The Watchers (7 page)

– 8 –

‘Unexplainable events,’ Corso had said. But I had learned long ago that there was always a logical explanation to be found.

One evening in the depths of winter – I was thirteen, I think, or fourteen – and just home from school, a door banged in the wind. I crept out of the kitchen into the hall to see my grandfather hunched in his overcoat in the porch, his gnarled fingers gripping a camera. His head was tilted back and his eyes fixed on the cloudy night sky. I came and stood beside him and saw the focus of his attention, a brilliant flashing white light. Somewhere in the farmyard Jasper, my only friend, my only source of comfort, was barking madly.

‘Get inside!’ Grandfather ordered. ‘You must not look at it, do you hear?’

I heard but I didn’t understand. The light was strikingly bright and, by my estimation, very high in the sky. But it seemed to be coming nearer. As it approached I saw that it wasn’t just a light but a burning cross radiating points of light from all angles. It was flattish but with rounded edges, and there was no engine sound. No noise whatsoever.

‘Boy, I said
inside
!’

I obeyed but only for a moment. My feet took me through the hall, into the kitchen and out the back door. I stood in the cold and looked up again into the sky.

The fiery cross was still visible, though it had slowed, was hovering. It then moved across the sky, and as it passed over the lower fields, towards the cliff edge where I was forbidden to venture, I had to run across the yard to the cattle sheds to keep it in view. Jasper was at my feet, growling, his hackles up.

Now the cross was hanging over St Brides Bay. There it lingered for a few more seconds, the dark waters around Stack Rocks reflecting a deep red glow, before it flashed brightly and dissolved into darkness.

Grandfather turned and saw me, and I hardly had time to frame the question on my lips – ‘Did you get it, Grandfather; did you get it on film?’ – before he threw an arm around me and dragged me back to the farmhouse, muttering under his breath about fires in the sky, signs in the heavens and imminent danger.

The next morning, watching as Grandfather trawled the newspaper for other reports, I began to wonder if perhaps there was something to his curious tales. Even though nothing had shown up on the photographs Grandfather had snapped, I had seen it too. I hadn’t imagined the fiery cross. And if he and I were deluded that night, so were many more people.

Over the next few days there were numerous other sightings of things in the sky, including reports of a fiery cross from six police officers in Glossop, Derbyshire. In the ensuing investigation the closest airbase to the incident, RAF Chivenor, denied radar confirmation of any unknown object.

I couldn’t help it, but I began to wonder whether Grandfather was right.

He wasn’t; there aren’t any such things as flying crosses. But planets and stars? Meteorites and satellites? Sure, there’s an abundance of those. Turns out that’s what we saw – a Russian satellite re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. It was in the paper a few weeks later. As the satellite’s altitude decreased, atmospheric conditions made spikes of light, beams and sparkles shoot out in all directions. Tricks of the light.

Soon after that news report, I formed some pretty strong views on flying saucers. They weren’t craft from outer space. They were night-flying aircraft, weather balloons, comets, car headlights, stars seen at unusual angles through trees and mist. They were explainable. And I was extremely relieved, even if Grandfather did refuse to accept rational explanations. I would never be like him, would never be dragged into his wild superstitions.

Selina was similarly sensible and logical, I’d thought. I remembered the UFO reports she’d shown me but didn’t for a minute think she was actively investigating them. The issue bothered me as I sat, alone, in her flat the day after my meeting with Corso.

It was Tuesday. I knew I shouldn’t have been drinking, given my state of shock, but I needed something to take the edge off. Selina’s parents had been on the phone three times that day, questioning me about the explosion. Every detail. And I was beginning to doubt that I would ever again be able to close my eyes without seeing Selina lying bleeding on the floor.

I didn’t believe Corso’s tale any more than I believed in flying saucers. I certainly didn’t believe anyone would launch an attack on Parliament to cover up such an absurd story. At the same time I couldn’t shake from my mind something Selina had said to me the morning of Corso’s evidence session:
You think it’s intentional? Someone making trouble?

I had assumed her agitation that morning was because of her job interview in the City. But now I was beginning to wonder how close she had been to the reports of peculiar sightings back home. How long had she been investigating the Croughton connection?

My thoughts turned to the admiral. He had first told me about Project Caesar and then warned me to leave it alone. My pulse quickened. I had never felt more isolated. I reached for the phone and dialled the only number I had for him at the Ministry of Defence, letting it ring once, twice, before the line clicked dead.

Keyed up, I returned to Selina’s bedroom, feeling very much the intruder as I dragged open the desk drawer and rifled through three or four slim folders, wondering whether I might find a clue here. All I could see was the usual flood of constituents’ letters from farmers, residents’ associations and charities, much of it demanding Bestford’s ‘urgent attention’.

Why had she brought so much constituency correspondence to London? With mounting curiosity, I reached to the back of the drawer and found a folder of cuttings, most of them sensationalist crap written by the journalist I vaguely remembered Selina mentioning, Frank Frobisher.

Was it any wonder the residents of Little Haven and Broad Haven were joining ‘flying saucer walks’, given reports like this? Tutting, I tapped the cuttings into order in the folder, ready to replace it. A face peeped out from a cutting at the back of the pile. The haunted hotelier Araceli Romero. The mother who’d reported a flying football of light and wanted Selina’s help.

At the sight of the picture, I felt something that made me wonder,
Do I know her
? I was sure not, but something kept me looking into her wide frightened eyes.

On the back of the article, scribbled in Selina’s handwriting, were the words ‘Haven Hotel’ and a telephone number. I checked the time – 9.45 in the evening – and decided I would call anyway. I let it ring for almost a minute. Eventually, a woman’s voice answered and at once I felt cold, exhausted. I couldn’t explain the sensation, the light-headedness, but couldn’t ignore it either.

‘Is that Miss Romero?’ I asked. ‘Araceli?’

‘I’m sorry, we’re closed for the season.’

‘Actually, I was hoping you might speak to me about your recent . . . sighting?’

Silence. A long pause.

‘I read in the newspaper—’

‘Don’t you people have any respect for our private lives?’ she cut in.

She thinks I’m a journalist
.

‘I work for your Member of Parliament,’ I said, trying to adopt a reassuring tone, ‘and I read in the newspaper about what happened to you, the light that chased your car. When I was young I saw something very similar, but it turned out to be a satellite. Perhaps you saw something else, some meteorological anomaly?’

‘Who the hell do you think you are?’

‘Someone who can help.’ Then I found myself adding, ‘I used to live in the area.’

‘I said all I’m going to say about this to Mr Frobisher at the newspaper. And to the military.’

‘The military? When did they contact you?’

‘Aren’t you listening? I don’t trust officials, and I won’t be ordered to be silent.’

I didn’t like what I was hearing. Silent about what?

‘Please,’ I tried, ‘I need to ask you about my colleague, Selina Searle. I believe she had information that could explain what you saw. I think she might have contacted—’ The line became crackly. ‘Hello? Hello?’

I pulled the phone away from my ear as a high-pitched metallic whine filled the room. Then the line clicked dead.

– 9 –

My conversation with Araceli Romero had left me shaken. I poured myself another drink. On the television were images of police boats patrolling the murky waters of the Thames. My hand clutched the glass as a thin greying detective appeared on screen. He spoke with the slow, deliberate consideration of a man imparting bad news. ‘Although no bodies have yet been recovered, in the absence of any further evidence we are treating the event as an unfortunate accident.’

An accident?
His voice was ringing in my head as I plunged out of the flat into the murky night. Feverishly I headed along the Embankment, over Westminster Bridge and found myself in Parliament Square. Across Whitehall, the grand windows of the Foreign Office glowed through the fog.

I hurried to a public phone box, paranoia making the blood pound in my ears. Thank God Corso had told me where I could find him; if he was right, if there was a connection between the explosion on the Thames and the sightings in west Wales, and someone knew I knew . . . well, there was a chance I could be in serious danger.

The telephone box was empty. I slotted in a coin, dialled the number. ‘Room 9, please.’

I waited ten, perhaps twenty seconds to be connected to his room.

Come on, come on . . .

A man with a stiff English accent came on the line. ‘Hello?’

‘Sorry, to whom am I speaking?’

‘This is James Stevenson,’ said the brisk voice, ‘hotel manager.’ Before I could decide whether to hang up, he cut in with a question: ‘Are you a relation of Colonel Corso? Do you know where we can reach him?’

‘I was hoping you might tell me.’

A pause. ‘We haven’t seen him in two days, and well, he was due to check out yesterday. His belongings are still in his room.’

Corso had said his life was in danger.

‘Did he leave a note?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Did anyone leave any messages for him?’

‘Only one message, sir,’ said Mr Stevenson, ‘from a Frank Frobisher.’

I remembered the byline on the newspaper cuttings in Selina’s room. ‘Can I have his number?’

‘I really shouldn’t give it out.’

‘Please,’ I said, clutching the receiver close, ‘a lot could depend on this.’

‘Who did you say you worked for, sir?’

‘Paul Bestford MP. Chair of the Defence Select Committee.’

It took some persuasion, but the manager eventually gave me the number. I found a pen and a scrap of notepaper in my pocket and jotted it down then hung up.

‘Hey! You gonna be long in there?’

I looked up to see a fat middle-aged bloke rapping on the rain-soaked glass.

‘Hey, come on! I’m waiting here!’

I turned my back on him and slotted in another coin.

‘Hey!’

I ignored the guy beyond the glass and punched in the number that the hotel manager had given me. Frobisher had been trying to reach Corso too. I needed to know why.

The phone rang and rang. I was about to hang up when a gruff Welshman answered.

‘Mr Frobisher?’

‘Yes,’ he sounded agitated. ‘Who’s this?’

I explained my connection. ‘I understand you’ve been trying to reach Lieutenant Colonel Conrad Corso?’

‘Oh, good. You’ve located him, have you?’ I heard the rustling of paper over the line. Then Frobisher said, ‘I’m trying to cover this flap down here. My God, since we published that story on the flying football everyone’s started reporting sightings of strange lights! I want a quote from a US military source. Want to make sure they’re not testing something around St Brides Bay that they shouldn’t be.’

Something didn’t feel right about this. Frobisher could have asked anyone from the US military about the sightings. Why Corso specifically?

‘Corso’s spent a lot of time down here, been seen in the Ram Inn quite a bit.’

That intrigued me, partly because Corso’s base – RAF Croughton – was over two hundred miles from the Havens, but mostly because it tallied with what Corso had told me about visiting Selina in the constituency.

‘If you ask me, the military are taking all this more seriously than they’re letting on,’ Frobisher added. ‘Whenever I dig, the witnesses clam up.’

I asked him to clarify.

‘When I approached Araceli at the Haven Hotel – to ask her if she’d seen anything else – she said she’d been threatened.’

‘By whom?’

‘Some men who came to see her after my article was published, warning her not to talk.’

‘Did she describe these men?’

‘Tall, dressed in black. She said their skin was like wax.’

A shadowy memory tugged at me. ‘Mr Frobisher, I have something I think you ought to see. Can I send it to you?’

‘You should get down here, man, come see me.’

Grandfather’s craggy face, the scar like a crooked smile, leaped into my mind, and I felt a shiver of fear as a familiar thought surfaced:
Somewhere, we went somewhere
 . . . ‘No, I can’t do that.’ I hung up.

Pushing out of the phone box past the waiting man, my mind was fixed on getting home, making myself safe. My world was turning into shifting shadows. I could not allow myself to become lost in them. But I had taken only a few steps before I was halted by a name called out from behind. My name.

Oh God
,
they’ve found me
.

I was relieved when I turned and saw it was just a lone man, black-suited, professional. Until I registered the serious authority in this pale stranger’s demeanour.

‘Yes? What do you want?’

‘Your attention.’

I looked around. There were other people in sight close enough to give me confidence to fire back, ‘Like you wanted Colonel Corso’s attention?’

He nodded in the direction of Trafalgar Square. ‘Come with me, Mr Wilding.’

I stood very still and replied, ‘I generally don’t go anywhere with strangers.’

‘It’s your choice, of course.’ He reached into his pocket and brought out a packet of cigarettes. ‘But if you value your safety, you’ll come with me now.’

‘Why?’

‘The men I work for require your assistance with a project.’

‘What sort of project?’

‘The sort that doesn’t exist. Not in any official sense.’

We were standing a little way down from the MoD Main Building, where on many occasions I had attended briefings and conferences in its grand Pillared Hall. In the distance the towers of Westminster Abbey loomed.

‘But why me?’ I demanded, finding my mouth dry with anxiety.

He lit his cigarette and inhaled deeply. ‘The project concerns the committee inquiry, your boss, your home. What happened to Miss Searle. We’ve been watching her for some time, watching you too, until we knew the time was right.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘You will. If you come with me.’

‘Where?’

No reply.

‘Who sent you?’

‘A friend.’

‘This is bullshit,’ I muttered.

‘Bestford has cancelled the inquiry.’ His voice turned eerily cajoling. ‘He had his reasons. And no one will ever know the truth about what happened at Croughton.’

I should get away, right now
, I thought, but instead heard myself saying, ‘OK. I’ll come with you.’