However, the sheer size of the book daunted him. Although much of it was mapped out in his mind and he had received outline agreement from most of his proposed interviewees, it was a vast project that would probably require two or three years of his undivided attention. Above all, it would mean him having to spend several months living in and travelling around the USA. His new book, Empty Cities, had involved a total of three visits to the US, tracking down and interviewing survivors from both sides of the Ukrainian uprising of 1953. There were tens of thousands of East European expats who moved to the USA throughout the ‘50s and ‘60s. Now he found it discouraging to contemplate going back again. There was much to like, admire and enjoy in the USA, but from the point of view of a traveller or researcher from Europe, time spent there involved endless hassles and wearying reminders of the Third War mentality that still held American political life in its thrall. He simply did not look forward to several months of having to cope with suspicious bureaucracy, crooked currency deals, technology that didn’t work and the need to register with the police or FBI whenever he arrived in a new town or county. He remembered the first time he had visited the US, in 1980. Struggling with the pervasive isolationist mentality, the xenophobia, the blatantly censored media, the cities managed by criminals, the fuel shortages and the inflated prices had felt like perverse fun at the time, almost like a trip back to the Depression of the ‘30s. Two decades on since his first visit, with nothing better and everything the same or worse, the novelty had gone out of it.
The other possible book for him to work on would be the one he was idly planning about Sawyer, but because of the time spent on Empty Cities he had done virtually nothing about it. By chance, his route back from Hull led him through Bakewell, the small town where Angela Chipperton lived, and he was reminded of her and the notebooks she had lent him. Compared with the American history, the book about Sawyer held all the appeal of smallness of scale, a puzzle to elucidate then ideally solve, a minimum of travel and perhaps a few weeks of soothing archive or internet research.
The main problem with the Sawyer project, apart from the general lack of response to his advertisements, was that Angela Chipperton had failed to reply to his efforts to contact her since their brief meeting. He had already sent the photocopied pages to the transcription agency, anticipating her response. The agency returned the clean copy to him a short time later, but she had not yet sent him the original notebooks, nor had she given him formal permission to use the copyright material. He had still not found the time to look at the long text. All he knew about Mrs Chipperton was her postal address. No phone number was listed and she appeared not to use e-mail.
Meanwhile, no reply had ever come from Sam Levy in Masada: Levy had always been a long shot, because for one thing there was no guarantee that the old man was even still alive. Levy’s link with Sawyer could anyway be a red herring. However, over the years Gratton had learned that there was rarely such a thing as coincidence. Everything was ultimately connected. He had a hunch that Levy’s offhand remark about the Sawyer he knew in the RAF meant that they were quite likely one and the same, but with or without a response from Levy there was still no guarantee he would be able to ‘find’ the real Sawyer.
He realized that the Sawyer book could rapidly become a waste of time, involving a lot of fruitless research for a book that he might never be able to write, let alone publish. The puzzle could turn out to be not a puzzle at all, but a misunderstanding by Churchill, even a mistake or a misprint. It wouldn’t be the first time that an idea for a book led nowhere. Nor would it be the first time historians had been misled by Churchill, that arch manipulator of twentieth-century history.
2
Then the decision was made for him. A few minutes after he arrived home and was still unloading his car, his neighbour brought round the various large postal packages she had taken in for him while he was away. Among them was a small, firmly packed parcel with Masada stamps and postmark.
Gratton attended to his necessary chores. As soon as he could, he settled down in his office and opened Sam Levy’s package. He then went back and read, at last, the Sawyer notebooks.
The next morning, after a night of shallow sleep, he was out of bed early. He telephoned his agent, leaving a message on her voice-mail to put the American social history project on hold. He went to his car and set off across the Pennines, speedily retracing his route of the day before, back through Buxton towards the town of Bakewell.
3
Bakewell was a place with which he was unfamiliar, somewhere he passed through in his car from time to time, with no reason to stop. While Wendy was still alive they occasionally used Bakewell as a base for walks, parking their car in the town then exploring the countryside around, but since her death Gratton had given up that sort of thing, endlessly promising himself he would return to taking regular exercise as soon as his current workload eased.
He was looking for Williamson Avenue, an address that sounded straightforward enough. Bakewell was a small town, so when he arrived he began cruising the streets, looking for the road. He stopped at a newsagent’s to buy a street plan, but they had sold out. He asked the man behind the counter if he knew where Williamson Avenue was. He was directed out of the town, towards Monyash. He turned back when he reached the countryside without seeing the road.
He located it in the end, surprisingly close to the centre of the town: it was a residential road off another residential road, with fairly modern houses down one side and a parade of recently built shop units on the other. The address Angela Chipperton had given him was number 17, which was a laundromat. The maisonette above was empty. According to the man who ran the pharmacy next door, it was used for storage by a firm of magazine distributors. Clearly no one lived there.
Gratton drove to the information centre at the town hall and carried out a systematic search. First he discovered that houses in Williamson Avenue had been demolished about ten years earlier to make way for the shops, but they had stood, derelict and uninhabited, for several years before that. There were no Chippertons in Bakewell, no Sawyers and no Grattons. Nor were there any Chipperfields, Sayers or Grattans, or at least not any with names or initials even close to those of the woman he was trying to locate. He cast his net wider, scouring through the directories for towns or villages in the area with names similar to Bakewelclass="underline" he found a Blackwell, a Baslow, a Barlow and of course a Buxton. He drew a blank in all of them: there was no one with a name even remotely similar, certainly not in any Williamson Road or Street or Lane or Avenue.