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

by Richard Whittle

  He grasps the hatch handrail and puts one boot on the ladder. As he does so the lookout behind him yells out: ‘Aircraft, dead ahead!’

  The klaxon blares. Men scramble. At other times Theo would be last off the bridge but he is at the hatch already and dropping fast. The tanks are flooding already, pulling the boat down. A waterfall cascades down the ladder way as the last man through the hatch slams it closed.

  The pulsing rasp of the alarm is silenced. All is quiet. The control wheels that affect the boat’s tilt have been superseded by modern, push-button controls. The large manual wheels are now for emergencies. Instead of attending to them the hydroplane operators watch the results of their button-pushes on the same, old large dials.

  ‘Big one,’ First Watch says. ‘Wellington, possibly. Flying low.’

  Theo nods. It is what these planes do. Flying low means they see silhouetted conning towers and schnörkels. Even periscopes. He stands aside, pulls a towel from around his neck and wrings it out. If the plane flies too close its crew will see turbulent water. They will be back.

  Men watch dials. The boat is levelling out.

  ‘Twenty meters... twenty-five. Thirty and holding...’

  The diesels have stopped. The boat is running on its motors, cruising away from the dive spot. In the clear blue Mediterranean they would be seen at great depth. But not here.

  ‘Hold depth! Keep silence!’

  There is no need for the command, it is quiet already. Crewmen sit or stand like shop dummies. A man whispers, the Bosun glares. The second hand on the bulkhead clock moves more slowly than usual, they are sure of it. It goes around once, then twice, then three times. Now eight times. If the aircraft has seen them it will now be returning. Any second now…

  Roth appears from nowhere. His leather-soled shoes click on the decking.

  ‘There is trouble, Kapitänleutnant? Why was I not told?’

  Nobody answers. Nobody looks.

  ‘Kapitän?’

  ‘Enemy aircraft, Sturmbannführer. Please keep silence. Please leave the control room.’

  ‘Were we seen?’

  ‘We will know soon enough. That we saw the aircraft is all that matters. We didn’t wait around to wave to the pilot.’

  Men splutter, stifling laughter. Roth colours up but says nothing. For the first time he seems to sense he is outnumbered and perhaps he should join in the laughter. He cannot, and instead he attempts a weak smile. If it gets as far as his face the crew do not see it.

  Theo snaps an instruction. ‘Periscope depth!’

  The hydroplane men play their buttons. Drive motors hum. A booming hiss of compressed air says the tanks are blown.

  ‘Watch it, Chief!’

  Lange nods. There is no need to explain. The compressed air filling the ballast tanks forces out water to lighten the boat. Too much air, too soon, and it will escape with the blown water and erupt from the sea like a wallowing whale. The hydroplane men watch the Papenburg – a tall, water-filled tube that shows fine-depth. By carefully trimming the boat they will keep the conning tower well below surface.

  Roth stays in a corner, leaning back with arms folded. The boat has two periscopes, the observation scope and the attack periscope – a scope that on a boat without armaments serves as a second pair of eyes. Lookouts sit at both and search the sea and sky.

  The skies are safe. The man on the observation scope steps aside for Theo, who swivels to see a coastline, far away. The slow-moving dots he sees are steam coasters with wispy black smoke, hugging the land, hoping they won’t be seen.

  As Theo steps away from the scope Roth shoves himself upright. He intends to take Theo’s place on the scope but with a whirr of motors both periscopes drop to their homes beneath the floor. Roth glares around the control room to see who did it but nobody moves.

  Theo breaks silence. ‘I instructed you to leave the control room, Sturmbannführer. You have no right to be here.’

  Crewmen glance sideways then turn back quickly. Roth’s neck flushes purple. His voice is quiet but it hisses and splutters.

  ‘Accompany me to my quarters, Kapitänleutnant. Do it now!’

  Roth leaves the control room clumsily and hurriedly, Theo following. Once they are through the bow tube room door Theo slams it behind them, anxious to speak the first words. He manages it. Roth, it seems, is still speechless.

  ‘Your presence in the control room jeopardises the safety of my boat Sturmbannführer. I instructed you to leave and you chose to ignore me. Either I am in command of this vessel or I am not.’

  Words said without thinking. Words that could have prompted a negative response from Roth but he seems to have missed them. His colour has gone and he appears to have calmed. The wooden door to the cabins is closed. The padlock and chain that was once on the watertight door is now wrapped harmlessly around the door handle.

  Roth looks Theo up and down, from sea boots to beard.

  ‘I have heard about you naval men,’ he says calmly. ‘You escape the real war. You know nothing of the bloodshed and slaughter faced by our real fighters.’

  Theo stands facing him. There is nothing to say.

  ‘So! You agree with me! I know about you, Volker, I have read your dossier. You are not a real fighter. Your father was a miner. You are merely a miner, like him.’

  A mining engineer and now a naval man, a twice-decorated commander of a Kriegsmarine boat. Yes. My father was a miner. Words thought but not spoken.

  ‘You were a miner in Salzgitter. Your people there failed us, Volker, they failed Germany. Under the Reichsmarschall’s Four-Year Plan you were to deliver twenty-four million tons of iron ore by last year. And what did you produce? Not even one third of it! That is a failure, Volker!’

  The man has done his homework. Theo was there when production geared up. It made no difference how many men and machines they sent, the ore they mined was poor, the grades were low. Theo wonders if Roth knows he, Theo, refused to transfer to the Lorraine.

  ‘Failed us, Volker! Have you nothing to say?’

  ‘I am needed in the control room, Sturmbannführer.’

  Roth’s colour rises. He turns his head to one side and spits at the floor. Then the sneer: ‘Go about your wretched business! I outrank you, Volker! I am a better man than you in every way!’

  ‘He woke, Kapitän,’ Lewandowski says excitedly. ‘I have told nobody!’

  Theo is in the aft tube room. Now there are three men in the bunks, all on the wall opposite Peter’s. Two are asleep and one is pretending to be.

  ‘But he sleeps now. He seemed well?’

  ‘He was disturbed and he was pale. Should we not call the medic?’

  Theo seems not to hear. ‘The Chief Engineer brought him food, scrambled egg. Did he eat it?’

  ‘He ate all of it.’

  Theo nods. He stands thoughtfully, stroking his stubble. Then he turns to the steel door he just came through and attempts to open it fully. It jams, won’t open wider than it did when he squeezed into the room. A small block of steel, welded to one of the hinges, snags the door when it opens.

  ‘Stoker Fischer has difficulty getting in and out, Kapitän.’

  ‘Then Stoker Fischer is too fat.’

  There is a grunt from one of the bunks. Lewandowski smiles.

  Theo takes out a small tin, opens it and pinches one of the yellow tablets with his fingernails. It breaks in half and he holds a fragment out on the palm of his hand. ‘Here,’ he says. ‘If Peter wakes before we surface, give him this.’

  ‘With respect, Kapitän, I do not think I should do that.’

  Theo stiffens. ‘Yes. Very well. But take it. Give it if he becomes disturbed or cries out. For the next few hours we will be silent-running on motors. He must not be heard.’

  He knows Lewandowski is right. His son is unlikely to cry. Since Theo first saw him he has shown few signs of emotion.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-FOUR

  THE FIRST CLIFF PATH Spargo ascended from the
beach ended at a sheer drop. He balanced on the edge of it, scanning the cliffs from a new vantage point. It was a waste of effort, he was chasing shadows, there seemed to be holes everywhere. Binoculars would have helped. He descended through rubble and returned to Benares. The man pointed to a ledge he had seen while he was waiting.

  ‘There is another place, that hole. Now you go to that one…’

  Spargo did as he was told. Went up. Came down.

  One hour and several trips later, Benares pointed again. Spargo raised his arms in despair.

  ‘I can’t check every bloody one of them! It’ll take the rest of the day!’

  ‘We have the rest of the day. You will do it, Mister Spargo.’

  Spargo suspected Benares was playing with him, exacting revenge for any number of things. It was clear to him the paths were made by small animals and not one of them went from one side of the collapse to the other. Whenever he investigated a place he had to return to the bay and start over.

  ‘There is another,’ Benares said. ‘There, do you see it?’

  ‘Another of your shadows. It’s rocks sticking out.’

  ‘It is a hole, I think. I have been to the water’s edge and from there I can see it clearly. It is a hole in the rock.’

  Spargo’s body had been working mechanically, fighting tiredness and pain. Ignoring Benares he sat on a boulder and stretched out his legs. There was a limit to what his body could do and he was close to that limit. Also, he still had to get out of the bay. Still had to climb to the top.

  ‘It’s time we went back to Bar.’

  Benares looked at his watch. ‘Mister Bar will be sleeping, it is his time for rest. You will make one more trip.’ He pointed. ‘Up there, to that place I have seen.’

  ‘I can’t get there. I’m not a climber. It needs ropes.’

  ‘That is an excuse. I can see a ledge, you can cross it. Go, Mister Spargo! Do not try my patience!’

  Ironically, until now, Spargo had genuinely wanted to find the old adit. Searching the cliffs had rekindled a boyhood interest in exploring. Had it not been for the tiredness and pain, and the fact he was no longer the fit lad who once leapt between boulders, the experience might have been a pleasant one. Now he was past caring. Not for Jez – that was what spurred him on – but for himself.

  The overhang Benares had seen was near the very top of the cliffs. Staring up at it, Spargo had the notion that if it were possible to get to that high then it might also be possible to climb right to the top and escape from Benares. Bar would be in the car with the engine running and the heater turned up. Unless he had a gun – unlikely, because he had been on a plane – there would be no resistance.

  Spargo set off. Halfway to the overhang he stopped for a rest. Benares, far below, was sitting on a rock at the water’s edge, cleaning his shoes in the sea. Spargo continued his climb. Ahead of him was the ledge Benares had seen. It wasn’t a true ledge but a thin, vertical slice of rock that had torn away from the cliff. It leaned outwards precariously, as if any additional weight might cause it to fall outwards. When he got closer to it he peered into the crevasse-like gash between the cliff and the slab. It looked bottomless.

  The overhang Benares had seen was on the far side of the slice. He could see it properly now and there was something about it, something unnatural. For one thing the overhang was flat underneath whereas those he’d seen so far were irregular. Also, he was sure he could see patterns, parallel lines on the rock. Clouds moved. The light changed. The lines became clear. He knew he was looking at half-barrels – the remains of the drill holes that were charged with explosive for blasting the rock. He had found the old adit. The original entrance had gone but the tunnel was there.

  Spurred on by what he was seeing, Spargo knelt down at the end of the ledge and started to crawl. It was madness. Crawling across meant looking down – an abyss on one side of him and a sheer drop to the bay on the other.

  An experienced climber might have walked across. A tightrope walker might have run. Spargo was neither of these. Gradually he eased himself forwards until he straddled the slice, one leg in the crevasse and the other outside it.

  With sweeps of his arm he cleared stones from his path, stones that smacked and cracked as they bounced to the bay. After ten minutes of shuffling on his backside he stopped and looked back. He was halfway across and he’d had enough. Nothing he had ever done had equipped him to cross something like this.

  Aware again of the pain in his side he closed his eyes. It was a mistake because dizziness overtook him, a numbness that started in his feet and spread through his body. Like a child on a horse without reins he slumped forwards and clung to the ledge. His arms turned to rubber. His grip failed.

  Spargo didn’t know how long he had lain there. Roused by the shrieks of gulls he came round refreshed, his head clear and his pain gone. He knew exactly where he was and why he was there but he no longer cared, no longer felt danger.

  A few minutes later he was standing on moss-clad rock, reaching high for firm handholds and heaving himself up. Peering into the adit he saw nothing but blackness. The glare from the sea had been strong, and to get used to the gloom he stepped into the gloom. For a while he could see only a low-roofed, narrow tunnel that sloped gently downwards, but gradually his eyes adjusted. How far could he see, he wondered? Twenty meters? Thirty, perhaps? Though the floor was littered with fallen rocks the adit hadn’t collapsed, it wasn’t blocked. He remembered Bar’s torch, took it out and switched it on. In its light he went further, picking his way around rocks.

  John Spargo, walking in Sam Spargo’s old mine.

  There was no point going further. The mine would be flooded. Sooner or later he would come to drowned workings and the thought of that unnerved him. What would Bar do now, he wondered, would he admit to the consortium he’d found the mine? And if he did, would they bother to fund exploration, bring in pumps the size of trucks, site them on the cliff and pump water for months?

  He imagined what it would be like down there. After fifty years under water the workings would be treacherous and knee-deep in mud. Exploration of the mine would be a colossal waste of time, effort and money. Anything stored there, protected or not, would have rotted away.

  He turned to leave. Took two or three steps towards the dazzling entrance. Then he changed his mind. Despite his imaginations he had no fears of being alone underground. He knew the dangers. He knew what to look for.

  The adit seemed to go on for ever. Because it curved slightly the daylight soon vanished. Its roof was uncomfortably low – painfully low for a man with a hip wound. Apart from a few fallen rocks the floor was clean, there was no ankle-deep mud like in some mines he knew. Once there were rails for small locos that pulled long trains of tubs full of ore and waste rock. His father had told him that before the cliffs collapsed the waste rock was dumped in the bay. The ore came out that way too and was loaded onto coasters at a jetty, destroyed when the cliffs fell. Very small quantities of ore, Spargo guessed. Minute, compared with the amounts from mines he was used to.

  Because there had once been rails the floor of the adit was smooth, there was no danger from unseen shafts. He walked on with his head well down, now and again craning his neck vulture-like to peer ahead, checking the way was clear and the roof safe. His breath, and the heat from his body, mixed with the mine’s cold air and formed a steamy white mist. It glowed in the torchlight. Obscured his view.

  As on the cliffs, his soles gripped the rock well. His footfalls, though light, echoed around him with deep, hollow booms. He felt safer here than on the cliffs – and infinitely safer than he’d felt with Benares. Here he was in his element, a no-go place for his abductors, an underground alley where getting lost wasn’t possible. If his torch failed he would simply turn back.

  His real concern was the air. He checked through his mental list of bad gases, the odourless poisons that crept up on you gradually, knocked you down before you knew they were there. There might also be another proble
m, one often overlooked – not the presence of poisons but the absence of air – a simple lack of oxygen. He took deep breaths. The air was fresh, kept clean by winds in the bay. Air that smelled more of seaweed than old mine.

  It crossed Spargo’s mind that by finding the adit he’d changed everything. If Bar had seriously thought of him as an asset, he was even more of one now. He was no longer expendable and if he played his cards right he might even get to handle the next stage of Bar’s project. He would suggest to Bar that he, Spargo, was the best man to plan and manage the dewatering and exploration. The locals knew him and trusted him. He could reassure them – with all honesty – that it was simply exploration. There would be no mining.

  He stopped dead. Something had changed. The echoes from his footsteps had been hollow and distant and they were now short and flat – the change you get in a blind alley when you approach the end wall. Spargo, attempting to see under the persistent haze, ducked down and shone the light under the fog. His instincts were right. Ahead of him, blocking the tunnel, was a pyramid of broken, angular rocks.

  He could see what had happened. The left hand side of the tunnel had been cut away to provide a safe refuge for miners and more recently its roof had collapsed into the tunnel, filling it from wall to wall with broken rock. He moved cautiously forwards, picking his way over rubble.

  Checking the roof for loose rock he shone the torch beam upwards. It was like peering up into an unstable, badly built factory chimney. Rocks bigger than his head hung ready to fall, and trickles of water seeped from fissures and splashed on the pile.

  It had been a bad place to widen the tunnel. The rock elsewhere was solid and safe but here it was broken, the natural rock joints all gappy and loose. As if alerting him to the dangers a book-sized slab broke away silently, dropping to the pile with an echoing smack. Rock falls can be hair-triggered, they loosen so gradually that a footfall, a cough or sneeze – even body warmth from an intruder like him – might bring on another collapse.