Free The Watchers by Neil Spring Page B

the Thames and the sightings in west Wales, and someone knew I knew . . . well, there was a chance I could be in serious danger.
    The telephone box was empty. I slotted in a coin, dialled the number. ‘Room 9, please.’
    I waited ten, perhaps twenty seconds to be connected to his room.
    Come on, come on . . .
    A man with a stiff English accent came on the line. ‘Hello?’
    ‘Sorry, to whom am I speaking?’
    ‘This is James Stevenson,’ said the brisk voice, ‘hotel manager.’ Before I could decide whether to hang up, he cut in with a question: ‘Are you a relation of Colonel Corso? Do you know where we can reach him?’
    ‘I was hoping you might tell me.’
    A pause. ‘We haven’t seen him in two days, and well, he was due to check out yesterday. His belongings are still in his room.’
    Corso had said his life was in danger.
    ‘Did he leave a note?’
    ‘No, sir.’
    ‘Did anyone leave any messages for him?’
    ‘Only one message, sir,’ said Mr Stevenson, ‘from a Frank Frobisher.’
    I remembered the byline on the newspaper cuttings in Selina’s room. ‘Can I have his number?’
    ‘I really shouldn’t give it out.’
    ‘Please,’ I said, clutching the receiver close, ‘a lot could depend on this.’
    ‘Who did you say you worked for, sir?’
    ‘Paul Bestford MP. Chair of the Defence Select Committee.’
    It took some persuasion, but the manager eventually gave me the number. I found a pen and a scrap of notepaper in my pocket and jotted it down then hung up.
    ‘Hey! You gonna be long in there?’
    I looked up to see a fat middle-aged bloke rapping on the rain-soaked glass.
    ‘Hey, come on! I’m waiting here!’
    I turned my back on him and slotted in another coin.
    ‘Hey!’
    I ignored the guy beyond the glass and punched in the number that the hotel manager had given me. Frobisher had been trying to reach Corso too. I needed to know why.
    The phone rang and rang. I was about to hang up when a gruff Welshman answered.
    ‘Mr Frobisher?’
    ‘Yes,’ he sounded agitated. ‘Who’s this?’
    I explained my connection. ‘I understand you’ve been trying to reach Lieutenant Colonel Conrad Corso?’
    ‘Oh, good. You’ve located him, have you?’ I heard the rustling of paper over the line. Then Frobisher said, ‘I’m trying to cover this flap down here. My God, since we published that story on the flying football everyone’s started reporting sightings of strange lights! I want a quote from a US military source. Want to make sure they’re not testing something around St Brides Bay that they shouldn’t be.’
    Something didn’t feel right about this. Frobisher could have asked anyone from the US military about the sightings. Why Corso specifically?
    ‘Corso’s spent a lot of time down here, been seen in the Ram Inn quite a bit.’
    That intrigued me, partly because Corso’s base – RAF Croughton – was over two hundred miles from the Havens, but mostly because it tallied with what Corso had told me about visiting Selina in the constituency.
    ‘If you ask me, the military are taking all this more seriously than they’re letting on,’ Frobisher added. ‘Whenever I dig, the witnesses clam up.’
    I asked him to clarify.
    ‘When I approached Araceli at the Haven Hotel – to ask her if she’d seen anything else – she said she’d been threatened.’
    ‘By whom?’
    ‘Some men who came to see her after my article was published, warning her not to talk.’
    ‘Did she describe these men?’
    ‘Tall, dressed in black. She said their skin was like wax.’
    A shadowy memory tugged at me. ‘Mr Frobisher, I have something I think you ought to see. Can I send it to you?’
    ‘You should get down here, man, come see me.’
    Grandfather’s craggy face, the scar like a crooked smile, leaped into my mind, and I felt a shiver of fear as a familiar thought surfaced: Somewhere, we went somewhere  . . . ‘No, I can’t do that.’ I hung up.
    Pushing out of the phone box past the