Break of Dark

by Robert Westall

  At the end of two hours he came out at a smooth loping run, wearing plimsolls, black sweater and dark-grey flannels. It was hard to run at all, his legs were so stiff from being curled round a chair with tension. The hair was standing up on the backs of his arms, on his head; it was like the time they’d taken out that guerrilla camp in Borneo.

  If anyone had seen him, they would have been scared. His Viking forebears had left him more than their broad shoulders, long arms and ginger hair. He struck the trough a terrible blow, up by its rim. It rang like a bell, but did not splinter. The hammer hurt his hands abominably.

  A frenzy came on him; he hit again and again. Boom, boom, boom. Each time, the head of the sledge-hammer sent out a spray of vicious sparks, each time a little nearer to the actual clocktower. His sweaty grip was loosening. The last blow flew wild, bounced off the trough on to the clocktower itself. A great shower of stone hit him in the face, blinding him. He dropped the hammer, cleaned out his eyes and shone his torch.

  A chunk had been smashed from the tower, where it adjoined the trough. A frighteningly large chunk, as if a shell had hit it. But on the trough itself, not a dent.

  He thought wildly: This trough is impossible, impossible. There is nothing in this world so hard as this trough. Another, stronger wave of rage and hate took him. He began hitting harder, harder, harder. He no longer wanted a chip of it, for evidence. He wanted to destroy it, and those who had so insanely made it.

  Harder and harder; part of him knew it would end in disaster, but the rest of him no longer cared. Harder and harder he hit, like a savage, a cave-man. Something had to give.

  There was a sickening crunch. Something hard and cold and heavy grazed his face, flying through the air and landing yards away with a heavy, metallic clinking and rolling. He stood panting, blinded by sweat.

  The hammer-haft in his hand was as light as a feather. He felt for the end. The head was gone; it was the head that had missed him by a fraction and landed down Front Street. He brushed the hair out of his eyes, words bubbling out of his dry, panting mouth.

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!’

  When he shone his torch, the trough was still without a scratch. He felt like crying.

  Then, vaguely, he became aware that his torch wasn’t the only source of illumination. Headlights had him fastened in a sharp glare. He saw the sign on top of the Panda.

  ‘Hey, stay where you are! Don’t you move an inch, my lad!’ Hughes, getting out of the car.

  It was all up; his life lay in ruins.

  But Hughes’ voice changed. ‘Oh, it’s you, Sarge. Did you get a glimpse of him?’

  ‘No,’ said Sergeant Nice, weakly. ‘He was gone when I got here.’

  ‘What’s that you got there, Sarge?’

  ‘Hammer handle. It’s snapped off at the head.’

  ‘Pity you picked it up . . . fingerprints.’

  ‘Too rough.’ Sergeant Nice showed him the old grey spelky wood of the handle. Suddenly, they were two policemen again, working in pursuit of an unknown criminal. ‘The head must be lying somewhere. Look what he’s done to the clocktower. A raving nutcase.’

  ‘We’ll never catch him now, Sarge. Funny the things people get up to. Wonder why he hated the thing so much.’

  ‘I think we’ve given him a fright,’ said Sergeant Nice. ‘I doubt he’ll be back.’ He sighed regretfully. ‘I was sitting up late, reading, and I heard the noise.’

  ‘Old biddy who rang up reckoned it was loud enough to waken the dead.’

  ‘I was sitting in the kitchen at the back,’ said Sergeant Nice.

  Sergeant Nice leaned his backside against young Thomas’s shopfront and admired the sunset at the far end of Front Street. He had never enjoyed a week so much. All his life had been given back to him, and he savoured it like one returned from the grave. The smell of salt off the ocean, the sun on his bare arms, the lissome little bathing beauties, even the screaming children; all given back as a gift after that night of madness with the sledge-hammer. Oh, a story had gone back to the Supers, all right. The story of Sergeant Nice so lost in some old book that he couldn’t hear a demolition in progress on his own doorstep . . . typical. Well, let them laugh. He could afford it.

  The memory of the crazy Neanderthal man with the hammer had faded too. Soon, he would be able to think it never happened at all. And yet Neanderthal man had had his value. The thefts from the horse trough had stopped completely. Seven days now, and not a single complaint. Neanderthal man had broken something.

  Or frightened something.

  Anyway, there’d been no more funny business. The Supers said the thief must have moved on. They had fed a report of his modus operandi into the central crime computer, in case he tried other seaside towns. The Supers were satisfied; the crisis over. Perhaps, elsewhere, cameras and handbags and wet bathing-costumes were vanishing from innocent park benches or left-luggage lockers. But not on his patch, not in his manor. Sergeant Nice laughed to himself, softly. A passer-by gave him a funny look. Policemen on duty were not supposed to laugh.

  Young Thomas came out of his shop, gave a sheepish grin that said all and began to push the shop’s sun awning back into its overhead casing with a long pole. ‘Peace an’ quiet!’

  ‘Peace an’ quiet,’ echoed Sergeant Nice.

  ‘You’ll have time to find my old cat, now.’

  ‘He gone missing? Not like him.’

  ‘Been gone six days.’

  ‘Courting?’

  ‘Not him. Neutered. Never known him miss a meal. Hope these vivisectionists haven’t got him – or one of those fur gangs. They call those fur coats coney, but I swear half of them are cats. Cat from the Elite Fish-bar’s missing an’ all.’ Thomas finished pushing his awning up, and paused, leaning on his pole. ‘You know, it sounds childish, but I miss him. He used to come out with me while I did this – at the end of the day – and sit on the horse trough waiting for me to finish an’ give him his supper . . .’ There was a hint of a watery glint in Thomas’s eyes.

  ‘Ye what?’ shouted Sergeant Nice.

  ‘Feed him—’

  ‘No – you said he used to sit on the horse trough. Waiting – when there weren’t many people about.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘The horse trough.’

  Thomas said, ‘Oh, Christ,’ and they turned and looked at the horse trough together.

  ‘No wonder it stopped nicking cameras and bathing-costumes.’

  ‘I’d like to blow the bloody thing up!’ said Thomas, vehemently. ‘I was fond of that cat . . . what is it in there?’ His voice rose and cracked in hysteria. ‘Why the hell can’t you do something about it? You’re the police . . .’

  ‘Got any suggestions? That won’t land me in Morpeth for a month on a compulsory-treatment order?’

  Thomas was silent.

  Sergeant Nice said, ‘You’re round here all day. Do you ever get little kids playing in that horse trough?’

  ‘No, no, never,’ said Thomas. ‘Never seen a little kid playing in it. Never in this world. Not without their mum watching anyway.’

  He sounded very far from sure.

  That night, Sergeant Nice had a dream. Normally, he never dreamt, or rather, try as he might, he could never remember his dreams. He remembered this one.

  He dreamt he was lying in bed and the bedroom door opened and silver shapes came in. Shapes like silver men and women, with beautiful silver faces and huge, dark-blue eyes full of . . . nothing. They brought with them Thomas’s black cat, and the striped cat from the Elite Fish-bar, and a little brown-and-white spaniel dog. They talked to the cats, which perched and slithered on their silver shoulders, in a cat language all prooks and chirrups. And the cats talked happily back. Sergeant Nice had never heard cats talk so much.

  He dreamt that he raised himself up in bed, in his striped pyjamas, to greet them. But one of the silver women bent down and pushed back the bedroom carpet, to disclose a manhole cover in the bedroom floorboards. The cover was li
fted; they descended, taking Sergeant Nice with them into a dim yellow light. And in the dim yellow light, huge glass bottles glistened. In the bottles floated dissected bodies of animals, like in the biology lab at school. From the necks of the bottles protruded not the usual corks, but the heads of Thomas’s black tom-cat, the striped cat from the Elite Fish-bar, and the spaniel dog. And the heads were still alive; the tongues licked dry, open mouths in vain. And the heads were still attached to the glistening white entrails inside the bottles.

  From the neck of the last bottle protruded the head of a little girl with long, blonde, greasy hair . . .

  Sergeant Nice dreamt he turned on the silver people in a rage and shouted at their beautiful, vacant eyes. And the beautiful eyes cracked like glass, and from behind them green snakes slithered, slowly dripping down the silvery bodies. And then the bodies began to fall apart, like armour, and more green snakes dripped from every opening joint, until soon there was nothing but green snakes.

  And Sergeant Nice awakened, sweating so much that his striped pyjamas were soaked. He went straight down to his office and checked the reports on missing dogs. There was a small brown-and-white spaniel reported missing, from the Esplanade Hotel. Answers to ‘Midge’. Reward offered. Sergeant Nice sat at his desk till morning. His wife found him snoring, face down on his blotter.

  After that, the sergeant dreamed his dream every night. At least the first part of it, the friendly part. But he would never return the chirruping greetings of the silver figures, no matter how earnestly they pleaded. For now he knew the truth about them, though he never again witnessed that truth. And each night the silver figures grew more frantically friendly.

  By dawn, each morning, he would bitterly accept that he was awake for good; he who had slept like a top every night of his life. He would go downstairs and make a cup of tea, and then go to his office window and pull back the curtain and stare for hours at the horse trough in the first faint light of day.

  The next fortnight became known in the Oldcastle force as ‘the Clocktower Business’. Even the youngest constable never referred to it without tapping his forefinger to his forehead; even if the youngest constable had joined the force long after the Clocktower Business was over.

  It began when Sergeant Nice gave out the day’s duties the morning after he had first dreamed of the silver people. Constable Wayne would spend only half his time pacing the prom, admiring lovelies and making the yobs put their lolly-sticks in the waste bins provided. The rest of the time he would keep his eye on the area of the clocktower. Constable Broady would spend only half his time at the Haven, damping the ardour of the couples on the Haven Banks to a level acceptable to the eyes of mothers of families . . . Constable Hughes . . .

  ‘But this bag-snatcher working near the clock,’ said Constable Broady, ‘he’s not shown his hand for a week.’

  ‘Then he’s all the more likely to start again today,’ snapped Sergeant Nice, in a voice that killed off any chance of reasonable argument. He looked pale and jumpy. It was not a time to argue. It was a time to wait, to have a word in the inspector’s ear, when the chance arose. So they mulishly went off and did what they were told. ‘Ours not to reason why; ours but to do and die,’ as P.C. Hughes put it to his wife that night.

  After the third fruitless day of clock-watching, they took to whistling the old music-hall song: If you want to know the time, ask a policeman.

  Sergeant Nice’s reasoning was quite sane, as far as it went. The Things in the horse trough were all too aware of what was going on around them. They could even sense what people were thinking round about them. While they knew the police were watching, they would do nothing. And the end of the holiday season was only a fortnight off. In a fortnight’s time, the Things would be the inheritors of a dreary, empty, rainswept desolation, with half the shops closed for the season and never a skylarking child in sight.

  By next season, having had their fill of tom-cats, They’d be gone.

  The situation had seemed so nicely tied up. It tore apart in seconds. A motorcyclist, showing off, doing wheelies down Front Street at thirty miles an hour. A woman stepping out into the road, looking back over her shoulder to tell her husband she wouldn’t be a minute. The biker missed her by inches, at some cost to his own skin. He came off spectacularly, the bike skidding along the tarmac throwing up showers of sparks and orange plastic from its winkers. The woman fainted. Her husband attacked the dazed biker and got roughed-up by the biker’s watching mates. All four police were rapidly on the spot; all were kept thoroughly busy. They even had to call in assistance from the nearest Panda. Hughes controlled the traffic while Broady marked the position of the bike in chalk on the road. Wayne revived the woman, with advice from a crowd of helpers.

  ‘Stand back, stand back, give her air!’

  Sergeant Nice forced flailing husband and bikers apart with massive, patient hands. The Panda man sorted out the real witnesses from the false. Front Street was back to normal in ten minutes flat – a very neat bit of police work, if Sergeant Nice had to say it himself.

  He was quite a long time realizing that something much more serious had happened, because the parents were trying so hard to be calm about it, so reasonable.

  A child was missing; a little girl of five.

  ‘It’s so stupid,’ the father apologized. ‘She was there one minute, and then she just wasn’t the next.’ He didn’t look frightened yet; just ashamed and angry at his own carelessness. ‘She can’t have got far . . . but I’ve looked all up and down Front Street. I can’t think where she can have got to. I hope you don’t mind us bothering you like this. It seems so silly. I mean, this is England . . .’

  ‘When did you discover she was gone, sir?’ asked Sergeant Nice. The terror in him made him speak slowly, ponderously. Made him sound a real P.C. Plod.

  ‘Just after that bike crash. We were all coming off the beach together, us and friends . . . we thought all the kids were together . . . they were all larking around in a mob. She was with her cousin Michael . . . she’s not one to stray, ever. She’s a timid little thing.’

  The kids, when questioned, knew nothing. They had been too enthralled by the motorbike; and picking up bits of orange plastic for souvenirs.

  Sergeant Nice glanced at his watch slyly, by the process of pretending to fold his arms. Fifteen minutes had gone by. That was a long time for a lost child. Usually the child came in first, bawling its head off, before the stupid parents had even noticed it was missing. He talked to his constables over his personal radio. Wayne working his way along the sea-front; Broady back in the Haven; Hughes working up and down Front Street, questioning people. Sergeant Nice was short and angry, anything but nice, barking down the microphone. The constables were squawking with indignation. What did he expect, miracles in a quarter of an hour? What the hell was the urgency; this wasn’t Chicago! Was the father a millionaire or something?

  After another hour had passed, the constables changed their tune. The beach was emptying; light starting to fade from the summer sky. The sergeant’s wife made tea for the parents. The sergeant watched them sinking into some silent, horrible pit, from which they tried to escape by leaping to their feet, pacing up and down, or by sudden violent snarlings at each other. Only to fall back into their silent private pit again. The husband’s hand sought the wife’s blindly; the wife, as blindly, thrust it away.

  When the child had been missing almost two hours, Sergeant Nice summoned assistance. Three more Pandas. He seemed to repeat the description over and over again: small and light, long blonde hair, wearing a pink dress. Had the child in his dream been wearing a pink dress? No, she had had no dress – no skin or flesh either. He closed his eyes, remembering the thing in the bottle – the thing that endlessly licked its dry lips.

  ‘I’m going to look,’ said the father. ‘I don’t want to criticize, but I know my own child better than—’

  ‘Better to stay here, sir, with your wife. She could be found at any moment. We know wh
at we’re doing. We deal with a hundred lost kids a year, here. More lost kids than lost dogs. They always turn up.’ But his words were hollow. Long blonde hair . . . timid . . . small and thin for her age.

  Other people were helping to search now; deck-chair attendants, the girls from the lost children hut. Graymouth wasn’t that big, and by this time the beaches and streets would be totally empty. Outside, it was dark. Sergeant Nice’s wife came in silently and drew the curtains, as if to shut out the trouble.

  The searchers were asking for torches.

  His wife offered the parents more tea. They refused; then accepted, desperately.

  I’ll fix those bastards, thought Sergeant Nice. I’ll fix those murdering silver bastards. If I’d fixed them before, this wouldn’t have happened. It’s my fault. I wanted everyone to be happy in Graymouth.

  Even Them, he realized with bitter amazement.

  But he’d fix Them now, if it was the last thing he did.

  The call came through at nineteen-seventeen. Constable Wayne, his voice wild with relief.

  ‘Got her. Curled up fast asleep, on a bench in a beach shelter.’

  ‘Why the hell didn’t you search there before?’ Sergeant Nice’s voice could not have sounded more empty of the gratitude he felt inside.

  ‘I saw her before. But there was another family in the shelter with her, and I thought she was one of them. It was lucky I was passing just as they were going, leaving her behind. Talk about pig-ignorance! They’ve sat there with her all this time and never asked her where her parents were. They even gave her a butty . . . what kind of standards do these people have?’

  Suddenly it was all over. The father began to swear and the mother began to cry. Sergeant Nice called up the police doctor, to come and give the child a once-over. The Panda pulled up at the door and the child was bundled in. He took a careful look at her, and decided she was nothing like the child in his dream.