Dead if You Don't

  He just could not trust her. Not totally. There were days when she arrived home late from work with excuses he wasn’t sure he believed. Occasions when she awkwardly ended a phone call when he walked into the kitchen. Always then the memory returned. Her naked body on top of the bearded man in their bed.

  A delivery van, its lights on, was driving slowly past. He saw one of his neighbours arriving home from the school run in her people carrier. She opened the rear door and from the glow of the vehicle’s interior light he could see her helping her small son, an irritating brat who always seemed to be screaming, out of his seat belt.

  The voice at the other end of the line was that of a cultured-sounding elderly man. ‘Is that Mr Hunter, the journalist?’

  ‘Speaking – who is this?’

  ‘Thank goodness I’ve got the right person. It’s taken me a while to get your phone number – I’ve phoned every R. Hunter in the phone book in Sussex.’

  ‘You could have contacted me on social media – I’m fairly active on Twitter and Facebook – or you could have just emailed me – my email is on all my bylines.’ Ross sipped some tea from the mug on his desk.

  ‘This is not a social media or an email matter, Mr Hunter. Email is not secure, I could not take that risk. I’ve read many of your pieces. I was very impressed with the article you wrote some years ago for the Sunday Times about the government failing our troops in Afghanistan.’

  ‘You read that?’

  ‘My son died in Helmand Province. Killed by friendly fire. Or blue on blue as they call it, I believe. If he’d been issued with a battlefield beacon, he might still be with us today.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s not the reason I’m calling, but thank you. My late wife and I tried not to be bitter about it.’

  Ross was starting to think this was going to be a waste of some of the very few precious minutes that he had left to finish and then proofread his article.

  ‘I’d just like to assure you I’m not a nutcase, Mr Hunter.’

  ‘Good to hear that,’ he replied.

  ‘My name is Dr Harry F. Cook. I’m a former RAF officer and a retired history of art professor at Birmingham University and I know this is going to sound strange, but I’ve recently been given absolute proof of God’s existence – and I’ve been advised there is a writer, a respected journalist called Ross Hunter, who could help me to get taken seriously.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I know it must sound strange. I appreciate that.’

  ‘Well, yes, actually, it does.’ Ross thought for an instant. ‘Exactly which God is it you have proof of?’

  ‘There is only one God, Mr Hunter. There are many prophets and many different faiths, but there is only one God. He is God of all faiths.’

  ‘May I ask who told you I’m the person who could help you?’ Ross asked, watching his neighbour shepherd her son up to the front door of their bungalow.

  ‘God Himself,’ Harry F. Cook replied, simply. ‘Could you indulge me for a couple of minutes?’

  Ross glanced at his watch, at the precious minutes ticking away. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to make it very quick, Dr Cook, I’m up against a deadline.’

  ‘Well, I’ll be as brief as I can – or would you prefer me to call you back in a while?’

  ‘No, go ahead.’ He picked up a pen and scribbled down the name, Dr Harry F. Cook, and Birmingham University – Art History – retd. Then he took another sip of his tea, which was turning increasingly tepid.

  ‘Well, the thing is, Mr Hunter, I need to come and see you, and explain everything more fully. I can assure you that I won’t be wasting your time. I don’t doubt you get oddballs contacting you every day. Would you meet me for just half an hour? I’ll travel to anywhere that’s convenient for you. And I have something I really believe you might want to hear. I have a message for you.’

  ‘You do? From whom?’

  ‘From your brother, Ricky.’

  For some moments Ross sat, numb. Wondering if he had heard right.

  ‘You have a message from Ricky?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Can you tell me it?’

  ‘Not over the telephone, Mr Hunter.’

  Ross felt a cold wind blow through the room. The lights out in the darkening street seemed to flicker, like a thousand candles guttering in a blast of wind. He shivered, and scribbled down some more with a shaking hand. ‘You really have a message from my brother?’

  He saw the blue flashing lights of an emergency vehicle heading up the street, and heard the wail of a siren. For a moment, he wondered if he was dreaming this conversation. ‘Who exactly are you, Dr Cook?’

  An ambulance raced past.

  ‘Please believe me, I’m just an ordinary man, doing what I’ve been told. Please, Mr Hunter, I urge you, can we meet?’

  Ross had dealt with and dismissed many nutters over the years, claiming to have world-shattering stories for him. But something in this man’s voice sounded sincere – and intrigued him.

  ‘I’ll give you half an hour, OK? I can meet for a cup of tea. If you’re able to convince me when we meet that we need longer than that, we’ll take it from there. All right?’

  ‘That’s very fair. Very good of you. As I said, I’m happy to travel to meet you anywhere convenient to you. If you just let me know when and where?’

  Monday, 20 February 2017

  At 3.50 p.m., ten minutes before Dr Harry F. Cook was due to arrive, Ross was staring out of the window of his second-floor den, thinking about a news story he was writing for the Sunday Times, which was going to make a certain National Health Trust executive squirm. He watched an immaculate white Nissan Micra pull up against the kerb in front of his house.

  A text pinged.

  Looking down at the phone, he saw it was from Imogen.

  Will be home late, around 7pm. Want me to pick up a takeaway? Fancy Thai? Beware of your nutter – don’t want to find you in little bits in the fridge! Love you. XXXX

  He texted back.

  Sure! Chicken satay & a green curry with fish, pls. Am armed to the teeth! Love you. XXX

  He returned to his work and tried to focus, but he could not. Late home again, he fretted. Why? What was she up to? He stared, distractedly, out of the window at the man in the little Nissan.

  Moments later as he walked downstairs into the hall, the doorbell rang. On the nanosecond of 4 p.m. He opened the front door.

  A tall, elderly man stood there, holding an enormous attaché case. He was in his mid seventies, Ross guessed, neatly dressed in a pin-striped suit with matching tie and pocket handkerchief.

  ‘Mr Hunter?’ He held out a hand.

  ‘Dr Cook? You found us OK?’

  ‘Oh I did, indeed, thanks to the wonders of satellite navigation.’

  As they shook hands, Cook leaned forward and said, staring at him imploringly, with sad, rheumy eyes, ‘It is very good of you to see me, Mr Hunter. You do understand that you and I have to save the world?’

  Ross gave him a hesitant smile. ‘Well, I’ll do my best!’ Seeing the man so smartly dressed, he wished for a moment he had on more than an old pair of jeans, a baggy jumper and broken-down slippers.

  ‘Mr Hunter, I can’t tell you how much this means to me – and to the human race.’

  Ross smiled. ‘Yep, well, let’s see. Come in, can I get you something to drink?’

  ‘A cup of tea would be most welcome.’

  A loud barking came from the kitchen.

  ‘Monty, quiet!’ Ross called out.

  The labradoodle ambled across the black-and-white chequered tiles of the hallway, his tail wagging clumsily.

  Ross patted the dog, then turned to the man, who was peering apprehensively at the curly creature. ‘He’s a total softie – the loveliest nature. Are you OK with dogs?’

  ‘Oh yes, absolutely fine. Monty, did you say?’

  ‘Yes. Short for Montmorency.’

  ‘I seem to remember Montmorency was the name o
f the dog in that wonderful book, Three Men in a Boat.’

  ‘That’s where we got it from – well, it was my wife’s idea, she always loved that book.’

  It was one of the books that he and Imogen had taken to Italy on honeymoon, and both read – he for the first time and Imogen for at least the third – and laughed at a lot, particularly at the first chapter, when the character was bemoaning feeling too seasick to eat anything on a cruise. Ross and Imogen had been on a free cruise, for the travel section of the previous magazine she worked for, and they’d been flat on their backs, feeling like death, for the first two days crossing the Bay of Biscay in a storm.

  ‘My wife and I were always more cat people,’ Cook said.

  ‘We had a cat, too – a rescue one. Cosmo. But he was very odd, used to disappear for days on end sometimes.’

  ‘Very hard to know the mind of a cat.’

  ‘Yep. One day he disappeared for good. Maybe he got a better offer.’

  The old man chuckled. ‘Maybe indeed.’

  Ross guided him to the sofa in their modern, airy lounge, then went through to the high-tech kitchen, which Imogen had chosen, and which had cost more than the national debt of a small nation – far more than they could sensibly afford – and put the kettle on. He made the tea then delved into a cupboard and found a pack of chocolate digestive biscuits, which he ripped open and tipped out onto a plate. Then he placed everything on a tray and carried it through.

  A few moments later, seated in an armchair opposite Cook, and with Monty at his side, beadily watching the stranger stirring his tea, Ross said, ‘So, you said you had a message from my brother, Ricky?’

  ‘Let me come on to that.’ Cook took a sip of his tea, then nodded pensively, lost in his own world for some moments. ‘Allow me to begin at the beginning.’

  Ross nodded.

  ‘Well, you see, my wife, Doreen, was also an academic, lecturing at the same university, in physics. Six months ago she passed away from cancer.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  ‘Thank you. The thing is, Mr Hunter, during her last days in a hospice she asked me to promise I would go to a medium after she died, to try to make contact with her. She was really insistent about this. Frankly, as a committed Christian, I’ve never been a subscriber to that kind of stuff, but she became increasingly anxious, so of course I promised I would. And naturally after she passed I had to fulfil my promise.’

  ‘Of course.’ Ross was wondering where this was going.

  ‘I managed to find a very nice lady, who came well recommended, and I had a sitting with her about three weeks after my wife’s funeral. But instead of any communication from Doreen, a man came through who claimed he had a direct message from God. He said that God was extremely concerned about the current state of the world, and felt that if mankind could have its faith in him restored, it would help to bring us all back from the brink. As proof of his bona fides, he said God had told him to give me three pieces of information that no one on this planet knows, in the form of compass coordinates. And he said there was a respected journalist, called Ross Hunter, who could help me to get taken seriously.’

  ‘Really? I had no idea I was so highly regarded.’

  ‘This man said he had someone with him who had a message for you. He said he had your brother, Ricky. He asked me to tell you that Ricky knew you did not like him, although he never understood why. But he forgives you.’

  Ross stared at him, mesmerized. ‘Did he say anything else?’

  ‘He said he wanted you to trust me. He said two names – I think it was Bubble and Squeak. He said remember Bubble and Squeak. Remember when Squeak bit you?’

  Ross stared back at him, feeling numb. Bubble and Squeak were two gerbils their parents had given them on their ninth birthday. Squeak had bitten him on his index finger, really hard. How on earth could this man, Dr Cook, possibly know this?

  The old man looked down at the attaché case on the floor beside him, and nodded at it. ‘It’s all in there, Mr Hunter.’

  ‘Right.’

  Cook opened the case and pulled out a massive bundle of A5 paper, held together by elastic bands. ‘I think we should start with you reading this. This was channelled to me directly from God, over several days following my visit to this medium.’ He handed it to Ross. ‘I have of course inked those compass coordinates out, Mr Hunter, in case this fell into the wrong hands.’

  It was heavy. The top page was creased and blank, with a dogeared corner. The journalist took a quick look through. There were no chapters, it was just continuous writing on lined paper – slanted, tiny, scrupulously neat, in black ink, with little patches of Tippex here and there, and peppered with annotations of arrows and boxes. The pages were numbered at the bottom. The last page was 1,247. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Well – if you leave it with me, I’ll take a look.’

  The old man shook his head, regretfully. ‘I’m afraid that’s not possible. You see, this is the only copy in existence.’

  ‘You haven’t made a copy?’

  Cook looked almost affronted. ‘I couldn’t possibly take the risk of a copy falling into the wrong hands. I need to be here while you read it.’

  Inwardly, Ross groaned. As he feared, this man was beginning to sound like a nutter. Yet he couldn’t dismiss what he had said about Ricky. How could he possibly have known about the two gerbils? He’d never written about them and, so far as he could remember, he’d never talked about them. So how did Dr Cook know? How? He held the manuscript up, weighed it in his hands, then flicked through it. ‘This would take me about four days to read!’

  The old man raised a finger. ‘That’s about right.’

  Ross shook his head and smiled, humouring him. ‘You’re going to sit there, on my sofa, for four days, while I sit here reading this?’

  ‘I cannot let it out of my sight.’

  Ross shook his head again. ‘Dr Cook, it’s not going to happen. I’m sorry, but quite apart from anything else, I don’t have four days free. You’re going to have to take a massive leap of faith – either you leave this with me and I’ll read it when I can, in my own time, or you take it away with you. And before I even start, I need to know a lot more about what’s in it. And about this proof of God you claim to have. What are these three pieces of information you say you have?’

  ‘I have been given three sets of compass coordinates – the first is for the location of the Holy Grail.’

  ‘The Holy Grail?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘That’s a pretty big ticket,’ Ross said, noting it down.

  ‘Not as big as the next, Mr Hunter. The coordinates for the location of a significant object relating to our Lord, Jesus Christ.’

  ‘Does it come with a certificate of origin?’

  ‘Please, Mr Hunter, as I said to you, I’m not some kind of a crackpot. Please hear me out. The third set of coordinates is for something so important it will, I assure you, have a tumultuous impact – in a truly positive way – on the world.’

  ‘Are you going to tell me what this is?’

  ‘In due course but not now, not until I can be sure you are the right man for this. But let’s say the third set relates to the Second Coming.’

  ‘The Second Coming?’

  ‘That is correct.’

  Ross thought for a moment and doodled a halo. ‘OK. Have you checked any or all of these out, Dr Cook?’

  Cook took a sip of his tea, then nodded pensively, lost in his own world. ‘Indeed, I have. I’ve checked out the coordinates for the Holy Grail. They give the location as Chalice Well in Glastonbury.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘As you know, this has long been reputed to be the place where Joseph of Arimathea is buried. Chalice Well is one of Britain’s most ancient wells, in the Vale of Avalon, between Glastonbury Tor and Chalice Hill.’

  ‘I do happen to know quite a lot about that, actually. I wrote a large piece on the Glastonbury Festival and the myths surrounding Glastonbury To
r for the Guardian a few years ago. All the Arthurian legends about the Holy Grail stem from around there.’

  ‘Good, then you will know what I am talking about. Of course, there is disinformation put out by enemies of Our Lord. I suspect you are man enough, Mr Hunter, to see beyond that. It’s probably one of the many reasons why your name was given to me as the man who could help me.’

  ‘So, have you investigated this claim?’

  ‘I’ve been there with dowsing rods and with a metal detector, in a wide arc around where the compass coordinates pinpoint, and there is something down there.’ Cook’s eyes lit up with an almost messianic zeal. ‘Chalice Well is run by a group of trustees, whom I then approached, asking for permission to carry out an archaeological dig, but despite explaining why I wanted to do this, they refused.’

  ‘Did they give you a reason?’

  ‘I’ve done all I can to persuade them, but I just don’t think they take me seriously. I believe it would be very different with you – with your reputation for integrity, they’d have to take you seriously.’

  ‘That’s very flattering.’

  ‘True, Mr Hunter.’

  ‘There is a very big problem,’ Ross said. ‘From what I remember from my own research, yes, it is possible that Joseph of Arimathea came to England after the crucifixion.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Cook said. ‘Quite likely sailing across the flood plains of the Somerset Levels, bringing with him the Chalice that contained some of Jesus’s blood from his crucifixion, and arriving at the legendary island of King Arthur’s Avalon, a hill now known as Glastonbury Tor. For safekeeping he buried the Chalice in a secret place. Seven centuries after the death of Jesus, Glastonbury Abbey was built. In 1191, monks at the abbey claimed to have found the graves of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere. I believe all records were lost during Henry VIII’s Reformation – when the Protestant Church broke away from the rule of Rome, and most monasteries were razed to the ground with their relics and records destroyed or lost forever.’