A collaboration with Gordon Lewis
The night is indeed dark, but probably not as dark as the inside of Tom’s head. After a few fitful starts, he feels his way by brushing fingertips along the tops of garden walls. Evidently it was Suburbia — just as he had been told. No longer lit by the nation’s power industry, but merely dependant on separate electricity companies.
Tom believes he is some kind of a government agent hired by a private detective agency to seek out wrong-doing in its own ranks. The agency, is in return, investigating the same government department for which Tom happens to work. We are all windfalls, he thought, off the same tree of bad apples.
Tom likes incomplete things. He thrives on broken links. His whole existence depends on misunderstandings and cross purposes. He lives off shattered mirrors.
He revelled in complexities, piecing together whatever he was investigating as one does with a giant jigsaw puzzle. The case on which he was now employed was both complex and sensitive. His main object was to investigate an official supremo from one of the sections in his own department. The investigation would have been better placed with another department, but Tom’s immediate superior wanted the primary investigation kept within the department before handing the whole thing over to the police authority.
Tom had already driven around the area during daylight hours, but what he was embarking upon now would have to be under the cover of night. The inadequate street lighting was a great help. Also the houses along the avenue were not bothersome, being well laid back off the road, each having quite long drives up to front doors, with very little light emanating from them.
Tom eventually reached the house in which he was interested. He was pleased to see that the front of the property was in complete darkness. Pleased too, to find the drive was of smooth tarmac, for had it been gravel-covered he would have to plough through wet grass and shrubbery to approach the house.
He thought Sir Harold Whittaker was away on government business, but there was no knowledge of the whereabouts of his wife, or any servants left to do the ‘house-sitting’. Gaining entry to Sir Harry’s study was going to be difficult if there was someone in residence.
He knew there was a burglar alarm system but having preknowledge of the type of system, Tom promised himself it would not be difficult to circumvent. As he drew near the back of the house, he cursed under his breath, for there was a lighted window high above the ground. It could mean there was someone left to look after the property, but knowing how mean Sir Harry was, it could be a light that automatically came on as it grew dark. But great care would have to he taken; the situation was extremely dicey. Sir Harry must not be given an inkling that he was under some kind of investigation. Tom simply had to get in and out of the building without leaving a trace of his intrusion.
Tom’s commander had been a guest in the house on several occasions, so was able to provide an accurate plan of the building which Torn had committed to memory. An expert like Tom would easily gain entry, for the alarm system was totally inadequate for such a large house — further evidence of the meanness of its owner.
So Tom made his way to a large hidden manhole cover at the rear of the property, knowing it was not connected to the system. Why it wasn’t connected was a bit of a mystery until Tom’s commander found out it was left disconnected to facilitate delivery of the Anthracite coal used in the large Aga cooker in the kitchen of the house.
Tom used to have an Anthracite burner of his own — one with a glass-panelled door and plenty of elbow-grease needed to keep the damn thing banked up at night. After all, his whole central-heating system at home used to feed off it. There came a time, Tom recalled, when the job — at which he worked to pay his rent and, also, the cost of the Anthracite nuts themselves — did hang in the balance due to the time wasted otherwise stoking the burner morning, noon and night.
Tom shrugged off such thoughts. His commander had not discovered, evidently, that this bunker, to which the manhole was an access, was merely a front for Sir Harry Whittaker’s wine caverns, nuclear shelters, war chests and gold bar stashes. Tom sensed these things instinctively. Also the Aga cooker was merely a subterfuge or, at best, a means for cooking heavy suppers for Sir Harry’s subterranean sidekicks who delved hither from God-knows-whither...
Tom’s wayward thoughts were abrubtly halted by a shafted beam of yellow light from one of the electrical dumps; evidently a power company experimenting with a newly invented energy source. Then the beam flashed off at the same moment Tom had managed to prise up one of the manhole cover’s edges.
Inexplicably, he wondered why it was called a ‘manhole’. A hole for a man to clamber through? Or the means for Earth’s vegetative resources to be funnelled in pursuit of some rudimentary heat exchange with which Sir Harry Whittaker chose to warm his abode — lacking confidence, as he did, in the separate electrical companies’ ability to provide anything suitable for the more modern devices which modern civilisation boasted.
The flash of light — whatever its mysterious cause — enabled Tom to spot a rope ladder leading down into the interminable vertical darkness. It appeared to be a chimney… of sorts. Its sides were coated thickly, not with coal dust, but black soot! It didn’t matter. He was filthy already. And with heart in mouth, he started tentatively to worm his body down the shaft. Destiny, after all, meant that if this were to be the right hole, Tom was, without doubt, the right man for it.
Tom had the foresight to wear coveralls, expecting coal dust in what he had been told was a coal chute. But as he dropped into the darkness, rope rung by rope rung, he was glad he had prepared himself for this venture. The shaft seemed to go deep below the foundations of the house. Nothing like it was included in the plan with which he had been provided and Tom began to wonder how he was going to gain access to the cellar area of the house — so to reach Sir Harry’s inner sanctum — his private study. There had to be a safe there, or, at least, Tom’s commander presumed there to be one.
Tom’s feet came to rest on solid ground, and, switching on his powerful torch which he carried attached to his coverall belt, he found he was on a form of landing. To his right the shaft carried on obliquely downwards. To his left there was a hatchway, a door of sorts that led under the property. Certainly, Tom didn’t want to follow the shaft to his right. His main purpose that night was to search Sir Harry’s study. The hatch moved silently inwards as he leant his weight upon it; he clambered through the opening, carefully closing the hatch behind him and, by the light of his torch, he climbed the sloping shaft until he deduced he was in what was the cellar of the property, a cellar that he remembered from his study of the layout of the house. He was below the kitchen area.
His feet in black trainers made not a sound as he climbed the cellar steps, where, with the aid of his light, he could see the door was locked. Prepared for all eventualities, Tom reached for his bunch of picklocks and made short work of unlocking the door’s simple rim lock. Inching the door towards him soundlessly, Tom found himself in a large kitchen. Padding along on silent footsteps, he laid his hand on the Aga cooker. It was hot to the touch which proved one thing, it must have been stoked up that very day. There could well be someone in residence.
Moving like a shadow out of the kitchen, he fancied he heard the faint sound of music, music that grew slightly louder as he came to the foot of the grand staircase. It was evidently coming from one of the upstair rooms. His torch lit up the doors leading from the hall, fetching him unerringly to the study door. At least he had got this far. Gently turning the door knob, he cursed under his breath. It was locked. Again his skill with a picklock paid off. Another lock was tripped — this one, a mortice, proving more difficult and taking him longer than the simple cellar door lock. He had reached his destination — he was safely in Sir Harry’ private study. Relocking the door, he swiftly drew all the curtains; then switched on the light, after making sure he had an escape route by unlatching one of the windows, and leaving it slightly ajar.
Tom looked in all the usual places for a hidden safe, finally deducing there wasn’t one; he turned to old-fashioned roll-top desk. That too was locked but it would prove easy to open with the expertise of Tom’s fingers. He could easily have made a successful cracksman, but had decided the right side of the law was to be his occupation. At least he was in the house without leaving any signs of someone breaking in. This was all-important; Sir Harry was not to know that he was being investigated.
“At least I’m in the house without leaving any signs of someone breaking in.” Tom spoke aloud, as if repeating to himself something quite crazy that had just gone through his mind. It was an attempt at rationalization and he laughed as he saw his own blackened footprints leading up to the desk. Time enough to retrace his steps...
He laughed again, but his thoughts were suddenly interrupted as the house light he had recently switched on started flashing and flickering. Tom checked his watch. This was the time when one electric company was taking on the responsibility of supply from another one — the transition rarely being a smooth one. But, tonight, the flickering continued for at least 30 seconds and when the full steady beam eventually resumed, he heard the music again — evidently louder than before; since there had been no sign of it since his arrival in the private study.
He turned his attention to the roll-top desk, he tried to shrug off the sounds of distant voices which now seemed to mingle with the music. Whether or not the voices derived from the same source as the music, it was hard to tell; they then began to sound as if they were in the walls… moving about with clips and clops of toe-caps the other side of the skirting-board.
Tom sighed with relief, as the voices faded into the distance. The desk was of the variety where the lowering of the ribbed cover locked all the lower drawers when it was snapped down into place after use. A devil to rifle, after all.
Tom frowned, he enjoyed incomplete things. Broken links. There could be no misunderstanding with this integral piece of utility furniture… until he paid attention to the cracked mirror on the wall behind the desk... showing that the back was heavily knotted and far from proud to the wall. The reflection revealed a single irregular hole about a third of the way down it. Tom leaned round, with some effort of contortion, and blindly poked his index finger as far as it would go into the desk’s interior. He touched something hard and craggy… a bit like stone or hardened earth...
The study door swung open with an abrupt flourish. There stood the surprising figure of Sir Harry Whittaker. Tom knew who it was straightaway from the man’s many appearances on television as an expert on matters of espionage. Tom embarrassingly realised his finger was stuck fast and there was no way he could make himself scarce. Quick feats of prestidigitative disappearances were usually his forte when caught in such extenuating circumstances, but evidently not tonight! He prayed that the floor would swallow him up — and he closed his eyes to envelop himself in darkness. In his mind’s eye, he believed he had seen Sir Harry accompanied by a bearded midget in winkle-picker shoes. But then his prayers were answered as the lights flashed off — and Tom could open his eyes again.
Tom wrenched his finger away from the clutches of the desk, grimly tight-lipped; he kept himself from crying out in pain. Though the game was up, Sir Harry might assume he was dealing with an ordinary burglar because darkness, due to the glitch in the power supply, became Tom’s ally that night. Quick thinking was a necessity in Tom’s occupation and, like a flash he shone his powerful torch in the direction of Sir Harry, effectively blinding him for a precious second or two. In his hurry to escape from the room, Tom shouldered his superior to the floor, and in so doing he knocked a what-not stand over as well, with its bearded bust of someone on the top. There was no sign of anyone else in the room.
Tom was out of there in the twinkling of an eye, and racing to the front door, he swung it open ... but did not escape through it. Instead he hurried to shelter in the well of the staircase, giving the impression he had fled the property. With the plan of the house etched on his mind he decided to lay low for as long as it would take — even if it meant a hour or two for the house to settle down again. He was determined to try and complete the job he was set to do. Evidence of Sir Harry Whittaker’s treachery was of paramount importance.
The lights came on but Tom was safe in the shadows; his hiding-place was ideal, for he could see what was going on without being seen. Sir Harry came rampaging out of his study with a gun in his hand, and seeing the front door wide open he assumed his quarry had made a hasty exit from the house. He slammed the door and shot the bolts, little knowing that Tom was still in the house. He paused at the hall table to pick up the telephone, and hesitating for a while, he recradled the receiver. The last thing he wanted was the police all over the place, especially in his study.
A hour or so later, when the house seemed quiet, Tom stirred from his not too uncomfortable hiding place once again to enter the old boy’s study. Locking the door behind him, he left his picklock in the keyhole, making it impossible for the door to be unlocked from the other side. Making sure once again that there was a window off the latch, he decided that would be the way he would finally leave the house. With the lights on, he carefully re-examined the room with a fine tooth-comb. He was sure that something was hidden in the room. Crossing to the desk again, he was surprised to see it had now been moved to butt right up to the wall. There simply had to be something hidden behind it. He determined to move it well away from the wall and was surprised at how easy it proved to be; the desk was fitted with well oiled castors.
As with the various electric companies that queued up to take turns in providing the Nation’s light, Tom had a quirky feeling that his own mind intercut between different personalities. Somewhere deep within himself was the furnace of soul to be fed with the Earth’s coal. Up top there flickered a brain that could not even take purchase of whom or what he pursued — nor who or what pursued him!
The desk was too light for there to be anything worthy of rifling. Too light? The words were ambiguous. All he really knew was that he was an undercover spy — yet, at the end of the day, all of us are clandestine. Never telling the honest truth, unless...
Tom glimpsed the desk’s roll-top cover rolling, shimmering — and the keyhole which was the next candidate for picking. Pick-axes were the best pokers when fires needed re-igniting in the depths of Hell.
The bearded bust rolled on castors against the backdrop of his consciousness, reminding him of the character who acted both as temptress and double agent in wars that crossed continents as well as time zones. The sharp-toed stilletos kicked and grazed as they careered from study wall to study wall. A wrung rope clamped in its jaws.
Sir Harry Whittaker woke in his study. Spying was a wonderful occupation — taking him into realms where even he didn’t realise who was in the know and who wasn’t. He rubbed his cold hands together as the roll-top burst into golden fire, ribbing the walls with tortured silhouettes of those who had suffered wars — without even a hole to let the gas out.
Tom kicked against the traces. He stumbled from the manhole, if clambering through the hot chimney could actually be called ‘Stumbling’. He knew he was guilty. Guilty as those he sought. Human beings, all of us. At the end of the day, even Hitler had a roll-top desk where to keep his papers and plans and ill-timed excuses for the darkness in his head. A moustachioed Mate Hari pouncing round and round her cage. Round and round the dark inside Tom’s head.
After several such fitful endings, Tom arrives back among his old haunts… feeling his way along the tops of of suburban walls now jagged-edged with some substance reminiscent of glass or flint. He had scrumped the juicy crisp apples of youth — now he leans over and feels squashier things with rank smells. And amid the spluttering of an uncertain street light, he curses...
He’s sad that Mankind rots from the centre, as he manages to squint at a reinvigorated TV screen flickering from within one of the suburban boxes. He is sure it is Sir Harry Whittaker’s tiny image upon it, complete with false beard and puppet strings. Tom laughs and picks his way more confidently through many windfalls. After all, complexities are his game: complexities and broken links that can reach further than anything straightforward and whole could possibly reach. The more irregular and shattered the coal, the sooner there’s light to feed the fire!
