Purple Death

Second Helpings

Second HelpingsAn hour after Sam Gabriel expired on the floor of his office, David Arnold, thirty- eight year old father of two and a driver for Great Eastern Railways pulled his train to rest at platform two of New Street Station in Birmingham. The journey from the south coast resort of Penzance had been uneventful and David had coasted to a halt at the platform at Birmingham dead on time. The burning in his stomach had started about ten miles from the city, but he'd put it down to having eaten his breakfast in a hurry that morning. Now he was paying the price.

It wasn't until he felt the burning and tingling sensations in his mouth and began to feel the cramping feeling in his gut that David realised there might be something more seriously wrong with him. He knew he couldn't continue to drive for the rest of his shift which would take the train as far as his home town of Liverpool, where he'd hand over to a new driver for the rest of the train's journey to Glasgow. In his current condition he'd be a liability to himself and his passengers and so he responsibly decided to exit from his cab and get help before handing over the train to a relief driver if one could be found.

It was at that moment, at the same time as he tried to rise from his seat and move to the door of the cab that he realised just how bad things were. Though his brain continued to function perfectly well, David Arnold found himself rooted to his seat. He wanted to move, but couldn't. All his motor functions seemed to have deserted him. Hell, he couldn't even reach out his arm to lean through the window and call for help. He felt sick and a heavy tightness began to form in his chest, breathing becoming difficult. David knew he was in trouble.

Carriage doors slammed, the guard's whistle blew, and the hundred and forty passengers aboard the train waited for the mighty diesel-electric locomotive to begin its slow glide as it pulled the snake of carriages away from the station before gradually picking up speed as it moved out of the city.

When the train failed to move, the guard tried the whistle once more, thinking that perhaps the driver had failed to hear the shrill piercing sound intended to send him on his way. When the second whistle produced the same abortive effect the guard walked briskly down the platform to the front of the train. He was joined as he neared the locomotive by a platform supervisor, whose job it was to ensure that the train's carriages were in a safe condition with all doors closed before it moved off. The two men arrived at the door to the driver's cab simultaneously and the guard, a veteran of twenty years working on the rail system reached out to open the door. Normally, the door to the cab would be automatically locked while the train was in motion, but now it allowed the guard to depress the latch and open it to reveal the interior of the cab.

The floor of the cab lay awash, stained with the vomit that David Arnold had spewed in his final moments. He'd remained conscious and clear-minded to the end, and had been horrified to feel the massive constrictions in his chest and lungs, to feel himself being gradually strangled as if by an invisible assailant, his need for air being met with nothing but more pain, more burning and numbness while his body closed down cell by cell, and the tears ran down his face. David Arnold thought of Vicky and Tracy, his two young daughters, and Angela his wife waiting at home for him to finish his shift and return to them as he always did. He could see their faces in his mind when that final awful constriction hit him and the struggle to breathe became superseded by the need to give in, to let the inevitable consequences of this sudden painful attack take their course. David Arnold died just ten seconds before Ray Fellows the guard opened his cab.

The horrified faces of Ray Fellows and Mike Smith the platform supervisor mirrored each other as they gawped at the horrific sight that met their eyes when they looked into the drivers cab. Smith looked away and vomited himself, right there on the platform. Fellows, despite the shock of finding the driver in such a state, managed to gasp a call for help into his radio and requested both the police and paramedics be summoned.

The police were there first of course, since the local force maintained a strong presence on all the major stations on the rail network as part of the modern-day deterrent against the scourge of terrorism. A sergeant and a police constable arrived at the entrance to the cab within two minutes of Fellows' call and the sergeant needed no second look in order for him to determine that the driver was unlikely to be alive. The grim rictus of pain on his face, frozen at the moment of death, served to advertise his deceased state and the sergeant ordered the constable to seal off the area around the cab until the paramedics and a more senior police officer arrived to take charge.

“What about the train?” asked Fellows.

“Eh?” the sergeant responded.

“The train, Sergeant! There are probably over a hundred people in these carriages waiting to continue their journey. What are we supposed to do with the b****y train?”

Sergeant Peter Seddon thought quickly, and came to a decision.

“I'm sorry, but until we know for sure that this was an accidental death, they'll have to stay here until a senior officer decides to release them.”

“You're joking surely,” the guard responded. “How do we keep them all on the train? We don't exactly have a massive security force here you know. They could just open the doors and leave the station and we'd never know a thing would we?”

“Davies,” the sergeant spoke to his constable. “Get on the radio and get as many men as we've got on duty at the station to get over here. I want the names and addresses of every passenger and I want them quick!”

“I'm on it, Sergeant,” the constable replied.

People were already opening carriage doors all along the length of the eight carriage train. It was going to take a superhuman and miraculous effort by the police to keep them all in place until the detectives arrived. Thanks to the sterling efforts of Sergeant Seddon, Constable Paul Davies, and four men from the transport police office at New Street Station, they achieved the near-impossible. As far as they knew, no-one left the train before the arrival some thirty minutes later, of Detective Inspector Charles Carrick and his assistant, Detective Sergeant Lewis Cole.

The detectives soon set to work, though there was little that could be gleaned from either the passengers or the rail staff on duty on Platform Two. The likelihood that anyone on board the train could have had anything to do with the driver's death was miniscule in the extreme in the detective's minds, and after ensuring that the constables had noted the names and addresses of the passengers they were released to continue on their journeys as best as they could.

The paramedics were certain that the driver was dead, (the policemen could have told them that) and Carrick demanded that the body remain untouched until it could be examined by the police doctor and officially pronounced as such. The whole procedure took about an hour from start to finish and eventually paramedics removed the body of David Arnold from the cab with as much care as possible, placed it in a black body bag, and removed the deceased to the local mortuary where he would soon be subjected to a rigorous examination and autopsy in an effort to determine the cause of the unfortunate driver's demise. The locomotive would be treated as a potential crime scene for the time being, forcing the station master into the inconvenience of having to shut down all operations on that platform, thus causing severe disruption to the whole rail network, until the police allowed the loco to be moved to a siding.

Carrick's words as he watched the ambulance carry away the unfortunate driver towards his date with the medical examiner's scalpel would eventually prove to be quite prophetic when he said to Cole,

“I wouldn't like to see one like that every day Sergeant, no sir, I wouldn't. Gives a man the creeps to see a body like that. The poor sod must have been in agony at the end, from the look on his face. No-one should die like that, no-one. I hope I never see a face like that again as long as I live.”

“Right, Sir,” Cole replied.

He could think of nothing else to say at the time. He was too busy trying to hold back the bile and vomit that he'd been fighting against since he too had seen the corpse of the once strong and vibrant engine driver.

At the time, neither man could think ahead any further than the inevitable autopsy, which they hoped would prove that the man had died from some awful but natural death, food poisoning perhaps.

That hope proved to be short-lived, as was Carrick's hope that this was the first and last time he'd see such a tortured sight as the body of David Arnold!