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

  Twelve hours in coveralls had reordered the creases in Mitchell’s suit. It had the appearance of having been stored overnight in a bin bag. Though he wore a tie it was undone, hanging like a halter around a drooped-open, unbuttoned collar. He had taken the trouble to comb his hair and its neatness was at odds with his dark-rimmed eyes and a day’s growth of stubble.

  Spargo stroked his own chin and wondered if he looked the same. It didn’t take detective training to see he’d spent the night in his car.

  ‘Forgive my bluntness Mr Spargo. I know your mother didn’t regain consciousness. I have been told you were with her when she died.’

  Spargo didn’t respond. He wanted to ask why the police hadn’t had someone there in case she came round. Perhaps they knew there was no chance she would. Mitchell, Spargo thought, was inspecting him as if he were a suspect, his eyes darting from his hair to his ears, his nose and his chin. From there they went down his clothes to his shoes. It seemed very personal. A whole body scan.

  ‘No, she didn’t regain consciousness.’ Spargo said. ‘The doctor said she was attacked. I want to know why I wasn’t told… why my daughter wasn’t told.’

  Mitchell stayed looking down, his manner thoughtful. ‘Things don’t always go to plan.’ If it was meant as an apology for poor communications then it was short lived. ‘I know this is a bad time for you,’ he continued, ‘but I want you to come to Kilcreg with me.’ He looked up from the floor and into Spargo’s eyes. ‘I need you there. There are things only you can explain to me.’

  ‘Kilcreg? You mean now?’

  Mitchell nodded, started to speak but interrupted his own flow by wagging a finger, first at Spargo and then to some distant, unseen point.

  ‘There’s a cloakroom. You want to clean yourself up or something?’

  Then, mindless of his offer, Mitchell ushered Spargo outside. Spargo took a couple of steps towards his car. Mitchell walked the other way. Spargo called to him.

  ‘Will you go first? Shall I follow you?’

  ‘No, I want you with me, how else can I talk to you?’

  Mitchell’s car was moving before Spargo fastened his seat belt, down the lane from the station and out to the road. Mitchell stayed quiet. Spargo wanted to initiate a conversation but decided Mitchell’s attentions were better directed towards manoeuvring through traffic.

  The sun, Spargo noticed as they took Kessock Bridge at an uncomfortably fast speed, had now vanished completely. The day was darker now than it was an hour ago and the Black Isle, the land to the north of the bridge, was living up to its name.

  Most of the traffic came towards them, early starters heading south for Inverness and beyond. The few that drove north were overtaken by Mitchell, at speed. His car was grey with no markings, an omission Spargo considered unfortunate because if there was ever a man who needed flashing blue lights, it was Mitchell. He drove mechanically, as if programmed to travel fast come what may. Spargo gave his seat belt a subconscious, tightening tug. Still Mitchell said nothing. Perhaps tiredness and events of the night conspired against conversation. They were twenty minutes into the journey before Mitchell spoke.

  ‘Did your mother keep valuables in her house?’

  ‘A few personal treasures. Nothing you’d call valuable. Don’t suppose they’d fetch much. Is that why she was attacked? Robbery?’

  ‘What do you mean by personal treasures?’

  ‘Old jewellery. A couple of hundred pounds worth of odds and sods. Did they take it?’

  ‘Did who take it?’

  Spargo was tempted to ask who the hell Mitchell thought he meant.

  ‘Whoever attacked my mother.’

  ‘Not as far as we can tell.’

  ‘There’s a DVD player I bought her last year. And the TV, of course.’

  ‘They’re still there. What else?’

  Spargo shrugged. ‘Nothing. Certainly nothing worth beating an old lady to death for.’

  No, he didn’t mean that. Nothing in this world was worth beating an old lady for. He had hoped Mitchell would start at the beginning and tell all. The way it looking, it wasn’t going to happen.

  ‘I need to know what happened,’ Spargo said. ‘I’m not expecting miracles. I don’t expect you to tell me who did it.’

  ‘What have you been told?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing at all. Yesterday I went out and forgot to take my mobile with me. When I got home I found a message from my daughter on the house phone. When I spoke to her she said someone had called her to say my mother had been taken to Raigmore. She wasn’t told anything about an attack.’

  Mitchell took time to answer. ‘That was my fault,’ he murmured, so quietly Spargo hardly heard. ‘The hospital was told not to mention it. They gave your daughter my mobile number. You or she could have called me.’

  ‘Nobody gave her any numbers.’

  Mitchell kept his gaze straight ahead, his eyes on the road as he overtook vehicles.

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Who found her, Rosie?’

  ‘Who is Rosie?’

  Rose Munro had lived in the cottage next door to his mother’s for as long as he could remember. It was a stone-built bungalow with a small garden at the front and a larger one at the back, almost a mirror image of his mother’s place. Both had always-open gates and short drives that were little more than parking spaces, each terminating at one-car, prefabricated garages. The drives were separated by a low chain-link fence on concrete posts and the side doors of the houses faced each other. It was a sociable, small village thing.

  ‘You mean Mrs Munro? No, she’s not there. It was the postman.’

  Spargo’s mind drifted to a story he had read long ago, a Father Brown mystery, by Chesterton, if he remembered correctly. The postman did it. He simply walked in and out of a house. Murdered a man and nobody really noticed him. Spargo bit his lip, angry to be bothered by such trivia.

  He waited for more from Mitchell. Nothing came. The man was negotiating a tight bend, down through the gears and then up through them rapidly.

  ‘And?’ Spargo asked.

  ‘He – that’s the postman – said the door was open. The side door, that is. Did your mother always use the side door, never the front?’

  ‘The postman always came to the side door. Years ago my mother used the front door for visitors, but now the only ones she gets are her neighbours. The front door is blocked off with a bookcase. She can’t use it.’

  Mitchell nodded. Said nothing. Spargo continued:

  ‘There can’t be more than a handful of people left. The village is dying.’ Bad choice of word. He bit his lip again. ‘Sometimes the postman gets invited in for tea. Stops for a chat.’

  ‘People still do that? Really? Who else calls at the house?’

  Spargo went quiet. ‘Different now,’ he murmured. ‘There was a milkman once. And a baker. And a man who sold groceries, he had a small bus, a green thing, a corner shop on wheels with the bus windows painted over. Don’t think he comes now.’

  ‘So how did your mother manage? She hasn’t got a car. I’m told there’s no bus.’

  ‘An old couple a few doors down drive her to the shops once a fortnight. Drove her…’

  ‘Mr and Mrs Dundonald?’

  ‘You’ve spoken to them?’

  ‘We’ve spoken to everyone. That’s except for Mrs Munro. She is away at her daughter’s, apparently. Up north somewhere.’

  There wasn’t much further north anyone could go. Spargo wondered where he meant. Thurso? The Orkney Isles?

  ‘You still haven’t told me what happened.’

  ‘She was attacked, Mr Spargo. I’m sure you were told. You must have seen her injuries.’

  ‘Was there more than one attacker?’

  ‘I can’t say.’

  ‘Can’t? Won’t?’

  ‘Can’t, not yet. As I said, the side door was open. The postman saw your mother on the kitchen floor. His mobile didn’t work so he used the house phone to call an ambu
lance. We’re investigating the possibility she opened the door to her attacker.’

  ‘More likely her attacker just wandered in. Kilcreg’s the ass-end of the world, there’s no reason for anyone to go there. You don’t get walk-in thefts.’

  ‘Are you saying anyone could walk in to any house there?’

  ‘Yes, during the day,’ Spargo said. ‘Not that easy though, is it?’

  Spargo turned his head and looked at Mitchell. He noticed the growth of stubble on the man’s chin and cheeks. Then, as he’d done in the police station, he raised a hand to his own chin. It felt rough. He was usually clean-shaven and the stubble made him feel grubby.

  ‘What do you mean, not easy?’

  ‘You’ve seen Kilcreg, it’s at the end of a valley, surrounded by high moorland. The harbour is the only low bit. Each side of it there are sea cliffs. Unless you are a hiker or boatman the only way in is via the road across the moor, you’ve driven it, you know what it’s like. The hillside behind my mother’s cottage is open land with hardly a tree in sight, there’s nowhere to hide. It’s easy to see people coming.’

  ‘That’s assuming there is someone to see them. The place isn’t exactly buzzing. What about the end of the road, the turning circle? I saw paths there. Where do they lead, along the beach?’

  ‘One of the paths goes to the old jetty. There’s no real beach, just boulders and collapsed cliffs. Didn’t you go there? Haven’t you seen it?’

  ‘I haven’t had time to go sightseeing. What about the lane across the road from your mother’s cottage? Where does that go?’

  ‘You mean the path beside the old school?’

  The school, left to rot when it closed in the nineteen sixties. At some point it had been robbed of slates, its roof timbers and then its stone. The stubby short walls that remained gave it the appearance of a partly restored Roman villa.

  ‘So that’s what that ruin is,’ Mitchell said. ‘I did wonder. So where does the path go?’

  ‘Up the hillside to the old chapel and graveyard. The chapel’s a ruin and the graveyard’s disused. Apart from that there’s nothing but mile after mile of heather. That side of the valley isn’t a good place to watch the house from.’

  More silence from Mitchell. Then:

  ‘When did you last see your mother?’

  Father, it should be, Spargo thought. When did you last see your father? – the painting, the Cromwell soldier and the boy. He checked himself. His mind was taking side-roads. Anything to avoid the real issue.

  ‘Well?’ Mitchell said. ‘Mr Spargo? When did you last see her?’

  Guilt, now. Kilcreg isn’t the easiest place to get to and it wasn’t as if he hadn’t offered to move his mother to Edinburgh years ago. If she’d agreed to move he would have seen her more often and this wouldn’t have happened. He took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh. He knew he was blaming her for his shortcomings. Now was not the time for untruths and excuses.

  ‘Too long ago,’ he confessed. ‘Months. Seven, I think.’

  ‘How long has she lived at Kilcreg?’

  ‘Since she was married. That’s most of her life. Nineteen thirty seven. Maybe thirty eight.’

  What was, to Spargo, beginning to sound suspiciously like an interrogation, terminated abruptly when Mitchell jammed on the brakes. What had been a fairly wide road narrowed suddenly. Though there was little traffic, the cars that came towards them travelled fast, middle-aged boy racers on autopilot, late for work. That Mitchell had been awake for more than twenty-four hours was clear from the way he overreacted to approaching cars. He jerked upright, as if stirred from sleep. Touched the brake pedal unnecessarily.

  ‘Why does a place like Kilcreg exist?’ he asked, the car up to speed again. ‘There’s nothing there. Just a few houses.’

  ‘It was a fishing village. Rose Munro can remember when most of the older locals had boats.’

  The white wooden signpost at the fork in the road, the one pointing to Kilcreg, had been there as long as Spargo could remember. They turned there, onto a tarred road that soon narrowed to become a single track across moorland, constrained between ditches holding brown peaty water. Spargo knew from unfortunate experience that at least once a year the road became impassable due to deep snow, sometimes for days. Posts to guide snowploughs stuck up at regular intervals like red and white javelins. These, and the occasional signs marking passing bays, far outnumbered trees. It was no surprise to Spargo that for the last fifteen minutes they had seen no other vehicles. Chances were they would get to Kilcreg without seeing a single car, animal, bird or human being.

  Spargo’s mind drifted. When he was young there was a snowplough in his father’s yard, a massive beast with wheels taller than he was. Memories of it came easily and played in his head like a video – the huge plough with its twin engines screaming, grinding its way up the hill out of Kilcreg, flinging snow back to the sky.

  He could see snow now. Way off to the north stood the granite dome of Stac Dubh, snow-capped as it often was, its upper slopes indistinguishable from its shrouding, low cloud.

  Though the Kilcreg road ran straight for miles it undulated violently, as if over the years long lengths of it had sunk into bog. Spargo knew from experience that if you took the humps too fast then your car left the ground.

  Mitchell slowed down. He had learned that too.

  Not long now. They had started the winding descent from the moor. The Craig Burn came in from the left and the road followed it down, its tumbling, peaty brown waters obscured by thin mist. The burn changed with the years. The turbulent melt-waters that roared off the moor after late winter thaws scoured out its bed and rearranged boulders. Many of the short bushy trees growing near the water’s edge were torn out by torrents, they never grew tall.

  A sharp curse from Mitchell plucked Spargo from dreams. A van with police markings laboured uphill from Kilcreg, taking up road space. Mitchell braked; jammed the car in reverse; backed into a passing bay.

  ‘Surprised this road hasn’t been widened,’ he grunted, ‘seeing as it’s the only way in.’

  Spargo nodded absently but didn’t agree. Couldn’t see much point in widening a road that led nowhere.

  Ahead, through a gap in the hills, two shades of grey met at a hazy horizon. The steep hillsides that framed the view of this distant sea and sky were as bleak as the high moor itself. As if aware of their own vulnerability, the few trees whose roots gripped the thin soil of the valley shrank into themselves like bonsai, their streamlined, seagull-winged branches pointing inland, as if attempting to hide from the sea gales.

  The van gone, Mitchell descended the hill slowly, taking bends carefully. One more bend and they would see Kilcreg – two short rows of houses on a straight, narrow road. At the inland end of the valley, the end from which they approached, the road clung to the right-hand hillside. On the left side, the ground dropped sharply to a floor of green fields. At some time in their lives these fields had been fruitful, fertilised every year by seaweed dragged up from the beach. Now they lay neglected, barren but for swathes of bright moss and dark reeds. Barely discernible squares and rectangles disturbed their regularity. Traces of things that had been.

  Kilcreg changed little with the seasons. The few firs on the hillsides stayed their own shade of deep green, as did the reeds in the once-ploughed flat land. Spargo recalled how his daughter once remarked that the main difference between the seasons in Kilcreg was that all times of the year except for two months of summer, smoke rose from chimneys. Today there would be smoke.

  Nothing could have prepared Spargo for what he saw when Mitchell’s car rounded the last bend. He had never seen more than a handful of cars in Kilcreg but today there were dozens. The approach to the village was littered with vehicles, cars crammed on verges, vans jamming the road. Police vehicles far outnumbered houses. Harsh fluorescent yellows and blues outshone Kilcreg’s drab greys and greens. Disturbed the peace.

  Escapism crept in again: Spargo, being driven
to the dentist by his father, wanting to be somewhere else, praying the journey would never end. In the same way he didn’t want to go to the dentist all those years ago he didn’t want to go to Kilcreg now, didn’t want to face what had happened there. He wished, for at least the fifth time since leaving Inverness, that he had refused to come.

  He looked away. To his left, beyond the fields, the hillside rose up to heather-clad moor. At the foot of the slope, about as far from the road as it was possible to get, stood a large detached house of grey stone. It was the first and the largest house in Kilcreg and it was away from the others, isolated from them by a sea of rough grass. Like a child’s painting it had a door in the middle and four windows, not quite in each corner. Long before Spargo was born an extension had been added to the left side of the building that had messed up the symmetry.

  ‘An only child,’ Spargo said absently, nodding towards the house. ‘We used to live there. My father was manager of the mine.’

  Mitchell glanced left. He saw no mine to have been manager of, only a large stone house with boarded-up windows and a hole in the roof where one of the chimneys had fallen through.

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘The waste ground to the left of the house was the mine’s plant yard. The mine itself was up on the high moor.’ He nodded, indicating a track climbing high through a cleft in the hill.

  ‘I thought you said fishing?’ Mitchell said. ‘I didn’t know there was any mining around here. Can’t have been coal, not this far north.’

  ‘It started as a copper mine in the early nineteen-hundreds, a one-man-and-a-dog thing. Then someone realised some of the stuff they’d been throwing away was wolframite.’

  ‘Wolframite? That’s valuable?’

  ‘It’s one of the main ores of tungsten, a key component of steel. It strengthens it. In the last war it was a strategic metal, they didn’t have enough of the stuff and because of the U-boats they couldn’t import it. The government must have guessed war was likely because back in the mid-nineteen-thirties the Ministry of Mines moved in and sunk a shaft. Well, my father did. It made access to the mine easier. The old entrance was high in the cliffs, above the beach.’