Max Gilbert

by Simon Clark

  Chris explained that the Reverend Reed had to phone his bishop for permission to sell. Ruth listened, then burst out laughing.

  "What's so funny, Mrs Stainforth?"

  "He phoned who?"

  "The bloody Bishop. I gave him coins for the pay phone in the bar."

  "Chris, David and I watched the Reverend Reed as you waited by the car. We watched him go up to the bar and drink what looked like three neat gins straight off. The phone was right behind him. He never even touched it."

  "The ... scallywag. You can bet it's not church funds that are being bolstered, it's the Right Reverend's in there. Never mind. We're having the cannon delivered. And we've got them at a bargain price. Right." He clapped his hands. "It's back to the ranch. There's work to be done."

  They drove slowly by the white-painted cottages then by Out-Butterwick's village store. Tony Gateman and Mark Faust stood talking outside the front door. When they saw the Stainforths' car, both gave a friendly wave. Chris, Ruth and David waved back.

  Chris noticed that the two men, one large, the other small and thin, were still watching as they drove out of the village.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Mark heard the thud against the beach. A splash of blood showed dark against the pale sand. He looked up.

  Against the moon, the milky-white flash of the owl's wings beat the night air as it carried the mouse back to its nest. He shivered. Did it seem cooler tonight, or was it just him?

  The pace of events seemed to be quickening.

  It wasn't just the "feelings". Everyone in Out-Butterwick had those. They were getting so strong now it was an effort to sit still; you just wanted to jump itchily to your feet and pace around, like poor Brinley Fox.

  Not just the "feeling." Mark was beginning to see things too.

  And hear things. He heard it now.

  Mark Faust sat on the dunes, the beach some twenty feet below running out in a long curving arc. In front of him lay the sea-fort. The tide had begun its long roll in.

  It looked very different from the first time he had set eyes on it, that stormy night in December. He had been nearly split in two by the piercing cold as he had dragged himself from the surf. He remembered, vividly, the waves that thundered across his body like a locomotive. That night he had been a damn sight closer to death than life. His nose had bled from the re-opened cut from the man's fist. That man, with the rest of his pack, now lay at the bottom of the sea with the Mary-Anne. Sent there by a sixteen-year-old Mark Faust.

  The sea twinkled, catching the moonlight. Beneath the faint hiss of the surf he could hear it again. That sound he had heard so clearly on that December night all those years ago.

  A metal beat. Metal on metal, a deep, deep bass sound-so deep you felt it in your stomach rather than heard it ...

  ... Bang ... bang ... bang ... bang.

  Keep beating the drum, Skipper, he had thought as he limped away that night long ago. Keep beating the drum.

  Christ knows how. But from the hulk of the MaryAnne lying rusting on the ocean bed the sound came again. That beat, deadly slow, rhythmic, like the heartbeat of a sleeping giant.

  His nights were restless now. He dreamt of a dark torso, water-bloated arms and legs, a head without eyes; long, long, long white hair floating around the head in the water; the drowned figure beating the freezer walls with that same iron bar. Bang ... Bang ...

  Mark reached down between his legs, picked up a handful of sand, then rubbed it hard against his face. His skin was burning; the sand felt cool. He rubbed harder, its coarseness pushing the nightmare images back into his brain.

  The deep pounding continued. Perhaps no one else would notice it. But he couldn't stop hearing it. It went reverberating down into his soul, down into the depths of eternity.

  "I hear you, Skipper ... But in God's name what am I going to do?"

  Chapter Eighteen

  For the third time that evening Tony Gateman thought he heard prowlers in his back garden.

  He looked up from where he was sitting at the dining room table to the clock on the wall. Ten o'clock.

  "Bloody kids," he told himself softly. But he knew there were no kids out there.

  Shakily, he stood up, walked to the window and looked out.

  Nothing but darkness. If he really wanted to check that there was no one there he would have to go out into the back garden.

  "Come on, you silly old fool-there's nothing to be afraid of."

  But there is, Tony, old son, said the voice of common sense in the back of his mind. There is lots and lots to be afraid of. You know it. Don't go out there. The doors are locked, the windows are shut, just draw the curtains and--"Oh, God ... The bloody back door."

  He'd been out earlier to empty the pedal bin and he was sure he hadn't locked it.

  Heart thumping, he hurried from the dining room to the kitchen at the back of the bungalow. The door into the back garden was shut but unlocked.

  His first impulse was simply to drag the bolts shut and snap on the Yale lock. But a stronger impulse drew him to the door. No. He had to see if anything was out there.

  A deadly fascination compelled him. If there was something there, he had to see it. Just as you hear the crash of cars colliding, you have to turn and see, even though the scene might bring you nightmares for years to come.

  Fear oozed through him as thick as meat-worms as he slowly pulled back the door.

  Nothing immediately outside the door. Just the pale gleam of patio slabs before him on the ground. He stepped out into his garden and walked through the darkness toward the barbecue area, his head twitching left and right at every imagined movement or sound.

  Get back inside, Gateman, jabbered pure, naked fear inside his head. Get inside. Lock the doors. Hide, man, hide!

  No ... He had to look. If it was them he had to see.

  Maybe they were no longer dangerous. Maybe whatever it was they had gone through had changed them.

  He peered short-sightedly across the lawn. The night had turned everything into shadowy ghosts. The trees, bushes, the fence-posts. They even seemed to creep nearer when he was no longer looking at them.

  Get a grip on yourself, you idiot. There's nothing there. They are-

  Christ...

  There's one behind me.

  Gateman's heart lurched agonizingly in his chest and he nearly vomited with fear.

  He twisted around to see the figure behind him. It stood there, loosely wrapped in a winding-sheet. He backed away, his hands clutched to his mouth, trying to choke out a scream.

  It did not move. When the night breeze blew, the winding-sheet flapped gently.

  Tony Gateman dragged in a lungful of air.

  Idiot ...

  It's only the patio umbrella. He'd folded it up himself that afternoon so the breeze wouldn't yank the thing out of the ground.

  Even so, his nerves were shot. He blundered past it back to the bungalow, slammed the door behind him, snapped the bolts across-one, two, three-thumbed on the Yale lock, then, hands shaking crazily, slipped on the security chain.

  Better.

  Breathing deeply to steady his racing heart, he tottered across to a kitchen drawer, pulled out a tea towel, then mopped the oozing sweat from his face and hands.

  After straightening his glasses, he went around every single window, checking they were shut, and carefully closed the curtains.

  Now to kill the silence. Still unsteady, he made it back to the dining room. There he switched on the stereo, filling the room with Vivaldi's Four Seasons.

  Normally the music lifted his spirits and he would conduct invisible orchestras. Not now. It sounded eerily hollow in a home that seemed far too big and far too empty these days.

  He returned to the table where his books and files were neatly spread out. Work distracted him from his imagination which could gnaw him like a rat.

  First he pasted into a file a newspaper cutting.

  CLEETHORPES FISHERMAN MISSING PRESUMED DROWNED SAY COASTGUA
RD

  After a three-day-search, coastguards announced that there is little hope of finding the fisherman alive. Henry Blackwood, 49, of Parade Terrace, Cleethorpes, failed to return home from a fishing trip on Thursday. Despite an intensive search along a fifteen-mile stretch of coast, no trace of Mr. Blackwood or his twenty-foot cobble boat, the Suzanne, has been found.

  "Vanished without trace," whispered Tony Gateman to himself as he dabbed at the cutting with his handkerchief. "And I believe I know why."

  He turned the pages of his file. They were covered with yet more newspaper cuttings. The ones at the front of the file were now yellowing with age. All basically told the same story.

  MISSING AT SEA ... VANISHED WITHOUT TRACE ... ANGLER FAILS TO RETURN TO HOTEL. ... FISHERMAN WASHED OVERBOARD ... BODY NEVER FOUND ...

  Some were still heart-rending after all these years:

  TRAGIC DEATH OF OUT-BUTTERWICK HOLIDAY MAKER

  Eleven-year-old John Stockwell went for a paddle by himself, after telling his mother he was going to look for the "funny shells". He was never seen again.

  That was in broad daylight on a warm summer day.

  Tony sighed and closed the file. He picked up a ring binder. Stark black letters on the first page spelled out:

  SAF DAR

  He turned to the next page. It was filled with his own neat handwriting:

  Armies throughout history have always utilized their own particular brand of crack troops or warriors to inflict mayhem and dismay on the enemy. The Romans employed black Nubian warriors to terrify the Northern European foe. The Vikings had their Berserker ceremonies to turn their wildest warriors into frenzied fighting machines. Nazi Germany formed the feared Waffen SS.

  The Urdu people of the Indian sub-continent created the Saf Dar. Translated, Saf Dar means simply "breaker of the line."

  In those ancient times opposing armies would face one another in long lines, which can be shown thus:

  Army: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Opposing Army: oooooooooooooooooooooooo

  The two lines would advance in an orderly way toward each other. Each general's aim would be to force a way through his opponent's line of men to enable his own forces to rush through the gap and attack the line from the back or seek out the opposing army's commanders.

  Clearly what is needed is a special force to "break the line." Hence the Urdu people's Saf Dar.

  The Saf Dar were spectacularly vicious and brutal fighters. One can imagine them dressed in garish clothes, perhaps bright orange, to differentiate them from the common soldier on the field.

  The Saf Dar would not be great in number but-- Tony broke off to wipe the sweat dripping down his spectacle lenses.

  The Saf Dar would not be great in number but they would target a specific point in the enemy's line of soldiers, which can be simply shown thus:

  Enemy line: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

  S

  Urdu line: oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

  The elite warriors of the Saf Dar are represented thus: S

  The Saf Dar would charge screaming, brandishing their curving sabers. And even though wounded by arrows and spear thrusts nothing could deflect them from their bloody task: to break the line; which would allow the regular foot soldiers to pour through the breach and annihilate the opposition.

  One could imagine that the terrible sight of the Saf Dar rushing toward them would, alone, be sufficient to put the enemy to flight. He'd written that twenty years ago. Then it had seemed like an academic exercise; purely a hobby to while away Out-Butterwick's quiet winter evenings. Now he read it and he trembled. As the centuries rolled by the need for the Saf Dar evaporated.

  But in the twentieth century they returned. Or at least a group of men resurrected the name. Now as Tony thumbed through the file there were more newspaper cuttings, these bearing dates from the late 1940s and 1950s.

  CIVILIAN MASSACRE IN KOREA More than a hundred men, women and children slaughtered in Korean village.

  Survivors describe horrific events.

  Eight days ago mercenaries of mixed national and racial origins massacred the inhabitants of a farming village twenty miles from the Korean port of Pusan.

  A number of villagers had been spared, but not through any sense of clemency. They were blinded and left with the instruction they tell the authorities that a group known as the Saf Dar committed the atrocity. And that the Saf Dar would strike again.

  Tony flicked on through the file, reading a fragment of text here and there. Accounts of atrocities, murders, mass blindings. Sometimes this mercenary group that called themselves the Saf Dar would leave no survivors. But they always left their calling card. They would hack the hands and feet from their victims and use them as bloody paint brushes to daub on walls and the sides of buses: SAF DAR.

  Tony saw the graffiti in his mind's eye in huge wet letters-in the deepest red: SAF DAR ... SAF DAR ... SAF DAR ... The words would drip from a dozen walls.

  Saf Dar: The breakers of the line.

  After a time a pattern began to emerge. The Saf Dar prowled the trouble spots of South-East Asia, India and Africa during the late forties and fifties. The style was always the same-atrocities, civilian massacres, mass blindings, the same bloody graffiti: SAF DAR daubed wetly on vehicles and buildings.

  The Saf Dar's chosen role was simple. They would be employed by revolutionary groups, or even the governments of unstable countries, to break the spirit of the population. Their random massacres created a climate of fear and uncertainty. If the Saf Dar went to work in an area, they created floods of refugees that swamped other areas.

  In the late fifties the Saf Dar operated extensively in the Belgian Congo. Thousands of civilians died in their genocidal campaign in the Ruwenzori Mountains in the south-east of the country.

  Then they vanished as quickly, and as mysteriously, as they had come. The last recorded encounter was in Norway, north of Bergen, when they were disturbed in their rural hideout.

  After a gun battle with the local police they fled.

  For a while speculation suggested that the self-styled Saf Dar had been employed by anti-communist groups to enter Russia and destabilise the government as a prelude to a coup.

  Wild theories abounded, but the truth of the matter was that the Saf Dar had simply vanished from the surface of the earth.

  With the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam war there was far more to interest the media and intelligence personnel. The world forgot about the Saf Dar.

  Tony picked up his pen and on a fresh page he wrote:

  THE SAF DAR. WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

  A rhetorical question. He already knew.

  They were-

  His head snapped up. This time he heard the sound distinctly.

  The garden gate at the front of his house had swung shut with a thump. Someone had just entered-or just left-the garden.

  With a cold feeling draining through his stomach, he walked quickly to the back door, still clutching the SAF DAR file in his hands.

  "Hello ... Hello? Who's there?"