“Will one of you tell me what is going on?”
Jack took a deep breath. “Until July forty-one the Germans and Russians had a non-aggression pact. They had carved up Poland between them and the Russians had defeated the Finns the previous winter. The British government had supplied arms to the Finns before the war began so, in the eyes of some, Britain was at war with Germany and the Soviet Union.
“That was never the case, of course, but some people with Communist sympathies were prepared to disrupt the war effort. It was never official Party policy, but small acts of mostly industrial sabotage were carried out. According to the official record at least some of this sabotage was encouraged by an agent codenamed ‘Sciron’ who claimed to be a Soviet spy.
“His real name was never known, but MI5 found out that he was in fact working for the Abwehr, which was the German’s secret service. So these people weren’t working for the Russians at all. In April of that year, George Williams and two accomplices, having failed to stop a munitions train by blocking the line to the docks, were encouraged to try again by derailing the train before it got to the goods station at the bottom of Fishergate Hill.”
A howl of pain interrupted Jack’s lecture. Joshua had managed to hammer his own thumb and ran to his mother in floods of tears.
“I’d best put him to bed,” Katie picked up the toddler and hugged him. “Back in a few minutes.”
“You got all that from that piece of paper?” Steve was clearly impressed.
“Not all of it. The man who wrote this report lives in Sussex. I’d interviewed him before for another book.”
“How many books have you written, then? What are they called?” He wasn’t actually a fan of the written word, vastly preferring his entertainment to be largely visual. But Steve Melling had never met a real live author before and was determined to have something to tell his work mates the next day.
“Six in total, and unless you are a serious student of military history I can guarantee that you won’t have heard of any of them.”
“Oh. Still, this will make a good book then, won’t it?”
“It would, if I thought that anybody would believe it.”
***
The evening’s heavy showers had cleared the air, and the smell of damp grass pervaded as George Williams locked his front door and crossed the road toward the riverbank. He had intended to make his way to the club to relieve his unremitting loneliness, but this evening he found himself drawn across the river towards the man-made embankment that had once been part of his railway.
On the south bank, a pathway, marked for both pedestrians and cyclists, followed the line of the old railway at the bottom of the bank. As George walked, to his left mature trees towered over him casting the former alignment into deep shadow. Occasional drops of water lost their grip on the young leaves and splattered on and around the old man as he strode on, his flat cap pulled down on his head and his hands thrust in his pockets to evade the twilight chill. Crossing Leyland Road, he picked up the path again as it squeezed between a redundant bridge abutment and the Methodist Church.
As the breeze ruffled the branches above him, George suddenly felt utterly wretched. A heartbeat later, he thought that heard somebody’s voice.
It’s time...the others are coming...why did you do it?
George’s head snapped to the left and up towards the top of the bank next to him. Fear gripped him, instantly replacing the despondent feeling despite that fact that there was nobody to be seen. Turning on his heel, he quickened his pace, not pausing until he was back on the main road.
Fighting for breath, he sat on the low wall surrounding the front of the church. Sweat poured from his brow as his eyes frantically scanned the embankment for any sign of pursuit. Again, the feeling of sheer misery began to envelop him and he pressed his hands against his ears in a vain attempt to keep out the voice.
The others are coming...
***
Joshua’s distress had proven to be a lengthy affair. After forty-five minutes, with no change to the intensity of the infantile anguish, Jack had made his excuses and left the Mellings to comfort their son. Returning to the hotel, he decided once again to gather his thoughts in the pub rather than in the solitude of his room.
As with the previous Tuesday night, the bar was virtually deserted. Remembering that the house wine was quite passable, he ordered a large glass of red from the obviously bored and uncommunicative girl behind the bar. As she shuffled off to get his drink, Jack’s mobile phone rang. At the sound of the Nokia tune (Jack had never figured out how to change it), the few faces in the room turned to look at him, causing him to flush with embarrassment. He quickly removed it from his jacket pocket and stabbed at the green button with his index finger.
“Jack Rimmer.”
A familiar female voice came back. “Hello, Jack. It’s Janice Forsyth.”
Jack was momentarily lost for words.
“Jack, are you there?”
“Yes...yes of course. How nice to hear from you, Janice. Sorry, you took me by surprise. Hold on a moment.”
His drink had arrived. Jack pulled a five pound note from his wallet and handed it to the girl, then turned and made his way to a corner table without waiting for his change.
“Sorry about that. Now, what can I do for you?” Jack was hoping that this was a purely social call, but Janice’s tone of voice suggested otherwise.
“Are you still researching your father’s death?”
“Yes, I am. I’m in Lancashire at the moment but I should be back by...” Janice cut him off before he could explain.
“My father wants to meet with you again. In Preston. I’ve no idea why, and I’m not happy with him travelling all that way. He won’t admit it, but he’s really quite frail.”
“Do you know what he wants?” Jack was intrigued, not only at the thought of something so important that Cedric Morgan wanted to travel well over two hundred miles to talk about it, but also at the possibility that his daughter may accompany him.
At the other end, Janice sighed. “I’ve no idea, Jack. But he insists that he must come to you, not the other way around. I shall have to drive him, of course.”
Jack’s heart leapt. “When will you come? Do you want me to arrange some accommodation for you? When...” He realised that he was jabbering excitedly.
“He wants to come straight away, so we’ll set off tomorrow. And yes, would you please find us somewhere to stay?”
“Of course. I’ll ring you in the morning and let you know where.”
Their conversation ended, Jack returned the phone to his pocket and drank deeply from his glass. It took him a moment to realise it, but he was grinning to himself. Silly old fool, he thought. But once again a mental image of Janice prevented him from concentrating on the job at hand. Jack had meant to spend at least an hour writing up a summary of what he knew in an attempt to identify the gaps in his knowledge, but it took a considerable effort of will to finish his drink and return to his room and his waiting laptop.
***
As Jack was answering his phone, Katie Melling was still trying to calm her son. Steve had tried, but Joshua was something of a mummy’s boy and had simply shrieked still louder. Tiring of walking around in the confines of the flat, she had sat on her bed with Joshua sat on her lap. Suddenly, he stopped crying and looked towards the door. As he did so, Katie sensed the approach of their spectral visitor; however, the feeling was less of sadness and more of fear tinged with menace.
“Man coming,” said Joshua and buried his face in Katie's chest. Steve came through the door, a nervous expression on his face.
“It’s him again, isn’t it?” He paused, seeing the wide-eyed look on his wife’s face.
“There’s something different this time,” she said. “It always felt sad before, but now it’s...it’s...scary.” A shiver ran down her spine as she spoke, the involuntary spasm making the little boy begin to whimper again.
The sensation grew in
intensity until it seemed to fill the air around them. Steve sat on the bed next to Katie and put him arm around her shoulder, almost at once realising the futility of his action. For the first time, their perception of the apparition’s approach was more than their imagination: simultaneously Steve and Katie both realised that a tangible odour was present in the room.
“Do you smell that?” asked Katie. “What is it?”
“Smells like... oh, I don’t know...is it the river? It’s certainly sort of damp, don’t you think?”
“Men coming!” sobbed Joshua, clinging still closer to his mother.
Steve and Katie looked at each other, the apprehension apparent on both their faces. Katie was trembling now and Steve pulled her closer to him. His own insides were knotted with fear and the shame that he could not protect his family from the horror that approached.
As they both looked back towards the door, a familiar figure appeared in front of them. He, at least was unchanged: the dejected expression held no malice. The spectre stood in the doorway looking at them, then half turned to look over his shoulder. When he looked back, the voiceless words came to Steve and Katie again.
The others are coming...it’s almost time.
“What others, Jack?” It was Katie that had spoken, adding to Steve’s shame. “What’s happening?”
He will be here...the others are coming to meet him.
“Do they want to hurt us, Jack? Have we done something?”
They want him...the one that sent us to...
His sentence unfinished, the apparition turned again. A sudden cacophony of voices filled the heads of the couple perched on the edge of the bed; the words were blurred, indistinct, like a crowd of people all shouting at once. The ghost turned back and faced them.
Tell him...we are waiting for him...he will answer for what he has done.
Wednesday Morning
Jack Rimmer had risen early. Despite a late night collating the information that he had gleaned from each source, he felt quite fresh. He shaved carefully, showered, then went to the reception desk to enquire about two additional rooms. Having secured these using his own credit card, he returned to the restaurant in the pub next door and treated himself to a full English breakfast.
Returning to his room, Jack looked afresh at the holes in his knowledge. He was certain that his father had been killed by a blow to the head somewhere close to where the Mellings’ flat now stood. From what he had learned the previous day, the prime suspect was George Williams, spurred on by the spy Sciron. But there were still some questions. Why had his father left the security of his signal box? Why had his disappearance not been investigated? It occurred to Jack that he didn’t know where his father’s remains were now, having been discovered recently. And why did Cedric Morgan want to travel the length of the country to see him in Preston?
It was that thought, and the accompanying image of Janice, that reminded Jack that he hadn’t phoned to let them know where the hotel was. Taking out his mobile phone, he looked at the last received call (he wasn’t completely technophobic) and pressed the green handset button to dial the number. To his disappointment, Morgan himself answered the phone.
“Oh, it’s you, Rimmer,” Cedric’s voice was subdued, hesitant. “Janice is driving. Give me the details would you, old chap.”
Jack passed on the hotel’s address and some brief instructions how to find it.
“It’s relatively simple, just off junction 29 of the motorway. I’ve booked two rooms.”
“Thank you, Rimmer. We’ll be up there at about two this afternoon, so Janice tells me. Will you be around then?”
Wild horses wouldn’t drag me away, thought Jack. But he confined his response to a simple “of course” before hanging up. The tone of Morgan’s voice was a little disturbing, he thought a moment later, quite out of character. These thoughts were soon suppressed by the rising excitement at the prospect of seeing Janice once more, in spite of his best efforts to curb his juvenile enthusiasm. Smiling to himself, he shook his head and returned to his laptop.
He had to speak to George Williams; that much was certain. Jack was dreading the encounter: what would he say? ‘Hello, Mr Williams, did you kill my father?’ or ‘My name’s Jack Rimmer. You orphaned me’. No, he needed a more subtle approach.
Looking at his list of questions, Jack realised that Steve’s recounting of Kevin Anderson’s story held the clue. Williams had been a signalman, just like his father. That would be his approach: he needed to know why his father had left his post and Williams could probably give him that answer to that.
Looking at an online telephone directory, there were thirteen ‘G Williams’ shown in Preston. On a hunch, Jack phoned Katie Melling, hoping that Steve would still be there. He was in luck.
“I don’t know the house number,” said the younger man, “but I do know that he lives just over the river from us on Broadgate.”
Thanking Steve, Jack hung up before he could be informed of the previous night’s development. Jack looked again at the directory. Sure enough, just one ‘G Williams’. He paused for a moment, briefly mentally rehearsing his cover story. Then he dialled the number.
***
I’m too old for this, thought Janice Forsyth, becoming restive at being stuck in yet another seemingly endless line of slow-moving traffic. They had made poor progress since she had collected her father from his cottage; now, on their third different motorway she realised that it had taken three hours to cover just eighty miles or so. Her car didn’t help: a Peugeot 106 was not built for long journeys or high speeds, not that the latter was a problem today.
Strangely, the call from Jack Rimmer had helped. Just as she was considering surrendering herself to the encompassing embrace of uncontrolled road rage, her father’s conversation had diverted her attention sufficiently to assuage her rising anger. For, like Jack, she had felt an attraction between them. It was an odd feeling, the resurgence of a long-forgotten sensation that she had considered consigned to history. Like Jack, she thought that she must be past such juvenile emotion and, like Jack, felt just a little foolish at the possibility of starting a relationship with a man whom she hardly knew and, as a life-long bachelor, would hardly be interested in an elderly widow.
Yet she didn’t actually feel like an elderly widow. She had retired early, but not that early, from teaching to nurse her husband through the cancer that would take him from her. She was now sixty-six, but in her heart she felt no different to when she was in her thirties, with three young children, a secure career and a successful husband. She had met Paul at university: he was in his final year studying architecture when she had begun her English course. They had married as soon as she graduated aged twenty-two and within eight years their family had grown with the addition of two boys and a girl. They were grown up themselves now, with families of their own, and it had been the grandchildren that had helped Janice through the dark days following Paul’s death.
She had had male friends since then, but could never bring herself to commit to a relationship with any of them. None of them had stayed in her life for long: whereas she wanted companionship, they wanted sex, and none were prepared to wait until she was ready. Paul had been her only lover: on the rare occasion she had come close to going to bed with another man the feeling that she was betraying her dead husband had been strong enough to prevent her going through with it.
But this new sensation was different to the others. Previously, the men had pursued her, now she felt that she might be the one to make the running. Yes, maybe Jack was the one that would share her dotage, and, before that, her bed.
The impatient blaring of a car horn snapped her out of her trance. The traffic ahead of her had moved a whole hundred yards and the man in the vehicle behind was clearly as fed up as she had been just moments earlier.
“Do pay attention, Janice,” muttered Cedric, grumpily. “I’d like to get there today, if possible.” Smiling to herself, Janice put the car in gear, released the handbrak
e and closed up the gap.
***
The phone had rung countless times, and Jack was on the verge of hanging up when a gruff voice finally answered.
“Is that Mr George Williams?” asked Jack, his voice as affable as he could manage.
“Yes. What do you want? I’m not interested in buying anything!” George virtually shouted back at his caller.
“Mr Williams, my name is Jack...er...Melling,” Jack knew that his genuine surname might have spooked the old man, and used the first one that came into his head. “I’m an historian, and I am researching a book on the relationship between the trade union movement and the railways.”
“Go on,” George’s tone betrayed his sudden interest, but he was still suspicious. “Who put you on to me?”
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