IN THE end, Jacqui did get some sleep, but she woke early in the small hours, her mind still in a turmoil. What was this elusive password? She hated being faced with a puzzle that she couldn’t solve. After a while she crept out of bed, wrapped herself in a dressing gown, and went to turn on the infuriating laptop.
Was ‘There is no key’ in fact the password itself? She tried typing in the phrase itself, both capitalised and in lower case: no result. She tried various paraphrases like ‘The key is not there’, ‘The key is lost’, ‘The key was never made’, ‘The key cannot be found’, ‘The key doesn’t—’
“Paul!” she shrieked at the top of her voice. “Paul! I think I’ve got it!” Paul appeared, also in his dressing gown and slippers, looking very drowsy. “Paul! ‘The key doesn’t exist’. The place that doesn’t exist. The place Grandad kept on hinting to me about, but whenever I asked him where it was, he simply replied ‘it isn’t’. ‘Wistbourne’! That’s got to be it!”
How was the name spelt? Jacqui had never seen it written down. With or without a ‘u’? Ending with an ‘e’ or not? She typed in various alternatives, finally Wistbourne beginning with a capital W. Bingo! The My Documents folder opened, containing, amongst numerous files which seemed to relate to Grandad’s affairs in New Zealand, a single ZIP file entitled Jacqueline, itself containing just two text documents: one of them small, the other large. The smaller file was named To Jacqueline - read this first.doc. Jacqui eagerly clicked on the file. The first thing that popped up was a scanned-in photo, of a smiling Grandad and Grandma sitting side by side, with a very young Jacqui sitting on Grandad’s knee. Jacqui couldn’t help shedding a tear or two as she saw this.
On the second page there was just a rough sketch—evidently contrived using Paint or a similar app, and none too skilfully at that. It consisted of three dots arranged approximately in an equilateral triangle, connected by straight lines. The dots were labelled ‘Wistbourne’, ‘Gomhurst’ and ‘Hartney’, and the line passing through the latter two dots was labelled ‘A471’. It looked like a sketch-map indicating the location of Wistbourne and its neighbouring towns or villages—so it did exist after all!
The message was on the third page.
> “My dearest Jacqueline.
>
> “If you’re reading this, two things must have happened. One: I must have passed on: to be honest I shall welcome that, since my recent life has been so difficult and June has had to help with the typing. Two: you must have guessed the significance of ‘Wistbourne’ in the period of my life that I’ve never divulged to you—nor to your mother. Yes, there was a village called ‘Wistbourne’ and it was important. We lived there just after June and I got married, and stayed nearly five years. It was a difficult time—not just for us—and I don’t mean because of all the food rationing that we were still burdened with. I have written a full account in the file named ‘Wistbourne’ on this computer—and there are still mysteries concerning the place which I’d like you to investigate. I know you’re the right person for the job! But you’ll need another password to open that file. I’m sure you’ll be able to figure it out, if you look in the right place. And don’t worry, it’s nothing unpleasant: it isn’t about lots of Bodies buried under the Village Green—nothing so Vile as that!
>
> “With all my love,
>
> “Grandad.”
For a moment Jacqui pondered the rather odd final sentence. It did seem a bit out-of-place as compared with the rest of the letter. Why should Grandad be reassuring her that Wistbourne wasn’t the scene of some mass murder? Would that concept have ever occurred to her?
She shrugged: probably just a quirk of Grandad’s.
The second file in the ZIP was indeed named wistbourne.doc, and—yes—it was encrypted; but with a different password. Wistbourne did not work—that would have been far too obvious!
“Hmmm…” muttered Paul, who hadn’t bothered to read Gavin’s message in full. “I suppose you’ll be wanting to get into that other file. I wish you luck. As for me, I’m going back to bed. Probably some rambling, half-baked Sci-fi plot of your Grandad’s, that he wanted you to work on. This ‘Wistbourne’ of his’ll be just an imaginary place where a squadron of flying saucers are supposed to have landed—y’know, like that Roswell place in America…”
“There really is a Roswell, Paul. In New Mexico: there’s a sort of ‘flying saucer’ museum there—even though there probably weren’t any actual saucers landing there. As to Wistbourne—well, I’m going to have a go at any rate,” retorted Jacqui. “These files must have been important to Grandad, and he took a lot of trouble to make sure they got passed on to me and to no-one else. I think all this password stuff is meant to be a test for me—to prove my aptitude for whatever investigation he wanted me to carry out. Well—I’m game!
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
So Paul shuffled off back to bed, while Jacqui extracted the wistbourne.doc file and set to work to try to get into it. Once again she trawled through all the snippets of information she had picked up over the past few days. Who was that man—that mess-mate of Grandad’s—whom they’d met after the funeral? Hector—Hector Beeley: that was it. She tried his name, and various permutations of it, and the daughter’s name, ‘Imogen’ (did Grandad know her, she wondered). The names of the other two places: ‘Gomhurst’ and ‘Hartney’—and various modifications of those. Nothing worked.
Why had Grandad included that sketch-map in his message? Evidently he wanted Jacqui to go and visit Wistbourne. He had written that cryptic hint: ‘if you look in the right place’, after all. Perhaps the second password was concealed somewhere in the village.
She would just have to go there. So she opened up Google Maps and searched for ‘Wistbourne’. No results. If the village actually existed, Google wasn’t telling. On Grandad’s sketch, the main road through the area was numbered ‘A471’—surely that should make it easy enough: she’d just have to drive along that road until she passed through either Gomhurst or Hartney. Somewhere in the South Wales direction, she guessed.
To her further dismay, there was no ‘A471’ anywhere in Britain—leastways Google knew nothing of such a road. ‘A470’ was fine of course: she was fairly familiar with part of the well-known route running from Cardiff through the Valleys to North Wales—but the ‘A471’ appeared not to exist.
Third try, and this had better work! Jacqui typed in ‘Gomhurst’ and to her relief the app zoomed in on that place—and Hartney was shown nearby too, further west. The setting was Herefordshire—so still on the English side of the Welsh Border—and the road passing through the villages was numbered B4710. No doubt it had been an ‘A’ road when Grandad drew the map, but had since been downgraded and re-numbered.
However, at the spot where ‘Wistbourne’ ought to be, according to Grandad’s sketch, there was nothing. No indications nearby of any village, farm, whatever. Jacqui tried satellite view, and got the usual vista of fields and woodland—but at one spot the view was unaccountably blurred. Zoom in, zoom out, no way could she make out any detail.
Jacqui was still puzzling over this when Paul joined her at breakfast. “I’ll take a day off work—call in sick or something,” she announced. “They can manage without me for a day: and I’ve got to get to the bottom of this. I’m going to try to get to this place Wistbourne, whatever. I’ll start straight after breakfast: should be able to get there and back in a day.”
“Go if you must,” replied Paul, wearily. “I wish you luck, but my guess is, you’ll find that this place ‘Wistbourne’ is derelict—if you ever find it, that is. Maybe that’s why it’s not on the map.”
“The place where it ought to be is blurred in satellite view.”
“Aha! That means it’s probably a secret military zone—like Imber or Tottington. Or maybe there are flying saucers grounded there. Well—you’d better take care then. Trespass won’t be tolerated. If they clap you in jail, best I’d be able to do is send you a file baked in a pie…”
Paul could be annoyingly flippant at times, but Jacqui was used to that—and she was quite determined. As soon as breakfast was finished and the washing-up done, she went out to her car and was soon heading for the M4…
*
Traffic was flowing fairly smoothly and Jacqui reached Gomhurst, an attractive little ‘picture-postcard’ village with several thatched cottages, soon after midday. There was a small pub in the village which seemed like a good place to stop for lunch. The pub was fairly empty; two elderly men—obviously locals from their accents—were deep in conversation at the bar, and there were two younger couples, who she guessed were not local, having lunch there. Jacqui wondered whether to question the local men about ‘Wistbourne’ but decided against it: her intrusion might be resented especially if her journalistic occupation was guessed at. She ordered a lunch and sat at one of the tables from which she could overhear snatches of conversation. But nothing of interest ensued.
Lunch finished, she got back in the car and drove slowly through the village, looking for a turning to the right which ought to lead to Wistbourne. After exploring several dead-ends with no result, she found herself leaving the village. There were no more turnings.
But wait! What was this? About a hundred yards beyond the last cottage, she came to a no-nonsense ten-foot wire fence topped with razor-wire, just beyond the right-hand verge. There was a red notice board with white lettering proclaiming:
THIS IS A PROHIBITED PLACE
WITHIN THE MEANING OF
THE OFFICIAL SECRETS ACT 1911-1939
No Entry Unless Authorised
So Paul had guessed right—this was some sort of secret or military establishment.
Jacqui turned around and parked back in the village, intending to walked along beside the fence and see where it led. She walked for over a mile, but the fence continued without interruption: no sign of any gate or other means of entrance. Then the road veered to the left away from the fence. Straight on, alongside the fence, there was just a muddy track. Should she explore further? But she’d left her walking boots in the car. Wearily she retraced her steps.
Just as she was passing the first cottage on the left once more, after leaving the fence behind, an elderly lady, grey-haired and leaning on a stick, but not frail-looking, emerged and hailed her.
“I saw you pass this way earlier, my dear,” she began. “And you seemed interested in the fence. Are you trying to find out about Wistbourne?”