painted it, but I was fond of it. A good deal of my life had been built around Saxe-Coburg Street. I’d been walking up and down it all my life. I’d seen it in war when the bombs dropped on it and I saw it now in prosperity. Because it was prosperous, make no mistake about that. It was getting the taste of big wages and steady employment and enjoying it. On all sides there were prophets of every sort of doom, economic and moral, but Saxe-Coburg Street couldn’t help appreciating the virtues of a world which gave it refrigerators, motor cars and cheap birth control. When the road had been run up by a speculative builder to celebrate the Prince Consort’s Great Exhibition of British wealth not even the Queen in her palace had had the benefit of any of these and Saxe-Coburg Street knew it.
My room was dark and small. I was probably the last policeman who was going to work in it. Across the road they were building a new police station for us. Every day I watched its progress with interest. Sometimes (like the day they had a fire) it seemed to go backwards and not forward, but equally sometimes it shot forward and I could even imagine us moving into it. Not today, though. The site looked deserted and I could only see one man working there. He seemed to be working in a workman’s lift running up the front of the building; it had reached the fifth floor. Did I tell you we were to have a tall, narrow, police building? I believe I was scheduled to have an office on the third floor. I hoped I’d still have my view.
I could see Saxe-Coburg Street with a professional eye too, of course. It’s not exactly the road where you’d leave your car unlocked, or leave the cream too long on the step; someone would nick it. But you probably could send the baby toddling out with a five-pound note to buy your paper and she and the change would come back unscathed. There was a great love of children in Saxe-Coburg Street and neighbourhood, due perhaps to a wave of Italian immigrants it had had at the turn of the century, whose descendants, cockneys to a man, were still there.
Until now I would have said the child was as safe in our district as it could be anywhere. That wasn’t so very safe perhaps, but until now it hadn’t been downright lethal.
Inspector Dove gave my door his usual swift knock which didn’t wait for an answer and sat down, again without waiting to be asked. He looked tired. He was hoping for promotion and was working hard on this account, as well as being genuinely anxious about the missing children.
‘Like that?’ I said.
‘It’s always like that.’ He was usually gloomy, anyway in speech, and at work. I dare say he sparkled at home. But he was a good policeman. We had known each other a good many years and a lot of the memories that were written on my face were written on his too. Perhaps he thought I was gloomy too and that I sparkled at home.
‘I hate these kid cases.’
‘Don’t we all?’
He got to his feet and went and looked from the window.
‘I’d like to believe it’s an outsider coming in, but I don’t believe it.’ He rapped on the window. ‘It’s someone in that area out there, someone local, that’s responsible.’
‘What makes you so sure?’
He turned round from the window and came back to stand in front of me.
‘Not one thing. Lots of little things.’
‘Such as?’
He took a deep breath. ‘The way the kids go. First you see them, then you don’t. If that had happened once I’d take it as luck, but it’s happened every time. No one has seen the child go. No one has seen a stranger come up and speak to her, no one has seen any unusual contact, no one has seen anything.’
‘So?’
‘That must mean it’s a local. Either someone so well known he fades into the background, or someone who knows every inch of the ground round here, and how to take advantage of it. I think he must have known the children too.’
‘Where are the children then?’ I asked.
‘Yes, you’d think we’d have found a trace of them, wouldn’t you?’
‘If they haven’t been taken out of the district, yes, I would.’
‘But we haven’t. They’re dead. Packed up somewhere in something. Even buried. But dead.’
‘So we check the neighbourhood.’
‘But that takes time, John, and I can’t wait.’
We were both silent, because this was the terrible worry; that while we were working another child would go.
‘Perhaps something will turn up to give us a lead.’
‘Not from this lot, John; with them there’s been nothing. So if you’re looking for anything it must be with another child.’
‘Who have you had a look at?’ I said.
‘Every crawler in the neighbourhood.’ Crawlers were what we called the sex offenders. We had our share. Lately more seemed to be moving in. Perhaps we were building up a coven. ‘And they all are covered. Either in hospital, in prison or well chaperoned.’
‘Someone could be covering for them.’
‘Yes, there’s always that,’ he agreed. ‘Or else it’s a new one we don’t know.’
There’s usually a beginning to that sort of thing,’ I said. ‘Something that stands out in the way of oddness, even if it’s only wearing a hat where you don’t usually wear a hat.’
‘I’ve even checked them. Even the man who sells papers at the corner and swears at everyone who comes past. The kids tease him.’
‘Might be something there.’
‘Could be. I’m not crossing him off. He’s a woman, by the way.’
‘Oh.’ It was surprising what you turned up when you started looking. ‘Well, I didn’t know that.’
‘No, even his mother didn’t. Used to put him in trousers. Her, I mean. But I’m still no nearer,’ he went on.
It meant we were missing something, of course. We had our fair proportion of nuts in the neighbourhood, you can’t help it in a district like ours. We also had our share of crank organizations. In fact, we were rather above average there. We had a sociologist from London University down here once doing a survey to find out why, but all the conclusion he could come to was that we just had them the way other districts had rats. So I knew all about Tony Young’s Club of UFO watchers. I had them on my list and thought them pretty harmless, although undoubtedly they were going to be useful if a flying saucer landed in my bailiwick. But when such organizations get mixed up with young men like Tony Young they are asking for trouble. From Tony Young’s description perhaps you haven’t got quite the right picture of the Club. Let me consolidate it for you. To begin with, he didn’t quite invent its organization the way he thinks he did. Secondly, he isn’t quite the powerful figure in it he believes. He’s using them all right, but they are using him too. Ask me how I know. I’ve met John Plowman before. Before he became interested in UFOs, he had been investigating the possibility of radio signals from beings in outer space. He showed a long and protracted interest in that subject, but I don’t know that he ever got anywhere. He had a little group of about six or seven working with him, some of whom went on to form the nucleus of the UFO group. And before that he housed for six months a woman who said she was the channel through which beings from Venus could pass into this earth world. He investigated her claim while she stayed as his guest, but I don’t know what he discovered and she dematerialized one day. Or so he supposed, but he never quite committed himself to belief. I’m almost sure I saw her eighteen months later in Lewisham Road, but perhaps not. So although John Plowman had some strange interests he was perfectly consistent in them and carried out his investigations in a thorough, detached way. I believe he had a degree in engineering from London University.
You may wonder why, if he’s so harmless, I continue to take an interest in him. Pehaps because it’s my job, you can never tell when one thing is going to branch