The second part of the Nigel Stratham tapes.

NS: ‘The trail had gone cold, and with no leads left to follow I headed for a coffee shop. No sooner had I ordered a half-caff cappumockolatte, my phone rang. The caller ID was withheld. Instinct made me record the call.’

Caller: ‘Stop looking.’

NS: ‘I beg your pardon?’

Caller: ‘I said: ‘Stop looking’.’

NS: ‘Stop looking for what?’

Caller: ‘For answers. For things better left unfound.’

NS: ‘And what things are better left unfound?’

Caller: ‘The Ark of the Covenant. The Gospel According to Thomas, where he doubts Bethlehem ever existed. The lost episode of Scooby Doo where the gang solve the Black Dahlia case. The Necronomicon. The minutes of the meeting with the devil where the manufacture of the SUV was first suggested. The cursed draftsman’s pen that was used to design both the Titanic and the Hindenberg. Oh, and that writer bloke.’

NS: ‘Mike Lancaster.’

Caller: ‘You mean the High Founder of the One True Religion.’

NS: ‘You mean science fiction writer, surely?’

Caller: ‘Er, that’s what I said Diddle-I?’

NS: ‘The phone went dead. Deader than the gag I was about to make about L Ron Hubbard. I sipped my coffee and thought about the strange direction that my investigation was taking me. How had the caller got my number? How did he know what I was investigating? Why had his voice sounded like he’d been inhaling helium? And why was the man at the next table winking at me and nodding at the empty seat at his table?

‘I decided to try to answer the last question. I sat in the indicated seat, in front of a man who seemed to be wearing contact lenses that gave him the appearance of having two lazy eyes.’

Man: ‘The cold breath of eternity is rattling the loose roofing tiles of reality.’

NS: ‘I beg your pardon?’

Man: ‘I’m sorry, I thought you were someone else.’

NS: ‘I am.’

NS: ‘The man seemed to consider this last statement with the care a woman takes frowning when her plastic surgeon used Semtex instead of Botox in her forehead wrinkles. Then he nodded and handed me a brown paper envelope.’

Man: ‘You know what that is?’

NS: ‘A plain buff?’

Man: ‘No, I’m a train enthusiast. Anyway, you know what’s in the envelope?’

NS: ‘I haven’t a clue.’

Man: ‘It’s called ‘Cluedo’ in this country. Anyway, the contents of that envelope will blow the case wide open.’

NS: ‘The man left suddenly, trailing behind him a scent of banana and mango. I opened the envelope. A sheet of paper and four photographs fell out onto the table. The man had lied. It wasn’t an explosive device for destroying briefcases. It was the next piece of the jigsaw.

‘The piece of paper was a printout of an email to someone called Perry, at least I think it was an email. And I think it was Perry. It read: ‘Stuff the Grabowitz photos. These are even better!!!!!!

‘I have no idea what a Grabowitz is. Or why anyone would use six exclamation marks to make a point. Does each one just add an extra bit of exclamation to the phrase, or is the exclamatory value exponential?

‘I looked at the photos. Because this is radio you can’t see them, which means I need to describe them. Ordinary photos, but with one interesting addition. A man can be seen – or half-seen – in all of them.’

NOTE: The photos were recovered along with Stratham’s tapes. We didn’t mention it earlier because then you would have been waiting for them, and with all that expectation they would only have disappointed. They are included, along with an extract of Stratham’s recorded notes for each photo.

NS: ‘The tunnel seems quite damp, and I think the man in the picture has a broken thumb and is trying to wave to the camera.’

NS: ‘An ordinary seaside scene, somewhat ruined by the fact that the same man has cropped up in it, and how he seems to have broken his little finger too. Oh, and he’s waving really badly, with his hand turned the wrong way. It’s more like he’s waving to himself: an elementary waving error.’

NS: ‘Some weird rock arch thing, with a sea view behind it. That man is either doing Winston Churchill’s ‘V’ for victory thing, or he’s indicating that a bunny rabbit is important somehow.’

NS: ‘This one is of a family at some ruin somewhere. The man is there again, pointing at something in the sky. You can see right through him. Must be some diet. And is that a hoodie he’s wearing? He’s pointing one finger into the . . . wait a second . . . one finger. The previous photo had him showing two fingers. The photo before that: three. Before that: four.

‘With a spasm of panic I checked the backs of the photos and there were dates printed on each one. They were taken a month apart, with the final one dated 13th October, 2012. Was the man . . . counting down to something?

‘First four months, then three, then two, then one. Did that mean something was going to happen in one month?

I put the photos back in the envelope and thought that I now knew what a Grabowitz was: a terrifying prophecy of something happening soon, a tantalising glimpse behind a dust-choked shroud, that covered a secret, that was sort of like a mystery, that had a puzzle hidden inside it.

November 13th. What unholy force was going to be unleashed on November 13th? What senses shattering secrets were going to told? What devastating . . . ?

Wait a minute. That guy in the photos . . .’

NS: ‘I quickly got out my phone and navigated to the page I’d bookmarked: the controversial Nigel Barker photoshoot for my missing author and confirmed what I already felt to be true.

‘The guy in the photographs, handed to me by that strange man in a coffee shop, was the author for whom I was seeking.’

NS: ‘We are now making our way back to the train station. But the city looks different …. changed . . .

I’m going to ask for directions . . .’

Nigel Stratham’s tapes end here. To date there has been no word from him. The tapes were found, along with the envelope, in a man’s hand, when he gave them to me a little while ago. A mysterious man, who seems to have seen things that we were not meant to see. He’s still here, sitting in a chair over there. ‘Did I forget to tip you or something? What’s that?  . . . Oh, YOU’RE Nigel Stratham. Why didn’t you say?’