The King of the Cogs Read online

  “Any luck?” he asked as we stood removing our caps and shaking our heads.

  “Fine engineers we seem to have these days.” he snorted in derision and in our embarrassment we all silently agreed that we simply had to crack the puzzle of how to open the damned thing. To be frank we would have had at the damnable thing with a ruddy hammer by that point if old Finch hadn’t warned us off shaking, rattling or striking the device in any way.

  Several weeks passed. Still we kept up our efforts but nothing worked. We were on our lunch eating by our benches whilst a few of the other apprentices pored over the box when we suddenly heard the brass bell ring once again.

  Only this time it rang twice in rapid succession.

  We raced into the room enquiring what they had done to make it do this. They stood and showed us the sequence of cog turning and gear pulling they had followed and as they completed the sequence the bell rang twice again.

  “It’s a start!” I yelled. “There must be another sequence after this!”

  “Or several.” said one of my colleagues glumly by my side.

  Sadly he was right.

  It took a lot of gear turning and so on until a few nights later the bell suddenly rang three times in quick succession. There were more than a few beers supped down at the pub that night, but still the box remained firmly closed. So on we continued.

  It took another month to complete the next sequence complete with four rings of the bell and six weeks after that before the bell rang five times.

  The next time however when the bell rang six times a small clasp snapped open on the side of the box from a recess none of us had ever seen or noticed before. Yet that was all. It was just an open clasp.

  On we went.

  This time it was only a few days before the seventh bell rang and another clasp fell open. Yet still the box would not open. Obviously there were other hidden locks or clasps holding it shut. It looked like this was to be a long process but we carried on, our appetites whetted by our success so far even though inevitably the testing of sequences involving the cogs and gears was a long and laborious process. It was on the Friday that the eighth bell rang and a tray slid open from the box, upon which sat a small piece of paper. Almost reverentially I plucked the paper from the tray. It was of good quality I could see and folded neatly in four. I opened it as all of the apprentices gathered around me. The writing was neat and in fine ink and read,

  “To open the box press the brass bell down firmly once.” It was followed by a strange signature that we had never seen before that looked as if it might contain the name “Finch” in there somewhere.

  “Get Nasmyth!” I shouted, ensuring nobody touched the bell atop the box until he arrived, which he did do soon after, red faced and out of breath. We all gathered around and watched intently as I leaned forward and pressed the bell down. Now it freely moved, sliding down into the box until it was flush with the surface. There was a small clunk and a small piece of what looked like string suddenly appeared in a small recess that had slid open.

  “String?” asked Nasmyth. “What’s all that about then?” Eager to finally see the box open we fell into a reverential silence awaiting whatever was going to happen next, which was when we heard the fizzing sound. Nasmyth leaned down and looked into the recess inside which the string seemed to be getting shorter.

  “That’s not a piece of string.” gasped one of the apprentices as he stooped down to look at it. His voice had a decided wobble as he continued and the fizzing sound suddenly stopped. “It’s a fuse...” he finished and I had but time to gulp as the world seemed to erupt about me, and all I saw was smoke and flame and death…

  ***

  So here I lie in my hospital bed. They think I cannot hear them these nurses who tend to my burns, though I can even if I cannot speak. According to them my chances are non-existent but I do not listen for this. I listen so I can hear what happened when the box exploded. The first thing I learned was regarding the destruction of Allsop and Bright’s which apparently was total. It simply did not exist as a building any more. Nearly two hundred and seventy five souls dead. The police cannot work out what explosive Finch used but it was powerful, that was for sure. I heard the nurses speculate that the only reason I was not dead like most of the rest of them was a sheet of metal from the roof fell on me, shielding me in some way. Yet soon I will be number two hundred and seventy six. They say it is inevitable as I am too badly burned.

  More darkness. This time voices nearby. They say in whispers that Finch cannot be found even though he is looked for. A person of that name fails to appear on any of the liner passenger logs. Even the newspaper journalists cannot find a trace of him; all are at a complete loss.

  Time slips again. Nurses again. I feel weaker today as if I cannot tell the difference between light and dark, and the pain is terrible to bear. Not much longer I think. More voices.

  “They found the pieces of paper from the clipboard they say.” I hear and I give all my strength to hear of what they talk. “They say he designed it to cast the papers inside the box into the air like confetti.”

  “Twisted he is if you ask me.” I hear the other voice.

  “What was on the damned paper?” I try to shout but no sound comes out of my mouth.

  My efforts are draining me. The dark rises from all around and I feel myself slipping away; floating and as I do so the last voice I ever hear comes to me like a knife through my heart.

  “The paper was blank of course.” the nurse says. “Police say it has never been written on at all.”

  “Sick.” repeats the other nurse as she comes nearer, noticing my discomfort. I think she may have touched me but I cannot be sure. “Not long now, love. It will soon stop hurting.”

  “They found the pen too.” the other voice, and as she continues the dark leaps at me as I realise just how sick old Finch really was and how he has done for me and nearly three hundred others too.

  “The police are quite certain. The blue fountain pen had never been written with at all.” she says. “Never even had ink in it. Not ever.”

  With what may be a wail I find my head spinning and the darkness takes me.

  “The King of the Cogs”

  is but one of many linked stories from

  “The Waiting Room”

  Available from Amazon.

  ALSO AVAILABLE

  FROM MICHAEL WHITE…

  READ ON FOR THE FIRST THREE CHAPTERS OF “ANYONE”

  ANYONE

  Part One: The Theoretical Cat

  Prologue: CDJ Electronics August 3rd 2007

  “Blue or Red?” said the tall guy as he rose slightly from his chair to give a brief but firm handshake. It was always the question anyone asked a newcomer in any place of employment on Merseyside and it was always one I dreaded. Not because statistically speaking you always had a fifty per cent chance of getting it right but because in truth I had a one hundred per cent chance of getting it wrong. He had glanced at me; fifty-one going slightly grey and I had assessed him too; big guy, late twenties. Obviously interested in football. It was a thing blokes always do when they first meet.

  “Neither.” I mumbled in embarrassment. “Not really into football sorry.” This answer, although perfectly true, always brought colour to my face and a slight feeling of embarrassment tinged with the thought that by not supporting a local football team (and God help you if you revealed that you supported any team from outside Merseyside) you were letting the side down just a little bit. I had glanced down at the desk where we were sitting and amongst the scraps of crumpled paper, discarded pens and scribbled on notepads there was a coffee stained Everton mug and I could have taken the easy way out I suppose, though I rarely did. The truth will always find you and bite you on the arse.

  The reaction of the man sitting facing me, his glasses balanced on his nose as he tipped back his chair (quite a feat for a chair on wheels I thought) was not however the same usual look of disbelief and disdain. He just raised his e
ye brow slightly and gave a small half grin that if I were to use one word to sum up how it looked then it would be, “mischief”.

  “Are you gay?” He smiled and the inflection he used made me realise he wasn’t being homophobic. Not at all. He was actually helping me out of an awkward position on my first contact with anyone on my first day in a new job. I knew all this, and he knew that I now knew all of this and he did it all with a half-smile and one eyebrow. I was impressed.

  “Don’t gay people like football either?” I smiled and his smile increased just a little more.

  “Of course they do.” He replied. “It’s just that they all seem to support Arsenal.” I laughed at this and pointed at the Everton mug.

  “I can name the 1966 cup final team though.” He looked at me doubtfully.

  “Go on then.”

  “Right.” I said, counting out on my fingers as I racked my brains. “West, Wright, Wilson, Temple, Harvey, Young.” I could see his eyebrows rising even more as I continued to search my memory. “Gabriel, Labone, Harris.” Still two more. I paused before the names jumped into my mind. “Scott and Trebilcock.” I finished triumphantly and with a flourish just to show off added, “Manager Catterick.”

  The guy gave a slow handclap. “Well done.” He smiled. “How come you can name the team and yet you’re not a fan?”

  “Well when I was a kid there wasn’t much else to do really, it was either football or cowboys and Indians.” He looked at me as if appraising me. I was a lot older than him; fifty one. I had him down for late twenties at best, though I could see even though he was sitting down that he was a big bloke; not fat – not at all, but tall and broad. “Think of it this way. We only had two fucking telly channels. Well, unless you had a posh telly of course and you could get BBC2 as well.” He looked appalled at this. “No internet.” I smiled.

  “Christ.” He said, and there was a flash of that mischievous grin again. “Where did you get your porn from?” I laughed aloud.

  “From the local newsagents.” He laughed. “You usually had to slip it into the TV times and flash it to the poor woman behind the till so she could ring it up on the register along with a quarter of pineapple chunk sweets.” He laughed aloud at this; a warm laugh; loud but full of humour. He stood at this point and held his hand out for me to shake it again, which I stood and did.

  “I thought the nineteen sixties were all in black and white.” He laughed and I joined him.

  “Jon.” He said, raising himself off his chair to shake my hand.

  “I am Luke.”

  “Pleased to meet you Luke.” He said, lowering himself down again.

  “And you.” I said.

  It was my first introduction to a man who over the course of the next few years would reduce me to tears of laughter on a regular basis. It is an over-used expression I think, but with Jon it was the truth. He once actually managed to make me laugh so much I was nearly sick. He had a knack for it. One mischievous grin and it was game on.

  Yet that was in my previous workplace. Six years in a technical support role sitting next to a harried and noisy sales department, of which Jon was but one member. He had made the place worthwhile really, and a counted him as one of my very few friends. Down to the smoking shelter we would go and have a laugh, chew over the day’s news and generally take the piss out of everyone. We were a team and both he and I thought the world of him. There would be football talk too of course which he always referred to as “white noise” because you could almost visibly see me zoning out when he started talking about football with anyone who was out there smoking with us.

  “He’ll always give you back a dirty shirt…” I heard him say and so carried on day dreaming for a while longer. Then In October last year I had a really bad water infection and was off work for a few weeks. When I returned Jon wasn’t there.

  “Have you heard the news?” asked Debbie who sat on the other side of the desk from me in what the management laughingly called, “pods”.

  “No.” I said distractedly, trying to catch up on the hundreds of emails that seemed to have accumulated during by absence.

  “Jon has got cancer.” She said and everything stopped.

  “What?” I managed, and she told me. It was in his bowel and a few other places too, Aggressive cancer. The Chemotherapy had to work.

  I felt sick.

  Although we were friends we didn’t socialise outside work – after all, I was nearly twice his age despite everything, and although I knew he wasn’t on Facebook (even though I was) I didn’t have an email address for him or a mobile number. I did know his twitter account though and so I sent him a message.

  “I go off sick with a water infection and you go and get cancer. You really should learn to curb your competitive spirit you know.” There was a few minutes’ gap and then a reply:

  “Ha Ha! I will be back before you know it!”

  He didn’t come back. The chemotherapy didn’t work as the cancer was too aggressive; too advanced. He died two months later on the 31st December 2012.

  I was devastated.

  I guess really a few years later that I still am. I don’t make friends easily and I felt his loss to the extent that I had to leave. Find a new job. I would look at where he sat and hate whoever it was that sat where he used to. Sometimes I would look up expecting to see him, and he would catch my eye and take the piss out of me in some way.

  Sometime I thought I did see him.

  I had to get out. It was time for a change.

  Chapter One

  “We do not belong to this material world that science constructs for us. We are not in it; we are outside. We are only spectators.”

  (Erwin Schrödinger)

  So here I was on my first day of a new job. I felt lucky to get it if truth is told as it was a definite step up from my previous job. It was still a technical support position, but the wages were considerably more, the hour’s nine to five and I also had the option of a residential place on site which I had taken up. That would certainly save me some money!

  It had all begun with the advertisement advertising the position of, “technical support person” or something like that. I’ve forgotten the exact wording of the rest of the advertisement now, it was just over a month ago and I’ve got a memory like a sieve, but it doesn’t really matter how the job was described, for when the job description says, “technical support” then you usually found that the job description had absolutely nothing to do with the actual work itself at all.

  So it is an understatement of understatements that the advertisement in The Liverpool Echo had caught my eye the minute my alcohol fuddled eyes slid across it. Not that I’m a regular reader of the Echo or anything. No, in fact I only bought the local rag on a Thursday for the job pages and it was in there that I saw it. The main thing that stood out I am not ashamed to admit is not the fact that the job description was at best vague to the point of non-existent, but the salary, which was enormous.

  I waited for inspiration to come for a few days, mulling it over as if trying to convince myself that I had no chance of ever getting a job with wages as good as that, but in the end I wrote up a letter and CV of what I considered to be of particular brilliance if not entirely factual and once done I made a quick trip to the post office and posted it.

  You could have knocked me down with a feather when less than a week later I received an invite to an interview with the head of the department, a professor Theodulus Wingnut. You read that right, by the way. That’s the prof’s full name. These days I usually just call him “Professor” and I think he’s okay with that. Never complains anyway. There’s no way I could use his real name all the time. I think it’s the kind of name that only a parent would ever love, and an employee could never get used to. I pissed myself laughing at the time, and I must admit I read the name two or three times, laughing like a loon as I did so, but I then remembered the salary and resolved to somehow or another scrape the money together to hire a suit for the interview. Oh,
and to keep a straight face when I shook the guy’s hand too.

  I scanned the letter once again, noting the time, date and place. There was a train ticket and schedule included with the letter, and I was surprised to see that I was to be collected by car from the railway station and driven to the company offices where the interview was to be held.

  Which I felt was a bit of over-kill really, as the company offices were only in one of the nicer parts of Cheshire and so not too far away. I didn’t have a car right then but it would have not been any great hardship to get there. So: a bit over the top, but nice to feel that a bit of effort was being put into the process on their behalf anyway.

  Being a bit of a nosey bugger I was slightly wary when I found out that the building itself did not seem to appear on Google Maps no matter how hard I tried to find it. According to the map page the location given in the letter was simply a big empty field, not in any way distinctive from the other fields that seemed to surround it. Weird. I mean, if he wasn’t on Linked-In then who the hell was he? If anything, this made me even more curious but searches for the location and the professors name came up with sweet bugger all every time. Such things I put out of my head and slowly but surely the interview date came around. I will say looking back on it that in all seriousness there was absolutely no excuse for getting completely pissed the night before the interview. I don’t mean rolling drunk and staggering home with a kebab at 3am.

  I had been completely caned.

  The next morning found me lying on the couch with the uncomfortable thought that for some reason the goldfish was staring at me. The kebab rolled greasily around in my stomach and my mouth felt as if someone had sand papered my tongue.