The platform was crowded, the noise of trains was deafening and the billowing steam was an impenetrable fog that seemed to thicken insidiously with every minute and invade his nostrils. In the previous year, Lime Street Station had been considerably enlarged, its majestic iron structure being the first of its kind. Leeming was unable to see this marvel of industrial architecture. His mind was on the harrowing journey ahead. When the train pulled in and shed its passengers, he braced himself and climbed aboard. The newspaper kept him awake long enough for him to read the front page. Then the locomotive exploded into action and the train jerked forward like an angry mastiff pulling on a leash.
Within seconds, Victor Leeming was fast asleep.
Inspector Robert Colbeck also spent time at Lime Street that morning, but he made sure that he saw every inch of it, struck by how much railway stations had improved in the past twenty years. It did not have the classical magnificence of Euston, but it had a reassuring solidity and was supremely functional. Even though it was used by thousands of passengers every week, it still had an air of newness about it. Colbeck was there to meet the train from which the murder victim had been hurled on the previous day, hoping that Sergeant Leeming's visit to Manchester had borne fruit.
Blackboards had been set up along the platform with a question chalked on them in large capitals – DID YOU TRAVEL ON THIS TRAIN YESTERDAY? – and policemen were ready to talk to anyone who came forward. Colbeck watched with approval. Long before the train had even arrived at Lime Street, however, Constable Walter Praine bore down purposefully on the detective.