Читать книгу Coffin’s Dark Number - Gwendoline Butler - Страница 6

Chapter One

Tony Young

I organized my first club when I was fifteen. It was for boys interested in birds; it lasted six months, but for the last four I was the sole member.

I did better with the next. The Harper Road Fan Club for Tommy Steele. We had twenty-five members, all contributing, monthly typed hand-outs and occasional meetings. But the meetings weren’t so important, it was the thought between us that counted. Then there was the Radio Ham Club and the Philatelists’ Club. I’m not a stamp collector but a club collector and I was getting liberal in my tastes. The next year I tried Young Lads for Labour. But this was kids’ stuff. I hadn’t got on to the big things yet.

Fate directs you, that I strongly believe. All these earlier efforts were training me for what was to be my real work. I won’t say life work because my life hasn’t run so far and there are lots of surprises in this package for everyone. Who can say what there really is in the universe? I’m a boy with a lot of faith, a good deal of it in myself. Some people say this is egotistical, but that’s not how it is at all. If you have faith in yourself, stands to reason you have a lot of faith for other things too. I have plenty. I can feel myself reaching out. Maybe there is someone sitting on some medium hot star somewhere sending out messages to me. The light years problem worries me a bit. I mean that message started out when my ancestors were just crawling out of the slime so it can’t really have my name on it. Or can it?

I like to think of that message winging its way through the centuries before I was born with my name on it. Tony Young, it would say. But there is what people call an ‘area of sensitivity’ about a thought like this and at the moment I am highly sensitive.

I always have been.

‘You’re a sensitive boy,’ Mr Plowman said once, and he was absolutely dead right. I am a sensitive boy. I hated it when he died. If he is dead, that is. There’s another sensitive area.

You might have thought that Mr Plowman and I would have cut across each other because he was an executive man like me. But no, once he realized how good I was in the organizational area he left it all to me and devoted himself to the spiritual side.

I soon had this new Club going like a bomb and I made the heart of it our meetings. I sensed right away that with this lot it was the meeting that counted. For the same reason I insisted all members were on the telephone; we had to be in contact. It was the contact of our minds that counted. All told I don’t suppose we had more than a dozen members. There was a tight little inner bunch and then a number on the periphery. It wasn’t the size of membership that made this my biggest operation so far, but our potential. For what we were after was the universe. Leave us alone and we might have our members strung out in the galaxies. And some of us thought we already had.

But don’t misunderstand me. We were scientific in our approach. Nothing we regarded as proved. We just didn’t have closed minds, that’s all. Any report of an unidentified flying object being sighted and we took it seriously. We didn’t laugh things off. Some were checked and got through our tests. Others, however much we might want to accept them, might fail on some little point of detail in our test and would have to be dismissed. I had it beautifully worked out. A report of a UFO appeared in the press and was given to one of our members; they telephoned it to me. I got in touch with Plowman, and Plowman and I appointed two agents to go out into the field and check. Sometimes he’d go himself, although he was better on the theory than on the practical. I hardly ever went, just sometimes, to see if the machine was running smoothly. I’m entirely an organization man. What John Plowman tried to do was to place his mind completely at the disposal of anyone or anything trying to get in touch with him; he wanted to be a focus.

He was too. He gave all his spare time to being a focus. Once a week on a Tuesday we all met in his house and his wife gave us cake and tea and we waited for John to give his report. Sometimes there wasn’t much. Sometimes nothing at all, but sometimes he’d say he had a strong feeling that if we went to the coast just outside Dover, or stood on the road leading towards Bath (his feelings always came clothed in precise detail) then we should see something. I didn’t usually go on these expeditions, but sometimes I’d take my girl friend along and we’d go together. I can’t say I ever saw anything but on the other occasions, when I wasn’t with them, the others frequently did. Once they saw four UFOs flying in formation and they dipped in salute over John’s head.

I’d have given a good deal to have seen that, but no. Three of our most dedicated members were present that night: Esther Glasgow, a sweet girl but a little too inward-turning for my taste, Cyrus Calways Read (known as Cy) and old Miss Jones.

If anyone deserved a viewing Miss Jones did. She was going into hospital within the next few days for a serious operation and we all knew she might not come out. She was being very brave about it, though, and had promised to see what soundings the unconscious mind could pick up while under the anaesthetic. If the worst came to the worst and she became disembodied she was going to try to observe and pass on what information she could. She didn’t promise anything. She was a very honest woman, old Miss Jones.

I thought Cy didn’t seem too contented after this last viewing. I would never call Cy a really satisfied person; there was usually a worm or two eating at him.

‘Touches of unfairness here and there,’ he grumbled. We often walked home together. He lived just near my home. He had introduced me to John Plowman. ‘Touch of favouritism, I’d say.’

‘I don’t see that.’

‘I’m not as close to John as I ought to be. I don’t feel the flow between us. Perhaps it’s his wife. I feel she is rather dark.’

‘She dyes it, I think. Touches it up, anyway.’

‘I mean spiritually. You don’t believe really, do you?’ He gave a sharp look at me.

‘I’m an organization man,’ I said, not committing myself. ‘Anyway, what did you mean by favouritism?’

‘Oh, you’ll find out. Goodbye. This is where I turn off.’

Our part of London isn’t the best part of London to live but it has a certain cosiness. It’s near the river and the docks, and the sea-gulls come racing in when there’s bad weather out at sea. I wouldn’t say I’m fond of it and a boy of my ambitions plans to get out of it, but I reckon even when I’ve left I’ll come sometimes to say hello. Of course, it’s changing fast and I dare say if I do come back I won’t recognize it.

I live in Harper Road, Cy lives across the little square – we call it the Banjo – in Peel Terrace. There’s a subtle class distinction, which naturally I despise, between Peel Terrace and Harper Road. Harper Road is one step lower down in the social scale than Peel Terrace. You wouldn’t know it walking past, but the people who live there, we know it. Mind you, you can rise in the world, you can put out window boxes and paint the front gate white and count yourself as good as Peel Terrace. My family haven’t risen in the world. My father preferring birds to flowers in boxes and watching television to painting his gate white. You might even say we’d sunk because we did once have a sundial in the middle of our front garden, but my sister took it away and made it a tombstone for her old dog. He didn’t die at the time, in fact he isn’t dead yet, but his name is painted on it in blue paint and also the date when he didn’t die. Against this, you could say that I, single-handed, have given us a kick upwards. I’m known as that clever red-haired boy that lives in Harper Road, or as “that mad one”. Of course, I know what they call me. I heard plenty during the short period when I took a job as night-watchman in a local factory so as to have more time during the day. I work days now. I chose not to go to university. My sort of life doesn’t need learning.

Around the corner from Peel Terrace and Harper Road a great new complex of building is going up. They’ve knocked down the old jam factory and in its place is a new jam factory, a quadrangle of shops that they call a shopping precinct and two new office blocks, including a police station which in my opinion is a luxury. The jam factory is finished but nothing else yet. The building has been going on for nearly two years, and one way and another it touches all our lives. We often smell of strawberries round here in the season.

‘Good job they don’t make kipper jam,’ I said to Cy. He started. ‘Kipper jam,’ I repeated. ‘Or we’d smell of that.’ He didn’t laugh. He has no sense of humour. A good-looking wife, four daughters, the only man to have seen four UFOs dip in salute and no sense of humour. It frightens you. ‘You couldn’t make kipper jam,’ he said. ‘There’s no pectin in it.’

Although he’d said goodbye and hadn’t laughed at my joke, he didn’t seem to want to let me go. We stood at the corner, looking at each other.

‘See you next week,’ he said, without moving.

‘Same time. I’ll have it all written up by then. We might get this one in the press.’

‘John doesn’t want publicity.’

‘He hasn’t said so.’ I was thinking how a bit of publicity would buck Miss Jones up. Publicly she would deplore it, inside it might be her last big thrill. Why shouldn’t she have it, if I could give it to her?

‘John’s always against publicity,’ Cy said firmly.

‘Maybe.’ No one knew what John thought, we only knew what he said he thought.

‘What do you get out of this?’ Cy said suddenly.

I was right, then, he did want to talk.

‘Work. Interest. Information.’ I shrugged.

‘It’s not enough.’

‘I think it is.’

‘I mean to explain you. You’re young.’

‘Oh, you’re hard. If not on me, then on yourself. Relax. You want drums and parades and heads off all the time.’

‘I’m serious about it all, I admit that. If that’s a fault. I’ve got a scientific mind. You can’t do work like mine without having a scientific mind.’ I’d forgotten the work he did. Drove a van. I suppose it did need a scientific mind. ‘It worries me how unscientific some of the others are.’

‘It’s a subject with a lot of emotion in it,’ I reminded him. ‘You’ve got to reckon with that.’

He still looked angry.

‘I reckon we take it all very calmly all things considered. That’s John Plowman.’

‘Oh, John.’ He bit back his words. I was junior; he wasn’t going to discuss John with me. He was naturally protocol-minded. It went with being scientific, I suppose. Scientists always think they’ve got a hot line straight through to Cod. ‘You know I was the first person in the whole group to make serious checks. The first. The others came later. And I had the first photograph.’

Light dawned. ‘You’re jealous.’

He flushed. ‘That’s it, that’s exactly what I’m complaining about. You just naturally think in terms of emotions.’

‘All right. Emotion’s out,’ I said peaceably. ‘No jealousy.’

As we stood there talking a policeman walked by, studying us unobtrusively as he passed. Hang about the streets these days and that’s what you get. It’s been this way ever since our troubles started in this district. Particularly for men, any age group.

‘Good night,’ said Cy, hastily. ‘Next week then.’ He walked off.

Cyrus’s job was not heavily intellectual and there was no doubt he resented it, even though he did say it needed a scientific mind. He sold ice-cream from a Kandy Kream Kart which he also drove. And don’t think the police hadn’t investigated him pretty thoroughly just lately. He and his van were a natural for the sort of trouble we were in. But he was clear. The van was painted fondant pink and Cy wore a blue overall. I’d often wondered why he didn’t hold down a better sort of job.

‘Next week,’ I called.

The policeman watched me go into my house. He knew me all right, but that wouldn’t stop him watching me. They thought it was a local, you see. With these child crimes it’s nearly always someone the kid knows. This is what gets them off their guard. There are other factors; I’ll go into them some other time.

The Club was in a peculiar mood this last week, and that worried me. I’m obliged to be responsive to mood. I have to see the danger signals before anyone else. Today it seemed to me these signals were being run up from certain quarters. Of course, we’d never been what I’d call a united group, each of us approaching the common aim from a different viewpoint, from Miss Jones’s open-minded optimism to John Plowman’s detached belief. In the centre were three or four members, like Esther, who were convinced that all UFOs were genuine for emotional reasons. Cy was right there. These people believed because the idea of little men flying in from space fascinated them. They were living out a fairy-story they’d read when they were kids. Oh, I knew that all right. I say nothing about Cy’s claims to scientific rationalism because I was never quite sure how far this existed.

Esther Glasgow had objected to the report John had drafted and I had written; her friend Peter had objected to the letter I had written to a similar club in the USA. “Too cagey,” he’d called it. The secretary (technically I’m secretary of the Club, in practice I’m everything that requires pen and paper) has to be. I form the public image. We don’t want it formed in a crackpot image, do we?

Or do we? Yes, there was no doubt where the danger was coming from. The central emotional block. And behind it I strongly suspected was Cy Read. He was jealous of John Plowman. I could see his point. After all, it was in John Plowman’s name I corresponded with our contacts across the Atlantic and it was John Plowman who organized the sky-watching routines and got first chance to prove or disprove an “incident”.

A brief conversation with John Plowman was worrying me also. To a limited extent he made me his confidant.

‘Of course, one has to ask oneself about these visitors from space: what their intentions are. I’ve always assumed their interest in us was a benign one.’ He looked uneasy. ‘Just lately, I’ve wondered if we were wise to rely on this.’

I know I didn’t answer, but I suppose he saw the look on my face.

‘There seems to have been a concentration of activity in this district. We seem to be a focus,’ he went on, ‘and I don’t feel the result has been towards tranquillity.’

It certainly was not. There was a bad feeling everywhere lately, arising from the matter of the children, of course.

‘Indeed, I’ve been getting strong intimations that something was going to happen.’

‘How? Where do you read these intimations?’ I asked bluntly.

‘Naturally they don’t put it in the newspapers,’ he said irritably. ‘I receive it in my mind. We are to get some sort of proof. There will be a sign.’

‘Yes, that is quite worrying,’ I said, carefully keeping all feeling out of my voice. ‘Any details?’

‘Just an impression comes into my mind that it will relate to someone who thinks he can fly.’

‘I only know one person round here who thinks he can fly,’ I said, surprised. ‘And I thought he’d given the idea up.’

Butty. Tom Butt. Butty (as we sometimes called him in unkind reference to his over-large buttocks) was at school with me. Spotty, dirty, fat, he had all the stigmata of the born victim, and seemed to know it too. He went out of his way to set us off. Like telling us that he dreamt he could fly. Without a doubt there was a sexual pleasure in our sport with him, just as there was in Butty’s dreams that he could fly.

‘I’m not happy about it all,’ observed John Plowman. ‘These ideas I get disturb me.’

They disturbed me. Without committing myself one way or another to the behaviour of the visitors from space (which might be good or not good, we had to see), I was beginning to be anxious about our little group. Wasn’t there a strong sexual element in our preoccupation? We were a focus for something all right. I did wonder exactly what we were letting out into the world. Or stimulating.

I hung my coat up and went into the kitchen where my sister, Jean, was sitting drinking tea. She looked up.

‘Back from meeting your loonies?’

I’m afraid she’s picked up that rough way of talking from my father. It won’t get her anywhere. I didn’t answer but poured myself a cup of tea and started to drink it. They weren’t loonies. A little unusual perhaps in their interests, but not loonies, or I wouldn’t be associated with them.

‘Seen anything lately?’

‘You know I’ve never seen anything,’ I said. ‘I don’t even look. That’s not my job.’

She snorted. Very few women can make that noise, but she could. ‘What do you get out of it?’

The second person who had asked me that tonight. ‘I’m practising,’ I said, and sipped my tea.

‘It was me that made that tea you’re enjoying so much,’ she said.

That’s another thing she’s learned from my father; how to make a good cup of tea. They’re remarkably alike. There are just the three of us, me, elder sister, and my father. My mother died a long while ago. I half remember her. Some days more than others. And I suppose that’s how it is with my sister too. Some days she looks more like the photograph of my mother and the other days not. I’m always frightened she’ll get to look like my father.

‘You’re pretty,’ I said.

‘Why the compliment?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps I’m a bit low-spirited tonight.’

‘Oh.’ She considered. ‘Where’s Judith?’ Judith was my former girl friend. Former, since last night.

‘We’ve split up.’

‘Why?’ There again she was like my father. She had to know why. No tactful silences. Still, it was easy to answer.

‘She said I don’t raise her spirits.’

‘Oh.’ Once again she considered. ‘You raise mine. I often get a good laugh out of you.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Oh well, you’ll get another girl.’

‘I won’t get one with a car. Not round here.’ It was luck having pulled in one girl friend with an automobile in this neighbourhood. Hers was a beautiful little white Triumph convertible, too. You froze in it in winter (she never let you put the hood up) but you felt a real he-man in summer. We only had one summer together, me, Judith and the car.

‘She still on the stage?’

‘Resting. Trying out for a part tomorrow.’

I got up to go upstairs to my room. ‘Dad out?’

‘No. Out the back watching his birds.’

At the door, I said: ‘Can I have the front room this day week?’ Jean nodded.

The Club occasionally met here. When it did Jean served coffee and cake and popped in and out observing us. I think she rather enjoyed it. I’ve noticed that this family’s pleasure tends to be vicarious. Jean watches me, I watch the Club and Dad watches his birds. I must check this tendency.

I enjoyed the Club meetings myself. When we were really functioning well, comparing notes, checking photographs, suggesting future projects, all of them looking to me for directions, I had the feeling of the chain of power stretching directly from John Plowman to me and going no further. That was how I wanted it in that group and that was what I meant by practice. We might be stretching out to other galaxies, but as far as I was concerned it was strictly an exercise in politics.

On my way upstairs I looked out of the window on the stairs and saw a police car go past. Three children in eighteen months and all living within one square mile of each other. Three children just gone. Sixpence in the pocket, ta ta, Mum. And then never seen again. She was the first, Shirley Boyle, aged eight.

I went on into my room and sat down on my bed. Jean didn’t come into this room much; I dusted it and looked after my bed. Jean knew I liked my secrets.

I drew the curtains on the night. The police car came back down the road. This time I could see a man in the back. He had a solid official look. We have a high-ranking policeman living round the corner from us. He’s called Coffin. He has a wife who is observed sharply by the old cats of the neighbourhood because she is an actress and this naturally alerts their moral sense. Judith was going to introduce us before we broke up.

Down below I heard the telephone ring. When I’m established in my chosen way of life I shall have a telephone in every room. I hate people shouting up the stairs for me.

‘Coming,’ I called.

‘David,’ she said, when I got to the bottom of the stairs.

‘Hello, Slave.’ I called him this. David Edmondstone was someone I’d known at school and then lost sight of for a bit. The last year we’d seen each other regularly. If we’d had lags at the sort of school we went to, Dave would have been my fag. When we were “streamed” (that was their jargon for a sorting out process according to ability) I was A and he was C; that was the measure of our relationship. But when he came back I was glad to see him. He sort of fitted into my life. There had been a hole vacant and he came into it.

‘Hello, Tony. Long time no see.’

‘Only yesterday. And talk English.’ I’d never cure him of using second-rate slang.

He laughed. ‘Tony, I want to talk, I’m excited.’

He sounded it. ‘Well, what’s excited you?’

‘I’ve got a new girl. You ought to see her.’

‘Good.’ Perhaps this one will last. They didn’t usually. I mean no one wants fidelity but his turn-over was too rapid. I don’t know what he did to them. I didn’t take literally his remark about seeing her. I knew he wouldn’t let me see her; he never did.

‘Where did you meet her?’ Jean was waving at me not to make a long call of it, but Dave might go on for hours. ‘Where are you speaking from?’

‘Call-box outside Lowther’s.’ Lowther’s was a big all-night chemists which was a great place for night birds (which Dave and I intermittently were) in the New Cut Road. Fine old slum it have been at one time but now it was a newly built disaster area. ‘Oh, I met her around,’ he said vaguely. ‘You know.’

‘If you’re going to talk all night, let me know,’ whispered Jean.

I scowled at her, nodding my head like a mandarin. She didn’t know what to make of that and it kept her quiet for a bit. Always keep your signals contradictory, that’s a good rule with an opponent. It puzzles them and they don’t know what to do. Quite scientific really. All animals have aggression or submission signals which other animals of their kind recognize. The dog snarls or cringes. We smile and nod or else frown and clench our muscles. Then the other animal knows what to do. But mix the signals and this throws them.

‘You two,’ she muttered. ‘I don’t like to watch. I mean, it’s such a funny way to live.’

This time I smiled but shook my head slowly from side to side. Jean went and sat down, still keeping an eye on me. Dave was getting quite frantic on the end of the phone.

‘You there? You still there? Well, are you listening then? Well, it was a lovely night, lovely night …’ He was working himself up.

‘Calm it down, boy. So what did you do?’

‘Talked,’ he said dreamily. ‘We’re going on talking, too.’

‘Lovely,’ I said. ‘Is that all?’

‘No, then I came home and baby-sat for my sister. Those kids were a drag. Then I came out to phone you.’

‘It was a big evening then?’

‘Yes. What about you?’

‘Oh, Club, home, Jean, you know.’ I darted a look at Jean who was still watching. It crossed my mind she was expecting a call herself. ‘Cy get home?’

‘Yes, he certainly did.’ Stronger feeling than even that aroused by his girl friend coloured his voice. ‘And wasn’t he sour! Came in, sat down in his chair and started writing his notes. Didn’t say good evening or thank you for staying here or anything. He makes me sick. So I came out.’

David Edmondstone was Cy’s brother-in-law and he lodged with his sister and Cy. Dave had gone away for a time to work in Birmingham but now he was back. In a way it was through knowing Dave that I found my way into the Club. Of course, it wasn’t really a club till it got me. More of a loose association of people with a common interest. It was me and John Plowman that shaped it.

‘How have you soured him up?’ asked Dave.

How had we?

‘I didn’t know he kept notes,’ I said.

‘Well, he does. After every meeting. And sometimes he puts things on a tape. Not always. Just every so often. Not that I’ve seen. But I’ve heard him talking away to himself.’

‘How do you know he has a tape recorder?’

‘I’ve had a look round.’ Dave laughed. ‘Maggie doesn’t know. And every so often he talks into it.’

‘How often?’

‘Well, I’m not watching him all the time. Not only that wouldn’t be right, it wouldn’t be easy.’ In a way Dave ran away from home when he went to Birmingham. He said it was because his sister beat him. I didn’t exactly believe him but I dare say she might have done. Or there’s Cy. Since you ask me about him, I’ve always thought he was a bit of a sadist. I saw a strap hanging on the wall of their kitchen. And they don’t have a dog as far as I know. Dave was a bit slow in those days. But when he got back he’d grown up a lot.

‘Since I’ve been here he’s only done it a few times. But I tell you what: sometimes I think he plays back things he’s done earlier. Yes, I think so.’

‘I wonder what he puts on it?’ I thought he was probably keeping his own record of sightings and investigations and no doubt adding a few sharp words about me and John Plowman. He was creating a Club of One.

‘He keeps it locked up,’ said Dave regretfully. ‘He’s got a little case where he keeps things. Regular old Bluebeard is Cy.’ He laughed.

This isn’t the image I would have found if my sister had been married to him, but Dave’s imagination was as limited as his mother’s had been. I just remembered his mother. Her idea of bringing up a boy was to whack him soundly every so often. At intervals she would go away from home and disappear for a few months. I think they really got on better when she was away than when she came back. I had an idea that Dave was going to take after her and turn into a disappearer. He was shaping that way.

I was shifting round vaguely in this conversation with Dave, trying to get at something – I didn’t quite know what. Perhaps Cy was up to something. I didn’t know. I just felt a pool of unease inside me.

‘I must go now,’ said Dave, almost as if it had been me that kept him talking. ‘Tomorrow?’

‘Tomorrow,’ I agreed, although I hadn’t really made up my mind about tomorrow. I like to feel free.

Jean watched me finish the conversation. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘You worry me, you two. Such a funny way to live.’

Personally, I thought hers was a funny way to live, always dreaming over the teapot. She was only twenty-two and pretty. And my dad’s way, wasn’t that funny, worrying over his birds’ breeding habits?

I heard Dad coming in from the back. This hastened me.

‘Remember, even a sad and lonely life can be beautiful,’ I said, giving her a smile as I passed.

I went back upstairs, drew back my curtains so I could see the sky. Clearly not the kind of night for a sighting. Anyway, John didn’t expect anything over this neighbourhood at the moment. There was something unfavourable about our position. Perhaps it was just all the policemen. He thought in the direction of the New Forest was the most likely spot. There were signs, he said.

It was always through John that our messages and first intimations of a sighting came. Afterwards Cy told us the scientific explanation and I wrote it up, but John knew all about it first. I wondered about this sometimes.

I took out my papers. I knew Jean worried about me. But she didn’t need to. I had my life well arranged.

Like Cy I made notes and kept records. I had an account of all the weekly meetings. I had a brief on each sighting of a UFO involving a Club member. When a special expedition had been launched by John Plowman then I had it all down: how information of the incident reached us first, with times and dates, when the checking expedition set off, again with times and dates, and the results.

I looked at my notes, then raised my head to stare at the dark starless sky. I felt so alone, but I wasn’t really alone, there were a hundred little dark figures tagging around with me. I have a very crowded memory. I feel sometimes that I can remember everything that happened to everyone in the whole wide world. But this can’t be, it must just be that I’m a sensitive boy. Now I kept thinking about murder and there had to be a reason for it.

I knew why Jean was sitting hunched over her teapot.

The last child that had disappeared was a kid she taught. Did I tell you Jean was a teacher? Yes, she’s a clever girl really. Brave, too, eight to eleven is the age range she specializes in. It’s the best age, she says. When I asked for what, she simply smiled at me and let it go.

Had eleven been the best age for Katherine Gable? Katherine Gable, eleven last June, third of a family of nine. The only girl. On Thursday June 26 Katherine had eaten her supper and gone out to play with little friend Milly Lee in Saxe-Coburg Street. Little friend Milly had come home in due time and gone to bed. When questioned she said that she had only played a little while in Saxe-Coburg Street with Katherine. No one had seen Katherine again.

I remembered Thursday June 26. It was one of our big days. There had been a reported sighting near the Thames in Buckinghamshire and John and a select little party had driven out to see it. I wasn’t quite sure who had been on that expedition. I should have to consult my records. Not me, not Miss Jones.

Katherine Gable on June 26.

May had been a clear month both for us and missing girls, but one day in late April – the 23rd – we’d had a sighting and another girl had gone missing. I knew the date because that was one UFO that had got into the papers and the two sensations got headlines side by side.

Grace Parker was only ten, but in her photograph she looked older. I never find it easy to guess a kid’s age; especially a girl kid. I would have said this one was around thirteen, but no, the newspapers said she was ten. She had elderly parents. Perhaps they let Grace run around more than she should. No one had found Grace, but they had found her scarf. It had been left hanging from a tree in the park. There’s no need to wear a scarf tonight, Grace. It’s a warm night.’ And the answer, ‘I like to wear a scarf, I feel comfortable with a scarf round my neck.’ A blue and yellow scarf, a present from someone for Christmas, I knew that. It must have been in the newspapers. I’d never spoken to Grace, had I? Unlike the Katherine Gable affair, no one I knew had known Grace. But she was walking there in my mind, a tiny figure, seen as if through the wrong end of the telescope, with every feature perfectly clear.

I consulted my records. Spaced out among the six months behind me had been several Club expeditions. Nothing important, you understand. I suspected that one or two of the trips were arranged by John Plowman for his own amusement. At all events there had been UFO sightings. I already knew that two of these sightings coincided with dates on which two girls had disappeared. Katherine Gable on June 26 and Grace Parker on April 23. I had been turning this thought over and over in my mind and wondering what people would make of it if they knew. What should they make of it? What was true and what false?

Was it something you could brush off as just coincidence? Or were people going to think the girls had been kidnapped into space? Could you expect anyone to think that? Should they think it? I couldn’t make up my mind.

Jean came into my room and dropped the old cat on to my bed, where he always slept.

‘Sorry if I was irritable about Dave.’

‘You weren’t.’

She saw I looked troubled.

‘I know I shouldn’t interfere in these boy-to-boy relationships.’

‘We don’t have a boy-to-boy relationship.’ I think one of the things that draws me to Dave is that we both started up acne at the same time. Mine has cleared; his hasn’t.

‘No.’ She knew something was worrying me, but she didn’t have any idea what it was. How could she? But she can catch on fast, can Jean, and she was watching me. Give her time and she’d read me like a book.

People think that boys like Dave and me don’t understand. But it’s not true; I know that if you’ve got someone like us, you’ve got a monkey in the family.

So I always tried to be good to Jean. Now I got up and offered her a chair, but she wouldn’t stay. She never would. There was something about my room she didn’t like. Me, probably.

‘Don’t talk too much tonight, Jean,’ I said. ‘Somehow I don’t think it’s a good night for talking.’

She left me alone. I went to the window and looked out. It was an ugly time for talking. An ugly night and I felt ugly with it.

There are so many crimes that no one gets to know about. ‘The dark number’, the police call it, don’t they?

At the window I could just see the house where Dave lived with his sister and her husband in Peel Terrace. Although Peel Terrace rates itself above Harper Road they’re so close together you could throw a stone from us to them. I wondered if Cy was sitting there dictating into his tape recorder. I looked at my own machine. The thought of all that tape whirring round gave me a funny feeling. They’re dangerous machines, closer than a friend, easier to talk to than a woman, but terribly, terribly likely, at the flick of a switch, to tell all.

I started to play a tape. Strange noises began to play themselves out in my quiet room. I kept it low. I didn’t want Jean to hear.

There were strange sounds on this tape.

Sometimes I think it sounds like a tiny, tiny girl, sometimes like a man. But crying, man and girl, both are crying.

One day I’ll tell you how I got these sounds on my tape.

I’d like to tell someone. It’s on my mind a lot.