The nearest man to him looked up, his shovel idle in his hands for a moment, his back straightening slowly. His skin was caked with dust and the sweat cut rivulets through it. He regarded Monk’s casual clothes and well-cut boots, and the horse standing at his shoulder. “Yer one o’ the surveyor’s men?” he asked. “ ’E in’t ’ere yet. Yer a day soon.” He half turned. “Eh, ’Edge’og!” he shouted at a short, heavy-shouldered man with a shock of gingery hair. “Yer sure yer in the right place, then?”

There was a guffaw of laughter from half a dozen men further away, and they all resumed their digging and shoveling.

Hedgehog screwed up his face. “No, Con, we’d better start all over an’ dig through that damn great ’ill over there!” he replied.

“Three weeks, mebbe,” Con said to Monk. “If that’s wot yer want ter know. I in’t see’d yer ’ere before. Yer come up from Lunnon?”

Apparently they assumed he was from Baltimore and Sons’ main office.

“Where’s your foreman?” Monk enquired.

“I’m the foreman, Contrairy York,” the first man replied. “Like I said, three weeks. Can’t do it no faster.”

“I can see that.” Monk squinted along the line of the rail. The last bit of the viaduct would take another two weeks at least, and then there were sleepers to lay, the rails themselves to lay and tie. It was double track most of the way, single through the cutting and as far as the other end of the viaduct. There must be a plan for timetables and trains passing. A length like this was far too expensive to use only one engine at a time on.

He had studied the survey map. The shortest route lay through the hill he had just crossed. “Couldn’t you have cut through that?” he asked. “Then you would have avoided having to build a viaduct.”

“ ’Course, we could,” Contrairy said dismissively. “Cost, though! Too ’igh fer a straight cuttin’, an’ tunnels are about the most expensive things there is. Look at yer map. See the ’eight on it! An’ granite! Takes time, an’ all.”