Alex Scarrow - A thousand suns

That all changed with a small clipping from a local newspaper, arriving by internal post in a plain brown envelope.

The clerical officer read it quickly and understood its importance instantly; his traditional mid-morning cheese and bacon bagel was forgotten for now.

The Medusa has been found.

The clerical officer knew what to do.

There was a protocol to follow; a protocol originally written with a fountain pen sixty years ago, and again on a typewriter ten years later, and when the ink on that had finally faded, rattled off on a dot matrix printer… and that too was fading now.

The clerical officer read through it and finally located in faint grey dots the name he was after.

He dialled the number, hoping that it was still current. If not, he wasn’t sure whom he would have to call next… there was no one else’s number to dial.

He tapped in the number, surprised at how edgy he was. After so long, file n-27 had come back to life.

It had been raining all day.

Chris finally decided to venture out of the coffee shop and head back to the motel as the dull grey of the afternoon was darkening with the approaching evening. Normally he would have grumbled and cursed the mean-spirited weather, as the fresh wind pulled at his clothes and the rain stung his cheeks, but right now his mind was on that aborted phone call to the museum and the very odd way it had ended.

The shortcut from the coffee shop led him down from the coast road, through dunes of sand peaked with wild grass, to a small, deserted cove. Across the cove he could see the bright quayside lights of Port Lawrence.

There were numerous boats at rest on the shingle, many of them little more than dinghies or just the stripped-down remains of larger vessels. All of them eroded by the elements, many worn away to exposed ribcages of ageing timber. Littering the ground between these dead and dying hulls like scattered body parts were ropes, tackle, anchors, cleats… the loose detritus of several dozen boats. A man could make a fortune selling this sort of junk in the right place to the right kind of people. A trendy little boutique in Greenwich Village, catering for dim-witted rich people seeking a slice of ‘traditional’ to slot inappropriately into their modern homes.

The shower was easing now, nothing more than a few wilful spots.

It was then that he heard a cough behind him. Not an honest, out-loud bark, but a short, brittle grunt that sounded smothered.

He spun round. Amongst the dimly lit silhouettes of dead hulls around him, he could make out nothing. He debated whether to call out a challenge. But he knew his own voice would unsettle him even more. He held his breath, and listened intently for any noise other than the tide on the pebbles and the occasional clatter of wind-borne debris. A few seconds passed, and Chris was prepared to believe it was his over-active imagination playing the devil when he heard the clatter of pebbles and the crunch of a clumsily placed foot.

‘Okay, who the fuck is that?’ he growled in a voice he hoped sounded menacing.

He heard another footfall, and then, his eyes growing keener, he picked out an indistinct form moving slowly between two of the beached vessels.

‘You’re the news man, aren’t you?’ said a voice coming from the dark shape; an old man.

News man? Chris found himself grinning in the dark. The natives were gossiping.

‘Yeah, I’m the news man.’

Chris heard the crunch of feet drawing closer, and the dark form grew until he could make out a lined and weathered face framed by the hood of an old canvas raincoat.

‘My name’s McGuire,’ he said. Chris could see by the fading light of the overcast afternoon that he was holding out a hand.

He grabbed it awkwardly. McGuire’s grip was surprisingly strong.

‘You’re here about that plane out there, aren’t you?’

Chris wondered whether to play it dumb, but then Port Lawrence was a small town. Undoubtedly old Will must have been spreading the news about his two passengers, like some old dear in a salon.

‘Yeah, you got me.’

‘I can tell you a story or two about that,’ said McGuire as he pulled out a crumpled pack of cigarettes and offered one to Chris.

‘No thanks. I’m five months quit.’

The old man laughed, a wheezy cackle that degenerated into a rattling cough. It sounded like something loose and leathery rattling in a cage. ‘Five months quit, eh?’ he said finally. ‘Not bad, but you know, you’re never “quit”, you’re just resting between smokes.’

Resting between smokes just about summed it up perfectly. Chris was tempted, but resisted the urge to reach out for one.

‘Don’t mind if I poison myself, then?’

‘No. Poison away.’

McGuire sheltered his cigarette and lighter from the wind and lit up. From the flickering glow of the flame Chris could see his face. It was long and narrow and weathered. He suspected the old man looked ten years older than he was.

The wind gusted and Chris shivered.

‘So? You going to tell me what it is you know about that plane, then?’ asked Chris.

McGuire took another long pull on his cigarette. ‘We found the pilot of that plane out there, on the beach just along the way from here. Found him on the sand rolling in the waves… pretty much in the last week of the war that was, if I recall correctly.’

‘How do you know it was the pilot of that plane?’

‘Well, it was Sean who got a good close look. Sean said he was an airman, one of ours. I went off to town and found Sean’s dad and told him we’d found the body of one of our boys down on the beach. Then, within only a few hours, they arrived.’

‘Who?’

‘Goddamned near everyone by the look of it. Army first, then later on some navy ships and still more army. They closed off the beach and spent several days out there looking for the plane that poor lad had come from. They never found it, though. Those navy ships trawled this way and that way out to sea for near on a week. Then overnight, in fact, the night before VE day was announced, they just disappeared. Ships, army, barbed wire, everything… just vanished into the night.’

‘And you’re certain they were looking for the plane?’

‘Yessir, that’s what it looked like. They sure as hell wanted to find that plane out there. And I figure I know why.’

Chris nodded. ‘Go on.’

McGuire smiled. ‘You planning on putting this in a book or on the TV or something? Cos if you are, I guess I’ll be due something, right?’

‘Sure, if I quote you, you’ll get something. That’s how it works,’ replied Chris with a reassuring smile.

McGuire seemed satisfied with that. ‘I’ll tell you, I think there was someone real important aboard the plane that pilot was flying; maybe a general, a government man or something. I mean, there was a lot of top brass and big hats heading over the sea at the end of the war, you know? All heading over there to see what beaten Nazis looked like, and slice up that country with the Ruskies.’

‘And the British,’ muttered Chris quietly.

‘Oh, yeah, you Limes were in it at the end too, weren’t you?’

‘I’m sure we had something to do with it.’

McGuire nodded. ‘Maybe you did. Anyway, so I think it was top brass who crashed out there, and they were looking for his body. And he must have been real important, because I never heard nothing on the radio or read anything in the papers about it. I reckon it was someone too important, if you know what I mean? Too important to tell everyone he’d been lost in a plane crash.’

‘And you think I might find out who it was out there on that wreck?’

McGuire cast a long glance out at the grey sea and raised his hand to point. ‘They were right out there, where that trawler snagged her nets. Just out there, a few miles out. I’ll bet the barn, the wreck out there is the one they were lookin’ for.’