are we going to catch this jewel thief, then?’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN
r />   THE MAGPIE

  Having wolfed down his food, Hal watched with a smile as Lenny licked her plate clean.

  ‘Have you got a list of suspects in that notebook of yours?’ she asked him. ‘We should think about each passenger and their possible motives. That’s what they do on TV.’

  ‘It’s a sketchbook.’

  ‘Let’s give the thief a name, like the Black Cat or the Pink Panther …’ She tilted her head, thinking.

  ‘What about the Magpie?’ Hal suggested. ‘They like to steal sparkly things.’

  ‘That is actually brilliant.’ Lenny looked delighted. ‘Write that down in your book.’

  Hal opened his sketchbook, turned to a blank page, and drew a magpie with a sparkling stone in its beak.

  ‘Hey, you can draw.’ Lenny pulled the book from his hand. ‘Let me look.’

  ‘No, I –’ Hal tried to grab it back, but she’d already turned the page.

  ‘That’s me!’

  ‘Yeah.’ Hal looked at the footplate floorboards, his cheeks burning.

  ‘No one’s ever drawn me before.’ Lenny stuck her tongue out at the picture, mirroring the drawing. ‘It’s good.’ She laughed and flicked forward.

  ‘Who’s this?’

  Hal took his sketchbook and closed it. ‘That’s my mum.’

  ‘Oh, right …’ Lenny changed the subject. ‘Think how brilliant it would be if we did solve the case.’

  ‘I might have to,’ Hal said. ‘Steven Pickle thinks I’m the thief.’

  ‘That overstuffed beetroot – what does he know?’

  Hal suddenly realized he’d been gone from his room for a long time. ‘I should get back.’

  ‘I’ll take you.’ Lenny stashed her dirty plate in the cupboard.

  ‘Thank you for showing me the engine, Mr Singh, and for the food, Mr Bray. I’ve had the best time.’

  Lenny’s dad shook his hand. ‘I would be grateful, Harrison, if you didn’t mention to any of the passengers that you were on the footplate, or with my stowaway daughter. It may cause trouble.’