Coffin’s Dark Number

‘Hello, Slave.’ I called him this. David Edmondstone was someone I’d known at school and then lost sight of for a bit. The last year we’d seen each other regularly. If we’d had lags at the sort of school we went to, Dave would have been my fag. When we were “streamed” (that was their jargon for a sorting out process according to ability) I was A and he was C; that was the measure of our relationship. But when he came back I was glad to see him. He sort of fitted into my life. There had been a hole vacant and he came into it.

‘Hello, Tony. Long time no see.’

‘Only yesterday. And talk English.’ I’d never cure him of using second-rate slang.

He laughed. ‘Tony, I want to talk, I’m excited.’

He sounded it. ‘Well, what’s excited you?’

‘I’ve got a new girl. You ought to see her.’

‘Good.’ Perhaps this one will last. They didn’t usually. I mean no one wants fidelity but his turn-over was too rapid. I don’t know what he did to them. I didn’t take literally his remark about seeing her. I knew he wouldn’t let me see her; he never did.

‘Where did you meet her?’ Jean was waving at me not to make a long call of it, but Dave might go on for hours. ‘Where are you speaking from?’

‘Call-box outside Lowther’s.’ Lowther’s was a big all-night chemists which was a great place for night birds (which Dave and I intermittently were) in the New Cut Road. Fine old slum it have been at one time but now it was a newly built disaster area. ‘Oh, I met her around,’ he said vaguely. ‘You know.’

‘If you’re going to talk all night, let me know,’ whispered Jean.

I scowled at her, nodding my head like a mandarin. She didn’t know what to make of that and it kept her quiet for a bit. Always keep your signals contradictory, that’s a good rule with an opponent. It puzzles them and they don’t know what to do. Quite scientific really. All animals have aggression or submission signals which other animals of their kind recognize. The dog snarls or cringes. We smile and nod or else frown and clench our muscles. Then the other animal knows what to do. But mix the signals and this throws them.

‘You two,’ she muttered. ‘I don’t like to watch. I mean, it’s such a funny way to live.’

This time I smiled but shook my head slowly from side to side. Jean went and sat down, still keeping an eye on me. Dave was getting quite frantic on the end of the phone.

‘You there? You still there? Well, are you listening then? Well, it was a lovely night, lovely night …’ He was working himself up.

‘Calm it down, boy. So what did you do?’

‘Talked,’ he said dreamily. ‘We’re going on talking, too.’

‘Lovely,’ I said. ‘Is that all?’

‘No, then I came home and baby-sat for my sister. Those kids were a drag. Then I came out to phone you.’

‘It was a big evening then?’

‘Yes. What about you?’

‘Oh, Club, home, Jean, you know.’ I darted a look at Jean who was still watching. It crossed my mind she was expecting a call herself. ‘Cy get home?’

‘Yes, he certainly did.’ Stronger feeling than even that aroused by his girl friend coloured his voice. ‘And wasn’t he sour! Came in, sat down in his chair and started writing his notes. Didn’t say good evening or thank you for staying here or anything. He makes me sick. So I came out.’

David Edmondstone was Cy’s brother-in-law and he lodged with his sister and Cy. Dave had gone away for a time to work in Birmingham but now he was back. In a way it was through knowing Dave that I found my way into the Club. Of course, it wasn’t really a club till it got me. More of a loose association of people with a common interest. It was me and John Plowman that shaped it.

‘How have you soured him up?’ asked Dave.

How had we?

‘I didn’t know he kept notes,’ I said.

‘Well, he does. After every meeting. And sometimes he puts things on a tape. Not always. Just every so often. Not that I’ve seen. But I’ve heard him talking away to himself.’

‘How do you know he has a tape recorder?’

‘I’ve had a look round.’ Dave laughed. ‘Maggie doesn’t know. And every so often he talks into it.’

‘How often?’

‘Well, I’m not watching him all the time. Not only that wouldn’t be right, it wouldn’t be easy.’ In a way Dave ran away from home when he went to Birmingham. He said it was because his sister beat him. I didn’t exactly believe him but I dare say she might have done. Or there’s Cy. Since you ask me about him, I’ve always thought he was a bit of a sadist. I saw a strap hanging on the wall of their kitchen. And they don’t have a dog as far as I know. Dave was a bit slow in those days. But when he got back he’d grown up a lot.

‘Since I’ve been here he’s only done it a few times. But I tell you what: sometimes I think he plays back things he’s done earlier. Yes, I think so.’

‘I wonder what he puts on it?’ I thought he was probably keeping his own record of sightings and investigations and no doubt adding a few sharp words about me and John Plowman. He was creating a Club of One.

‘He keeps it locked up,’ said Dave regretfully. ‘He’s got a little case where he keeps things. Regular old Bluebeard is Cy.’ He laughed.

This isn’t the image I would have found if my sister had been married to him, but Dave’s imagination was as limited as his mother’s had been. I just remembered his mother. Her idea of bringing up a boy was to whack him soundly every so often. At intervals she would go away from home and disappear for a few months. I think they really got on better when she was away than when she came back. I had an idea that Dave was going to take after her and turn into a disappearer. He was shaping that way.

I was shifting round vaguely in this conversation with Dave, trying to get at something – I didn’t quite know what. Perhaps Cy was up to something. I didn’t know. I just felt a pool of unease inside me.

‘I must go now,’ said Dave, almost as if it had been me that kept him talking. ‘Tomorrow?’

‘Tomorrow,’ I agreed, although I hadn’t really made up my mind about tomorrow. I like to feel free.

Jean watched me finish the conversation. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘You worry me, you two. Such a funny way to live.’

Personally, I thought hers was a funny way to live, always dreaming over the teapot. She was only twenty-two and pretty. And my dad’s way, wasn’t that funny, worrying over his birds’ breeding habits?

I heard Dad coming in from the back. This hastened me.

‘Remember, even a sad and lonely life can be beautiful,’ I said, giving her a smile as I passed.

I went back upstairs, drew back my curtains so I could see the sky. Clearly not the kind of night for a sighting. Anyway, John didn’t expect anything over this neighbourhood at the moment. There was something unfavourable about our position. Perhaps it was just all the policemen. He thought in the direction of the New Forest was the most likely spot. There were signs, he said.

It was always through John that our messages and first intimations of a sighting came. Afterwards Cy told us the scientific explanation and I wrote it up, but John knew all about it first. I wondered about this sometimes.

I took out my papers. I knew Jean worried about me. But she didn’t need to. I had my life well arranged.

Like Cy I made notes and kept records. I had an account of all the weekly meetings. I had a brief on each sighting of a UFO involving a Club member. When a special expedition had been launched by John Plowman then I had it all down: how information of the incident reached us first, with times and dates, when the checking expedition set off, again with times and dates, and the results.

I looked at my notes, then raised my head to stare at the dark starless sky. I felt so alone, but I wasn’t really alone, there were a hundred little dark figures tagging around with me. I have a very crowded memory. I feel sometimes that I can remember everything that happened to everyone in the whole wide world. But this can’t be, it must just be that I’m a sensitive boy. Now I kept thinking about murder and there had to be a reason for it.

I knew why Jean was sitting hunched over her teapot.

The last child that had disappeared was a kid she taught. Did I tell you Jean was a teacher? Yes, she’s a clever girl really. Brave, too, eight to eleven is the age range she specializes in. It’s the best age, she says. When I asked for what, she simply smiled at me and let it go.

Had eleven been the best age for Katherine Gable? Katherine Gable, eleven last June, third of a family of nine. The only girl. On Thursday June 26 Katherine had eaten her supper and gone out to play with little friend Milly Lee in Saxe-Coburg Street. Little friend Milly had come home in due time and gone to bed. When questioned she said that she had only played a little while in Saxe-Coburg Street with Katherine. No one had seen Katherine again.