Mark Chadbourn - World's end

The vicar was in the churchyard, in his shirt-sleeves despite the chill, trimming the hedge with an electric cutter. He was tall with a red face-although that might have been from the exertion-and a balding head with white hair swept back around his ears. The drone of the cutter drowned out Ruth's first attempt at an introduction, but she eventually caught his eye.

"I said, shouldn't you have a gardener to do that?" she said.

"Oh, I like to get my hands dirty every now and then. What can I do for you?"

"My name's Ruth Gallagher. A solicitor. I'm looking into the death of Maurice Gibbons. I was told you knew him." She was still surprised how quickly people parted with information once she announced her legal background; it was almost as if they considered her a policewoman-in-waiting.

The vicar nodded ruefully. "Poor Maurice. Still no suspect, I suppose."

"Not yet, but no one's giving up. There was one particular line of enquiry I wanted to discuss with you. It might be nothing, but Mrs. Gibbons mentioned he came to church the week before his death which was unusual-"

"He was a very troubled man," the vicar interjected. "He came round to the rectory after the service for a chat. I can't betray the confidences of the people who come to me …" He paused, weighing up his options. "But with Maurice dead, I don't see the harm, especially if it gives an insight into his state of mind." Folding his arms, he stared up at the steeple. "Maurice was concerned about spiritual matters. We discussed, amongst other things, the return of the spirits of the dead, ghosts, you know, and possession by demonic entities. He wanted to know how easy it would be to arrange an exorcism if necessary, and I told him something of that magnitude would have to be sanctioned by the bishop."

"He thought he was possessed!" Ruth said incredulously.

"No, I didn't feel that. It was more as if he was talking in general terms, but he was certainly very anxious. He seemed to fear being tormented by the more malignant aspects of the spiritual realm."

The memory unleashed by the therapist returned in force, and Ruth stifled a shudder.

"Are you feeling all right?" the vicar asked, concerned.

"Fine. Just a chill." She forced a smile. She didn't believe in those kind of things, but the coincidence was hard to ignore.

The Victorian house could have been stately, but it had been indelibly scarred by thoughtless inzprovenzent: cheap, UPVC window frames and door, grey plastic guttering, an obtrusive aluminium flue for a gas boiler. Barry Riggs smiled broadly when he answered the door to Church, but it seemed forced, almost gritted. He was around forty, slightly overweight, with a doughy face and glasses that were a little too large. He smelled of cheap aftershave fighting to mask body odour. Inside, he seemed to have the builders in. Planks leaned against the stairs, an empty paint can stood in the hall, there were dust sheets everywhere and a pristine toilet bowl stood in the lounge, but he made no mention of the mess and there was no sound from anywhere else in the house.

"I know why you're here," Riggs said conspiratorially as Church was ushered on to the sheet that covered the sofa.

"I did tell you on the phone," Church replied dryly.

"No, the real reason. Something much bigger than Maurice Gibbons." He nodded knowingly.

"You better fill me in from the beginning, Barry." Church was already harbouring doubts about the validity of his visit. As "chief investigator" of the Crouch End UFO Association, Riggs had sounded more authoritative on the phone than he appeared in his natural habitat.

"Maurice heard of my investigations on the grapevine," Riggs began, sitting a little too close to Church for comfort. "People talk. There's never any coverage in the media, but you talk to people in the street and they know of the importance of my work. It's the future, isn't it? Anyway, I digress. Maurice knew I'd uncovered some unarguable evidence about Government knowledge of the UFO threat. I'm not going to go into details now, but let me just say secret base and St. Albans. We can talk about that later if you want."

"Why did Maurice come to you, Barry?"

"Alien infiltration, Jack. Plain and simple. Maurice was a Government employee. He knew he was a target. He was frightened, Jack, very frightened, and he came to me looking for any information that might protect him. `They walk among us,' he said. I remember it well. He was sitting just where you are, with his little briefcase. He'd got classified information in it, but he wasn't ready to show me just then. It was a matter of building trust, but they got to him before he could divulge what he knew."

"Who got to him?"

"The aliens! In the future, Maurice will be seen as a hero. He was a whistleblower, ready to open up the whole can of worms about the Government selling us down the line for alien experiments."

Church stared out of the window at the sinking afternoon sun, wishing he had opted for the vicar. "And he told you this? That aliens were after him?"

Riggs paused. "Not in so many words. But he wanted to know everything about my investigations. We ran through the dates and times of sightings, witness reports, everything. He was particularly interested in the descriptions of different races, the Greys and the Nordics and all that. And alien abduction scenarios. What the abductees experienced in real detail. What they heard, lights in the sky. I tell you, Jack, he was here for hours."

Church stood up quickly before he was overpowered by Riggs' body odour. "Thank you, Barry. You've been very helpful."

Riggs grinned. "You know, that's just what Maurice said. `People need to know what's out there, Barry. They're sleepwalking into a disaster."'

"So here are the options. Maurice was crazy. Maurice was overworked and suffering from stress-induced psychosis. Or Maurice was crazy. Either way, it's a good explanation for why he was wandering along by the river at the crack of dawn." Church sprawled on the sofa in Ruth's lounge, looking out at the city lights against the early evening sky.

"Do you think you could possibly be a little more glib?" Ruth said ironically.

Over a take-out curry and a bottle of Chilean red, they had spent half an hour trading information and finding there was no common ground whatsoever.

"You were the sceptical one," Church replied. "This was supposed to be taking us away from the Devil living under Albert Bridge. Now we have one man thinking Gibbons is being hunted by aliens, another convinced our man is being haunted by ghosts and demons."

"You're still skating on the surface, Church. Dig a little deeper."

"Do you think you can patronise me a little more? I haven't had my fill yet."

She laughed and topped up his glass. "The important fact is that Maurice Gibbons was a frightened man. Something was disturbing him enough to seek out the vicar and your UFO loon for information. He knew something."

"Or he was crazy."

"He was a civil servant, down-to-earth. If he was frightened, why was he keeping it to himself? There must have been hundreds of people he could have discussed it with, not least his wife."

"Perhaps he was waiting until he was sure." Church took a deep swig of his wine and then said out of the blue, "Do you believe in ghosts?"

Ruth looked at him in surprise. "Why do you ask?"

"It doesn't matter. So where do we go from here? I can't think of any other lines of enquiry … hang on a minute." He suddenly stared into the middle distance, ordering his thoughts, then he snapped his fingers. "There's something we've missed."

Susan Gibbons welcomed them in forty-five minutes later after Church's phone call had convinced her their visit would only take a few minutes. In Maurice's room, he went straight to the desk and pulled out the pile of taxi receipts, riffling through them quickly. They were all for a Monday evening and for the same amount.