He took his Evidence Box out from the bedside cabinet and went to sit with it by the window. The Evidence Box was an old cardboard Black and White whisky case Steven had picked up somewhere. In it he kept a small radio-cassette recorder, a piece of estate agent's literature and a school atlas, along with dozens of fading yellow newspaper cuttings.
The cuttings were of the Strange But True type; fillers and funnies, supposedly True Stories which Steven could tell were complete nonsense; made-up rubbish they taunted him with, trying to get him to stand up and challenge them, call their bluff. But he wasn't going to be so predictable or stupid; he would keep quiet, and he would collect the evidence. One day he might have a real use for it, but in the meantime it was reassuring.
He took out the cassette recorder, switched the tape on. He had recorded the noise of the so-called "static" from the Short Wave band. But he knew what it really was; he listened to the grinding, deep, continuous roaring noise, and he recognised the sound of the War's eternal heavy bombers of the air. He was amazed that nobody else had noticed it. Those were engines, that wasn't static. He knew. This was a Leak, a tiny slip they had made which let part of reality slip through into this false prison of life.
He breathed deeply, looking out down Packington Street, trying to remember or imagine what those droning, immense-sounding noises represented; through what limitless airs and atmospheres did those huge craft power, what was their seemingly endless mission, what was the appalling cargo they carried, what dreadful enemy would suffer beneath them when they arrived over their target. He switched the tape off, rewound it.
The next piece of evidence was trickier. It was a sheet of paper with house-buying details on it; the evidence of the leak came from the name of the firm. Hotblack Desiato was the name of the estate agents, and Grout knew that was a Leak. He was sure he could recall something about that name which related back to his previous life, his real life in the War. What that name actually meant, whether it was a name at all, and if so that of a friend or enemy or place or thing, or whether it was a phrase, order, instruction or what, he could not remember, no matter how hard he thought about it, or how hard he didn't think about it and just waited for his subconscious to come up with the right answer. But it meant something, he was sure. Something had happened to him, sometime, which related to that name.
Oh, and as usual, they were very clever, very subtle. If the name was not a Leak then it was a deliberate ploy by the Tormentors to taunt him, tease him. They had put that firm of estate agents in the area he lived in just so that he could keep seeing their signs and so be constantly distressed and frustrated by his inability to remember exactly when and where he'd heard the name before. Anyway, it was more evidence, even if it turned out just to be a Leak and they hadn't meant it. He folded the paper up again and put it back in the box.
He took out the atlas, opened it at a map of the World. He had drawn red-ink circles round places like Suez and Panama, Gibraltar and the Dardanelles.
He snorted with contempt at their ridiculous attempt to design a reasonable-looking planet. Who did they think they were kidding? Ho-ho, so the continents just happen to link on to each other, do they? Very handy. Any idiot could see it was all too carefully arranged to be natural. It had been designed. Whether he really was on a planet with those shapes on it he didn't know; he suspected not, but it didn't matter. Even if, as he rather suspected, the "world" actually came to an end just outside Greater London, that wasn't the point. The point was that they were trying to get people - him - to believe this travesty of a map. The contempt they must feel for him, expecting him to accept this! It made him boil just to think of it. But they had made a serious mistake; they had underestimated him, and they would not break him, certainly not while he had evidence like this to back him up. He turned the atlas to the pages on South East Asia... yes, the island of Celebes still looked like a letter from some alien alphabet (and the more he thought about it, the more familiar it looked, too, so that sometimes he almost thought he knew what it represented, or the sound it made, if his human throat or brain was capable of forming such a foreign sound). He closed the atlas, smiling to himself and feeling better; justified and reassured. He put everything back in the Evidence Box and put it back in his bedside cabinet, where it fitted in neatly, then he made his way carefully back to the window, dosed it, and threaded his way back through the walls of books to the door, making sure that he had his door keys and his money in his pockets.
He stopped at the door, faced with the choice of keeping his good hat on or putting on his usual safety helmet. He decided to keep the good one on. It was a lovely deep-blue colour, with almost no scratches or abrasions on it at all, and a nice real leather sweatband bit inside the front part of the inner webbing. Why not keep it on? Celebrate today. It was his birthday, after all. He wondered if it was worthwhile telling Mrs Short it was his birthday. It didn't seem right that nobody else knew. At least if he told Mrs Short there would be somebody to wish him "Happy birthday" or "Many happy returns'. That would be nice. Still undecided, he left the room, after first checking that he hadn't left the fire on or left a plug in a socket, or left the light on.
He didn't encounter Mrs Short on the way down the stairs, and found this something of a relief. He was walking quietly through the gloom of the front hall towards the door to the street when Mrs Short's door opened suddenly and she was there in front of him in the hallway, huge arms folded, the light reflected on her taut-skinned forehead.
"Aow, there you are, Mr Grout. Off to the dentist, then?"
"What?" Steven said foolishly, then remembered. "Oh, yes, yes that's right. Umm..." He closed his mouth so that Mrs Short couldn't see into it, not that he expected her to be able to see anything in the darkness, but one never knew.
Mrs Short said, "Don't suppose you'd like to give me my rent money now, would you, Mr Grout, in case I don't see you for a few days?"
Steven thought about this. Not seeing Mrs Short for a few days. What a pleasant thought. But unlikely. He shook his head and said. "No, not just now, Mrs Short; I haven't got enough money just at the moment. I'll have it on... Friday," he lied, starting to feel hot again. They were using the microwaves on him even now, even here! He had one of his hands behind his back, the fingers crossed because he was telling lies.
"Well, if you're sure, Mr Grout," Mrs Short said, then looked down at his trousers. "Only I thought I saw this bulge in your rear pocket, didn't I?" An" me bein" me I just naturally assumed that it was pay."
Steven felt his eyes widen. He didn't know what to say; Mrs Short had guessed! She must know! In fact - of course! - they'd told her. She had probably been informed by the depot immediately after he'd left. That was probably one of the first things that Mr Smith's secretary had done. Idiot! Why hadn't he guessed this?
Well, he would just have to brazen it out, he decided. There was no point in trying to come to some sort of compromise now. It was all or nothing. Mrs Short might know, but it seemed that it was not in the rules that she was allowed to tell him she knew, and she could only imply it.
"Friday," Steven said, nodding briskly. "Money on Friday. Definitely." He edged towards the welcoming opening of the door, shaking his head as he passed her. She blinked rapidly at him. He had often wondered if this was some sort of code. He cleared his throat, said, "That's all right, thank you." He patted his back pocket; "Dental card," he explained. Mrs Short nodded sympathetically.