But Dr Hopkinson didn't seem so convinced. 'Inspector Matthews,' he said politely, 'I hope you don't think I'm trying to tell you your job, but—' He hesitated.
'Go on, Doctor,' the policeman encouraged.
'Don't underestimate Joseph Sinclair. He's old, and his mental health is frail. But he's not stupid — I've had enough conversations with him to establish that. He has a scientific mind, he's a voracious reader and he's no fool.'
'What are you trying to tell me, Doctor?'
Dr Hopkinson looked away for a moment. 'I don't know,' he replied. 'Just don't expect to find him sitting in a field somewhere talking to the daisies. Just because he suffers from psychosis, it doesn't mean he can't merge into society perfectly easily.'
The policeman nodded. 'Point taken,' he said. 'In the meantime, you'd better hope the press don't get hold of this — they'd have a field day.'
Dr Hopkinson smiled. 'I'm concerned about my patients,' he said honestly. 'Not chattering journalists.'
He watched as the policeman closed his notebook, put it away and stood up to leave. 'Thank you, Doctor Hopkinson,' he said. 'I'll be in touch.' Inspector Matthews made to leave, but before he reached the door he stopped and turned to look back at the doctor. 'Just one other thing,' he said, a certain hesitation in his voice.
'Of course,' the doctor replied.
'If this guy is as sharp as you say, all the stuff about government conspiracies and the like — has anyone actually checked that it isn't true ?' He seemed a bit embarrassed to be asking the question.
Dr Hopkinson stood up. 'Officer!' he exclaimed. 'I didn't have you down as a conspiracy theorist.' Suddenly his face became more serious as he stared directly at the policeman. 'Believe me,' he said clearly, 'we don't lightly section people. I've been in this job for twenty years now. If I had a pound for every time I heard a paranoid schizophrenic tell me there was a government conspiracy to silence them, I promise you, I'd be a rich man. Joseph Sinclair is smart, but he's delusional. He needs to be back here, where we can look after him.'
The policeman appeared chastened, even slightly embarrassed to have asked the question. 'Of course, Doctor,' he said politely, then left the room, closing the door firmly behind him.
Chapter Three
Haltwhistle Station was like a ghost town when they arrived.
It had been a five-hour train journey from Macclesfield to the sleepy rural village that claimed to be the exact geographical centre of the country but which seemed to Ben to be the end of the earth. Ben had spent some of the time being instructed in ornithological matters by Annie. She made, he thought, a strange sight, dressed in army surplus combat trousers and boots as she pored over pictures of obscure British birds, but that was her through and through. Ben was also dressed in sturdy outdoor gear, and was glad of it: the rain had let up, but each time they changed train, first at Manchester, then Lancaster and finally onto an elderly, two-carriage boneshaker at Carlisle, the air seemed to grow damper. He could hardly believe it was late summer.
On the last train they fell into a comfortable silence. Ben picked up a newspaper that somebody had left lying around and flicked through it. One of the main stories grabbed his interest. NORTH KOREA AGREES NUCLEAR STEPDOWN said the headline. He read further:
North Korea has agreed to disable its principal nuclear reactor, and to submit details to the West of its nuclear programme in a move that is widely seen as a peace overture from the totalitarian regime of this stricken country. He handed the newspaper to Annie and tapped the article. 'Looks like your dad might be out of a job if peace keeps breaking out everywhere,' he said archly.
Annie glanced at the article. 'Hardly,' she said. 'There's always some regime out there that thinks it's OK to start killing people. If it's not the North Koreans, it'll only be someone else.'
'I suppose you're right,' Ben agreed glumly, taking the paper back and continuing to flick through it.
When the time finally came to disembark for the last time, they lugged their rucksacks off the train with only a handful of other passengers, and then found the bus stop, a little way from the slate-roofed ticket office, where they waited for their bus to the youth hostel. Evening was drawing in now, and the place where they stood was practically deserted. It had already been a long day, and Ben and Annie stood in silence as they waited for the bus that didn't seem to want to come.
It was only gradually that the feeling came over Ben. It was a curious sensation, a bit like pins and needles but not so acute. The feeling of being watched. He looked around him, and at first could see nobody. But then he looked back towards the train station. An arched bridge connected the two platforms, and standing on top of it, silhouetted ghost-like against the dusk sky, was a figure. Something about him chilled Ben's blood.
The figure stood perfectly motionless, and Ben found himself squinting his eyes to try and make out his features more clearly. He was too far away, though, and the light was not good enough. Gently he nudged Annie.
'What?' she asked, tiredness showing in her voice.
Ben didn't say anything — he just nodded in the direction of the figure. Normally he would have expected a sarcastic comment from his cousin, but not tonight. She too fell silent as she watched the silhouette, clearly as unnerved by it as Ben was, though neither was able to pinpoint quite why.
Ben bent down to his rucksack, opened it up and pulled out the pair of binoculars that Annie had lent him. He knew how rude it would be to use them to stare at somebody so close, but he couldn't stop himself: he just wanted to be able to look at the guy clearly, to dispel some of the uneasiness he was feeling. He put the binoculars to his eyes and adjusted the focus. Gradually the man came into view.
He was elderly, tall and thin and wore a shabby grey overcoat. His nose was hooked and his floppy hair seemed to fall over his face, though he made no attempt to brush it off. His left cheek occasionally twitched nervously, but it was the eyes that alarmed Ben most of all. They seemed constantly to flick off in different directions, nervously — panicked, even — and they gave the man's face a scary, disturbed demeanour. It did nothing to ease Ben's mind. What was he doing there, all alone? What was he searching for? Ben felt scared of him, yet transfixed. For a moment he wondered if the man intended to throw himself in front of the next train.
Suddenly, Ben felt a shock of ice run through him. The man was staring at him — staring straight at him — and his eyes had stopped darting around, though his face still twitched. How long they remained like that, Ben couldn't have said. Seconds probably, although it seemed like an age, and he watched in horror as the man's lip curled into what could only be described as a smile — but a smile with no humour.
Ben found himself almost hypnotized by the man's eyes, and it was only the sudden sound of the bus pulling up that made him lower the binoculars. Again the man appeared to him as no more than a silhouette in the distance.
The two cousins shuffled their rucksacks onto the bus, a rickety old thing that was empty apart from the driver, who silently took their fares, then they grabbed seats together at the back of the vehicle. As the bus pulled out, Ben glanced out of the window in the direction of the railway bridge. The old man was no longer there.
It was Annie who finally broke the silence. 'Why d'you look at him through the binoculars?' she asked.
Ben shrugged. 'Don't know,' he replied a bit defensively. 'I just had a weird feeling, that's all. Like he was watching us.'
'It's all right,' Annie replied. 'He gave me the spooks too.' She looked out of the window herself. 'It's pretty remote up here,' she observed. 'That's why it's good for bird-watching. Not too many people. If I was a bird, that's definitely what I'd want. People aren't good for wildlife — they always seem to manage to mess it up somehow.'