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

by Richard Whittle

  ‘You knew about this! You knew!’

  ‘Release the handbrake. Move on. If you don’t then this rabble will be all over the road again.’

  ‘You knew!’

  ‘Where have you been all these years?’

  ‘You know damn well where I’ve been!’

  ‘None of this is our concern. It is not our place to judge the decisions made by our leaders.’

  ‘You are a bloody hypocrite! You rob the bastards one minute and the next you make excuses for their crimes.’

  Walter, avoiding Theo’s eyes, looks ahead. ‘You are being beckoned. The trucks have pulled in to let you pass. Stop being so self-righteous and drive!’

  An SS man waves them on. As they drive slowly past him Walter opens his window and calls to him. There is laughter. The window slides closed.

  ‘He said don’t bother to sound your horn. If you hit a few of them you will save him a job.’

  The handbrake is on again. Theo flicks up the door catch and is halfway out of the cab when Walter lunges at him and locks his arm with a frighteningly strong grip. Theo hears the click of a safety catch. Walter’s Mauser jabs into his neck.

  ‘You leave now and I’ll blow your head off. Do you want to end up in a ditch like these wretches? Do you think these ghouls whipping them care about human life? You will get a bullet in your head and so will your boy. If I am lucky they will spare me – but only because I outrank them. My bet is they will kill all three of us, it is easier that way. Nobody will know. Nobody will care.’

  Theo, shocked, drives on. What he sees can surely be nothing to do with the war he’s been fighting. Food is short for everyone, but deliberate starvation? They must want these people to die.

  Memories click together. Things are making sense. He sees shaven heads and he remembers his bosun’s old sea boots, remembers how his crew laughed when the soles came loose. Remembers, also, how they went quiet when they saw that the insulation that kept their feet warm was human hair.

  He feels nauseous. He will remember this day for ever, the shame, the disgust and revulsion, not for the prisoners but for those that have done this thing. What he is seeing will never leave him. It will be in his dreams.

  ‘Peter! Get down!’

  The boy is at the window again, watching the procession of misery – the men, the women and children who drift past in silence, who turn to him and stare with unseeing eyes. The boy obeys his father and slips down to the floor. He snuggles down on the cab floor and is soon asleep.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY

  OSCAR BAR TALKED ON. He had a tale to tell and a captive audience – of one – to tell it to. Hardly in a position to protest, Spargo listened.

  ‘I am cold!’ Bar snapped. He picked up the torch and shone it around the room as if to find a solution. ‘Where is that damned man, he has been gone for two hours!’

  Bar, expecting to gloat over paintings he’d expected to find in the mine house, had jetted-in for the day. Not expecting to stay he hadn’t bothered to equip himself for cold weather. Now he drew his coat around him. Doubled it over at the front.

  ‘Perhaps you should have thought about heating before you started all this,’ Spargo said. ‘Benares won’t find anything. Even if he drives to Thurso he’ll find nowhere open.’

  ‘That is unhelpful,’ Bar said. The torch beam found a rusting hurricane lamp standing on a shelf in a corner. ‘That thing…’

  ‘I’ve checked it. No fuel.’

  Bar looked from the lamp to the bare mattress and then to the sleeping bag. It had been flipped base-over-top by Spargo. Bar wagged a finger.

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘It’s a sleeping bag. All mod cons. Your friend thinks of everything.’

  ‘He thinks of nothing. That carrier bag, bring it to me.’ Spargo eased himself up, went for the bag and placed it on the table. Bar shone the torch into it and took out a bottle, cursing in Spanish as he examined its label. ‘A Rioja from a second rate bodega… though in this godforsaken place that should not surprise me. My hands are arthritic, John Spargo, I am cursed by old age. You will find in the bag two wine glasses and a corkscrew. Open the bottle for me and fill the glasses. I apologise in advance for the inferior quality of the wine and the fact it will be unpalatably cold.’

  Spargo had no wish to drink with the man, but nor did he want to upset him. He did as he was asked, extracted two tissue-wrapped glasses from the bag and set them down. The corkscrew wasn’t needed, the bottle had a screw cap. Spargo half-filled each glass and slipped one of them across the table to Bar, who nursed the glass in his hands. When he finally took a sip his grimace said everything.

  The door rattled. The old counting house had never been proof against draughts and fifty years of neglect hadn’t helped. Wind found its way around the door and the boarded-up windows; the loose kapok insulation swung gently in the unsteady air.

  Bar said, ‘You mentioned Carinhall. What do you know of that place?’

  ‘It was Göring’s hunting lodge.’

  ‘It was where he kept his best art pieces – bought at gunpoint as you so rightly said. Towards the end of the war I was at that place. Did I tell you this? Theodor Volker was with me. I had successfully passed myself off as what you might nowadays call a logistics expert. I fixed things, I moved things around. I provided Theodor with the uniform of a Luftwaffe officer and papers to say he was my aide.’

  ‘Volker mentions the Friedrichstrasse in Berlin, is that where you met him? Is that when he offered to help you?’

  Bar put the glass to his lips. He sipped. Grimaced again.

  ‘Theodor offered nothing. He and I went to the same school, did he write that in his precious books? My parents moved away and he and I lost contact. Many years later, when my colleagues and I were planning to relieve the Reichsmarschall of some of his art, I learned my old friend had become a submarine commander. I needed someone I could trust and I had him brought to me. I explained what I wanted but he refused to co-operate. I found it necessary to blackmail him.’

  ‘Something you seem particularly good at.’

  Bar took another sip and put the glass down.

  ‘Do not underestimate me, John Spargo, I do not take kindly to such criticism. You cannot even imagine what life was like in those days. Theodor was married, he had a child. Early in the war his wife moved to Hamburg. Do you know all of this? Did he write these things?’

  ‘Not all of it.’

  ‘His wife was killed in an air raid but the child survived, it was taken by relatives to their farm in the south of Germany. I knew Theodor was attempting to visit him. I also knew he would not get there because there were no trains.’

  ‘You said you blackmailed him.’

  ‘At the time I did not consider it to be blackmail. We had ways of getting things done and having a hold over a person was only one of those ways. As I told you, it was nearing the end of the war, we all knew that. Göring was planning to move his treasures to Berchtesgaden near the Austrian border.’

  ‘The Berghof. Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest.’

  ‘You are not quite correct. But yes, it was near that place. The treasures were crated and I assisted with the arrangements. I offered to take Theodor to see his son on the condition he worked for me.’

  ‘And did he do what you told him to do? Thirteen pieces of silver.’

  ‘I think you will find it is thirty pieces… however, I told you I blackmailed him, not that I bribed him.’

  ‘Same thing.’

  ‘No it is not. Perhaps you will tell me what would you have done in the same circumstances?’

  ‘Hypothetical question. Ridiculous question, actually.’

  ‘No, again you are wrong. Theodor Volker was willing to risk everything for a chance to visit his child. A short visit is all I offered, there was no time for longer. The Allies were advancing from the south and would soon overrun us. We believed they would raze Germany to the ground and slaughter us all. That was the propagan
da. We did not know if it was true or false.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’

  ‘Because your present circumstances are not dissimilar. You are convinced I have your daughter. I am wondering what lengths you might go to in exchange for her safety.’

  ‘If you haven’t got her then what’s the point?’

  ‘Given the right motivation I might be able to influence those who have taken her.’

  ‘I’ve told you already that I will do anything. Who is she with? What will they do to her?’

  ‘My belief is that members of the consortium have your daughter. I have told you they are impatient, they say I have made promises I have not kept. I have been accused of procrastinating and keeping things from them. These accusations are true. There are things they have no right to know. Things I shall never tell them.’

  He took a gulp of wine and slapped the glass back on the table. It startled Spargo. Made him jump.

  ‘I don’t see how they can put pressure on you by kidnapping Jez.’

  ‘Oh, they can, John Spargo. Believe me, they can.’

  Spargo swivelled around and reached for the sleeping bag. ‘You are cold,’ he said. ‘Do you want this?’ Without waiting for an answer he dragged the bag from the bed and draped it around Bar’s shoulders. Bar didn’t protest.

  ‘Tell me,’ Bar said. ‘Did Theodor write in his journals what we saw when we went to the farm?’

  ‘What farm?’

  ‘At Ingolstadt. At the boy’s grandparents’ farm. They had found Theodor’s boy in an orphanage in Hamburg. The farm was a squalid place and it stank. The man I saw there was old, he had no money and the farm was run down. Did Theodor admit in his writings that the boy was unwell and living like a pig?’ Bar turned up his nose as he spoke. ‘Did Theodor write that?’

  Spargo wasn’t sure it mattered. Far worse things happened back then. From what he had read about the dying throes of the Third Reich, the boy was lucky to have survived.

  ‘Pour me more of that stuff,’ Bar said. ‘If nothing else it serves to quench my thirst.’ Spargo poured, and handed back the glass. ‘I told you I knew Theodor,’ Bar continued. ‘What I did not tell you was I was in his debt. When I was young he saved me from drowning.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  Bar lowered the glass and stared at Spargo with tired eyes. ‘You are a less compassionate man than your father.’

  ‘Leave my father out of this. You know nothing about him.’

  ‘I have done my research. I told you already I know all about you and your family. Humour an old man, listen to what I have to say. Theodor and I were railway enthusiasts. What you English call train spotters.’

  ‘I am Scottish.’

  ‘Whatever. In school vacations we rode our bicycles to the railway yards at Braunschweig to watch the locomotives. When the weather was warm we would stop on the way home and swim in the canal. One day I was foolish. I swam beneath a barge and became entangled in ropes.’

  ‘And Volker rescued you.’

  Bar nodded, slowly. ‘Theodor rescued me, yes. A brave but foolish gesture, he should have been more aware of the dangers. But clearly, if it were not for him I should not be here now. And please, John Spargo, refrain from making another of your cynical comments.’

  ‘But he’s not here, is he? He’s dead. He must have been in that submarine. You sent the man who saved your life to his death for the price of a few paintings.’

  Bar became animated, waving his arms and slopping the wine. He turned his head to one side and spat at the floor.

  ‘You dare to say such things? What right have you to judge me? Theodor was thirty years old when he died and the world was at war.’ Then, more calmly, ‘I did not know he would die, he was a good man, it should not have happened. I told you we were friends and we went to the same school. When I was sixteen my father was appointed to an important post and we moved away. I did not see Theodor again until the end of the war.’

  Bar sat quietly, thinking back, nursing his glass.

  ‘The trains, John Spargo, I was telling you about trains. Göring was obsessed with them, did you know that? If I had realised Theodor still retained that particular boyish interest I might not have selected him to help me. When we arrived at Carinhall I took him to the railhead. I won’t bore you with details but the Reichsmarschall took a shine to him. I will admit to you it was one of the worst moments of my life. We were grey men. We did not need such attention.

  ‘Theodor spent the next day in the attic in the Reichsmarschall’s mansion, playing with what he described as surely the most impressive model railway in Germany. Mercifully for both of us their discussions did not stray beyond the merits of different locomotives and Göring’s collection of tobacco pipes.’ Bar stopped, looked towards Spargo and frowned. ‘Have I told you these things already?’

  Spargo shook his head. He was tired and cold. His wound had stopped bleeding but the pain was still there. He no longer cared what Bar was saying.

  ‘I’m sure Volker does mention some of these things in his journals.’

  If Spargo hadn’t been so cold he would have dozed off. The man was waffling now.

  ‘The tobacco pipes, John Spargo… while they played trains the Reichsmarschall wanted to smoke. Theodor produced a lighter that didn’t work and so Göring produced his own. He gave it to Theodor.’

  Spargo stiffened. ‘What lighter?’

  ‘You are not listening to me! Göring gave Theodor his lighter! It was made of silver and gold! It was a valuable piece!’

  Subconsciously Spargo slapped his pockets. The shell of the lighter was there, mixed with loose change and receipts. Surreptitiously he moved it from one pocket to another. But not surreptitiously enough.

  ‘What do you have there? What is that?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Show me!’

  Spargo took out the lighter and handed it over.

  ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘Kalman.’

  ‘Was it found on the submarine?’

  ‘In the engine room.’

  Bar rotated it, inspecting it. ‘What else did the man give you?’

  ‘Only that. He slipped it into my pocket without me knowing.’

  ‘Why did he do that?’

  ‘He must have realised I liked it.’

  Bar grunted, sat upright, and pulled the sleeping bag tightly around him. He held the lighter in the torch beam so he could see it more clearly. ‘The flint wore down,’ he said, absently. ‘And Theodor could not get any more of them. When he arrived at the farm he gave the lighter to his boy to play with. The child kept it with him at all times. He would not part with it. The trains, John Spargo. I was telling you about the trains…’

  ‘You told me about them already.’

  ‘I have not told you everything. The Reichsmarschall planned to move his treasures to the south in his private trains. You will have heard, I suspect, that the last of these journeys was a disaster. The train was abandoned in a tunnel to avoid attack from your bombers.’

  ‘No, I haven’t heard that. Were you and Volker on board?’

  ‘Fortunately not. We were on an earlier train carrying paintings in wooden crates. At Neuhaus we transferred them to waiting lorries. Theodor assisted me, it was part of our agreement. I diverted to the farm and reunited him with his son.’

  ‘So you said.’

  ‘For me, travelling to the farm was a mistake, I lost three vital days. Did I tell you the wooden crates were unsuitable for a sea voyage? My colleagues made arrangements for them to be sealed inside bronze boxes. To do that we had to drive into Poland.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Nineteen forty-five. January. Making the journey was a mistake. It was a wretched winter, the worst I have ever known. My friends and I had liberated twenty-eight of Göring’s best paintings. Would you believe that while in Poland all but six of these were stolen from me?’

  He laughed at his words. Wine slo
pped on to the sleeping bag and he looked down at it. Flipped it with his free hand.

  ‘Stolen by your so-called friends?’

  ‘I have no idea who stole them. Besides, there were other treasures on the submarine. I was not the only one removing Göring’s art. When we eventually arrived in Hamburg with our six crates, others had already been stored on Theodor Volker’s boat, though ours were the only ones so well protected. My colleagues were expecting me to accompany the cases on the submarine we had ready for Theodor but I could not do that. I had then, and I still have, a morbid fear of water and confined spaces, a legacy of the incident in the canal. In my place they put on board a Schutzstaffel officer, a pig of a man called Roth.’

  ‘Schutzstaffel. That is SS.’

  ‘Correct. Later I learnt Roth had in his belongings an explosive device he was supposed to wind like a clock every twenty four hours. My colleagues called it insurance. It is my belief something happened on the submarine to prevent Roth from winding his little clock.’

  Spargo narrowed his eyes. ‘You said earlier you weren’t Luftwaffe. What were you, SS like Roth?’

  Bar shrugged. ‘Do not pretend to be surprised. You saw the photographs in my study. I instructed my maid to take them from the walls, I did not suppose for a moment she would then leave them where they might be seen.’

  ‘I only looked at one. If you were in it I didn’t recognise you.’

  Bar dismissive it with a flick of his hand. ‘It no longer matters.’ He finished his drink and passed the empty glass to Spargo. Spargo picked up the bottle and tipped it. It was empty.

  ‘You mentioned Poland,’ he said. ‘Why Poland?’

  ‘You haven’t been listening to me. I told you we took the crates to be sealed in bronze boxes. To be doubly sure they remained watertight they were to be encased in rubber. When we arrived at Monowitz… did I tell you about the factories there? Yes? When we arrived, the Soviets were very close.’

  ‘What happened to Volker’s boy, did he ever see him again?’

  Bar looked away. ‘The boy was sick, I told you that. Theodor wanted to take him with us. I told him it was not part of our deal.’