Devil's Den

Devil's Den A Novella in The Johnson & Wilde Series Andy Griffee Copyright © 2023 Andy Griffee All Rights ReservedThe right of Andy Griffee to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author. To all of my former BBC colleagues We’d come on shift at eight o’clock having cycled from our digs at Kinver through the quiet and frosty country lanes. I can still picture the steam coming in short sharp bursts from our mouths as we pedalled hard, side by side, determined not to be late and marked down in the foreman’s book. Most of the other lads were living in temporary dormitories near the tunnels and work had already begun on a big new hostel above ground. We preferred our lodgings in a widow’s spare bedroom in Kinver, where there was a bit of life. Me and Jack had been digging out the Millionaire Tunnels for the past six months. We’d been transferred there from a coal pit in Nottingham to help with the war effort. The big plan in the foreman’s office showed the eventual layout of the aircraft parts factory that we were tunnelling out of the earth. It revealed there would be about three and half miles of tunnels in a grid pattern with four main tunnels running east to west, high and wide enough to let big lorries travel along their length and criss-crossed with a multitude of smaller linking tunnels running north to south. It was hard work, but better than being down the mine. Hollowing out these sandstone hills was clean work compared to bringing up coal. But that didn’t mean it was any safer. We’d already lost Harry Depper and his two mates last year, in October of ’41. They’d been blasting with gelignite in Tunnel One when the roof came down without any warning. All three of them had been crushed to death by the falling rock. But it was still safer than going into uniform and being shot at or torpedoed by Jerry. I’d felt guilty at first, what with mining being a ‘reserved occupation’, and there were still times when someone would mutter something nasty when you were queuing for a pint at The Cross on Church Hill. But most of the locals knew we were doing our bit and taking risks for it too. And with more than a thousand men on site, we were hardly on our own, were we? There was a rumour doing the rounds that the suits had cocked things up and that the main tunnels lost their shape when we started blasting the entrances to the linking tunnels. The lads reckoned this made the whole thing unstable – which it couldn’t be if it was to survive German bombs. It was the raids on Birmingham and Coventry that had prompted the government to order the tunnels in the first place. Anyway, Sir Alex said we had to cut the smaller tunnel gallery entrances by hand instead, and Jack and I had been transferred to this new duty. It was bloody tiring work. The pneumatic chisels were heavy and awkward, so we worked in pairs, taking it in turn to cut into the rockface and remove the spoil out of our immediate workspace. It was dark, damp and hellishly noisy what with the blasting, the chiselling and the non-stop clank, clank, clank of the conveyor belts they’d installed to remove the loose stone and boulders. We could barely hear each other until the hooter sounded for dinner and all the machinery was switched off for thirty minutes while we sat on the cold floor and munched on our spam and boiled egg sandwiches. Jack had teased me that day. He knew I was sweet on a barmaid at The Cross called Elizabeth Shaw. Lizzy had a lovely round face, big brown eyes, a rosebud mouth and a knockout figure. Her dad was the pub’s landlord and kept a close eye on her, but we’d managed to meet up at the pictures a couple of times and got along famously. The second time, she held my hand as soon as the lights went out. She was a lovely girl, kind, gentle and when she laughed two dimples appeared in the peachy soft skin of her cheeks. Jack had been with me the previous evening when she had brought two pints of Black Country ale to our table. I saw her wink as she carefully replaced my cardboard beer mat with a new one. I turned it over as soon as she returned to the bar. She had written on it in pencil. ‘Tomorrow, half past seven, The Vine.’ The Vine was another of Kinver’s pubs, located down by the canal and alongside Kinver Lock. Lizzy had obviously negotiated the evening off, but we’d need to be careful that none of her dad’s friends spotted us together in the town’s rival boozer. Jack snatched the mat off me, read the message and snorted with laughter. “Ay up,” he said. “Gilbert Shaw’s a lucky boy then, ain’t he? Arr, that he is. Be a mate will you and ask if she’s got a friend.” He winked at me. “P’raps I could come along too?” “You’re bloody joking, aren’t you?” I snapped back in a whispered voice. He chuckled and cast a glance up at the bar where the imposing pot-bellied frame of Lizzy’s dad was polishing brandy glasses with a tea-towel. “So how far d’you think she’ll let you go then?” I snatched the piece of cardboard back off him. “Shut your dirty mouth, will you?” I hissed at him. “You’ll ruin it with your big gob and your dirty mind. And