The Watchers (12 page)

She disappeared for a minute and returned with an older gentleman who looked every bit the headmaster. A tall man with a narrow studious face. ‘Howell Cooper, hello.’

His handshake was firm, too firm. And although he greeted me with a confident smile, I did not feel the same confidence when I looked through his horn-rimmed spectacles and into his eyes. They were hard eyes, scheming and quick. I think it was those eyes that prevented me explaining my childhood connection to the area. Remembering why I’d come to the school in the first place, I explained my interest in recent events.

I thought of telling him that I’d quit Parliament – remembering how many of the locals didn’t see eye to eye with Bestford – but I didn’t think Cooper looked the sort of headmaster who would take kindly to a stranger admitting to calling at his school under false pretences. ‘I’d be glad to know the details of the sighting and to help – if I can.’

‘Help?’ Cooper let the word hang between us as he reached into an open drawer and withdrew a half-empty packet of cigarettes. He gestured at me to sit with him at the imposing desk at the top of the classroom. With the scratch of a match, his cigarette was glowing and he was inhaling deeply.

‘Do you know,’ he said eventually, ‘how long I have worked in this school?’

His dark moustache and side-parted grey hair made him difficult to age. Seeing my hesitation, he said, ‘Thirty-two years, Mr Wilding. I must have been near your own age when I became a teacher.’ Those hard eyes swivelled over my shoulder. ‘And in all that time I thought I’d seen it all, heard it all, learned the ways of children.’

He shook his head and straightened against the back of his chair. ‘Well, I’ll tell you this: I’ve learned enough. Enough to know when a child is lying.’

His gaze fastened on me, and with unmistakable solemnity, he said, ‘Mr Wilding, I hope you have an open mind.’

– 15 –

Broad Haven Primary School, Marine Lane, 2 p.m.

The story was as remarkable and unusual as any I had encountered. Cooper had been in his study preparing a letter concerning the forthcoming parents’ evening. From the playground he heard familiar sounds: squeals and laughter and playful taunts. The
thump
of a booted football, the rhythmic
thwack
of a skipping rope. Then, nothing. He knew most of the school was on a trip to the local caves, but even so thirteen kids can make a lot of noise. And now there was none. He hadn’t heard the bell ring. Why were the children suddenly so quiet? He checked his watch – there were still ten minutes of lunch break remaining.

Rising from his desk, he went to the window, peering out into the drizzle. And felt panic surge through him.

‘It’s like all your worst nightmares coming true at once,’ he told me. ‘I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.’

The playground was empty.

‘You didn’t imagine the kids had come inside to play?’

‘I would have heard them! I stood here in my office staring out over the playground for perhaps ten seconds or more, before the door behind me burst open and in stumbled little Tessa, bawling her eyes out. “Sir, sir –” she was crying “– please, you must come and see. Now!”

‘I thought there had been an accident or something. I crouched down, over there by the door, gripped her shoulders and looked her straight in the eye and asked her what was wrong. But she just kept crying and pulling at my arm and begging me to go and see. Well, what else could I do?

‘She led me out around the back of the main school building, facing the hill, and that’s when I saw twelve of the boys, running towards me, hysterical. I held my hands up and told them to stop, to get in line. But they bolted right past me. I found them in the classroom, Mr Wilding. Cowering at their desks, crying.’

He hesitated then, frowned, and I saw I had a way to go before winning his trust.

‘Tell me the rest, sir. Discretion is my forte.’

After a few moments he nodded, rose and led me to the nearest window. ‘It seems one of the boys spotted something moving in the field up there near a telegraph pole.’ He was pointing to a gap in the hedge between the school and an adjoining field which rose steeply. ‘The boys had some difficuly getting nearer because of a stream on the other side. But they all claimed to have a good view of the . . . object.’

‘Why weren’t these kids on the school trip?’

‘Oh, various reasons,’ he said hastily. ‘Now when the children described the object, I couldn’t accept it. Wouldn’t accept it. So I separated each child and asked them to draw what they had seen.’

‘Very sensible,’ I said. ‘And the results varied hugely, I suppose?’

‘On the contrary.’ The headmaster’s eyes sharpened, and after a brief moment he reached for a large paper folder, opened it and drew out the pictures, presenting them in a line on the tops of a row of desks.

For a moment I could hardly believe what I was looking at. My surroundings – the classroom, the moan of the wind outside, even Mr Cooper – seemed to withdraw. Thirteen drawings. Each near identical.

‘Tell me, Mr Wilding,’ said the headmaster, ‘what does that look like to you?’

I studied every drawing, transfixed by their similarities. In every one something silver and cigar-shaped was resting on the ground. There were some variations, but in most of the pictures the object had a central dome with a light on top.

That the children had seen something I had little doubt, but what was it? I knew what it
appeared
to be but couldn’t accept that. There had to be a better explanation, a rational explanation, and if I was to find out what it was, I needed to see the landing site myself.

‘Do you think you can show me the place where they saw it?’ I asked the headmaster.

He looked momentarily startled then adopted a more composed expression. ‘Really, Mr Wilding, I hardly think now is a good time.’

‘Now’s the perfect time!’ I cut in, peering out into the wet weather. ‘If that craft left anything behind – tread marks, imprints,
anything
– it needs to be protected.’

But Mr Cooper was shaking his head. ‘We must keep this as quiet as we can, Mr Wilding. There’s been some concern over the potential threat to the public from these UFOs. Father O’Riorden has called a public meeting for tomorrow night. It’s not easy running a school at the best of times, but in the last few days we’ve been besieged by journalists, television crews. If you took this information back with you and news got out in London that . . . Well, it would be a circus and make my job impossible. No more, you understand!’

Memories flashed: Room 800 and the boxes of files deep beneath the Hotel Metropole, the speedboat powering its way towards Parliament, Selina in her hospital bed. I imagined her here now, what she’d say to me:
You must find out what they saw
.

‘This is bigger than you,’ I said to Mr Cooper. ‘Perhaps bigger than all of us.’

I said goodbye. As I strode across the playground Delyth Cale caught up with me, full of concern. ‘I really wish you hadn’t upset him; he’s struggling to hold things together. I worry about him. He’s been so distant these last few weeks. They make such demands on him.’

‘You mean the children?’

She looked bewildered at the question but nodded without any hesitation.

I stopped as we reached the end of the tarmac and looked her straight in the eye. ‘Where were you when it happened?’

I heard her take a deep sigh.

‘Were you in the playground? Did you see it?

An expectant silence opened between us and I saw undisclosed thoughts crowding her eyes. ‘Tell me, please.’

‘I know that spot well,’ she replied finally. I noticed that she didn’t look at the place in question directly, but rather flicked glances at it from the corners of her eyes. ‘I walk there frequently. There’s a sewage works up there . . .’

‘Then perhaps they saw a tanker or some other industrial vehicle?’

She just looked at me, raising her chin. I tried to decipher the expression on her face. Reluctance? No, more than that. She looked frightened.
‘You saw it, didn’t you?’ I asked.

‘You must understand that I have to live in this village,’ she said in a low, taut voice. ‘You can just walk away, while the rest of us suffer.’

‘Suffer? It’s not as bad as all that, surely?’

She glanced at the sky, then shot me a cold glare. ‘You’re not going to give up, are you?’ Finally she nodded and said quietly, ‘Very well. I was talking to one of the chefs in the kitchen and came out of the school by the side door, there.’ She pointed back at the building. ‘I was facing the field, and I saw the children who hadn’t gone on the school trip huddled in a group, up at the top of the hill. Then something shiny caught my eye.’ She took a breath and I watched her eyes scan the field. Whatever she had seen, she was seeing it again now. ‘It was a large object, oval shaped, with a slight dome. The colour of metal. The whole thing was sharply defined. There were ridges on its surface.’ Her eyes were bulging now, and her head was shaking as if the gesture could deny this recollection. ‘It was just sitting there in the rain. And then it glided away, into the trees.’

‘That’s it?’ I pressed her.

She nodded quickly. But although she maintained eye contact I could see she was trying hard not to blink.

‘Were there any people around? Controlling it, or nearby? Please, whatever you tell me, I promise it will go no further.’

‘I saw
something
,’ she said reluctantly. ‘A strange figure with a blacked-out face. Dressed in silver.’

‘How long was it in view?’

‘Seconds. It appeared rather suddenly from behind the trees, then climbed into the machine through an opening in its side.’

I scanned the marshy little field, most of which was hidden by banks of fog.

‘Please, Mr Wilding, leave it. For all our sakes.’

A fence and a rapidly flowing stream would prevent me from accessing the field with ease, but I wasn’t about to let them stop me. I gave her once last glance, then climbed over the fence and peered into the wet gloom.

*

In five minutes I had made it to the top of the field and the telegraph pole next to which the children had seen the silver object appear.

I looked around the slope for any sign that something had been there, but there was nothing. No tracks, no prints of tyres. Directly behind me was a hedgerow, beyond which lay a narrow road. Mounting the stile in the hedge, I immediately saw the sewage works that Mrs Cale had mentioned. I crossed the road and headed towards them. There was no one about, so I rattled the gates until a man in overalls appeared.

‘Did you have a tanker down in that field?’ I asked him through the fence.

‘Why would we have a tanker down there?’ He laughed and shook his head at the idea.

No reason. And anyway the children who saw the anomalous object were mostly from farming backgrounds. They would have recognized a tanker, surely?

‘I know why you’re asking,’ the workman continued. ‘I saw the news. If you ask me, those kids are having a game.’

I thanked him and returned to the field, squelching through the glutinous sludge. Even if a tanker had been able to get in there, there was no way it would have got out again.

I was about to return to the school in the valley below when something caught my eye. I craned my neck for a better look, squinting against the freezing drizzle at the telegraph pole. The metal support beam at the top of the pole was bent, almost as if something had . . .

Crashed into it.

The thought had barely occurred to me before another boom, like the crash I had heard the night before, shook the heavens, unleashing pelting rain upon me. I turned. At the doorway to the school the headmaster was standing with his hands clasped behind his back.

Watching.

– 16 –

By the time I had made my way back to Little Haven, the Atlantic mist was spreading hungrily into the village and its huddled maze of pastel cottages.

I parked on the seafront, where the sea thudded in and sprayed up against the sea wall. The postmistress was crossing the road and she granted me a weak smile, tinged blue.
Lips like dead slugs
, I thought again. That smile didn’t fool me. Not for a second. Already the strangeness was reverberating around this small community, and the villagers, conservative and God-fearing, could hardly conceal their suspicion of outsiders. I had been gone so long I might as well have been a stranger.

Did the past whisper to the locals as it whispered to me? Did they share my apprehension about this place? Probably, even if they did choose to make their homes here. Maybe they’d convinced themselves that every coastal village felt like this. And maybe they were right. But I doubted it. There were a great many sinister places around the Havens, abandoned forts and lone caverns, coves flanking the wild and unpredictable sea. Even in summer, when sunlit clouds gleamed and shadows grew long, these villages could feel dangerous.

For me that danger had been there since the freezing currents had flooded the Havens in December ’63. I’d never forget. Couldn’t forget. A blackness once more fell over me. In my mind I was eleven years old, staring vacantly at the funeral cards on Grandfather’s mantelpiece.

I flinched as another pulse of swell crashed in and the water sprayed up.

Hastily I decided to seek refuge in the Ram Inn, partly because I was hoping to find Frobisher, mostly because I wanted to escape the snapping cold. Two elderly men near the fire exchanged sharp glances the instant I closed the door on the chill afternoon air, and as I perched shivering at the bar a muffled silence filled the room.

‘Afternoon, gentlemen.’ I attempted a smile around the room.

They didn’t smile back, just hunched further over their pints.

The landlord looked flushed and weary as he wiped the polished oak bar. He was a thin man with a wasted face and shiny bald head. Behind him an upside-down horseshoe hung on the wall, flanked by several grainy black-and-white photos of what appeared to be flying saucers.

‘What’ll it be?’ the landlord asked.

I hadn’t ordered my Guinness before a ragged boom shook the building. Bottles rattled and somewhere a glass smashed. I jumped down off my stool.

‘What the hell was that?’

It had come from the sky, a startling roar of . . . something. Yet the landlord, to my amazement, seemed quite unconcerned. So did the middle-aged chap sitting a few stools away from me, staring down at a newspaper.

‘That was the worst one in a while,’ the man said without looking up. ‘We’re calling it the sky quake.’ He nodded, turned the page of his paper and continued. ‘Some sort of sonic boom, if you ask me. Another in a long list of military experiments they’re not telling us about.’

Dark hair with just a few grey hairs beginning to show. He was a well built man no older than forty-five. I went and sat next to him. His pint glass was almost empty.

‘You want another?’ I asked.

‘Sure.’ He looked up and stuck out his hand. ‘Frank Frobisher.’

Success!
‘From the
Western Telegraph
?’

He nodded, smiling as if pleased to be recognized. ‘You must be Robert Wilding. We spoke on the phone. So you couldn’t keep away, eh? And where’s our MP? Not interested in what’s been going on down here, eh? In “the Happenings”.’ He nodded at the blurry photographs on the wall behind the bar. I thought they looked like hubcaps. By the grin on Frobisher’s face I’m pretty sure he thought the same, but his tone implied criticism of my former boss that I suspected was widespread in the constituency.

‘I suppose you could say I’m here on Bestford’s behalf,’ I lied.

Frobisher was instantly alert. ‘So there’s
official
interest now?’

I hesitated, mind racing, and decided to backtrack before I said something I regretted. I gave the journalist what I hoped was my most sincere expression. ‘No, no. Nothing that grand. I take a . . . personal interest. I grew up here.’

Admitting this to Frobisher made me feel nauseous. I had hoped to tell as few people as possible about my connections with the area. I felt as if just talking about them might bring the bad wolf of memory to my door.

He looked at me for a moment with a curious expression, then nodded and lifted his pint. ‘So, you coming to the public meeting tomorrow?’

Just try to keep me away
. I shrugged, feigning nonchalance. ‘Perhaps. Where is it?’

‘School hall,’ Frobisher said, still looking at me. ‘You should come. Just don’t stay here too long. This place –’ he shook his head – ‘it’s the bloody graveyard of ambition.’

‘You ever think about leaving?’

‘Me?’ He shifted on his stool, his eyebrows lifting. ‘Where would I go?’

‘I don’t know – Cardiff, Bristol, London?’

‘Nah.’ He dipped his head. ‘Too late for me. You need a bloody degree these days to be anyone on Fleet Street. What have I got? Twenty-four years on the local paper. Twenty-four years of town meetings, funerals, weddings and fetes.’ He smiled with a hint of sadness. ‘I’ve enjoyed it – big fish in a small pond and all that – but what about you? Enjoy London?’

I thought about that. What was enjoyable about never having enough time to finish my work, always fighting with tourists for space on the Tube, never having enough money to keep up with the other researchers? ‘Sure, it’s fine.’ I paused. ‘When the place isn’t on high security alert.’

He understood immediately. ‘Hell of a thing. Could have been a lot worse too. Were you in Parliament when it happened?’

I blinked and the memories leaped up onto the black screen of my closed eyes. ‘Yeah, I was there.’

‘You reckon they’ll catch who did it?’

‘They will,’ I said, although after my discussion with the admiral I privately felt it was unlikely. If my long-time mentor’s assessment of the attack on Parliament was correct – if the Americans were responsible – that was a line of inquiry that would lead nowhere.
The NSA, the CIA. Don’t think they’re not capable of it.
But I still wasn’t convinced. Extraordinary claims required extraordinary evidence.

Suddenly, the reason why I was there – why I had sought out Frank Frobisher – came back to me in a rush. ‘Mr Frobisher,’ I began, choosing my words carefully, ‘Lieutenant Colonel Corso was a witness at the recent parliamentary inquiry. You were trying to reach him recently at his hotel in London. Can I ask why?

‘Sure. With everything that’s been going on around here, I wanted to know why American soldiers were meeting the staff of our local MP.’

‘You mean Selina Searle?’

He nodded. ‘They met in this very pub.’

‘What’s odd about that?’ I asked. ‘The Americans are a vital part of the local economy. You’d expect them to talk to the local MP’s staff, wouldn’t you?’

‘But Colonel Corso wasn’t based here in Wales. He was based at Croughton. That’s over two hundred miles away. So what was he doing down here?’

I had asked myself the very same thing. I kept my mouth shut.

Frobisher smiled. ‘It’s always worth asking questions, that’s my opinion. And anyway there’s a lot of suspicion about the American facility – about the work they’re doing up there . . .’ He allowed the words to hang between us.

I rushed to fill the silence.‘You think that’s what people have been seeing in the sky? American aircraft?’

‘It’s possible.’ He lowered his voice. ‘You know the airspace above Brawdy has been completely restricted since the Americans moved in?’ I didn’t know that. ‘No one’s allowed near,’ he added. ‘Which is why I’ve tried. Many times.’

‘Seen anything strange?’

‘The runway lights flash on, an aircraft leaves the ground. Seconds later the base is in darkness again. Complete blackout. You don’t see much – just flickers of activity at night, if you’re lucky. I’ve been out to the base three times now. Twice I’ve seen something, almost as though they’ve been expecting me. Tuesday and Friday nights. Around ten thirty.’

This was a lot of information for a stranger to offer me; so much that I had to wonder if he was trying to influence me. I’d met too many journalists not to be wise to their crafty ways.

‘Did you ask Selina about her meeting with Corso?’

‘Oh yeah, I asked, but like everyone else she didn’t want to talk. Listen.’ He cast a furtive glance towards the men by the fire. ‘What do you think is really going on down here?’

I smiled. I liked Frobisher, but I sure as hell wasn’t ready to tip off a journalist that nuclear weapons were stored nearby. Not until I had the facts.

‘I’m interested in something you said on the phone – the single mother you interviewed, the woman who runs the Haven Hotel.’

‘Araceli Romero?’

I nodded. ‘You told me on the phone that she was threatened by someone.’

He nodded, pulling a frown. ‘She told me about a globe of light that had chased her car – terrified her and her little one half to death – then, when I phoned her a few days later to follow up, she clammed up. She’s a strange one,’ he added flatly. ‘Bit of a recluse, like her mother.’

‘What happened to her mother?’

‘Died some years back. Left Araceli with a shitload of debt.’

‘What about her father?’

‘Dunno, some aristocrat. Not been seen in decades.’

‘So she’s all alone up there?’

‘She and her little girl.’

I hesitated, remembering the overgrown driveway that led up to the rambling Haven Hotel.

Frobisher looked me straight in the eye. ‘Shit, you’re not thinking of staying there?’

‘I was hoping I might.’

His eyes widened. ‘Why the hell would you want to stay
there
? Bad atmosphere. You know they say it was built on ley lines? They say it’s haunted.’

‘“They say”.’ I smiled.

Behind the bar the landlord – eavesdropping – caught my eye then returned his attention to the pint glass he was wiping. He was making me feel uneasy.

‘When I was young people used to gossip about Araceli’s mother. Do you know what they used to say?’

‘Yeah. She lived up there for thirty years and rarely came down into the village. The stories about that woman used to scare me,’ I added. ‘My parents would drive me to this pub every Friday, after my father has finished work on base, and I’d hear people gossiping about the mad woman on the hill. We’d sit just over there.’ I nodded towards the fire, where I could see the ghosts of my parents in memory. ‘Just stories . . .’

‘They still live around here, your parents?’

I told him then of their mystifying deaths.

‘God, I’m sorry,’ Frobisher said. I saw that he meant it. ‘Too many died that night. But what were they doing up the cliffs?’

‘Wish I knew.’

‘And what did you do afterwards?’

‘Went to live with my grandfather.’ I drained my pint and leaned forward. My moment had come. ‘Mr Frobisher, is it true that you and Randall Llewellyn Pritchard were the first to visit the landing site at the school?’

Understanding broke over Frobisher’s pleasant face. ‘Wait,
Randall
is your grandfather?’

I nodded.

‘OK. Now I see why you’re interested in all this. Sorry. I should have made the connection. I knew Randall had a grandson who worked for Bestford. Sure, I went with him to the school. He was pretty insistent, said there was no way the children were making it up, thought if we were lucky we’d find evidence of what had been there. Nothing. It’s as if whatever it was had never been there.’

‘I understand my grandfather told you that he had predicted this wave of recent sightings. How is that possible?’

Frobisher frowned again. ‘More likely he made an educated guess. There have always been strange goings-on in the Havens. I’m not saying your grandfather is right . . . ’ His eyes fell to the newspaper once more and he said quietly, ‘But I do believe this whole area – Little Haven, Broad Haven, St Brides Bay – is . . . haunted. You see, we’ve had everything – UFOs, ghosts, strange weather – you name it. There’s a tale that in 1884 some labourers near Ravenstone Farm were rounding up cattle when they heard a terrific whirring noise from above and looked up to see a blazing object plummeting into the sea near Stack Rocks. They say the water glowed for days afterwards, that the men went blind. And mad. I know we were talking about the Americans, the aircraft, but surely that can’t explain everything that’s going on.’

‘It’s just local superstition.’

Frobisher shrugged. ‘If you’d asked me twenty years ago, I’d have sounded as sceptical as you. But recently?’ He narrowed his eyes.

My gaze drifted to the window and across the horizon beyond. ‘Listen. Coastguards, harbour police, tanker crews—’

‘What of them?’

‘When I was a child only trawlers and lobster boats disturbed these waters.’

‘So?’

I turned to face him, ‘Well think about it. There are just so many more people about these days – all trained observers. It’s their duty to report anything they see, especially if it’s unusual. An odd craft, an erratic light . . . ’ I was remembering the newspaper stories about dancing lights. ‘There would be more official reports.’