The Camp

by Guy N Smith

  ‘It’s probably a phantom.’ His voice lacked conviction.

  ‘No, it isn’t!’ she snapped angrily. ‘It’s real and I’m going to have it, Gwyn, whatever you say!’

  ‘I think you’ve …’ He checked himself just in time, saw that the man on the end of the bench had opened his eyes. I think you’ve been having it off with somebody else, personally.

  ‘You think I’ve what, Gwyn?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ He leaned against the table, his legs felt very weak. ‘I wish we’d got the time on us. They might have had the decency to put a clock in here. I wish this bloody doctor of theirs would get his finger out.’

  ‘Don’t swear, please, Gwyn.’

  Same old Ruth, she hadn’t lost any of her starchiness in spite of all this.

  ‘We’ll be snowed in if they don’t get a move on,’ Billy Evans grunted. ‘It’ll be too deep even to walk through. They’ve no right keeping us here. The commies have taken over, that’s what’s happened. A breakdown of law and order because everybody’s gone south and these lefties who’ve been hiding in the shadows have seized their chance. They’ve taken the country over, these chaps in grey uniforms are their secret police, you mark my words.’

  Gwyn shifted his position, turned his back towards the other. Ignore him, treat him with contempt. I haven’t got the energy to get involved in political arguments.

  ‘I think I can hear somebody coming,’ Ruth broke a long silence.

  Footsteps outside, pausing outside the door. A faint click and they saw the grey steel door sliding smoothly open, the security men entering first, different ones this time, followed by a tall silver-haired man in a white coat. The latter was undoubtedly the long-awaited medic.

  ‘Ah, Mr and Mrs Mace,’ he smiled, came forward. ‘I’m sorry to hear you’ve had problems but I’m sure it’s nothing serious. Now, if I could just have a quick look at you,’ out of his breast pocket he produced two thermometers, ‘let me just check your temperatures.’

  A bloody school medical, Gwyn thought, sitting there on the edge of the table with a thermometer stuck in his mouth like a cigarette. Humour them, they’ve got us by the short and curlies. Ruth had a slim glass cylinder in her mouth, too; she seemed to be taking it very seriously. But everything was serious where Ruth was concerned, she had no sense of humour.

  ‘That seems fine.’ Professor Morton noted the readings, wiped the thermometers on a piece of tissue and put them back in his pocket. ‘As I thought, nothing radically wrong with either of you. Stress is your problem, you need to rest, nothing more.’

  ‘Doctor,’ Ruth stood up, moved close to him, ‘tell me, I am pregnant, aren’t I?’

  Morton was taken aback, eyes widening behind his glasses. ‘Mrs Mace, I really can’t tell you that. You’ll have to have a pregnancy test when you get home if you really think you are expecting a baby. Your own GP will advise you accordingly. I’m not here to examine you on that score, merely to ascertain that you are both well enough to travel.’

  ‘Travel!’ Gwyn Mace echoed. ‘Where are we travelling to?’

  ‘I’m recommending that you return home,’ the other spoke kindly, condescendingly. ‘Really, it’s the best place for you both, in your own surroundings, away from the hurly-burly of a camp like this. I had to make sure that you were capable of driving, though, Mr Mace. You do feel up to it, don’t you?’

  ‘Sure, I’ll be fine.’ Anything to get away from this bloody madhouse!

  ‘Good, that’s excellent. If you’d like to walk to the end of the corridor there’s a car waiting to take you back to your chalet. But I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until morning before leaving the camp, you’ve had a tiring experience, particularly your wife, and I think it would be unwise to travel until you’re both rested.’

  ‘All right,’ Gwyn agreed, another few hours were neither here nor there. ‘Come on, Ruth.’

  Ruth glanced back at the Evanses, they looked so tired and dejected. ‘Goodbye.’ She extended a hand, dropped it back down, they weren’t interested, barely acknowledged her. ‘And thank you again for helping me. I don’t know how I would have managed without you.’

  You patronising bitch, Gwyn strode on ahead of her, it’s a bloody wonder you don’t apologize to them for inconveniencing them, holding them up!

  Behind him he heard the door sliding shut again.

  ‘Ah, Mr and Mrs Evans,’ Morton approached the couple seated on the bench against the wall, ‘I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, all this must have been very trying for you.’

  ‘You can say that again!’ Billy Evans was tight-lipped and angry. ‘You’ve no business holding us here like bloody prisoners. Let us go or I’ll have my lawyer on you.’

  ‘I won’t keep you long.’ Morton drew something out of his top pocket, shielded it with his hand so that the others were unable to see it. ‘You haven’t been well, you know. The weather, probably, the British climate is responsible for a host of illnesses.’

  ‘You’re not taking my temperature!’ Evans grunted, stood up. ‘I’m not a bloody schoolkid, you know, so you can put that away for a start!’

  ‘Billy,’ Valerie Evans shrieked, had craned her head so that she could see what the ‘doctor’ was holding, ‘it’s not a thermometer, it’s a syringe. He’s going to inject us!’

  ‘I assure you it’s perfectly harmless and you won’t feel a thing,’ Morton laughed, ‘just a little something to calm your nerves, and then you’re going to be taken back to your chalet, and in the morning you’ll feel as right as rain. I promise.’

  ‘Chalet! What bloody chalet? We’ve just come from our own house and you’re trying to stop us leaving like everybody else is. I was right, you lot ’ave taken the country over. You’re a bleedin’ commie like the rest of ’em!’

  Morton sighed, turned to the two uniformed men who stood with their backs to the closed door. ‘Gentlemen, I should be grateful for your assistance. No more force than is necessary, though. Now, please, Mr and Mrs Evans …’

  ‘Don’t you dare touch us!’ Billy had his fists raised, pushed himself in front of his wife. ‘Try anything and you’ll get a fourpenny one. I’ll ’ave you lot for bloody assault and it’ll cost you …’

  The uniformed men moved in with precision and speed. Not so much as a scuffle, and within a second the protesting couple were rendered helpless, held firmly but not painfully.

  ‘Good,’ Morton’s smile was one of satisfaction as he pulled up Billy’s sleeve, ‘you won’t feel more than the tiniest of pricks, I assure you. There!’

  ‘You …’ Billy’s eyes were already beginning to glaze over, his mouth moved mutely.

  ‘Just a sedative, nothing more,’ he moved towards the struggling woman, ‘and now you, Mrs Evans …’ Valerie was starting to scream hysterically, a screech that died away as quickly as it had begun. She went limp in the arms of her captor.

  ‘Lift them on to the table, please.’ Morton was curt now, as though his earlier self-confidence had been a front that was collapsing. A slight edginess, a man who doubted the results of his own experiments. C-551 had been a success, the antidote was still untried on a human brain.

  He put the syringe back in its case, produced another one, held it up to the light to check the contents. A movement of his hand indicated to the watchers that they were required to move away. He bent over the inert bodies, searched carefully for a vein. Precise now, perhaps nervous, but his hand was steady.

  ‘Marvellous!’ He stood back, let out a small sigh. ‘I thought they might be troublesome. Now, after dark, return them to their chalet and put them to bed,’ he smiled, ‘undress them and tuck them up like tired little children who have stayed out too late and have fallen asleep on the way home. Understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the taller of the two men nodded. ‘We’ll attend to it. Nobody will see us.’

  ‘Excellent. And when they wake up in the morning they won’t remember a thing. They will just carry on with their annual working
class holiday.’ He sniggered. ‘And, of course, it will have stopped snowing!’

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘I thought you’d run out on me, Jeff.’ There was relief in Norman’s tone. They were sitting at the tables on the patio outside the fish and chip salon overlooking the boating lake. Norman Tong tried not to keep looking across towards the island, told himself that the murdered girl could not have been Sarah. A tiny stubborn voice inside him kept insisting that it was.

  ‘No, I wouldn’t do that.’ Jeff cut off a piece of battered fish with a plastic knife, forked it into his mouth. ‘I knew you’d do your own thing whether I was there or not. If those guys in grey were going to pull you in then there was no point in both of us losing our freedom, was there?’

  ‘You’re right.’ Norman screwed up his greasy papers, tossed them towards a litter bin. They hit the rim and bounced off. There was sense in what the other said. ‘But I can’t get over the state Ruth Mace was in, and, Christ, did you see how they were togged up?’

  ‘Some kind of winter hallucination,’ the other looked thoughtful, ‘which only goes to emphasise my suspicions. There’s some sort of experiment going on there which they’re trying to cover up. Ann, my girl, knows all about it. She’s terrified but she daren’t let on what she knows, even to me. In a way that gives me a free hand because I won’t involve her. But I’m frightened for her, she might just disappear. I’ve been thinking that if I could only get her away from the camp …’

  ‘You mean kidnap her?’

  ‘Nothing quite so melodramatic as that,’ Jeff smiled, ‘but she wants to leave. Last night she wanted me to drive her away, just like that. Maybe if we’d gone into town we wouldn’t have come back. We’ll never know because somebody was one step ahead of us and let my tyres down. Now I have to rethink my plans.’

  ‘You can count me in, whatever they are.’

  ‘Thanks, mate, you’ve no idea how I appreciate that. Between us we have to 1) find your girl 2) get mine clear of the camp. And, don’t forget, we don’t eat in that restaurant. My guess is that they’re slipping something into our food.’

  ‘But everybody else seems okay.’

  ‘Selected victims, it has to be that. Why they want me, I’ve no idea. But they obviously picked out your friends, the Maces. And that guy and his woman who got killed. Sarah could be somewhere, still alive and … quite safe.’

  ‘Let’s hope. But what’s our next move?’

  ‘Not easy.’ Jeffs crumpled papers landed in the bin. ‘With luck Ann will come round to my place tonight. Lateish, around ten-thirty to eleven. Maybe you’d like just to turn up. There’s safety in numbers!’ It was meant as a joke but it didn’t sound funny. ‘In the meantime I suggest we go our own separate ways. If this thing is really big, and I suspect it is judging by the methods they’re using, then we don’t want to be seen together. Nothing to be gained by both fish landing in the same net.’

  Norman felt his flesh goose pimpling. What the other said was common sense. ‘So we just idle the rest of the day away separately.’

  ‘Something like that,’ Jeff Beebee eased himself out of his seat. ‘I might go for a swim or lie on the beach. You do whatever takes your fancy, Norm.’

  Norman watched the other walk away, felt the loneliness seeping back. Together it didn’t seem as bad, now he was back to believing that Sarah really was the murder victim on that island across there.

  He was restless, could not come to terms with the idea of lazing on a beach. He needed something to do, something to occupy his mind. As he walked away he saw in the distance the chairlift, a number of tiny cable cars jerking their way along a line that led towards the beach. Dots that were people in them, leaning over to look down, maybe enjoying a feeling of vertigo. It was better than sitting in a deckchair or just mooching aimlessly. And you could get off by the beach and come back on the miniature railway, take a tour of the camp that way.

  Norman began to walk quickly in the direction of the chairlift starting point, a huge raised hanger-type building. There was a queue, he could see the tail end of it spilling out down as far as the junior scrambling area. It didn’t matter, he had all day and most of the evening to while away.

  There were two sets of cable cars, going in opposite directions. A regular relay, you could ride them all day if you fancied, perhaps some people did. The queue moved, a batch was loaded up, two to a cab, children to be accompanied by an adult according to the prominent notice board. Norman joined the throng, leaned against the barrier.

  The cars touched down, their passengers scrambled down on to terra firma. There was an attendant, a small man in jeans and a brown leather jacket with short cut hair. He appeared only just to have taken over, was giving the surprised youth who had done the morning shift a cigarette. The latter smiled, dashed away. He obviously had an unexpected afternoon off, Norman thought. This place had a high proportion of casual workers, a way of keeping the wages bill to a minimum; you couldn’t really blame the owners.

  ‘Right, everybody aboard,’ the supervisor had a soft voice, Norman doubted whether it could be heard above the chatter of excited holidaymakers, ‘two to a car, all children to be accompanied by an adult. Hurry along, please!’

  Norman found himself a car, took the far seat, left the nearer one for somebody else. In spite of the number of travellers people seemed to be fussy about where they sat. A couple with a young teenager whose mother seemed over-protective; the boy made as if to join Norman but was roughly called back by the woman.

  ‘No, you don’t, Alan,’ she had a high-pitched voice, ‘I’m not ’avin you where we can’t look after you. You sit with me, your dad’ll go in there.’

  ‘But I want to sit there!’ Petulant, trying to squirm out of her grasp but she held him tightly.

  ‘No bloomin’ fear, you ain’t goin’ on yer own and that’s that. We know you, climbin’ all over the place, leanin’ out, acting the goat. Come ’ere and stop strugglin’, will yer? Jim, get in there and I’ll see to Alan.’

  Her husband obeyed without question, hauled himself into the vacant seat, dropped the safety bar. He sat looking straight ahead of him, a long-suffering husband who took the line of least resistance.

  ‘Now, you come with me, you little bugger!’ The woman dragged her son back down the platform. ‘Thanks to your playin’ up we’ve lost those seats behind yer dad now. Hurry up, there’s two more down there.’ The supervisor ignored family squabbles, busied himself checking that all the safety bars were firmly in place, reached the end of the line and walked back, meticulously inspecting all the cable fasteners on each car. Pushing them, pulling them, swinging his full weight on some to ensure that they were fastened securely. He paused by Norman’s car, adjusted a nut with a spanner, moved on to the next one.

  A brief hush from the passengers, for the first-timers it was a slightly apprehensive experience, like a virgin flight. The queue on the platform had swelled, pushed right up to the barrier in readiness for the next line of cars which would arrive in a few minutes.

  The overseer was obviously satisfied, walked down to a set of controls at the far end, tugged a lever down. Norman felt the cars move, jerked, began to rock as they were pulled off the ground. A slight incline, swaying as they gained momentum, went out through the building and began to climb.

  He found himself clutching the bar in front of him as the chairlift rose at an angle of 45°, a steep ascent before they joined the horizontal cable some fifty feet above the ground. A slight feeling of unease, like seasickness in a way, or going over humpback bridges in a car at speed, your stomach objecting.

  Now the cars had settled to their altitude, the ascent was completed, it was a straight run from here down to the beach.

  Swaying slightly, a stiff sea breeze catching them, but the swivels held them firmly on course. Norman risked a look down, caught his breath. Magnificent, the camp spread out below like an untidy toy town, parallel streets, the funfair a gaudy array of colours, people moving abo
ut like a restless colony of ants. Becoming smaller as the chairlift moved coastward.

  A grassy landscape, browned in places by the recent drought, the riding paddock rutted by the constant trampling of horses, some sheep in the field adjoining. Rough wasteland, a few more sheep and a winding muddy stream.

  The car jerked, checked, picked up speed again. Norman tensed, looked up. Cable joints, it seemed that the airborne vehicles bumped on each one like a car going over potholes in the road. Somewhere behind him a child was crying, its mother attempting to comfort it. Excited shrieks from a group of youths, they had spied the approach of the return chairlift which would pass within ten yards of the outgoing one. Cheers, shouts, exchanges between passengers as the line of the cars drew level, an instinctive desire to communicate, greetings and catcalls, waves and gestures.

  The convoys went their opposite ways, juddering as they crossed more joints, swaying, steadying. A shrill whistle, a rush of wheels; Norman looked over the side, saw the miniature railway far below, a colourful model train on a winding track emerging out of the dunes. Beyond it the rocky outline of the coast, steep cliffs in places, a stretch of shingle leading down to the sand, still glistening wet from the outgoing tide. Bathers, kids playing ball, a lone fisherman on an exposed rock hoping to hook a mackerel. Gulls swooping and calling, wheeling. And far out towards the horizon he could just make out a boat, probably a trawler.

  He looked at his companion. The other seemed completely unmoved by it all, a suburban father on holiday under sufferance, perhaps relieved that he was spared the company of his nagging wife and spoiled son for a short time. A blank expression, unappreciative of the scenery, impervious to the heady height, one who vegetated in his own way. Maybe he did not even have thoughts of his own, just switched off and lapsed into a kind of waking slumber. Norman ignored him, he had no wish to strike up a conversation with anybody.