The Kill Call

until your fifteenth birthday. But Jimmy was mad on aircraft spotting and modelling, and he joined up the minute he could. It was one of the great things about the ROC – you were among people who talked about planes. There was a monthly magazine that was full of planes, too. So, yes, Jimmy was keen. He was the sort who was desperate to take the master test on a Sunday to get some badges on his uniform. Trouble was, his age. He was only seventeen when he was killed.’
    ‘Why was his age a problem? He was old enough to join, wasn’t he?’
    ‘I just said, you could join when you were fifteen. No, it wasn’t that.’
    ‘What, then?’
    ‘We used to have post meetings every week. Ours were on a Wednesday evening, seven thirty until nine thirty. In the summer, we met at the post, but during the winter we went to the pub.’
    ‘The Bird in Hand?’
    ‘Of course. It was the only one in the village, even then.’
    ‘And Jimmy wasn’t old enough.’
    ‘The landlord wouldn’t let him in until he was eighteen.’
    ‘So he missed some meetings.’
    ‘He hated that. But there was another problem.’
    Massey speeded up his pace, as if to leave Cooper behind. Cooper slithered on the wet grass as he tried to keep up.
    ‘Mr Massey?’
    ‘Shirley,’ he said.
    Cooper thought he’d misheard. ‘What?’
    ‘It was Shirley. Shirley Outram.’
    ‘What was?’
    ‘The problem.’
    Cooper ran and put his hand on the next gate to prevent him opening the latch.
    ‘Tell me, Mr Massey. Please.’
    Massey looked at him, with a searching gaze. Cooper seemed to pass some kind of test, because Massey dropped his hand.
    ‘Shirley was our only female observer. Yes, we just had the one in our section, and that was quite an innovation at the time, I can tell you. Somehow, she managed to make the uniform look good. A tight mini-skirt and kinky boots. I don’t know how she got away with it. Most of the observers were middle-aged men, you see, and she was a real breath of fresh air. There was quite a social life in the Corps – as well as the pub, there were parties, dances, and so on. You can imagine she was in demand.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Well, that was something else Jimmy was mad keen on – Shirley Outram.’ Massey sighed. ‘It could get pretty tedious on a long exercise. We took radios down, cards, dominoes. But a lot of the time, we just sat around and chatted. You found out a lot about people, sitting down there all night. When you’re frozen solid at two o’clock in the morning on an all-night exercise, on the graveyard shift, it makes a difference who you’re stuck down there with.’
    ‘You had Jimmy. And you had Leslie Clay.’
    He nodded. ‘Les Clay worked in the engine shed at Rowsley until it shut in ’66. He was made redundant in the October, transferred to Bakewell as a porter and got made redundant again five months later, when the line closed. Dr Beeching – there’s a man whose name lives on.’
    Cooper recalled that there was a little woodland station not far from here, at Great Longstone. The last stop before the crossing of Monsal Dale viaduct. Now the station was passed only by walkers and cyclists.
    ‘What age are you?’ asked Massey. ‘I suppose you think this was all a different century?’
    ‘Well, strictly speaking, sir …’
    Massey laughed sourly. ‘Yes, all right. The twentieth century, damn it. Consigned to the history books now.’
    ‘I heard about the closures,’ said Cooper.
    ‘The 1968 reorganization came as a jolt. We thought the ROC was safe. It ought to have gone on for ever. But we were called to a special meeting at Group HQ in Coventry, and we went like lambs to the slaughter. The commandant got up and read out a list of posts that would close. Alpha One, Bravo Two … we were devastated. There was a lot of antagonism and bad feeling. They asked the older ones to retire, said they couldn’t go up and down the shaft any more. Some they wanted to transfer to other posts miles away, but that wasn’t the same at all.’
    Cooper was glad to see they were walking back towards the house now. His hair was sticking to his head, and the water was running down his neck.
    ‘Do you know Michael Clay, Mr Massey?’ he asked.
    ‘Who?’
    ‘Les Clay’s son.’
    Massey shook his head. ‘I’ve heard his name mentioned. I never met him.’
    Cooper watched him for a moment. It sounded like the truth. And Peter Massey just didn’t seem like a man who could tell a lie so