The Man Who Played Trains: The gripping new thriller from the author of Playpits Park

by Richard Whittle

  ‘I am Kapitänleutnant Theodor Volker. I am a loyal Kriegsmarine officer.’

  ‘I know very well who you are, Kapitänleutnant. Please pick up your bag and go into the room.’

  CHAPTER

  EIGHT

  THE MISTY DRIZZLE AT KILCREG became fierce, drenching rain. Spargo, oblivious to it, had changed his mind, turned his car in the road and was now driving back down the hill. Thanks to Stuart Main’s efficiency he was early, he didn’t need to leave for home. Not yet, anyway.

  Spargo turned off the road and stopped the Volvo in the entrance to the plant yard. Though his destination was the mine house, its front drive was blocked by stone from the gate pillars, whereas the plant yard’s entrance was clear. Driving further into the yard was unsafe for his tyres; the surface of the yard was studded with nuts, bolts, washers and other small steel scrap.

  It had been a private joke amongst Kilcreg miners that there was probably more tungsten in the old steel scrap machinery in the plant yard than there was in all the ore they mined. Despite his father’s pronouncements about disposing of unwanted junk, in truth he couldn’t throw anything away. Damaged equipment was kept in old buildings or out in the yard. To young Spargo, the mine’s plant yard with its old engines and mining equipment had been an Aladdin’s Cave of treasures.

  It was the same at home, nothing was ever thrown out. Things no longer wanted, such as old lampshades, old suitcases and vacuum cleaners with burnt-out motors, were safely stored away. Ironically, what his father used to say about the attic was true – it really was empty. The things the Spargo family no longer used were kept in a shed on the edge of the plant yard; occasionally the young Spargo would go there with his father to look for things amongst the junk, the vases and pots, the Christmas tree lights and old books.

  The question Spargo never thought to ask his father came to him as he drove up the hill: why did his father trudge all the way to the dank dirty shed when there was perfectly good storage space in the mine house attic? Why had his father said if it’s ready for the attic then it’s ready for the tip?

  The comments he’d made to Mitchell came back to him – whoever murdered his mother had got the wrong house. He’d also said there was nowhere in Kilcreg worth burgling, but somebody clearly thought there was. What if their information was years out of date? What if they’d searched the wrong Spargo house?

  Spargo, screwdriver and claw hammer in one hand and hand lamp in the other, set off towards the mine house, making his way there by way of the plant yard. Though the yard was cleared years ago, traces of things long gone still remained: a flat slab of concrete was all that was left of the mechanical workshops and blacksmith’s shop; a rectangular depression marked the place where a tall stack of sleepers once stood; heavy steel bolts, brown with onion-layered rust, stuck up through the grass. Once, the ground was all black ash and clinker, brought from the steam boiler at the mine and rolled flat, like tarmac. That too was still there, visible occasionally through a veneer of small weeds.

  Spargo stepped through a gap in the fence dividing the plant yard from the mine house grounds. The house, ahead of him now, had been constructed from dark grey stone. Its extension, built on its left-hand side, was a simple, one-up and one-down affair under a lean-to slate roof. It had been constructed in wartime out of concrete blockwork, then rendered with grey cement in an attempt to make it blend in. To the young Spargo it had always been part of the house. Now he saw it for what it was: artless, bomb shelter architecture.

  Over the years the plywood sheets nailed over the windows had loosened. As Spargo neared the house the wind got behind them and they flapped with a regular, thudding beat. The planks across the front door were fixed in a criss-cross pattern by nails driven into the mortar. A case-opener – a jemmy – might have eased them out; Spargo, carrying only the small tools salvaged from his mother’s garage, didn’t even attempt it. And anyway, tearing wood from the front of the house wasn’t an option because the house could be seen from the road.

  Like the back of the cottage, the back of the mine house faced the hillside. In it were several tall windows and a back door that led into the kitchen. This doorway, like the one at the front, was heavily boarded, and the windows were covered by ply. By levering one of the plywood sheets with his screwdriver he managed to get his hands behind it. It was rotten. It tore away easily.

  The kitchen window frame behind the plywood was glassless. Rather than climb up onto the windowsill Spargo leant over it and slithered snake-like into the kitchen, a task made easier by whoever had removed the large Belfast sink that once stood there.

  Had the room not been bare it might have triggered emotions, but Spargo felt none. Not only had the sink gone, so had everything else. Whoever had gutted the place – he assumed it was builders – had taken the door to the walk-in larder and the door to the hall, complete with its frame. Rectangles on the walls and floor marked where cupboards and shelves had been – the mine house, though built more than a century ago, had a fitted kitchen with floor to ceiling cupboards and a built-in, wood-fired range.

  The floorboards, still covered by the original brown linoleum, felt sound underfoot, they didn’t bounce when he crossed to the hall doorway. Once there he switched on his lamp, playing its beam lamp on the pile of felled masonry that had once been the main chimney stack. Not only had the falling stack torn through the roof, it had smashed its way through the hall ceiling, the hall floorboards and the strong beams beneath them. Broken slates lay scattered like playing cards and, at his feet, sprouting from the ground beneath rotting floorboards, was a crop of tall weeds. High above him, wind laced with rain swirled through the gash in the roof with an eerie, hollow howl.

  It took Spargo a while to realise why the hall seemed so huge. The main staircase, an elegant structure of polished mahogany, was no longer there. The balcony-style landing that gave access to the bedrooms and bathroom had gone too, as had the doors to the upstairs rooms. Now, these doorways sat high in the wall, like eye sockets in a square, hollow skull.

  Spargo played the lamp on the hall ceiling. Sheets of lath and plaster, still attached to broken beams, dangled precariously above his head. Off to one side of the gash, above where the balcony had been, was a hatch that once gave access to the attic. Now that the staircase and balcony had gone, the only way to reach it would be with a three-section extending ladder, set up in the hall on the rickety floor. He didn’t have one. Wouldn’t dare do such a thing anyway.

  He stopped looking up. In his heart he knew that searching was pointless, he was wasting his time. Had there been anything in the house to find, then whoever stripped the place bare would have found it.

  Curiosity took him into the ground floor rooms. The dining room, once kept for best, was as bare as the kitchen, its fireplace and fittings torn out and taken. The sitting room too, was empty. Even the light fittings, switches and sockets had gone.

  The two rooms in the extension were accessible through a door at the end of a corridor – not that the door would be there now. Spargo pointed the lamp in that direction and saw he was right. The door had gone.

  He hesitated before entering the room and he wasn’t sure why. The floor was sound, under the lino it was solid concrete, he knew that. It was just that he had never liked that part of the house, it was different and felt claustrophobic, even to him as a boy.

  The room stank of rot and its wallpaper, black-streaked and spotted with mould, peeled at its top edge and hung down like rotting net curtains. To him, this room had three lives; in his earliest recollection of it there were beds with metal ends; later, when he was six years old, it became his father’s office, transferred from the mine buildings when they needed more space. Lastly – and this was the memory that hurt most of all – the room became a store for his late father’s paperwork and files, his brown oilskin waterproofs and his mining helmet. Spargo had hated it. Hated the room and its contents.

  The extension had its own staircase, narrow and stee
p and built into one wall. Surprisingly it still had its small wooden door and he went to it, lifted its metal latch and swung the door back. Surprisingly, too, the stairs were still there. Lamp in hand he placed a foot gingerly on the wooden step, then the next and the next. The staircase led directly into the upstairs room and, when he reached it, he again did his testing thing. The floor was sound.

  He hadn’t expected to see a trapdoor in the room’s ceiling. That the extension should have its own attic hadn’t occurred to him, despite the fact the building was a lean-to and the room’s ceiling was flat – which meant there was dead space overhead. He reached up. Managed to touch the trapdoor with his fingertips.

  Thirty minutes later he was back in the room, standing on the stepladder he had taken from Rose Munro’s garage after beating the padlock on the door with a half-brick until the hasp and staple broke away. He knew the stepladder would be there. Long ago he’d fixed brackets to the garage wall so she could hang it up.

  If he couldn’t go into the main attic, at least he could look into this one, stand on the steps and check with the lamp. Simple and safe. He stood on the steps, pushed up the hatch and shoved it aside. Then, climbing higher, he lifted his lamp and inspected the void. Apart from a thick layer of dust on the wooden joists there was nothing. No hidden treasure. No pots of gold.

  What Spargo hadn’t expected to see was a dark triangular patch, high on the house wall. It was off in one corner of the attic and he puzzled over it, angling the lamp beam to see it more clearly. It took him a while to work out that though most of the lean-to roof was lower than the main roof, the dark patch was a gap where the two overlapped. There was, after all, a way into the mine house roof.

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  THE BASEMENT ROOM in the Air Ministry building stinks of damp. It is small, little more than a cell; its ceiling and walls are concrete, painted pastel green. Halfway along the left wall is a sink and above it, screwed to the wall, is a polished sheet of steel to serve as a mirror. Beyond the sink, in the far left corner of the room, is a lavatory pan with no seat, screened from the door by a short wall of bricks – shiny pastel green, like the walls. A stackable, steel framed chair with a brown canvas seat stands by the bed; the bed itself, against the right hand wall, is a slab of concrete topped with flat wooden boards on which has been placed a thin mattress. A towel, two neatly folded grey blankets and a horsehair-stuffed pillow are stacked where a bedhead would be, had Hitler’s Reich bothered with such things.

  Fixed to the wall between the lavatory and the bed is an electric heater. Theo’s gaze traces the route of the black steel pipe that carries its cables, along the wall behind the bed and up to switch near the door. He reaches out and flips it down. The heater hums. Whatever else he may die from in this place it won’t be from cold.

  The bed is the least of Theo’s worries; when tired he can sleep almost anywhere. He drops down and sits on its edge, reaches down to unlace his boots and kicks them off. They fly across the room and he goes for them. Places them neatly, side by side.

  A clear head and fast responses have kept him alive in this war and yet he let down his guard, he fell into a trap. It seems so clear now. The man in the carriage – Helmut Saur – moved from his compartment to make space for the Generalmajor. Or did it start before that? Was another unfortunate passenger hauled away to make space in the carriage for him, Theodor Volker? And there is another thing: his name. He’d assumed the Generalmajor saw it on his passbook. That, he realises now, was unlikely. This morning the man produced reading glasses to check the list of crates.

  The biggest puzzle of all is why a senior officer, a very senior officer, should have done this, it isn’t as if Theo holds high rank. And why a Luftwaffe man, why not the Kriegsmarine or the police? Or, if it they believe he has committed a crime against the state – god forbid – why not the Gestapo?

  He wonders if he should have protested more forcefully. But you don’t protest, do you, not these days. He has seen what happens to those who do, seen a crewman kicked and beaten, dragged off by men who refused to give explanations. He recalls how polite they were when they came to the dockside, insisting he need not trouble himself such matters, that they would inform the Kriegsmarine, they would write the reports.

  Theo has slept. Somewhere far off a pump is running, water is flowing. There are other noises, all muffled, all distant. Shaking off sleep he stumbles to the sink, runs water and splashes it on his face. The room has no ventilation and has become over-hot. As he switches off the heater he notices that the heavy metal door is slightly ajar. He hesitates before touching it, wondering if it has been like that since the Generalmajor left. Wonders, also, if it was left unlocked deliberately. The door opens inwards; though there is no door handle on his side of the door, that does not mean it cannot be opened; slowly and silently, using his fingertips, he eases it back.

  Compared with the room Theo just left, the corridor feels cold and damp. It is well below ground and the outside wall, if indeed it is an outside wall, has no windows. Like his room it is lit dimly with bulkhead lights and he stands looking down it, attempting to identify the noises he hears. Then, walking slowly back the way he came with the Generalmajor, he passes other rooms. Their doors are open, their rooms unlit. All but one - a washroom - are packed with old files.

  When he came with the Generalmajor the prison-like, steel bar gate across the end of the corridor was open, swung back against the corridor wall. Now it is locked shut and he shakes it, more from frustration than in the hope it will open. That it is locked doesn’t surprise him. After going to so much trouble they would hardly let him walk free.

  There are voices, far off. Sounds echo confusingly and it is only when the voices get close that Theo realises two men at least are descending steps beyond the barred gate. One is the Generalmajor, he can tell by the walk. Scared of being caught Theo runs the length of the corridor, back to his room like a misbehaving child. By the time he hears the clang of the barred gate he is sitting on the edge of his bed with the door fully closed. Then the Generalmajor is there, leaning on the door. It opens unexpectedly and he topples into the room. The man with him shakes his head and laughs loudly.

  ‘Well, you clever old bastard, you did it! And single-handed! Didn’t think you still had it in you. I owe you a drink, maybe several. Though you may have to wait some time.’

  Both men keep laughing. They ignore Theo, who watches the new man, sees he wears the uniform and insignia of a Luftwaffe Major. Theo stands up. Reaches for his naval cap. Places it on his head and salutes.

  Still the men ignore him. He notes that though the newcomer is three ranks below the Generalmajor they converse as if they are equals, swapping jokes at Theo’s expense, commenting on the size of the room, that to a submariner it must seem like a ballroom. The newcomer runs a finger around the inside of his shirt collar and remarks on the room’s heat.

  ‘I suppose we should expect this from a bloody submariner…’

  He swings the black briefcase he is carrying, hurling it across the room. It lands on the bed.

  ‘This is Kapitänleutnant Theodor Volker,’ the Generalmajor says to the man, quietly and deliberately. ‘Present and correct. Though when I say correct, Walter, he is unlikely to pass any inspection of mine. Are all U-boat men as scruffy as this one?’

  ‘I don’t know any, thank god. Though I suspect they are.’

  ‘I can leave him with you now?’

  ‘Of course. An excellent job, my friend. Truly excellent!’

  The men laugh again and the Generalmajor leaves, pulling the door closed behind him. The newcomer stares at Theo for a few seconds then turns his attention to the wall heater.

  ‘Turn that bloody thing off!’

  ‘It is turned off.’

  ‘It is turned off, Herr Major!’

  Whatever humour the Luftwaffe men might have shared is not to be shared with Theo. He goes to repeat the man’s words but is interrupted before he can speak.
The major is staring at Theo’s leather jacket.

  ‘Good god man, you should see yourself! You are a Kriegsmarine lieutenant! What is that thing you are wearing? Where are your badges of rank?’

  Then, spotting Theo’s boots beside the bed and realising the submariner is standing to attention in his socks, he commences a torrent of abuse about naval men in general and submariners in particular.

  Theo stays at attention. Making no attempt to explain, he simply apologises. Explanations are excuses. They have no place here.

  ‘Herr Major,’ he says when the man has calmed. ‘Why am I here?’

  He gets no reply. Instead the man goes to the door, realises there is no handle on the inside and curses everyone, Theo and the Generalmajor, for imprisoning him in the room.

  ‘I can open it, Herr Major.’

  ‘Leave it. Sit down.’ He wags his hand. ‘Not on the chair, on the bed.’

  Theo obeys. The man grabs the chair, turns it around and sits down straddling it, resting his arms on its back and his chin on his arms.

  Theo senses a change. If this is an interrogation, the man has gone soft. Or perhaps this is the way they do it. Scare you. Then relax you. Then maybe they hang you or shoot you.

  The man rabbit-jumps the chair forwards until he is close. Much too close. So close to Theo he has nowhere to look but straight into disturbing, bright blue eyes. He tries, and fails, to assess the man’s age. His fair hair is cropped short and thinning, and there are hints of grey near the ears. But the eyes are those of a much younger man.

  Theo realises he is assessing his opponent. He stops abruptly and runs a hand through his own hair. Hair thick and wiry. Brown once. Now almost white.

  ‘Kapitänleutnant,’ the man says. ‘You are making me feel uncomfortable.’

  ‘I am sorry, Herr Major. That was not my intention.’

  ‘You are very confident, Kapitän. Perhaps overconfident.’

  ‘I have done nothing wrong.’