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• "I've never seen snow like it.said the big lad with the seat by the window.
I'd been watching him for a while. With only six of us in the service station waiting for the snow to stop, there was nothing else to do but watch the blizzard or watch each other.
Outside the windows, the wind was thick with snow, hammering into the white blanket which covered the motorway and deepened with each passing minute.
The door behind me opened and a lone figure staggered in, his dufflecoat patchy With compressed snow where he had been lying on the ground.
"Is there a driver here for Hancock Haulage?" he asked.
"That's me," said the tall young lad with his back to me.
"I don't know you. Are you new?" "Only started last week," the lad explained.
"Aye, right. My name's Alan. Listen, I've got a spot of bother. I skidded sideways up the ramp there and I can't get any grip. Can you give us a snatch?"
The young man stood up, pulling his jacket tight around him against the anticipated chill. As he turned, his long straight nose swinging into profile, I had a glimpse of a short scar on his neck like an unhealed wound.
"Did you tell me your name?asked Alan. "Ray."
"Aye, right."
They walked through the double doors, their voices fading into the wind.
"This'll be a laugh!" said the Scotsman they called Willy, ''Let's go for a butcher's!" He lifted an ex-Anny parka from the table and struggled his large frame into it. "Coming Graham?" he asked the overweight man by the window.
"No fear. I'm not supposed to be out on the road with that bus tonight. If someone from the company sees me I'll be for the high jump."
"Och man, who's going tae see you on a night like yon!"
"All the same, stay here."
"Please yersel." Willy waddled towards the door.
"I'll join you," called the sheepskin coat in the corner. "If it brightens up the evening . . ." He shrugged his padded shoulders. He was a middle-aged salesman type, the sort with an artificial smile which leapt into action as and when required.
"You with us?" he glanced at me in passing. I shook my head, passing up the opportunity.
"More sense," Graham called over. This seemed like a good moment to turn my full attention to the station's res taurant manageress, Susan according to her badge. "Some way to spend Christmas Eve," I said.
She looked up from her task of polishing the counter top. "I should actually be stretched out on a beach in a bikini."
I could agree with that. She had the type of figure which woud look good stretched out most places with or without a bikini. "So what are you doing here?" I was tempted to add 'in a place like this' but there's a time and a place for corn, and this wasn't it.
She sighed. It was a long story but, cutting it very short to save a fresh outbreak of tears, she had been stood up. I could understand being jilted at the altar or abandoned outside the cinema, but not missing a foreign holiday. For Susan's sake I didn't pursue the matter.
"Guess your stuck here till the snow melts," 1 sympathised, "Just like you," she retorted.
"What usually happens in situations like this?"
"I make a lot of coffee and we tell old jokes." She picked up the coffee pot and examined it. "I guess my job starts now."
"Refill time, eh?"
"Damn!" she said, looking under the counter. "Right out of coffee. I'll need to get some from the store."
"Need any help?"
"No thanks. I can manage." She clipclopped into the kitchen area out of sight.
"Lucked out,Graham commented, a lecherous grin crossing his face.
"Win some . . ."
". . . lose some," he completed the phrase for me and walked across to my table.
We watched the snow swaying in the breeze as it was blasted past the plate windows.
"Wonder how they're getting on out there!"
"Cold work, coupling two trucks together. What do you reckon their chances are?" I asked.
"Depends how badly it's lying."
A few more minutes passed before Wil ly and the sheepskin coat came in. "Get her off?" asked Graham.
"Och it wasnae that bad. man. He coulda took it off himsel, if he'd thought aboot it. 1 reckon even Martin here coulda done it." Martin was searching the pockets of his sheepskin.
"I seem to have misplaced my car keys. Must have fumbled them with these gloves on." He left us, passing Ray between the double doors.
Ray came in, shaking his head and grinning. "Daft old sod."
"Ye've no left him not there packing thae chains, hiv ye?" Ray nodded, obviously amused at the thought.
"Hiv ye no pity, man? The old codger will gie' himsel a heart attack." But I noticed that Willy wasn't rushing to help.
Someone who was rushing was Martin as he flew back in, gulping for breath, "He's dead." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "Your mate's out there lying in the snow."
We all went out this time.
Sure enough, lying in a heap with a thin covering of snow forming on his dufflecoat, Alan was dead, but far from stone cold. A thin trickle of warm blood from the ugly gash in his neck mixed with the snowflakes melting on his skin and dripped into a pink hole in the snow.
"We can't leave him lying here," I said. "Let's gel him inside."
We took him into the building, but rather than have him lying in the cafeteria like a side of beef draining after the slaughter, we put him on a table in the janitorial supplies room of the mens' toilet and returned to the cafeteria area.
"We could do with the police being here," said Graham.
"If nobody minds I'd like to ask a few questions."
"What gie's you the right to interrogate us? Polls are ye?" That was an interesting question from Willy and a question which deserved an answer.
"My name's Jimmy Sparks. I'm a private investigator and I'd like to help, but if you've got any objections then I'll back down and we'll wait for the police."
Willy realised then that his outburst had put him in prime position as a suspect. "I didnae mean anything. I jist thought . . ."
I didn't suspect Willy. He was loud and shameless, but the main point of interest was that he had been with someone all along. He, like Graham, was a man I could discount from the list of suspects. Susan appeared from the kitchen area. thought you'd all left me." She glanced each face in turn.
"No." I explained. "There's been an cident. Alan's dead."
She covered her mouth with her hand. low?"
"We don't know." I didn't see any point outlining the gruesome details. She was fficiently shocked as it was. Her hands re shaking nervously and the coffee pot ttled in her fingers.
I went back to the table where the oup had assembled, ashen-faced and letly constructing their alibis. The cusing finger pointed sharply at either ty or Martin. Both had been alone out3e although only Ray was supposed to lye been with Alan. I didn't want to blow with questions until I had at least one of c textbook requirements straightened it — the method.
"I'm going to take a closer look at the Idy. I'd advise you all, for the sake of ■ pearances, to stay here." There was ent agreement.
As I crossed the corridor to enter the ilets, I wondered what I had done to !serve this kind of Christmas Eve. I looked down at the outstretched body id sighed. The face was pale, draining to at pearlised blank-canvas finish on which orticians like to work. Against this eaching, the dark hair lay in stark conast, its hard texture softening as it deDsted. I opened the coat and pulled the liar away from his neck. There, at the ick of his head, was the dark patch of atted blood which had caused the probm. God knows what the Weap on was,
but it was no blunt instrument to leave that sort of indentation.
I examined the dufflecoat hood. 'rhe blood had seeped through leaving a dark nondescript stain but there was no hole in the fabric. It was almost as if the assailant had pulled down the hood before striking. Strange. But then, murders were strange.
The man who had so suddenly become a corpse was telling me nothing. The method, motive and opportunity remained vague. I tried the scene of the crime.
The blizzard had covered up the trail of crimson dots from the doors to the front of the truck where Martin had found the body. All footprints, marks of any scuffle, traces of a murder weapon were lost under a half-inch of white powder.
I checked my watch, 11:25pm. Almost time for the weather report on the radio. I turned over the car engine, trying to remember if I had ever added anti-freeze or if the car ran on the stuff all year round. Two hundred miles from home and stranded in this winter nightmare, it wasn't going to make a snowball in hell's difference now. The news jingle played.
"Blizzards sweeping across England have halted road movements throughout the country and the London Weather Centre expects no change for several hours yet . . ." I was about to switch off and return to the cafeteria when the next item caught my attention: "Due to the weather conditions, police have had to call off their search for the convicted murderer, Robert Dawson, missing since lunchtime from Swansea Prison. A police spokesman said it was possible that Dawson, a 34-year-old Londoner, had crossed the Severn Bridge before it was closed.
I switched it off.
If Robert Dawson, one-time murderer, had become Ray the new truck driver for Hancock, that could explain a lot of the mystery. It would explain why Alan had not known him. And Ray might have suspected that Alan, as the last man to arrive, had seen a television newsflash and could identify him. There was the motive.
The conversation stopped as I entered the cafeteria.
"I'd like to talk to each one of you individually." No one objected this time.
Willy had been with Martin all the time the truck manoeuvring had been in progress, and Martin could corroborate that fact. Graham had been with me all the time until the body had been found. The man I suspected to have last seen Alan alive was Ray, but Ray swore that Alan had been loading chains when he last saw him. Which all pointed the finger at Martin. I spent time with him.
"And he was dead when you got there?"
"I told you, it looked like he'd fallen in the snow, but when I spoke to him to see if he was alright there was no response."
"What made you go anywhere near the truck?"