EVIDENCE [300] Paul Smith and Catfood Joe walked in opposite directions along the outside of the high brick wall with broken glass cemented all along its top that shut them both out of the school in Droitwich where Prowl taught sometimes. They met, and would have passed each other and ignored each other as irrelevant parts of other worlds. But Paul Smith, returning to the bossyness which had got him into trouble several times before, challenged: "Yah! Dirty tramp! Off with you, or I'll tell the headmaster or my mates.". "Paul Smith!" said Catfood Joe, "It was abaht yer in the noos-paper, and a photo of yer, that time! People drop papers, and I can read! Yer've got no mates, and yer were kicked aht o' that school.". "You've got no mates either!" Paul Smith replied, "They say someone heard someone tell the cops that your bunch dossed in a gang's hideout and the gang came back and shot the lot [see 267 & 234]!". "Nobody wants us around. We can't just vanish." Catfood Joe complained. "The whole world's unfair!" Paul Smith complained, "Real Transformers chasing me. That talking mobile refuse destructor Shockwave grabs me and stows me in its hold [see 154 etseq]. Dad won't give me any money, he says I must pay for things. That arcade's gone. Nothing to do any more.". "Shockwave!" said Catfood Joe, "That oversized tin $%^. No point us tottin' where 's been. it pinches tottin's. The cops broke up a pop festival that time, left no end o' stuff, masses o' pickin's - and Shockwave gobbles up the lot!". "It got all my mates' bikes that time [see 154 etseq]." said Paul Smith. "There's only one of 'im - so far." said Catfood Joe, "There's still plenty places to tot. I'll give yer a quarter of what it fetches, if yer keep lookout for uniformed 'eavies and dustmen and `Big S' [= Shockwave] while I tot, next time.". "Yes, uniformed heavies. I know where some of them are based. A quarter, you said." said Paul Smith, skilled at hinting of trouble. "Unpleasant little bossy #$%^. I better watch 'im." Catfood Joe thought, recognizing the veiled threat and the tone. They went to an empty site in an area of terrace housing, where a large corner pub had burned down several years before. There was a `Cadbury's Chocolate' poster high up on a wall, and below it on the ground a big pile of rubbish. Council rubbish tips let ordinary people's rubbish in free, but charge to take trade waste; so, to avoid this expense, some small traders go the rounds of different tips pretending to be ordinary people having a clear-out, and others tip it illegally where they can, including there; then other people with big stuff to throw away add it to the heap. "'Ere's a good spot." said Catfood Joe and explained some of this, "Usually summat 'ere'll fetch a bit. `Big S' ain't been 'ere for a while, nor the dustmen. Yer go obbo [= lookout] on that corner. And stay on obbo, or yer won't get yer quarter.", wondering whether to pay the quarter anyway, since "I'm bigger than 'im, if 'e tries lip.". Paul Smith went on lookout, wondering how to keep stories matching each other, and hoping that his mother and his aunt, who each thought he was in the other's house, would not do the unexpected such as meeting and comparing notes. Catfood Joe found an old vacuum cleaner in the heap. He knew a shop that would pay a pound or two for it, and tart it up a bit and sell it as `nearly new'. Suddenly Paul Smith ran back, warning: "Two dustmen and a cop!, but no dustcart.". "Quick! Under these cartons! Them's trouble!" Catfood Joe ordered. The two hid under some big cartons thrown out by a shop. "We'll come with the truck tomorrow and clear this lot away. Flytippers flytippers flytippers." said one of the dustmen approaching. "What's the point of charging for trade waste?" said the policeman, "They just burn it in their yards making smoke, or fly-tip it and you've still got to take it away for nothing.". Catfood Joe took out a bottle. He did not like sharing drink, since that left less for himself; but times when `his' stuff was taken away while he was sleeping off drink while others stayed sober, had taught him the hard way the rule "All drunk or all sober". He offered Paul Smith the bottle, explaining that it was not meths but proper drink. Paul Smith accepted, and resumed thinking how to avoid inconsistencies between the various cover stories that he had told different people. The drink (cheap whisky) made them both drowsy. Under the cartons out of sight of the policeman and the dustmen, they slept, and slept - they slept too long. [301] Just outside one end of the M.O.D. Hiddleston secret area, two sport divers, Bert and Jim, dived on the sunken wreck of a freighter called the `Cerberus'. One of them felt thankful that Tregear at Crabhaven 's resumed campaign of `warning off' sport divers had stopped when the last lot of divers that his men threatened turned out to be a diving club from Bristol police station, with Tregear's three dismayed words: "They're all cops!". The two divers swam down over a litter of torn-up steel sheet and girders with no recognizable ship shape. Bert noticed that there was less of the wreck than before and that something had been digging about. Red seaweeds and encrusting sponges covered everything. He looked down between two upstanding pieces of steel plate, and found a lobster, which he left to grow and breed, since too many people take them. "Hello!? Look what someone's lost!" he thought, reaching down into the crevice and extracting a videocamera in an underwater case. They used up their air and finished their dive, reflecting on the advisability of keeping in practise and checking tide and weather and local conditions before diving, "else there be group diver disappearances, one gets in trouble, then the rest trying to rescue him. I bet that's what's been happening to those groups that have been in the papers and the TV news. Hurlock's inside for a long stretch. Now to get our cylinders refilled first.", as he said putting his aqualung in the boot of their car. "I still don't trust those `Hurlock special' ultrasonic guns that were in the papers that time." said Jim. "Hurlock and his nine merry men?" said Bert on their way home, "No risk from , unless you dive in Wormwood Scrubs! String of warnings and prosecutions and searches - that anti-diver campaign by lobster fishermen's been put a stop to. This camera's got a tape in, lets play it back when we get home, we may trace who lost it.". "Still, something not quite right about some of those disappearances - or perhaps it's paranoia creeping up on me. You always get accidents, `law of averages'." said Jim. At Bert's house they played the tape back and watched it. At first it was someone's unremarkable dive. There seemed to have been two divers with the camera, both wearing bulky two-cylinder aqualungs with twin-hose regulators with diffuser boxes to avoid bubbles. Then something else came into shot. "What!!?" Bert exclaimed shuddering, "Help! Now I know! That explains much! No point looking for the camera's owner! One of ! Just like we'd been told wouldn't happen! And there's umpteen of them about by now! The sooner I get copies of this tape sent off to as many different people as possible, the better! [see 189]". "Yekkh! Yes! I'll get my video to make two to copy with, and all my blank tapes! Then copies to the BSAC, MP [= Member of Parliament], newspapers, TV, police, ..." said Jim.