The Lost Luggage Porter

by Andrew Martin

York, Winter, 1906 - two brothers have been shot to death. Meanwhile, Jim Stringer meets the Lost Luggage Porter, humblest among the employees of the North Eastern Railway company. He tells Jim a tale which leads him to the roughest part of town, a place where the police constables always walk in twos. Jim is off on the trail of pickpockets, 'station loungers' and other small fry of the York underworld. But then in a tiny, one-room pub with a badly smoking fire he enters the orbit of a dangerous, disturbed villain who is playing for much higher stakes . . .

Andrew Martin, a former Spectator Young Writer of the Year, grew up in Yorkshire. He has written for the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, the Independent on Sunday and Granta, among many other publications, and his weekly column appears in the New Statesman.