‘You popped out for a cigarette break?’
Any other soldier would have looked embarrassed, but not Private Evans. He merely shrugged it off as if it was perfectly normal behaviour for a soldier to leave his post without permission.
‘Well, I got bored, see? And the stiffs weren’t going anywhere, were they?’
Lethbridge-Stewart raised an eyebrow. ‘I see. Soldiers who died defending their country and you just left them?’
Again Evans almost shrugged. ‘It’s not my country, is it?’
‘Quite beside the point, Private.’ Lethbridge-Stewart really didn’t know what to do with the man. With London filling up, the hospitals would once more serve the purposes for which they were built; people would be coming and going all over the place. Men who had given their lives to protect this city deserved to be left in peace, not disturbed simply because one army private could not contain his boredom. Lethbridge-Stewart had checked inside the morgue, immediately upon his arrival, and was much relieved to find that only Arnold’s body was missing. Spencer Pemberton’s body still remained; resting peacefully. ‘I will deal with you later, Private Evans. In the meantime do not move from this position again, do I make myself clear?’
For the first time Evans looked chastised. He gave a half-hearted salute. ‘Yes, sir.’
Lethbridge-Stewart nodded sharply and turned to the hospital attendant.
‘What if I need the toilet, sir?’
Lethbridge-Stewart glared at Evans. ‘Then hold it in, man!’ He shook his head. Unbelievable. ‘Mr Khan, do you have a phone I can borrow?’
‘Of course. This way.’
The attendant led him up a corridor away from the mortuary and to a small office that still showed signs of being vacated in a rush. A phone sat on the table. The attendant excused himself and closed the door. Lethbridge-Stewart lifted the receiver and asked the operator to put him in touch with Major General Hamilton.
After Lethbridge-Stewart had finished briefing Hamilton on the situation, at least as far as he himself understood it, there was a long pause. He could almost hear the general’s gears turning. Eventually, Hamilton broke the silence. ‘Why would someone want a dead body?’
‘Beyond me, sir. More to the point, though, who would want it? Someone aware of his close connection to the Intelligence would be my guess.’
Hamilton was silent for a few moments, his mind no doubt running through the various scenarios that implied. ‘I suppose information was bound to slip through the cracks, Colonel. Very odd. And I’ve just received another very strange report from Major Douglas.’
Lethbridge-Stewart wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to know. He knew enough already, knew where this was all leading, but he felt obligated to ask about the report.
‘People at Paddington started acting in the most unusual way. Groups of them walking around in circles, quite literally. Concentric circles, so the report says, weaving in and out at one point. Lasted about half an hour, and then they all continued on their way as if nothing had happened. Caused quite a disruption, as you can imagine.’
He could. Every inbound train station in London was going to be jam-packed for the next few weeks. ‘I suppose we’re running with the assumption that it is connected in some way to the disappearance of Arnold’s body?’
‘I should think that is wise, at this point. We may have rounded up all the Yeti and those control spheres, but who knows what else the Intelligence left behind? So much for teething problems.’
Lethbridge-Stewart pointedly did not remind Hamilton that he had warned him of such potential danger. ‘Do we halt our operation?’
‘No, Colonel. After all, we’re too far into it. Keeping the London Event out of the press is proving difficult enough as it is, and it seems someone has got wind of what happened, or at the very least Staff Sergeant Arnold’s connection to it. We can’t afford to draw in any more attention.’
‘Then what do you recommend, sir?’ It was a question to which Lethbridge-Stewart knew the answer, and it was one that Sally wasn’t going to like. He didn’t much like it himself, but the whole situation was fragile at best, and he knew he was needed.
‘I’m afraid you’ll have to postpone your holiday. There’s no one better qualified to deal with this. Find out what happened to Arnold, and keep it as hush-hush as possible. Discretion is the key word here, Colonel.’
‘Sir!’ Lethbridge-Stewart couldn’t bring himself to say anything else, for fear of his disappointment seeping through. He ended the call and then asked the operator to put him through to Major Douglas. He had to break the bad news to Sally. While the connection was being made he found his mind drifting, already thinking of what was needed to investigate Arnold’s disappearance. Just who would benefit from stealing a corpse?
The animated corpse in question was sitting comfortably on the train while it rushed through the countryside en route to Liskeard, Cornwall. From the outside he looked like any other old soldier returning home after a hectic tour of duty. His combat fatigues looked dirty, his skin and hair even worse. Several passengers noted this, and one young boy kept asking questions of his mother, while his sister wanted to go and poke the old man to see if he was dead. The mother was, for now, keeping her children under control. But such curiosity could not be sated for very long.
A ticket inspector passed through the carriage, checking the tickets of those who had boarded the train at Exeter St David’s. Barely a handful had joined the train at Paddington – people were still returning there and those who had managed that feat were in no rush to leave again – and so the inspector was only now doing his first pass through the train. He glanced out of the window, absently clicking the ticket he had been offered, watching as the train came to a rest next to a field of cows. A common stopping point on this line, as the signal changed to red to allow a high speed train to pass by. Such a train rushed by, the tooting of its horn just audible over the rumble of the wheels on the tracks and the gust of wind squashed between the small gap separating the trains. The inspector was glad to not be on the other train – he would never have been able to walk one end to the other. There was barely any standing room.
‘Tickets, please,’ he said, passing by the old soldier as if he hadn’t even noticed him.
The inspector stopped, blinked, and turned around. He walked back up the carriage and stopped at the door joining it to the previous carriage. He turned and started through the carriage again, like he’d not stepped on it before.
‘Please have all tickets ready. All tickets, please!’
He received some odd looks from the first passengers whose tickets he had already clicked, but they still handed them back to him nonetheless. He didn’t notice that they’d been clicked, for his eyes were on the field outside. The cows were moving in circles, weaving in and out as if they were performing some strange ballroom dance.
All the while the soldier appeared to sleep, his lips moving as if he was whispering. Had the little girl been allowed to get close enough to poke him she would have heard the voice that ushered from his mouth. A child’s voice, a little boy saying, ‘follow me, this way home.’
— CHAPTER THREE —
Mapping the Route
THE PAKISTANI HOSPITAL ATTENDANT PROVED to be very helpful in finding Lethbridge-Stewart the right people to interview. Mr Khan had explained that not much went on in the hospital without him knowing about it these days, since the building wasn’t fully staffed yet. Lethbridge-Stewart expected a lot of it was due to Mr Khan’s race, too; he was often invisible to most people. Just another dark-skinned man who was little more than a porter. Lethbridge-Stewart had served for a short time in India and found the culture there to be rich, and he expected no less was true of Pakistan. Unfortunately the layperson in Britain would never learn this, and so ethnic minorities like Mr Khan would never get their dues. Which meant Mr Khan saw and heard a lot. But not who had stolen the corpse, apparently. Still, the two men now in front of Lethbridge-Stewart seemed mo
re helpful in that regard.
Alf and Ralph were two delivery men who had been unloading supplies around oh-one-hundred-hours that morning, the time the corpse had gone missing. They looked much alike, both dressed in dirty casual clothes, matching flat caps on their greying hair, and a peppery moustache setting off their deeply lined faces. Lethbridge-Stewart assumed they were brothers. They now stood next to the loading bay at the rear of the hospital, not far from the mortuary. They had just arrived with new supplies to unload when Mr Khan pointed them out. They stood to attention as soon as Lethbridge-Stewart approached, probably ex-army men themselves.
‘I was having a quick fag break with that taff,’ Ralph was explaining. ‘Nice fella, talks a bit too much, though. Bored of looking after stiffs, he said, reckons the bigwigs have it in for him.’ Ralph lowered his voice. ‘Not one for the night shift, if you get my meaning.’
Lethbridge-Stewart nodded. Ralph was probably right; Private Evans wasn’t going to last long in the army the way he was going. Didn’t have the stones for it.
‘That was when you were doing that funny walk, remember, Alfie?’
Alf looked away, puffing on his cigarette. ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about, mate, never did. I was waiting for you and your lazy backside, I wasn’t bloomin’ well exercising.’
Ralph laughed at this. ‘Excuse me brother, sir, reckon he had too much of the sauce last night. Bit of a black-out on our last run.’
Lethbridge-Stewart chose to ignore the implication that one of them had been drunk while working. He wasn’t their supervisor, and besides they at least were working without complaining about the money. ‘A funny walk?’ he asked, warning bells ringing in his head. This sounded familiar somehow.
‘Yeah, I came back and he was standing here walking in circles. Tried to talk to him but he ignored me, his own bloody brother, stone cold ignored me, then started walking in… Oh, what do you call them?’ He moved his right hand around in a weaving loop. ‘Figure of eight, yeah, that’s it.’
‘Weaving from one circle to another?’
‘Yeah, guess he was.’
The report from Paddington Station came to mind. ‘And did you see anybody at that time?’
‘Well, the hospital was pretty deserted, especially down here, but…’
‘The bloke in the army get-up,’ Alf said, finally stepping into the conversation. ‘Looked like he’d been in a horrific accident. Skin all burned. Thought it was just shadows at first, but it was definitely burned skin.’
Ralph was nodding along with his brother, then stopped, a thought coming to him. ‘Hang on, come to think of it I think I spotted him just before, too, when me and the taffy were having a quick smoke. Down by the mortuary.’
Was it possible that Arnold had removed himself? Lethbridge-Stewart had to concede it was at least slightly possible after all the things he’d seen in the past month. ‘How old was this man?’
‘Hard to say, what with all the burns,’ said Alf.
‘Yeah, but I’d guess late forties, maybe early fifties? About this tall,’ Ralph said raising his hand just below his own height.
It sounded like Arnold.
‘Thank you, gentlemen,’ Lethbridge-Stewart said, already planning on taking an inventory of the uniforms removed from the dead soldiers. He would happily place a bet that the one uniform missing was that which had belonged to the staff sergeant. He also needed to place a call to Dougie again, to get Sally to double-check those reports about the odd events in London since last night. They started out in Kenton, and that was not too far from here. Something told him they’d find a trail leading to Paddington Station.
Intentionally or not, Arnold was leaving breadcrumbs behind him.
Lethbridge-Stewart left the two brothers to their bickering and went back inside. He had been there in Piccadilly Circus Station, saw the blackened corpse of Arnold after that pyramid device thing went up in smoke. There was absolutely no doubt in his mind that the staff sergeant had died, the army MD who arrived shortly after had even confirmed it. First robotic Yeti controlled by an alien intelligence, then possession and now this… How things had changed for him since rescuing that boy in Tooting Bec.
He stopped for a moment outside the office he had commandeered, overcome with a feeling that the strangeness was far from over.
Ray was considered something of a recluse by the people of Bledoe, although that had not always been so. Four years earlier he had published the last of his ghost stories after twelve years of relative success. He’d done well on those books, made enough to be comfortable for a few years, and Bledoe had embraced his minor celebrity. Now he helped out here and there, just enough to keep his small fortune topped up, but he was considered by most as reclusive, a man who liked to keep his own company while he thought up new stories.
Nobody knew the truth.
He was a haunted man. It was the source of his own ghost stories, a fact he had never shared with anybody in Bledoe, although there were a few people who actively chose to ignore what they, too, knew. He had seen things when he was a kid, things that had never left him.
He now sat at the bar of The Rose & Crown enjoying a quiet tankard of ale, trying his best not to listen in on the conversation George Vine was having with Henry Barns, the pub landlord. It seemed that one of George’s sons was going through a rough patch. Everybody in Bledoe knew the Vine twins – two more helpful lads the village had never known – so it was a bit strange for Ray to hear George talk about them in such a way.
‘They’re young men now, George, they have to let go of the apron strings at some point.’
George nodded. ‘That’s not the problem, Henry. Lewis let go of those a couple of weeks ago, when the Watts’ came back from London, but Owain… Something queer is going on with him.’
‘Well, as long as he doesn’t start winking at my son, he can be as queer as he likes,’ Henry joked loudly and all the men at the bar laughed. Even George. Ray found himself laughing, too. ‘No fairies in this village, and if they ever do come here, they ain’t welcome in my pub.’
‘Don’t blame you,’ George agreed.
‘Always was a mummy’s boy, that one,’ Henry added, just to make it clear he wasn’t completely joking. ‘At least Lewis and that Watts boy are proper men, none of this long hair like they have in London. Proper short back and sides. What a young man should look like. Not surprised so few of them sign up for military service these days. They’d ball their eyes out if they had to cut their hair.’
For a moment George considered this, and Ray could see the cogs turning in his brain. He was really considering the possibility. Ray doubted that was the way Owain was going, and he said so.
‘Kids just like to fit in,’ he added. ‘We were all the same back in the day.’
All the men at the bar agreed.
‘He’s been like it ever since he went up to the Manor,’ George said, once he’d taken a sip of his pint.
By contrast, Ray missed his mouth with his own ale. He wiped his chin with the back of his sleeve. ‘The Manor? Last weekend?’
There were murmurs around the bar, everybody surprised by Ray’s sudden question. Even Fred Murray, sleeping off his eighth pint, looked up from where he was resting his head on the bar. It was one thing for Ray to make a quick comment, but to actually get involved in a conversation… George Vine narrowed his eyes – he’d never been Ray’s biggest fan.
‘Yeah, think so,’ George said, his tone carrying a warning. ‘Wanted to show the place to Watts. Lewis I can understand, but not Owain. Never seemed to be up for that kind of larking about, but then the boys have always done everything together.’
Ray tuned George out and let him and Henry continue to speculate. The light on at the Manor, it had been the Vine twins and the Watts’ boy. Ray quickly finished his pint and left the pub, barely remembering to say goodbye. His mind was full of the same feeling he’d had when he noticed the light on. Something had happened at the Manor again, and this tim
e Owain Vine was caught up in it.
He shuddered as he stepped outside the pub. It wasn’t the coldness of the weather. It was the memory of what had happened in Draynes Wood near the Manor back in ‘37.
He gathered his coat about him and set off, completely oblivious to the army truck that drove past the pub. All he could think about was talking to young Owain Vine.
By the time Lethbridge-Stewart returned to the London Regiment offices in Battersea, Sally was hard at work mapping out the odd events reported in London since Arnold decided to go for his early morning stroll.
Pins were stuck into a map of London, detailing the trail from St Mark’s to Paddington. Lethbridge-Stewart sat down on the edge of Dougie’s desk, a welcome mug of tea in his hands. Sally stood next to the map, explaining the route taken.
‘It seems that Staff Sergeant Arnold…’ At this she paused, her face showing her disbelief.
‘Takes a little getting used to, Corporal,’ Lethbridge-Stewart said. The door to the office was open and more of Dougie’s staff were in the ante-office; even though the only people in the office with him were his oldest friend and fiancée, Lethbridge-Stewart had order to maintain and spoke in his most official voice. ‘But I am convinced that it is indeed Arnold who has moved himself. How…? Well, that is something we shall learn in time.’
‘Hopefully,’ Dougie said behind him.
Lethbridge-Stewart raised an eyebrow and glanced back. ‘Quite so, Major,’ he said, barely able to keep his smile at bay. ‘As you were, Corporal Wright.’
‘Yes, sir.’ She turned back to the map. ‘It would appear he moved on foot and took the longest route, although judging by the time he left St Mark’s and arrived at Paddington we can assume he stopped a lot along the way. He took the A4088, some eight point seven miles, which would have taken a normal healthy person just under three hours. It took him almost the entire night, leaving St Mark’s at approximately oh-one-hundred and arriving at Paddington Station around 11:50am.’
The Forgotten Son Page 5
