excerpt

Lucas’s stomach is awash with nausea, and a swill of unexpected hysteria.
He shifts his weight away from Buttivant’s bulk. Just keep some words coming.
“It’s only a single track . . . not exactly grand . . . it’s derelict, isn’t it?”
Keep the ancient bugger in line.
Buttivant’s grin is weakening, that grip slackens even as Lucas concentrates
on the notion: this outlying rural loop was little more than an elongated siding.
Grand/grandiose. The pretensions of Victorian capitalism. Look on my works,
ye mighty…
Buttivant releases the elbow, looks reproving, and puts an avuncular arm
around his shoulder. Knobbly fingers entwine for an instant with his—a
masonic grip? The trainmaster clears his throat with a solemn swig of mucus.
“If you had the Knowledge, young man, you would know that every Junction
has its time and place . . .” He snorts with apparent disgust, tugging his
nostril and doing up the top button on his sodden greatcoat. “All that Knowledge,
just lying in wait. And in the pride of his young body he passes it by.”
The ground seems to buzz again, as if the earthscape is an enormous wet
electrode, leaking insect energies. Abruptly Buttivant removes that avuncular
arm and lumbers into the kiosk, a dung-beetle re-entering its matchbox.
Noises occur : electrical hum, nasal intercom chatter, Buttivant’s thick
responses.
Suddenly these sounds are overdubbed by the whine of tyres, the solid
clunk of a car door, footsteps on the gravel forecourt. Time to steal away while
the stranger keeps Controller Buttivant busy.
But there’s a bellow of profanities, exuberant fractured utterances in a
heavy accent. A big man in an expensive overcoat, yelling into a mobile phone,
strides straight past him.
“. . . I’m already there, Samih, right outside the old man’s signal
house . . . you call me back, you hear?”
This high-energy executive stashes his phone, knocks furiously on the Controller’s
kiosk.
“Hey, you old scheisshund, what kind of a doggy’s mess is this, huh? You told
me everything was all ready. You better be right, old man, or else I kick your
arse!” He catches sight of Lucas and gives him a stagey wink, invites him to be
part of this candid camera caper.
Buttivant bumbles out of his hutch, caricature of the mummerset menial,
clutching his cap. “We’ll get the trains running again, Mr. Kraskolkyn, sir!”
But now Mister K is focused on Lucas.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562839

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0978186508