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

by Richard Whittle

  On his way out he noticed a sudden change in the headstones. Rows of small, neat stones gave way to massive granite slabs. Christian crosses gave way to the Star of David and inscriptions in Hebrew. Some headstones had English translations of the Hebrew and he noted the names: Jeremy Riesenbaum, Yosef Rosen, Isaac Samuels.

  Lewis, Spargo told himself, would not be amongst these.

  Intending to return to his car by the shortest possible route he cut across the grass, picking a path between the huge headstones. Off to his right, dwarfed by the forest of stone, stood a small black headstone. It looked quite out of place amongst the old granite blocks and because of this he walked to it. It was obviously a recent burial. Turves had been placed to form a long, heaped-up mound. Carved into the slab of black stone were gilt letters, a line of Hebrew with English beneath:

  MAREK LEWANDOWSKI

  ‘Was he a friend of yours?’

  The voice startled him. A woman’s, husky and deep.

  ‘No,’ Spargo said without turning. ‘I didn’t know him.’

  The woman who shuffled up beside him was in her mid-forties. All but her face was concealed in an outsize green parka with a sodden, fur-trimmed hood. Wet, close-cropped hair peeked out and mingled with the fur.

  ‘Polish name, Lewandowski,’ she said.

  Spargo thought the comment unnecessary but he nodded anyway.

  ‘Could he have been known as Mark Lewis?’

  The parka lifted and fell as she shrugged. Raindrops fell from the fur and showered down on her boots.

  ‘Possible, I suppose. Bit of a mouthful, Lewandowski. My father’s was Beckenstein. He shortened it to Beckton.’

  ‘Do you know what the Hebrew says?’

  ‘Something about a friend. I don’t understand much.’

  There were fragments of gravel on the top edge of the headstone, placed in a neat row. Spargo nodded towards them.

  ‘What are the stones for?’

  ‘You are not Jewish.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Then it’s just as well you didn’t bring flowers.’

  Spargo frowned, not understanding. He looked around at the other gravestones. There were no flowers at all. It explained why this part of the cemetery looked so dull.

  ‘Tradition,’ she added. ‘Some visitors place a stone. It shows they’ve been. Shows they care.’

  ‘So Marek has had five visitors?’

  ‘Five visits. No way of knowing how many people.’

  Lanark Road seemed never ending. To make things worse Spargo got trapped behind a bus trundling west at the pace of a snail. At least the slow speed of the bus gave him time to check the house numbers. He had just passed two-hundred. Still had a long way to go.

  The headstone had given him Lewis’s first name. The telephone directory at home listed several possibilities and Spargo had phoned them all. Those that answered their phones knew nothing of Mark Lewis, though there was one that interested him, the man who had answered hesitantly and hung up when Spargo mention of the name. He had called again and again but the phone went unanswered. He was driving to that address now.

  The houses were large and set back from the road, most of them well hidden behind hedges. The one he sought stood in half an acre of ground, most of it down to grass in dire need of a mow. It had been built as a two bedroom bungalow and extended in every direction and tacked on to one side was a massive, flat roofed conservatory looking to Spargo as if it had been assembled from old greenhouse parts. Like the lawn, it was neglected. Weathered, silver timber showed through flaking blue paint.

  Spargo took the crazy-paved path to the front door. Paint had peeled from it, long strips of blue that revealed not the wood beneath it but layers of ancient, bottle green paint. Beside the door a white plastic bell push hung free on the end of its wire. Spargo held it steady with one hand and pressed the button with the other. Hearing nothing, he pressed it again. Then he reached for the tarnished brass knocker and swung it down twice in a loud, double knock.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw movement. Stepping over weeds thriving in the flowerbeds he went to it, peering in at a conservatory window in time to catch sight of a man slipping out of the room. Returning to the door he pushed open the letterbox and spoke through it.

  ‘I’m told you knew Mr Lewis,’ he lied. ‘I would like to talk to you.’

  The reply he got was as old and as shaky as the house.

  ‘Go away. I don’t want to talk to you.’

  ‘Mr Lewis did some work for the police in Inverness. Detective Sergeant Mitchell.’

  ‘You are Mitchell?’

  ‘I’m not Mitchell.’

  The man was close to the door. Bony fingers took over from Spargo’s and held the letterbox open.

  ‘I’m not expecting you to ask me in,’ Spargo said. ‘I have just seen Mr Lewis’s grave.’

  ‘Go away. I don’t want to talk to you.’

  ‘I want to know about him. If you’re not willing to talk then tell me who is.’

  ‘There is nobody else. Mark had no other friends.’

  ‘Did he live here with you?’

  ‘Why do you ask me these things? Why are you pestering me? Mark is gone, he suffered enough. Why can’t you people leave him alone?’

  ‘What people?’

  ‘You people.’

  Spargo shivered, but not with cold. He had to talk to this man. He had to get inside.

  ‘My name is Spargo,’ he said. ‘My mother was murdered. It has something to do with Mr Lewis and I want to know what it is. I want to talk to you.’

  Things changed suddenly. The letterbox flap banged down and two bolts slid back. The door opened just a crack and was grabbed by a chain. Spargo, scared the man would be brandishing a weapon of some kind, took a step back. The door stayed on the chain and tousled hair appeared, then an eye that looked Spargo up and down. Then two eyes, the man’s head turned sideways.

  Finally the door closed and reopened minus the chain. The gap revealed a man in his late eighties, a head and shoulders shorter than Spargo and with one of his hands over his mouth. His eyes were wide, staring as if confronting a ghost. Any colour he might have had in his face had drained away.

  ‘They have killed Morag? You are John?’

  ‘You knew her? You knew my mother?’

  They stayed on their own sides of the doorway, the man in slippers with holes at the toe. The man’s shoulders, lost in a sports jacket two sizes too big, drooped forwards.

  ‘You said they,’ Spargo said. ‘Who are they?’

  ‘The ones that killed Mark. The ones that ran him down.’

  The man turned his back on Spargo and shuffled inside. Spargo, the door left open for him, found himself in a dark hallway with an uncarpeted, varnished floor. Three cardboard boxes, the kind supplied by removal firms, were shoved against one wall. It was more of a wide passage than a hallway and Spargo eased past them, following the man into a sitting room that resembled a stage-set for a nineteen-fifties play.

  The fireplace had been boxed in with hardboard panels and painted, like the skirting, the picture rail and the window frames, in pale lilac; in place of a real fire stood a coal effect substitute whose coals glowed red but no longer flickered; above it, on a mantel shelf that could well have been made from a painted floorboard, were around fifty black and white photographs. Some were in frames. Most were at the back, propped against the chimney breast. That they had been there for years was obvious.

  The man walked to the window, stopped, turned, and regarded Spargo as thoroughly as Mitchell had done when they first met. The difference was that this man, whoever he was, took his time whereas Mitchell was a man in a hurry. Low sun silhouetted him against the window and the garden’s autumnal brown leaves. Realising his guest was being dazzled he tugged at a curtain and blocked out the sun.

  Spargo waited for questions. They didn’t come.

  ‘You knew my mother?’ Spargo asked.

  ‘I did.’
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br />   ‘Did Mr Lewis live here?’

  ‘He did.’

  Spargo’s head filled with so many questions he didn’t know which to ask next. But he didn’t have to. The man had started to talk.

  ‘My name is Francis Rydel. Mark was my friend. When my wife died I suggested to Mark that he come and live with me. The house was too big for me. Many years ago my mother-in-law lived here, she had her own flat. That is where Mark came to live. He had his own entrance at the back of the house. So you are John?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘And Morag? She is dead? Murdered, did you say? This is a terrible thing.’ He was nodding, slowly. His gaze dropped from Spargo to the carpeted floor. ‘I am sorry. I do not know what to say.’

  ‘How do you know my mother? Do you know who killed her? Do you know who killed Mark? Did you see them do it?’

  Far too many questions for Rydel. He pulled a chair from beneath a table in the window, turned it around awkwardly with one hand, sat down on it and gestured for Spargo to sit in one of the room’s two armchairs. Spargo stayed standing.

  ‘Mark... yes… nobody saw it. Mark was a creature of habit. Most days he walked down the road to Balerno to catch the bus into Edinburgh. You have seen the road. On this side there is no footpath and on the other there are obstructions, they have been building houses and digging up the road. Mark has been walking where there is no pavement. I did not know this. It was very dangerous.’

  The nods were continuous now, slow and deliberate. When Spargo made no comment, Rydel continued to speak.

  ‘The policeman who came here said the car did not stop. I did not believe him.’

  ‘You don’t think it was a car?’

  The nodding changed to an irritated shake of the head.

  ‘No, no, not that! I did not believe Mark. He was scared. He was always scared. I did not believe he had a reason to be scared.’

  ‘What was he scared of?’

  Rydel shrugged. ‘I do not know.’

  ‘Is that why he changed his name?’

  ‘That is no business of yours.’

  ‘If it bears on my mother’s death then it is very much my business.’

  ‘It is the business of the police to discover who killed your mother. It is not yours.’

  Spargo let it pass. To a point the man was right and to argue with him would be counterproductive. Rydel gestured again to one of the armchairs and again Spargo ignored him. Instead he drifted to the mantelpiece, glanced at the photographs and picked up the largest.

  Rydel didn’t protest. The frame had been given pride of place in the centre of the spread and showed a couple in their twenties, a young man with his hair slicked back and wearing a jacket with wide lapels. Beside him, arm in arm, stood a young woman wearing a flared, pleated dress.

  ‘That is my wife Maureen,’ Rydel said. ‘Gone ten years now.’

  ‘An old photo,’ Spargo said. ‘Nineteen-fifties?’

  ‘Nineteen fifty-three.’

  Rydel stood up and came over, took the photograph from him and replaced it on the shelf. As he did so Spargo noticed him slide a small unframed photograph behind it, as if deliberately concealing it.

  Rydel returned to his chair and Spargo, not wishing to abuse then man’s hospitality, finally sat down. Glancing around him he guessed things had stayed much the same since the man’s wife died. A fine layer of dust covered everything. Even the mirror on the wall above the fire had a frosted-glass look.

  Rydel broke silence. ‘How did Morag die?’

  ‘I’ll tell you if you tell me why Marek Lewandowski became Mark Lewis.’

  Rydel didn’t respond. For almost a whole minute he sat motionless.

  ‘Mark and I are immigrants,’ he said finally. ‘For people like us, changing names is not an uncommon thing to do. Sometimes it is necessary in order to fit in.’

  ‘Did you change your name?’

  ‘I did not. I did not see the need.’

  ‘But Mark did. You said he was scared.’

  ‘It does not matter. He is dead now.’

  ‘How did you know my mother?’

  ‘Many years ago I worked with Mark. We knew Morag Spargo. I have told you why Mark changed his name. Now it is for you to tell me what happened to Morag.’

  ‘She was beaten to death.’

  More shock tactics. As Spargo spoke Rydel did the hand over mouth thing again and stared with wide eyes. He gave a quick, disbelieving shake of his head.

  ‘You said you worked with Mark,’ Spargo continued. ‘Were you a teacher too?’

  ‘I was not.’

  Rydel bit his lip and again looked at the carpet. Spargo, making connections, thought of the two men who had stayed in the mine house extension, the men who taught him how to play football and how to fish from the rocks in the bay. Could this frail figure really be one of those men? Could the other have been Mark Lewis?

  ‘Kilcreg,’ Spargo said. ‘You worked at the mine with my father. You lived at the mine house, in the two room extension.’

  Rydel kept his gaze on the carpet.

  ‘I was there the other week,’ Spargo said. ‘In the mine house. I found a package in the roof.’

  Rydel looked him in the eye for no more than a second before looking down again. ‘A package? What kind of package?’

  ‘A heavy bronze box wrapped in canvas.’

  Rydel shrugged. ‘That is no concern of mine.’

  ‘That’s an odd thing to say, considering you just asked what kind of package it was. I took it to the police. They opened it and found wartime journals. They sent them to Mr Lewis to be translated. They came here, to this house. Actually, he did very little work on them. And what he did was wrong.’

  Spargo regretted his words. They were tactless.

  ‘I knew nothing of Mark’s work. If these journals are here then you are welcome to take them.’

  ‘They are not here. They were returned to me.’

  Rydel stood up and shuffled silently to the door. He stopped, turned, beckoned Spargo to follow, and continued his stooping shuffle. Both men passed through a long kitchen and into a passage. A central heating boiler, stripped of its white metal panels, stood near the foot of a flight of stairs and Rydel stopped and leaned on it heavily, propping himself as if preparing for the climb. Spargo noticed for the first time the man’s left arm hung limp and he used his right hand for everything. The man used it now to haul himself up the stairs At the top he stopped and leant on the bannister rail.

  ‘This was all Mark’s,’ he said between breaths. ‘Everything on this landing. He had his own rooms. He used the box room, this one…’ he said as he elbowed open a door ‘…as an office.’

  Rydel flicked a switch and stepped to one side. The room was narrow with no window. A wooden desk had been placed against the end wall and a modern swivel chair pushed against it. There was no other furniture. The remaining space was filled with stacks of paper and files. A computer and printer stood on the desk.

  ‘That’s his? That computer?’

  ‘It is. I know nothing about such things. Now I have to dispose of it as I have to dispose of all of his things. His clothes I have thrown away. How can I tell if there are important things in here?’

  ‘On his computer, you mean?’

  ‘I mean everything. He worked long hours for book publishers, I do not know which ones. I do not want to go to the trouble of contacting them all. I do not understand such things.’

  Spargo lifted a box file from the top of a pile. He flipped up the lid and saw a letter from Rydel to a Sunday paper, typed fifteen years ago. Checked another stack and found documents even older.

  ‘I’m sure you can safely destroy all of this.’

  ‘And the computer?’

  ‘It’s not that old. Why not donate it to a school? I can check it if you like. I can delete everything from the machine.’

  Spargo pulled out the desk chair and sat down. Realising the computer was still on standby he pressed a key. It
sprang to life.

  ‘I see he’s got a modem.’

  ‘What is a modem?’

  ‘His computer is connected to the phone socket. It allows him to communicate with others. Did he use it?’

  ‘I don’t know what he did. When he came to live here he had his own telephone put in.’

  Spargo, more interested in the computer than in Rydel, checked Lewis’s directories on the hard drive. Unlike the rest of the office, the computer files were in good order and indexed under clients’ names. Spargo checked them out and found nothing of interest. He clicked on the email icon and when mail came up he scrolled through Lewis’s mail. Found nothing that interested him.

  ‘Each morning Mark started work at six o’clock and he worked very late,’ Rydel said. ‘Sometimes I heard him in the early hours. It was his way. His work was his life.’

  ‘He never relaxed.’

  ‘That is incorrect. He listened to music, he had a stereo machine. He was a considerate man and when he listened to music he wore earphones… headphones. With his money he bought compact disks. They are costly, I know that. It is so wrong for me to throw them out.’

  ‘Why not take them to a charity shop?’

  ‘It is not easy for me. I have been packing his things. I have put the compact disks with his stereo, they are downstairs in boxes. Like Mark, I do not have a car, I cannot drive. Do you have a car?’

  Spargo, ready with an excuse, swivelled round in the chair. He tried to imagine Rydel as the man in the photo downstairs, young and fit and newly married. God knows how the man now leaning on the door frame had managed to carry all the stuff to the boxes downstairs.

  ‘No problem,’ Spargo said, smiling. ‘Of course I’ll take them. My daughter knows people who do charity work.’

  ‘Before you came I was about to make tea,’ Rydel said. ‘Would you like a cup?’

  Spargo made all the right noises. Said he was thirsty and would appreciate that very much and he didn’t take sugar, only milk. As Rydel made his way slowly down the stairs Spargo swung back to the computer. He had just about decided he was wasting his time when he noticed his own name in a deleted file. Seconds later he had restored and opened an email from Lewis. Familiar words: