Distraction: Out of the silent suburb

By Andrew Coombs

Part mystery, part love story, this Cold War thriller sees the enigmatic PK, the faithless son of a clergyman, seemingly involved in the disappearance of a schoolgirl. His close friend, Frank, certain that PK holds the key to the missing girl, is determined to find her. But Frank, a former soldier in Northern Ireland, is unaware that he is being targeted by a terrorist with a personal vendetta.
Meanwhile, the nuclear countdown continues...
This excellent, thoughtful and darkly comic page-turner is set in the decade before the end of the Cold War, and focuses on the twelve days leading up to a potential Armageddon.
Will the schoolgirl be found and PK exonerated? Can Frank escape the terrorist’s revenge? And, ultimately, what is the distraction that causes a US pilot to hesitate in his defence of the UK?
Based on real-life events, finely crafted and realistic, Distraction will appeal to mystery and thriller enthusiasts alike.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AG Books
• Release date: Dec 14, 2017
• ISBN: 9781785388248

Book preview

fictitious.

Prologue: The Army Chaplain

1956

‘Quick Eve, take off your clothes, I think I can hear God coming back.’

Adam

A strange day for providence to choose. The kind of day that made the Reverend Kendrid appreciate his vocation. The universe was gloriously uneventful. His world consisted of homemade cakes and friendly old ladies. The tombola turned, the showers came and went and the morning smelled of tree pollen and privet. For a while at least, the only worries were the declining sales in raffle tickets and the future of the organ that lay in pieces like old scaffolding at the back of the church.

Surrounded by war as a boy, he longed for some ‘trivial concerns’. Now he had arrived in a kind of low-grade utopia. For a few days a week, days like these, he felt calm and in control of a tiny oasis of civilisation. And if he believed enough and held it in his mind then it would continue to exist. But obviously he had not believed enough. Soon the uncertainty returned: the uncertainty from a different time.

The bookstalls were slow that morning. People were distracted. The renovations had spread during the week and the area around the churchyard was dotted with trenches and abandoned machinery. Some displays were propped precariously between the workings. It seemed no one noticed the Reverend paying sixpence for something he already possessed.

‘For the boy,’ he mumbled, unheard. He slipped the book into his pocket before jumping a mound of earth and walking away into the sunlight.

Next day, alone at the vicarage, while Dorothy was taking Philip to school, he opened the study and sat in the shadow of papers and boxes with his new book. It was something he had never read properly, not the old part anyway, not in its entirety. There were reams that were impenetrable. Everyone knew this, from Sunday school to the Synod. As a student he was exceptionally bad. Even today, the other Bibles, the large illustrated volumes around the room bound in elephant folio, the shelves sagging under their weight, never saw action. He preferred to conceive his sermons and articles in the church at the pulpit and on the pews making notes before typing at his desk. He collected most of his material from his parishioners’ anecdotes and the pamphlets left out by the playgroup teachers and church committees. He told himself he would change. He would be in a better position to field the questions coming from Philip’s random inquisitions. And how much further could he reinforce his island haven if he made a greater effort?

The pieces of paper that fell from the leaves as he turned the pages were at first only a curiosity. The handwriting was almost illegible, most of it being small and in smudged pencil. But the slips of paper became more interesting as he skipped on. Sometimes they fell and drifted to the floor like tissue. The brittle paper, infused with the smell of stale pipe tobacco and dust made him sneeze. Finding his spectacles, he took the book and its contents to the bureau and turned on the lamp. He carefully extracted a fragment from the beginning of the volume-

The Philistines were for a time more advanced than the Israelites. They were living in the Iron Age on the fertile coastal plain west of the Jordan. The tribes of Israel were on the edge of the desert languishing in the Bronze Age. They needed the Philistine technology.

And on the back in black ink scratched on the paper, an afterthought-

Is this how our civilisations began? Manifest Destiny? With a history of enslavement and persecution, a free thinker (and God seems to have given us freedom of thought) might surmise that an ancient people had an idea that could help overcome their misfortune. To be chosen by the God of gods would undermine the credibility of all other deities and justify the destruction of the tribes that stood in their way.

The Reverend shifted uncomfortably in the chair. This was surely the work of a mischievous student, not a serious scholar. He began making notes on the back of an envelope.

When Dorothy returned, slamming the door in the hall, he closed the book with the papers within and closed the lid of the bureau.

‘They were not innocents,’ he said defensively, not meaning to say anything.

Dorothy looked at him with amusement as she removed her coat. ‘Innocents?’

‘The Canaanites were not innocents, but had rejected God...’

Later that morning, standing in the dappled sunlight of the yew that snaked around and through and sometimes out of the tombs, he oversaw the efforts on the riverside. The workers were on a barge shoring up the bank from the water. Two others collected the delicate material from the consecrated ground by the wall. They quietly swore and made fun as they assembled windbreaks and sheets to hide the more sensitive areas where the bones were seeing the sun for the first time. The rainstorm that had highlighted the problem some months before left rivulets of mud that were still visible. The inundation heralded many changes.

Saved from crumbling into the water, the soldiers who made it back from the Great War, only to die at the sanatorium, were depending on him. His relatives were among them. But, not for the first time in his life, he felt a fraud - A service of prayer for The Glorious Dead. The phrase made him shudder.

He sat on a low-lying branch as he caught sight of little Philip on his way home for lunch. Chased by an imaginary foe, the boy ran among the gravestones on the other side of the church, Indian feathers on his head and a cap pistol in his hand, his satchel dragging on the ground and his shoes untied.

Philip was an attractive baby, the only truly beautiful baby in the world. The ones he anointed in the font every week screamed. Philip never cried. He was a contented child. The feeling of unquestioning, selfless love that overcame the Reverend on the day Philip was born could only have come from God. To do something for his son was everything. Here, surely, was the meaning of life. Suddenly inspired and the darkness retreating, he exchanged a few words with the workers and walked back to the house, following the zigzag warpath his son had trampled in the long grass.

The previous weekend the Reverend and Philip had made their first trip to the Devil’s Punchbowl. Flying a kite in the clearing where hundreds of families congregated in the sun made it seem that this life was reasonable.

As they ate their sandwiches on the edge of the escarpment, the boy asked, ‘Was this place made by a crashing spacecraft?’

‘Possibly,’ said the Reverend.

Phil took a tin Dan Dare rocket ship from his satchel and practised landings in a clump of weeds. ‘Do you really believe that’s possible, dad?’

The Reverend laughed. ‘No Phil, it’s a natural formation.’

‘It could be though couldn’t it? Aliens land in America all the time.’

‘There are no otherworldly creatures here Philip,’ he answered reassuringly. ‘They are all in America.’

‘So where are angels from?’

‘They live in heaven with God. They help him out.’

‘Like the elves that help Father Christmas?’ he asked mischievously.

‘Shall we go back to talking about flying saucers?’

‘What about the angels that had a fight with God? Where are they?’

‘He sent them away.’

‘So if all the angels ganged up, could they overthrow Him?’

‘No - that could never happen.’

‘Maybe the devil crashed here in a spacecraft when God sent him away - he was an angel.’

The Reverend scratched his head in mock reflection. ‘Angels don’t need spacecraft.’

‘If there are more bad angels in heaven, and they don’t need spacecraft, how do we know we are safe?’

He gave Philip a shoulder hug. ‘Because of Jesus.’

The sky was darkening. They prepared to make their way back to the car. Philip helped shake out the travel rug.

‘My RE teacher told us how the flocks of shepherds saw an angel who knew Jesus. Like in the song.’

‘The animals were the flock, not the shepherds, Phil. Do you mean the carol?’

‘I’m joking, silly,’ Phil said. ‘When I told Mr Lucas I saw something like that once...’

‘Like what?’

‘Like an angel... He said I was being daft.’

‘Were you?’

‘Yes, but why didn’t he believe me if he believed the other story?’

A few days later, after lunch, the Reverend watched from the bathroom window as Dorothy went to deliver the parish news and drop the boy back at school. He returned to the study and read some more. Then, with the late afternoon sun streaming into the room, he collected the notes, pulled the typewriter from under the table and rolled two sheets and a carbon into the machine. With one deft finger, he began to rattle the text into legibility-

It wasn’t an apple, it was a fig...

According to Edward Gibbon, this religion did not contract error and corruption through a long residency on the earth, but had problems of credibility from its induction. The Israelites frequently lapsed into rebellion against their god. He only had to turn away and they would be erecting other idols to worship, despite his ominous demonstrations of power.

The god of the Israelites was constantly bewildered. ‘How long will it be before they believe me, for all the signs I have shown them, still they are not loyal.’

He stopped typing, closed the book and watched the dust settle back on the desk. He studied the pages for a signature, but there was none. Finally, he annotated each of the slips of paper with the corresponding place where it had fallen from the book, then rose to stretch his legs and clear his head.

Outside he breathed the air and cast another eye over the river work. The foreman acknowledged him with a wave. The progress was good. Satisfied that the workers were showing the appropriate respect and taking care with the remains, he went back along the towpath, sat among the trees overlooking the island and lit a cigarette, turning his attention inward. There was no doubt some spell had been broken. He was once again in danger of being adrift in the chaos.

The river flowed faster now. It would not have been such a bad thing, he thought, to have your bones washed out to sea. He would not mind. It was the Big Sleep. What does it matter where they lie? Only atoms made from the same stuff as the water and the trees. They will return to the universe in their own way eventually. A bank of mud, a slab of stone or even a lead coffin isn’t going to keep them from the stars. He flicked the butt into the navigation channel.

When he returned to the study he discovered the notes continuing into the New Testament. He fed in some new sheets and began typing-

...We try to separate Jesus from the brutality of the Old Testament. However, to do this is to separate him from his god...

*

The evening paper lay on the kitchen table. There was a picture of a mushroom cloud boiling into the sky from an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. The report had a childish exuberance.

That night, as he lay in bed, he was thinking of Philip. You have to prepare the answers to the questions that will inevitably arise. And the boy is far too smart to be fobbed off.

The next day he had just finished typing more of the notes when Dorothy came in unexpectedly.

‘What are you reading?’ She looked over his shoulder as he feigned nonchalance. ‘That’s one of the books I threw out last weekend,’ she said.

He said nothing and showed no surprise, though he was surprised.

‘You didn’t buy it back did you?’ she asked.

‘I suppose I must have.’

‘What on earth do you want with another one?’ She picked it off the desk before he could stop her. ‘Is this a sermon you’re writing?’

She ignored the pieces of paper, assuming them his notes. ‘How can you see in this light?’ She pulled her spectacles from the top of her head and looked at the inside cover. She took it over to the window where a shaft of light slipped past the barricade of cassocks, coats and cricket whites.

‘William Kendrid 1915,’ she pronounced. ‘Gosh, I didn’t notice that when I was clearing out. We must put a stronger bulb in that loft.’

The Reverend was startled. ‘Can I see?’

‘Sorry darling,’ she said handing it back, ‘that was careless of me; this is a family heirloom. Lucky you bought it back.’

After Dorothy returned to listen to the wireless, he studied the pencil marks with his father’s name partially hidden where the stallholder had scrawled 6d. There was no doubt: the name stretched almost apologetically across the inside cover. The same writing was clear on the notes. The clue was there in the final entry-

It seems everyone I knew yesterday, is dead today. The morning after one of the worst artillery barrages we have faced and these boys, my boys, are scattered all over. Even God would have trouble piecing them together. As the slaughter continues, battle after battle, I am seriously expecting divine intervention (something more substantial than the Angels of Mons). If it does not come...?

When he closed the book this time, a flower-scented breeze drifted through the open window and made him melancholic. It was like his first breath of air.

He tried to recall his father - He did not recognise the image that flitted in his head. It was hard to interpret the earnest photographic depictions that had migrated to distant unattended rooms. He had sometimes thought Philip looked a great deal like the army chaplain, some kind of reincarnation (that would be awful - ancestors returning through their progeny).

He spent the next morning going through the boxes in the loft. He found the portmanteau beneath one of several green military suitcases heavy with Lugers, bullets and shell casings, familiar relics from a lost time. He choked on the dust. The letters inside were bundled and tied with string. Impatiently, he extracted the top page, pulling it through the bindings. Written on notepaper from the infirmary where the army chaplain had contracted influenza, this was part of the chaplain’s last known correspondence with his wife. The Reverend had seen it before. Despite the letter’s provenance, he recalled how once, foolishly, he had mistaken the content as an affirmation of faith.

... Despite the soft foundations, the survival of the Church of England as an institution is paramount. How else can we remember those children reduced to fertiliser? The Church needs to survive, however corrupt. Above all, we need to keep out the ideas of more tyrannical and immature ideologies that would rush into the vacuum...

*

At first the Reverend did not recognise the foreman when he appeared at the front door. He had scratched the stubble from his face, his gnarled hands were clean and a blazer hugged his shoulders. He entered and took the seat offered in the conservatory among the potted ferns.

‘We’ve found your father.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ the Reverend said.

‘With respect, we have found the remains of your old dad. We’ve notified the health people.’

‘Of course,’ he said, now realising. ‘Sorry, I’m just a bit surprised.’

‘We knew he was there somewhere.’

‘Yes, quite.’

But he was reeling from the portentousness of the news. He recovered himself and forced a smile. ‘Good work. Another flood tide and, who knows, the old man could have been sailing away to join his fallen comrades on the continent. I’m told he liked the seaside.’

It was an inappropriate remark. And it felt peculiar as he said it.

‘Of course,’ he added respectfully, ‘he’s not an old man - or he wasn’t. Age shall not weary them... etcetera. I’ll do what’s necessary.’

The foreman nodded sympathetically.

‘The poor blighter was considerably younger than I am now,’ the Reverend continued without meaning to. ‘A young man trying to bring comfort to an uncomfortable world... I never knew him you know. It felt odd coming back to his Parish... Some of his things were still in the loft, waiting for us, as if one day we would be able to face them.’

The foreman was embarrassed. He prepared to leave, buttoning his blazer and looking for a way out. But there was no obvious path through the furniture unaccompanied.

The Reverend was still talking. ‘It’s a strange thing to be older than your father.’

‘It’s not uncommon these days.’

‘I still think of him as my senior. And I suppose, if he is up there in heaven, then he is.’

On the way back from the works later that afternoon where they had made plans for the renovation and said a prayer over the remains, the Reverend informed Dorothy of his recent doubts and the implications for Philip.

He pointed at the church roof, broken gables and gargoyles steeped in sunlight.

‘Suppose this is the work of men and men alone.’

Dorothy laughed, ‘The Dean’s contractors are definitely responsible for some of the repairs.’ She held his arm, ‘It’s not a bad life. Don’t let the ideas of men ruin it. Just follow the philosophy of Jesus. The Confucian Golden Rule.’

‘Heavens, you have thought about this haven’t you. But what’s going on if we’re not all going to be seated at that table one day?’

‘Is that what you need? An affirmation that you’re somehow worthy?’

‘What’s the point of passing on the baton of life if there is nothing at the end of the race? We’ve been lied to.’

‘Lied to?’

‘No, not Him perhaps. Not that poor fellow.’ The Reverend found the thought of the crucifixion uncomfortable. ‘Just the old material seems so... you know?’

‘As I understand, your dad was not the first to find the whole thing implausible... banal even.’

‘I’m staggered you’ve entertained such thoughts Dorothy.’

‘My schooling included the Age of Reason.’

He sighed, ‘You’re being very superior. Am I such a fool?’

A flotilla of boats returned on the evening tide. The boatyards filled with voices from across the water. His father would have known a similar scene. They reached the front of the vicarage and stood contemplating the windows in their gently rotting frames. The cat saw them from the roof and slipped down the wisteria, creating a shower of purple petals.

The Reverend smiled, ‘The earth held on the back of an elephant.’

‘I thought it was a giant turtle.’

He suddenly looked serious again.

Dorothy gripped his arm tighter, ‘Your god exists if you want him to - the God of do unto others... or do-as-you-would-be-done-by.’

‘"Exist if I want him to," reminds me of Peter Pan. Every time you deny the existence of fairies, a fairy dies.’

‘We’re getting our stories mixed,’ she said.

‘Yes, that’s exactly what we’re doing.’

As they entered the house, Philip was sitting at the table still in his uniform with a partially spilt milkshake and a trail of Nesquik powder leading from the cupboard. He was waiting for his tea. He giggled as the cat jumped on the table. He had heard some of their conversation.

‘Who’s Peter Pan?’ he said rubbing his cheek against the feline coat. ‘I like the Water Babies... Mrs Do-Be-Do-Be-Done... Do.’

*

At the Reverend’s behest, over the next few days, Dorothy began to study more of chaplain William Kendrid’s texts.

‘He should have noticed,’ she