Break of Dark

by Robert Westall

  ‘Going to have it processed in the police lab?’ asked young Thomas eagerly.

  Sergeant Nice thought of the comedians at the Police Social, and shook his head.

  ‘I can get it done for you,’ said Thomas. ‘Cheap. Twenty-four-hour service. I’ll run it up in the car myself. I know a guy through the camera club.’

  Sergeant Nice frowned. He had no great opinion of the guys Thomas knew. Most of them sold Thomas things like duff Hong Kong tape recorders at ridiculously cheap prices.

  ‘This guy’s at the Ilford labs,’ said Thomas, shuffling. ‘I’ll tell him to be careful.’

  ‘Tell him to be very, very careful,’ said Sergeant Nice.

  When he got back to the police station, carrying the cine-camera, there was a message for him to ring Super Green. ‘I’ll make you a cup of tea while you do it,’ said his wife sympathetically.

  From the jovial play-acting tone in Super Green’s voice, and from a certain hollow feeling in the telephone Sergeant Nice could tell that Chief Super Higginson was listening in on the extension. That and Higginson’s stentorian smoker’s breathing, which sounded on the phone like the beast from 20,000 fathoms.

  ‘What, what, what’s all this I hear?’ asked Green, with bogus joviality. ‘An outbreak of street thefts in your manor, Bainbridge?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Sergeant Nice woodenly.

  ‘Can’t have this, you know. Graymouth’s a family resort – must be kept safe for kiddies. Isn’t that what you told the Evening News?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘People will be stopping going to Graymouth if this goes on – regular crime wave, Bainbridge – getting like Chicago. People will be saying it’s not safe to walk the streets in broad daylight. Cameras, bathing-costumes . . . not a nice experience having your bathing-costume stolen, Bainbridge – especially when it’s wet.’

  Higginson was trying to stop himself laughing; it sounded like the beast from 20,000 fathoms was starting to eat people.

  ‘What are you doing about it, Bainbridge?’

  ‘We’re keeping our eyes open, sir.’

  ‘What do you normally do – walk around with them shut? You want to watch that or you’ll fall over the cliff into the sea.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘What’s your theory, Bainbridge? Or do the police admit themselves baffled? I thought I’d be reading in the paper that you’d called in the Yard by this time.’

  ‘It’s a sneak thief working round the clocktower. Snatching things while people are looking the other way.’

  ‘He snatched anything today?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘What?’

  Sergeant Nice closed his eyes in dread. ‘Six crash helmets and four pairs of motor-cycling gauntlets.’

  ‘Say that again,’ said Super, ominously. ‘Six crash helmets! Do you mean to tell me a sneak thief can make off in Graymouth carrying six brightly coloured crash helmets, in broad daylight, and not a single member of the local constabulary notice him?’

  ‘He may have put them into something, sir,’ Sergeant Nice said miserably.

  ‘You mean – no, let me guess – in a bag marked SWAG or something?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘And you haven’t a clue – you literally haven’t a clue?’

  Sergeant Nice was very tempted to tell him about the cine-film then. But something could still go wrong: old film, fogged developing. Better to be prudent – he didn’t want to be any more of a laughing-stock than he already was.

  ‘Pull your bloody socks up, Bainbridge, or I’ll have you shifted. That clocktower’s in front of the police station, isn’t it?’

  When Green hung up, Higginson was laughing audibly. They both were. They’d have laughed on the other side of their faces, if they’d known what was to follow.

  At five o’clock the next afternoon, young Thomas shouted and waved from his shop when Sergeant Nice was still the other side of Front Street. He was positively jumping up and down, like a chimpanzee before a tea party, causing passing holiday-makers to give him odd looks and his shop a wide berth.

  He seized Sergeant Nice by his neatly starched shirt. The sergeant removed the sweaty hands with some distaste.

  ‘C’mon, c’mon – I’ve got my projector set up in the back room – it’s incredible – incredible. You won’t believe it!’

  From the look on Mrs Thomas’s face, the chimp act had been going on for some time, and she obviously laid all the blame at the sergeant’s door. Ignoring her ominous silence, Thomas bustled the sergeant into the back room, which was so dark that the sergeant walked straight into the projector, almost sending it crashing to the floor, and practically had to grope and crawl to a seat.

  ‘All set!’ yodelled Thomas. ‘All set? Columbia Pictures present . . . the greatest mystery of all time . . . fit to stand with the sea drama of the Mary Celeste . . .’

  The projector began to whirr. A perfectly focused picture of the clocktower bloomed on the screen, after the flashed sequence of numbers. It really couldn’t have been clearer. There were the motorbikes; there were the bikers. The scene brightened momentarily, before the electronic exposure meter adjusted. A bright white glow coming from the right, lighting up the right-hand side of the bikers’ faces.

  ‘That’s the street light exploding,’ said young Thomas, needlessly.

  The bikers’ faces turned towards the light; looks of glee appeared on them. The bikers as a man ran off to the right and out of the picture. Other passers-by remained, motionless, looking at the invisible shower of sparks that lit up their faces. Nobody looking anywhere near the horse trough. Except the camera . . . Now for it! Now for a picture of the thief, good enough to give to every policeman in Oldcastle.

  Nobody. Nobody. Nobody went near the horse trough.

  The light from the right faded. The bikers began to drift back towards their bikes. One looked into the trough, saw his helmet was missing, began to gesticulate . . .

  The reel of film ran out and the screen went blank, then dark.

  ‘Run it through again,’ said Sergeant Nice, letting out a long-held breath.

  ‘I didn’t spot it the first time either,’ said young Thomas, smugly.

  This time the sergeant watched the piled helmets in the horse trough. Their bulbous, shiny tops were quite visible over the rim. He ignored the departing figures of the bikers, kept his eyes so fixed on the helmets that he did not even blink.

  ‘Stop!’ said the sergeant. ‘Run it back a bit. Now on again. Good God, I don’t believe it! Run it through again.’

  They ran it through ten times in all, while the sergeant chain-smoked four of the five cigarettes he allowed himself a day. Finally he said, and he was glad the room was in darkness,

  ‘The helmets don’t just vanish . . . they sink. Through the bottom of the trough . . .’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Thomas, breathily. ‘They just sink. Did you see one of them suddenly roll clear of the rest?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve got it all worked out,’ said Thomas, triumphantly. ‘I’ve had time to think about it. That horse trough’s a fake; it’s got a false bottom. Did you know, there’s an old manhole cover under there? I worked it out from the pattern of cobbles in the road. What a way to nick things! Everybody puts their bags in that trough. Distract people’s attention, work the trap door and, bingo, you’ve got a new Japanese camera. Crafty sods, lurking down a manhole cover.’

  ‘Let’s go and have a look,’ said Sergeant Nice, heavily. He knew there was something wrong with the whole theory.

  They walked across and stared down into the sunlit depths of the horse trough. A woman was sitting on the far edge of the trough, with her bag inside, among the crisp bags and lolly-sticks. Sergeant Nice asked her to move it and herself; and for once he wasn’t nice about it. He cleaned out the litter thoughtfully, as if he were recovering the Crown Jewels.

  There was no crack or slit anywhere in the horse trough. Like most of its kind, it ha
d been carved from one massive block of limestone. Sergeant Nice went over every inch of its surface, scraping away with his massive, many-bladed Swiss pocket-knife.

  Nothing.

  ‘That’s mad!’ exploded Thomas. ‘There’s got to be a trap door. We’ll have to look from underneath – down the sewer.’ People began to stare at him curiously. Sergeant Nice hauled him away by brute force, just in time.

  They timed Operation Sewer for four a.m. Sergeant Nice had got a book out of the library which said that the flow of sewage was least then. It also mentioned choking concentrations of methane gas and the danger of being caught underground by a heavy rainstorm. Sergeant Nice did not mention this to Thomas, but he checked the midnight weather forecast; drought continuing.

  They covered up the whole operation as a spot of night fishing; that would account for the old clothes and waders and possible smell on returning home. There was also the worry of Constable Hughes, covering the whole of Graymouth on his solitary Panda-duty. But Constable Hughes had been dealt with fairly thoroughly. Orders to keep his eyes open for a streaker on the golf-links up the coast.

  ‘Any description?’ asked Constable Hughes hungrily; he was a badly over-married man.

  ‘About five-feet-eight, long blonde hair, aged about eighteen.’

  ‘Female?’ Constable Hughes’ eyes positively bulged. It was like feeding candy to a baby.

  ‘Old biddy who phoned in reckoned the young ’uns are holding orgies on the beach.’

  No more trouble in that direction. Sergeant Nice still had his personal radio on the car seat beside him. Every time Hughes came on the air, he seemed a little further north.

  ‘Right,’ said Sergeant Nice, coming out of his professional doze at 3.45 precisely. They drove up St George’s Road. Young Thomas leapt out, eager to try his newly invented patent hook for lifting manhole covers, as if he were taking part in the D-Day landings. By the time Nice had parked the car, he had lifted a square manhole set in the pavement that even an idiot could see was marked GPO.

  The relevant manhole, as Sergeant Nice had feared, was right in the middle of the road. Even at four a.m., that was a bit nervous-making. They fished a clutter of red diversion signs and flashing beacons out of the boot. By the time they had finished, the diversion looked quite convincing. The beacons looked cosy, their beams exaggerating every stone in the tarmac.

  The sewer lid lifted easily. Iron rungs descended out of sight. Sergeant Nice led; the rungs were slippery under his waders, but the smell wasn’t too bad, only cloyingly human, like a bed that’s been slept in too often. But the round manhole shaft was too narrow; not physically but mentally. Nice felt like a worm burrowing down through solid rock.

  At the bottom, the heat of the sewage clamped round his waders up to the knee. There seemed to be stones lying on the bottom, half-bricks that turned treacherously under his feet. He stood clear of the ladder and switched on his rubber torch. A six-foot worm-hole of black brick stretched away on either side, glistening. Drops of warm bath-like water dripped off the roof on to his hair. The air was thick with smelly steam, like the Borneo jungle; he kept on wanting to hold his breath, breathe shallow. He made himself breathe deeply.

  Which way? He had a sudden flush of panic. If he turned the wrong way, they could end up wandering through the maze that lay under Oldcastle. Fool! Sewers ran downhill to the sea.

  Thomas arrived with a thumping splash that put drops on Sergeant Nice’s face. He wiped them off carefully with a hanky; they left pale brown stains on the clean linen. ‘You’ve taken your time!’

  ‘Had to close the manhole quietly, didn’t I?’

  Closing it had been Thomas’s own idea; Nice didn’t like it. Suppose when they got back, somebody had parked a car on top? Suppose their torches gave out?

  ‘Switch your light on,’ he said savagely. ‘Let’s go. I don’t want to write my memoirs down here.’

  ‘Your what?’

  ‘Scrub it!’

  They seemed to wade on and on. Only two hundred yards, thought Sergeant Nice. In his youth, he had run that in twenty-two seconds. It didn’t feel like it tonight. The black worm-hole went straight, without bend or curve. The sewage flowed forward at the same pace as they walked, so that the same patterns of oily iridescent scum and toilet paper, bobbing bottles and furred mounds of potato peelings kept pace with them, unvarying. As if they were walking on a treadmill staying for ever in the same place. Time had no meaning, space had no meaning in this bowel of the earth. Timelessness. Spacelessness. Warm water dripping on to them; warm sweat dripping off them. If they slipped and drowned, who would know? Someone would clear away the flashing beacons in the morning thinking them a joke . . . was this how methane poisoning felt, this strange other-worldliness? The book hadn’t said what the symptoms were.

  It was a relief to pass a side-channel, down which the sewage poured faster, breaking the surface of the scum. The smell here was horrific: sulphuric acid, man-hating; he supposed that in the main sewer, the scum kept the smell trapped, inside those great greasy bubbles that floated past like dead bloated animals. Mounds of khaki detergent-foam had built up round the side-inlet; they had to force their way through, up to their necks. The torch dimmed ghostly as it passed through the foam.

  Still, they made progress. It was even comforting to meet a rat, up to its whiskers in scum, but swimming cheerfully and briskly, till its tiny eyes glowed red in the light of the torch and it fled away with frantic splashing. Good to meet something else alive.

  Drip, drip, drip.

  Suddenly Sergeant Nice knew quite positively that they would meet nothing human down here. Who would put up with this stench for all the Japanese cameras in the world?

  The thought struck him like a bomb. Nothing human.

  Something inhuman? That cared no more for the stench and heat and wetness than the rat?

  Far ahead, in the swing of his torch-beam, the bottom of another ladder swam into view, like a pale skeleton furred with dried slime until its limbs were nearly as fat as a man’s.

  ‘We’re here,’ he announced roughly. Another round black worm-hole rose vertically above his head. He took a shallow breath and began to climb, rung by rung, stamping down his feet, making a hollow thrumming noise. What was he doing that for? To warn something? To frighten it, up there in the dark above?

  It was a long climb up in pitch darkness. Front Street was on the cliff top, and the sewer would have run down to sea-level here, preparing to flow out into the harbour across the rocks. Sergeant Nice could feel every cubic ton of the wet sandstone cliff around him; dark, ageless, beyond the comprehension of man. Again that other-worldly feeling crept over him.

  His head hit the underside of the manhole cover with a painful thud, so that he almost took his hands off the ladder to contain the pain. He clung to the metal rung with one hand and got out his torch with the other. He couldn’t get the torch out fast enough. If there was anything to see, he would see it now.

  Nothing. Or rather, a circle of black, featureless bricks, a rusty ladder and the rusty underside of the manhole cover. He swung the torch to and fro aimlessly. He tried lifting the cover; got his shoulders to it, neck bent, and heaved upwards till the iron ladder creaked and cracked warningly in its brick fastenings. Of course the manhole wouldn’t move; it had several tons of limestone horse trough on top of it. He tapped it; it had no hollow ring. It sounded as if it had several tons of limestone on it.

  Nothing; or exactly what anyone but Thomas would have expected. Not a sign of disturbance, not a crack or scrape in the brickwork. Sergeant Nice thought for a moment of his wife sleeping peacefully in the police station, across the cool fresh air of moonlit Front Street. Then, with a growl in his throat, he started down again. Forced young Thomas to climb up in turn and poke about.

  ‘I want you satisfied. I don’t want to bring you down here again.’

  Thomas seemed to poke a long time, disconsolately; his figure, far above, outlined by a pool of torchlight
at the end of a long black dwindling tunnel, remote as a star. Finally, he came clumping down.

  ‘Satisfied?’ It came out like a curse.

  Thomas nodded, dumbly.

  ‘Shall we look a bit further – down to the sea?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Thomas defiantly. They waded on, very tired now. The sludge overtook them a little, objects left them behind and dwindled away into the dark beyond their torches. A dream of space and time and endless journeying. That was how it felt, an endless journeying through the black between the stars; lifetime after lifetime . . . Sergeant Nice shook his head angrily to clear it. Methane.

  They came to where the old brick sewer became new concrete pipe, and a few bits of seaweed were stuck to the sewer wall. A sharp smell of the sea cut through the gaseous filth. They tapped on the sides of the concrete sewer and the concrete boomed like metal. They rejoiced, knowing that out there was the open air, and the waters of the harbour and the dawn.

  ‘Seen enough?’

  They turned back, suddenly eager to hurry, as if afraid their luck would run out before they reached the light. The sewer stream was against them now, kickable, rippling round their waders. Their wading broke the scum, the fat greasy bubbles burst and the smell of sulphuric acid tormented their lungs. Dark, cold, endlessly black without hope . . . Methane. Keep going. Methane.

  Past one skeletal ladder. Finally, up to a second. Leaden legs, climbing it. For an awful second, the sewer lid refused to give. Then they were out, dumping paraphernalia in the car boot, and sitting in the car drinking coffee and watching for the coming of dawn, with their stinking waders lying outside like crumpled black corpses on the pavement.

  They sat silent a long time. Then an early milk-float whirred and clinked past and broke the spell. Simultaneously they turned to each other and said,

  ‘You bloody faked that reel of film, didn’t you?’