Break of Dark

by Robert Westall

  The woman police doctor arrived, took mother and child aside into another room and returned, smiling. No crime. Now it was all fresh cups of tea and swapping of stories and happiness. All except for Sergeant Nice, watching and listening and writing his report at his desk, very far removed from all the fuss.

  Finally, the father took Sergeant Nice’s hand. ‘Sorry to have troubled you. You’ve been marvellous. We were silly to have worried. Thank you, thank you very much.’

  ‘No trouble, sir,’ said Sergeant Nice.

  He sat on a long time at his desk, when everyone had gone. Only the odd remark on his personal radio, from the solitary patrolling night constable, broke the neon-buzzing silence. That silence got bigger and bigger until it filled the room, until it filled Sergeant Nice’s head.

  He had had his warning. God had been very good to him. God had shown him what could happen; then taken all the agony away again.

  But he knew he would not get a second warning. Reluctantly, he went upstairs and began to undress for bed. Then he paused, sitting in his shirt and socks, the bedside lamp shining on his long, white, bony knees. He reached into the top drawer of his bedside cabinet, and pulled out an old, wrinkled address book he’d kept since his army days. He was very careful about such things; still kept in touch with a lot of old comrades. He turned the pages slowly; ran his finger down the column of addresses.

  ‘Hurry up and get that light out,’ grumbled his wife from the other twin bed. ‘You’re that restless these nights, I don’t know what’s got into you. It’s not like you at all. I’m thinking of moving into the spare room, honestly I am.’ She turned over with a great: hump of protest.

  Sergeant Nice made up his mind. Closed the book, slap. Switched off the bedroom light, click. And, having made up his mind, he slept as soundly as a log.

  It was very easy, really; though it cost him two days’ precious leave. The Supers grumbled about it still being the holiday season, but they had heard the first whispers about the Clocktower Business and thought it best to give him the break when he asked for it.

  He made twenty phone calls before he went; drove nearly a thousand miles in his middle-aged Morris Marina. But at the end of it all, he had what he wanted. Ten pounds of plastic explosive. He gathered it cunningly, a pound at a time. Ex-sergeants of the Royal Engineers, who have mates still in the army, or working as quarry-managers, are never far from being able to lay their hands on explosive. The excuse he used was always the same; big old tree stumps to blow up in his new front garden. His old mates all made the same joke. ‘It’s lucky we know you, Bill. It’s lucky you’re not a Paddy. You haven’t joined the IRA, have you?’ And sound, sensible old Bill just smiled his slow, shy smile and let them get on with it. And got what he wanted.

  He returned home; to a suspicious Mrs Bainbridge, who didn’t quite accept this talk of old comrades’ reunions. He spent a long and thoughtful time in electrical and model-aircraft shops. Then he rummaged deep into the old wooden cupboard that was the Graymouth police lost property store.

  That night, his wife looked dourly at the large portable stereo radio-tape-recorder that lay in a thousand pieces on the kitchen table.

  ‘That’s not yours. That was handed in. That’s stealing.’

  ‘It was found on the beach at low tide. Soaked. It’ll never work again. They wouldn’t let me hand it in at Oldcastle . . . junk!’

  ‘What d’you want it for, then?’

  ‘That’s my business.’

  She swept off to bed in a huff. He worked on till the small hours, patient and sure, with his big square-ended fingers.

  He stood on the cliffs at the end of Front Street, looking down at where shadows were slowly engulfing the hot golden sand and the last bathers. Few would have recognized him in his patched khaki slacks, garish beach-shirt and dark glasses. There was a camera slung round his neck; he looked a proper tripper. He was glad his wife had gone to the first autumn meeting of the Townswomen’s Guild.

  He held the portable stereo in one hand. It was exceedingly heavy; but then stereos were. It held enough! First, a tiny transistor-radio that at that moment was sending out disproportionately loud pop music. Second, two tiny radio-control receivers from model-aircraft, linked to two radio-control transmitters set up in the boxroom at home. Two of each for safety, in case one went wrong. He had always been a belt-and-braces man.

  At the moment, the transmitters in the boxroom were switched on, the boxroom door was locked, and the only key was in his pocket. Because if his wife came home early and switched off those transmitters unthinkingly, the ten pounds of plastic in the stereo would explode, and the late Sergeant Nice would be spread in little gobbets of red flesh all round the roofs and gardens and telephone-wires of Front Street. They said the birds found them and ate them . . . there were worse ways to go. But while the transmitters went on transmitting, and the tiny receivers could receive their signal, the bomb was quite safe. For at least two hours, till the batteries ran out.

  But if someone were to put the stereo into the bottom of the horse trough, and it vanished into oblivion, like the camera and the beach-bag and the wet bathing-costume . . . there would be one hell of a bang in oblivion. And that would be the end of oblivion and the poor suffering cats in the bottles, and the little brown-and-white spaniel, and the still-living remains of the girl with long, blonde, greasy hair. It would be a blessed release for her, thought Sergeant Nice. If she existed. If she didn’t, it didn’t matter anyway. Sergeant Nice giggled to himself. Then stopped; he didn’t like giggling to himself.

  There remained one problem. How to get the mice to take the cheese in the trap. He knew They knew They were being watched. He knew They could read the minds of people who came close to the clocktower. If he tried to plant the stereo himself, they’d read his mind and They wouldn’t take the bait. The bait had to be put down by a third party, an innocent bystander.

  That was the hell of it.

  He looked up Front Street at the distant clocktower, nearly blotted out by the molten ball of the setting sun. Maybe They could reach out to read his mind even at this distance? Maybe they already had . . . Still, there was no harm in trying.

  Not many people about. Only one kid, a thin kid of about fifteen, laden with sea-fishing tackle, making his way home from fishing off the pier. Whistling, not a care in the world. The perfect innocent bystander. Only, he’d better stay innocent; if he ran off with the stereo, out of the range of the radio-control . . . But fishermen were usually honest, unlike yobbos. And this kid was too heavy-laden to run fast.

  ‘Hey, mate!’

  The kid stopped, mildly but instantly suspicious. Sergeant Nice almost wished he’d kept on his uniform and made out that the stereo was some new kind of radar speed-trap. But it was too late now.

  ‘Do us a favour, mate?’ Sergeant Nice cringed at his own forced bonhomie, real as a music-hall comedian’s. ‘You going past the clocktower, mate?’

  The lad nodded, seeing no possible snag in that. He had a spotty face and was chewing gum. Sergeant Nice held out the stereo.

  ‘Take this thing up to my wife, will you? She’s waiting by the clocktower. I can’t take photos with this great thing in me hand.’

  The lad considered, seemed about to turn away. Sergeant Nice fished a fifty-penny piece out of his slacks. ‘And buy yourself a drink for your trouble.’

  That was a mistake. The youth’s lip curled. The youth remembered practical jokes, of which he had suffered too many at school. He thought of Candid Camera. He thought about strange men who accosted you in the street.

  Next second he was walking away. Sergeant Nice shouted after him in despair. The youth turned and gave him the two fingers of scorn.

  Sergeant Nice went on waiting, trying to control himself. But he was pacing up and down, now, like a caged tiger or a man that needs the loo.

  He almost didn’t stop the Girl Guide in uniform. But he was desperate. And didn’t Guides still have something about a good deed for
the day? She was obviously on her way to a Guide meeting.

  He was more formal, this time. ‘Excuse me, young lady. There’s a lady waiting up there by the clock . . . she’s my wife.’ The child squinted her blue eyes against the setting sun. Then she nodded; she couldn’t see if there was anyone there or not. ‘Would you mind giving her this radio to keep for me? I can’t take photos with it in my hand, and the light’s already fading.’

  The child considered a long moment, then nodded. Sergeant Nice gave her the stereo. She was a very small Guide, and her wrists were very thin. She had to use both hands to carry it, and then it was a struggle. She set off up Front Street, walking like a crab, but with her face aglow with her good deed and the setting sun.

  Sergeant Nice held his breath till his lungs ached. She reached the clocktower, looked around, saw nobody there. She looked back enquiringly at the sergeant, her face a dark blank against the sun.

  ‘Not there?’ shouted Sergeant Nice. ‘She must have gone to the loo. She’ll be back in a minute. Put it inside the horse trough – it’ll be safe there, till she comes back.’

  The child was very still. Then she hoisted the stereo with great effort and, at the third try, balanced it on the edge of the trough.

  ‘Lower it down inside,’ shouted Sergeant Nice. ‘It’ll be safe there – for a minute.’

  The child was very still again; doubtful about the wisdom of what she was being told. But she knew all about the apparent foolishness of adults. And the stereo was far too heavy to carry all the way back; and Guides were supposed to be obedient. With great care she lowered it down inside; her whole body pulled by the weight of it into a living horse-shoe stretched over the horse trough rim. The sergeant could imagine her tongue stuck out with the effort of it. Then she straightened up and waved. Sergeant Nice waved back and shouted,

  ‘That’s your good deed for the day.’

  She waved again and ran off up Front Street, obviously late now for her Guide meeting.

  Sergeant Nice waited and waited. The impulse to close in and look over the rim of the trough, to see if the stereo was gone, was unbelievably strong. It was a good job he had the patience of a fisherman himself. All the same, as if by a tidal drag, the horse trough pulled him nearer and nearer.

  The sun sank finally in scarlet ruin of smoking clouds, behind St George’s steeple. The dusk came purple and dim. And with it, what Sergeant Nice feared. Human voices at the far end of Front Street, drawing nearer. Dinner in the boarding houses was over. People were coming out for their evening stroll.

  Two voices, one young and one older. Two figures, one small and one big. A woman and her child. The child’s shrill voice carried clearly.

  ‘But I do want a camera. If I give up my pocket-money between now and Christmas, and let you cancel my comics and—’

  ‘I haven’t got that kind of money, Susan. Thirty pounds for a camera . . . if only you’d saved up your pocket-money before your holiday like I told you . . .’

  Suddenly, they were too near the clocktower, and Sergeant Nice was running, running to cut them off. If the child laid hands on that stereo . . .

  He had to run past the clocktower, past the very rim of the horse trough to cut them off. As he ran past, it seemed to him that he saw a fleeting ghost of the stereo in the gloom. Glimmering, ephemeral and sunk halfway into the stonework. Then it was gone. He pulled up sharply at the sight, quite unable to believe his eyes, staring at the bottom of the horse trough, which was empty now even of dust and lolly-sticks, clean as the most thorough charlady could have swept it. He had never seen it so clean before.

  ‘Stand back, madam!’ he said. ‘And keep that child well clear.’ In spite of his ridiculous tourist-gear, the policeman in his voice made her back off quickly, to what might have passed for a safe distance. Even as an ex-sergeant of the REs, he couldn’t be quite sure what damage ten pounds of plastic would do. Explosive was funny stuff.

  There was the slightest tremor in the ground, as if somebody had dropped a big sack of potatoes on the pavement. A tiny piece of the rim of the horse trough fell to the road with a tinkle. Sergeant Nice picked it up; it was sharp-edged and cold, and fitted neatly into his hand. And that was all; except that as he looked at the fragment, it, and his hand, seemed to brighten slightly in the gloom.

  ‘Ooh, Mummy, look. Look at the comet. Isn’t it beautiful?’ Mother and child were staring straight up at the sky, their faces lit with the same strange glow that had lit up the stone in his hand.

  ‘It’s not a comet, darling, it’s only a shooting star.’

  Sergeant Nice looked up too. A great streak of light fell down the sky, purple and green and white like a good rocket on November 5th. Except that it fell much more slowly, like slow-motion action in a Kung Fu movie.

  ‘Isn’t it beautiful,’ repeated the child.

  ‘I’ve never seen such a big one,’ said the mother, grudgingly. Then she came out of her trance and turned to Sergeant Nice, expecting quite a different kind of explanation.

  ‘I’m a police sergeant, madam. On observation duty. There’s been a lot of bag-snatching round here, recently. I thought I saw somebody . . .’

  ‘We’ve seen nobody,’ she said, as if that settled it.

  ‘Goodnight, madam.’

  ‘Goodnight.’ They moved on, resuming the argument about the camera.

  Sergeant Nice stayed on, to watch the shooting star die down the sky, until every last fragment was gone. It took a long time to die; for a while it went on getting bigger and bigger. Something incredibly massive was burning out up there. He remembered, when he was a little lad, his granny had taken him out one night to watch for shooting stars.

  ‘Every one you see,’ she’d said, ‘is a soul dying and winging its way to heaven.’

  He’d known even then that they were only bits of space debris, hitting the earth’s atmosphere at terrific speed and burning up. But he’d said nothing, because he loved his granny.

  How many were there of You? he thought. You loving silver chirrupers with your rows of glass bottles?

  Nobody would ever know now. Or where they’d come from, through the dark, endless years of space.

  ‘You should have left us alone,’ he muttered angrily. ‘Graymouth’s not your sort of place. It’s a family resort.’

  But they never came back to reply; not even in his dreams.

  About the Author

  Robert Westall was born in 1929 on Tyneside, where he grew up during the war. He went to the local Grammar School and then studied Fine Art at Durham University, and Sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. He worked as an art teacher in Cheshire and for the Samaritans.

  His first novel for children, The Machine Gunners, published in 1975, was an instant success and was awarded the Carnegie Medal. His books have been translated into ten languages and dramatized for television, and he won the Carnegie again in 1982 for The Scarecrows, the Smarties Prize for books for 9-11 year olds in 1989 for Blitzcat, and the Guardian Award in 1991 for The Kingdom by the Sea. Between 1986 and his death in 1993, he devoted himself to his writing.

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  BREAK OF DARK

  AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 446 49501 8

  Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK


  A Penguin Random House Company

  This ebook edition published 2011

  Copyright © Robert Westall, 1982

  First Published in Great Britain

  Chatto & Windus Ltd edition published 1982

  The Bodley Head edition published 1984

  Red Fox edition published 2003

  Red Fox 9780099439530 2003

  The right of Robert Westall to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

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