ON THE CASE CLOSE ENCOUNTERS

Had teenager Liam really been abducted by aliens? As always, Maggie finds a much more logical explanation

The camera flashes took Maggie Maddison by surprise as she stepped outside the Half Moon Cafe on Bridge Street. Winchester was full of eateries but those near the river were popular in the summer. Today, though, no amount of sunshine could cut through the tears of cafe owners, Emma and Richard Tulley.

“He always comes home at night,” Emma sobbed. “The police won’t even start to investigate until he’s been missing for 24 hours, but Liam hates sleeping anywhere but his own bed.”

Richard Tulley put an arm around his wife’s shoulder and nudged Maggie front and centre. They’d done a good job of rounding up the press, but the media attention wasn’t just because Liam had gone missing. Maggie took a deep breath and prepared to speak.

“At 1am, Liam Tulley, aged 18, was on St Catherine’s Hill to watch a meteor shower. He was walking home and speaking to his father on his mobile when the call suddenly ended.”

“Did the disappearance have anything to do with the unexplained lights over the city last night?” a journalist asked.

Maggie sighed inwardly. She’d been wondering how to phrase that part of the story. The appearance of the lights had been all over the internet, although as yet no print newspaper had been bold enough to use the term UFO.

“Liam’s disappearance coincided with the lights seen in the vicinity of St Catherine’s Hill. Family and friends have spent the morning searching the area but there’s no sign of him. There are copies of a recent photo and a phone number if anyone has any information.”

“And who are you, love?” asked a photographer.

“Maggie Maddison. I’m a private investigator working with the Tulleys.”

She escaped as quickly as she could and made her way to the base of St Catherine’s Hill. It wasn’t a long walk, but it was steep enough to leave her thinking she ought to exercise more.

Her phone had rung at 9am, and since then she’d watched a dozen clips of the mysterious lights that had drifted across the hills just beyond the city boundary. A faint violet, pulsating when the lights were briefly stationary, created a 3D snowflake pattern in the sky, shifting up and down, turning, then moving on a little. The lights seemed to have come from behind the hill, then disappeared into the tree line just as Liam was walking through the wooded area on his way down the hill.

Wandering through those same trees, Maggie checked the news updates on her phone. The military were denying any of their aircraft had been in the area, and declared nothing had shown up on their radar. Conspiracy theories were exploding. Maggie was a skeptic. Not that she thought it impossible that life existed elsewhere in the universe. Just that she doubted intelligent life would bother trying to get in touch with a race of beings whose current obsession was posting short videos of themselves on social media doing ridiculous dances. Alien life almost certainly had better places to be. Yet Liam Tulley was nowhere to be found. It was a coincidence, but Maggie believed in coincidences even less than UFOs.

Maggie sat down to rest. Not a cloud in the sky today. She contemplated Liam’s parents’ account of the previous night. Their son had an obsession with astronomy. In fact he’d just received confirmation of a place at Southampton University to study a degree in Physics with Astronomy. Southampton, Emma had explained, because it meant Liam would be able to live at home rather than in residences. He’d always refused sleepovers and overnight school trips, so it was undoubtedly out of character for Liam to stay out. No girlfriend or habits that would get him into trouble, those things weren’t Liam’s style. So where had he gone, and why?

Pulling out her mobile, Maggie dialled Lance Ryan’s number. A local fireman, Maggie knew he was off duty today. He’d left a message inviting her to the cinema, but she’d have to take a rain check until this case was solved.

“Was that your beautiful face I just saw on the local news?” Lance asked,

Irish brogue somehow stronger on the phone than in person.

“I need you to talk to me as I walk down

St Catherine’s Hill,” Maggie said, ignoring the question.

“I suspect your motives have nothing to do with wanting my attention, but I’ll take it if that’s all I can get.”

“Thanks. I need to check if there’s a point when the signal cuts out,” Maggie explained as she retraced her steps.

“Ah, that missing teenager. Not found him yet then.”

“No. He’s 18, 6 feet tall, well built and has no known reason to want to disappear. If anyone had tried to abduct him up here they’d have had to wrestle him all the way to the bottom of the hill, and there were other people in the area last night who’d have heard him cry out.”

“You’re coming through loud and clear. There’s no reception problem on St Catherine’s Hill. Emergency Services get regular calls from there from people who’ve tripped and hurt themselves. If your boy lost contact with the rest of the world, I doubt it’s a mobile phone issue.”

“Thanks Lance. That answers that.”

“Maggie, before you go, did you decide about the cinema tonight?”

“I need to be on hand for the family so the cinema’s not a good idea.”

“I’ll come to yours then. 8pm. You light the candles, I’ll bring Chinese takeaway and a movie. See you later.”

“Lance, wait…” Maggie said, but the phone line was already dead, and it had nothing to do with reception. Lance Ryan wasn’t going to be fobbed off.

Sliding her mobile into her pocket, Maggie reconsidered the events…

A meteor shower. People up on St Catherine’s Hill that would normally be home in bed. An opportunity to draw people interested in extra terrestrial phenomena into the open. Should the parents be expecting a ransom request? The kidnappers had chosen the wrong family. No one could mistake them for the sort of people with money to spare.

As she mulled, there was a crunch beneath her foot. She stopped, took a step back and knelt in the undergrowth.

But for the bright sunlight she wouldn’t have spotted the minuscule shards of glass sparkling among the leaves. They were so thin it was hard to pick them up without breaking them further. Holding a piece up to the light, she caught a faint purple glimmer. Maggie pocketed the item, then made her way back to her car.

She wasn’t even out of the car park when her phone rang again. “Maggie, it’s Emma Tulley. Liam’s in the hospital. Meet us there.”

The distraught mother didn’t wait for Maggie to reply before hanging up. Fifteen minutes later Maggie parked her car at the emergency department.

The press – ever one step ahead – had apparently heard the news too, but were banished to wait outside the building. Maggie made her way through without commenting, and followed the sound of raised voices.

“Shouldn’t you be conducting an MRI scan? We have no idea what he’s been through,” Richard Tulley told a doctor.

“Mr Tulley, I appreciate your concern but there are no indicators for invasive tests. I’d like a psychiatric evaluation in the circumstances, but his blood pressure, pulse, oxygen saturation, lung sounds and ECG are all normal. There are no cuts or fractures. No sign of a blow to his head, although given his account…” The doctor let the end to that sentence hang in the air.

Maggie put a hand on Emma Tulley’s arm as she approached. Emma burst into tears and let Maggie comfort her. “What happened?” Maggie asked. “He’s saying he was abducted by a space ship. One minute he was walking down the hill and the next he woke up in a car park. He made his way to the hospital and they called us. He had idea how long he was away. He can remember seeing bright lights and then a terrible pain in his head with

He said he was walking down the hill, then was abducted by aliens!

voices he couldn’t understand.”

“All right,” Maggie said. “You should avoid talking to the press. Do you mind if I take a look in your flat? I want to see if I can find anything that might…” she chose her words carefully, “attract the aliens to Liam in particular.”

Emma thrust the keys into Maggie’s hands. “Please, any answers you can find, we’d be grateful. We’ll stay here until we can be sure Liam’s unharmed.”

Maggie let herself in through the rear door of the cafe. It was very small, holding no more than twenty customers spending small amounts each. It must be a struggle for them to make a decent profit. Taking the stairs, she looked around the flat disturbing as little as possible. A pile of bills sat on Richard Tulley’s desk in a corner of the lounge. Liam’s room was neat, with a single bed, a wardrobe and a bean bag that had seen better days, a pile of books by its side and university paperwork covered in notes in neat handwriting.

As she exited the building, another door caught her eye. There was a rear store room down some ancient steps. Nothing untoward… old tools, batteries, remnants of wire and boxes of things most businesses had to keep somewhere – cleaning supplies, broken chairs and Christmas decorations.

Back at the hospital an hour later, Liam emerged into the fresh air, having discharged himself before any psychiatric evaluation could take place.

“I don’t remember very much, but I have these weird flashing images,” Liam was saying. Journalists were scribbling as the cameras rolled. “Right now I just want to go home with my parents and sleep. Whatever happened to me was exhausting, and I need time to recover. I’ll make a further statement tomorrow, then I’ll be happy to give interviews.”

“Mr and Mrs Tulley, any comment?” someone shouted.

“We’re just happy to have our boy home,” Richard Tulley said. “I never believed in aliens. I guess you don’t until something like this happens.” He put an arm around his son’s shoulders and they made their way to the car park.

Maggie caught up with them, ensuring they were beyond earshot of the press.

“Your keys,” she said, holding out the bundle to Emma Tulley. “And I have something else of yours.” She reached her hand into her pocket and took out the tiny sliver of glass.’

“What’s that?” Emma Tulley asked. “It matches some of the Christmas decorations in the cafe storeroom. I think it’s from a set of fairy lights.”

“You let her into the cafe?” Richard Tulley demanded.

“Yes, I was right next to you. You were talking to the doctor,” Emma said. Liam folded his arms. “So what?”

“It’s all right,” Maggie said. “I’m not the enemy. You can tell the press whatever you like. Just don’t use up any public resources. If I hear either the police or the military have got involved, I’ll have to tell them what I know.”

“I don’t understand,” Emma Tulley said. “You’re acting as if we’ve done something wrong.”

“Not you,” Maggie said. “And not your husband or Liam, not really. A little dishonesty, perhaps. Clever, though. If you hadn’t told me Liam was going to study Physics with Astronomy I wouldn’t have put two and two together. Easy for someone good at physics to disguise a drone to look like a distant alien craft. Clever to send it into the air during a meteor shower so you had a reason to be on St Catherine’s Hill with other people to witness the appearance of what looked like a UFO. The only problem was that it was bound to suffer some damage when you were landing it. It left tiny fragments of coloured glass at the place where the call to your dad supposedly ended,” she said to Liam.

“And why exactly would we do that?” Richard began.

“Because you have no end of debts,” Maggie interrupted. “The cafe can’t be making much money. There are stacks of bills on your desk, and paperwork in Liam’s room detailing the cost of the university fees plus living expenses. Who wants to start life with student loans when you can sell your alien abduction story to the press, blog about it, give interviews – plenty of ways to make money out of that.”

“You two cooked this up together?” Emma Tulley demanded. “How could you? I was terrified!”

“He was always going to be found safely,” Richard Tulley looked shamefaced. “It seemed foolproof.”

“Sorry, Mum,” Liam muttered. Maggie left them to it. Emma Tulley was going to be demanding enough explanations from them both.

It would be easy to make money out of an alien abduction story

At 8pm sharp, Maggie’s doorbell rang. She could smell the tang of lemon chicken before she’d even opened her door. Lance Ryan stood there, grinning from ear to ear. Maggie folded her arms.

“You look pleased with yourself,” she said. “What have you done?”

“You mean apart from getting you to agree to our first date?” he asked.

“Yes, apart from that,” she said, standing back to let him enter and put the food boxes on the table.

He passed her a plastic case with a DVD inside. She opened it up to see what he’d chosen.

“Oh, very funny,” she said. “But I think I’ve had enough Close Encounters. How about we just talk instead?”

NEXT MONTH More exciting action and adventure with our sleuth Maggie Maddison.