The Watchers Read online

  Praise For

  Praise for The Ghost Hunters

  ‘Surprising, serpentine and clever’

  Sunday Times

  ‘Close the curtains pull up a chair, open a book – and prepare to be pleasantly scared’

  Metro

  ‘A deft, spooky psychological drama based on a true story’

  Daily Mail

  ‘Engrossing . . . a chilling English ghost story’

  Fortean Times

  ‘Spring weaves a dark web of romance, deceit and a lingering curse’

  Metro

  ‘I was gripped by the supernatural menace and the gradual revelation of mysteries and secrets’

  Fortean Times

  ‘Genuinely spine chilling . . . an excellent blending of fact and fiction’

  Light Magazine

  ‘A gloriously spooky tale, perfect for dark autumn nights’

  Netmums.com

  ‘A roistering paranormal adventure’

  Radio Times

  About the Author

  Neil Spring was born in south Wales in 1981. He started writing at the age of twenty-eight. Between 1999 and 2002 he studied philosophy, politics and economics at Somerville College, Oxford. In 2013 he published The Ghost Hunters, a paranormal thriller based on the life of Harry Price. The Ghost Hunters received outstanding reviews and has been adapted into a major television drama under the title Harry Price: Ghost Hunter for ITV. Neil is Welsh and lives in London. The Watchers is his second novel. You can contact him on Twitter @NeilSpring or visit him at www.neilspring.com.

  Also by Neil Spring

  The Ghost Hunters

  Title

  Copyright

  First published in Great Britain in 2015 by

  Quercus Publishing Ltd

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © 2015 Neil Spring

  The moral right of Neil Spring to be

  identified as the author of this work has been

  asserted in accordance with the Copyright,

  Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication

  may be reproduced or transmitted in any form

  or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

  including photocopy, recording, or any

  information storage and retrieval system,

  without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available

  from the British Library

  PB ISBN 978 1 78429 063 4

  EBOOK ISBN 978 1 78429 062 7

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters,

  businesses, organizations, places and events are

  either the product of the author’s imagination

  or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to

  actual persons, living or dead, events or

  locales is entirely coincidental.

  Dedication

  For Guy, Lord Black of Brentwood. A dear friend and a great man.

  Contents

  Note

  Map

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Robert Wilding’s Statement

  Secret State

  – 1 –

  – 2 –

  – 3 –

  – 4 –

  – 5 –

  – 6 –

  – 7 –

  – 8 –

  – 9 –

  – 10 –

  – 11 –

  – 12 –

  – 13 –

  – 14 –

  – 15 –

  – 16 –

  – 17 –

  – 18 –

  – 19 –

  The Broad Haven Triangle

  – 20 –

  – 21 –

  – 22 –

  – 23 –

  – 24 –

  – 25 –

  – 26 –

  – 27 –

  – 28 –

  – 29 –

  – 30 –

  – 31 –

  – 32 –

  – 33 –

  – 34 –

  – 35 –

  – 36 –

  – 37 –

  – 38 –

  Sky Watch

  – 39 –

  – 40 –

  – 41 –

  – 42 –

  – 43 –

  – 44 –

  – 45 –

  – 46 –

  – 47 –

  – 48 –

  – 49 –

  – 50 –

  – 51 –

  – 52 –

  – 53 –

  – 54 –

  – 55 –

  – 56 –

  – 57 –

  – 58 –

  – 59 –

  – 60 –

  – 61 –

  – 62 –

  – 63 –

  Afterwards

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  Also Available

  Note

  This novel was loosely inspired by the UFO sightings that took place in Wales throughout the late 1970s. However, all the characters appearing in this work, as well as all details of the story itself, are entirely fictitious. Any resemblance to real places or persons (living or dead) is purely coincidental. For more information on the historical background of the sightings, please see the author note at the back of the book.

  Map

  Epigraph

  ‘We are a haunted species. The spectres are among us. They continue to come. They rattle their chains. Yet it is us who have chained them.’

  Ralph Noyes, former MOD official

  Prologue

  Delivery of the Parsons Report

  by Jonathan Harrison, former special adviser to the prime minister

  Wednesday 22 May 1979, 10 Downing Street, London

  Perhaps it was the prospect of meeting the new prime minister that accounted for his ashen expression; perhaps it was the weight of history which lay behind that famous black door. Whatever it was, the young man looked fearful. I might even go so far as to say tortured.

  Smiling, I gestured him forward. ‘This way please, Mr Wilding.’

  Many visitors to 10 Downing Street react with something close to awe, but this shabby, unkempt gentleman was different. He was not taking in the grandeur of the entrance hall; he was focused on stepping carefully across its chequered black and white floor.

  ‘Is that it? ‘I asked, eyeing the slim blue file in his hand.

  He nodded without looking up, and I hurriedly guided him to the corridor that ran to the back of the house and up the grand stairs. He did not admire the gilded banisters. He did not eye the portraits of previous prime ministers. But when, as we reached the landing of the first floor, he glimpsed through an open door a vast oval table surrounded by vacant chairs, he stopped.

  ‘There?’ he said.

  I nodded.

  He stared into the panelled room, and I let him have a moment. It’s not every day a former parliamentary researcher is invited to attend an extraordinary meeting of the National Security Council.

  ‘You followed the instructions in my memorandum?’ I checked.

  ‘Yes.’


  ‘You told no one of this meeting?’

  ‘I told no one.’

  ‘And you understand that—’

  ‘That what is said here today remains a secret, yes,’ he snapped, finally meeting my gaze.

  ‘The prime minister is waiting,’ I said, and I guided him along. I did not add that our new PM was not a lady to be kept waiting. Nor did I point out that he had just one hour to tell his story – to convince us – before the council members arrived. He did not look like he could take the pressure.

  We arrived at the door to her study and I knocked once.

  ‘Come in.’ Her voice was calm but stern.

  The prime minister looked up as we entered her office. I gestured Wilding to a chair before the desk, but before I could make the necessary introductions our guest had turned back towards the door I had just firmly closed.

  ‘Mr Wilding, are you all right?’ I asked.

  He had gripped the door handle and was rattling it: once, twice, three times.

  ‘Mr Wilding?’

  He looked at me with embarrassed, apologetic eyes and nodded, yet proceeded to perform the exact ritual a second time.

  In all my years as a private secretary in Downing Street I had never witnessed a guest behave so peculiarly, especially before a prime minister. I was nervous to see her reaction – intrigued too, for this was only her second week in office.

  After a third cycle of rattling, I ushered Wilding towards the chair once more. ‘Please, won’t you sit down?’

  He did. Carefully. Perched on the edge of the seat as if ready to leap up at any moment.

  The PM studied him. His hair was unruly, a shock of dark curls. His eyes too were dark and set deeply in a gaunt face. Haunted is the word that comes to mind. He looked haunted. And if the stories about him were true, that was understandable.

  ‘You are a difficult man to find,’ said the prime minister at last. ‘Two years?’

  ‘I needed to get away. I needed to recover.’

  ‘Remind me who you worked for?’

  ‘Paul Bestford. Member of Parliament for Pembrokeshire.’

  ‘Ah yes.’ She nodded, only once but her tone spoke volumes. ‘Paul’s loss of self-respect was sad to see. But his loss of self-control, that was unforgivable.’

  The observation was cuttingly smooth. I wasn’t surprised when Wilding flinched. But his eyes remained locked on hers.

  A beat passed, another, and still they stared. The silence was loaded with tension.

  Finally, the prime minister began again. ‘Mr Wilding, I am so terribly sorry for your loss,’ she said with an empathy far removed from her public persona. ‘And so grateful for all you have done.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Wilding murmured. Quickly, he looked back over his shoulder to the door, then back at the blue file he was still holding in his right hand.

  ‘I want to reassure you that a full investigation into what happened in the Havens has been under way for some time,’ the prime minister said. ‘And the guilty parties are being sought.’

  Wilding nodded. A gesture of reluctant acceptance, or grief perhaps.

  ‘Help me understand,’ she said, ‘what compels a man to act as your grandfather did?’

  Wilding looked distressed. Dropping the blue file onto her desk, he said, ‘This. The recurrent power of evil.’

  She didn’t reach for the document immediately, just eyed it steadily. ‘You have no idea,’ she said, drawing a breath, ‘for how long the intelligence services have sought this information. Beyond the Vatican Library, only a few copies exist, and we had no lead on any of them. Until now.’

  But Wilding was no longer paying attention. The high windows that overlooked Horse Guards and St James’s Park were like a magnet to his eyes. What on earth is he looking at? I wondered. Finally he tore his gaze away, pulled in a deep breath.

  ‘Has Dr Caxton arrived yet?’

  ‘He is expected shortly,’ the prime minister answered. ‘We are in desperate need of his assistance. Yours too. Now go on. Tell me, please, Mr Wilding, how did you come by this document? From the beginning. Leave nothing out.’ She gave me a quick glance. ‘My secretary will take notes.’

  ‘I . . . I don’t know where to start.’ He paused, then added, ‘Prime Minister, I think the questions you really want to ask are, “Did those things actually happen? Could they happen?”’

  She tilted her head to the side, just as she had during my briefing to her earlier that morning on the plague of phenomena that had occurred two years ago in the distant community of the Havens, St Brides Bay, in west Wales, an area the newspapers were calling the Broad Haven Triangle. The events had made national headlines: mutilated animals, tormenting poltergeists, dancing lights in the sky, unidentified flying objects and menacing silver-suited figures watching, watching.

  Wilding hesitated. ‘What now? I mean, what happens to me?’

  ‘We will establish a unit to investigate these matters.’

  ‘Yes, but will I be safe?’

  ‘That rather depends upon you, Mr Wilding.’ The prime minister gave that noncommittal smile that I would live to see her give many more times. Her gaze dropped to the title of the blue file before her: The Parsons Report. ‘This document couldn’t have come to us at a more important time. The Soviets are hell-bent on world dominance, and they are rapidly acquiring the means to become the most powerful imperial nation the world has ever seen. They are among us. And this could make all the difference.’ She paused. ‘I want to hear your story. There will be time afterwards for you to write it down.’

  Wilding leaned forward and rested his tented fingers on the desk’s dark leather surface. ‘Prime Minister, there’s something I’d like to know before I begin.’

  ‘By all means.’

  ‘Do you believe we are alone in the universe?’

  Margaret Thatcher’s eyes widened. ‘Mr Wilding, my national security advisers inform me that it is no longer a question of belief.’

  Wilding released a troubled sigh. It was hard to tell whether he agreed with her or not.

  ‘Well then,’ he said, leaning restlessly back into his chair, ‘my story begins in west Wales sixteen years ago. At a place called Ravenstone Farm.’

  Robert Wilding’s Statement

  I

  Secret State

  ‘The Earth is a farm. We are someone else’s property.’

  Charles Fort

  – 1 –

  Friday 6 December 1963, Ravenstone Farm, west Wales

  I remember the first time I laid eyes on the farm, rocking and jolting in the back seat of Grandfather’s truck, struggling to ignore the overpowering stink of damp dog fur as we passed down a narrow potholed lane bordered on both sides by skeletal trees.

  We had travelled some ten miles from my family home in Brawdy, across St Brides Bay, near the military base where my father had been posted, and as the truck laboured through the many winding lanes and huddled coastal villages to bring us here, I watched the sun sink ever lower to the horizon and felt my spirits drop with it.

  My parents had died in an accident and I was to be taken in by my grandfather, a man I had met only a handful of times. Mum and Dad had never brought me to the farm, even though we’d lived only a few miles away. Now, as we made our way down the narrow lanes towards the house, I couldn’t help wondering why.

  ‘Well, boy, here we are,’ said Grandfather, trying his best to be cordial with a grandson he hardly knew. ‘Home.’

  The word sounded painfully hollow. I already knew that nowhere would ever feel like home again.

  Hanging from the rear-view mirror: a small silver cross, attached to a beaded chain. I looked past it, through the dirty windscreen and saw the gloomy lane open into a small clearing, saw the wide fields slope down towards the cliff edge beyond. Directly ahead were dilapidated cattle sheds o
f corrugated iron, brown with rust, and immediately to the right, behind a low crumbling stone wall, the farmhouse. It had stood here at the edge of the Atlantic for hundreds of years, he told me. Once, perhaps, it had been gleaming white. Because I was a child I never thought to ask why my grandfather might be living somewhere so lonesome: miles from anywhere, in a place without road names, shops, a pub or even a phone box.

  His truck crunched to a halt on the gravel next to a grey Hillman Hunter that had seen better days. I climbed out, feeling an odd pang of nervousness. Looking doubtfully around me, I scrunched my nose against the stench of manure. Listened. Somewhere beyond the fields the ocean roared, and from behind the farmhouse a bull groaned as if in pain.

  ‘Don’t mind ’im,’ Grandfather muttered, his rough voice offering scant comfort as he climbed down from the driver’s seat and opened the back of the truck.

  Despite his age – mid-fifties – he was a strong man; he had to be to manage the chores of Ravenstone Farm alone. He had a fresh scar, jagged, on his left cheek, which caught the eye, and he was tall with a quiet confidence about him. Though on that crimson evening he inspired little confidence in me.

  ‘You like swings, boy?’ he asked awkwardly.

  I didn’t but I nodded yes. Grandfather was staring to the side of the farmhouse, where rising from the overgrown weeds there was a slatted wooden seat suspended by two twists of rope on a rusty frame.

  ‘Your mother used to love playing on that thing.’

  A sudden memory: me in my school uniform, eating breakfast in our kitchen, watching Mum in her jeans kneeling over a placard emblazoned with the slogan BAN THE BOMB.

  Grandfather’s voice jolted me back to the present.

  ‘That’ll be your room.’ Hunched in his shabby greatcoat, he was pointing with a hand that was red raw from the cold to a narrow window directly over the small arched porch that led into the farmhouse. ‘There’s quite a bit of damp. I’ll sort it.’

  But I wasn’t thinking about the damp. I was thinking about the thick iron bars fixed over the glass. They weren’t just on my window. They were on every window.