Dream Detective Book pt 2

CHAPTER EIGHT
In many ways, it was the first great test of his powers, and of his faith in them.
Thursday, 17 May, Chris parked his car about half a mile away from the RAF base at Stanmore. It hadn't changed much in the years since he had -worked around these parts. He had been having the dreams for eight months, and had long since overcome his initial wariness to embrace them "wholeheartedly. It was well over a month since he had started to dream about a bomb attack on Stanmore. He had reported all these dreams, just as he had reported his dreams about the Wembley bomb.
No-one had seemed to do anything about that. He wasn't prepared to let that situation arise again.
But was he doing the right thing by driving here? He decided that it couldn't do any harm, as he had already reiterated his warnings to Paul Aylott. The faxes had also gone to John Branscombe and Chris Watt. If, between them, they hadn't passed anything on to a higher authority he would be extremely surprised.
If nothing else, this was making him feel better: after the death of Sergeant Chapman two days earlier he had to do something to alleviate his conscience.
He walked from his car to the turning that led to the base entrance. It wasn't as long a distance as he remembered, and he stopped, his resolve wavering. The entrance appeared too soon for him to gather his courage. He had deliberately parked some distance away, so that he would have the walk in which to psyche himself up for the encounter that he knew would come. Now he stood on the corner for a few seconds, bracing himself.
For all his doubts, Chris knew that he would not be able to rest easily with himself until he had at least tried to tell someone in authority at the base about his dreams.
He gulped down a breath and walked up to the barrier to be greeted by two soldiers in combat uniform, machine guns slung over their shoulders. They watched him approach in a distant, non-committal way. They had no real interest in him. If anything, his approach seemed to irritate them.
'Can we help you?' one of them asked, with a bare veneer of politeness covering his boredom.
'I'm not sure,' Chris replied nervously. 'My name is Christopher Robinson. I'm a psychic, and I've had a dream telling me that your base is going to be bombed by the IRA.'
Whatever he had expected — probably hostility, if he thought about it - he was greeted with looks of blank incomprehension from the soldiers. They seemed young, only in their early twenties, and looked at him as though they thought he was either a madman or a practical joker. There was a silent pause, filled with embarrassment on both sides. Finally, one of them said, 'Is this a joke?'
'Do you think I'd joke about something like this?' Chris replied, trying to keep his voice level. He didn't want to sound like the lunatic or joker they expected. 'I tried to warn the people in Wembley about the bomb that killed Sergeant Chapman. I told policemen in Dunstable, Milton Keynes and at the Yard. But no-one listened. This time I've decided to come and tell you personally. That way someone might listen.'
The two sentries exchanged glances: Stanmore was only a few miles from Wembley, and the events of the day before had made them understandably nervous.
There had been an immediate stepping-up of already tight security, and neither of the young airmen felt in a position to take responsibility for the man at the main gate. If he was telling the truth, and another bomb was to be planted, then let the responsibility for dealing with Chris be taken by a superior officer.
Their attitude changed. No longer distant or bored, they were, if not friendly, then polite. One of them asked Chris to follow him into the look-out post just behind the main gates. The other sentry followed behind them. They kept Chris covered: it was a precautionary measure, in case he had been sent as the vanguard of an attack. To Chris it seemed vaguely ludicrous. They thought he would create trouble, but that was precisely what he wanted to prevent.
The look-out post was a squat concrete building, and when Chris entered there were three other people inside: two men in military police armbands, and a woman in RAF uniform. He couldn't tell her rank, but knew enough to recognise, from their armbands, that the military police were both sergeants. One of them searched Chris, while the other called through to the base commandant's office. They hardly uttered a word, communicating with each other in the barest of sentences. Obviously they wanted to give nothing away that Chris might be able to use in some way. Another security measure.
The search finished, and Chris straightened up. The MP conducting the search seemed almost disappointed that he had found nothing on Chris, and now spoke directly to him for the first time. His voice was low and harsh.
'You should now consider yourself under arrest. You will not be allowed to leave here until you have been interrogated further.'
It was a strange situation in which to find himself: he knew the names of none of the people in the room, and the rank of only two of them. The small building was now crowded with five people - one of the sentries had returned to his duty on the main gate, unwilling to leave it unmanned for long.
Normally, like anyone else, Chris would have been terrified at the prospect of being under arrest in a military base. But not this time. On the contrary, he was overjoyed. This is great, he thought: if they arrest me, they have to start filling in forms, and there will be a record of my actually having been here. Then there will be no way they can deny it.
If only the atmosphere hadn't been so cold. Chris had every faith in the story he had to tell - he knew it was the truth - but how would it sound to RAF officers hearing it in a room like this?
Although the MP who had searched him had seemed hostile, the others seemed almost apologetic about the whole thing. Chris was on his own, with no weapons and no place to conceal them. As he filled out the form registering Chris's arrival and arrest, the sentry who had remained said to him, 'I'm sorry about all this, but it's got to be done. We don't have any choice in the matter, it's all procedure.'
'That's all right by me,' Chris replied. The fact that he seemed almost happy about the turn of events seemed to confuse them. Chris continued, 'This isn't quite what I expected, but now that it's happened I'm quite pleased about it. You can't say now that I didn't try to warn you.'
Forms filled, superiors alerted, they sat in an embarrassed silence for more than ten minutes before another two men arrived. They didn't announce themselves, and from their uniforms he couldn't tell what rank they were, but from the way that the others smartly saluted he could only assume that they were fairly high-ranking.
Their attitude was markedly different from that of the airmen he had first encountered. They took him across a
concrete yard to an ante-room in an outbuilding, where he was offered tea in the great British tradition. If this was an attempt to create a friendlier atmosphere, then it certainly worked, as Chris felt more comfortable in the company of these two, who almost fitted the 'dashing RAF officer' archetype. They were interested in what he had to say, and told him that they would tape-record the interview. Chris was more than happy with this: if nothing else, it would represent another record of his visit to Stanmore.
One of the officers — and neither of them, despite their friendliness, volunteered a name - offered Chris a biscuit and switched on the tape recorder. Chris felt at ease with them, and trusted them to believe that he was telling the truth as he saw it, regardless of their own personal opinions. Hopefully they would concur.
'Now that you're here,' began the other officer, who had remained seated, 'and you've been formally arrested, we're duty-bound to inform the civilian police force, and you can only leave here to be released into the custody of the Metropolitan Police Force. We've been in touch with the local station, and two officers will be down shortly to collect you. In the meantime, why don't you tell us what this is all about?'
It may well be that it was up to the local force to deal with Chris as they saw fit, but at least the RAF were giving him the chance to tell them what he had seen in his dreams.
The previous night's sleep had been fitful, but despite this Chris had managed to write three pages of dreams. Most of them related in some way to Stanmore, not surprisingly, since this must have been on his mind virtually all the time.
In the strangest part of the dream, Chris had been sitting in the back of a car that was speeding through London streets. The car was being driven by a dog,
which meant that it had something to do with the IRA. Chris was convinced that this car •was the one that would carry the IRA bombers across London. He didn't know the make of the car he was in, or the number of the licence plate: he did, however, know the area in which the car was travelling, and he could clearly see the number and make of the car in front.
Chris wanted to tell someone about this, but knew it would sound like crazy ramblings to the two officers sitting in front of him. Instead, he opened his dream diary at a relevant section, and began to explain what was in front of them.
The first section read:
Two cups the same, 1 dirty and burned, 1 clean and new
Full of milk.
Large machine gun beautifully made Fast warship [LAUNCH] They are catching up
with us Illuminate target Are we lit up. Sex case.
Steering wheel. Car like Dick's.
Then there were two sketches of wristwatches, only one of which had a strap. This was followed by:
Wrecked car bomb. Inside car. Very serious problem.
To most people, including the RAF officers, this would appear as rubbish if just read from the page. So Chris attempted to explain to them the series of symbols he had been taught by his spirit guide, Robert. Some of the things, like the references to 'wrecked car bomb', were fairly obvious and straightforward; some, such as the reference to 'car like Dick's' were personal and needed only a little explanation. Other symbols,
however, Chris was only just beginning to learn himself, and he could see that the RAF officers sitting across from him exchanged a few glances that varied between disbelieving and simply bemused. They became even more confused when he explained the significance of postcodes, and how he used the postcode computer program to locate where the bombs were likely to explode.
He explained to them that he was sure the attack would be on Stanmore: he was born in Bushey, Hertfordshire, and had lived round this area of London and the suburban outreaches all his life. From other dreams in the diary he was able to explain to them that references to Bushey and to Holland were occurring again and again. There were symbols and landscapes in his dreams that were unmistakable. He knew from news reports that the IRA used Holland as a base for its operations. He also knew, from information picked up from friends in the police, that there were investigations into the transportation of arms and explosives from IRA cells in Holland to Britain.
When he reached this part, Chris chose his words very carefully: he didn't want to get his friends into trouble, but he had to do all he could to persuade the officers that he was speaking the truth.
The atmosphere in the room was filled with a strange kind of tension. Like all psychics, Chris is sensitive to mood and atmosphere, and he could feel the pull between his own efforts to explain and the bemused and confused scepticism of the men he was trying to convince.
He moved on to his next piece of evidence. There are some government buildings, mostly Forces administration buildings, that might also have been IRA targets, but Chris believed that the base was more likely to be the target because it was split into two sections: Headquarters Fighter Command, as it used to be known, was on Bentley Priory, on the north side of Uxbridge Road;
the second section of the base was actually on the road itself. This meant that, unlike other buildings used by the government, security was hard to maintain because of the wide spread of land involved. Although security would be as tight as possible, it was virtually impossible to cover every inch of ground on the two widely spread sites for every minute of the day.
Going back to an earlier dream, Chris had seen the Queen riding on a horse. This worried him: it could refer to the Trooping of the Colour, which took place in June. But, at the same time as he was having this dream, and on the same pages of the dream diary, there were continual references to 'a house', 'a horse', 'having a', 'adjust hold'. The letters 'h' and 'a' cropped up continually. Early on, he had learnt that this repetition meant that a postcode was being given to him. There was no postcode that used the letters 'ah'. But there was one that used 'ha'.
The postcode for Stanmore he now knew to be HA3.
That very morning, as though to reinforce his resolve, Chris had stronger feelings than before when he awoke. He was sure RAF Stanmore was the target. He still had vivid recollections of his dreams from the night. This was fairly unusual, as the dreams usually became vague memories on waking. The dream diary •was usually necessary as an aid to the memory, and was Chris's only reference to some of the dreams. Also, he was sure that he had heard Robert's voice as he awoke, telling him to go and warn the base. Now.
So it had been an easy decision for him to make. But, he told his interviewers, whom should he approach? He had no real working knowledge of the rank structures and hierarchy in the RAF. He knew he would have to get advice. So he had phoned Paul Aylott, and told him that he was going to Stanmore himself, unless Paul could reassure him otherwise.
'Look, don't go,' Aylott had said. 'I'll try and get in
touch with someone. It'll be better if it goes through official channels. You know what it's like with this sort of thing by now — they'll think you're some kind of nutter if you just turn up out of the blue.'
Chris put down the phone knowing that Paul was always as good as his word. Yet there had still been a feeling that nagged at him, telling him he should do something himself. It was as if Robert had entered Chris's waking life and wouldn't rest until Chris actually took action.
Without even thinking about it, he had got into his car and driven to Stanmore, parking about half a mile from the main gate. He had with him his passport as proof of identity. He drove past the side of the base in Uxbridge Road, then up to the main entrance in Common Road. Unsure how to go about his task, he stalled for time by turning left along Clamp Hill and then left again back into Uxbridge Road, passing the entrance to the South Base again. He couldn't make up his mind which part of the base to try first.
He could see that the officers in front of him were more at home with the familiar descriptions of the roads around the base. It seemed silly, really, but he had taken pains to tell them this detail simply because it had reassured them. He knew intuitively that a return to — as they saw it — common sense would make things easier for them to assimilate.
Then he told them that as he drove past a second time, a voice in his head told him to go back to the second entrance, as that was where the majority of the personnel worked. Yes, he thought, that would be a good idea: if I stop here, then I'll only be taken over there anyway. So Chris had parked in Bushey Heath High Street, and walked back to the base entrance.
Seeing that he was losing the officers again, Chris decided to pull out all the stops: he told them how he had felt when he had heard of Sergeant Chapman's death the day before, and how he had thought about this as he walked up to the base. He knew that if he had acted as decisively on that dream, there was a chance that the Sergeant might have been saved. That had given him the determination to see this through, no matter what they thought of him. He just wanted them to listen.
And now he was sitting in this office with two senior officers listening intently to what he had to say, recording it all on tape. He continued his story, telling them that as far as he was concerned they were about to be attacked by the IRA.
One of them asked again what 'car like Dick's' meant.
'Dick is a friend of mine,' Chris replied. 'He's got this really knackered four-door saloon, which is dark green. In my dream I was in a car. I don't know what this car was, but the one in front was the same shade of green - but I can't be sure if it was the same make. I think it was a Peugeot, but that's not like Dick's. When I was sitting in the car I could see two road signs. One was for Wood Lane, and the other for Green Lane.'
'Aren't there two roads around here called that?' asked one of the officers.
Chris shook his head. 'No, that's not it. There are a couple of roads called that, but you couldn't see them from the same point, as I could in the dream. Anyway, they didn't look like these roads. They were too built up, too much like city roads. No, those names have got some other significance. Find that car, and you've nabbed some terrorists — maybe even stopped the attack.'
In all, Chris spent about three hours at the base, going through his dream book with the RAF men and pointing out the relevant entries, discussing what he felt was going to happen at the base. He'd taken the whole of his diary with him as proof of the dreams. But it didn't really
prove anything: a determined hoaxer would simply have written out a whole book of 'dreams' before leaving home. It did seem to convince them, however, that this was something more than a casual joke, and Chris felt that there had been a change in attitude when he told them about the cars and the two road names. He couldn't pick up what it was, just that they suddenly seemed more receptive.
At the end of three hours Chris was released into the custody of two uniformed constables from Wealdstone police station. They didn't go directly to the station: first, they went back to Chris's car. The constables asked for the keys, and as he had nothing to hide Chris handed them over gladly, and waited patiently while they searched his car, looking for bomb-making equipment. He had expected something like this, but why they thought he would go to the base and take the equipment with him if he was a genuine bomber was something he still can't work out.
Of course, they found nothing. To Chris's amusement, they seemed disappointed by this and took Chris to Wealdstone station, where he was put into an interview room to await the arrival of a Detective Inspector who would question him.
The room was small and cramped, •with no natural lighting, only a harsh neon strip. Chris sat in silence after a few friendly attempts to engage in conversation the uniformed constable who stood in the corner. It was a long wait, and not particularly comfortable.
Eventually a plainclothes policeman entered the room. He wouldn't give Chris his name when asked, and Chris found his manner to be bordering on hostile. This immediately put Chris on his guard: even now, after several years, he still can't understand why the man wouldn't give his name. It was obvious from the way he was treated that he was a Detective Inspector — the one Chris had been waiting to see. It was equally obvious.
right from the beginning, that he thought Chris was the perpetrator of a hoax in very dubious taste. The first thing he did was tell Chris that he had found his name on the police national computer. Chris Robinson was down as a bank robber. This was totally untrue.
'I think you're wasting my time, son,' the DI said, leaning across the table. Tm going to nick you for something if it takes me all day. I don't like you at all.'
The feeling was mutual.
It was fortunate for Chris that the DI's partner, Detective Sergeant Holmes, was the opposite. He was quiet and understanding, and listened to what Chris had to say while the superior officer just snorted. He even laughed at Chris's weak and nervous joke about the DI's name being 'Watson'. Perhaps it was just part of their routine — the 'good cop/bad cop' routine you see on every police television show. Chris couldn't look at it this way at the time, and was glad when the DI told him he was going off to the base to listen to the taped interview that had been recorded earlier.
Chris was left in the hands of Holmes, who questioned him while the other officer was absent, with the uniformed constable still impassive in the corner. They went over Chris's story time and time again, with Holmes looking for discrepancies that he just could not find. Chris showed him the relevant parts of the dream book.
'But how do you know you're writing it down correctly if you can't remember the dreams that well when you wake up?' he asked at one point.
'I write it when I'm asleep.' Holmes looked at him in disbelief, so Chris tried to explain. 'It's called automatic writing. I have the book and a pen by the bed, and while I'm dreaming the subconscious guides my hand. That's why it's in bits and pieces, and not proper sentences.'
Chris \vas questioned by Holmes for over three hours — as long as it took the DI to travel to the base, listen to
the tapes, and get back. He stormed into the room, and threw a fax message at Chris.
'Read that,' he snapped. But as Chris tried to turn the paper on the desk so that he could read it properly, the DI snatched it back. 'I don't know who the hell you are, son, but I've been ordered to release you,' the DI snapped, screwing the message into a ball in his hand. 'And the message comes from God.'
Chris had just about managed to read the signature on the fax, and knew that the DI was referring to Commander George Churchill-Coleman, then head of the Anti-Terrorist Squad.
Had Paul Aylott really passed on his message? Was someone actually taking notice after all?
'Someone somewhere likes you,' snarled the DI. 'But just because they do doesn't mean that I have to. Go on, get out.'
Summarily dismissed, Chris was driven back to Bushey Heath High Street by two uniformed constables. They told him that despite the DI's hostility, everyone else at the station hoped there was something in Chris's story and that it would help avert a disaster. Word had come back from the RAF base — probably via the DI's driver - that the RAF officers had contacted Paul Aylott, as Chris had suggested. And the description of the green four-door saloon in Chris's dream had been sent out: police would be on the look-out for it. The constables wished Chris good luck as they dropped him at his car.
On his way home he couldn't help but think about the attitude of the DI. Chris was trying to warn people about a bomb threat, and all this policeman had wanted to do was arrest him on a trumped-up charge because he didn't like him. The whole situation seemed ridiculous.
When he got home Chris phoned Paul Aylott and told him about being arrested. Aylott, of course, knew all about it because the RAF and the Anti-Terrorist Squad had been on to him all day.
He sighed, 'I told you not to go. To leave it all to me. But you had to insist, didn't you. Feel happier now?'
Chris had to reply that he did. Now he officially existed, and was on record.
The attack on Stanmore took place on 21 June, just over a month later. During a routine check a bomb was found and detonated next to a disused photographic storehouse. It had been there only for a few minutes, as regular checks were being made. The base was evacuated before the detonation.
What happened to the car in Chris's dream provides an amusing side-light on the occasional misinterpretation of dreams — though it was not amusing for the person involved.
Shortly after Chris's visit to Stanmore (the following Monday), a green car was stopped in Wood Green, north London, after a cross-town chase. The occupant had been under surveillance and was suspected of being part of an IRA bomb squad. He was Kevin O'Donnell, who convinced an Old Bailey jury that he knew nothing of the Semtex in the back of his car. He was acquitted, and was later killed in a shoot-out in Belfast. This takes care of the references to Wood Lane and Green Lane and Chris's green four-door saloon.
The car was stopped at a roundabout, and the car in front — a red four-door Peugeot — sped away. Someone had obviously taken note of Chris's dream, as the licence plate tallied with some numbers Chris had provided. The car was traced to a pub car park in west London and the owner taken in for questioning.
Unfortunately, he was a doctor on holiday from Ireland. While someone high up had taken note of Chris's dream, they had forgotten that he was in the IRA car and had only described the car in front . . . something that the spirits had obviously meant to be
taken as a reference point, but not an implication that the unfortunate doctor was involved.
Despite this misunderstanding, the startling clarity of Chris's information could not be denied.

CHAPTER NINE
Another police acquaintance of Chris, who had been interested in his dreams since the beginning but can, for security reasons, only be named as Andy, had remained low-key throughout the whole series of events surrounding Stanmore. His interest was re-awakened by Chris's visit to the RAF base. So it came as little surprise to Chris when, on the following Saturday, he answered a knock at his door only to find Andy standing there.
'Hello. I hear you've been a bit of a naughty lad,' said Andy with a smile.
The two men settled in Chris's mobile home and talked generally about things: Chris ran over the events at RAF Stanmore a few days before, and Andy told him that Paul Aylott had contacted him as soon as he had been called. 'You were lucky we were both in our offices — otherwise other people might not have heard about it . . . Know what I mean?'
He didn't have to say any more: without Andy, George Churchill-Coleman might not have known.
Then Andy changed the subject. 'Listen, that bloke who's studying you —'
'What, Keith Hearne?'
'Yeah, him. Does he reckon you could ask it questions, or what? You know, questions that are, shall we say, beyond the grave?'
'What do you mean, ask it questions?' Chris replied, bemused by the reference to part of him as 'it'.
'Well, could you ask it something by writing it down, and then get an answer?'
Chris pondered this for some moments. 'I don't know. I've never tried it, but I don't see why not. After all, I talk to people in my dreams, and they talk back.'
'Good. Because I've got something I'd like you to try.'
Andy outlined his plan. There were sections of the police and security services that were maintaining a discreet interest in Chris. Although unwilling to come out and admit that the powers of the unknown could be more efficient than conventional intelligence-gathering, they would admit - albeit grudgingly - that Chris got results. There was a school of thought within these sections that believed Chris to be an IRA man playing 'double' - playing for both sides. This was patently absurd: not only was Chris totally opposed to terrorism, but he wasn't getting any payment for his information.
Andy agreed with Chris that the idea was ludicrous: that was why he had come up with the idea of the tests.
'Let's be honest, it's a two-fold thing, right? First, if I can ask you a question and you get a positive answer, that proves that something weird is happening and you're not Gerry Adam's right-hand man. Second, if it can be asked questions, then it'll be good for us — you can tell us something we want to know rather than what we don't.'
This seemed reasonable enough. Chris contacted Keith Hearne, who believed that it would be a valid and worthwhile experiment. He warned Chris not to expect outstanding results, as the nature of dream precognition was always erratic. Chris agreed, but knew deep down that he was on the verge of discovering another facet of his powers: one that he would be able to use in order to channel his dreams in the future.
The tests would take place over three nights: 23/24/25 May. A Thursday, Friday and Saturday night. The questions were prepared by Andy, and were faxed to Chris during the day preceding the night-test. This way he would have no opportunity to tap into police contacts for any possible answers.
The first question was simple: who is Peter Darling?
It is impossible to use the man's real name as he is still at liberty, but suffice to say that he was someone the police were extremely interested in at the time. Chris had never heard of him before.
In his dream diary, Chris wrote:
W-Scrubs [43] should be
[114] is it [VW] [Lies flat]
Ring xxx crossed.
None of this was a clear answer, but when presented to the police it made a lot of sense: 'W-Scrubs' mean Wormwood Scrubs, a prison in west London; '43' refers to Rule 43, which sections off prisoners convicted of child sex offences from other prisoners . . . for their own safety. Chris had worked out that '[VW]' and '[Lies flat]' were connected by a line, and meant somewhere like Germany, only flatter: to him this meant Holland, as did the triple X phrase — from his years in the video trade Chris associated XXX with the certificates on pornographic films that had been imported from Holland.
Chris felt that he had failed, as there was no direct answer to his question. Andy, however, was delighted by the result. Peter Darling was an alleged child sex offender whom the police wanted behind bars, but he had fled the country. They had no idea where he was, but believed him to be in Holland.
The first test was therefore a success, if a qualified one. For instance, could Chris have known about Darling by
ESP (extra-sensory perception), picking things up from Andy? Perhaps. Certainly Andy now had some kind of proof. What would the next test show?
The next night there was more than one question. Andy wanted to know about Oscar Roberts and Andrew Arnold. Who were they, and where were they? He also wanted to know 'Is 11 June correct?' Chris had no idea what this question meant, and that was exactly how Andy wanted it to be.
Once again I have changed the names of the men Chris was asked about.
Chris wrote 'in side', connected by a line to '[out]'. He already had a feeling that the word out, when in a box, meant dead. So he said to Andy the next day, 'These two blokes — one of them is in prison, and he killed the other one.'
Andy whistled. 'How the hell did you know that?' he asked.
So Chris explained the code, then said, 'Look at this bit here — "sweetheart", "walked away", then "out" with the box round it again. I think that means that they had a row over a woman, and one of them got killed in the fight. I'll tell you something else as well — I think they're black.'
'How the hell do you work that out?'
'Look at this bit — "chocolate fingers in the cupboard". And I've underlined the chocolate. I saw biscuits, but that was just a symbol. At least one of them is black — and as the biscuits were in the cupboard, I think it's the one in prison.'
'They're both black, actually,' Andy replied shortly, not knowing what to make of Chris's accuracy. Things were going better than he had imagined — so well that it was beginning to frighten him. The only black spot on the tests so far was that Chris had got nothing on the question regarding 11 June. As Andy didn't enlighten him, Chris is still in the dark about that.
There were other messages coming through, jumbled up with all this — messages that were a warning to Chris. 'Have been tracked or bugged — listened 2', 'Did you hear that - everytime I talk.' Chris didn't elaborate on these to Andy, but had a nasty feeling that surveillance had started up again, perhaps to coincide with these tests.
Maybe Andy wasn't behind the tests: maybe he was the front man for another organisation, who were more interested in Chris than they wanted to let on. Chris had heard of the KGB developing psychics, trying to bring them on to the point where they could be used as intelligence weapons. He had also read books by other psychics, such as Uri Geller, in which they talked of their brushes with the CIA. It seemed like rampant paranoia and conspiracy theorising, but Andy had mentioned 'others' being interested in Chris. What if it was MIS and 6, testing his capabilities? Part of Chris wanted to shy away from all of that — perhaps fake a few failures, so that the pressure would be off. The problem was, would the spirits let him?
With this preying on his mind, Chris made sure that he told no-one except his wife that he was going to New York that Sunday with Paul, his son from his first marriage.
He approached Saturday night's test in an unsettled state of mind. The questions he asked were: please tell me something I could not know about Andy; and where is the red French car like the one shown to me in the dream? The latter referred to the Peugeot that Chris had described after his dream concerning Stanmore.
Nothing much happened concerning the car, possibly because Chris's mind was preoccupied with what would happen when he tried to go to New York. He did, however, draw a detailed map of an office layout, with exact positions for a personal computer terminal, a fax machine and printer, and telephones. Beside it were the
words 'Was he murdered? PNC check. Did Robinson know him? Fuck me, look where it was.'
By themselves they made no sense, but when Chris faxed them through the next day, Andy rang him immediately.
'How did you know what my office looked like?' he asked. 'And how did you know I said that?'
'What?' replied Chris, confused. So Andy explained: while he was going over Chris's fax of the night before, he had run a computer check on one of the men mentioned, and had come up with some additional information concerning the case. He had spoken those very words to another officer, and the occasion was etched on his memory by seeing them appear again on the fax sheet he held in his hand.
'You're too dangerous to know,' Andy told him. 'I don't know if I should have anything much to do with you.'
From that moment on Andy handed much of his contact with Chris over to another officer. The two men, who had been friends, have seen nothing of each other from that day on.
Paul, Chris's son from his first marriage, was eighteen, and he and a friend were going to New York on sponsored air tickets as part of a radio station fund-raising scheme, called a 'gaol-break'. The team who got furthest from Luton were the winners, and their sponsor money would be topped up by the station. Chris •wanted a break, and was also a little nervous of his son being in New York, so he decided to go as well.
There was just one problem: Chris Watt had already told him that he didn't want Chris leaving the country. However, he was determined to go without having to get permission.
This would give him the perfect opportunity to see if his phone was tapped, as his dreams had seemed to warn him. He would also see if his movements were being followed.
For the few days preceding the flight, he was careful not to mention it over the phone, or even in the caravan, as he was certain that if the phone was bugged, then the rest of the caravan was sure to be. He did manage to tell his wife, when they were in the open, that he would phone her from the airport just before the flight took off. If nothing happened after this, then they could assume that the place was safe.
On Sunday Chris left the caravan as he would on any normal trip. Except that this time he made for Gatwick, and fifteen minutes before boarding he phoned his wife and told her that he was standing in the departure lounge, and he would see her when he got back.
Five minutes later the phone rang in the caravan. When his wife picked up the phone, a voice said, 'Has Mr Robinson left the country?' When she replied in the affirmative, the caller hung up in silence.
When Chris returned, he was greeted at the airport by two policemen, who warned him never again to leave the country 'without telling them.
While he was in New York Chris hoped that he would be able to find some clues as to the identity of a serial killer who had so far killed more than a dozen cab drivers. Trevor Kempson, Chris's friend on the News of the World, had a contact at a New York paper and so had arranged a few introductions for Chris, who was hoping that he might get a positive result and be able to claim a slice of the offered reward money. This would enable him to make other trips, and would finance experiments to try and validate his powers.
It wasn't successful: the dream writing included the phrases 'bungalow [overlooking the sea]' and '[dog] in back of the car'. The latter was pretty obvious: the dog was a killer — not IRA in this case, as it was in a box —
sitting in the back of the cab. All the drivers so far killed had been actually shot in their cabs. The bungalow that overlooked the sea meant Brighton. This was not so obvious, but stems from an association of ideas, as Chris has friends who live in Brighton, in a street called Wilson Avenue, in a bungalow that overlooks the sea. Therefore the killings were somehow connected with a place called Brighton.
Unfortunately there are many streets in the New York City area that have Brighton in their name, and there is also Brighton Beach in Brooklyn. If something was coming through, then it just wasn't clear enough. Looking back, this could be because it was something that had no real connection with Chris: even such seemingly unconnected events as the Philippine Airlines crash had some kind of link — Chris's wife is a Filipino, and he had been to the islands a couple of times and was in the process of planning a new trip there. The rail crash at Chorleywood also had a link, no matter how tenuous — it was an area he frequently drove through, many times crossing the bridge near the accident site.
But a serial killer in New York? Even if the spirits were trying to tell him something, there was too little in his own life for him to make strong enough connections.
On the other hand, there were dreams that related to things closer to home: on the second page of dreams, the '[dog] in back of car' made another appearance, this time linked to '[station] [leaving] [train]'.
When he read this back the next morning Chris felt a chill run through him. He could remember the dream clearly. Three soldiers, returning from leave, had been standing on a railway station platform when they had been shot down.
This haunted Chris for the whole day, as he moved on from New York to Niagara Falls. Once again he asked for information about the serial killer, writing down a question, as he now knew he could. There were some interesting results, if nothing conclusive. Beside a map showing an intersection of two streets, with five houses drawn down one side, the middle one asterisked, he wrote, 'New houses. Very cheap when built. Now very expensive. In New York.'
Underneath came: 'A person shown as [steve pearce] in the dream. Delivery to [Scotland] if we have enough. Put them in my garage until it is time to go. Do we have a driver? Yes.' On another page followed: '[chase] Manhattan [card]' and 'San Francisco. First visit. Killer lives in New York? Yes.'
The only thing he could really glean from this was that the killer lived in a house on an intersection like the one drawn, somewhere in New York. For some reason, he felt sure that it was Brighton Beach, but couldn't really explain why. He also felt sure that Steve Pearce - a friend — had appeared in the dream because he bore a resemblance to the killer.
There was something in it, but exactly what remained locked away, partly because there were urgent intrusions regarding the soldiers he had seen shot the previous night.
Stop [train]. Gold bell,
[campers 3] 12
3
This was followed by a diagram of a rail track switching-point on a single track. The two directions at the point where the track branched in two were both arrowed, and 'TRAIN TRACK. One comes down before the other can go up' was written beside it.
Analysing it, Chris felt sure that the single track and 'stop [train]' phrases were signs for a postcode: ST. '[Campers 3]' referred to three holidaymakers, or the three soldiers returning from leave. 'Gold bell' was another cipher — a simple one meaning G.B., as in
Great Britain. It •was as if the spirits were re-directing his thoughts to home.
He left Niagara for Toronto, not really noticing what was happening around him. Instead he was focusing upon dreams that seemed to be warning of an attack on soldiers thousands of miles away.
Chris was with Simon Templar, the Saint. The popular hero had been stabbed, and was bleeding heavily after an attack from an umbrella. He told Chris that the tip of the umbrella had been poisoned, and that Chris must help him to get home.
Templar and Roger Moore, the actor who played him most successfully, were interchangeable, as Templar led Chris through the streets of north-west London until they got to the railway station at Stanmore. It was snowing heavily, and progress was slow. When they reached the station, Templar collapsed and died . . .
This was the point at which Chris woke. He had a feeling of foreboding: the message was so terrible and so clear. All he had to do was crack the code. He looked at what he had written while asleep. It read:
The Saint — bleeding.
Snowing - Died - at [Stanmore] station. Stabbed in the leg with a poison umbrella - a dart. You follow him. I -will follow her on [road to London]. Happens in the snow down a slope on a sledge on the [W]ay to [S]chool.
It was a comparatively short dream message, but there seemed to be little extraneous matter in it: it was heavily focused, and not as wide-ranging as other dreams Chris had.
As Toronto awoke and began to go about its regular business, Chris sat in his hotel room, hunched over the page, his thoughts once again thousands of miles away. He had dreamt about the Saint before, and knew it was connected to Stanmore. The car number plate was important. Previously he had figured that ST1 was Stanmore. Now, with the new postcode map, he knew that Stanmore was HA3. But there was an ST postcode -Stoke, in Staffordshire. The way that the letters W and S were boxed also suggested that they should be separated. When Chris looked them up, he discovered that WS was the postcode for Lichfield, also in Staffordshire.
It seemed that the dream was working on two levels at once, warning still about Stanmore, but also alerting him to something that would happen in Stoke: with the recurrence of a railway station and someone dying there, he was sure that this related to his dream of the three dead soldiers.
But why was he dreaming of Stanmore station? Was this just more confusion? Stanmore was in a box on the page, so what if it just meant 'S' for station, as in Stoke?
Chris sat back and looked out of the window at the early morning sun, glowing over the bustling city. There was a lot of information in the dream, and it was obviously important; but May had been one hell of a month, and he was beginning to feel the strain. Perhaps he was seeing things that -weren't there? Or perhaps the dreams were becoming confused because he was so tired?
No matter. He was on his way home today. Perhaps the dream would start to become clearer when he was back among familiar surroundings.
He was greeted at the airport by the police, angry with him for leaving the country: but he found it hard to take what they had to say seriously. He had hardly slept on the plane and just wanted to get back home. It was a long drive from Gatwick to the mobile homes park, longer because of his fatigue. So it was with no little sense of relief that Chris reached home in the early afternoon of
31 May. He went straight to bed, exhausted. He slept for several hours, and during that time recorded a mass of dream images.
[Canada] Murder Killer
Strikes 2 times [New York]
Try to contact [Police] [log all thoughts]
[Train] your mind. Follow all clues. They will come to you [police].
Look at [golf balls] again, with holes in. drive [home] look and see.
2 stations 1 old 1 new. 58[3]? [Stanmore] [Saint] blood soon? [snow on the ground]
He awoke in the early evening and read his writing back. Some of it seemed to be telling him that the serial killer he had little success with in New York would soon be striking again. Then there was some reassurance that the police would be taking notice of the information he gave them. After his recent problems with Wembley and Stanmore, this was an assurance he needed. Then the dream writing returned to its by now repetitious and familiar themes: trouble at Stanmore, and something to do with the shootings he had seen. Did '2 stations 1 old 1 new' mean that there would be two separate attacks? Or was that to tell him a specific postcode, like ST1 or ST2? Reference to his computer program showed those particular codes actually to be Lichfield, on the edge of Stoke, and not the town itself, as he had thought. The 'WS' in a previous dream had been a clue to this — there is an area that still carries a Stoke postcode, even though it overlaps with Lichfield.
Was this what it all meant? Chris was tired and confused, and wanted right now to forget about dreams. His sleep had been fitful, and the jetlag was still with him. He was about to go back to bed when something hit him, and hit hard: snow. He turned to the dream diary, and flicked backwards. On 28 May he had helped a dying Saint through snow, and in this recent dream there had been snow on the ground. The appearance of snow must mean urgency and great danger. Chris had to struggle through it in one dream, and it had sealed off the point of danger — the station where the dying Saint lay — in this last dream. Looking back to personal associations, Chris hated snow because it made his job difficult in winter, when he had to scrabble about on people's roofs, trying to repair television aerials.
He realised that the snow could only mean one thing: the shootings were imminent.
For the first time since he had the dream of the air crash Chris was afraid to go back to sleep. Just a few minutes before he had felt that he couldn't be bothered with the dreams, and that they were too jumbled to make sense. Now he felt a great obligation to get things clear in his mind. If the danger was imminent, perhaps he could help, perhaps he could save these soldiers from dying.
He had to understand whatever he dreamt that night.
Bomb warning. Now very soon.
Spit out blood, [houses] outside them. Train. Points. One on same track. Other runs out of track.
[AMBULANCE] [INJURY]
Run away after [HA] still HA.
Funeral. Parked on drive at the place shown before. You can't rely on any other. The whole chain must be in our control. We will be caught otherwise.
Escape along the [track]. Trains each direction. Non stop. [Skoda car on track] between trains.
When he woke on 1 June Chris felt sick. Stanmore was still at risk, and the shooting at the railway station
was imminent. Golf balls meant Great Britain - telling Chris to concentrate on these incidents. The blood had been awful: he had to do something about it.
He did all that he could: at 8.08 a.m. Chris began to fax the dream pages through to Superintendent Branscombe's office. But it was gone half-past nine when the last sheet went through, as the fax receiver at the police station jammed.
Chris could only hope that his dreams would filter through the police and intelligence systems in time to do some kind of good . . .
On the evening of 1 June 1990 three rookie soldiers stood on Platform Two at Lichfield City Station, in Staffordshire. All three were on leave from Whittington Barracks, which was situated near the station. They were on their way home to South Wales and intended to travel together. They were laughing and joking on the platform, waiting for their train, when two balaclava-clad gunmen walked up to them. They must have studied the barracks for some time, as all three soldiers were dressed in civilian clothes.
Before the three had a chance to notice, the gunmen drew handguns and pumped six shots into the soldiers from point-blank range.
The platform was busy with commuters on their way home from work, and it became a screaming mass of frightened humanity as the soldiers hit the ground. Men and women tried to take cover as the noise of the shots rang around the station. One brave railway worker advanced on the gunmen, but wisely backed off when they turned their guns on him: better to be alive and describe them to the police than be dead.
The gunmen turned and ran, sprinting across the tracks and into cover among the sidings.
The railway worker turned his attention on the soldiers. Two of them - Privates Robert Parkin and Neil Evans — were still alive. One of them had wounds in the neck and shoulder, and had lost a lot of blood. The other was wounded in the right arm, and had been lucky.
The third soldier had been unlucky. Private William Davies had been hit several times in the head. He was already dead.
Chris had been on edge all day. When he woke up that morning his sickness had been accompanied by a headache and flashing lights. It had all the hallmarks of a migraine attack - except that Chris had never had a migraine in his life.
After finally faxing the last page through to the police, Chris went about his work, mostly for regular customers who were aware of his dreams, and he told all of them that there was going to be an IRA attack on three soldiers near Stoke.
At half-past five Chris was sitting at home, waiting for the early evening news with a mixture of anticipation and dread. So when a knock came on the door he expected it to be the police, as they had turned up after the Leicester incident. He was relieved to find that it was Keith, his brother.
'Here, you're a bit edgy, ain't you?' his brother said as he came in. Chris told him about the dreams, and how he was convinced there would be an attack. 'Leave it out,' Keith replied, laughing. 'You're mad or something. Look, old son, the only spirits you or me are ever going to see come out of bottles, so I should forget all about that old crap.'
'No, you say what you like, but I know it's going to happen,' Chris said.
'Oh yeah?' Keith decided that he would stick around for a while, just to see what would happen. He had a notion that he •would be able to get hours of fun out of Chris if, as he thought, nothing happened . . .
News of the shootings was made available to the press at 6.15 p.m. and was broadcast on the BBC bulletin.
Both men sat and watched in silence. Chris really didn't know how to feel: on the one hand, he felt justified for continuing, and for putting up with the sleepless nights and having fun made of him; on the other hand, he felt incredibly depressed. Once again he had foretold an incident, yet hadn't been able to prevent a death. Why wasn't he given a clearer picture of what was going to happen? Were the spirits playing games with him? He recalled something David Bolster had told him months before, about the possibility of evil spirits using his dreams. Were they intruding, distorting the information? There was so much to learn: he was more aware than ever that he was sailing into uncharted waters.
Keith stayed -with Chris while he checked the postcode on his computer program. The station lay in WS13. So ST1 had been misleading ... all the time it was drawing him out towards Lichfield, but never quite getting him there: the actual postcode letters WS had turned up only once, in the phrase '[W]ay to [SJchool'. Why couldn't the dream have been more direct? One thing for sure: Chris had been right about the gunmen's escape along the track — there had been plenty of references to going up a track, away from a station.
The more Chris looked at it with hindsight, the more it seemed that the fault lay with him rather than with the dreams: it was his interpretation that was at fault.
It was something he •would have to work at: and he would have to be patient. It could only be a process of trial and error.
June started with Chris asking the spirits to tell him the names of the gunmen who had perpetrated the Lichfield outrage. He was also working on ways of interpreting the dreams. Looking back retrospectively, he realized that there were references in the dreams to the way he had walked to school - W(ay to) S(chool) - when he was thirteen years old: it was a particular route that he never used again. So that meant WS13 - the postcode for Lichfield Station. He now began to reason that the postcodes themselves would appear in symbolic form. Again he asked himself why the spirits would present information in-this way: but there is no answer, even all these years later. Chris just has to try and make the best of what is given to him.
Certainly the spirits were not going to help him any more with the names of the IRA gunmen, he had a dream about animals being let loose from a cage, and masked men swinging down from branches to free them. Perhaps this had something to do with a symbolic representation of their names; perhaps not. There were Animal Liberation Front raids on laboratories within a week of this dream, which would certainly seem to relate to their activities, but Chris was too preoccupied really to notice; once again there were repeated warnings about Stanmore, with the Saint and Gordon Avenue uppermost.
On 2 June there was the following entry in his dream diary:
Submarine — nuclear
cutting through underwater nets. Rescue Radiation sickness
Mustard gas IRAQ ATTACK [fly by remote] [USAF]
In his dream Chris had been in the middle of the desert, surrounded by US Air Force fighters as they bombed and attacked a group of Iraqi soldiers. There were chemical weapons in use, and many of the injuries he saw looked like radiation burns. When he woke, he was sure that there was going to be a major conflict
in the desert, and that the Iraqis would be involved. It wasn't the first time he'd had this sort of warning - but previously he thought it referred to the long-running skirmish between Iran and Iraq. This time, because of the USAF presence, he felt sure that it would be something bigger than that - but exactly what was still a mystery.
It would remain that way for a while, as Chris was about to be sidetracked by events closer to home.
At the beginning of June he was approached by a journalist called Liz Phillips, who worked for the Daily Star. She wanted to write a story about a psychic, and had been given Chris's name by Stuart Winter, who worked on the news desk. Chris and Stuart had known each other for some time, as Chris was familiar with many journalists through his escapades with Trevor Kempson.
Phillips made a bargain with Chris: 'If you can predict three things that happen within a week — three big news stories — then I'll write about you.' Her tone of voice betrayed her scepticism.
'You're on,' replied Chris.
'There is one thing,' she continued. 'The police aren't too keen on this. They told me that what you're doing is remarkable, but they only have six months worth of dreams to go on - there's not enough evidence there to really attack any sceptics that come along. So we've got to keep the story fairly low-key.'
Chris wasn't too surprised about this, as by now Chris Watt had him reporting to Kilburn police station almost every day, and phoning in five times a day at pre-set times. This was partly an overt form of surveillance — there were still elements in the police who felt Chris must be in some way allied with the IRA — and partly a way of making sure there was no repeat of the Canadian escapade. The police wanted to know exactly where Chris was at any given time.
On the night of 3 June the first story came to him. A dog was among flowerbeds, planting a bomb outside a party somewhere in London. Robert, the soldier, was in attendance, telling Chris what would happen. Chris drew a map of a square with a building in it, steps leading up to the building, and a tube station at the corner. The name on the building was obscured: the last word was 'Company', but the first two were unreadable.
Saturday, 9 June: the IRA bombed the Honourable Artillery Company's London headquarters. At 11 p.m. a blast rocked the building from a bomb planted in a flowerbed outside, injuring fifteen people. An engagement party was being held inside at the time. That very afternoon Chris was in Kilburn station, explaining that the bomb would go off at around eleven, in either El or El8 . . . The Honourable Artillery Company is located on the edge of the City, where the district becomes postcode El.
Chris was still puzzled as to why the Honourable Artillery Company had been unreadable in his first dream, but also excited that information about the attack had built up over the week. The repetitions were beginning to form cycles, and this was a new development.
First story complete.
During the week Chris began to get a lot of postcodes coming through to him, most relating to the Salisbury Plain area. There were also landscapes covered in snow. Chris was convinced that there would be a bomb placed under a vehicle on Salisbury Plain. There were numerous references in the dreams to 'sexy picture' and 'swimming pool'. Although these images were otherwise unconnected, they did represent a preponderance of phrases using the letters 'SP', the postcode for Salisbury Plain. He was also sure that there would be a bomb somewhere in Bristol, as he saw a repetition of'[bus] stop' in the dream. The initials, BS, arc the postcode prefix for Bristol.
On Sunday, l<> June, a bomb exploded under a car in Bristol beloiminy; to .1 scientist involved in
vivisection experiments. The car was stationary and empty at the time, but a 13-month-old baby was injured when shrapnel from the bomb penetrated his buggy and lodged in his spine. The child's father, Jim Cupper, had no connection with the car and was simply unfortunate enough to be walking past it when the bomb went off. Animal Liberationists claimed responsibility, and the story made front-page headlines.
This was the week's second story, and it gave Chris a valuable insight into dream imagery: for the first time a bomb warning had been given that featured no dogs. This led Chris to the conclusion that dogs definitely equalled IRA terrorists, and no others. Animal Liberationists were given their own dream symbols: pigs, or bacon.
The third story was again connected with Animal Liberationists: this time it was the Salisbury Plain bomb. A Suzuki jeep driven by Margaret Baskerville, who worked at the Porton Down chemical research establishment on Salisbury Plain, was destroyed by a firebomb triggered by a Mercury tilt device. Fire swept through the vehicle, but the 49-year-old surgeon, who experimented on guinea pigs and mice, escaped with only minor injuries. The Animal Liberation Front expressed regret that she wasn't killed.
Although this happened second in chronology, on 8 June it was the third event to come to Chris in dream sequence, underlining once again the fact that — once out of the physical realm — time is no longer linear.
While all this was going on, other premonitions were still coming through: on the night of 9 June, Chris was sitting in an aeroplane when the fuselage opened — literally, like a zip fastener along the centre — and the pilot was sucked out of the plane. On Sunday morning - 10 June — Chris rang Liz Phillips to tell her about this dream.
'But where does it happen?' she asked him.
'I don't know,' he replied, 'but the plane lands at Southampton.'
During the day a British Airways charter jet took off from Birmingham Airport. Soon after take-off, at a height of 23,000 feet, the cockpit window blew out and the pilot - Captain Tim Lancaster - was sucked from his seat. His life was saved by Nigel Ogden, a steward who was serving tea in the cabin. Thinking quickly, Ogden grabbed the captain's legs and clung on desperately until another steward arrived to help. Between them they hung on to Captain Lancaster for eighteen grim minutes, until the co-pilot emergency-landed the plane ... in Southampton.
Not only had Chris given Liz Phillips three out of three - he'd gone one better, and given her a fourth premonition that had come true. The story appeared in due course and was one of the first to feature Chris and his remarkable powers.
After May, any month would have seemed uneventful, but Chris was still getting information coming through to him, including symbols that he felt were important, although he could not crack them. One symbol whose solution constantly eluded him was that of cakes . . . three cakes on a plate, which went with three people in a cafe, and chicken on a plate. The multi-layering of meaning was obvious: first, it was significant that the letters PC were constantly repeated. And the fact that the number three occurred twice was also of significance. Yet what really worried Chris was the cake: he was sure that it had some important meaning, but it remained -for the moment — out of his grasp.
The spirits also began to show a distinct political bias during this month. They told Chris they believed the Tory Party to be intrinsically greedy, and that they would do little to prevent a forthcoming bomb attack on a Tory club.
'You can't do that,' Chris said in his dream, 'if I miss an attack at this point, it'll make me look like an idiot. Besides, you can't just let people die.'
So the spirits compromised. They told Chris they wouldn't tell him the name of the club, but instead would give him some clues, the main one being: Vauxhall cars in reverse. While Chris stood in front of a road, a procession of Vauxhall cars passed by him, starting with the earliest models and leading up to the very latest.
So what could the link be between cars in reverse, Vauxhalls and a Tory club in central London? Working with the police at Kilburn, Chris worked out that it might be the RAC Club, as this represents 'car' in reverse. The police searched the RAC Club and found nothing.
On 26 June, three days after Chris had the last dream relating to the cars, a bomb exploded at a Tory club in central London. Going off at night, at a time when many members were using the club to dine and for informal meetings, it was a miracle that only six people were injured as a blaze swept through all three storeys of the building, requiring 40 firemen to fight the rapidly spreading fire. It was a large bomb, and buildings up to 500 yards away reverberated in the shockwave, losing their windows.
The club was the Carlton Club. The latest model of Vauxhall car on the market was also called the Carlton.
In an attempt to understand the clues leading up to this bombing, it was easy to overlook the events already described of 21 June, when the alertness of a civilian electrician saved RAF Stanmore from a bomb disaster just two minutes before the timer exploded inside the hidden package.
Where did all this leave Chris, now nine months down the road from his first precognitive dreams? Certainly the police were now taking notice: Chris was faxing
his dreams to three separate officers (Chris Watt, Paul Aylott and Watt's boss, Detective Chief Inspector Dale), was visiting Kilburn regularly and keeping in constant contact by phone. He knew that other agencies were keeping a close eye on him, and he had been told that his information was passed on to them - although he never knew exactly who they were.
He had proof, and witnesses, who could back up his claims: yet he still didn't have a result with which he was entirely satisfied. He hadn't, as far as he knew, helped to prevent any deaths or explosions. And the codes were becoming more and more complicated, always at the point where he thought he was just about to crack them once and for all.
June 1990 had been a quieter month than May. Previously the dreams had always been building in intensity. Now there were fewer of them. Was it all about to end?
CHAPTER TEN
The months of July and August 1990 were even quieter than June. For a while Chris began to worry that he was losing his gift because he was somehow not worthy of it, as though the spirits were punishing him for being unable to understand everything clearly.
It was only in later years, when this decline in dream activity occurred with regularity during the summer months, that Chris began to realise that it was due to something totally beyond his control. His own theory is that solar activity, which is always stronger in the summer months, interferes with the way he receives messages. If the spirits — or what he chooses to believe are spirits — use a kind of'mental radio' to communicate, then it is feasible to assume that solar radiation might interfere with their 'radio' waves, in the same way that it interferes with radio and telecommunications signals during this period.
But all this was in the future for Chris Robinson, as he sweated out the months of July and August 1990, with the dreams becoming more and more confused. He did, however, get a few more clues and keys to his own personal Rosetta stone.
The dreams took a surreal turn at the start of July. Golfing umbrellas and hospital gowns filled his head; dogs ran around a house, but unlike IRA dogs, they didn't actually do anything except run.
On the night of 2 July Chris wrote: 'Gown not sterilised', followed by '[DIED] YES [2]', with 'members of Parliament - going past in a [CAR]' and 'member of P election Tories do not get my vote'. At the bottom of the page were the words 'car in bits'. Most significant was the phrase 'Black Name 2 [45]'. This could only be a postcode, and one of the most blatant he had seen for some time. Taking the letters, it read BN245. BN was Brighton.
He knew that this one would be a bomb: the dogs hadn't been terrorists, but had represented some kind of horror. But it was all too confused. Would it be an IRA bomb or one belonging to some other terrorist group? Recalling the dreams, he knew that two MPs died, but only one of them was murdered. He had written 'Hospital cubicles. [2] injured cardiac arrest.' The other MP would probably have a heart attack.
Chris faxed the material through as usual, but knew there was nothing there to go on. He knew it would happen when he was on holiday in his camper, as he had seen himself in the woods, but that was no good as an indicator, as he had no plans to go away.
On 5 and 6 July he saw lots of cups, large white ones and cups of coffee. Chris knew these meant dead bodies, but there were only one or two cups at a time. Still two people would die — but who were they?
Chris tried to impress on his police contacts that they must warn any MPs who lived in the Brighton area about the bomb attack — as for the heart attack victim, well that was just a stroke of fate that could hit anyone, and he couldn't work out the name from any of the clues he had been given.
Chris Watt's office phoned Chris later in the month and told him they had spoken to every MP who lived in the Brighton area. All precautions that could be taken were being observed. Chris asked Watt who these MPs were, but Watt refused to tell him: it would be a breach of security.
On 22 July Chris decided to take his family away for a few days, so they packed the camper and headed for the Cheddar Gorge camping site, a particular favourite of Chris's. One night Chris was talking to a man who owned the camper parked next to his. They were admiring each other's campers and got talking about a variety of subjects. Chris told the man about his dreams, as he told everyone. Everything always led to this subject, as it was taking over the whole of Chris's life, to the point of obsession. The man scoffed when Chris told him that an MP would die in a bomb attack that would occur in the Brighton area.
'You're having me on,' he said. 'Things like that don't happen.'
Chris was woken early the next morning by a banging on the camper door. Opening it, still half-asleep, he found himself face-to-face with panic and fear: the emotions of his new friend.
'It's just been on the news - some Tory MP has been blown up. In Eastbourne . . .'
Eastbourne lies only a few miles down the coast from Brighton. lan Gow had been the victim of an IRA bomb placed underneath his car. His postcode was BN245. As far as Chris knew, from what he was told later, Gow had been warned but had dismissed the warning, as he didn't believe in psychics. He was also aware that he was a possible IRA target.
But that accounted for only one MP: who was the other? This question wasn't answered until two days later, when Mike Carr, the Labour MP for Derby, died at the wheel of his car. At first it was thought that the crash had killed him, but a post-mortem revealed that he had suffered a massive heart attack, and it was this that had caused the accident.
Looking back, Chris could see cryptic clues to the names of the MPs: hospital gow(n) and misspellings like '[Go]lf [UJmbrella' for Gow. Most important, in the case
of Mike Carr, was the double clue of the MP in a car(r)
— this being the type of vehicle in which both of them died. There was also a reference on 2 July to Derby, Mike Carr's constituency.
Yet in some ways the most interesting aspect about both premonitions was that they had arrived four weeks before the event, and then had ceased: there wasn't the increasing repetition of the Stanmore incident. Chris was at a loss to understand this: was it because they weren't
— in the great scheme of things — as important as an attack on a military installation that could kill numerous people?
This theory didn't really hold up, as the start of July had also seen war warnings in his dreams. To Chris it seemed like World War Three, but when he told Chris Watt, the policeman laughed.
Nonetheless, almost a month to the day after Chris's last war dream — 7 July 1990 - Iraq entered Kuwait, and Operation Desert Storm was on the horizon. For a while it looked like a major war.
So here were two new aspects: the cycles between dreams and events could increase from a matter of days to weeks, and they seemed to run in three-night sequences: each of the three events just described ran for three nights in detail, although there were later 'reminders' to Chris if the spirits felt he wasn't really getting the message. The second major aspect was the addition of wordplay and puns in the clues: Mike Carr in a car, MP and a hospital gown for lan Gow. Whatever you may think of the spirits' sense of humour, these were two new and valuable tools for Chris in his attempt to understand what was happening to him each night.
In August the dreams were non-specific, with a great deal of vague imagery thrown at Chris, associations of ideas that seemed to make little coherent sense. It was as though the spirits had decided to put him through
a crash course in symbolism, and he was lost in a sea of signs.
One thing that did come through clearly, on 9 August, was that there was to be another bomb, and the postcode would be BH. On 10 August this was reiterated, as Chris dreamt of being in a house in Brighton — yet he knew the bomb wouldn't actually be there, as he woke to find he had written '[Brighton] [House]', which suggested that it was a cryptic clue rather than something literal. There was also a reference to Durdle Door, the only part of Dorset that Chris knew; this established the location as Bournemouth.
It was on the night of 11 August that something else became clear. There were very few dreams that night, and Chris couldn't remember any of them when he woke. There was very little written down; in fact, just a few lines:
[FIRE WORK] - in the kitchen Tip out gunpowder
Burn his hand.
[Petrol station] Fill to the top
Long hair cheating.
Some of this made no sense at all, but the symbolic meaning of firework was clear: it related to the bomb Chris had been dreaming about. This was reiterated by the phrase 'Burn his hand', which provided the initials 'BH - H'.
On paper, some years after the event, this-all looks rather spurious, but Chris knew inside himself when he was on the right track, and he knew that the appearance of fireworks signified a bomb attack. He didn't have to see bombs any more, just this simple symbol.
From now on he decided to write in beside the dream the previous meaning of any symbol that he came across: by this kind of cross-referencing he hoped to find a few more answers to difficult questions. It was in this way that he discovered what the appearance of cake meant: it was the symbol for an important person.
This symbol had appeared when Prince Charles had a riding accident in June of that year. Falling from his horse while playing polo, he broke his arm. For some reason, when Chris saw this on the news it made him think of a dream he'd had a few nights before. He pulled out his diaries for that month and searched back through the pages. There it was, on 25 June 1990: the dream was about raspberry cake, which had fallen from a plate and the raspberry jam had spilled. Somebody had splinted the cake to hold it together, in much the same way that a broken arm is splinted. The words that clinched it as a symbol were 'HRH - DI' and '[horse] [race]' on the same page.
Now the cake was reappearing, but to whom did it relate?
The whole month was confused, and it seemed as though things were beginning to slip away from Chris. He was asking every night for information on the next IRA attack and getting nothing that was consistent.
He was still visiting Kilburn, and faxing his dreams through almost every day. When Paul Aylott asked him why there was nothing in the manner of a prediction that he was prepared to put his name against, Chris thought about it before answering.
'There's no repetition,' he said finally. 'They're what's really important. If you get something coming up just once, then you can make anything of it. If it really is some kind of message, then it has to come at least three times. That's something that I've learnt over the last ten or eleven months. And there's nothing that's coming more than once. It's just a mess.'
Chris was depressed by the month's dreams. He began to despair that he would ever again be able to predict anything. Yet in retrospect lie would realise that
August 1990 was an important month, simply because he received no solid message from it. Although he was no nearer to knowing who the new cake was supposed to represent, or whether there really was going to be a bomb in Bournemouth, he had learnt that a dream and its imagery were useless in themselves. They had to be repeated and reiterated for there to be any point to them.
He faced September with a growing pessimism. Yet it was to be a month of surprises - not least of which was the gradual return of his precognitive powers.
September started with a return to form. Chris wanted to know about the next IRA attacks. The dreams told him 'warning- getting hot'. There were to be two small attacks involving a military base. There was also to be a bigger attack, which, he was told, would easily be carried out. 'Soldier' and 'gun' were placed together on the page, and Chris knew that there would be a soldier shot during the month. Interestingly, he didn't know if the soldier would die. The shooting was also signalled by a television with '1 [Russian] make' underneath. The appearance of'Russian' or 'Skoda' inside a box signified a shooting: this was another of Chris's highly personal symbols. He always thought of Russian-made AK47s when there was an assassination. In fact, it was the only make of machine gun or rifle whose name he was familiar with. In the same way, Skoda cars always meant something Russian or Eastern-bloc to Chris.
The first day of September had become the diary for the whole month's activities. Whatever happened, Chris knew there would be two major events in his dreams, as the number two recurred with an alarming frequency: 'small television set [2]', '[2][2][k]', 'wire wound - G[2] [FEED]', 'no [G] 2 volts', and 'High resistance [2]'.
The 'small television set' told Chris it was Stoke: ST. There were two sets, so it was ST2. Would it be IRA or Animal Liberationists? There were no dogs, but there was a reference to bacon. However, the two were nowhere near each other on the page, so they might relate to separate events.
Bournemouth came back into contention as a target, as there were references to '[BUY HOUSE]', and '[Back] of [house] to see [gardens]'. There were '[2] rooms downstairs' in the house, which was 'between [2] others'. This reiterated the idea that there would be two attacks.
Another postcode appeared in the frame: references to 'sacks of post' and 'safe place' gave Chris an SP postcode, indicating Salisbury Plain.
In all, there was more coherent information in this one night than there had been in the whole of the previous month. Chris was delighted: whatever had caused the flow of information to decline had now passed, and he was able to set about interpreting the information and passing it on to the authorities.
On the night of 2 September he asked the spirits to show him where the Bournemouth bomb might be placed. Bournemouth had been one of the few coherent details to emerge from the August dreams, and with the party political conference coming up, Chris was sure that any bomb attack would happen this month.
All he got were further repetitions of the postcode, as the night's dreams centered on postcode clues: '[Borrow] [hack][saw]', 'Balls hanging [out]', '[Husband] [back]', and 'Bought heart-shaped chocolates'. On the second page of dreams he drew a floor plan of a house, with a questionmark in one room. Was this to be where the bomb was placed, or where the shooting was to occur? At the bottom of the page was a message: 'Don't blame yourself, Christopher. Keep trying. Look into the Broken Hearts made of chocolate.'
On the nights of 3 and 4 September Chris was visited in his dreams by lan Gow. They were walking along the
front at Brighton, not far from where Gow had lived, and the dead politician wanted to impress on Chris that he was happy where he was now. He told Chris that he hadn't believed in the spirit world, but he now knew he was wrong, and should have paid more attention to the warnings when they came from the police. He wanted Chris to contact his wife.
'Well, what's her name?' Chris asked. 'I don't know anything about you, other than that you were an MP.'
So Gow gave Chris his address, and told him that his wife's name was Jane. He gave Chris the following message for her, which he wrote in the dream diary:
'Tell them lan sends his love. Please keep trying Christopher. Jane I love being home here. You just can't see me, that's all.'
When Chris looked at the page the next morning, he found that 'lan' was written '[I]an', and that 'being home' was '[Being] [Home]'. Again, this pointed to Bournemouth. Written further down the page was '[Two] in the [passenger] seat with [me]. Jane will remember.'
There were also references to 'Bourne and Hollings-worth', 'then Back Home' and 'She does not [?] in Bournemouth'. Finally there was the imprecation: 'please go and look, Christopher', along with 'Douglas Hurd -warn him' and 'Home secretary — warn him', both of which were underlined twice.
Chris was sure that lan Gow had an important message to pass on, and so contacted Paul Aylott and Trevor Kempson. He reasoned that the police would be wary of telling a recently bereaved widow that her dead husband had left a message for her — but a journalist of Kempson's long standing -would have no such qualms. Chris wanted Jane Gow to receive that message.
He was also convinced that the attack would come at the Tory Party conference in Bournemouth, which was scheduled for the next month. It wouldn't be the first attack, as it hadn't appeared on the first page. More important was the shooting: Chris had an image of someone outside a house, bleeding from a tooth cavity — but the tooth hadn't been extracted, it had been shot out. Was this the shooting he had seen on the first page?
The welter of images was confusing in the cold light of day, and it was hard for Chris to recapture the true meanings, which had been much more obvious in the heat and intensity of the dreams.
On 4 September he wrote 'fly small plane — learn to fly.' This was the start of an image that was to recur over the years. Small plane could have meant Salisbury Plain (postcode = SP), but learning to fly? This was puzzling. A bit clearer was '4 volts [AC] from Radio Control. Find it.' This was an obvious message to Chris that he should work harder on the dreams. 'Radio control' signalled a receiver, and the initials reversed were CR — Chris Robinson. But how much harder could he work? In four nights he had received more information than he had had in any single month since May — and the strain was immense.
He clung to the postcodes and tried to make something out of the rest. For instance, there was the sentence 'Hamlyn Slowe — break into their offices sue them [2]'. Hamlyn Slowe was a firm of solicitors that Chris had been having problems with, but the crucial phrase was 'sue them [2]': ST2 — Stoke again. The box meant that the district concerned might not be the area covered by ST2, but was near it.
The next few nights told Chris that the Bournemouth attack would take place in a hotel, but he was still no nearer to getting a name or a date. He saw dogs in his dreams again, one watching television, another speaking Dutch to someone in a blue uniform who was on a boat.
On the night of 7 September he dreamt of the place where he used to work when he was younger - a shop on Wellington Street. The manager there was a man called Duggan, and Chris worked with someone called Fred Derby. Fred used to repair television aerials, which also appeared in the dream, and he was repairing one in Derby Road.
Four days later a 5-pound bomb exploded in an Army Careers Office in the centre of Derby. It •was planted on the roof, and the soldiers inside escaped injury only because the concrete roof deflected the blast. Shoppers in the street up to 200 yards away were blown off their feet by the force of the blast.
Fred Derby, in Derby Road, on a roof: had it been a message that Chris hadn't been able to decipher correctly? Certainly he had written down all the salient points on the page where he had tried to interpret the dream.
It was the breakthrough: the first prediction for over a month, and he got it at least 50 per cent right. It was the morale-booster Chris needed. Now all he had to do was make sense of the rest of the dreams . . .
The dreams continued for the next few nights: once again the same places were reiterated: Stoke, Bournemouth and Salisbury Plain.
On the night of 15 September the Stoke postcode returned, with the added warning of very thick snow on the ground — Chris actually underlined the phrase 'snow on the ground' twice — and meat pies everywhere. From his experience of bomb warnings, Chris knew that meat pies meant dead meat, wounded meat - carnage and bloodshed. He also dreamt of a knight in armour, and of a girl called Christine Stokes, with whom he had been involved at one time.
He was now sure that the Stoke incident would relate to the shooting of a soldier, who might be a titled soldier, perhaps a retired or ageing General or Major. He duly passed this information on, but it was still a little vague.
On 19 September, just four days after this dream, Sir Peter Terry was shot nine times by the IRA at his home in the village of Milford, Staffordshire. The 63-year-old former Governor-General of Gibraltar was an Air Chief Marshal and had been Governor-General at the time of the 'Death on the Rock' scandal, when three IRA terrorists were shot dead by an SAS hit-squad in circumstances that even now are shrouded in a degree of mystery. This was significant, as Chris looked back over September's dreams and found that he had dreamt of an SAS squad killing three terrorists. At the time he had thought this related directly to the shootings that his dreams were predicting. In retrospect it could also be said that this was a clue to the identity of the man who was about to be shot.
Sir Peter was hit nine times by IRA hitmen, and yet he managed to survive. Interestingly, Chris hadn't seen any cups throughout this month - so he hadn't predicted any deaths.
Salisbury Plain was becoming more and more important, and it cropped up time and again. Chris also dreamt that it was connected with an Austin or Morris car — he dreamt of a red Mini, made by the firms of Austin and Morris at the time they were amalgamated.
This didn't come to a head until the beginning of the next month. On 3 October a dramatic police ambush on the edge of Stonehenge, on Salisbury Plain, led to the arrest of two men and a •woman. They constituted an IRA cell, which was believed to be responsible for the death of lan Gow.
A massive stake-out by the police caught the gang as they swapped information and explosives with a fourth man, in a grey Transit van. He escaped, but was later
picked up on the road as the net tightened around the area. Meanwhile, the three captured terrorists were taken from their car and searched on the ground by armed police. It was a dramatic scene that amazed passers-by. The terrorists captured in the ambush were later tried and convicted.
That morning Chris had woken at 5 a.m. and faxed his dreams through to Hertfordshire police headquarters in a blind panic. He had foreseen the arrests during the night and wanted to make sure the dream turned to reality.
Chris was right about Salisbury Plain being the centre of activity, and he was also half-correct in connecting the red Mini with the scene. Although the car driven by the terrorists was a blue Ford Sierra, the car under which they had planted the bomb that killed lan Gow was a red Austin Montego . . .
As September drew towards a close, the spirits had one last surprise for Chris: a surprise because it had nothing to do with the recurring dreams concerning Bournemouth.
On the night of 30 September the following information was contained in Chris's dreams:
Gold lighter in a drawer. [Video tapes] Flat in London — radio equipment, [money
owed] Baby playing on the ground. Sale or return.
[BOMB] in Kilburn. 2 informers in one street. Block of flats. Lamp stand. Leaded lights. Bamboo [cabinet], [cocktail] cabinet. Machine gun — AK47. Russian Train.
loser sight. 2 from Belfast. 1 man 1 •woman. Gun is a bit rusty — shows me how to use it — change barrel bolt action.
Underground station — hold doors open. Toilet underground. Water on the floor. Flat in London — girl on the floor.

CHRIS ROBINSON
near [Highgate] Point gun at them. Shall I shoot them
Wide open [attack].
Although it may appear rambling, this was in fact one of the most coherent pages Chris had written for some time. The annoying thing was that it had little bearing on the questions he had actually asked, which -were to do with the disappearance of a young boy, Simon Jones. Simon was one of Chris's biggest failures, yet there was much to be learnt from this matter when it was finally resolved.
On the morning of 1 October 1990, however, Chris was not to know any of this. All he knew was that the spirits seemed to be wilfully ignoring the questions he asked, and were keen to impart information of another kind to him.
The most obvious part of the dream concerned the shootings and the reference to Belfast, as he found when he switched on his television and turned to the Teletext pages. As a source of up-to-date information, the Teletext service was quicker and more efficient than a newspaper, as it ran twenty-four hours a day and was constantly updated. Since he had become aware of his ability to predict the future, Chris had found himself becoming a Teletext junkie, and turning it on \vas the first thing he did whenever he came home: When he was staying in the camper, which had only a portable Television without Teletext facilities, he missed it desperately.
That morning's news carried a recently released story about two people shot in Belfast during the night: one male, one female. That explained the section of the page that ran from 'Machine gun . . .' to 'change barrel. Bolt action.' The fact that Chris had possibly been dreaming of the event as it actually happened also accounted for its clarity.

DREAM DETECTIVE
But there were other sections that seemed to be mixed up with it, and which related to something he had been discussing with Chris Watt at Kilburn the day before; something that related to events that had occurred a fortnight previously.
The day before Sir Peter Terry was gunned down outside his Staffordshire home, the IRA had mounted an attack in London, intending to strike at the heart of the then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's constituency of Finchley. Colour Sergeant Bernard Cox was shot as he left the recruiting office in Finchley High Road. He was hit three times and hospitalised. He was released after a few days in hospital, but was left with a bullet lodged near the base of his spine.
The day before Chris had told Chris Watt that he thought the IRA would shoot someone in Hampstead. It was too imprecise for any action to be taken, but shortly afterwards Chris had asked the spirits for help in identifying the gunmen. There had been little response, except that he had drawn a map of a square, but he didn't know exactly where this square was located.
After the dream of 30 September Chris looked back through the diaries and found that he had made references to Kilburn on 18, 19, and 20 September. 'Chamber', 'Sidmouth' and 'Christchurch Avenue' were names that recurred.
That day he took an 'A-Z' map of London with him when he visited Kilburn.
'You know we were talking about finding an IRA cell around North London?' he said to Chris Watt.
'Don't tell me you know where they are,' laughed Watt.
Chris smiled. 'Maybe I do. Look at this.' He showed Watt the dream of the night before, and also the earlier references.
'Sorry,' Watt said after examining the pages, 'I can't say that it means much to me.'
'Yeah, well, you don't know what I do. You see this bit here about a gold lighter in a drawer, and then this bit about a bamboo cabinet and a cocktail cabinet?' He pointed out the relevant sections on the page.
'Yeah . . . so?'
Chris tapped his nose. 'Well, I had a look around here when I was on my way over, and there's a lot of nice blocks of flats around here. Old ones, look a bit like they were just pre-war, right?'
Watt nodded. So far he had no idea what this was leading to. 'Okay. But there's a lot of blocks like that all over London.'
'Yeah, but this bit about the cabinets is the real clue. Y'see, I used to have this girlfriend who lived in a classy block of flats. She had it done out really nice, had taste. It was one of these pre-war blocks, and it had a porter and everything. A bit like some of these round here would have done at some time. With me so far?'
'Yes . . .' said Watt slowly. 'I think I'm beginning to get the point. Her taste in furnishings wouldn't happen to run to bamboo and nice cocktail cabinets, would it?'
Chris smiled. 'More or less. She had this really nice cabinet that she used to keep the drinks in - it wasn't actually a cocktail cabinet, but she used it as one. And she had these bamboo screens. What's more, she had this really flash gold lighter — I don't know why, but I really remember that. In my dream last night it was her flat, but there were these dogs in it.'
'So you reckon that they're in a block of flats around these parts that looks like the one your old girlfriend lived in.' Watt laughed: 'I suppose that narrows it down a bit.'
'More than that,' Chris said, opening the 'A—Z' and producing his own sketch. 'I had .\ look in here, and around the streets as I came in. I reckon it's in this area here —' and he pointed to a block on the map, around
500 yards square. 'It covers a fair few roads, and a lot of flats, but I reckon it's there. You see: Sidmouth and Chamberlayne -just up the road.'
Watt smiled. 'You give me the creeps, old son. I'll pass this one on, see what happens.'
For over a month nothing happened and Chris had virtually forgotten about it until he bought the Daily Express on 12 November. The headline proclaimed: 'IRA Bomb Factory Smashed.'
The story related how a block of flats had been staked out since the preceding Wednesday, and how the police had finally raided it on the Sunday night. Over 100 pounds of Semtex high explosive was found on the premises, and it took army experts over ten hours to make sure the building was safe before the explosive could be taken away. Over 2,000 people living in the vicinity of the block were moved to a nearby community hall, in case of an explosion.
The police believed that the flat was a bomb factory preparing for a major Christmas blitz on the capital. Six people were arrested, and two cars were seized — both found to be full of guns and explosives.
The flat was located in Kilburn. The road in which the block was situated was Chamberlayne Road. The block was named Sidmouth Court. It was within the square drawn by Chris Robinson, who had also supplied the names Sidmouth and Chamber. Christchurch Avenue lay around the corner.
Unable to contain himself, Chris phoned Chris Watt.
'I told you they were there, didn't I?' he said.
Watt 'was silent for a moment, then replied that although Chris had told him, he didn't want anything further to do with Chris. They haven't spoken since.
The first year of dreams ended with an event that made Chris think long and hard about the manner in which he received them, and possible reasons why. It was a
failure, but even in that there was much to learn. Chris discovered the truism that you can learn more in failure than in victory.
Simon Jones was a 4-year-old boy who disappeared from a park in the middle of Hemel Hempstead towards the end of September 1990. Chris felt this very deeply, as two of his own children were under five, and Hemel Hempstead lies not far from where he lives: it could easily have been one of his own children who was snatched.
Even though he had Salisbury Plain, Kilburn and Bournemouth running through his dreams, he was determined to try and help find Simon. He phoned Hemel Hempstead station, half-expecting to be treated like a crank - after all, he'd had no contact with this particular station, and there was no reason why they should know who he was. To his surprise, however, the detectives in charge of the Jones case were willing to see him.
'Look,' one of them said, 'you fax us your dreams every day, or bring a copy in, and we'll spend five minutes with you every morning going over them.'
From 27 September Chris began to ask the spirits every night what had happened to the child. The first night he had eight references to Stevenage, which led him to believe the child had been taken there: Hemel Hempstead and Stevenage are only a few miles apart in Hertfordshire.
He •was also convinced that the boy was dead. The body had been dumped somewhere in the town, and Chris was sure that the killer was a vagrant, who had taken the boy with him on a bus to the town before killing him.
'Grass stains by his back door. Dig up the grass when [we] get set to move.'
The boy lay in a wooded, grassy area, buried rather than just hidden. The initial ('• and S of'grass stains' were
also important - together with 'smashed glass' the next night, they convinced him that Stevenage was right. The postcode prefix for the town is SG.
There were dogs in the park at Stevenage, but these were not IRA dogs — this was 'dog' in its original symbolic meaning of killer. The dogs were then inside a van, leading the boy away from a group of playing children. Chris also saw a fairground and was convinced that Simon had been abducted by a fairground worker.
For several nights, right into October, Chris saw the same things again and again. He reported them to the police in Hemel Hempstead, but they seemed to be losing interest. Then another psychic, Nella Jones, was brought into the picture by Simon's family and was reported by the News of the World newspaper. She believed the boy was still alive, and was being kept somewhere in the area.
Chris \vent to Stevenage at the start of October and drove around the town, hoping that this would help his dreams. Once again he asked the spirits where the body of Simon was hidden. They replied by telling him that the 'fair was at Stevenage, so was [I]'. They also showed him a gas leak in a loft, with loose boards all around, like those disturbed in order to hide a body.
This left Chris even more confused. Now the spirits were trying to tell him that the boy was hidden in the loft of a house, when they had already told him he was buried in some woods and that the killer was homeless.
The disappearance of Simon Jones was giving Chris the kind of anxiety he hadn't suffered since the very early days — not since the Special Branch had turned up on his doorstep after the Leicester bombing.
The police in Hemel Hempstead were sceptical about Chris's dreams — at least those that concerned Simon. The spirits had changed course yet again, and were now intimating that the homeless fairground worker with a loft was also a traveller: 'Been to fair, [out] Side going to see traveller site. Waiting near traveller site. Walk in entrance.'
This was followed by a sketched map of a footpath leading from a car park to a camping site, but it was so vague that it could have been anywhere. Then came: 'Car being driven in very deep snow. Snow on the ground under a car. [BOMB]. Christopher he will do it again soon. You will get him in court. [Waite] and see.'
Still there were no concrete clues. And the police were more and more convinced that Simon Jones was actually alive.
Meanwhile the Salisbury Plain arrests took place, and the policeman dealing with Chris in Hemel Hempstead, a DI Sparrow, was amazed by the dreams that had foretold this.
'Tell me,' he asked Chris, 'tell me how come you can get this right, but you're not any nearer helping us find Simon?'
Chris wanted to answer, but couldn't: he had an idea that the evil and mischievous spirits that David Bolster had talked of some months earlier had interfered with his dreams. Would a hard-nosed policeman want to hear that? Chris also wondered if the spirits were real: did they exist, or were they just inventions of his own subconscious? Were they as symbolic as the postcodes, cakes and dogs, and everything else he dreamt of every night?
The Salisbury Plain arrest gave him a confidence in his dreams that was drained by the Simon Jones debacle: a confidence that was drained still further when Simon was found alive a few weeks later. He was still in Hemel Hempstead and had been taken by a man named May. He was unharmed. The night before he was found, Chris had dreamt that the boy was discovered - but there were still no clues as to where, or what had happened to him.
Several years later this still disturbs Chris Robinson: helping to find the child was something he was very keen to do, and the fact that he failed is still a sore point. Did he try too hard? Certainly, other psychics such as Uri Geller believe that wanting something too much can obscure any power you possess. This is why Geller generally refused to have anything to do with murder cases: he found that he began to care about the victims, and this would lead his conscious mind to block the unconscious, so that messages could not break through. Geller also discovered that being surrounded by detectives wanting to crack a case could obscure his power, as their will and determination would impinge on his own mind by ESP.
Did Chris want to solve this one a little bit too much? Did he block any powers that he had by willing a result too strongly? It's possible that what he saw was a mirror of his own fear about what might have happened to Simon — or to his own children.
Then again, if the spirits were real, as Chris had hitherto believed, it was possible that they were misleading him because they had work for him: they wanted him to concentrate on the other matters in hand. He had Bournemouth, Salisbury Plain and Kilburn running through his dreams throughout this period. Perhaps the spirits, and particularly Robert, wanted him to concentrate on the IRA and so misled him in order to prevent him from being sidetracked again in such a manner.
Kilburn and Salisbury Plain were successes; Bournemouth only partially so, as the bombs were firebombs and weren't found until they had caused a minimal amount of damage. This weighs up well compared to the one failure of this period: the lack of success in the Simon Jones case. But not to Chris.
October 1990: one year on from the time when the precognitive dreams began. In that year Chris had forged links with the police and security services, and was unofficially acknowledged as a source of information. Keith Hearne was still monitoring his progress, logging every success and failure for statistical analysis.
The only question now was this: how much further could it all go?

CHAPTER ELEVEN
During those first twelve months Chris had plenty of time to consider the wider implications of what was happening to him. There seemed to be three possibilities:
1. He was being used as a conduit for spirits to pass on messages. These spirits were human in origin, as they included people he had heard of, who came to visit him in the night: people like Fazad Bazoft and Dr Gerry Bull. But, confusingly, among them they also numbered Terry Waite, and Chris was sure at this time that Waite was still alive. There had been much speculation in the press during the preceding twelve months as to Wake's status as a hostage, but his spirit had actually told Chris that he was alive and hoped to get out soon.
There were also spirits that he couldn't identify, such as the soldier Robert, who had been his first point of contact; and the spirits who had given him religious and quasi-religious messages.
2. The messages came from within himself. He had noticed that the best results were always obtained when he had some personal point of reference. The rail workers' accident in Chorleywood, for instance, had been on a stretch of line near which he frequently drove; the bomb warning concerning Stanmore had involved an area that Chris knew well from his childhood and early work experience.
It was also worth noting that an event that was to happen just outside his own frame of reference often included some landmark that Chris knew. The clearest examples of this were the football hooligans rioting in Poole, and the bombs involving Bournemouth. Both occurred in Dorset, and the key that Chris was given involved the beauty spot of Durdle Door, the only part of Dorset with which he was familiar. Even something as seemingly unconnected as the Philippines air disaster could be accounted for by the nationality of Chris's wife, Bessie, and the fact that he had many times visited the islands with her.
If the messages about forthcoming events were coming from Chris's own mind, then it was highly possible that he could only see things with which he had some kind of link. Certainly psychic researchers and philosophers alike have pondered the idea of the subconscious mind reaching beyond time as we currently understand it: HF Saltmarsh, an early twentieth-century researcher, posited the idea that the mind works like two beams of light. The strong, focused beam is the conscious mind, taking in all that is happening in the here and now. The subconscious, however, is like a weaker, more diffuse beam that spreads over a wider area. As such, it observes things that will happen slightly ahead of what the conscious mind will see — that is to say, it can see into the future. It could be this that was happening through Chris's dreams, and the symbols and spirits were just his own mind's way of interpreting what he could see. 3. Time travel. In many ways Chris was willing to
admit that this was the most way-out of all the ideas he had during the year: but who is to say that it's wrong? Chris is the first person to hold up his hands and say that he doesn't know what is happening to him. So why shouldn't it be time travel. He put it like this:
'Suppose, in the far future, they've found a way of travelling back in time - but it isn't physical. They can't send actual bodies back, but they can send information. So they send back a beam of concentrated message and information, in the hope that someone back in time will be able to pick it up. And that someone, just by chance, is me. Why me? I don't know why. But suppose that's what they're doing, and it's me that's picking it up. That would explain things just as feasibly as spirits from the dead, or me seeing into the future.'
Ultimately, Chris believes that the messages come from a spirit world - a dimension beyond death. The next step of spiritual evolution, if you like: a version of the Bhuddist Nirvana. But that is just his faith. He's quite prepared to admit that he might be totally wrong, and it could be any of the above explanations or one that no-one has even considered as yet. For instance, the scientist and researcher Andrija Puharich became convinced that Uri Geller — whom he spent several years studying on an on—off basis — gained his powers from alien beings in UFOs. When I explained this theory to Chris he laughed . . . and then told me that it might very well be so. After all, •who knows?
During that year Chris was able to ask himself why he had been chosen. In truth, he didn't know, and when he asked the spirits they refused to tell him. So he began to look for answers himself. As he sat down to consider his position, he began to write. What he wrote
is worth reproducing as one man's ideas about what was happening to him, and as a reflection of what was running through his mind during the year of learning.
Notes by Chris Robinson: 1990
Considering the amount of money spent on research into space and astronomy, I think it's incredible that no-one has ever written a book or undertaken any exhaustive research into dreams. Dr Keith Hearne has done a little into 'signalling' - the transfer of thought from one person to another during dreaming - but nothing appears to have been done on content or meaning. Millions of people all over the world are dreaming every time they sleep, thousands of millions of dreams every day, yet not a single study has been published. If they have, it can't be found in any library I've tried. Is there some law about studying precognitive dreams that I don't know about? Or am I the first person to have enough precognitive dreams to be able to say that what is happening is beyond mere chance and warrants further study?
So far as the police I've spoken to are concerned, I'm the only person that they know of who has repeatedly had dreams that appear to foretell unforeseeable occurrences. I'm alone in uncharted waters, yet not on my own. I have the police, Dr Hearne and David Bolster on my side. My own doctor has told me that I'm not mad, nor do I need any medical treatment. He has said that there is still a lot to learn about the human brain and the way that it functions. He says it is possible that I am more developed mentally, or perhaps I have been affected by the high number of near-death experiences that I have had over the years, or by the prolonged periods of anaesthesia that I endured during my open-heart surgery, when I was a child.
I have had a number of surgical operations, the most
serious being one for the rectification of a defect to the aorta. I was nine years old when this was carried out and was in hospital for four months. The operation was performed by the top heart surgeon of the time, Mr Donald Ross, at Guy's Hospital in London on 3 August 1960. I still have the most vivid memories of my time in hospital, and can remember the names of most of the nurses who looked after me.
Dr Hearne believes that this may be a key factor in my ability to have psychic experiences: he told me that a high proportion of people he has studied have had prolonged periods of anaesthesia. His theory is that the mind is somehow expelled from the body and so the out-of-body experience (OOBE) makes you more inclined to accept psychic experiences like precognition when they happen to you: most people cannot let go enough to accept them, but those of us who have had numerous out-of-body experiences are more receptive.
When I was sixteen I was involved in a very serious accident on my motor scooter. I was very seriously injured, and almost didn't make it. It was then that I had the first OOBE that I can remember. I remember vividly looking down on the ambulance that was transferring me from Edgware General Hospital to Mount Vernon in Northwood. It was as though I was travelling on top of the ambulance, and could see it speeding through the streets. I could also look down and see through the ambulance: see my body inside.
By coincidence, Mount Vernon was the hospital where my nan would pass on some twenty years later . . .
Why do we dream what we do — the content of dreams? I have a friend who has suggested to me that we do not exist on a physical level. We live in a mentalistic universe: everything is a dream; one we call asleep, and one we call awake . . .
If you gaze up at the sky at midday you will see,
clouds permitting, the sun. An enormous, bright, round ball of fire, a swirling, seething mass of hydrogen, helium and countless other components. You are looking across ninety-three million miles of almost empty space.
If you look up at the same position at midnight, again into a clear sky, then you will see millions upon millions of suns. Many are exactly the same type of fireball that we see in the daytime; the only difference is that they are much further away from us. Of course, we are surrounded by these suns - we call them stars. Because of their great distance away from us they appear as tiny pinpoints of light. But don't be fooled: some of them are more than a thousand times bigger than our own sun, millions of miles in diameter.
Not all the twinkling objects in the night sky are balls of fire: some are cold, equally hostile worlds that shine by the reflective light of the suns. We call them planets, moons and comets, etc. The use of a telescope enables us to shrink the vast distances and see these heavenly bodies in more detail.
If you took a microscope instead of a telescope, and pointed it at yourself instead of the sky, then you would see a similar picture — if the microscope is capable of a magnification equal to the shrinking powers of the telescope. The atoms and molecules that you then observe, the ones of which you are comprised, look remarkably like the solar system. A universe in miniature.
As above, so below. Microcosm, macrocosm, worlds within worlds, but at the end of the day all you have are objects spinning around each other at phenomenal speeds. At the minuscule end of the scale you have atoms, at the other end galaxies and maybe other universes. Who knows what else is out there or in there?
Mankind and everything else we see is made up of them, but are the atoms that make you really you? Maybe not: we are continually taking in 'new' atoms from our surroundings and at the same time shedding 'old' atoms
back out into the environment. My reasoning says to me that if this is the case then we are not our 'physical' or 'material' body, as this is never the same from one minute to the next. We are continually exchanging atoms with our surroundings and with each other. Some of the atoms that at this very moment make you were yesterday part of somebody else, and millions of years ago those same atoms helped to build a dinosaur. Where were those same atoms a billion or ten billion years ago? They did exist, and must have been somewhere out there in the universe.
Any A-Level physics student will tell you that you can't destroy matter, but it can be changed from one substance to another. At the time of conception, a child is just two cells, but those cells go on to grow into a new human being made of old atoms — atoms as old as the universe. Atoms that have perhaps been in hundreds of other plants and animals.
If you are not what you are made of, then who are you? I think that we are constructed of an unknown substance: sub-atomic, particles smaller than the ones that make up atoms. Science will, I am sure, discover the answers to these questions in due course, for now all we need to do is prove that the seemingly impossible happens.
Nothing seems more impossible than foreseeing events before they occur, especially if those events are outside human control . . .
I was brought up as a Christian in the Church of England, and as a child I went to Sunday School. I do believe that there is a God, and have no problem in accepting a man called Jesus. Equally, I believe in the existence of Mohammed, and in many — if not all — of the other prophets of whom there is historical evidence.
There are some stories in the Bible that I find it impossible to accept, mainly because what we call scientific facts seem to rule out these events as being
impossible. But that would not cause me to dismiss the teachings of the Bible and I think I understand how and even why it was that people of 2,000 years ago wrote in the way they did. Today we would write using modern words and symbols, but the basic meaning would go unchanged.
It would naturally follow that we would today dream in modern symbols too, and so far as I know we would use in our dreams the symbols that were most familiar to us as individuals. The symbols that occur in my dream language are in many instances personal and would only have any meaning to me. Some are more general and have a 'universal' meaning, a meaning that many people would understand . . .
The Big Bang: the beginning of time and all things known to man. If it started with a big bang, and all ends with matter contracting back into one lump - a singularity - then it will surely start all over again. The question must be: how often has this cycle repeated itself? It is estimated that one cycle lasts thirty billion years. Could this be one of God's days?
If a form of life could develop during this cycle to a point where it could escape the continuum, then that life form would develop and continue to develop unaffected by the changes brought about by the destruction of its creative cycle: the first cycle, the birth of God.
The events of the second cycle must be identical to those of the first, if all events start from a single act, a single particle — assuming there was no God.
It must be that, if a life force was created and did escape from the influence of the physical cycle, then that would be the first cycle. If the first cycle lost something at some part of its cycle, then we would expect to see a change in the second cycle with no relation to the first. But if no further loss or escape of something occurred in the second, then no further changes would be brought about, no matter how many times the cycle repeated itself.
As we are here now, and some of those among us are able to see into the future, then we could not be on the first cycle, as there would be no future to observe.
What could be happening when we glimpse the future is that we are seeing what has happened on the cycle before. Without interference the same will happen again, but by seeing or being shown the forthcoming events we are given the opportunity to make changes. Those of us who can see the previous cycle and predict our future hold enormous power, and I feel that what we claim to see is not actually what we see by chance, but what is shown to us.
I believe that there is a God. I also believe he would keep a strict control over the seeing, and only allows to be seen what he needs to show in order to show that the changes he desires us to make can be made.
Our eternal spirit is not physical and is not affected by material actions and is in this sense indestructible. It can only cause physical change by controlling a physical body. Spirits cannot harm us, only cause us to harm ourselves and others. These are the conclusions I have made so far, but are they correct?
This is what I was directed to write one night by Robert, the soldier:
For every action there is a reaction. Before this can be related to, you must first discover if you are looking at an original act or a reaction to an act or chain of acts. It can, of course, be argued that every action is, in fact, a reaction, and there must have been only one original act.
It has, so far, been impossible to isolate the original act. There must only have been one.
It can therefore be assumed that everything that happens is the direct result of the previous action, or the result of the combined previous actions.
If this is all true, then it must be possible to calculate the actions that have yet to occur.
Time: what is time? Well, that is another difficult question to answer.
Time is the interval between two events or a series of events. If there were not an action or event, time, it could be argued, would not exist. It must follow from this that the gap is also an action or event as it does and must exist.
Try to imagine a gap between two events that is small enough that no other action or event, however apparently unrelated, could have occurred. This gap or unit of time is time itself. It can be argued that this gap could not exist, and if that is correct, time cannot exist either. As time is something that we could not deny must at least exist in our minds, it could then be argued that everything that has existed, or will ever exist, must have existed at the same time.
It is worth at this point trying to consider this: everything that has existed, or will ever exist, must exist now and have always existed, and will always exist.
If all things exist always, then travel between one event and another could be a possibility. Try to imagine it as a sideways, rather than a forwards or backwards, step.
The thoughts put forward so far are, of course, assuming we exist at all ...