The Hobbyist

Short story of a young man brought up in a repressive household, by straight-laced father with a sinister, obsessive secret after meeting a curious visitor.

I’ll never forget the time I first saw him. It was a fine summer day in early May and Father was almost finished getting dressed for church, when there came a knock at the front door.

"Who on Earth can that be calling on a Sunday?" said Mother. Father glowered but didn’t speak, as he was still struggling to fasten his tie over his stiff collar. "Should I answer it?" said Mother, reading something in Father’s silence.

"Whoever it is, send him packing. It’s not Christian to call unplanned on a Sunday."

My Mother went down the dark hallway to the door and opened it, letting a torrent of sunlight in from the chasm of the terraced Aigburth street. For the moment I was blinded, nor could I hear the muted conversation from the door. The uninvited stranger was not in retreat, it seemed. Father, having mastered the knot in his tie, strode up the hallway, shouldering my mother aside. Perhaps I followed a step or two in his wake. There I could see a man, dapper, in his late fifties, grey hair at the temples. On seeing my father he raised his trilby hat.

"Er-oh, hello," he said politely, in a gentile, public-school accent. "My name is Tibbets. Have I the pleasure of addressing the man of the household?"

"And what might your business be?" said Father, his tone none too friendly.

"Business, ah, business. Yes, it is a business. But not in the conventional sense. Not an enterprise, not that kind of business at all, my dear fellow."

I could see Father stiffen at this trite pleasantry. "Tell me what you want and be quick about it, so the sooner you can be on your way."

"Yes, of course, of course. But perhaps not here on the doorstep. It is a matter of some discretion."

"It’ll be on the doorstep or nowhere at all."

The stranger, replacing his hat, gave the merest flicker of a glance in my Mother’s direction. "Very well," he said, a faint hint of regret in his voice, "but it is something only you and I should discuss. A lady," he flashed the briefest of smiles at my Mother, "might be, how shall I say? – disquieted."

Father bristled, caught in indecision. Mother intervened. "I’ve the Sunday tea to be getting on with," she said, diplomatically. "Excuse me." With that, she retreated down the hallway to the kitchen that lay at the back of the house. I, still in the doorway of the front parlour, continued to listen astutely.

"What is it then?" Father demanded.

"Sir," said the stranger, in his cultured, well-educated voice, "I have a certain – adeptness – a skill, if you will, granted me by a Higher Power. Or at least, I assume it is from a Higher Power, for I have certainly made no effort to cultivate it myself. This – adeptness – gives me a sensitivity to things."

I was wondering how much of this circumlocution my Father would tolerate before he slammed the door in the stranger’s face so that he could return to his Sunday habits. But the slam I anticipated did not come. The stranger appeared to have captivated my Father’s normally impatient attention.

"Things?"

"Things," continued the stranger. "Things that are not of this corporeal world."

Whatever I had expected my Father to say, what he did say surprised me.

"What’s that got to do with this household?"

"As I say, I have a sensitivity. I happened to be walking past your home on this glorious afternoon," – he paused to indicate the sunlight hammering off the brickwork of the terraced houses – why anyone should just happen to wander down our street, or any of the dozens like it in this part of Liverpool, was itself a mystery – "when I sensed that all was not well with this house." Suddenly, the polite flippancy of his earlier speech was gone. His tone became grave. "Not well at all."

I was certain my Father would have no more of this conversation. But I was mistaken. Still he held open the door to the stranger.

"What’s wrong with it?" he said.

The stranger looked almost uncomfortable. He lowered his voice a note and I had to strain to hear. "Sir, I must speak plainly. Your house is in habited with spirits. Many spirits. And these spirits are in torment."

I saw my Father's shoulders raise – surely now the door-slam would come. But then they sagged, as if he had been caught out with some accusation he could not deny.

"What is that to you?" he said, lamely.

"I have come to take these spirits away, and let them move on to a happier place."

"An exorcist?" I could not tell whether my Father spoke in surprise, derision, or merely resignation. Or possibly even fear. His tone was so ambivalent, so unlike him. His usual religious leanings were strictly conventional, the Bible, fire and brimstone, and that was about it. It was almost as if he had become a stranger to me. As strange as the caller standing in our doorway.

"A guide," corrected the stranger. "A messenger, a healer, no more." His voice recovered some of its earlier levity.

"And what’s your fee?" my Father demanded, more like his brusque, usual self.

"My dear fellow, there is no fee. It is a service, the use of a talent that I never aspired to. Regard it as a hobby, if you wish. What I can promise you is that you will not be sorry by the time I am finished."

To my astonishment, my Father said, "You’d better come in." I nipped out of the parlour doorway sharply and pretended to be busying myself before the mirror. My Father ignored me as if I were not even there and guided the stranger into the parlour, closing the door firmly behind him. It was more than I dare risk to listen at the door, so I have no idea of the conversation between the two men, but it was more than an hour later before the stranger and Father reappeared. The stranger seemed to be in the same, chipper mood with which he had arrived, though my Father was quiet, ashen in appearance.

"Good day to you, sir," said the stranger, tipping his hat once more. "I shall see you again within the week." With that, he was gone. My Father, without speaking, retreated to the bedroom. I did not see him again that day, and he did not attend church, as was his custom.

True to his word, Mr Tibbets returned one evening later in the week. This was to be the first of many such visits. My Mother, myself and my Mother’s sister, Minnie, who lived with us, were all banished from the front parlour during his visits, which we had to sit out in the breakfast room with no consoling explanation until Mr Tibbets left. We could hear the faint murmur of conversation between the two men, but of what they spoke we had no clue. On the third or maybe fourth visit, I heard my father come out of the parlour and climb the stairs to the bedroom then descend. Evidently, he had returned with the key to the cellar, the access to which was by a door below the stairs that was always kept locked. From time to time in the past, my father would disappear down there, in the darkness, maybe for an evening, or early in the morning before the rest of the household rose, but would never give any explanation of his actions. Indeed, even to ask of one was to invite at best a brusque and at worst a harsh rebuttal from my father. On more than one occasion – not a frequent event but one that would come around from time to time, I had found myself alone in the house – my mother, father and aunt would all be occupied elsewhere – and I had searched my father’s room for the key to the cellar, without success. I had absolutely no idea in what activities he was engaged whilst down there. Evidently, however, he had no reservation in letting Mr Tibbets enter this private domain.

After this first time, my Father took Mr Tibbets down to the cellar on a number of occasions. Always, after they had entered, I would hear the key turned in the lock from the inside and some time would pass before its sound was to be heard again. No-one ever asked my Father why he and Mr Tibbets descended to the cellar as there would have been no point – he never would have answered.

It was hard to gauge my father’s mood before and after Mr Tibbets’ visits. Subdued, mollified would be about it, and a contrast to Mr Tibbets’ own, which was on a borderline between conviviality and deference. Polite, cheerful but earnest, as if he were about some purpose of servitude. But what this purpose might be, my father never explained. And when he had nothing to say on one matter, he was wont not to speak at all.

This changed in an unexpected manner. On one of his visits, for some reason – maybe he was early – the door was opened to him by my Aunt Minnie. Minnie was, I realise now, looking back, a bit of a dotty creature who had never married nor worked. Aside from seeming a little simple, she was pleasant enough, sharing my mother’s good looks with an added note of facile charm, a kind of innocence. On seeing her, as I observed slyly from the entrance to the breakfast room, he seemed delighted. A smile of genuine pleasure, rather than the polite demeanour he normally adopted, lit up his countenance. My father, hearing Mr Tibbets’ arrival, virtually bundled him away from Minnie and into the parlour, where the door was closed with a bang.

After that, Mr Tibbets’ calls became more frequent, and he would consistently appear to arrive ahead of expectation. If ever Aunt Minnie opened the door to him, he always beamed with delight, exchanging pleasantries or something more – I wasn’t on every occasion able to hear. That this was not to my father’s approval was easy enough to infer, but was confirmed beyond all doubt, when, on one evening, conversation from the front parlour increased in volume and became more heated, climaxing with my father clearly exclaiming, "You are in my house to do your business, Tibbets, but on no account are you to have dealings with my family, especially my sister-in-law!"

Tibbets could be heard protesting his case, but to no avail, it seemed. Father effectively threw Mr Tibbets out, their business, whatever it had been, concluded. Mr Tibbets barely had chance to retrieve his trilby from the coat-rack. I never saw him again.

I never saw my Aunt Minnie again either. She simply did not return to the house next day, having apparently gone on some errand or other. The police were eventually informed, but no trace of her was ever found. There was nothing of hers missing from the house. But after a period of searching, the police merely concluded that people went missing all the time and there was nothing further of any practical value they could do. There was simply no reason to suspect foul play and that was that.

Time passed, and nothing was heard of Mr Tibbets, nor my Aunt Minnie again. It seemed indelicate even to discuss the matter, let alone suggest the two disappearances might have been connected. When my school exams came up and I got good grades that enabled me to read English literature at university in London, it was, I later realised, with some relief that I was able to leave that claustrophobic household. My only regret, which I realised too late, was that I had turned my back on my Mother, and her death from a sudden stroke, while I was still away, hurt me grievously. I should have kept in touch and I felt guilty. I had no such inclinations towards my Father. At her funeral, all he said was, "Brutal, but mercifully quick." There was some speculation that Aunt Minnie would suddenly appear at the burial of her sister but to no avail. I went back to London, without concern for my Father now living alone in the empty, draughty household and I did not make any attempt to keep in touch with him.

I lacked any idea of a career. I started writing little pieces and submitting them to the quality newspapers and certain magazines and, to my mild surprise, they were accepted and I received payment. After graduating, it was an easy way of making money. It’s funny how you can do something once, then repeat it until it becomes a habit and before long it is taking up all of your free time. Without any formulated plan I realised that become a freelance journalist. Yet it didn’t feel like an occupation and the money, though adequate and pleasant, was almost irrelevant. It was more like a pastime. I had settled into my new life comfortably, when, one day in early summer, I received a phone call out of the blue.

It was the police. My father, with whom I had had no contact since my mother’s funeral, had died suddenly, a fact that had been detected by the milkman who noticed that his deliveries were not being collected off the doorstep. The police explained that the coroner’s office had been notified, which was standard procedure in the case of a sudden death, but would I travel back home as soon as possible? They needed somebody to identify the body.

When I got off the train at Lime Street I was met by two CID officers who said they had some questions. I tried to determine whether I was under arrest for something. They remained vague on the point, saying that I would merely be helping with enquiries, but the supposition was that, had I refused, they would indeed have arrested me.

"Enquiries into what?" I asked, and repeated the question when we reached the police station.

"Enquiries into how fourteen bodies come to be buried in the cellar of you family home."

Shock is such a short word for the conflicting tumult of emotions that struck me now. A whole series of questions sprang to mind at once with the effective result that I was unable to speak at all for several seconds. When I did, it was to ask what, in retrospect, may have seemed an odd question: "How long of they been there?"

"None of them is recent," said a quietly spoken senior officer whom I suspected of being rather sharper than he looked. "In fact, some form of embalming or preservative process seems to have been carried out on them."

Then he added, in a tone I did not like at all, "You were probably still a child when the last of them was, what shall we say? – laid to rest."

"Who are they?"

"We were hoping that you might be able to shed some light on that matter."

This detective took some considerable convincing that I could not, that I did not know anything at all of their existence and had no idea how they had ended up as they had. But there came a point at which the officer suddenly seemed to become satisfied. "The bodies are all male, men in late middle age."

A thought struck me. "Are you sure none of them is female?"

"A forensic pathologist has been over every corpse. Why, were you expecting someone in particular?"

"Of course not." I don’t think I sounded too convincing, even to me. But the officer continued.

"We were doing only a routine search of the house when we became suspicious. The floor of the cellar was bricked, but it was way too uneven and the bricks came up too easily. Much later on, we were going through your father’s possessions and we came across this." He produced a hard-backed note book, the sort that had that curious cobweb-like pattern in dark blue bands across the cover. Not unlike my old school exercise books.

"What is it?"

"It’s a kind of diary. Meticulously kept. The first entry relates to an incident that occurred while you, your Mother and your Aunt were all out. He stresses this point several times. A gentleman came to the door in some distress, asking your father for help. He was having some kind of attack it seems. Your father went to make him a cup of tea and by the time he returned from the kitchen, the gentleman was deceased. Your father found some medication on him, digitalis – it used to be prescribed for heart conditions. Your father records here," he rested his hand on the page, "that he felt guilty for not having checked with the gentleman first about his health before leaving him on his own.

"He goes on to say – I won’t go into detail – that your father decided to attempt to lay him to rest in your cellar – some kind of act of contrition - he says here – ‘a kindness.’"

"That’s odd," I said, dumbly, "my father wasn’t noted for his kindness."

"That’s the only thing you find odd?" said the detective with a curious stare.

"I mean, I – " I stumbled for words. "No," I managed at last.

"Well, it seems his kindness didn’t end there," the detective sniffed. "After that, your father committed a number of ‘kindnesses’ on various old fellahs that he came across, usually at the church mission. Chaps he identified as lonely old blokes who’d no family, no friends, generally fallen on hard times – and, of course, wouldn’t easily be missed. He used the digitalis on the first few – it’s related to deadly nightshade, of course – and when that ran out he employed other means. Then he wrote it all up in his log book," he raised the note book to my face, "names, dates, any other details…" he closed the book, steepled his big bony hands underneath his chin, "then stuck ‘em in the ground below where you were living." There was that stare again, as if he could see right to the very back of my mind.

"I – honestly – I swear – I knew nothing about this."

The detective leaned towards me conspiratorially. "And I believe you. Your father makes it perfectly clear he kept his private activities to himself. But, of course, I had to check. I think if you’d known anything I’d have got it out of you by now."

I felt as if I ought to thank him; then again, he had suspected me of conspiracy to murder, and, while I thought this over, the moment passed. Then something else occurred to me. "You say all the victims’ names are recorded – written down – in – in that book."

"Yes. Of course, we’re still checking them, but there were various personal effects that you father had also kept and so far they all tally with the bodies."

"There was no mention of a Mr Tibbets in there, by any chance?"

"Who’s Mr Tibbets?"

"He is – was – is – a stranger who came to the house while I was still at school. He and Father seemed to have some kind of business, then my Father had a sort of falling-out with him and threw him out of the house. I never saw him again."

"When was that?"

I gave a date accurate to the best of my recollection.

The detective shook his head. "There’s no Mr Tibbets mentioned in here. And the last body your Father laid to rest was some months earlier."

"There were no more deaths after that?"

"Not according to this, and the pathologist agrees."

When I got back to the house, it was after sunset, but there was still an afterglow out over the Mersey. Under the circumstances, it was rather eerie. Despite my long absence, I still had a key and let myself in to dark, silent house. The interior was, as ever, cool, the heat of the day had never penetrated those sullen bricks. I snapped on a light, a bare bulb, in the front parlour. What should I do now? It was too late to get back to London tonight. It was a grim prospect, the thought of spending the night trying to sleep over a graveyard. Yet I’d done it, apparently, for years.

Suddenly I had an idea. I realised what an astonishing story this was. I could sell it for a big fee, and live high in the hog for months. I found some paper in the old bureau, laid it and my pen on the parlour table, and sat down to write.

It was then that I noticed the trilby hat, hooked over the back of the chair opposite me.

THE END

Echo of the Mind

Short story about a young man who has everything - it seems - except the girl of his dreams - a girl whose biggest thrill is deadly.

A cool breeze was just starting to lift off the Atlantic to give some relief at the end of a hot New Jersey afternoon. This was invitation enough to bring out the early evening drinkers to the Ocean Club down the avenue from Point Pleasant. Guy loved this time of day. He knew, as he rolled his Ferrari F430 Spider into the parking lot, that the women’s heads would turn. He would leap out over the door without opening it, and the gentle wind would just catch his expensively-coiffured shock of straw-coloured hair, ruffling it and making him look even more interesting. If that was possible, with his tan good looks, Versace jeans and the fact that he’d arrived in a diamond-graphite coloured car that cost more than some people paid for an apartment.

Dino had his Long Island Iced Tea, mixed just the way he liked it, with extra Sour, by the time he reached the bar. He raised the glass, already steamed with condensation, and took a long, satisfying drink before he spoke.

"How’s it hanging, Dino?"

"Just fine, Mr Richards, just fine. How’s things with you?"

"You beat me to it, Dino." He put his glass down carefully on the bar and pushed his Ralph Lauren shades up into his hair. "Just fine." He cast his gaze round the bar. "Usual crowd in here this evening?"

"One bit of class out there on the veranda. I thought you’d have already noticed her."

"I certainly did, my man," he said, with a twisted grin. "Just wanted to check I wasn’t dreaming. I didn’t want to ask you to pinch me." He collected his drink and set off towards the striking woman standing out on the veranda, sipping a cocktail and staring out over the breakers.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey yourself."

Guy hesitated, as if tangling with a problem. "I know you must get this all the time, but – has anyone ever told you that your God’s own spitting image of Julia Roberts?"

"Happens all the time," she said, over the rim of her glass. She was weighing him up, he sensed.

"You’re not Julia Roberts, are you?"

"Ssh!" she grinned. "No-one’s supposed to know. I’m incognito."

He held out his hand. "Guy Richards."

Her long eyelashes fell and rose slowly before she placed a delicate hand in his. "Evelyn Turner."

"Pleased to make your acquaintance, Evelyn."

"Nice car you got there."

"I like to think so." Guy realised the parking lot was not visible from this side of the club-house. "You noticed when I drove up?"

"Yeah." There was a tiniest flash of her tongue as she took another sip of her drink. "I like fast cars."

"Maybe you’d like to get better acquainted with it?"

"Maybe I would."



That was the trouble with Ocean Avenue. It ran along the New Jersey coast which, at that point, was dead straight. So the road was dead straight. No reason to slow down, hold the car back.

"Faster," Evelyn breathed.

Guy liked to open up the Spider whenever he could – he loved the thrill of the wind dragging at his hair as much as anyone could. But there was a time and a place. Now late at night was one thing. But Ocean Avenue was not the place, with the local townships nearby and all, and after a long evening drinking. If a blue-and-white caught them, he’d get more that a ticket for speeding. DUI and he’d be in jail.

He nudged the accelerator downwards then eased back a little.

"Faster!" Evelyn demanded.

"We’re doing one hundred and ten now," he grimaced, trying to still sound calm.

Evelyn was laughing now. "Is that all? Surely this thing can go faster?" It was like a lover’s request.

Guy pounded down on the accelerator and the Italian engineering roared with delight. "There’s a red light!" Guy yelled into the slipstream.

"Jump it!"

There was no traffic, either approaching or crossing. Guy decided to go for it.

Just as they reached the point of no return, a car pulled out in front of them.

Guy would have hit the horn if hadn’t been wrestling with the wheel. He also toe-poked at the brake. The anti-lock would not have given up traction easily but he wanted all the control he could hang on to, and not to turn the vehicle into a sliding one-fifty mile an hour coffin. Rubber screamed. The car slammed into the sidewalk and tipped at a crazy angle, tires off the tarmac, before crashing back down. It careered on, snaking this way and that as Guy strangled the speed out of his mechanical pet, lest it turn and roll and bite him, and it finally slued to a halt almost half a mile beyond the intersection.

He was dazed, exhausted, soaked in icy sweat, when he realised the beautiful woman next to him was laughing.

"You enjoyed that." He wasn’t sure whether he intended it as statement or a question.

She was panting like a race horse, just coming down, her own spittle on her cheek. "That was magnificent," she gasped, and huddled against his shoulder, closed her eyes.



"I used to come here when I was a boy," he told her. It was the latest of a number of dates they’d been on in quick succession after that first night and slept together. Always she wanted him to push the Spider to the edge of its capabilities. Artfully, for a change, after picking her up from the Ocean Club, he’d headed inland east of New Brunswick to some woods. He thought if he could get her out of the car and maybe just walk, she would calm down a little. Not that her excitement wasn’t infectious. On the contrary, it seemed to seep from her into him. Just that, sometimes, a little quiet was also nice. The woodland was a favourite place from his childhood. At the end of a path there was a clearing with a high, rocky point, from which it was easy to see the skyscrapers of Manhattan, clustered like blue-grey shapes, more than twenty miles away. He took her there now, and showed her the view.

"D’you ever go to the Big Apple?"

"I used to," she said. "I used to love going up the WTC, to the observation deck, and tell myself, ‘Hey – I’m a quarter of a mile off the ground.’ It was such a thrill. I always thought it was a shame you couldn’t lean right out over the edge, because of all the fences and everything. To stop the jumpers."

"Well, you don’t want to go too crazy jumping round here. The cliffs here are only about fifty feet but you’d do bad things to yourself if you stepped off one."

"Really?" She seemed to find the place more interesting.

"I used to come here with my Dad," he said. "He was more like a big brother to me than a father. We used to play a game in the Fall. Just a silly game. We’d try and catch the leaves as they were falling. One at a time. It was crazy. Such a simple game. But we’d have hours of fun playing it."

"What happened to him?"

"He died when I was a kid." Suddenly, he couldn’t say anymore. He wanted to say that his Dad was his best friend. He wanted to say after he’d gone, he was all on his own and nothing made much sense for a while. He even remembered how lonely he he’d felt back then. In his mind’s eye, he saw a solitary kid, quiet and abandoned with no toys and no friends and nowhere he belonged. But it just sounded corny so he kept silent, pushed it all back down inside.

"I can think of a game," she said, suddenly animated. She pulled her silk scarf from around her neck and abruptly tore it in half, giving two long strips, "Come here."

He was standing right next to her anyway but he moved closer. She took one of the strips, folded it over then placed it across his eyes, and tied it behind his head.

"What are you doing?" he said. "Hey!" She suddenly spun him round, several times, then let go. "What gives?"

"Hold on," she said. "I’m just putting my blindfold on too… There. Neither of us can see!" She took his hand and started dancing him around. "Don’t take it off," she sang out, "don’t take it off."

"What are you playing at?"

"Know which way your facing?"

"Not a clue!"

"Run!" She screamed, "Run!" She grabbed his hand again and dragged him into a stumbling trot. "Come on, come on, come on, faster, faster!" she kept yelling at him.

He staggered trying to keep up with her. "It’s dangerous!"

"I know. But it makes you feel alive! Run!"

He plunged headlong in total blindness, the ground constantly leaping up to hook at his feet. He could feel she was tripping and bumping into him but still upping the pace, laughing wildly. Something snagged his foot and he fell full length, she landed on top of him. Winded, he tugged off the silk blindfold, just in time to see her do the same.

They had fallen at the very edge of the cliff.



After that, Guy didn’t know where to go out with Evelyn. He had been really scared after the woods episode. He called in at the Ocean Club without making a prior arrangement to meet her. He was just beginning to relax, thinking he would have his evening to himself, when she arrived, carrying a purse, ordered a drink. "Come walk with me on the beach," she said. He followed her down the wooden steps from the veranda onto the sand. There was nothing much of any threat down there. Unless she planned taking a swim, in which case he’d certainly not join in.

It had been a blast knowing her though. He wanted to please her. By the time they had walked fifty yards and she’d said nothing, he found himself wishing she’d suggest something. Eventually, he spoke.

"You like danger, don’t you?"

"It’s a turn-on, isn’t it?"

He surprised himself by laughing. "Yeah. Yeah it is."

"I knew you did. That’s why I do it."

"Do what?"

"All of it. For you. To give you a thrill. You like a thrill, don’t you?"

"But somebody could get hurt."

"Of course they could. It wouldn’t be a game without all the parts."

"What game?"

"Like playing with your Dad. But it’s not a game unless there’s danger. Didn’t your Dad like danger?"

He saw a shy little kid in his head, without a Dad. "You didn’t know my Dad. Nobody did."

"Wouldn’t you like to play another game right now?"

"What sort of game?"

"With two friends of mine." She reached into her purse and pulled out a gun. "With my two friends, Mr Smith and Mr Wesson." He stopped in his tracks. She handed him the revolver and paced out ten steps. "How good a shot are you?"

"What?"

"How good a shot? You could hit me at this distance, right? Then I’ll go a little further." She took another ten paces.

"I haven’t fired a gun since I was a kid."

"Don’t worry. I don’t want you to hit me! I want you to miss. But you got to see how close you can get."

He held the dull metal object in his hand.

"I can’t."

"Go on," she begged. "Think of the thrill. You don’t have to aim all that near to me."

"I can’t," he said again.

"But I want you to. It excites me. And I know it excites you. Look how we make love afterwards. Isn’t it always great? Because you feel so alive?"

He hesitated, lifted the weapon, then lowered it again. "But not like this, Evelyn. I can’t do something like this. This is too much."

She stood a second, as if waiting to see if he might still take the challenge. Then she came over to him. "If you can’t give me a thrill, then how can you expect me to do anything for you?"

Something stirred in the far reaches of his mind but he pushed it deep back down. "I can’t," he said, as much to himself as to her.

"Maybe you and I should call it a day," she said. "It was fun for a while. But you’re not alive anymore." She reached out for the gun. It was as if she had already made up her mind. He didn’t want to lose her. Suddenly, another idea seemed to occur to her. "I tell you what. I’ll give you one more chance. If you’re too scared to shoot at me, shoot at them!" She indicated the gathering of people on the veranda at the Ocean Club. "Do you think you could hit anybody at this distance?"

Before he could stop it, an image leapt up like vomit from his inner being. A young man, standing outside a sleazy dive, his clothes worn to rubbish, knees through on old jeans stiff with dirt, his yellow hair greasy and matted with neglect. Inside the bar it was noisy and bright with neon, people having fun, friends enjoying each other’s company. Outside, the scruffy young man, alone, in the dark, and shivering with cold, his skin pale and ingrained with dirt. How he longed to have someone to talk to, how he longed to have enough money to share a beer with someone – anyone – and if he could make contact with female company, that would be wonderful. He’d feel alive. All he had, in the pocket of his rough jacket, was the Smith and Wesson.

"Go on," she said. "You can’t hurt them. They can’t even feel you. Go on."

The yellow-haired man raised the gun and took aim at the crowd.

He could feel himself squeeze the trigger.

The End

Sucks In The City

(Short story that, for reasons explained elsewhere, has to include the following random word pairs and expression, namely: "axe lips, war stick, city hair, basket vampire, zip book, door vomit, pan party, banana lace, shelf buttock, nest beauty, specially for Carol.")

Karl was late.

Ironic, considering what they about to, and its emphasis on speed. Speed implied promptness. And Karl couldn’t even get here on time. Just to mock him, it seemed were all the stainless steel and glass clocks on posts down the surreal pathway he’d just walked along, like a deleted scene from Alice Through The Looking Glass.

Darren Taylor adjusted his suit and checked he wasn’t getting pits under his arms in the warm summer evening. He had spent his day in shirt-sleeves in the air-conditioned offices of 1 Canada Square and now he would rather be relaxing in front of the TV, his shoes and tie off, with a can of beer and take-away. Instead, he was standing around outside the huge arched glass canopy of Canary Wharf DLR and Tube station, looking along the waters of Heron Quays and wishing he could go home.

Not that it was much of a home now. Not since Carol had left. But he’d sooner skip on the DLR and take the five short stops to the small flat he occupied in Mudchute, rather than carry out the frankly stressful undertaking Karl had suggested. Or insisted on, to be more accurate. "You’ll love it, man," he’d said. "I never miss it." Where the Devil was he?

Darren was within seconds of chucking the whole idea, when he heard Karl’s inimitable and somewhat irritating greeting. "DT! Sorry I’m late, buddy, but just had to clinch a final deal for the week-end. Nothing like making a small fortune to set you up for an evening out. How about yourself – close on anything good today?"

"I may I lost the company millions again – I don’t think I understand any of this business." Darren realised he was talking to himself – Karl was already setting off across the concourse towards their destination for the evening, The Merchant Banker on Grime Street, south of the Quays. That was the official name of the bar, but everyone who worked in Canary Wharf knew it as The Muck and Brass or simply Grimy’s. This was probably after someone had pointed out that "merchant banker" was rhyming slang for something else in the rest of London, especially to the indigenous residents of the East End, where the two city slickers worked.

Darren hurried to keep pace with Karl. "I’d rather have had a shower and changed before coming out," he said, struggling to keep up.

"Nonsense!" said Karl. "You want to catch everyone while there’ll still on a high from doing business."

"I don’t feel on much of a high."

Again Karl wasn’t listening. "Striking fast is the whole point of the battle, buddy. Knock ‘em off their feet before they’ve had time to have second thoughts."

"Battle?"

"Got your war stick ready?"

"What?" Darren was perplexed.

"Your killer chat-up line. Speed-dating is like going to war. You’ve got to make split-second decisions. It’s hard, it’s aggressive and you’ve got strike fast. Your war stick is a killer chat-up line in the dating battle – sticks the prey like a butterfly in a display case for you to enjoy at leisure."

"I thought we were going out to meet some girls, not to kill them."

"Of course not," said Karl. "Take a few prisoners perhaps. That’s why you need a good chat up line. You’ll learn, buddy. Might take you a bit of practice before you hit on one that suits you. Just don’t use the one I tried when I first started."

"What was that?"

"You won’t believe this." Karl suddenly halted and turned to face him, as if confessing to a long-redeemed misdemeanour. "I used to say, ‘Your eyes match my duvet.’ Nearly got me slung out of the place."

"It isn’t very subtle," said Darren.

Karl still appeared not to hear him. "No use at all," he nudged shoulders with Darren. "It’s speed-dating. You’ve got to be much more direct than that! Here we are." Karl took another step, then halted again, just outside the entrance of Grimy’s. "One last thing – door vomit."

"I beg your pardon?"

"If you’ve got any emotional baggage in your guts, buddy, chuck it up now and leave it at door."

"So best not to think about Carol."

"This is specially for Carol. After all, DT, she walked out on you. This is where you get your own back. You go in there with ‘rebound’ written all over your face like that, the lassies will spot it a mile away and never come near. Come on."

They plunged into the bar of gleaming glass and chrome, and vicious Budweiser neon. Darren sometimes wondered if the architects of Canary Wharf had simply forgotten the existence of dark timber and its calming grandeur. Perhaps he wasn’t a city slicker at all. Maybe he should be a labourer on a farm or something. Before he could speak, Karl had thrust a bottle American beer in his hand when he’d far rather had had a pint of bitter. "I’ve already paid for our tickets. We’ve got about 15 minutes before the off, let the latecomers straggle in. Gives you time to loosen up and absorb the atmosphere."

"What atmosphere?"

"Just take a few deep breaths," said Karl – all too literal and missing the point. Just about to meet someone – several someones in fact – that could be that special person – "

" – or persons – "

" or persons," Karl agreed, "in the rest of your life. Which is about to start now. Prepare to get cooking!"

"Cooking?"

"Cooking in Life’s Take-Away. The wok of human relationships – it’s stir-fry time in the pan party of pulling. Time to get sizzling. And, if you feel yourself losing your bottle – well, just buy another bottle, one for you and one for her, some tart-fuel or one of those huge great goblets of wine the size of a bucket. Of course, you may end up with a six-pinter at the end of the evening if you can’t see straight, but that’s all part of the game.

"You’re such a romantic."

"That’s my man. It’s a good idea to have some kind of game-plan – think of the sort of woman you want to go for. Don’t waste your time with anyone who’s not your sort."

"How do you tell which is which?"

"I’ll give you a run-down of the different species and how to spot them. City hair means a Power Girl working in the Square Mile or Canary Wharf – probably worth a few quid but she will expect you to be the same. Basket vampire – looks cute as a kitten but get her home and she’ll expect you as her new S.O. – that’s Significant Other – to be a meal ticket on the gravy train for life. When they’ve got something frilly and colourful showing above their business suit, that’s a spot of banana lace – one bit of female decoration on androgynous City clothing to suggest ‘I am a girlie, really.’ Though for goodness’ sake, don’t call her that or she’ll freeze your assets off in a flash. Beware axe lips also. Not to be confused with ‘wax lips.’ They look DDG – "

"Drop dead gorgeous?"

"You’re getting the hang of it – and as kissable as they come, but you disappoint one of them…

"And they’ll chop you down with a sentence."

"With a word, buddy, with a word. Lastly, beware the nest beauty. Pretty as a picture, but all they want to do is set up home somewhere – have you picking out fabrics and deciding on colour schemes before you can say ‘Where’s my slippers?’ Unless that’s your type, of course…" Karl let the statement hang in the air like a question. However, Darren refused to speak. "Sometimes wondered if that’s what you thought Carol might become."

"Really?" Darren was surprised.

"Never would have happened with Carol, though, DT."

"Why not?"

"She was a Power Girl, if I’m any judge. If you thought she was the settling-down-and-having-a-quiet-life-type then you were pretty much mistake."

"I never really thought about…" Darren trailed off. Maybe he had got Carol wrong. After all, she had left him, for some reason. But, on the other hand, if Karl was right, maybe he would have one day wanted to leave her. The high life didn’t really seem to be his thing.

"Ready for the off?" said Karl.

"Ready as I’ll ever be."

"OK, here’s the rules. Here’s your ticket. This let’s you into the Enterprise Lounge. When the hooter goes, you’ve got five minutes. Go and talk to the nearest available female and see how you go. It’s alright to take notes, because by the end of the evening, the faces may have become a bit of a blur. She’ll be doing the same, probably, or putting you in her zip book – that’s her PDA –"

"Personal Digital Assistant?"

"That’s right. Probably a Blackberry or something similar. Replaces the old ‘little black book.’ You want to get your mobile number and email address in there as fast as you can. Likewise, you want to get her contact details – assuming you’re interested – and mark how attractive she is as you go."

"Why don’t I just give her marks out of ten?" Darren remarked, dryly.

"Excellent! That’s what I do. Then at the end of five minutes, the hooter goes and you move on to the next filly, and so on. By the end of the evening, you see how many you’ve got, rank them in order and start giving ‘em calls over the week-end."

"Wonderful."

"If we cross paths as we circulate, we can have a quick check on numbers." Karl nudged Darren’s shoulder. "Just hope we don’t go for the same ones, eh?" At that moment the hooter sounded. "Here we go! Catch you on the other side."

Darren had to tackle his demons. The demons of shyness, self-doubt and simply not knowing what he was doing. What was the killer line he was supposed to come out with? A lady with city hair approached him. Therefore he had to speak.

"Hello."

"Hello"

(Going well.)

"Your eyes match…" He broke off. This was not going well.

"Of course they match, you rude little sod! How dare you!"

The blonde goose-stepped off. No wonder they called it speed-dating. From his first seeing her to her disappearing forever had taken eleven seconds. He needed another drink. At the bar, a raven-headed woman was ordering "a JD straight up, large."

"I’ll have the same," he called over her shoulder. She turned to see who had attached himself to her order, with a slight pout. "I see you like a stiff one," he said. Her expression withered to disgust. Four seconds.

Darren stood, pulling on his drink, feeling like a spare groom at a wedding, trying to spot any other female singleton he could approach, while waiting for the hooter that would toss the ingredients of the people-wok into the air again. Karl cantered past, pursing some brunette who, to Darren, appeared to be trying to put as much distance between herself and Karl as possible. "Isn’t this great fun, DT?" he yapped. "I’ve got two numbers already!"

"Bully for you," thought Darren.

By the half-hour mark, he had interlaced eight meetings with eight drinks orders. Things had only got worse as he tried to remember Karl’s patois of the dating scene. At one point, Karl hove into view, and Darren would have asked him for a little more advice. Instead, he got an idiot grin from Karl as he held up his outstretched hand to indicate the number, five, as he scuttled off in pursuit of some other lady. Darren had tried opening with compliments, which had been OK if a little predictable at first, but as the alcohol took its effect, he had started to come out with comments such as "you have banana lips," "I like your hair nest," had invited one to an axe party, called another girl a zip vampire and described yet another to herself as a war beauty with a face like a pan.

"I’m no good at this, am I?" He slurred wearily to a rather shapeless female, one of the few still left, and for whom the choice of a jacket in houndstooth check had not been well-considered.

"Talking or standing?" she remarked. "You seem to be having trouble with both."

"What’s the secret of chatting someone up?"

"If I told you, one of us would have to die." This was her valedictory remark.

At last, the final hooter-blast of the evening sounded, a voice over the PA announced the speed-date session was ended, and invited to people to relax. To help with relaxation, I Predict A Riot started blasting out from speakers in every corner. Darren screamed an order of another JD from the barman and slumped disconsolately on a bench. He had just about finished feeling totally sorry for himself when Karl showed up, Budweiser in one hand, and pen and notepad in the other. "What great evening, eh?" he bellowed, so close to the side of Darren’s head that his voice made Darren’s ears ring. It was necessary as Karl was in competition with Hard Fi wailing out Cash Machine. "You stay sat on the sidelines much longer you’re going to suffer from shelf buttock!"

"So you got lots of dates," Darren yelled.

"Loads!" Karl yelled back. "A great evening!"

"So you keep saying."

"What?!"

"I said, I’m very pleased for you. I didn’t get any!"

Karl took this in. "What, none at all?"

"None at all."

Karl abruptly slumped in an echo of Darren’s posture. "I’ve got a confession to make."

"Yes?" Darren wasn’t really interested.

"I’ve had a rotten night."

"What?"

"Rotten. I got none, too. Not a one."

"None at all?"

"None. Nix. Niente, nada, null points. Zero, zilch, the leather medal, the wooden spoon – "

"I understood you at ‘none.’"

"This was supposed to be a brilliant evening for both of us. A brilliant end to a brilliant week. Do you want to know something else? I didn’t close a big deal this afternoon. I haven’t closed a brilliant deal all week. In fact, not for a number of weeks…"

Darren hated to see a grown man cry. Even if it was Karl. And he was just about a grown man. "Never mind, Karl," he said. "I’ve got a great idea where we can go and have a good evening."



They slumped down in front of Darren’s TV to watch a Cheers marathon on UK Gold, battered cod, chips and curry sauce steaming in their laps. Darren yawned and rubbed his face with both his hands trying to clear away the images of the evening. "That was the worst best time I ever had."

"I can’t argue with that, buddy."

"You know," said Darren, surprised that Karl had heard him through his fingers, "I think I’ve decided. I’m going to pack in my job, first thing Monday, sell this place and move to the country. Maybe live on a farm in south Wales. Property’s cheap there."

"Now that is speedy decision-making," said Karl. Darren waited for Karl to give some half-wit reason why he couldn’t leave the city and become a country boy. But he didn’t. "Darren?…" Karl said slowly.

"Yes, Karl?"

Karl propped his head up on one hand, unwittingly plonking his elbow in his curry sauce.

"Do you think I could come too?"

The End.

(This story originally appeared on http://cadwc.blogspot.com/)

If You Think Your Tough – Try Saying "Cancer."

Non-fiction article explaining a widespread but often not widely-understood disease.

It’s a disease that strikes fear and dread into the bravest hearts. It’s a word, even today, said usually in little more than a whisper, or not said at all – when John Wayne got it, he told a friend that he had "Big C." His friend thought that the Duke was admitting to having caught "the clap." It affects all age groups, from babies to octogenarians, both genders, all races. It attacks all parts of the body. It is sometimes resistant to treatment and, untreated, can kill. The word is cancer.

Even reading it makes you feel someone has just walked across your grave. More than one in four people will have cancer during their lifetime, and after heart disease cancer is now the most common cause of death in western countries. But "cancer" needn’t mean "curtains," and there is plenty of good news about this so-called silent killer. So, what exactly is cancer?

Is that a hand up at the back there? I thought not. Most people have only a vague idea what the disease is. Hardly any wonder – it’s not one disease, but a whole family of them, brothers sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins and all. In a nutshell, most of your body is made up of many different tissues, and there are as many cancers as there are types of tissue. The tissues are made of cells which grow by dividing like amoeba (hence the old amoeba joke – Frank and Mabel Amoeba have split up.) Each pair of daughter cells is supposed to be identical to the parent. But sometimes this duplication goes wrong (just think about your average photo-copier) and abnormal out-of-control cells, that sometimes grow very rapidly, are the result. This is known as a tumour, which may or may not be harmful. But if is, it means trouble. There are also cancers of the blood.

Despite all the scare stories you hear, in the press and on TV, the precise causes of most types of cancer are not known – at least, not officially, by researchers in the field (who demand a very high burden of proof.) But the usual suspects have a lot of evidence stacked against them. Carcinogens – poisonous chemicals that are linked to many cancers – environmental factors, such as radiation – including sunlight – are all up there. And, of course, top of the list is cigarettes. Along with certain foods, drink, not exercising, not eating other foods such as fruit and veg, and others of life’s pleasures. Annoying, isn’t it? Some cancers can be caused by viral infections and some are even hereditary.

Which brings us to good old DNA. Back in the 1950s, no-one knew what it was. Then Crick and Watson discovered the now-familiar double-helix, the Secret of Life. Today, we can’t get away from the stuff, with stories about gene therapy and genetically modified food in the news every day. What’s the connection? Basically, DNA carries the genetic instructions for making cells. If these instructions get damaged in any way, cells go wrong. The amazing thing is not that errors occur, but that they are, relatively speaking, so rare. If the instructions to make you were copied from generation to generation by the world’s best copy typists, you’d have mutated back into jelly millions of years ago.

What causes DNA to copy itself incorrectly? One or more ‘insults’ – which is the technical term for exposure to carcinogens – may result in damage or modifications to a cell’s DNA. ‘Oncogenes’ are genes present in the DNA of every cell and carry out normal functions but have the potential to make a normal cell turn cancerous. These genes help regulate normal growth and development, but an abnormal change may cause them to produce irregular or excessive amounts of chemical signals. These may stimulate extreme or abnormal cell growth. On the other hand some genes are thought to be protective against cancer and viruses causing badly damaged cells to self-destruct. So don’t go insulting your DNA, if you can help it. In particular, avoid tobacco. Tobacco is a killer. If it were discovered today, it would be banned.

Treatments for cancer are improving all the time. Surgery can be used to remove isolated tumours but is sometimes not suitable for deep-seated problems. Radiation, which is a possible cause, can also be a cure. By focussing the radiation from a number of different angles, the tumour gets burnt to a crisp, while healthy cells all around receive just a mild toasting. Chemotherapy uses a near-toxic cocktail of drugs, intended to kill bad cells while leaving the rest of you alive – just. It tends to kill the hair cells in your scalp, which is why patients go bald.

Prostate cancer is on the rise so rapridly that it is likely overtake lung cancer as a cause of premature male death. There are several reasons for this, not all of them as depressing as this might sound. For one thing, lung cancer is falling as people cut back on smoking. Prostate cancer is more common in older men and we’re living longer. What is needed is research to develop a quick and accurate screening method, but here again self-knowledge is key. Classic symptoms include wanting to go but not being able to pee. So if you can’t go, go see your doctor instead. He or she will give a penny for your thoughts about you not being able to spend a penny.

Other drugs, such as tamoxifen, have been around for years and have a very good track record for stopping the return of breast cancer, so much so that it is being trialed as a preventive treatment for people at risk. Newer relatives of tamoxifen that work even better are coming along, but some are hellish expensive. No-one wants to be in the position of having to decide between extending the life of one adult or, say, saving one hundred children, but at the end of the day there is only so much treatment money can buy. One drug, Arimidex, has had extremely successful trials in the United States and is likely to be introduced shortly over here.

Some cancers are difficult to treat while some respond readily – especially if caught early, but by this we do mean early. So early, in fact, that you probably don’t yet know that there is anything wrong with you. The only way to detect cancers this soon is by screening – that is, people going for check-ups anyway, as a matter of routine. This is why there is such a fuss about extending screening programmes for a variety of common cancers. Despite the occasional stories about mistakes with tragic consequences which make the news, screening has saved thousands of lives, which doesn’t make the news. Some people are reluctant about going for screening. Don’t be. Think of it as an MOT for your body – it’s meant to last a life-time, but you can’t trade it in for a newer model.

That’s another thing about cancer – it does seem to have a fondness for bits of the body you’d rather not talk about. If you are in a sexual relationship, a partner can be very good at spotting changes in you that you might not notice. Oh, and it’s not just women who get breast cancer – men can get it too. They’ve got the same sorts of cells in their chest, just not so much of them. Men obviously tend to corner the market in prostate and testicular cancer, while women are at risk to cervical and other genealogical cancers. We don’t want you to ruin a romantic moment, but while you’re at it, you can give your partner’s gorgeous tits or balls a critical once-over. It’s all part of a healthy relationship.

So, if cancer scares you, avoid insulting your DNA, don’t smoke, don’t allow people near you to smoke, don’t go where people smoke, exercise a bit, don’t sunbathe too much and eat your greens. If you get the invited to a screening, for goodness’ sake go, and if you are ever worried about any part of your body that shows unexpected changes, tell your doctor like now. Don’t be afraid of mentioning bits south of your waist-line – he or she will know they are there from medical school – and it would be silly to die of shame. He’d be happier to put your mind to rest than for an undertaker to put you to rest.

Saying the word "cancer" might just save your life.


Postscript: There’s masses of information about cancer on the Web. Some of the information in this article is from http://www.cancerindex.org/. Another good site for much more detailed information is http://www.cancerbacup.org.uk/. Just type "cancer" into your search engine for more.

Cancer – some facts
Data from the World Health Organisation

• In 1997, a world-wide total of 6.2 million deaths were due to cancer (out of a total of 52.2 million deaths). Leading causes of death from cancers were those of the lung (1.1 million), stomach (765 000), colon and rectum (525 000) liver, (505 000), and breast (385 000).
• 
  Cancer and cardiovascular (heart) disease are the leading causes of death in industrialised countries, in developing countries infectious diseases are the most frequent cause of death.
• 
  By 2025 the risk of cancer will continue to increase in developing countries, with stable and possibly declining rates in industrialised countries (partly due to screening).
• 
  World-wide cases and deaths of lung cancer and colorectal cancer will increase, largely due to smoking and unhealthy diet respectively. Lung cancer deaths among women will rise in virtually all industrialised countries, but stomach cancer will become less common generally, mainly because of improved food conservation, dietary changes and declining related infection.
• 
  Cervical cancer is expected to decrease further in industrialised countries due to screening. The incidence is almost four times greater in the developing world. The possible advent of a vaccine would greatly benefit both the developed and developing countries. Nuns don’t get cervical cancer.
• 
  Liver cancer will decrease because of the results of current and future immunisation against the hepatitis B virus in many countries

The End.

What is Quantum Mechanics – Reality or Magic?

Non-fiction article about the unreality of some real science

Ordinary Mechanics

Somehow, the phrase Quantum Mechanics crept into a conversation I was having with a mate down the pub the other day. "I’ve no idea what it is," he said. I said that it was the most important, most successful, most far-reaching scientific theory ever devised by the human race, and that it affects everything around us.

"But what exactly is it?" he asked.

That is a hard one. Never one to resist a challenge – unless I’ve got something better to do – I shall try to explain the underlying principles on which the entire Universe works, in as few words as possible. To save time, I’ll chuck in a few diagrams. And no maths.

First of all, we need to back-track. What’s classical mechanics? A little bit to do with cars, it’s just how ordinary matter interacts – what happens when you push something, what happens when things collide. By "ordinary" I mean everyday-sized objects. A pool table gives loads of examples of mechanics in action.

Figure 1. The moving red ball collides with the stationary blue ball.

When the moving red ball has a sidelong collision with the blue ball, the blue ball moves off, forwards, in the opposite direction from the collision. The red ball moves the other way (bouncing off the side cushion, giving a very tiny amount of movement to the table and the Earth on which it rests.

There are all sorts of rules you can work out about these collisions. One obvious one is that the blue ball can never move backwards. Lots of tests would show that the balls always come to a halt eventually – what would happen if the table was frictionless? Other rules can be worked out about speed and direction, especially what happens when balls of different sizes are used.

So what’s Quantum Mechanics? It’s the mechanics of the very, very small. Is it different from classical mechanics? Very, very much so.

Enter the Atom

How small are we talking here? We’re looking into the world of the atom. The idea of the atom comes originally from ancient Greek philosophers, some of whom believed that there was a lower limit to how much you could grind up a piece of matter (others thought you could grind it up endlessly.) Those who thought there was a limit called the smallest pieces atoms, which means ‘can’t be split.’ There were more nearly right than the other lot, but not spot on. A typical pool ball is about four centimetres across. If you expanded the ball so that an atom was a few centimetres across, the whole ball would stretch about one tenth of the way across the entire Universe! So, you must remember, we’re talking about really small things here. This will be important later on.

It took a long time for modern day scientists (that is, going back just a hundred years) to discover that atoms really did exist, and it was less than a hundred years ago to learn that, despite their tiny-ness, they had an internal structure – they are not the same all the way through. You may well have been taught this sort of structure at school in basic chemistry.

Figure 2. Model of the Atom - a bit too simplified.

Looking a bit like the Solar System with a central sun and orbiting planets, even this model took some time to come up with. The core is known as the nucleus and is itself made up of still smaller particles, called protons and neutrons, while other, very light particles, called electrons whiz round the outside. For many explanations this model works quite well, like a model aeroplane. But it is only a model and a very simplified one at that. (Incidentally it’s not to scale – the nucleus takes up only 100,000th the diameter of the atom – it is mostly completely empty space – whatever that is.)

The first problem is that the protons in the nucleus are electrically charged and, like magnets of the same pole, repel each other with enormous force, so something has to glue them together. We won’t be going into how this glue works, but we will need to consider how we can get things unstuck at some point.

The second is the electrons are negatively charged and should be strongly attracted by the nucleus. Just whizzing about isn’t enough to stop them spiralling into the nucleus, giving off energy, and all the matter in the Universe should just collapse in an instant and a loud bang. But it doesn’t, so something must be stopping it.

Light – Particle or Wave?

But let’s talk about something else here. Light is energy that flies across space from any glowing object. Some folk speculated that it must travel instantly from place to place, but that wouldn’t explain why my hand casts a shadow on the wall when I shine a light at it – the light must hit my hand before the wall so light’s speed must be finite (though still very fast.) Sir Isaac Newton thought light, too, might be little particles, though he doesn’t seem to have tested this; perhaps he was too busy working out how gravity works. Other people did experiments later that proved light was a wave. How do you do this? Imagine waves on a pond striking a barrier that has two narrow gaps in it. Waves pass through the gaps in an orderly fashion spreading out till they hit the shore of our pond.

Figure 3. Two lots of waves interfere with each other.

Where two crests, from the two lots of waves, hit the shore together, we get an even higher crest. Similarly, where two troughs meet, we get a deeper trough. We can show the places on the shore with the biggest waves as white bars. Where a wave and a trough meet, they cancel each other out and we get little wave activity, which we show as dark bars. Overall we get an alternating pattern of great activity and quietness which is called an interference pattern. It is a characteristic of anything than travels in waves.

Experiments carried out projecting light though a blind with slits, then on to a screen, reveal interference patterns. This simply cannot happen with particles so light must be a wave. In fact light waves, radio waves, microwaves, x-rays and gamma rays are the same sort of thing, just with different wave lengths. But they are definitely waves, not particles. (You try dropping blobs of putty – particles – through two different holes in the floor and you will not get an interference pattern, just two piles of putty.)

There was just one problem with this. Some experiments with light only work if you assume light is made of particles. When talking about light as particles it is usual to call them photons. One example is the way things glow; classical physics expects hot things to glow with as much energy as possible in one go – this means every hot thing should look violet. But we all know things glow red, then yellow as they get hotter. (This is known as black-body radiation, and the classical, wrong answer as the ultraviolet catastrophe.) Another example is that you can knock electrons – particles – out of atoms. This is why some metals give off electricity when light is shone on them. It’s called the photoelectric effect and is used in light meters in photography, amongst other uses. You simply cannot explain the photoelectric effect (or any of the other experiments) if light is a wave. So it must be a particle. But it also must be a wave to explain interference patterns. What the devil is going on?

It gets worse. Once you can get electrons – particles – flying through space you can project them through slits and on to screens. And you get interference patterns.

This turns out to be true for other particles – whole atoms even – that can behave like waves when we perform experiments to find waves but perform like particles we look for particles. The only way round this is to talk about wave-particle duality and say that tiny bits of matter and energy behave like wave-particles. But, I stress, this happens only at the scale of the ultra-small. Nothing we have on a pool table or on a pool for paddling in – the ordinary scale of things – behaves like this. In fact, we cannot even make an ordinary everyday-sized object that has wave-particle duality – we can’t even imagine what it looks like. But it’s how the ultra-small world works. And it has to work like this, otherwise the Universe wouldn’t work at all. Things get even weirder, as we shall see.

Quantum Leaps

Just before we do this, I need to explain just a little more of the photoelectric effect. Photons can have any amount of energy, from the absolutely feeble to enough to crack a nucleus. It was noticed though, that only a photon of a certain energy, or size, would dislodge an electron from any given type of atom. Too little and it didn’t work. Too much and it didn’t work either. In a similar way, and electron can be moved from a lower orbit to a higher orbit – that is, not knocked off altogether, just shifted, by supplying a photon with exactly the right energy. If waves had been able to do this, there wouldn’t have been a need for this preciseness. A chap called Max Planck suggested that it was a certain-sized packet of energy that did the trick. Only he didn’t like the word ‘packet’ so he coined the word ‘quantum’ – meaning a precise quantity, instead ("So that’s where the word comes from!")

As a footnote to this, the electron in the higher orbit has absorbed this quantum of energy, and is in what is called an excited state. After a while, the electron prefers to go to the lower energy state (a bit like things cooling off) into what is called its ground state. When it does so, it gives off a photon of light energy. (Emission spectra are explained in the article, Somewhere Seen Through The Rainbow, elsewhere.) This photon has exactly the same amount or packet of energy as the photon that excited the electron in the first place. No more, no less.

We’re are close to an explanation (admittedly not a full one) of why electrons cannot spiral down into the nucleus, or, indeed, give off (or absorb) other amounts of energy. Each atom’s electron orbits correspond to whole quanta (the plural of quantum.) you could think of two orbits being like railway tracks – your carriage can be on one track or the other, but not half way in between.

Figure 4. Quantum orbital tracks: an electron can leap from one track to another, but it can't run along in the gap in between.

Half a quantum (or, indeed, any fraction) is not allowed. So electrons can only be in certain orbits and can’t go up or down just as they feel like it. A quantum leap is the smallest leap an electron can make, and no smaller. People who talk about "quantum leaps" as if they are giant leaps (usually of progress) are therefore making a big mistake and look rather silly (to those of us who know what a quantum leap really is. Chuckle.)

By the way, the movement of large numbers of excited electrons is what makes lasers possible, from laser-guided missiles to laser bar-code readers in shops.

But can’t a quantum be of any size? I hear you ask. Well, yes. So there must be something about which orbits are ‘allowable’ and which aren’t. Yes. One explanation is that the electron particles have a wavelength as they go round the orbit. When an electron sets off it is some point in its wave. If it is to be in the same part of the wave when it completes an orbit, then the length of the orbit must be a whole number of electron wavelengths. If the orbital length was not a whole number of wavelengths, then the electron wave would interfere with itself and wipe itself out. Therefore only certain orbits are possible.

Figure 5. If the length of the orbit is not exactly a whole number of electron wavelengths, the electron interferes with itself and wipes itself out.

This might not be easy to visualise (and my diagrams, drawn free-hand, aren’t as good as they might be) but it shows again that, at the size of the ultra-small, things are both particles and waves.

Quantum Mechanics has a lot more to say about how electrons populate orbits – henceforth known as orbitals – in what are known as shells and sub-shells. This is too complicated to go into here, but in a nutshell, only so many electrons can fit in a shell and once it is full, no more are permitted (this is an example of something known as the exclusion principle.) This is why every chemical element has a different arrangement of electrons and these determine its chemical properties, what chemical compounds they can form and also why matter is solid (even if atoms aren’t.)

Another question you might ask is, "Where is the electron as it moves between orbits, making its quantum jump?" That’s a good question (which means I don’t know the answer.) But things are going to get so much weirder it doesn’t really matter. It turns out, in the quantum world, we can’t really tell where anything is.

Uncertainty

Obviously, finding out anything about things so small must be difficult – where they are, how fast they are going, for example. It turns out, however, that it is not difficult, it is absolutely impossible. In the normal, pool-table world, we might be able to say exactly where a ball is; we might also be able to say how fast it is moving. With quantum objects, these properties simply do not exist. Many physics books describe this problem incorrectly; they suggest something like this: if you have a glass of hot water that you want to measure the temperature of and you put a cold thermometer into it, then the result you get (after waiting a while) is the temperature of the water after the thermometer has cooled it down and that therefore the measurement is inaccurate. But we could allow for this – either by estimating what effect the thermometer’s glass has on the water or by using such a tiny thermometer it would make very little difference. This implies that, if only we could develop measuring instruments delicate and sensitive enough, we could measure and electron’s position, or speed. This is absolutely not so, because these things do not exist. Not even the electron ‘knows’ where it is or how fast it is going.

If this sounds bizarre, then that’s because it is. An electron doesn’t have a position we can measure any more than a field has an area you can get just by measuring the length of one side. Length is measured in metres, area in square-metres – two similar sounding, but completely different units. You may as well try to weigh something in degrees Celsius.

What the electron ‘knows’ – and then only approximately – is it’s position-momentum. Momentum is just speed times weight; if you want twice the momentum, you either go twice as fast, or get twice as heavy. This is one of the few examples where ordinary mechanics is exactly like quantum mechanics. However, to simplify things: if we are talking about electrons, they all weigh the same so we can just think about the speed. Even so, an electron has position-speed and you can only measure the two things together as if they were one. And, even then, you can’t know what this is, exactly.

Imagine, for a moment, taking a photograph of a rapidly moving racing car. When you look at the picture, all you see is a long, streaky blur. If you know the length of the exposure at which you took the photo, you could estimate, from the length of the blur, how fast the car was moving. But you can’t say exactly where the car is because it isn’t at any one fixed point in the photo. So you try again, this time with a much shorter exposure. Now, you may get a much sharper picture – one with only a tiny amount of blur, and with the car at apparently, more or less, one position.

But you can no longer say how fast the car is moving.

The more you pin down position, the less you know about speed. The more you know about speed, the less you know about position. But this is still not the end of it. In the quantum world, no matter which way you do it, you cannot get an exact measure of position-momentum. This is not because of the limits of your instruments but because there is a limit to how exact this double property is. It’s like an exactness speed limit. The man who discovered this, Werner Heisenberg, called it Unbestimmtheit. This is always translated into English as Uncertainty, but an alternative might be Inexactitude. Don’t ask why the Universe is like this in the ultra small, it just is. If you imagine the Universe to be like a map with grid lines, then there is just a bottom limit to how close the grid lines are drawn together. (It sounds a bit like the Greeks who thought there was a limit below which it is impossible to split matter.)

I said position-momentum is a double-barrelled property. This means that you are entitled to try to measure the position of something as accurately as you like. But, like car in the photo, you will know less about its speed. Measure its speed with great accuracy, and you lose the position. The position and the momentum multiplied together can never be more accurate than the quantum limit. This limit is a number that even has a name – it is known as Planck’s Constant (remember him?) It’s an exceedingly small number which is why it only is noticeable with ultra tiny things. Pool balls and cars don’t count, so we don’t notice what a crazy, fuzzy place the Universe is.

So who cares? If it’s only a problem with the ultra-tiny, how can it affect us? Well, it does, when we start using quantum mechanics to work out how the world works, chemicals, light-bulbs, people and so on. As we shall see.

There is another double-barrelled property that involves the Uncertainly Principle. This is energy-time. In a system, as scientists like to call it, there can be a certain amount of energy and the rules state that energy cannot be created or destroyed, so this amount is fixed. But what the Uncertainty Principle says is that a system can have more energy, providing it is only for a very short time, because of the limit on certainty. The more extra energy you want, the shorter the time. Again, the ‘system’ doesn’t ‘know’ how much energy its got for a very brief interval. Or it can have just a tiny bit more energy for a longer interval and still not know.

This is a bit like having an account at a bank which checks your balance at the end of the day. If you withdraw more money than you have actually got in the morning, so long as you get it back by afternoon, the bank never knows. For argument’s sake, imagine the bank is a little more cautious with large withdrawals. If you take out a very large sum, then the bank double checks your account, at the end of the day and also at lunchtime. But if you get the money back before then, the bank is none the wiser.

Does the Universe really act in this balmy, irresponsible way? Oh, yes! Can we tell? Sure we can. The Sun wouldn’t burn and atom bombs wouldn’t explode without it.

However, this is still not the end of the weirdness. Because, it turns out, that, in a sense, nothing really exists at all! That is, nothing exists, until we decide to take a look at it. Then, depending on what we are looking for, things spring into existence. For more surprises, read on.

Quantum Unreality

Remember when I said we find waves when we look for waves and particles when we look for particles? What happens if we cheat?

The double slit experiment is looking for waves (that form interference patterns) and, hey presto – we get ‘em. What happens if we put some sort of particle detector at one of the slits?

Figure 6. Looking for waves and particles. What happens?

The answer is more incredible than you can possible imagine.

Remember, a wave can spread out and go through both slits. But a particle can go through only one slit – what’s more it can’t make an interference pattern. Suppose we do this experiment with a source of electrons (an electron microscope would do fine.) It’s very easy to sneak an electron particle detector up to one slit, sit back, then just switch it on. And detect particles.

And the interference pattern vanishes.

You have to think hard about this. We had an experiment that was looking for wave evidence and we got waves. But the moment we switch to looking for particles, we find particles and the wave evidence disappears. We see a particle go through one slit. And, as a particle can’t go through two slits simultaneously, nothing, goes through the other slit. The really weird thing is a particle can go through the other slit, but, because we’re looking for particles at the first slit, it’s like the ‘particle’ knows we’re looking and so it behaves like a particle. How does it know, at one slit, what is going on at the other? We don’t know. But we’re sure it happens. Experiments prove it.

To get a feeling for this, see how it might look if the every day world behaved like this: imagine I am in Manhattan, standing on the corner of 34th Street and 5th Avenue – not far from the Empire State Building – and an event has just occurred at the junction on the opposite corner of the city block, at 33rd and 4th. I don’t know what it is yet, but I do know it can be one of only two possible events, and I will find out in a few moments which it was.
The event at 33rd and 4th is one of the following: either a fire hydrant has burst and sent a torrent of water (it’s a really big fire hydrant, you must understand) in all directions; or a taxi has just set off on its way to 34th and 5th. It can go along 33rd Street from 4th to 5th Avenue then from 33rd to 34th Street, or it can go up 4th Avenue to 34th Street, then along to 5th Avenue. In other words, it can take one of two routes to me, but – because taxis can’t split in two, not both routes. Just one or the other. A torrent of water can of course split in two and go two routes at once.
Now here is a funny thing on this day in Manhattan. Somehow, if I shut my eyes and don’t look to see what is coming towards me, I will be soaked! But, if I look up, then a taxi will arrive and no water will appear. Think very carefully about this. If I have my eyes shut and the fire hydrant bursts, water will set off down the streets. But if I open my eyes, the water will disappear on both streets and be replaced by a taxi, on just one street. Magic!

It gets stranger still. Suppose I have closed-circuit television cameras on both routes. If I switch them on, or even just one of the cameras on, all I will see is a taxi, or an empty street (which will mean there is a taxi going by the alternate route. But if I leave them switched off, then a wave of water will inundate me from both directions. Even if water had set off originally, switching even one camera on makes the water disappear as if it never existed and the taxi (which until now had effectively never existed) suddenly appears as if it existed all the time.

This one-slit-affects-the-other is known as non-locality. Einstein called it "spooky action at a distance." I think this sums it up nicely, not least because the distance between the slits makes no difference – switch on the particle detector at one and the other one knows, instantly.

We can try another experiment; get rid of the particle detector at the slit and send one ‘particle’ at a time at the two slits, one after another, like someone throwing balls randomly at two holes in a wall. At first, it seems that each particle goes through one slit or another, but without the detector, we can’t be sure. What happens at the screen? At first, no obvious pattern is recognisable. Amazingly however, after we’ve sent thousands of particles through the whole experiment, we get an interference pattern once more. It’s like the experiment knows we’re no longer looking for particles; what’s more, each wave-particle also knows where on the screen to land – it’s even like it knows the past and the future of the experiment – in order to give a wave result.

What happens if we have the particle detector switched on? You’ve guessed it – we get particles – the interference pattern disappears.

A good question to ask now is – what happens in other areas of the experiment? The short answer is simple – we don’t know! Until we look, we can’t be sure, and when we look, we find what we are looking for. Again, it is like the experiment knows what we are doing. Our observation becomes part of the experiment! Our decision affects the result! Science isn’t supposed to work like that! Meanwhile, the whole of empty space is boiling with virtual bits of matter that come into existence then disappear again before they are detected by virtue of the Uncertainty Principle not knowing they ever existed.

The first work on the theory of Quantum Mechanics started at the beginning of the 20th Century. By 1930, scientists had done enough experiments to want to sit down and summarise what was going on. The result of this is known as The Copenhagen Interpretation. It’s not the only one but it works as well as any of the others. It was concluded that, in the gaps in the experiment where we are not looking, the electrons or photons or whatever are not really in existence at all! More accurately, they are in a superposition of possible states, each having its own probability, like odds in a race. When the wave-particles reach the screen, they have to decide, depending on these odds, where they are going to appear. Some places are more likely than others which is why you get the fringes of the interference pattern. But until they hit the screen they could be anywhere.

This is a bit like tuning into the radio at tea-time to get the horse racing results. The horses have different odds of winning, but once the winner has past the post, its ‘odds’ of winning become certainty and all the other ‘odds’ become zero. You would like to think that, even before you’ve switched on the radio, the results of the races already exist. But, in the Quantum World, the results don’t exist until you listen to them! What’s more, once you stop listening, the uncertainty starts creeping back in as if the race was still being run.

This is described like this in The Copenhagen Interpretation. The object travelling through space might set off as a particle but it travels as a wave of probability. When it encounters a detector at some point, this collapses the wave function so that one result becomes definite and all the others impossible – a particle at one place. To give a different example to get the feel of this, imagine a crowd coming out of a theatre. Some people may drive home, some may get a bus and some a taxi, while some may just walk. We can work out the relative odds of each outcome, saying, for instance, 30% will get a taxi. But, take any one individual, and we have no idea what he or she will do, just that the odds are 30 in a hundred they will get a taxi. Until he gets a taxi we don’t know what he is going to do. This doesn’t sound like the sort of physics Newton would have liked. Einstein didn’t like it either – he was prompted to say, "I cannot believe God plays dice with the Universe!"

No-one seems to have told God this.

We are all made up of matter that could exist in a superposition of states. And yet, we seem real enough. In which case, who has collapsed our wave functions. Who is looking at us? What makes us exist in reality? Tricky.

Is Quantum Mechanics Real?
One scientist once said, "It’s like our everyday-scale Universe is real, but the things it is made up of are not." Whatever happened to reality? Is everything all magic? Those are questions for another day (and another article.) Does all this peculiar goings-on – wave-particle duality, collapsing probabilities, and uncertainty about position-momentum and energy-time – have anything to do with us in the ‘real’ world? Well, yes, fortunately.

For one thing, it accounts for how anything glows (this includes radio transmitters, microwave ovens and x-ray machines too.) It also accounts for how the eye works, how photographic film works and enabled us to make TV cameras and digital cameras too, and makes astronomy possible, as well as movies and why we don’t have to grope around in darkness.

It also explains why we could grope around in darkness if we had to because it explains why you can’t put your hand through solid matter, or just melt into it.

It explains how all chemical elements bond together, so it accounts for all chemical compounds. This was particularly important in understanding the structure and shape of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, because without knowing its structure we wouldn’t know how it works. This applies to the rest of molecular biology as well.

It also accounts for how, in stars nuclear burning of elements like hydrogen and helium and so on can take place to create, ultimately, all chemical elements. And how stars work generally up to where some of them collapse to become Black Holes (though it doesn’t seem to be able to say what happens next.)

Again, Quantum Mechanics explains radioactivity. Remember when I said the nucleus is held together by very strong glue. It is, but it works over a very short distance – the size of a nucleus. Because the exact position of the parts of the nucleus is not determined, occasionally bits can be outside the nucleus – where they take the opportunity to fly off. In reverse, inside stars, the inexact position of nuclear particles allows these particles to sneak into the nucleus, making nuclear fusion possible and for stars to burn. Alternatively, you can think of the radioactive particle gaining extra energy by the Uncertainty Principle; either way, it’s known as quantum tunnelling and it explains the fission and fusion of nuclei.

It explains how electricity flows through conductors such as wire and not through insulators such as plastic (imagine where we would be otherwise in the modern world.) It explains what happens to super-cold materials that make super-fluids and super-conductors possible. These might seem a little exotic – take, for example, a super conductor – something that allows an electric current to flow with no resistance. If you put such a current in a ring it will flow forever and I mean forever. This makes superconducting magnets possible – really high powered magnets that are used in magnetic resonance imaging which is used in medicine to investigate the inside of the body and to detect tumours, for example.

It also explains how to use materials called semiconductors to make transistors – one of the most universal practical applications in the world. Transistors were originally seen as a replacement for vacuum tubes, also known as valves, in early radios and amplifiers. But they can also be used as switches and as such made ultra powerful computers that were also very much smaller and cheaper (not to mention more reliable.) Again, computers were invented first, but it was the application of Quantum Mechanics to materials science that made the microchips we have today.

Quantum Mechanics also accounts for lasers, both how to make them, and how they are used. When you look at the colours reflected off a Compact Disk, that is a quantum mechanical effect. In fact, when you think of the disks, the amplifier, the computer control circuitry and the laser in a CD player, you have a superb example of a device that relies on the application of Quantum Mechanics to make it possible.

But, then again, that goes for just about everything, if you look at it close enough. However you look at it, Quantum Mechanics is the most successful scientific theory ever and it’s here to stay.

The End.

Humans Make Rubbish Pets

(A bit of doggerel about how bad Humans are for Planet Earth)

I brought me home a human being
They said it’s all the rage
They said that I could let it roam
It wouldn’t need a cage

Things started well, it must be said
Sitting by the fire
It claimed it had invented
Besides the rubber tire

After dabbling with steam
To drive things to a station
It then went on to invent
Internal combustation

Then it learnt how it could fly
And how to sail on wave
Now it conquered sea and sky
And how it misbehaved!

Having mastered half the world
Beneath its tiny feet
It started trampling everywhere
In search of things to eat

Soon the world was all used up
I felt such deep despair
What it had it couldn’t use
It pumped into the air

The world it started heating up
The other creatures suffered
The seas they started rising up
And woods and jungles withered

It gobbled up the fill of fields
Dug metals from the ground
And then it cast its eye to sky
To see what could be found

I feared it might escape the Earth
And tread among the stars
Leaving dirty footprints
Leaving dirty scars

There was one solution left
I could choose with a frown
To take the human to the vet
And have the sod put down!

It all could be so different if
Humans could be taught
The planet’s not for its amusement
A new one can’t be bought

If human being would just behave
Its brain says that it can
To use with care what’s free as air
Man sharing thing with man

So beware what you unleash
A pet’s for idle pleasure
If you release a greedy beast
You will repent at leisure

But in the end I’ve got to say
They don’t make too good pets
You can’t train ‘em – who can blame ‘em?
Just leave them at the vet’s!

The End

The Florist And The Spider

(A small but baffling crime has the local police applying the latest investigative technology to detect the culprit, from a long list of suspects. A humorous short story, with a twist.)

Florist’s Window Smashed For A Bunch of Flowers. This was the headline in the local newspaper that evening. The story went on to report: The Florist’s shop in the High Street had its front window smashed earlier today and apparently an expensive bouquet of flowers was stolen. Police were on the scene immediately as, by chance, a CID officer was in the vicinity at the time. "I just happened to be passing moments after the incident," said Detective Constable Neil Bell. "We are taking this matter very seriously as we are operating a policy of zero tolerance to petty crime and vandalism. We are following up a number of lines of enquiry."

"Why smash a florist’s shop window just for a bunch of flowers?" said Detective Inspector Keating, Neil Bell’s superior, just as Neil sat down and put his feet up on his desk.

"Because you wouldn’t get any flowers if it was a bakery or an ironmonger’s," said Bell, without looking up from his notepad.

Keating bent over Bell’s shoulder and said, "If you’re so clever, show me what you’ve come up with so far. And get your feet off your desk. You make the place look untidy. Number one conference room in five minutes."

"Are you sure?" said Bell, without moving. "I mean, it’s only a bunch of flowers."

"Five minutes. Zero tolerance, remember? And that means the feet too. Put ‘em down – you’re not on holiday."

Five minutes later, Bell was standing before the whiteboard in the conference room with Sergeant Cross, Inspector Keating and Bell’s oppo, Scott McKay. Quite a team. Though Bell knew Cross was only there out of courtesy and that both he and Keating would leave him to it once he’d done his little briefing. Even McKay would probably busy himself with something else – there was talk of a theft of a large quantity of sausages across town.

"Everybody here? Right – " Bell answered his own question, pulling the top off his marker pen. "This is what we’ve got so far."

"Nothing at all, I would imagine," said McKay, who looked like he wanted to be elsewhere.

"You’d be surprised."

"Witnesses?" said Keating, sounding authoritative.

"Not to the smash and grab itself, but quite a number of interesting suspects in the area.

"Do tell," said McKay.

"OK," said Bell, who turned to the whiteboard and drew a big oval in the centre of the whiteboard, and wrote the word Florist in the middle.

"Is this going to take long?" said McKay.

"Shut up and find out," said Sergeant Cross, who was probably wondering the same thing.

"I spoke to the proprietor, Mr Kent. He said that he saw no-one at all in the street at the time. He also said that he’s had a number of breakages in recent months that he can’t account for and he is beginning to the think that the shop may be – well – haunted." Bell drew another circle on the whiteboard, wrote the word Ghosts in it, and drew a line between it and the word Florist.

"Oh, great," said McKay. "So now we have to investigate suspects in the afterlife."

"Shut up," said Sergeant Cross.

"He did have one other theory," said Bell, "but as he had never seen anyone he thought it unlikely to be the explanation."

"And a ghost is?" said McKay.

"What was the theory?" said Inspector Keating.

"Kent said he was in dispute with a chap called Gallagher." Bell drew a third circle and labelled it. "Gallagher owns the confectioner’s around the corner. Kent said he once had to get some spare change from Gallagher one day a few weeks back because the cash float in the till was low. Gallagher later accused him of not paying up the full amount, and got quite heated about it, but Kent says it was just a mistake."

"So Gallagher smashes his window and grabs a bunch of forget-me-nots in revenge?" said McKay.

"Shut up," said Sergeant Cross.

"I went round to see Gallagher, and he said he’d forgotten all about it – we’re only talking ten quid. But Gallagher had another theory."

"Oh, great," said McKay. Sergeant Cross glared at him. "What was it?

"Gallagher says that there are some property developers interested in the whole block. He’s heard that they can get pretty imaginative when it comes to persuading reluctant tenants to sell up. They are called Astra Holdings." Bell drew another circle on the board and linked it to the centre.

"Intimidation," said Sergeant Cross, pursing his lips with his first show of enthusiasm. "Could be a motive."

"My brother-in-law works for Astra Holdings," said Inspector Keating, with a withering tone. "They’re as straight as a die. Some other property company started that rumour about them."

"Oh," said Sergeant Cross, slumping back in his chair.

"Just a minute, said Inspector Keating, "isn’t there a CCTV camera on that corner of the High Street?"

"I was coming to that," said Bell. "It turns out that the camera is angled on the pub, The Drunken Duck, across the street and doesn’t show the front of the florist shop. But we do know several people who were in the area." Bell left the whiteboard and switched on the trolley-mounted TV and VCR in the corner. Picking up the remote control, he set the tape running. The picture was a mix of black and grey. Faintly discernible was The Drunken Duck. "Here," he pointed to the pavement in front of the pub, "a few minutes earlier was some sort of argument between two men who had just come out of the pub. At one point, one of them – here, you see? – seems to throw something at the other, but misses." Bell paused the tape.

"Blimey, they started early in the day, didn’t they?" said McKay.

"Any idea who they were?" said Sergeant Cross, glaring at McKay again.

"No – I’ll need to go back to the landlord and show him this tape to see if he recognises them." Bell drew yet another circle on the whiteboard and wrote Disturbance –something thrown? in it. Only the lettering didn’t quite fit the circle. The diagram was getting rather crowed. "But there’s a couple of other faces I’ve identified in the street."

"Amaze us," said McKay.

"Shut up," said Cross.

Bell ran the tape on a few seconds before pausing it again. "This is Thomas Fairchild," he pointed to a grey figure. "He’s a known schizophrenic out on Care In The Community – he’s regarded as harmless, according to his psychiatrist, a Doctor Fisher, as long as he remembers his meds. We’ve pulled him in a couple of times for trying to direct traffic on the motorway – presumably he doesn’t always take ‘em. Dr Fisher said Fairchild has a thing about Stargazer Lilies – thinks they are the most beautiful flowers in the world."

"So he took ‘em," said McKay.

"The missing flowers were not lilies."

"Perhaps he’s branching out."

"Dr Fisher said he attended an out-patients clinic twenty minutes later at the General. He didn’t have any flowers on him then. Still," Bell drew on the whiteboard once more, "we can’t rule him out. Then there’s this chap," Bell pointed to the screen. "This is Reggie Blower. He’s an environmental campaigner. He was arrested last year up at Crofter’s Farm for destroying genetically modified maize."

"Does Mr Kent sell genetically modified roses or anything?" said Cross, wearily.

"Kent says of course not. There’s no such thing, apparently."

"You’d still better draw him on the board," said Cross with a hint of irony. "You wouldn’t want to miss him out while you’ve a bit of space left."

"There’s room for just one more," said Bell, as he scribbled with his back to his little audience. "While I was talking about this to Mr Kent, he told me he’d had a customer, a Mr Ledbetter, who had complained that some flowers he’d bought a week ago gave him hay-fever when he’d never had it before." Bell filled one last circle with this name, and added one last line to Florist.

"Was he in the Mafia, this Ledbetter? Did he threaten to have Kent sleeping with the compost before the day was out?"

"No," said Bell. "It was just that, when I asked Mr Kent whether he’d had any dissatisfied customers, Ledbetter was the only one he could think of."

"I never knew it could be so exciting being a florist," said McKay.

Pointing to the mass of circles, lines and scribbles now sprawling out in all directions on the whiteboard, Inspector Keating said, levelly, "Is that it?"

"Yes," said Bell.

"And what do you call that?"

"It’s a spider diagram. It shows all possible lines of enquiry in the case."

"I don’t think you’ve much chance of solving it," said Inspector Keating, rising stiffly to his feet.

"It’s a complete mess," said McKay, as the officers filed out, "that’s what I call it. You won’t catch me getting involved – " he pointed to the diagram – "with that."

"Shut up," said Sergeant Cross, closing the door behind them.

"No," said Bell to himself, shaking his head. "I don’t think I’m going to solve it either."



"Darling, I’m home," said Neil Bell. "Happy anniversary!"

"You remembered!" said his wife, seeing him standing in the doorway. "I didn’t think you’d be able to get me anything – I found your wallet after you left for work this morning."

He handed her a huge and impressive bouquet of flowers. "Well – it has been a busy day… but you know me – I’d always grab you something, no matter what."

THE END