The next morning he was up early. The bright October sun was streaming in through the window and, had the circumstances been different, the day would have been glorious. The leaves on the ground outside were golden brown, a colour that seemed to fit perfectly with the green grass they lay upon, and the rich clear blue sky above.
After a long shower Kieran went into the kitchen to brew up some coffee. He placed a couple of muffins in the toaster. Gandalf was sitting by the fence at the end of the garden. Upon seeing Kieran enter the kitchen, he thundered up the garden, bounced through the cat-flap, and hovered around his bowl.
‘How come I only ever see you when you want food? You little rotter.’
He opened a can of Whiskas and forked three-quarters of the contents into Gandalf’s bowl. Gandalf wasted no time in digging in, and making a lot of noise while he went about it.
Kieran stretched back to a standing position, and noticed his trousers hanging over a chair by the table. He’d thrown them there to put into the wash, but now he remembered what was in the pocket.
He put his hand inside the front pocket and pulled out the audiocassette. Turning it over in his hands he wondered if anyone would miss it, at least for the time being.
He took the cassette out of the case, placed it in the tape player he had in the kitchen, and pressed Play. The tape stopped straight away. He ejected it and turned it over, and pressed Play again.
~
After the leader, there is the sudden sound of a baby, uttering a long happy wavering noise that sounds like he or she is being bounced on someone’s knee.
A man’s voice speaks over the baby, ‘Up and down, up and down.’ The man sounds sort of middle aged, perhaps older. But it is no voice Kieran can recognise. But then, why would it be?
The man is making up a rhyme for the baby. ‘Can-you see-the boats, out on-the sea? Can-you see-the boats?’
Now a woman’s voice, she sounds middle aged too, and with no discernable accent, ‘I’ve got to go up to the shops. We need milk and flour. I don’t have enough to make this cake.’
‘Okay Darling,’ says the man.
She carries on, ‘And I need hundreds-and-thousands. Now have I got enough Bourneville? Oh dear I’d better make a list.’
‘No need to get in a flap my love there’s plenty of time,’ says the man in a calm, reassuring voice.
Strange unintelligible rumble noise, far away.
‘Ooh look, look at that!’ says the man.
‘Where?’
‘Over there. Between the houses. It’s down.’
‘Oh yes. Gosh I hope nothing’s wrong.’
‘Beautiful. It’s quite majestic when you see it like that isn’t it? Not when you just…’
‘Yes… yes…’ she says dreamily, ‘Anyway, I really must go. Shall I take him with me?’
‘Yes, why not.’
There is a pause, and then the man utters a strained sigh, like he is struggling to get out of his chair.
A few seconds of rustling. A door closing. It isn’t an outside door though. It’s inside, like a bedroom or a bathroom door.
The woman, whispering, ‘Pass him here.’ Then louder, to the baby, ‘Hello little you.’
The man says, ‘How long do you think you’ll…’
‘Ooh not long, just twenty minutes or so.’
More rustling, a floorboard creaking under the carpet.
She speaks again, ‘See you later.’
‘Bye love,’ the man says.
A door slams shut. Footsteps dying away outside. A car door opening.
Inside, soft footsteps walking around.
Silence. The occasional deep breath. A cough.
A car driving off outside.
Rustling, then a flapping noise. The sound of wood scraping against wood.
A light thud, like the sound a wooden spoon would make if it were hit against a chopping board.
Fumbling, fumbling, fumbling. Another cough.
The recording stops, the tape goes blank. Now only the high-pitched hiss of unused tape.
Stop. Fast Forward. Stop. Play. Nothing. Stop. Fast Forward. Stop. Play. Nothing.
~
Kieran stood in the sub-basement at the office. Here he was again, looking at the boxes. He was holding a pair of scissors. There was no one around.
Right now he was finding it easier to concentrate on the mystery of the archive boxes than it was to think about Phillip. His reaction to Phillips suicide had yet to form correctly in his mind. The whole idea was still sinking in. And while he was numb to the news, Edward Gosnell's archive material was a beguiling diversion.
He lifted the lid off the first box again and snipped the string that bound the old newspapers together. Then he took the top paper off the pile. It was faded and brown, and the paper felt old and rough, not smooth like today’s newspapers. He carefully folded it into the copy of the Metro newspaper he was carrying, and then replaced the lid on the box.
Now there would be no doubt that someone had tampered with the boxes. If Edward Gosnell decided to check out his archived material he would get quite a surprise. But for some reason, Kieran had come to the conclusion that Edward Gosnell wasn’t going to be showing up anytime soon.
But why? Kieran thought to himself as he closed the door on cage 14. What possible knowledge did he have about the elusive Mr Gosnell. Just because his name didn’t show up on the office extension list. Just because nobody on the 6th floor knew whom the man was. So what? There could be any number of ways that an error could have been made. And even then, it certainly didn’t give Kieran the right to go rooting through those boxes for no apparent reason. And what had he found? Well it wasn’t a bomb of course. There was no security issue. All it was was just a bunch of old wartime newspapers and a stupid cassette of some woman talking about going to the shops. Altogether not the most riveting of archive material. Okay, maybe it all meant something to Edward Gosnell. Maybe he was archiving some research material, or some family heirlooms. The point is, it was none of Kieran’s damn business.
He let out a deep sigh. Maybe it was time he let it go. After all, there were other things to occupy his mind now. More important things like the suicide of his old school friend. Perhaps he really should be starting to allow the grief in.
Kieran paused, almost ready to turn around and return the newspaper to the box.
No. It can wait till tomorrow.
He headed off towards the lift.
Tomorrow, after he had looked at the newspaper he would bring it - and the cassette - and return them both to the box.
~
Kieran returned home from work at the usual time of 6:45pm. In the cold sky the sun had almost set, but the high pink cirrus clouds gave the world a wonderful heavenly glow.
Gandalf met him outside the front door, eager to get inside. Kieran could think of only one reason why. Cats were after all just little four-legged eating machines.
He switched on the light in the kitchen.
The audiocassette was lying on the floor. The tape had spooled out all over the floor, and Kieran could see it had snapped.
‘Oh Gannndalllfff! You bloody stupid cat.’
Gandalf was waiting at his bowl.
‘Did you do this? Did you do this?’
Gandalf started to clean under his armpit.
Kieran dropped his bag and bent to pick up the tape. Holding it in both hands he looked closely at it, trying to ascertain whether it could be mended. Then he started to wind the broken tape onto one of the spools.
The telephone rang. He answered it quickly, placed the receiver between his ear and shoulder, and continued to spool the tape.
‘Hello?’
‘Kieran, this is Diane Hynes, Phillip’s mother.’
‘Oh, yes, hello. How are you keeping? Is everything…?’
‘Yes, everything’s fine. Everything’s in order.’
‘Good, good.’
‘Listen, Kieran I just wanted to let you know that the funeral will be a week on Friday if you would still like to come.’
‘Of course I do. Of course. What time?’
‘It’s at two o’clock, at the Breakspear Crematorium in Northolt. Do you know where that is?’
‘I should be able to find it.’
‘Okay, well, that’s two o’clock then.’
‘I’ll see you there, Mrs Hynes. Thank you for calling.’
‘Goodbye.’
Kieran replaced the receiver, and stared down at Gandalf, ‘I can’t believe it little fella. Can you? Phillip Hynes eh? Phillip bloody Hynes is dead.’
Gandalf pounced up onto the sink and deftly navigated his way past the mug-tree to his favourite spot on the windowsill, where he settled down and looked out at the cold evening.
~
After dinner, Kieran poured himself a straight double Jack Daniels and sat at the kitchen table. He brought the old newspaper out of his bag and flattened it out in front of him. Then he pulled the Concise Oxford Dictionary off the bookshelf in the lounge and laid it next to the newspaper. Gandalf jumped up to see what he was doing, then curled up into a ball at the edge of the table and pretended to sleep.
Kieran looked at the old text before him. There were two major stories printed in The Times on October 15th 1943, the first being the story under the headline about the German Army’s retreat from the Zaporozhe bridgehead on the bank of the Dneiper River. The second story detailed the heavy attack delivered by the US 8th Air Force against the ball bearing plants in Schweinfurt, and how the Luftwaffe lost only forty planes compared to one-hundred and ninety-eight of the US’s B-17’s.
Kieran took a sip of whiskey and lit a cigarette. Gandalf was purring softly with his eyes closed.
He took the dictionary and searched for Spireclaw.
No such word.
He put the dictionary away and reached for the phone directory. Flipping through the pages he found the letter G, and read down the page.
No Gosnells in West London.
Kieran picked up the phone and dialled directory enquiries.
It didn't matter that he didn't have an address for Edward Gosnell. There were no Gosnells listed on this green and pleasant land anyway. For some reason this didn't surprise Kieran in the slightest.
‘No Gosnell’s,’ he said to himself after putting the phone down. ‘No Gosnell’s listed in the UK,’ as though the very act of saying it confirmed the obscure revelation in his mind.
He returned to the table and opened the newspaper to the next page. Here there were more details on the two cover stories.
He turned the pages forward until he reached the births, marriages and deaths section. Perhaps Edward Gosnell’s name would be written somewhere there. An all-revealing obituary perhaps. He spent a few minutes reading the names. No sign of Edward Gosnell.
Kieran closed the paper. What was he looking for? Why was he looking for it? Would there really be something in this newspaper that was connected to Edward Gosnell? And what of the cassette? Just because the cassette was in a box that was stored with the newspapers, did that mean that there would be a link? Perhaps this Gosnell bloke just happened to archive the items at the same time, and there was no link between the tape and the newspaper at all. And what if Gosnell was storing the newspaper for someone else? What if it was one of those “date of birth” newspapers? There was nothing to indicate that the newspaper would contain Edward Gosnell’s name.
Or was Kieran looking for the word. Was he looking for Spireclaw?
But that’s just ridiculous.
And if the word Spireclaw did turn up somewhere in these aged pages, what exactly would that mean? There was nothing to connect Spireclaw to Edward Gosnell and the newspapers, or Spireclaw to the cassette. It was just an unrelated word that Kieran had seen in the basement at the same time.
But he couldn't banish the feeling that someone or something wanted him to see it.
Kieran took a final tug on his cigarette, inhaled deeply, and stubbed it out in the ashtray. 'Gandalf, I think I’ve gone completely mad. I'm chasing shadows.'
He sat back, folded his arms, smiled and shook his head. He was looking too hard at something that just wasn’t bloody there. The only associations between all these things were in his mind.
It really was time he laid the whole thing to rest, and returned everything back to its rightful owner.
Just as soon as he got the tape fixed.
