UNIT UK 16: De Profundis

by ComsatAngel

Lieutenants Walmsley and Munroe travel to a remote Scottish seaside village to discover why people are disappearing. They make not one surprising discovery, but two ...

UNIT UK 16: De Profundis

The Doctor and Sarah were guests in our mess for the evening meal, to mark Armistice Day. The Brig, as UNIT's commanding officer, and Sergeant Benton, as UNIT's longest-serving survivor, had been part of the official parade to the Cenotaph for the first time. Roy Mason, the Defence Secretary, had asked for their inclusion, and Geneva had agreed; UNIT seemed to be moving out of the shadows. The BBC and ITV didn't comment on the solitary pair of soldiers in uniforms not of the British Army, and the only paper that seemed to bother was the Daily Worker, who described them as "capitalist lackeys and running dogs" as a reflex action.

The Doctor was always good company at table, full of anecdotes, usually about historical figures, whom he had the unsettling habit of speaking about as if he knew them. Given his ability to zip about in time and space the way you or I can drive a car, he may very well have known them.

He knew more about me than I did, exclaiming "Good Grief! Not that Walmsley!" the first time we met, which indicated either great or terrible things ahead for me. Being a coward, I never dared to ask him what he meant. Mind you, he wouldn't have told me.

After he'd finished a tale about Harry Houdini, which ended with Harry teaching the Doctor several tricks of the escapology trade, I butted in.

'Did you ever meet Napoleon, Doctor?'

He looked keenly at me, stroking his chin.

'Briefly, and not by choice. It wasn't a happy encounter. Just after the battle of Preuss-Eylau. Why do you ask?'

'Oh, just curiosity. Boney once said he would write down his principles of war, which were quite simple and straightforward but would allow other generals to be successful.'

The Doctor sipped his port and shook his wild white locks.

'He suspected me of being an Austrian spy and might well have had me imprisoned, John. No cosy little chats about strategy or tactics.'

Lieutenant Nick Munroe leapt at this conversational opportunity.

'That's a shame. John could do with a little strategic seasoning, and he lacks tactical sophistication.'

The Brig seemed amused at this criticism and didn't intervene to stop it, since it was professional, not personal.

'What do you mean!' I retorted.

Nick had an answer ready, the swine. He'd probably been waiting for days to use it.

'Well, John, you have two tactical methods that derive from your boxing days. Method one; if you encounter a problem, hit it as hard as humanly possible.'

Sarah found this amusing, too. She took up the conversational bait.

'What's the second method?'

'Ah! If method one fails, method two is: Hit it again, except even harder.'

Cue general chorus of amused laughter around the table. I even managed a grin, since it was close to the truth.

'I take it you enjoy being an infantry lieutenant?' asked the Doctor.

'You bet!' I replied, all sincerity. ' "Advance to contact!" "Skirmish line thirty feet apart" "Gimpy team right flank" – you can't beat it. General Slim said that the best commands to have are a platoon, a battalion and a division, and I agree with the first one.'

Captain Beresford put a quiet comment in, quite a telling one.

'If you're looking for promotion when that promotion board sits, John, you need to be able to look at a bigger picture. A captain can't get stuck in the way a junior officer can. Needs to maintain a bit of distance, get a perspective.'

'Absolutely correct, sir,' smarmed Nick.

'He also needs to get away from an obsession with making loud bangs that scare sheep,' replied the Brig, directing his glance at Nick.

'And badgers,' I commented. Nick coughed in embarassment; during an alarm drill at night he'd shot dead a badger by accident, which always made him blush when it came up in conversation.

'You were quite sophisticated at tricking General – sorry, Hector – Finch,' observed Sarah.

'That was deceit,' interrupted Nick. 'Low animal cunning. Not really the done thing, you know. Not British or sporting.'

The Brig got his oar in before Nick and I engaged in a round of insulting banter, since he knew we could go on all night.

'Yes, thank you Nick! Doctor, Miss Smith. Thank you for being our guests tonight. John and Nick, I'd like to see you in my office last thing. Godnight, gentlemen.'

'What have you gotten us into?' I queried as we walked up to the Brig's office.

'Me?' replied Nick, busy going over his schemes and scams mentally. 'Nothing that could incriminate both of us.'

In fact the Brig had an official point to put to us, having us sit down. That was a good sign: not being told to sit implied a shouting session.

'Have either of you heard of Rockcliffe?' he asked, sitting back in his chair and twiddling a pen.

I thought it sounded rather like one of Nick's hideous caterwauling pop groups.

'Yes, sir,' said Nick, screwing up his face reflectively. 'Small town on the Dumfries coast, I think. We visited occasionally when my mother was alive.'

'Correct. Small town, small population. Getting smaller of late – they've had five people disappear recently.'

'That makes it a police matter, surely, sir?' I asked. The Brig stared back at me.

'The last one to vanish was a policeman, John. The Dumfries and Galloway police are shy of committing more men to a problem they don't understand and don't see why UNIT shouldn't investigate. Nor do I. Given your recent involvement in the ghastly events at Wandsworth, I thought you two might be keen to go out and hunt down bogeymen, monsters or whatever turns out to be responsible.'

Oh boy, Wandsworth Prison. Words don't exist in the English language to describe how dreadful that place had been. An opportunity to put that behind us?

'Yes sir!' we both replied.

'Stout fellows!' enthused the Brig. 'Take whatever kit you need but try and be discreet, eh? After all, this might all turn out to be smoke and mirrors.'

We both made our way to the Armoury rubbing our hands, given the blank slate that the Brig had offered us.

'Which army are you taking on! Sir,' exclaimed Sergeant Whittaker, after being told what we wanted.

'Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart's words were "whatever kit you need", Sergeant.'

'I'm afraid the flamethrowers are out of fuel, sir. No more due in for weeks.'

Nick tutted in annoyance. A mixed blessing, that. I'm not sure I'd trust him with a flamethrower.

I signed out Landrover 7348, which has a solid rear cargo body with lockable doors. Not a good idea to let Joe Public see the assortment of equipment we'd have with us.

The Brig wanted us to get up to Rockcliffe quickly, which meant driving overnight. Nick knew the drive to north of Carlisle would be easy, if boring, so he dossed down in the rear with a sleeping bag. I pulled off the A74 a few miles north-west of Carlisle, at the coincidentally-named Rockcliffe service station and parked up in an empty car park.

'All out, Rockcliffe Services,' I called, rapping on the rear door. Nick emerged yawning hugely.

'Should we go for a wet?' he asked, pointing at the not-very inviting lights of the service station.

I pondered. Think like a captain, John.

'No. We don't know how long it would take them to serve us, and I reckon it'd add half an hour to the journey. Plus, I need to sleep, not to stoke up on caffeine.'

On we boldly went, me managing to sleep surprisingly well amongst all the weaponry in the rear. This leg of the journey was far shorter than the motorway trip, but it was on progressively less impressive Scottish roads. Nick pulled up outside Rockcliffe at five in the morning, radioed in our arrival to Aylesbury and napped in the front seat as arranged. By eight I had gotten enough sleep to register the arrival of dawn outside, a dull grey light coming in through the one-way window in the rear doors.

Proper daylight didn't arrive until nine o'clock, when we had a recce of Rockcliffe. Nick filled me in on the locals whilst driving.

'These people all know each other, and each other's business. They'll try to wheedle all sorts of info out of you, politely, since you're a new face. This is the off-season, so there aren't any tourists and most of the holiday homes will be empty. Major recreational activities are drinking, poaching and more drinking.'

Parking up on the single-lane track into the village, well onto the kerb to allow any hypothetical other traffic to get past, we looked over Rockcliffe.

Picturesque. Lots of small houses, mostly whitewashed, scattered in a semicircle around and above the beaches, amidst a lot of trees, both deciduous and pine. It being November, the colours were brown, yellow and green in equal amounts.

'Okay, Mighty Leader, what do we do first?'

Once again I pondered. Think like a captain. First instinct was to get down there and start looking, ask questions, poke under rocks. Second thought was to obtain an information overlay and proper background.

'First, you get yourself armed and discreetly nosey around Rockcliffe. I am going to drive back to Dumfries and contact Bluebottle, then call Aylesbury. We need more background info than we possess. Don't alarm the natives, and don't get disappeared yourself. I don't want to have to explain that to your old man.'

Nick coughed in slightly embarassed form.

'Yes, well, I'm not currently in pater's good books. He found out I took his Bentley without asking while he was on business in Japan. Son Nicholas now black sheep of family.'

The police station in Dumfries was a solidly-constructed structure composed of sandstone blocks, with an interior straight out of the '50's. Don't suppose major crime impacted here very much. The duty sergeant looked at me with both worry and suspicion.

'UNIT? Here to see who?' he asked.

The most senior officer in the station that early in the morning was a DC McLaren, a long and dour officer not impressed with me, my uniform or the state of the world.

'So you're here to investigate the vanishings near Rockcliffe?' he finally realised.

'Yes. I would like any information you have on the date, time and location of the disappearances. Doesn't have to be now, I can come back and collect it. Also, I need to make out a Firearms Declaration Cert.'

McLaren's thought processes didn't match those of his namesake racing car.

'What is a Firearms Declaration Cert?'

Mental sigh from John at Policeman Plodder.

'A form that details the weapons we are carrying by permission of the Chief Constable.'

It took fifteen minutes for the staff to locate an FDC, which is understandable – in a quiet corner of provincial Scotland there isn't much use of FDCs. I filled it out and passed it to Detective Constable McLaren, whose face registered increasing levels of alarm as he read. Finally he read it back to me.

'One Nitro Express double-barrelled hunting rifle; one Sterling sub-machine gun, silenced; one nine millimetre Browning pistol; one forty-five calibre Colt pistol; two 36 pattern hand grenades; two white phosphorus grenades; six M18 directional mines; one LAW rocket launcher; one SLR; one L4A2 machine gun; two ER kits containing a total of three pounds of plastique explosive.'

'And this,' I added, pulling out the knife tucked down the side of my DMS boot. 'The L4 is the old Bren gun, with rimless ammo and a different flash hider,' I helpfully added. Hey, the Brig said we could have what we wanted! If this was how Mister McLaren reacted, perhaps it was a good thing we didn't bring the flamethrower.

DC McLaren stared at me, at a loss for words.

'Are you planning on going to war?' he asked.

'Hopefully not, Mister McLaren. We don't know what's caused the disappearances, so we like to be on the safe side. I promise not to shoot passing tourists or inhabitants. Now, about the information?'

He nodded slowly and agreed to have it compiled and ready for us by that afternoon.

Another hour later brought me back to Rockcliffe, and Nick standing on the edge of town, cradling his Sterling.

'What news, Great White Hunter?' I asked, to a shrug.

'No obvious reason or connections for the missing people. No storm, no wild animals on the loose, different locations. No particular enemies, drug or mental health problems. Some rather smart-looking girls, however.'

The usual start, then. No leads, no clues, no suspects and Nick the victim of his hormones. Ah how I love our UNIT investigations.

'The police at Dumfries are compiling info about the disappearances. Did you get any gen that might be under the radar normally?'

He had – the missing constable had sat out one night with a shotgun, torch and lead-loaded cosh. None of which had been seen since.

Parking 7348 high on the kerb, I took my trusty .45 in it's bum holster and escorted Nick back to the village. A few locals abroad in the streets nodded or waved in greeting, whilst staring very hard at the two newcomers in uniform. With guns. I had the feeling that even if there was a mundane explanation for the vanishing people, Rockcliffe would have chattering material for a long time to come.

The road ended up leading to the beach, where the tide was in. Choppy, very cold water slapped around the rocks.

'What do people poach out here?' I asked.

'Salmon, obviously. Deer. Game birds – grouse and pheasant.'

'Big enough business to warrant murder?'

Nick laughed.

'Lord, no! The Highland Fisheries and the Rangers have anti-poaching patrols on the look-out, but it's more a battle of wits than anything else. A poacher who killed someone would be found trussed-up on the police station doorstep next morning, dumped there by fellow poachers.'

Having seen the sea, we ambled to the west of Rockcliffe along the track, coming across occasional locals. Some had already encountered Nick, and nodded to him whilst staring at me. Nick had been absolutely correct, there were some startlingly attractive women here for a tiny village off the beaten track.

'Do I stand out that much?' I asked.

'Yes. Plus, you haven't lived here for twenty years. A bit parochial, these villagers.'

When we got back to 7348 a local had found it and was hovering, watching us and the Landrover. He was a lithe teenager, wearing a denim overall, sporting ginger hair and freckles.

'I recommend you vanish, smartly,' I growled at him. Freckles raised his eyebrows in surprise at this.

'Oh, aye?' he asked, sounding interested. Not surprising. UNIT were the most interesting thing to have happened here since the year dot.

'Aye. Or you can tell us where to get food around here. Shops? Supermarkets? Local chippy? Pub?' I continued.

Freckles explained. His name was Callum, there were no chippies or supermarkets, the local pub didn't sell food - but we could find things to eat at the village shop. Yes, he could show us the way.

"Things to eat" covers much ground. The local shop combined off-licence, newsagents, grocers, post office and sporting goods all under one roof, and a small roof at that. Nick and I bought the makings for sandwiches and left before the owner and wife could ask any more questions – "Who are you? Why are you here? Are you here for long? Where are you staying? What are your names? Have you been here before? Are you police? Are you married?"

Once outside, I shook my head in astonishment.

'I did warn you,' said Nick drily. 'We're the new boys in town. That makes us news.'

Callum remained in the background, hovering. Part-helicopter, that boy.

'Is there any history of people vanishing in these parts before?' asked Nick. Callum cocked his head to one side and reflected. In the background, net curtains twitched.

'Not like this. Folks have been swept out to sea before, or lost at sea. One man killed himself in the forest, hung from a tree, over a broken heart. That was during the Boer War.'

Hmm, seventy-odd years ago. Not a possibility today.

Since Callum exhibited all the signs of accompanying us back to 7348, I prepared to shout at him. Nick forestalled me.

'We're going back now, Callum. I want you to look over Rockcliffe and find anything that is unusual or out of place. We'll meet you back at the pub – that's "The Solway" – at five o'clock, where you can report to us.'

A delighted Callum threw us a salute and vanished, doubtless to pester the honest folks of Rockcliffe for hours on end.

'Smart move, Lieutenant,' I congratulated. A modest Munroe accepted the thanks with good grace. 'Now, how do we construct sandwiches without a breadboard?'

'You're the captain candidate,' he replied. 'You work it out.'

I drove back to Dumfries in the early afternoon to get information from the police. DC McLaren had been true to his word and a big wad of foolscap lay on the counter waiting for me to collect. Before I could collect, a Detective Inspector McManaman put in an appearance.

'Lieutenant Walmsley? Can I have a word?' he asked when I had gotten to the far side of the counter, poised to pick up the information.

Cue sigh from me. Traditionally, when agencies meet in the field, you get a clash of arms as each attempts to out-macho the other, establish a dominance and assert their primacy. I can do without any of this bullshine, having a higher calling.

'The word being?'

He stopped and looked at me for several seconds, before we ended up in his office.

'I understand you're here about the disappearances?'

Nod from John.

'Well, tread carefully. Rockcliffe is an odd place where odd things happen. Keep your eyes and ears open.'

'Indeed. One of the locals told us how remarkably not-odd Rockcliffe was.'

DI McManaman shook his head.

'As if they'd know! Take it from me, you need to keep your wits about you out there. Strange is the order of the day. Alright, alright, I've warned you, Lieutenant, you can go now.'

Depart I did, wondering if DI McManaman hadn't been drinking too much coffee of late.

Nick had been busy busy busy whilst I'd been away. I collected him at the edge of the village.

'Got us quarters while you were hob-nobbing with Bluebottle.'

'Oh aye? The Brig's not going to bite me on the arse about breaking into private property, is he?'

'All legal and fair and square and entirely above board. Number 37. Holiday home empty for the season.'

We bumped into the village and up to Number 37, a small whitewashed cottage. Munroe had been to the village store, enquired about empty properties, been shown keys and appropriated a set in exchange for an official UNIT indent.

Our cottage was stale and bare, no running water or electricity. Ferreting around with torches under the stairs revealed the electricity meter and power switch. The water stop-cock was hidden under the sink. Spartan but better than the back of a Landrover.

'Let's have a look at what Bluebottle tried,' I said in commanding tones, hopefully, opening the wallet on the kitchen table.

They'd tried hard, bless them. First came a list of the missing.

"DONNELLY, PETER Age 56 Resident of Rockcliffe

Mr Donnelly set out to walk his dog at 6 pm on November 1st. His wife, worried when he had not returned from a normal 20 minute walk by 8:30 pm, rang the police at Dalbeattie. A search revealed no clues as to the whereabouts of the missing person. To date neither he nor his dog have been seen.

COCHRANE, ROGER Age 34 Resident of Rockliffe

Mr Cochrane was not reported missing until the 4th of November. The exact time of his disappearance is difficult to determine, as he lived alone and was not seen to depart his house by any witnesses. Given that fishing tackle was discovered in his kitchen, but no fishing rods, it seems likely that he set out to go angling. To date no trace of him has been discovered.

SHIRLEY MCMANUS Age 44 Resident of Rockcliffe

Mrs McManus went out to collect driftwood for firewood early on the evening of 7th November, as was her habit at this time of year. Once again time of disappearance is difficult to determine, as there are no surviving witnesses.

PETER MCMANUS Age 48 Resident of Rockcliffe

Husband of Shirley McManus. It is presumed that Mister McManus became worried about the failure of his wife to re-appear and went looking for her himself. Neither of the McManuses have been seen to date.

CONSTABLE ERIC MCKEEVER

Constable McKeever, from Dalbeattie, arrived at Rockcliffe during the evening of 9th November. His task was to remain on observation and see if any reason for the disappearances could be found. It appears, contrary to regulations, that Constable McKeever took a .410 single-barrel shotgun with him. He vanished at some time during the night of 9th November and no trace of him has subsequently been found."

There we had it. For five people to vanish without trace in a small seaside town in the space of eleven days was bizarre and worrying. One person could be explained away by reference to mental health problems, or debt, or marriage difficulties, or an accident. Five made it very different.

Next we looked over the different police reports. The D & G police had done their best to look at things from a rational, normal perspective: Motive, Method and Opportunity. They came up blank with motives or method. "Opportunity" revealed that all the victims were alone, at night, when they vanished. The tracker dogs used had trailed scent to the water's edge and then lost them.

I looked out of the kitchen window. Four o'clock and already nearly dark. Out here there were only a few streetlights along the track into Rockcliffe, and after them you either relied on torches or lots of carrots in your diet. Nick turned on the light and we continued.

Having no sensible suggestions in their investigation, the police turned to less-usual explanations. An escaped murderer, except there were none. A ferocious wild animal – one which left no tracks, spoor, kills or any record of it's existence. Abduction by party or parties unknown was the verdict – which is when the Chief Constable of D & G called UNIT.

'Take a look at this,' said Nick, passing over a photo of the village from above at low tide. A huge expanse of white sandy beach lay between the village and the sea, very picturesque. A white cross marked the supposed vanishing point of Peter Donnelly, near the white sands. Constable McKeever's white cross lay at the mid-point of the village, again a supposition given that nobody knew when he actually vanished.

'I wonder, I wonder. The police were looking for a land-bound explanation. Who do we know who resides in the briny deep and harbours ill-will towards all men?'

'The Parrot-Pigs,' replied Nick promptly, causing me to laugh in surprise.

'No, no, really, that's what they look like. Cross between a parrot and a pig. The Marine Silurians, if you want to be proper.'

The Sea Devils. Why would they pick off five people at random? No, if it were them, they'd be wading ashore by the hundred, and at Liverpool or Bristol, not Rockcliffe.

'How about the fish-men of Maiden's Point?'

I had to shoot that one down, too.

'Nope. The Doctor said they were a unique – er – what was it? Something to do with time. Anyway, they had a truce with the Royal Navy. Either party steps out of line, the hammer falls.'

Besides which, the fish-man monster I encountered at Maiden's Point had been very polite. He didn't even mind when Corporal Dene shot him.

'Soooo,' mused Nick. 'We can postulate a creature that is hostile, aggressive but not necessarily intelligent.'

'Like a Saint Helen's prop,' I joked. Nick scowled at me.

'Be sensible, Walmsley. Christ, I never thought I'd be saying that! A creature that can tackle a full-grown man.'

'A man with a gun. And come off better.'

'Imagine a crocodile,' said Nick, looking at the rafters. 'No, not a real crocodile,' he added, seeing me looking at him with concern. A crocodile on the west coast of Scotland? 'A creature like a crocodile. Big, fierce, carnivorous. Likes to lie in ambush. Capable of killing a man easily.'

Great, the Dumfries Lesser-Spotted Saltwater Crocodile. A creature so rare it didn't exist.

'Okay, we can imagine a creature like that. Why hasn't it shown up here before? Why hasn't anyone discovered it's bleaching bones on the beach at Blackpool?'

'Nice alliteration! Good question, too. Okay, it hasn't shown up before because of circumstances that have only recently changed.'

Environment? Weather? Food chain? All were possibilities.

'Right. John, thinking like a captain, decides more local information is needed. And a kettle. I'm dying for a brew.'

Nick produced a notepad and make notes.

'I think we need more than that. Night vision equipment, Starlite scopes if possible or the humble infra red otherwise. Flares, portable high intensity spotlights, and lots more batteries for the torches.'

'Right. I'll radio Aylesbury - '

My intent was interrupted by a knock at the door. Nick hastily took up the L4 and I drew and cocked my trusty Colt, hiding it behind my back.

'Come in!' shouted Nick.

Constable McLeish was a rotund, affable chap with thinning hair on top and sharp eyes that took in the kitchen surroundings. His normal beat was Dalbeattie, but DI McManaman had asked him to look in on us. His first look came over the barrel of a machine gun and semi-automatic pistol.

'Whoops, hey, lads, don't shoot me,' he'd called out, understandably worried at being the target of twin gun muzzles.

'So, you're the lads with all the guns,' he cannily observed shortly afterwards, after departing for a few minutes to re-appear with a kettle and a bottle of milk.

'Lifesaver! Constable, we are in your debt!' Nick shouted, gleeful at the prospect of a cuppa.

'Lots of guns, yes. Which are secured in the locked Landrover outside. Which is booby-trapped,' I reassured him, if that was reassurance.

'Booby-trapped!' he exclaimed.

Yes. I told him, in a fit of malicious humour, that I'd wired up one of the M18 Claymores to point at the rear door; if you unlocked and pulled the door open you'd get a faceful of explosively-propelled metal.

'Leave well alone, suffer no harm. Mess about with, go home in pieces. Now, can we help you?' Knowing how local folks gossiped would mean not having light-fingered people trying the Landrover locks.

Constable McLeish was an invaluable source of local information. From him we discovered that the folk in Rockcliffe were worried enough to camp out in their parlours with shotguns a-loaded. Nobody, absolutely nobody, went out alone after dark, except him and a few dogs. People were afraid that what had happened might affect their tourist trade in the spring and summer of 1976, which impacted, big time, on their lives. Their traditional pastimes of poaching and distilling might be affected.

'Do you have any ideas about what might be the cause?' I asked. Always treat Bluebottle with care and consideration.

Constable McLeish looked at Nick for a couple of seconds before replying.

'Aye. The piskies.' Said in a deadly-serious tone. 'Water-sprites,' he enlarged for me, before bursting into laughter. 'Oh, man, your faces! Ha ha! Ha – ah. You aren't amused. Sorry.'

Nick shook his head in a don't-worry gesture.

'We came up with the suggestion of a creature that emerges from the water and snatches it's victims from dry land before returning to the deeps.'

The constable looked sharply between us, divined that we weren't joking and tipped his helmet back.

'Well, aren't you two the boys. Seriously, over the years, lots of people claim to have seen water-sprites out here at Rockcliffe. Nothing's got into the papers, but everyone here in Dumfries knows it's an odd place.'

The warning of DI McManaman came back to me. No, that was just a local having a little malicious fun at the expense of a visiting Sassenach. Besides which, if these water-sprites had been around for years, why had they suddenly turned hostile?

'I was thinking more along the lines of an amphibious predator that has selected Rockcliffe for it's dining pleasure,' I explained.

'One that sneaks up on it's prey in the dark,' added Nick.

'And mist,' added Constable McLeish. Feeling two pairs of eyes upon him, he quailed slightly. 'What?'

' "Mist", you said. Why that?'

'Well, when Eric vanished, it was another misty night. Is that important?'

It might very well be. Us two UNIT officers exchanged glances whilst the Constable looked at his watch in surprise.

'Good heavens! I need to be on my way and be long gone!'

Nick gave him and his bicycle a lift to the edge of Rockcliffe in 7348.

'I called Aylesbury and asked for the met reports of this area between the first of November and today,' he told me on his return.

'That's thinking like a captain,' I flattered him. 'Reflecting on that, if conditions were misty then that allows our hypothetical predator to get even closer to the prey.'

'And don't bother about piskies,'sneered Nick. 'It seems that out here there's not much to do except mock outsiders.'

'Do you think we should get an officially clever person to ask questions of, about fish?' I asked, already half-convinced. 'Like Ruth, except about fish not dinosaurs.'

'Oho! That's thinking like a captain. I shall have a trawl through the phone directory tomorrow, and isolate several possible persons.'

Well, since the shades of night were fallen, it seemed to be time to have a party. Not much of a party, with only the two of us, but we tried hard. The mist outside grew stronger and visibility decreased accordingly.

'Seems like the sort of weather our Salt-Water croc might enjoy. Dark, misty, silent and lonely. Want to take a walk?' asked Nick, basically taunting me.

No, I didn't. Nick might very well get up to something whilst I followed.

Well, wanting, not needing, didn't take precedence. We ended up patrolling the mean streets of Rockcliffe in the moonlit night, toting a machine gun and elephant gun, watching each other's back. Several net curtains twitched when we passed, all the way down to the water's edge. The mist wasn't thick, being dispersed by a breeze off the sea.

'Ssst!' hissed Nick, pointing with the L4 barrel at a large rock on the waterfront that lazy waves slapped at and over. I'd seen a white streak on the rock, out of the corner of my eye. Now there was nothing there.

'Back to back!' I said in a low and insistent voice, and we did so.

Five minutes later Nick coughed.

'Much as I like being in intimate physical contact, Lieutenant Walmsley, I don't see any reason to continue playing buddy-buddy.'

The two of us walked back by the pub, where an anxious Callum loitered, half-in and half-out of the doorway. Not much to report, apart from Mister McMilligan entering Miss Campbell's cottage by the back door –

'Perhaps not quite what we're looking for, Callum. Keep your eyes peeled, won't you?'

'There was something on that rock,' I insisted, back at Number 37, brewing tea.

'I'm not arguing. I definitely saw a splash in the waters. We haven't disappeared, have we? Perhaps two men are too much.'

I handed him the Nitro Express.

'Two hour stags each until morning. You take first. Keep a 36 nearby as well.'

He took the rifle with some apprehension, since firing it indoors would probably rupture one set of eardrums (only one set of ear-protectors) and blow out the windows.

Confused dreams involving fish, monsters, Ruth and seaside villages kept me twitching until Nick poked me in the ribs with a butter knife.

'Your stag, boss. Nothing to report. Gimme sleeping bag.'

Off he went to the land of nod. John, trying to think like a captain, took a mental backseat and pondered.

Piskies? Water-sprites? I'd read about these entities in childhood books many years ago. They might be mischievous, even malicious, but murderous – no. If there were real-life equivalents of them on the West coast of Scotland then they'd co-existed with humans for centuries without killing. No reason to start now. That was a mark of UNIT experience – not dismissing creatures from folklore as superstitious nonsense. Bluebottle didn't even begin to appreciate the connection.

A third agency? A third party. I recalled a novel by Graham Greene – "The Quiet American". Alden Pyle had tried to create a third alternative to the status quo. Our Contemporary Politics tutor at Leeds recommended it as an example of modern literature addressing modern political concerns.

November the Thirteenth dawned bright and breezy, a blue sky full of scudding clouds, a white-topped sea slowly encroaching on the sands below and what few leaves left on the trees ready to fall any second. I looked out of the front window of Number 37 at what really was a beautiful sight. No wonder tourists came up here.

'You've got the tourist stare,' commented my comrade in arms.

'It's a better view than my monastic cell at Aylesbury. Come on, lets get a brew and toast going.'

We were looking over the photographs of the Rockcliffe hinterland when there came a hesitant knock on the door.

When I opened it, a vision of feminine beauty stood before me. Tall and slender, with big green eyes, long loose red hair, a scattering of freckles, looking good even in an unflattering Arran sweater and waterproof leggings.

'Hello?' she said shyly.

'Hello!' enthused Nick behind me. 'One of the smart-looking lasses I mentioned. Can we help?'

'Can we help?' I repeated.

'Well – I just heard you brought an awful lot of guns with you. A few folk are worried about that.'

Thinking like a captain, and not a schoolboy with a crush, I invited the young lady into the kitchen.

'She's mine, all mine!' chortled Nick. 'Care for a cup of tea, Miss?'

She smiled wanly and shook her head.

I pointed at the kitchen table, where lay the Nitro Express and L4.

'Our weapons of choice. Until we find out what's doing the disappearing, we'll be carrying firearms. Neither Lieutenant Munroe or myself are trigger-happy idiots. Though the lieutenant may give a different impression.'

She still looked doubtful.

'The two of us were out patrolling last night and noticed an unusual object down by the water's edge. Despite that, we didn't go banging away with big guns.'

'Oh. But you'll be staying till you discover what's been making people vanish?'

'Your safety is our greatest concern, Miss -?' smarmed Nick.

'Moyra McTaggart.'

'Whatever's abducting people only seems to come out periodically. Perhaps only when it's misty, Miss McTaggart.'

'It'll be misty tonight,' she informed us, taking her leave.

I didn't add, which in retrospect was a mistake, that having seen the extent of horror and killing which went on in Wandsworth Prison, I'd need good reason to resort to violence.

Aylesbury said a motorcycle courier would bring up the kit we'd asked for, and the Brig asked me for a sitrep.

'Nobody's disappeared since we arrived, sir, but there is definitely a threat here. Bluebottle rationally considered it came from the land. We think it came out of the sea.'

'Since you seem to have taken half the Armoury with you, John, I think you can handle anything short of a mass invasion. Call me back tomorrow. Trap One out.'

Constable McLeish dropped by at noon, catching up with us prowling on the perfect white sandy beach. We heard the squeak of his bike wheels before he arrived.

'Hello, lads. Nobody else gone missing?'

'Not while the brave boys of UNIT stand watch. We went out last night and saw a Something.'

'Not a hostile Something,' I added. 'And we didn't see it clearly, because of the mist.'

'In the water?' asked the Constable, genuinely interested. 'Or out of it?'

'Both. It dived into the water from a rock.'

'A seal, maybe.'

'Big seal, then,' muttered Nick.

'And what are you lads doing amongst the rocks and sands? You look like a couple of bairns hunting for shrimp.'

In truth we were trying to find clues, unsuccessfully. Giving up on that, all three of us trudged back up the beach to the track.

'Nice shallow incline,' commented Nick. 'Easy to get up.'

A large young man came down to meet us at the waterfront, looking pale and aggrieved. His pale face looked even paler in contrast with his shock of long dark hair.

'Hello, Donal,' said Constable McLeish affably enough.

'Are these the men with all the guns and bombs?' blurted Donal, not very happily.

'That's us,' agreed Nick, cheerily. 'Guns, bombs and a big pokey stick.'

Donal did what must be "glowering" at Nick, who beamed back an expression of imbecile satisfaction.

'Is that all you wanted to know?' asked the constable drily.

'How long are ye staying?' asked Donal brusquely.

'Ooh, for simply ages and ages!' beamed back Nick, playing the part of a fatuous buffoon.

'Don't be rude, Donal, these young men are risking their lives trying to find out what's made those people vanish.'

Donal delivered a grunt of dislike and went off at high speed in a fair old temper. Constable McLeish rubbed his chin.

'I apologise on his behalf, gentlemen. Not normally like that.'

'You can tell Inspector McManaman that we'll be getting a delivery of night vision gear and flares and the like, Constable. Perhaps the locals will be less unhappy if they realise we're not going to blam away at anything moving in mist.'

'Aye, maybe.'

He stopped before mounting his bike for the hard uphill ride, turning to look at us with shrewd eyes.

'D'ye think these people gone missing are dead?'

Nick gave me a go-ahead gesture.

'Sorry to be pessemistic and blunt, but yes I do. The first man went missing twelve days ago. No body has turned up on the shores, nor inland, the tracker dogs didn't find any trace and nobody has seen him. I firmly believe he's dead, and therefore the others are, too.'

The constable sighed.

'Aye, I reckon you're right, just didn't like to admit it to myself. I knew Eric pretty well.'

With a wave, he squeaked off on his bike.

For the afternoon, I pored over sketch-maps of the seafront at Rockcliffe, doodling and drawing. The M18 Claymores might be just what we needed, to set up a self-activating ambush. If we set them up at the end of the track – no, too much risk from the backblast. A semi-circle arrangement, pointing seawards, angled down slightly to – but that would still mean setting up too close to the village. How about at low tide? There were vast expanses of sand to set them up on, well away from the village and not risking anyone's life. If the Dumfries Salt-Water Crocodile came up out of the water into the middle of a Claymore ambush, what remained could fit into your coat pocket.

Nick, meanwhile, had been ringing around for ichthyologists or marine biologists. I wished him luck – Project Broom used a struck-off doctor for their biology needs, since the real thing was in short supply at UNIT.

'Success!' he crowed. 'Iain Maclean from Herriot-Watt is coming down in two days. Ah, the early Impressionist school?' he added, seeing my sketches.

'Dolt. I'm trying to work out where to set up a Claymore ambush. That means working out fields of fire, backblast, ranges, nearest civilian property, fratricide. What does Iain Maclean know about fish?'

'More than you or I. He normally works for the Fisheries Commission, and is on a course. He hails from Dumfries, so natural curiosity got him hooked.'

Good for Nick. Between the two of us our piscatorial knowledge ran to "salmon en croute" and "cod in breadcrumbs".

'Er – forgive your humble minion for asking, o mighty one, but won't setting up an ambush in picturesque Rockcliffe result in destruction of previously-picturesque coastal town?'

I explained my brainwave – set up on the beach once the tide went out.

'Oh yes! I like that. Nice and flat, a good killing ground. Those mines will slice any beastly beast into bits. Hey, with our dismal diet here, do you think we could slice and grill it for brekker?'

Constable McLeish rang us in Number 37 to pass on bad news later in the afternoon – our motorcycle courier had suffered a serious accident in Dumfries, come off his bike and broken a leg. The bike lay at the bottom of the River Nith. Fate conspires, etcetera.

For all the care we took, and we were careful handling the Claymores under misty moonlight, we might as well not have bothered.

Not that we minded having an exciting little excursion. Oh no. Nick swapped the L4 for his silenced Sterling on this occasion, reasoning that waking the burghers of Rockcliffe with a burst of machine gun fire at midnight was probably not a good idea. I brought along my trusty elephant gun and a spade. Terrific anti-personnel weapon, the humble spade.

After planting three of the mines, the mist rolled in extra-thick from the sea, and visibility dwindled down to thirty feet. I got rather twitchy at this reduction in visibility, and we stopped for a short while to point deadly weapons at the walls of white vapour, standing literally back-to-back.

'Which direction are we facing?' hissed Nick to me.

My watch has a compass built in, so I checked.

'South-west. Towards the Solway Firth and the sea.'

'Then why can I see a streetlight not far from us?'

The natural insult that came to my lips died the moment I saw the streetlight bobbing nearby.

How the hell can that be! I asked myself. We were at least a hundred yards out from the waterfront, on the sands, making the nearest streetlight in Rockcliffe a hundred and fifty yards distant.

Yet there the light was, bobbing and dancing. Five feet above the ground, at a guess. A cold white globular light no more than thirty feet away.

'I don't like it,' declared Nick. No, I didn't like it either. Nick disliked It so much he sighted along the Sterling barrel and put a silent nine mill round into the light.

Which went partially out, swinging wildly up and around, accompanied by a peculiar wheezing, hissing grunting sound, followed by a flapping, slapping, rapidly-fading sound. Us two heroic UNIT stalwarts slowly moved over the sands, discovering that the sands were disturbed and disarrayed. No trace of streetlight or – anything else.

'If it was that close, we ought to have seen it.'

'We heard it. You shot it. Good enough for me. Come on, there's still three more mines to place.'

Five minutes later we were on the waterfront, watching the mist drift about, unbothered by fairy lights or hissing crocodiles. Back at the cottage we fortified ourselves with strong tea and toast, then set the alarm for four in the morning, just before the tide came back in.

Our bleary-eyed return to the beach was made easier by a lack of mist. A breeze from the sea had freshened the air and got rid of obscuring vapours. This allowed us to walk confidently across the sands and discover that the command wires for the Claymores had all been cut, then removed.

'Amphibious fish with knives. Iain McLean is going to be so amazed,' I commented sourly. Making the Claymores safe, I dumped them in a musette bag and shouldered the Nitro Express.

'What the hell – we walked out here and back and then came out again,' exclaimed Nick. 'So how come there's eight sets of tracks when there should only be six?'

Trying to act the expert tracker, both of us stuck our noses into the interloper's set of prints, not discovering anything more than that whoever made them wore boots. The impressions were evenly distributed, implying that they weren't hurrying.

We ought to have been, however, with the tide coming in after us. It chased us to shore and we scrambled up the rocks to dry land, to stand under a streetlight. A real one, that didn't bob about. For a good twenty minutes we skulked about the end of Rockcliffe's track, seeking the saboteur in the shadows or amongst the rocks.

'Ugh! Good God, don't these people watch where their dogs – John, I need to dip my boot in the briny,' complained Nick, having trodden in the metaphorical mess, beyond the illumination cast by a solitary streetlight. He hobbled to the water's edge with considerable muttering, then sat down on the rocks, ready to dip his boot in the water.

'Don't fall in,' I cautioned him wearily. 'It's deep there.'

'As if – whoops, I'm stuck on – AH!' he yelled, being suddenly and violently pulled forward towards the water by his boot.

Lunging forward, I got his jacket collar in one hand and heaved mightily backwards, whilst trying to unsling the elephant gun left-handed. The material started to part, and another violent tug dragged Nick down the rocks still further.

Things would have gone badly for us; whatever had hold of Nick's boot pulled too strongly for me to pull him back, even with two hands. It's outline was just visible in the seawater: big, very big.

A white torpedo, travelling faster than ought to be possible, rippled underwater across the dark waters of the bay and hit whatever was trying to haul Nick in, making it release him suddenly. Taken by surprise, I fell backwards on my rear, dragging Nick with me.

Wet and white-faced, the pair of us stared at the dark and brooding waters. No white torpedo any longer.

'Damn. Good job I brought a change of underwear,' Nick complained, hobbling on a heel-less boot, dripping sea-water. He led the way up to 37 with me at the rear, pointing the Nitro at any suspicious sounds.

Safely back in the kitchen, Nick vanished upstairs to do a bit of personal bathing and clothes changing. I tipped the useless Claymores out onto the hob and threw myself onto a chair, then took my temper out on the chopping board, propped vertical, hurling knives at it with great force.

'Do you get the feeling that the folks here have already seen the whole script? While we're on page one,' shouted Nick down from upstairs.

'Not only feel it, I know it. I wonder where that surly knave Donal was tonight.'

Whack went another knife into the wooden board.

'Bloody ungrateful swines, trying to stop us helping them.'

Whack

'Stupid and counterproductive. Agreed.'

'So what do we do now?' asked Nick in the doorway, now resplendent in clean fatigues.

Whack

'Being reactive hasn't worked. We need to pre-empt the saboteurs.'

Whack

'Yes quite. You do know we have to pay for damaged inventory in this cottage?'

Whack

'It helps me think.'

And it had, too. That thought about a third force came back to haunt me, drifting around my head for ages.

'Nick, it's nearly six in the morning. We need a good sleep before continuing or we'll be worth nothing later today. Bed sharpish, and that's an order.'

Whack.

The scent of frying bacon, scrambled egg and grilled mushrooms brought me out of an increasingly shallow doze.

'Brekker!' shouted Nick from the kitchen. My watch jarringly informed me that it was now half past eleven in the morning of November Fourteenth. A nice bright sunny, if chilly, day.

Good Lord, a thorough chap, he'd even made porridge. With salt, which makes my mouth pucker, but which Nick insists is the sign of a True Man.

'You realise that there are two parties in dispute here?' I asked, to an exasperated sneer.

'Hey, you're talking to the man who!' and Nick held up his right boot, where the heel had been sliced lengthways, down to within a millimetre of the sole. 'Proof positive about one party, wouldn't you say?'

The Brig was going to love this.

'What do you know about Scottish folklore?'

Nick goggled over his bacon.

'What do you want to know? My ancestors were the most superstitious bunch of peasants in the world. There isn't a rock or tree or river that doesn't have some bloody nonsense associated with it.'

'What if some of those myths are based on reality?'

Any person in a normal walk of life would have laughed this off with a merry quip about the quoter's sanity. Nick continued chewing his bacon thoughtfully and kept on being thoughtful until the plate was empty.

'There are creatures called "Selkies" or umpteen other variants, who were seal-folk. They could take on human or seal form at will.'

'And do they eat people whole?'

He scratched his nose with the knife.

'No. They sort of mixed in with humans, actually. Cannibalism not on the menu.'

'Plus, they'd be kind of human-sized. That outline in the water yesterday was the size of a Cortina.'

'How do we trap one without working mines? Oh! I know! What do they use on the barbed wire at Maiden's Point?'

I radioed through to Aylesbury, giving a sitrep to Captain Beresford, since the Brig had swanned off to Geneva again in his jet-set lifestyle: evidence of a large, hostile marine creature that attacks at night in mist.

'Put me through to the Doctor,' I told the R/T operator, after the Captain finished.

'Which one, sir? The MO or – well, the other bloke.'

'The other bloke.'

'He's in his lab, sir. Not keen on interruptions.'

No, the Doctor wasn't keen on stupid military impositions on his time or research. Thank the Lord he'd found another acolyte in Sarah Jane Smith, his face and general disposition when Jo Grant departed had been miserable.

'Doctor, Lieutenant Walmsley here, with a quick question.'

Loud impatient sigh.

'Go on then, Lieutenant.' Hmm, he wasn't happy – if he wasn't happy you got the rank instead of the first name, or the slightly cooler rank and last name.

'Is it possible or probable that certain supposedly supernatural creatures actually have a basis in reality?'

'Lieutenant, it is not only possible, it is a fact. Remember the Seal o'Canth.'

At least I thought that's what he said at first - the "Seal o'Canth" sounded very Celtic and selkie-ish, until the Doctor rattled off an edifying explanation.

When Constable McLeish showed up for his usual noontime nosey, we treated him to a slightly edited account of what had occurred the previous night. His normal cheerful expression became considerably grimmer during the tale, until he stopped us talking.

'Lads, I can see what you think. There's two things I can do – see Donal's grandmother and call a meeting at the village hall.'

'I'll go with the constable, Nick. You can go and get the makings for the new traps.'

The constable and I set out to walk to "Bhen Mhor", the cottage where Donal and his grandmother lived. Before we got there a distinguished-looking villager in a duffel-coat stood squarely in our path, his big square chin jutting forward aggressively.

'I hear you two were shooting out on the sands last night,' he stated. Not a question, he knew the truth of the matter already.

'Then you must have supernatural hearing,' I replied coldly. 'The single shot fired was a sub-sonic round from a silenced weapon, inaudible at thirty feet. And we stood two hundred yards from the shore.'

'Do you have business with us, Angus?' asked the constable, in a voice lacking the warmth it normally held. Angus spat on the ground and moved away, muttering darkly.

'What is it with folk in Rockcliffe!' asked McLeish angrily. 'Here you are trying your best to save them and they object!'

Not long after we arrived at Bhen Mhor, a grey-slated bungalow surrounded by dry-sotne walls, at the northern part of town, flanked by pines, with a bronze statue in the front garden. The constable walked to each end of the bungalow and checked without telling me what he wanted, before knocking on the bright red door.

Several seconds later it creaked open, to reveal a small, frail old woman, grey hair in a bun and grey eyes looking warily at us both through glasses.

'Hello, Alice. Can we come in for a minute?' asked McLeish.

'I don't see why not,' said Alice in a firm tone, her eyes darting from McLeish to me. The constable tucked his helmet under one arm, indicating that I do the same with my beret.

'This is Lieutenant Walmsley, Alice. He and I would like to have a chat with Donal. Is he in?'

'Come into the parlour, do, and can I make you a cup of tea?' said Alice, ushering us past the hallway and into a small, cold, spotlessly clean room full of chintzy bits and pieces.

'Well, that depends on whether or not we can see Donal. If he's not here we'll just be moving on.'

'He's not in trouble, is he?' asked Alice, an underlying edge in her voice. She wasn't as frail as she looked.

'Innocent until proven guilty,' I put in. 'We do need to ask him some questions, however.'

'Then you are out of luck,' replied Alice. 'For has he not gone to Dalbeattie on business? Away yesterday before dark, on his bicycle.'

The walk back into the village centre was downhill and easier than the trip to Alice's.

'His bicycle is gone, as you notice I checked,' explained Constable McLeish. 'I'll ring the station and confirm he is actually there.'

Our next port of call was Mister McPherson, the caretaker and keyholder for the village hall.

No, he wouldn't surrender the keys to us, not even if he'd known the constable these twenty years, only open up if he did it himself, can't be too careful, no offence meant sir, Captain, odd things happening here lately, what was the world coming to, personally he blamed the Americans and their landing on the Moon, now there was a thing that wasn't natural, was it, all that bad weather of late bound to have been affected by them and their rockets, and the storms, and the mists, and the vanishings –

Thankfully Mister McPherson shut up when he led us to the doors of the village hall, a building looking like an undersized church hall annexe. The interior smelt of furniture polish, being all polished wooden walls and floors. Glass cases on the walls displayed news cuttings of interest, or artefacts or souvenirs. A corner display case held the uniform and VC of a son of Dumfries, killed in the Great War, but not before single-handedly killing or capturing an entire platoon of German soldiers, an officer and two machine guns. One of the 05/13's sat in the case, squat, black and baleful.

'I might have guessed you'd notice that,' commented my constable companion.

There were other cases in a sequence along one wall, with stuffed and mounted specimens of local wildlife, and the piece de resistance was a giant sword in a case above the entry doors.

'That's why people may have looked at you strangely when you mentioned your Claymore mines,' explained McLeish. 'It's a "Claidheamh Mhor", pronounced "Claymore". Gaelic for "Great Sword".'

Not an inaccurate description, the pig-poker must have been at least six feet long. I laughed in amused incomprehension.

'How the hell can you fight with a sword that big! Seriously, Sigmund Freud would have a party with a weapon like that.'

Tutting at the Sassenach's ignorance, McLeish told me that the preferred method of use was to swing the claymore around your head in a circular pattern, then run at the enemy. Any enemy who failed to get out of the way got diced.

'Rob Roy's claymore is nine feet long,' he added casually. I silently tipped my hat to Rob Roy, whoever he might be.

'Ah, the ferocious bagpipe.' There were two of them in a display case, wired and mounted in overlapping style, looking for all the world like plaid spiders fighting.

Constable McLeish tutted in amusement again.

'Philistine! Anyway, you're not a tourist, you're hear to put a point to the townspeople. I shall go and phone from the shop and send people up here. We want it done soon as possible and before dark, eh?'

He had a point there. Yes we did, having the burghers of Rockcliffe wandering around in mist and night didn't fill me with cosy warmth.

Out of a population of maybe a hundred and fifty, about eighty turned up in the village hall for my little address. Good enough, those present could pass on John's Holy Word to those not present.

McLeish remained at the back of the hall, a weighty presence for any people considering misbehaviour. Since Callum turned up early, I sent him to summon Nick to our meeting. Fat lot of good he was – he made a bee-line for Moira McTaggart and whispered to her non-stop the whole time.

Putting on my best parade-ground voice and scowl, I began my lecture to the massed inhabitants, who were standing up and fractious.

'Last night, my colleague and I went out onto the beach to lay an explosive trap for the creature that's been attacking and killing people. When we returned the trap had been sabotaged.

'Quite apart from allowing the creature to escape – because we spotted it earlier that night – messing with Claymore mines is extremely dangerous. If the saboteur had tripped a wire, we could bury what was left of them in a teabag.

'Tonight my colleague and I will be going out again, and we are going armed, and we are going to kill the creature. Anybody who gets in our way will regret it, for a short while.'

'Why only a short while?' asked someone.

'Because they'll be dead. Anyone interfering with or obstructing us is, by extension, an accessory to murder already.'

Constable McLeish caught my eye and coughed diplomatically. Okay, I was taking a liberty with the law, set lawyers on me then.

'Please pass on this information to anyone you meet who wasn't able to attend.'

That was the meeting over, so Constable McLeish ushered people out again. A striking middle-aged lady, all poise and elegance, who looked as if she might have stepped from a film-set, approached me from the departing crowd.

'Officer, I'm sorry that Angus was rude to you. It's just that the vanishings have made people nervous and worried.'

'Your apology makes up for it,' I managed, as gracefully as I could. This woman could have made Liz Taylor green with envy at her looks and carriage. Where did all these good-looking people come from?

'That's Cora, Angus's wife,' said the constable, looking after her with a wistful air.

'A highly successful meeting,' beamed Nick.

I frowned at him. Scaring the locals – oh.

'When do you meet her?'

'Tomorrow noon. Providing we're not knee-deep in dead fish-fiend.'

Once at HQ (number 37) my idiot assistant partly redeemed himself by proudly producing a new set of trip-wire traps to be set up on the sands once the sea went out.

'I noticed a giant pan of baked beans on the hob. Our staple diet from now on?'

'That's all they had a lot of. No marbles, so I got a collection of small stones. Fishing line from a creel under the stairs, stout sticks cut from tree branches.'

Our plotting didn't get plotted, much, as an anxious Callum knocked loudly on the kitchen window.

'They're throwing stones at Mrs McPhail's cottage,' he gasped.

Not quite a threat to the planet, however, our gentlemanly instincts made us run up the road to Bhen Mhor anyway, me with a spade and Nick bare-handed.

A trio of small, grubby boys were shouting "Witch! Witch!" at the lifeless cottage and throwing stones, which were cracking against the roof slates and pinging off the windows. Nick stooped, scooping up a stone himself and hurling it with deadly accuracy at the nearest little oik, who howled with pain and dropped the stones clutched in his hand.

All three fled at high speed when I came clumping up, holding the spade like a weapon. No point following them, they knew the paths and streets better than we did.

'And stay away!' I shouted. Nick politely knocked on the old lady's door, which creaked open a fraction.

'Any damage done, Ma'am?' he asked, the model of concerned sincerity.

'No, apart from my dignity,' replied Alice, her voice stern and steady. She went up in my opinion – that lady had a backbone of carbon steel!

'If they come back, inform Constable McLeish,' I told her, all brusque efficiency. 'And I guarantee they won't sit down for a week.'

Alice nodded and shut the door.

'I mean it!' I told Nick, stomping back down to Number 37. 'I'll paddle their arses with this spade so hard they'll glow in the dark. Picking on a little old lady. Bah!'

'Grr, rage, Walmsley stamp on head, kill with spade, dance on grave. Calm down, John, they're only kids.'

Callum had stood guard over the empty cottage while we were off doing good deeds. Okay, he had a good side. Not all kids are little swine.

By evening Nick and I were out on the sands, a hundred yards out. Our cunning Fiend-Fish trap consisted of branches driven deep into the sands, with a heavy-duty fishing line strung between them. From the line between each branch an empty baked-beans tin dangled, one-quarter full of small stones. When Fishy came calling, it would move the line and jangle the stones, alerting us to it's location. Arrival of UNIT party with big guns, short blam session, fishy monster expires, awards all round.

Of course, no plan survives contact with the enemy.

Hopefully my stern and deadly warning at the village hall meant the mystery saboteur would keep away. More than hopeful, really, since Nick and I were staying on the sands. Fortified by cocoa in a thermos.

'I didn't know cocoa came in whisky flavour,' was my initial comment.

'Sassenach! That's uisghe beath, I'll have you know,' retorted Nick, mocking me if I did but know it. We strolled up and down the fishing line, until a mist gradually rolled in from the sea. Not a pea-souper, yet enough to make distant objects vague.

'Did you hear that!' asked Nick suddenly, cocking his head and listening intently.

'No. My hearing, for your information, is not what it used to be, not since my eardrums got pummelled by that fifty calibre and this Nitro.'

'It sounds like bats,' he continued.

'Nick,' I replied. 'That sentence is such a gift I cannot respond to it, as it would be taking advantage. Like kicking a man when he's down.'

'No, really! A very high-pitched squeaking. Like bats.'

'You heinous anus. Bats roost in the winter.'

'You mean hibernate, batman.'

'Hibernate, ruminate, get sedate. They go to sleep at this time of year is my point.'

The implication hit us both, and we stopped chattering.

All there was to hear was the gentle rush of the sea, that and the sudden rattle of pebbles in a can, towards the centre of our hundred yard tripwire.

Cautiously, the pair of us moved closed, smelling damp sands and wet weed.

Thirty feet distant, that familiar bobbing streetlight danced and weaved in front of us, as the can of pebbles rattled and clanked, then clunked as it fell to the sands.

'Don't get any closer!' I whispered. Everyone who disappeared must have encountered the peculiar light, gone to see what it was and – wham!

I put my ear-protectors on and Nick cocked the L4, loudly.

'Aim at the ground and walk rounds up to that light,' I ordered Nick, who responded enthusiatically with several bursts of gunfire, walking the tracers up along the sands and into the mist. Two at least of the bullets hit whatever was using the light as a lure, with a meaty smack. Once again that hissing, flapping, grunting sound emerged from the murk, and a great swirling disturbance on the sands thumped away from us.

A breeze cut the vapours away from us in all directions, leaving us looking at the level sands, dotted with clumps of weed and rocks. That damn light still stood away from us, thirty yards distant, on narrow pole sticking out of the sands.

'Where is the damn thing!'

'Hey, cricketer, throw a stone at the light, will you?'

My comrade's accurate bowling skills served us well. He hit the light with a stone as big as a fist, the light heeled over and the sands beneath it exploded upwards in a flurry of violent action.

The Fiend-Fish had camo'd itself to blend in perfectly with the sands around it; that was why we hadn't seen it. Big as a Cortina? Oh yes, and with a mouth as big as a doorway, gaping open to reveals row upon row of big sharp teeth, the lower jaw sticking out a couple of yards in a massive underbite. The monster fish then stood on it's fins and began to waddle towards us. Clumsy but not slow, either.

'Ears!' I shouted and let loose with the Nitro, both barrels at once. Nick fired the L4 from the hip, unable to miss at this range, and I reloaded to give our target another two barrels.

After that, the Fiend-Fish lay on the sands, gone to a better place.

'I don't think we ever need to boast about "I caught one this big" any more,' said Nick. 'Bloody smart camouflage, wasn't it? No wonder victims never noticed it until they walked into it's mouth.'

'One or two, yes, but all five?'

Tins of pebbles thirty yards to either side of us began to rattle. More giant killer fish? How many were there?

'I kind of expected only one,' I complained.

'A decoy, at that. We're being flanked and hunted, Johnny boy.'

The tins stopped rattling as they were dislodged or the line snapped.

'Strategic withdrawal?' asked Nick, to a nod from me. One of the monster fish tried to intercept, flopping like a deformed dog to try and get behind us. In a moment of malicious inspiration Nick bowled it a No. 36 hand grenade, and the ungainly horror jumped to swallow it out of the air. Several seconds later it blew up like a balloon and flew apart like a Tom and Jerry cartoon, spattering the sands with disintegrated fish. I spotted another lurching light and put a bullet into the sands beneath it, causing another lurching monster to cast off it's camouflage, which helped us to perforate it with bullets. It hissed, grunted, sagged and rolled onto it's side, which I guessed was fish body-language for I'm-dead.

'Now we know. The damn things hunt in a pack. I bet that explains how the constable was snatched, he watched the one in front whilst the flankers jumped him.'

I sent Nick back to get the Landrover. No way could we shift one of these things on our own, they must weigh at least a quarter of a ton. Using the winch, we dragged the nearest amphibious monster over the sands and up on the track, where it lay in a great soggy mass, looking a bit the worse for wear. It got covered with a tarpaulin weighted down with stones to keep the dogs and nosey locals away.

Breakfast consisted of baked beans and grilled fiend-fish, since a few large slices had found their way into our stores collection. Dawn brought dozens of locals down to the water's edge, where Nick allowed them to peer under the tarpaulin, eliciting choruses of horror and awe.

'No touching!' he warned, sternly. 'The creature is mildly radioactive.'

Not a surface contamination, the whole fish was hot. Not dangerously so, but keeping the natives away from it was good policy. Callum was recruited to throw buckets of cold sea water over the corpse, preventing it from rotting and stinking up the entire town.

Nick's boot with trimmed heel finally gave up the struggle and split apart. Boots were one thing the village store did not stock, meaning he borrowed the Landrover to drive to Dalbeattie for boots, taking the lovely Moira McTaggart along with him.

Donal McPhail put in an appearance, having a little chat with Constable McLeish. Later he called at Number 37, knocking and coughing in embarassment on the doorstep.

'My gran says you chased the kids away and she's had no bother from them since, so, er, thanks,' he said to the ground and fled.

The last new arrival was Iain McLean, a middle-aged man wearing waterproofs and a competent air, who had come across Nick in Dalbeattie whilst asking for directions to Rockcliffe. He followed 7348 back to the village, where we proudly displayed the giant, dead, fiend-fish to a chorus of astounded exclamations from McLean.

'It – well, at first sight it looks like a variety of Lophius Piscatorius. The Angler Fish,' he added to clarify matters to us squaddies. 'Except they only rarely get to six feet long.'

'This is nearly twenty,' added Nick with the proud demanour of a successful hunter.

'Radioactive. See these pectoral fins? Adapted for movement out of water and along the sea bed. Remarkable, truly remarkable. And the teeth – these ranks of teeth are more characteristic of a shark than a predatory fish.'

'And they hunt in packs,' I added, for good measure. McLean stared at me in sheer astonishment.

'Like dogs,' clarified Nick.

'I don't know what to say,' said Mr McLean.

He brought along oceanographic maps and displayed them in our HQ's Operation Room (the kitchen).

'Okay, first problem: how and where do these creatures originate? I suspect that they were originally bottom-dwelling ambush predators like the Angler Fish, in the deep waters of the Irish Sea. Given the radioactivity present in their body tissues, my first suspect was the nuclear reprocessing facility at Sellafield. More probably, they encountered other radioactive contaminants in the region of the Beaufort Dyke.'

Nick coughed to cover up his laughter.

'It sounds like part of Hadrian's Wall. Or Offa's Dyke,' I commented. See, Nick, that's me behaving like a captain.

'Nothing like, Lieutenant. It's an undersea location used to dump surplus munitions since the end of World War Two. Bad storms occasionally stir up the ironmongery and it comes ashore.'

A giant military dumping ground.

'Whatever radioactive source is down there, if my hypothesis is correct, has affected the food chain and perhaps resulted in these mutant monsters - Mega Lophius Piscatorius, though it does seem rather a rapid process given the normal trend of radioactive influence on mutation rates.' He reflected for a few seconds. 'Which are no longer simply ambush predators, not if they exhibit rational hunting behaviour. Again, a supposition, but I suspect they've exhausted the stocks of fish that they normally prey on.'

'So they look further away from home for food?'

'Yes. Rockcliffe is vulnerable because of the long shallow littoral leading up to the beaches. These creatures can either swim or walk up to the land and hunt down prey.'

I mentioned the Seal o'Canth. McLean visibly shook himself and snapped his fingers.

'Of course! Of course! As an alternate hypothesis, the radioactive contamination doesn't create these creatures – they were there all along, merely unobserved by humans. Eureka! The contamination kills off these creature's normal prey, so they venture further afield to get food.'

He looked at me.

'That was a pretty inspired statement, Lieutenant. Congratulations.'

I confessed about Doctor John Smith. He'd told me about the Coelacanth, a prehistoric fish discovered living alive and well in the oceans off South Africa.

'Very well, then, Doctor John Smith made a very accurate and prescient observation. Pass on my regards to him.'

Callum, our village employee, came to inform us that the villagers were having a cayley tonight, and would we care to come?

'Is it drunk or eaten?'

'Oh, you uncultured English lout! "Ceilidh". Gaelic for a big party. The monsters are dead, so they're celebrating.'

'Nothing barring World War Three will keep you away from Moira, will it? Go on, Callum, the officers will be delighted to attend. Mister McLean?'

He shook his head.

'Teetotaller. Instead, I intend to examine that fish you hauled ashore.'

The ceilidh had lots of drinking, music and dancing, only the first of which I enjoyed, being totally tone deaf and with all the agility of Simon Smith's dancing bear. The fiddle-scrapers and accordion-fondlers and bagpipe-cuddlers all put lots of effort into their attempts, from what I could see. Nick and Moira hit it off fantastically well, spending the time either snogging or dancing. My sole companion was Callum, who pestered me about what I'd done in UNIT, whilst women avoided me.

'I'm not looking to romance any females here, Callum,' I said. 'Especially as my girlfriend would be very displeased. But why do they all keep clear of me?'

'Girlfriend?' repeated a doubtful Callum. 'Lieutenant Munroe said you were twice married and with a mistress.'

Did he. My eyes fell on the giant kebab-skewer above the doors and I wondered if chasing a fellow officer with a deadly weapon was grounds for court martial. I consoled myself with more food, "Stovies", savoury stuff that was filling and tasty, and slices of haggis. Cora, wife of Angus the ingrate, served me.

'I didn't believe your friend,' she said, smiling. 'About the mistress.'

'Thank you. "Friend" Munroe has a peculiar sense of humour. I shall gain revenge shortly.'

She pointed over to a corner.

'Canna has no men talking to her. I'd deem it a favour if you had a friendly word with her.'

The men must be blind, then. Canna was another of the strikingly attractive women here, tall and slender, with long black hair and cheekbones you could cut bread with. Unusually for a woman, I didn't have to look down at her face.

'Do you fit in the bath?' I asked, making the haughty expression of disdain vanish from her features, replaced by one of bemusement.

'I beg your pardon!'

'Cora asked me to strike up a bit of banter, which I'm not very good at. However, I judge you to be probably six feet two, which means - like me - you don't fit in the bath very well.'

Canna looked at me very carefully before deciding that I wasn't taking the mickey.

'Six feet one, officer Munroe.'

'Walmsley!' I corrected. 'Lieutenant Munroe is the human boa-constrictor wrapped around Miss McTaggart.'

She sipped at a glass of spirits and measured me up and down.

'You don't seem scared of me, officer Walmsley.'

'The wise man is always a little scared of women, Miss – er, Canna.' That made the corners of her mouth twitch slightly. 'Why would I be scared of you? Jealous husband or boyfriend lurking in the shadows with big knife?'

She didn't reply to that, merely shaking her head and smiling.

'Ah, I see – ' and suddenly I did, the jigsaw pieces falling into place. 'You work for the D & G anti-poaching patrol,' I joked, covering up the revelation with humour.

'What do you think of Scotland?' she asked, dismissing my graduate-level humour.

Good question.

'Seriously? I haven't visited anywhere that speaks English with such a well-developed sense of it's own culture. This is really Scotland, not just part of Britain where they speak funny.'

That seemed to impress her. Any further developments in the conversation were halted by a thin screaming from outside the village hall, a horrid piercing sound that stopped suddenly.

I have to give Lover Boy credit, he got to the front doors just as fast as I did, with half the hall behind us. Pressing down on the exit bar, we opened the doors a crack, enough to see outside and the track leading up to the hall.

A ball of light quivered and danced in the middle of the track thirty yards away, with another a few dozen feet behind and to one side.

'More of them!' I snapped, feeling unfairly let-down. 'Is there a fire exit?' The front doors were slammed and bolted.

Yes: at the rear of the building, on the stage's left hand side. The first person to open the door and step outside didn't even have time to scream as the "ground" sprouted giant teeth, and the equally giant mouth of a fiend-fish swallowed them whole.

Lying in wait. These creatures were smart.

Bang! went the front doors, being assaulted by one of the fiend-fish.

'John! This is all I've got,' and Nick held up his Browning. I chucked him my .45. Neither of them would stop a single one of these monsters, let alone three.

'Get me a chair!' I ordered Callum, who pitched one across the floor to me. 'And another!'

Bloody inevitable, I know. Once I'd seen that sword – oh beg pardon claymore – above the doors, I might have known fate would have me use it. Whenever I meet an unwieldy weapon, I have to wield it. I smashed the glass with the second chair, then dragged the sword from it's mountings and jumped down.

It felt as heavy as an anvil and hit the floor well before me, the point trailing on the floor. Using it properly meant having a few seconds grace to work out how to swing it.

Bang! crunch! went the front doors again as the fiend-fish charged again, sending splinters flying. The folk of Rockcliffe cowered back.

'Get back to the stage,' called Nick to the crowd, realising that I needed room to swing the sword. He threw the bolts on the doors, which opened slightly, then flew open as the giant fish jumped at them.

Possibly it expected more solid resistance from the doors, as it came to a halt a few feet inside the hall, colours rippling across it's back in an array of patterns.

'Hi! Got a ticket!' shouted Nick, levelling both pistols and giving the beast half a dozen bullets. The fiend-fish didn't like that, shaking itself and heaving around on its fins to better lunge at Nick, which is when I came out of the shadows of the hall on it's other side, swinging the claymore in an arc from over my shoulder, shouting "faugh a ballagh!". I hit it with a stroke across the back of the head, the blade cleaving entirely through it with only a slight grating of resistance, cutting down and into the floorboards. The fish fell apart in two halves, spilling pints of colourless blood across the floor, twitched once and that was that.

Apart from the smell. Intensely fishy and repellent. Not only that, I had to tug and wrench the claymore free from the floorboards.

'Number two is still out there,' warned Nick, pointing a pistol at it.

'I'll sort him out. You go and get the L4 and grenades.' I held an arm out to stop him haring off. 'After I've filleted it. Much as you deserve a painful demise for lying to the community.'

Having slung it around in action, the claymore wasn't such an unknown factor. You needed space to whirl it around, get up to a killing speed, and room to run at your enemy. The enemy, being smart and getting smarter all the time, decided upon discretion as a tactic, hiding under a camouflage coating with the tell-tale streetlight extinguished. Boldly, if foolhardily, I ventured out onto the dirt path, claymore held out in front of me. If mister fiend-fish jumped at me from the shadows, it'd get spitted.

'Can I help?' asked Canna, appearing beside me.

'Help? – yes, you probably can. I need to know where the other killer fish is hiding. If you point it out to Nick he can shoot it.'

She strode over to Nick, pointing and whispering to him for several seconds. He popped off a couple of rounds before hitting the monster, which twitched and lurched in annoyance.

'Craig a dour!' I yelled, whirling the claymore round my head in the approved fashion and charging the fiend-fish, which obligingly leapt at me, only to fall apart in bits as the claymore slashed it apart first strike, and again in the second, and for good measure it got the killing over-head sweep. There's probably a proper claymore-fighting name for these moves. I don't know and don't bother about that.

A pale khaki blur went past me en route to Number 37: Nick. He came back with the L4 and my elephant gun.

'Round the back. Canna, will you do the honours and spot for us? Munroe will be our valiant support. And be quiet – these things learn alarmingly quickly.'

They did, yet not quickly enough to realise the hunters were being hunted. Canna pointed out the fish-in-ambush on the rough ground behind the village hall and Nick, snarling a collection of cliches straight out of a World War Two film, emptied a full magazine into it. Using the Nitro or claymore was a bit redundant after that.

'Wow. All that because it threatened your girlfriend. True love strikes Munroe at last.'

I sternly ordered everyone to remain in the village hall with Nick whilst Canna and I patrolled the dark and empty streets of Rockcliffe. This was a calculated risk, given what I'd worked out already. She worked one arm through mine, being friendly. Apparently. Only a few minutes passed before the questions started.

'Back at the hall, you were quite insistent that only I could help, Lieutenant. What made you say that?'

'Background experience. Being in UNIT. Not being a local.'

The mists had thinnned but not gone entirely. Canna's eyes were sharp, and directed more at me than the path.

'I'm not sure I understand, Lieutenant.' She slowed down. Now, I guessed, would be the moment of truth.

'Oh but I think you do, Canna. After all, a para-human semi-aquatic entity needs to have outstanding eyesight.'

She began to move, very very quickly, which I pre-empted.

'Ah-ah! This is the safety pin from a 36 pattern hand-grenade,' I warned her, dangling a circular object from my left thumb. Working it there took ability, given that I carried the Nitro over my left shoulder and the claymore over my right. 'Nick gimmicked the fuse down to half a second for use against the monster fish. You might be fast but you're not that fast.'

Her gaze might have melted diamond. Eventually, face working, she spoke.

'What do you want? Sex? Money? What?'

'None of the above. Do you have a leader in Rockcliffe?'

The leader, or Elder, turned out to be frail little old Alice McPhail. She hadn't been present at the ceilidh, making it a fair guess she might very well have something to do with the selkie-folk, for want of a better word. Canna led me to the cottage, where no signs of life existed, and knocked on the door. Alice opened the door, looking alarmed at the sight of a large man armed to the teeth and a very sullen young lady with him. The bats were out again, making their trilling ultrasonic squeak.

'He knows,' said Canna, indicating me with a thumb. I gave Alice a nod and smile.

'You'd better come in, then,' she said. I politely left the claymore and Nitro in the hallway. The second I stepped into the ill-lit parlour Donal came from behind the door and caught me by the throat, lifting me completely off the floor in a punishing grip, making me spasm and thrash. He went for my pocket with the hand-grenade, coming out with –

'A lemon!' exclaimed Canna, looking at the fruit pinched from the ceilidh. Donal also exclaimed, since all the spasming and thrashing had brought my feet up to snatching level with my hands, enabling me to get to the boot knife and stab his wrist. He dropped me whilst the knife stayed in his wrist.

'Enough!' barked Alice, probably worried at the potential damage to all her chintzy bits and pieces if two large men started to kill each other in her front parlour.

'You said - ' began Canna.

I dangled the ring on my thumb.

'From my key ring,' I rasped, voice not steady or correct after imminent crushing. 'What? Did you really think I'd blow you up?'

'It hurts,' whimpered Donal, indicating the knife protruding from his wrist.

'Good,' I replied, unasked. 'You deserve a little pain after sending our courier into the hospital.' A guess again, but his angry grimace indicated a bullseye.

'Canna. See to Donal in the kitchen. I need to talk to this man. Get you gone!' snapped Alice, not brooking any delay or answering-back. She sat on her couch, looking at me with her laser-intense stare.

'Could I trouble you for a drink?' I croaked. 'I need to talk and my throat – well, your grandson has quite the grip.'

'Canna! Tea for three!' shouted Alice. 'What do you know of us?' she asked, at a more conversational volume.

'Firstly you need to know about UNIT. Have you heard of us before?'

All Alice knew was a wildly-inaccurate tale from the tabloids and television of Operation Chromium – the Fantastic Dinosaur Assault on London. By the time she revealed her ignorance I had downed several cups of tea, lubricating my throat.

'UNIT's brief is to "Protect the Planet". More specifically, our charter includes the defining phrase that we deal with "exotic threats to the human commonwealth". Threats like irradiated monster fish that eat people. Not yourselves.'

Alice opened her mouth and that bat-like trilling went around the room. Canna appeared in the kitchen doorway.

'As to what I know of you and your kind. Hmm. Well, firstly I am familiar with non-humans who nevertheless look entirely human on the outside.' That would be the Doctor. 'So you aren't the intellectual leap others might have to make. Secondly, I've encountered real-life creatures that inspired myths about supernatural ones.' Those would be the Cadaverites, those horrid Russian vampires. 'Thirdly, I noticed that one of you saved the life of my comrade when he was in danger of becoming fish-food.'

Alice looked at Canna, who shrugged.

'It must have been Moira,' said the Elder. 'Headstrong girl.'

'I made an intellectual leap. The stories of selkies were not stories, they were facts filtered through folklore. By a coincidence, the attention of the outside world had come to rest on your home. I know you and your kind aren't a threat to humans because nothing happens when only you are around. No murders or disappearances or the like.' Oh, very formal, John. Particularly as my throat was throbbing like mad.

Canna came over to sit by Alice, offering moral support.

'You're quite perceptive, Lieutenant. We aren't hostile. In fact our survival, given our problems with sterility, is tied up with humans.'

'Well, why did one of you sabotage our Claymore M18 trap?'

Alice took up the tale. The People, as they termed themselves, had a morbid dislike and fear of human weaponry, and with good reason. Thus they had sabotaged the automatic ambush, and our UNIT bike rider. On the other hand, they had an obligation towards humans which meant mounting a submarine patrol to ensure the fiend-fish didn't kill people. Moira took this to extremes with her attack on the monster trying to drag Nick into the depths.

Wow. Did Nick have a heart-mate here?

'We could make you vanish, Lieutenant,' said Canna, quite coldly. I don't think I liked her very much.

I dumped sugar cubes into my cup of tea.

'You haven't encountered UNIT before, have you? No. No, I thought not. If you wanted to get rid of me then you probably could, provided you didn't mind suffering fatal injury. However, after I vanished you'd get the Assault Platoon here within one hundred and twenty minutes. A few hours later the whole battalion would arrive. Total lockdown, secure perimeter, complete body search and checks.'

Canna laughed in mocking style, whilst Alice looked uncomfortable.

'We'd be long gone by then!' declared Canna.

'Maybe so. In which case you'd be hunted down like dogs. With Special Branch, MI5, UNIT and the Special Air Service on your tails. Helicopters, dog teams, snipers.'

'Is there an alternative?' asked Alice. Her shoulders had slumped in weary response to the bickering around her. I immediately felt like a complete dastard, making her feel miserable.

'Yes. You do nothing. Nothing. Completely nothing at all.'

Both women looked at me with a degree of wonder and surprise.

'We usually move on when compromised,' said Alice. Canna looked at me with her carbon-black eyes.

'Both of you anticipate that I will be passing on your details to The Authorities. Well, I won't.'

Feeling perverse, I took a good long sip of tea and nibbled away at an oatcake, letting my audience worry and fester.

'Oh – were you waiting on me? Nice cuppa. Yes, notification. I shall report back to UNIT at Aylesbury that we have met and exterminated the amphibious threat to people in Dumfries.'

'What about us?' asked Alice.

'What about you? You haven't killed anyone. In fact you saved a life and helped to locate and terminate the fiend-fish threat to humans.'

This news seemed to throw both women into a state of bewilderment.

'What gave us away!' demanded Canna, finally, having bat-squeaked with Alice for whole seconds.

'Your looks. Hollywood-grade people aren't common in the major metropolii, let alone a small fishing village on the Dumfries coast. And your attitude towards weapons.' More tea for my aching throat. 'You ought to study film make-up, having mentioned Hollywood.'

'Film make-up! What do you mean!' complained Canna.

'He means we ought to look less appealing,' replied Alice. Canna looked cross at the very idea. Apparently even para-human semi-aquatic entitities, if they're female, don't like to look less than their very best.

Time was passing, which meant I could only ask a few questions. How many of The People were there? Only a dozen in Rockcliffe. Alice, Canna, Moira, Donal, Angus, Cora and half a dozen others I hadn't met. Why Rockcliffe? Because it was next to the sea, very small and pretty isolated. How many locals knew about The People? Very few knew for certain, more suspected and the impression of Alice as a "witch" was widespread amongst the youth. Were The People native to Earth or alien stay-behinds? That puzzled them, and I never got a straight answer.

'You are the most unusual young man I have met in fifty years,' announced Alice, ending my question and answer session. 'And I speak as a woman of seven hundred years experience.'

John's eyebrows rose at that, no kidding.

'Why should we do nothing about what happened here?' she asked me.

Casting an eye at the clock, I replied with vigour.

'Rockcliffe has seen or experienced the symptoms of an amphibious assault. These monster fish were driven here by hunger, the loss of their normal feeding grounds, which happen to be far out in the Irish Sea. The problem's roots aren't here, they're out in the ocean.'

Alice nodded in silent appreciation.

'My recommendation will be that UNIT pressures the Royal Navy to sort out the problems that sent the monster fish here.'

'You can do that?' asked Alice, wonderingly.

'Miss McPhail, I could have a NATO Amphibious Task Force in the middle of the Irish Sea within twelve hours.'

A bit of poetic licence there. The Brig might be able to do that, his junior officer definitely couldn't, not unless circumstances warranted. A final bit of the jigsaw fell into place.

'Not only that, I rather think Lieutenant Munroe is pretty smitten with Moira McTaggart. He, at least, will be returning to Rockcliffe. Another reason for you to trust me.'

Alice saw me to the door, where she paused and told me a few interesting facts.

'Canna was supposed to get information out of you, twist you around her little finger, make you a near-slave, the way we've done with other humans.'

'Oh! Oh. What stopped her?'

'Nothing! Your emotional and psychological armour defeated her. There is a woman in your background whom you love, genuinely and completely. That is what stopped Canna, a girl unused to being stopped, I can tell you.'

The loved-lady in question would be Marie Valdupont. My current girlfriend, partner, light of love.

'Oh. Er – wow. Marie will be pleased.'

I think. "love genuinely and completely" is pretty heavy-duty stuff.

'You've still got Moyra. Her and Nick.'

Alice tutted at me.

'That relationship goes both ways, officer. Goodbye now.'

Canna and I went down to inspect the probable missing corpse of Iain McLean at the seafront. He'd been down there inspecting the huge fish carcass before the monster fish arrived, which meant he'd be right in their path when they advanced on the village hall. A few major bones might remain, with luck.

'I've never been rebuffed like that,' complained my companion as we walked down towards the sea.

'Like what?' I asked, all ingenuousness.

'Please! Don't make it worse!' she hissed. Hell hath no fury, etcetera.

In silence we reached the beachfront, where a rapidly-approaching sea ran over the white sands and up towards the rocks that maintained an escarpment between dry land and briny shallows. I peered over the boulders and witnessed that the fiend-fish had created a ramp between sands and dry land composed of sand and boulders pushed together. Clever rascals, these fish.

'Hssst!' hissed Canna. ' 'ware the fish!'

The only fish nearby was the giant, battered, white-eyed, holed carcass of the monster Nick and I had shot lumps out of. I looked back at it, witnessing the flanks heaving and working madly.

'Cover your ears!' I shouted, dropping the claymore and getting ready to deliver a double-barrel broadside.

'mmf ffmfmff,' shouted the fish, sides bulging wildly.

It's a good job I didn't hit the carcass with either blunderbuss or broadsword, since Iain McLean had sought shelter in it. Canny chap, Iain. He heard the three monster fish shoving sand and rocks together to climb onto the Rockcliffe track and realised his life expectancy was measured in minutes, if not seconds. Nearest shelter was the collapsed corpse of the monster fish, with lots of holes providing ventilation. Having got in, he found getting out was more difficult, and needed the help of Canna and myself.

Not only that, he stank to high heaven. Imagine, if you will, the carcass of a fish long dead, which you climb into and remain within for an hour. The shower at Number 37 ran for an hour when he took to the waters.

Nick and Moira led the survivors from the village hall to safety in the chilly air of mid-November, to wonder over the shattered remains of the fish he and I had killed. Iain McLean ran between the corpses, taking measurements and making notations in his spiral-bound notebook.

Cora came up to Canna and myself, looking worried.

'See Alice' I snapped. Canna work me round her little finger indeed! Canna departed, giving me black looks and once she was out of earshot the ultrasonic trill of The People winged around the paths up above the sea. Cora's look of worry became one of surprise.

'O! My!' she squeaked. 'She hates you. Because of – Marie? I don't understand.'

'I told you, see Alice,' I growled.

THUNDERBOLT

THEATRE-RANGE MISSILE

MASSIVE RETALIATION ASSET

WARHEAD YIELD: 150 KILOTON

WARHEAD TYPE: FISSION-FUSION-FISSION

SUB-MUNITION WARHEADS: 12 X 112 PINT L2E NERVE AGENT

PROPULSION SYSTEM: CHEMICAL BOOSTER X 4

SINGLE-USE FISSION MOTOR

CCEP: 1,100 YARDS

"THUNDERBOLT was designed in the mid 1950's as a weapon intended to target and destroy major centres of population amongst the cities of the Warsaw Pact. The chemicaly-fuelled launch of a missile body identical in proportion to a Bloodhound, if three times the size, gave minimal warning of a disabling counter-city strike. THUNDERBOLT was launched and maintained over the initial segment of it's ballistic trajectory by chemical fuel boosters. Once the target city had been confirmed in it's circuitry, the one-shot atomic-engine would fire, propelling THUNDERBOLT towards the target at speeds that prevented any interception. The core warhead would detonate at Ground Zero, destroying the target and producing a massive amount of very long life radioactive contamination. The twelve submunition warheads containing nerve gas would contaminate the environment around the target city. Any survivors or refugees attempting to flee the target zone would be killed by the L2E nerve agent. Any rescue, retrieval or salvage attempts made by personnel outside the impact zone would be compromised by the L2E presence, forcing operations to be made in full NBC kit or abandoned altogether.

THUNDERBOLT was operated and deployed by the RAF's 112nd Heavy Anti-Aircraft Missile Regiment. Target cities included Moscow (3 x missiles); Minsk (2 x missiles); Kiev (3 x missiles); Leningrad (2 x missiles); Warsaw (1x missile); Buda-Pest (1 x missile); East Berlin (2 x missiles).

Under the secret addenda to SALT, THUNDERBOLT and other massive retaliation NBC weapons of the BLOOD DONOR class were deemed to be in violation of treaty terms and liable to dismantlement and disposal before treaty re-negotiation in 1977."

The above document gave me the raving jitters. Some collection of consience-free nutters, in all probability identical to those who came up with the Backfire Bug, had created a missile that killed civilians, millions of them, and prevented any help from arriving for said civlians.

What does this have to do with the fiend-fish of Rockcliffe?

Well, that twod The Master tried to hijack and use a Thunderbolt on the London peace conference. "Destroy the peace conference", he'd told his frankly-not-very-bright minions. "Destroy the entire population of Central London to the number of two million people" is closer to the truth. When the government realised what had so very nearly happened, the remaining Thunderbolts were dropped in the Irish Sea quick smart.

Where they leaked. L2E kills off anything it touches, including marine life.

Naturally, returning to Aylesbury, I had to seek out the Doctor. I told him of the selkie-folk at Rockcliffe, which didn't bother or interest him.

'Folk-memory traducement,' he commented. 'And I suppose you and the navy depth-charged the monster fish to pieces? Killed a potential threat to humanity? Genocide in order to prevent homicide?'

'Not at all!' I boasted, making him stop messing with crystals and oscilloscopes.

'Oh? Do tell me,' he asked, suddenly all ears.

'Those monster fish were only after food. That's it. Not evil, not trying for world domination, not trying to displace Homo Sapiens. They wanted dinner.'

The Doctor rubbed his fingers clean on his lab coat.

'Yes, and "dinner" in this case was people, wasn't it?'

'Only because their normal food source had been killed off or dispersed by radioactive and chemical contamination. Which had been caused by careless dumping in the Irish Sea by HM Government, as confirmed by Iain McLean. The Royal Navy has been relocating Thunderbolt missile carcasses from the Irish Sea to the mid-Atlantic of late.'

The Doctor looked at me whilst stroking his chin.

'Quite a successful compromise, John. You may have what it takes to make a general.'

Hey, this was me thinking like a captain.

'You didn't seem very interested in the selkie-folk, Doctor. Met them before?'

He shook his white hair.

'No, never. They seem to have a great many of the characteristics of human beings, though; good, bad or indifferent.'

They may. However, I don't know how I'm going to break the news to Nick that his girlfriend is half-fish.