The Last Line

Book 0: John Cook

by Stephen Ronson

Genres: World War II; Spy Thrillers; Historical Thrillers

Synopsis

In Britain's darkest hour of the war a veteran left behind from the fighting discovers evacuee children haven't been arriving at their destinations.

May 1940.

With Nazi forces sweeping across France, invasion seems imminent. The English Channel has never felt so narrow.

In rural Sussex, war veteran John Cook has been tasked with preparing the resistance effort, should the worst happen.

But even as the foreign threat looms, it's rumours of a missing child that are troubling Cook. A twelve-year-old girl was evacuated from London and never seen again, and she's just the tip of the iceberg - countless evacuees haven't made it to their host families.

As Cook investigates, he uncovers a dark conspiracy that reaches to the highest ranks of society. He will do whatever it takes to make the culprits pay. There are some lines you just don't cross.

THE LAST LINE is a blistering action thriller combined with a smart noir mystery, played out expertly against the taut backdrop of the British home front.

(P) 2023 Hodder & Stoughton Limited

Release date: November 16, 2023

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 336

Sample

1

Friday, 10 May 1940

I was walking in the meadow between the woods when I saw the Spitfire. At first, just a speck in the sky. The engine sounded wrong, the revs falling, spluttering, then finally cutting off with a last cough.

My meadow must have looked like a godsend. Flanked by the woods on either side, running south to north from his perspective, quarter of a mile long. Big enough for me to get a useful amount of hay come haymaking time. Not much distance to slow a fighter plane from flight speed to full stop. Maybe enough. Maybe not. At the northern end of the meadow, a row of ancient chestnuts was a dark wall in the bright early morning. If he hit those trees at speed, there wouldn’t be much left of him.

He came in fast, trying to line it up without any power. Behind him, up in the sun, a speck – another plane.

I was halfway along the meadow, inside the treeline. If he survived the landing, he’d need help getting out of the plane. I ran towards those chestnut trees, keeping close to the edge of the field in case the plane suddenly came my way. I did my best to run through the long grass in my heavy boots but it must have been quite a sight – a forty-year-old farmer running flat out like a boy on sports day.

The Spitfire clipped the big oak at the far end of the meadow, breaking off a branch with a loud crack, then he blew past me, hitting the ground hard. The left wheel ripped off and the wing dipped and caught the grass. He got it back up again but only for thirty yards before the wing dipped again and dug in.

I struck out diagonally across the meadow, following him towards the trees, barely registering the sound of another plane passing close overhead.

With the wing dragging, the Spitfire kept turning, bringing it back towards me. I stopped running and watched it complete a tight circle before coming to an abrupt stop.

The plane that had buzzed me came around again, lining up for its own landing. I hoped he could make a better job of it than the man on the ground.

I hurried towards the downed Spitfire. The canopy slid back and the pilot climbed out, shaking himself out of his restraints. He jumped down onto the grass and stood with his hands on his knees, shaking like a racehorse that’s been worked too hard.

‘Are you all right?’ I asked.

He looked beyond me to the plane coming in to land, his face screwed up in anger.

The second plane was a Messerschmitt. Unmistakable, with the yellow nose and black cross of the German Luftwaffe. It touched down lightly and bumped towards the north end of the field, deftly turning and taxiing towards us. He cut the engine and let it roll to within twenty yards of us before he pushed his canopy open. He was grinning.

He was a young chap. He had a weathered face and a white silk scarf tucked into his shirt. As he climbed out of his cockpit, I put myself between him and the English pilot.

‘I think I caught your coolant line,’ he said to the English pilot behind me.

‘There,’ he nodded, ‘I see my bullet holes.’ He gestured in a diagonal with his flattened hand, sketching out the path his bullets must have traced. ‘I wanted to make sure you’re all right, but it looks like you are,’ he said, confirming his own diagnosis. ‘I think we’ll see each other again over France in the coming days.’

The German stepped past me and held out his hand. But the English pilot refused his offer to shake.

‘Get away from me, you fucking Kraut,’ spat the English pilot, taking a step backwards.

The German stood with his hand held out. He smiled ruefully and took it back.

‘That’s OK. The adrenaline. I get it. How many flying hours for you in the Spitfire? Twenty? Twenty-five? I was the same.’

He turned to me.

‘I’m sorry if we damaged your field.’ He looked around appreciatively. ‘It’s a beautiful place. Maybe when all this is over, I’ll become a farmer. It must be good to spend your life growing things, after a war.’

I nodded.

‘My boys will be wondering where I got to,’ he said, turning back to his plane.

‘Fucking Kraut,’ muttered the English boy, more to himself than to the German. He fumbled with a lanyard around his neck and pulled an Enfield revolver from the front pocket of his jacket. His arm shook as he raised the gun, his muscles spent from bringing down the plane in one piece. I stepped out of the way. I’ve had a lot of guns pointed at me and it’s an experience I try to avoid. The boy pointed his gun at the back of the German. A symbolic gesture, or so I thought.

The gun fired with a shocking loudness, echoing back off the trees. If this had been a Jimmy Cagney flick, the German would have turned round and uttered a final thought, perhaps a curse on England. But it wasn’t a film. He didn’t turn around to wrap things up like a gentleman. He dropped to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.

The English pilot walked stiffly to the body and fired again.

‘Fucking Kraut.’

He grinned at me like a boy who’s hit a six.

‘I got him,’ he said.

He knelt by the body and turned it face up. I knew what he was doing and I turned away, wanting nothing to do with it. I’d seen it too often in the last war: men trading their honour for a souvenir. I guessed he’d take the scarf unless it was too bloody. Maybe he’d take it because it was bloody.

I studied the Messerschmitt. It was a beautiful machine, second only to our Spitfire in its speed and manoeuvrability, or so they said. I put my hand on the fuselage and felt the glossy paintwork. It was warm from the May sun.

‘Their guns are much better than ours,’ the pilot said, joining me and circling around the front to examine the propeller. ‘They don’t tell you that on the newsreels. It’s not a fair fight.’

He peered underneath.

‘Fighter-bomber,’ he said, nodding at a hefty-looking bomb strapped to the undercarriage. ‘Two hundred and fifty kilograms. They’re using them to take out our ships in the Channel. Pretty nervy of him to land with that still attached.’

I took a step back, wondering how the bomb was detonated. Presumably some kind of impact trigger.

‘They’re coming,’ he said. ‘The sky over France is thick with them.’

‘It was on the news,’ I said. ‘They said Belgium and Holland.’

‘It’s not like last time,’ he said. ‘They’re already overrunning us. You can see it on the roads. They’re jammed with people evacuating. It’s a mess.’

He looked around.

‘They’ll be here in a few weeks.’

*

A bright red sports car turned onto the lane in the distance, accelerating down the straight half-mile towards my farm.

We waited in front of the house, leaning against the stone wall separating the garden from the lane. Bees buzzed lazily around the blossoming lilacs.

The pilot was rehearsing the story in his mind, his face previewing some of the emotions he was going to get across, bagging his first Hun and all that. I didn’t judge him for it. In war, everything you do is obscene to anyone who wasn’t there. I wouldn’t have shot the German in the back if it had been me, but it hadn’t been me. When it had been me, a long time ago, I’d done things, and I’d told people stories afterwards. I’d told myself stories afterwards.

‘He was right,’ he said, ‘twenty hours flying. And I’m one of the experienced ones in our squadron.’

I looked up at the sky, clear blue.

‘From what you said about the situation over there, it sounds like you’ll get a few more hours under your belt before you know it.’

‘I wonder how many I’ll get before my luck runs out,’ he said, following my gaze upwards.

*

A clipboard-wielding NCO took my details in preparation for the salvage operation. It would be three or four weeks at least. Planes were falling out of the sky over Sussex faster than they could haul them away to the scrapyard.

‘We’ve taken the Jerry,’ he said, offering me the clipboard.

‘Will you get word back to his unit?’ I asked.

‘We’ve got a pretty good line of communication with them,’ he said. ‘We’ll let them know what happened and they can notify his family.’

I signed in triplicate. Good to see the armed forces hadn’t lost their taste for paperwork.

‘You should cover up the planes,’ he said. ‘Get some camouflage over them until we get them hauled away. Herr Goering might send you a nice, personalised bombing raid. They try not to leave operational planes behind.’

2

Tea was sausages and boiled potatoes. It was one of two dishes Mum made, so we ate it three or four times a week. That suited me fine, I’ve always been a creature of habit. Nob always ate it, so we had to assume he didn’t have any complaints. Luckily for us, neither sausages nor potatoes were rationed, at least not yet.

Uncle Nob didn’t do well in the last war. The Great War: always capitalised, always thick with meaning. I’d done my bit – couldn’t wait to sign up, told them I was sixteen. I spent my time at the front, but I got off lightly, more of a Boys’ Own adventure than the horror stories others experienced. Nob was there for the duration. Ypres, the Somme, Passchendaele. Every big push. Hundreds of thousands of boys and men at a time, both sides of the field. Nob never really came back. When he was pushed out of a taxi at the end of the lane, dressed in his demob suit and clutching an empty cardboard suitcase, he walked up to the house, found his old armchair by the fire, and sat quietly, his hands shaking. More than twenty years ago. He hasn’t said a word since.

We sat at the old oak table in the kitchen, where the oven kept things warm all day every day. The rest of the house was cold and damp, even in summer, so the kitchen got the most use.

‘This is the BBC,’ said the newsreader on the wireless. ‘The Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, travelled this afternoon to Buckingham Palace, where he met with the King and delivered his resignation. A government spokesman said there will be an announcement later this evening naming his successor. It is widely expected that Lord Halifax will take the role.’

‘Told you,’ Mum said. ‘He should have gone straight after Munich.’

It was a commonly held view. Chamberlain and Hitler had met in Munich in 1938 to negotiate the future of Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain had bent over backwards to appease Hitler, turning four million Czechs into Germans with a signature. Chamberlain returned home triumphant, proclaiming ‘peace for our time’, and thirty-six German divisions rolled across the border with the blessing of the international community. Within six months Czechoslovakia didn’t exist. Turned out those thirty-six divisions didn’t stop rolling once they’d taken the bit we’d allowed them. Playground politics. Give in to a bully today and he’ll be back tomorrow wanting more.

‘In further news, German bombers have attacked Rotterdam,’ the BBC newsreader continued. ‘This unprovoked attack on a city of civilians is seen as an early indicator of the tactics that Hitler’s Reich intends to pursue across Europe. Eyewitnesses report thousands of casualties, with much of the population of the city fleeing in advance of the expected German invasion force.’

Mum switched over to Radio Hamburg. Their news was nonsense of course, but they had better music in the evening.

3

The Cross wasn’t the closest pub to my house, but it was my local. Half an hour’s walk across the dusty fields. The first pub I’d walked into with my friends when we were fourteen, desperate to get rid of the money we’d earned from a hot day of baling hay, and even more desperate to be men. All we knew was that men worked hard in the fields all day, then spent their pay that evening in the pub. Most of my friends were gone, as was the boy I’d been. Only the pub was still there, slowly sinking into the ground under a rotting thatch that was almost all black moss. I often daydreamed about buying the place, pulling it down, and replacing it with a smart brick and concrete building.

Without needing to be asked, Jim pulled me a pint of best, and a porter for Doc Graham. I put the change in the jar for the Spitfire Fund and carried the drinks to my usual place in the corner, instinctively ducking under the ceiling beams. I always sat with my back against the wall, which gave me a full view of the small public bar. I was facing the fireplace, blackened firebricks reeking of woodsmoke throughout the year, the mantel hung with brasses and now littered with leaflets exhorting us to ‘make do and mend’, ‘keep our spirits up’, and report our neighbours if we thought they were up to no good.

I kept an eye on the front door, and beyond that the lounge bar, where the gentry gathered to talk about foxhunting and politics. The public bar where I sat was for farm workers and labourers. An unwritten rule that never needed enforcing.

When I’d left the army, I’d put all my savings into our dying farm. I’d turned it around, and bought land from my neighbours. Now I owned the largest farm in the area. I would have been allowed into the lounge bar, but I wouldn’t have been welcomed. Doc Graham was the only man I knew who moved with ease between the lounge and the public bar. He said he had to drop into the lounge every now and then to keep his paying customers onside.

‘Quite a day,’ Doc said, taking a long swallow of beer as he took his seat. Doc drank like most people breathe.

‘We knew it was coming,’ I said.

Since the start of the war the previous year, we’d been waiting for the real action to start. They’d called it ‘the phony war’ because we’d been ‘at war’ but there hadn’t been any fighting, at least not for us. A lot of people had been willing it to start. Get it over with. Face your fears. That kind of thing.

‘He’ll sweep through the Netherlands without too much trouble,’ he said. ‘Then Belgium. What do you reckon until he’s in France? Christmas?’

‘That sounds fast,’ I said. ‘Our boys and the French are ready for him. They’ll start digging in and he’ll get bogged down. Same as last time.’

‘Is your mind still made up?’ he asked. ‘Now it’s happening?’

‘I’ve got nothing to lose. No wife, no children, nobody to mourn me except Mum and Nob. Better me than anyone else I know.’

We’d had this discussion all through winter, and the logic hadn’t changed. When Germany turned west, England would need another few million bodies to soak up their attack. The last war had almost finished us off, and those of us who survived had grown up in a country missing a generation. If it was going to happen again, the least I could do was to take the place of a young man who could otherwise stay at home and raise a family.

‘Well, you know what I think,’ he said.

‘I know what you think about everything,’ I replied.

‘What am I thinking right now?’

It was too easy. While we’d been talking, he’d absently drunk most of his pint. Like breathing, as I said. I’d caught the quick flick of his eye towards his glass.

‘You’re thinking it’s your round,’ I said, ‘and you’re wondering whether to switch to whisky to speed things up.’

Doc’s eyes twitched. He was embarrassed. He didn’t like to think anyone knew about his drinking. There were things you were meant to pretend not to notice.

I pushed it. I was annoyed. At him. At Germany. At the stupid boy who’d shot that brave German pilot in the back.

‘You’re thinking of getting a quick shot on the side while you’re up at the bar, but you’ll drink it while I’m not looking and come back with the beers.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ he said, but I could tell he was hurt, and I felt a brief flare of triumph before it died away to leave the inevitable regret.

‘I don’t care what you do as long as you come back with two pints in your hand,’ I joked, giving him a way out.

*

Two airmen spilled into the bar, wrapped up like they were slotting into a scrum. They were both tall and aristocratic, and in their fine blue uniforms they stood out like royalty in the gloom.

Their arrival had been heralded by the sound of wheels sliding on gravel and a high-powered engine gunned with an unnecessary flourish before being cut out, then doors slamming.

Behind them, the pilot who’d crash-landed in my meadow staggered in, a young woman hanging on his arm. He was flushed and unsteady. Looked like he’d started drinking the minute he got back to the airfield.

I recognised the girl. Harold Staunton’s daughter Mary, from Newick. Staunton did my books, and he used to bring his little girl to the farm to see the animals. It was a shock to see her grown up, dressed to the nines, face made up like a Hollywood starlet.

The airmen passed out their drinks, including a pint for Mary. She took it and glanced around the pub, self-consciously. She caught my eye and smiled. I didn’t think she’d have remembered me. I nodded in reply and raised my glass. It was unorthodox, having a bright young girl like that in the public bar, but that was how things were going. The war was shaking things up everywhere you looked.

The airman who’d bought the drinks proposed a toast.

‘Pilot Officer Billy Baxter, the living legend! The first of our unit to bag his very own Jerry.’

The pilot did his best to ignore his friend. He cast his eyes around the pub and noticed me, sitting in the corner.

‘Shut up, Geoffrey,’ he muttered.

‘Said Jerry having doggedly pursued said pilot officer all the way across the Channel, on a one-man invasion mission you might say, trying all the while to finish off our good friend, until our friend outclassed his enemy, getting behind him and shooting him out of the sky.’

The pilot’s eyes were locked on mine, and I held his gaze. I sombrely raised my glass to him and nodded.

‘That’s not what happened,’ Mary said. She hung on his arm, and I realised she was drunk.

‘Shut up,’ he said.

‘That’s not what you told me, Billy,’ she said loudly, pulling away from him and staggering. ‘You said he landed—’

The loud crack of his hand on her face was shockingly loud in the small bar.

The pub fell quiet. Even Mary was silent – the pain hadn’t arrived yet. She raised her hand to her face, already turning a livid red.

I stood up, with a scrape of oak on the stone floor, and put myself between the girl and the pilot. ‘I think you’ve had enough,’ I said, looking him in the eye, ‘and you owe the lady an apology.’

It wouldn’t have been a fair fight. All he saw was a farmer, an old man whose fighting days were long behind him. He didn’t see the apprenticeship I’d served in some of the most hostile environments in the world, learning hand-to-hand combat against men who didn’t know the meaning of the word prisoner. I wanted the pilot to hit me, so I could do to him far worse than he’d done to Mary.

He glared at me, but he picked up something from my confidence and backed away, trying to be nonchalant. He gulped down the rest of his beer.

The door slammed behind me, Mary running out of the pub.

‘Let’s get you another drink,’ said Geoffrey, putting his arm around the pilot.

‘Going outside,’ the pilot mumbled, shrugging off his friend’s arm and following Mary out through the door.

I sat down, vibrating with adrenaline, my stomach churning. A long time since I’d felt like that. The way the body took over, girding itself for the fight. I tried a breathing exercise one of the doctors had taught me. By the time I finished, Doc was back with two more pints.

4

Closing time. Last pints swiftly downed. Good nights said. Doc and I stepped out into the car park and I was struck by the fact that it wasn’t completely dark. May’s arrival had brought long evenings.

Doc’s house was in the opposite direction to mine. We stood in the cool air for a customary pause between the evening and the walk home.

There was one car at the far side of the car park, almost hidden in the gloom under an old yew tree. The driver’s door opened and the pilot stepped out. He walked unsteadily towards me and Doc, a glint of something metal concealed in his hand.

The passenger door opened, and Mary climbed out.

‘Billy, leave it alone will you?’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Cook. I’ve been trying to calm him down. He’s not usually like this.’ There was an edge of panic in her voice.

‘I think you’ve got a problem with me,’ Billy said.

‘Hold on a minute, let’s be sensible,’ Doc said.

I kept my eye on Billy’s trailing hand. He had something hidden. A knife or a gun. I don’t like knives, but I certainly hoped it wasn’t a gun. I’d already seen him shoot one person that day, so I knew he had it in him. Now he was drunk and angry, and I’d humiliated him in front of his girl.

My best option would have been to run. One thing I learnt in the trenches – you win every fight you don’t have. But I wasn’t alone. I didn’t think Billy would turn on Doc or the girl, but I wasn’t sure. Billy didn’t seem all that stable; he was drunk, and he was having an interesting day.

The next best option would have been to take out Billy. Leave him unconscious on the gravel, immobilised, his right arm broken to ward off future surprise attacks. But I didn’t want to hurt him too badly. It wasn’t entirely his fault he was worked up. It was the war. He deserved a day to blow off steam, even if that included a brawl in a pub car park. And he was a trained Spitfire pilot. We needed every one of those we could get. If I damaged him, I might as well be fighting on Hitler’s side.

‘What have you got in your hand?’ I asked, calm, trying to keep things civil.

Billy raised his hand sheepishly to show me a flick knife.

‘That’s not very sporting,’ I said. ‘Drop the knife and I’ll fight you, fair and square.’ I used my best command voice. I’d known a lot of young men like him. Shipped off to boarding school and raised in a strict hierarchy. They always responded to authority.

He dropped the knife on the gravel and Doc picked it up. I nodded and rolled up my shirt sleeves. It was a pantomime of what you were meant to do before starting a fight. I’d been in lots of fights, some for show like this one, most real. In a real fight there wouldn’t have been any verbal warnings, no dropping of knives or rolling of sleeves. If this had been a real fight, one of us would have been dead or immobilised by now.

Billy rushed at me, and I made a big fuss of raising my arms in front of my face, like a boxer. I didn’t want him to break his hand on my skull.

He thumped me in the stomach, right where I’d led him. I knew it was coming, and I’d tensed my muscles, but I acted like I’d been poleaxed. I went down and moaned. I stayed down, keeping one eye on him in case he wanted to follow up with a kick. I wouldn’t allow that.

‘Cook! Are you all right?’ said Doc, as he knelt down by my side.

I groaned, giving the performance all I had.

Mary caught up wit. . .