CHAPTER SIXTEEN In September of 1990 Chris began to feel that very few people were taking notice of what was happening in his dreams. He felt that he had to get some results: so he decided on a bold course of action. He wrote to Graham Bright (his local MP), Scotland Yard and the Ministry of Defence. In each letter he outlined what had happened to him so far, and asked each party what they intended to do to help further research into his dreams and also to put the dream results to good use. On 8 October he received a letter from the Ministry of Defence that was so non-committal as to be almost offhand. It read: I have been asked to reply to your letter of 21 September to the Secretary of State for defence in which you claimed to be able to foresee the time and location of terrorist attacks launched against MOD bases and senior public figures. As I believe you already appreciate, this is a matter more properly dealt with by the relevant Police Force; you appear to have had a number of contacts with the police regarding your predictive powers already. Clearly if you have any knowledge that an attack is to take place, it is your responsibility to make the relevant authorities aware. Nevertheless you have to be certain that any advice you give is well-founded and could not be regarded as an attempt to waste police time. I hope this is helpful. There were pieces of car all over the place. Read in a more sardonic mood, this last sentence could almost be construed as satire: on the one hand, the letter told Chris to keep going to the police with his dreams; on the other, it tried to disclaim any responsibility for acting on them. This was something Chris knew to be false, as his encounters with Special Branch and the Anti-Terrorist Squad over the past twelve months had proved. So there was little joy to be had there: Chris could supply the information, but he would get no help in studying why he dreamt, and no feedback on whether or not his premonitions were acted upon. Graham Bright did, however, reply more positively. In fact, he wrote several times and telephoned Chris about his premonitions. The two men arranged to meet at Parliament, but commitments on both sides caused this to be postponed. Chris was then put in touch with Special Branch in Cambridge, and Mr Bright began to take particular notice of Chris Robinson. Why? Because Graham Bright was John Major's Parliamentary Private Secretary, and Chris began to have dreams about an attack on Major. The first time that Cambridge entered Chris's dreams was on 18 October 1990. He was in a car with an Irishman in a blue suit. He could see the man's face clearly, with its pointed chin, classic pear shape, and thick shock of red hair. The man was talking about the IRA, and although Chris could remember no details about the conversation, he was sure that it had something to do with an attack. The car was a white Mini, and they arrived at a garage where the front of the car was changed: the old front wings were chiselled off and replaced. Then the car was re-sprayed silver after a welder had welded the new parts in place. When he woke Chris could see that he had written 'Car in Bits' and '[mini] change front'. From this he knew that the next IRA attack would utilise a vehicle - not necessarily a Mini, which was why the word was boxed - that had been altered in some way. And from the way he had written the former phrase, he knew that the postcode would be CB - Cambridge. This was reiterated by a later part of the dream, where Chris dreamt of '[2] Childrens Bikes laying on the ground'. Again, the use of capitals by his subconscious mind indicated a Cambridge postcode. The same could be said of the phrase 'Clip Board on a trolley', which occurred at the very end of the dream. There was then a long gap before the next intimation of an attack came to Chris. On the night of 14 November 1990 he dreamt of a white transit van, which was being used by the IRA. Two nights later, on 16 November, there was a reference in the dreams to '[Philip] Lawson', followed by 'I tip off police'. The box around the name Philip suggested that this should be discarded - which left Chris with Lawson . . . the name of the then-Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson. Chris began to feel that the next attack would take place on Downing Street itself: he had Cambridge postcodes running, which indicated John Major, whose constituency lay in Cambridgeshire. But now he also had Nigel Lawson indicated in his dreams. The Chancellor's official London residence is 11 Downing Street, next to the Prime Ministerial residence. John Major was not yet Prime Minister, but Chris had a feeling that this would change: for some time he had been receiving dreams that told him Margaret Thatcher would soon be replaced. Put together with the preponderance of references to )ohn Major, Chris felt certain that he would be the replacement. At any other time this would have been a premonition noteworthy in itself, but right now that \vas the last thing on Chris's mind. There was nothing actually to give a concrete attack date, but the dreams were starting to filter through some sort of warning. Chris wrote to Graham Bright again, telling him of his fears. Bright responded by inviting Chris to meet him at the House of Commons to discuss his dreams. The meeting was set to take place within the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, the dreams began to come through \vith a stronger message. Chris dreamt of IRA men getting away from a scene of crime on a big motorbike. This turned out to be correct — after the Downing Street attack to which this was a lead-up, the IRA men who had perpetrated the attack made their escape by motorbike. But the dream had a double meaning, as Chris wrote the phrase 'Big Old Motorbike' in his dream diary, which was becoming a way of indicating a bomb: Big Old MotorMke. He also began to get postcodes for SW - Downing Street, of course, is SW1. Along with this came a vision of being in a large house, with plaster shaking off the walls. The house was beginning to crumble. Chris was beginning to get worried by the increasing frequency of these images. By 23 November Cambridge had begun to figure again in the equation. There •were more postcodes coming through. Graham Bright had to change the date of his meeting with Chris and postpone it until the New Year. He had commitments that made it impossible to hold the meeting, and Chris was due to fly off in December to the Philippines. With some regret on both sides, therefore, the meeting was postponed. Bright was, however, sufhaently concerned by what had happened to pass Chris on to the Cambridge Special Branch, from where he was contacted by a Sergeant Peck. Peck gave Chris his fax number and requested that he forward all his dream diary sheets with his translations. The MOD may vacillate, and Scotland Yard may have kept its own counsel, but Graham Bright was taking Chris very seriously indeed. On 2 December Chris asked the spirits to show him the next IRA attack in England. He needed to know so that he could leave the country with a clear conscience and warn whoever he needed to with an ease that wouldn't be possible if he suddenly had a message while in the Philippines. For his pains, he was rewarded with a series of images that left him in no doubt about the target. The dreams of 2 December were extremely confused, and made no sense as a series of images, but when trans¬lated the next morning there were repeated references to 'PM' and 'CB' - the Cambridge connection coming up again and again. Chris dreamt of a river, and this remained a strong image: was there a river running near Major's house? He faxed the dream, and his questions, to Sergeant Peck. More startling still were the dreams for 3 December, when Chris actually wrote the postcode SW1 in his dream, without it being symbolically represented. More than this, he dreamt of a massive Old English Sheepdog, which chased after him. In his book, he wrote, 'Dulux [dog] after [ME]' . . . The dog was obviously an IRA symbol and the 'me' in the dream, as it was boxed, seemed to infer that a target was close at hand. Further down the page was written: Watching TV - Whole House shakes Did the outside walls [shake] switch on the wall [stays still] It was yet another indication that the attack would be on a house, and that it would severely damage it in some way. '.switch on the wall' was also a postcode clue. The house would appear to be in an SW postcode. Put together, this had to mean an attack on Downing Street. While this had been happening, the expected coup in the Tory Party had occurred and since the first warnings had corne to Chris, John Major had been installed as Prime Minister. Thus it was no surprise that Chris wrote on 3 December: Halt at Major Rd ahead Phone call warning to [police] Later in the dream Chris had been at a pub in Thrapston, which is on the main road to Northampton. He was with two Irishmen, drinking beer and eating. When he awoke this worried Chris, as Thrapston is near the town where Major lives - his house is located on the other side of the Al, the main road Chris had seen. In case this was a clue for a military target, Chris checked on the nearest military installation, which was the Simpson Barracks in Northampton. But there had been no direct military involvement in the dream, and the barracks were located several miles from the dream's locale. The meaning was pretty self-evident: there was danger ahead for John Major. On 4 December Chris wrote again to Graham Bright. He received a reply dated 14 December, which read: Thank you for your letter of 4 December listing all the various incidents that you have foreseen. As you know, I have been in touch with the police and have spoken personally to the Chief Superintendent at Luton. The Cambridgeshire police are aware of you and of the fact that you have information to give to them. If you would like to let me have any additional detail, particularly of what you are predicting for the future, I will ensure that the appropriate authorities are fully aware. The letter was signed personally by Graham Bright. In the period between the two letters, more infor¬mation had been coming through strongly. On 6 December Chris had once again written 'Halt At Major Road AHEAD'. At the top of the page was 'Northampton - at a [House] watching a tape'. Again the reference to Northampton, which seemed to be Chris's own personal geographical indicator for John Major's home. Was the attack actually to be on Major's home rather than on Downing Street? Was it possible that attacks were planned on both locations? Certainly the dream seemed to be inferring this. Chris had also written 'J [MORGAN]' and 'open to car [MORGAN]'. This was another of Chris's personal clues: almost twenty years before, Chris had worked at a place called Bar Hill, as an engineer. Bar Hill lies less than ten miles from the Majors' home. The company that Chris had worked for was Phillips Electrical Engineering Services, and his boss had been a man named Jim Morgan. The open sports car had been an old-fashioned racer - a Morgan. Taken together, Chris felt that the location was being given to him by the spirit of his old boss. John Major now began to flit in and out of the dreams as a real person. He didn't do anything that was worthy of note, but he was always there, lurking in the background. His presence made Chris certain that he was now a prime target. On 14 December - the day that Graham Bright replied to his last letter - Chris flew to the Philippines, leaving behind him as much detail as he could: the dreams hadn't given him as much as he might have hoped, but certainly enough to put Special Branch in Cambridge on their guard. While he was away the dreams became scrambled, and there was little in them that related to home: Chris has noticed time and again that his dreams seem to shift their reference to wherever he is located. It is rare for him to have precognitive dreams relating to England when he is as far away as the Philippines. During this time he was out of touch with what was happening at home and had no idea whether or not an attack had occurred. Things started to hot up for Chris just a few days before he came home. On the night of 1 January 1991 he began to dream of trouble. Firework — [Roman Candle] 2 close [fountain] - blows up in the air and all over us — try to run away. The firework was a new symbol for a bomb — and the fact that it was a Roman candle meant that it would be a rocket. There was heat and fire over the people who tried to run away. There were two of them, and Chris knew this meant that there would be two IRA men who made the attack. Another reference to rockets came with the mention of Chris's friend Bob Monkhouse - a mention of Bob also meant a bomb, although it took Chris some time to work this out. Eventually he realised it meant 'I see Bob Monkhouse'. or MCIJM', therefore: intercontinental ballistic missile. The night of 2 l.inu.irv w.is even more intense: there were numerous rcten-iu rs to SW and SW1 in the dream and on the page. Thru- w.is ,i long section of dream when Chris was in his c.unpri The particular camper he had at the time was a white transit van, and this tied in with one of the very early dreams in which a vehicle was being re-sprayed silver. The location was also being fixed by a more personal reference at the beginning of a long written section: Tomato sandwich with salt — alternate in rows -park on a hill — brakes not very good — snow on the ground outside a phone box - make a phone call. Phone Churchill Coleman - on allocation. When Chris worked in London he often used a sand¬wich bar in SW1, a few minutes' walk from Downing Street. He would always order a salt beef sandwich, but would horrify the Jewish owner of the bar by requesting tomato with the salt beef. This reference gave a clue to location. Snow on the ground was the long-standing sig¬nal for danger. And the final part of the writing was pretty clear: Chris was being told to ring George Churchill-Coleman, then head of the Anti-Terrorist Squad. In the dream he couldn't get through, as the Commander was 'on allocation' and couldn't easily be contacted. The meaning of this, too, was obvious: Chris would have immense difficulty getting through to anyone from his remote location in the Philippines. He would have to wait, and be patient. There was one other thing, which didn't make sense at the time: at the top of one of the pages was a mention of being in the camper - the white transit van - and lighting the gas. Further down the page was a drawing of three gas rings on top of a stove. It was the design of stove his mother had had over twenty years earlier. What this had to do with anything Chris just couldn't work out. Except that it bore an uncanny resemblance to the kind of mortars the IRA used to fire rockets. It was only a couple of days until he returned to England, and Chris wondered what the future held in store for his dreams. Back in England the important dream came on Tuesday, 8 January. It was so explicit in many ways that it prompted Chris to send it directly to Graham Bright. The dream revealed codes for the SAS, SW1, BT - the postcode for Belfast, and a sure sign of IRA activity in Chris's universe - and Cambridge, signifying John Major. Part of the dream read: Very complex - [WH Smith] can you get the card back - what do you press. 2 cards. 2 machines. To Chris, this meant that two attacks were planned, both in the SW1 area. The second target would be a branch of WH Smith. But why? It wasn't that Chris distrusted the spirits, but he couldn't work out why a branch of Smiths would be attacked. Even as what was termed a 'soft' target - one with little strategic impor¬tance - it seemed a waste of effort. Especially when there were much bigger fish for the IRA to try and fry. But Chris had no doubt that a branch of WH Smith would also be bombed, as he turned the page of the diary and began to translate. For there, on the top line, was 'sex on the floor', which had come to represent the term 'soft target'. Like many of Chris's dream codes, the real meaning was once again obtained by taking the initial letter of each word, which in turn spelt out the word that was the real message. Also on this page was a drawing of a house, with the word 'MALL' written up the side of the house, as though along a road running in front of it. Underneath was 'not up 2 roof, and ^/l way up only'. The real clincher was 'S. Wall', obviously another SW postcode symbol. There was only one thing which, again, did not make sense at the time. At the top was •written 'New World [43X]'. Taking this as a postcode symbol, Chris came up with NW3 and NW4 - Swiss Cottage and Hendon. Was this an indication of another target, or some kind of clue as to the whereabouts of the cell that was about to perpetrate the attack? Later, of course, much would become clear to him: 'New World [43X]' referred to a make of gas cooker, and was another reference to the gas rings he had seen a few nights before. And the word 'Mall' was written beside the house because the attack was launched from a van parked in London's Mall. Now, years after the event, it's hard to imagine how Chris must have felt as he tried to make people listen to him, and feverishly translated the dream to send to Graham Bright. These dreams had visited him with an intensity and emotional impact that he hadn't experienced since the Stanmore affair. He had hoped that he would be able to control the way they pulled on his emotions, but now he found that this was impossible: they haunted his every waking hour. On 10 January he saw a white transit van being re-sprayed by the IRA. He knew the van that would be used in the attack would be white - as indeed it was. Throughout the rest of the month he was still getting postcodes, and lots of dreams in which snow littered the ground: there was imminent danger. However, things began to get confused, as the Gulf War was on the horizon, and Chris found his dreams being filled with visions of Iraq and war in the desert. It wasn't the first time that he had encountered such visions in his dreams, but he was inclined to put them down less to precognition than to the fact that the imminent war was ever-present on the television and in the newspapers and was a favourite talking point among the public. 1 •Everywhere he went, he heard something to do with the forthcoming conflict - would it happen, wouldn't it, would it be World War III, or merely a local conflict . . . The subject was inescapable, and Chris felt that this was starting to leak into his subconscious and obscure the real messages. But just to let him know the attack was still imminent, he had a dream on 25 January 1991 that told him the SW postcode was connected with the IRA and the number 2 - two attacks. The following night he dreamt of being at Victoria Station: he hadn't been to the station for many years, not since he had a girlfriend who lived in Brighton. He would travel into London to catch the Brighton train from Victoria. Victoria Station is at the other end of SW1 from Downing Street and the Mall. That much Chris knew. What he didn't know was that there are two branches of WH Smith located in the station complex. February began with a bang, as Chris saw ICBMs (Bob Monkhouse again) attacking in London. On the night of 3 February the dreams became stronger. Chris was at a roadblock, and asked the driver of a white van if he had seen the reason for the roadblock. The driver replied that he had seen the crash leading to the roadblock, they were driving too fast ('2 fast'), and they killed themselves. The car was a write-off. This could only mean that two people would be behind the attack, that the vehicle from which the attack was launched would be a write-off, and that it would be a white transit. All the clues were adding up, more and more of them. But was anyone listening? By this point Chris was beginning to wonder: Chris Watt had little to do with him; he was sending things to Graham Bright, but who was lie passing them on to? At the end of the day all he was left with was Paul Aylott. And, as Aylott said to him, 'You've written to the Prime Minister, his private secretary, the Ministry of Defence - what more can I do, or what can you do? Go and knock on the door?' The increasing intensity and frequency of the mes¬sages was pushing Chris close to the edge of madness. He was telling everyone he came across about the imminent attacks, and how he couldn't make anyone believe him. Wednesday, 6 February, saw the most blatant dreams yet: three rockets firing into space, with postcodes for SW1. There were more re-sprayed cars like those he had been seeing for so many months. When he woke in the morning he knew what was going to happen. At this level of intensity, the attacks would happen either that day or the one after. It was early morning: 4 a.m. Chris knew that he wouldn't be able to go back to sleep, as the dreams were far too intense for him to rest from them. His wife was still working at a hotel, and she was due to start an early shift at half-past five. Chris made her breakfast, then drove her to work. When he got home it was still early and he couldn't rest. For something to do, he took his children to school and told a couple of their teachers about his dreams. By the time he got back home it was close to ten o'clock. There was no way he was going to ring Paul Aylott, or fax Cambridge Special Branch or the number he had for Chris Watt - or even contact Graham Bright. By this time Chris had become resigned to the fact that no-one was taking any notice of him. He had to make himself relax somehow, so he ran a bath, hoping for a long soak with which to ease the stress. It was not to be. He had been in the bath only for a few minutes when the phone rang. At first he wasn't going to answer it, but a voice in his head said, 'Answer it, Chrissy, it might be important.' If there was one thing he had learnt by now, it was never to ignore the voices that occasionally came into his head. He got out of the bath and wrapped a towel around himself. Covered in shampoo, and freezing in the February weather, he answered the phone. It was Graham Bright. He told Chris that there had been a mortar attack on Downing Street at ten o'clock that morning. Three rockets had been fired from a white transit van that had then exploded in the Mall. Two men were seen making a getaway. One of the rockets had landed in the garden of No. 11 Downing Street, the other two had hit No. 10, but had caused little damage, apart from the falling plaster dust that surrounded Bright as he spoke. 'What can I do to help you?' he asked Chris. 'I now know that you were utterly correct.' 'If you really want to help, the first thing you can do is write me a letter,' Chris replied, 'and in it you can tell me about all the things I sent you. Because when I go to people, the biggest problem I have is that they don't believe me. If I had verification from somebody in your position, that would make things so much easier.' 'Well, you write to me again, detailing all that you have done, and I'll reply, affirming it all. I have to be very careful because of my position as the PM's private secretary — but I do believe you. And all the police I've spoken to who have dealt with you believe you. The problem is that all the ones who have no experience of you think that you're mad, and think that I'm mad to believe you.' It wasn't until Chris put the phone down that something remarkable struck him: within an hour of a major attack on Downing Street, the PM's private secretary had found time to ring a psychic in a small Bedfordshire village. What kind of powerful feelings had motivated him to remember what Chris had said in the midst of all that mayhem? The first attack, and the one that had really occupied his thoughts, had occurred. But what of the other attack? The dreams had been very specific about there being two attacks, and one of them involving a branch of WH Smith. On 10 and 13 February 1991 he dreamt about Victoria Station again, and was certain that the attack would occur at Victoria. A soldier came to tell Chris about the IRA attack. It wasn't Robert, his usual contact, nor was it anyone else he knew. But on 13 February the visions were much clearer. There were killers on a station platform, and while they stood there, Chris looked upwards and could see World War II planes criss-crossing the skies, firing at each other. He was witnessing a dog-fight — did this signify the IRA? Were they the fighting dogs somebody was trying to tell him about? He was at the station waiting for his friend from Brighton. On 14 and 15 February he again saw railway stations — the dream on 15 February could have been London Bridge station, as Chris recognised parts of it — on the other hand, was it just because he remembered so little of Victoria that his subconscious was drawing on images of London Bridge, a station he knew so much better? He bought a ticket to Gatwick, and the only stations he knew on the route were Victoria and London Bridge. By Sunday, 17 February, he knew that the attack was imminent. When he woke up on the Mon¬day morning he was certain the bomb would go off that day. The first thing that greeted him on the news was an announcement that a small bomb had gone off at Paddington Station, at about half-past four. There had been some damage, but no-one had been hurt. Naturally, Chris was relieved to hear this but at the same time he felt confused: he was sure it was Victoria, and his dream of the night before had been distressing, as he had been in the Underground at Victoria after a blast, with many people who had been injured. Why had the spirits misled him about the station? The answer lay in the fact that his dreams had started to warn of two bombs in the next attack . . . and Paddington was only the first. The second bomb went off three hours later, at the peak of the rush-hour. The shrapnel bomb was placed in a litter bin outside WH Smith on the station concourse. It erupted with savage and bloody violence, killing 34-year-old David Corner, the father of a 16-month-old child, who was on his way to work. A piece of shrapnel gouged a massive hole in his chest and pierced his heart. Three children were among the injured, one of whom was a 12-year-old boy who was hit in the buttock by a piece of shrapnel as he waited to catch a train on a day out with his father. One eye-witness described the scene: 'I was standing watching the world go by and waiting for my platform to be announced. Suddenly there was a loud bang and a big yellow flash about fifteen yards to my left. People were screaming, 'It's a bomb, it's a bomb', and there was organised chaos. 'Windows were broken. There was shrapnel, pieces of metal and a lot of blood. 'One man was very badly injured. His whole stomach was exposed. He took the whole impact in his stomach. 'There was a cyclist with him, doing a very good job calming him down, talking to him and checking his pulse. 'I went to the man nearest me. His jaw was broken and part of his lower leg was gone. He said his name was Geoff and he was an engineer. He was in quite a bit of pain. I didn't think it was .1 good idea for him to look at his leg, so I talked to him.' In all thirty-nine people were caught in the blast as the bomb exploded at 7.40 a.m. Deadly showers of glass and debris ripped into commuters as they arrived at the station, into people buying tickets, and into people using the payphones. The IRA claimed that they had telephoned a warning, and that it was a cynical act on the part of the police not to clear the station. The police, on the other hand, countered that the warning had been given using a new codeword that they could not verify in the midst of a spate of hoax calls following the Paddington explosion. The phone call had been logged at 7 a.m. leaving the police less than three-quarters of an hour to clear a mainline railway station at the beginning of a weekday rush-hour. It is extremely doubtful that a busy station could have been cleared in the time given before the explosion. The carnage at Victoria resembled that seen by Chris in his dream the night before. It was the culmination of a long-running series of dreams relating to attacks in the centre of London. Once again Chris had tried to make the police listen to his premonitions. He was having success in helping the police at a local level, as his experience with Patrick Frater was demonstrating; this was happening concurrently with the Victoria and Downing Street warnings. Yet once matters got beyond a local level Chris kept running into a wall of silence. Were his reports really being acted upon? He didn't doubt that Graham Bright had passed on information that Chris had sent him: the fact that the clearly rattled Bright had telephoned him so soon after the mortar attack on Downing Street certainly showed that he took Chris seriously. But what happened to that information afterwards? Chris felt that the intelligence services, and the higher echelons of the police, didn't seem to take him as seriously as those who had actually met him. It was as though there was a level at which the apparent outlandishness of the manner in which he derived his information outweighed — for them — his past accuracy. That was why he was glad that Bright had agreed to help him: without back-up of this kind Chris wouldn't be able to get his dreams logged and the process by which he dreamt investigated. Then, perhaps, he would be taken seriously. He would be able to stop an outrage like the one at Victoria, instead of sitting, crying, in front of the television, knowing that he had done all he could to prevent it but that, because of other people, it had not been enough. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN During the years since the dreams started to take over Chris's life, he has had several spirit guides: that is to say, the apparent spirits of dead people, who have appeared in his dreams and have either guided him through forthcoming events or have given him information that he has been able to translate into everyday sense. Whether or not they really are the spirits of the dead, entities that appear to take on this form, or indeed mani¬festations of Chris's subconscious is ultimately unimpor¬tant. What is significant is the information they pass on and the fact that Chris is able to accept these 'people' in his dreams and relate to them. In this book they have been referred to throughout as 'spirits', simply because it is best at this stage to take Chris's word that they really are deceased people. Most of the spirits who have visited Chris are either people who have been in the news — such as Fazad Bazoft, the journalist executed in Iraq — or have been friends. After his death in December 1990, a frequent visitor was the journalist Trevor Kempson, who had •worked with Chris on a number of stories for the News of the World. On the other hand, the spirit who came to Chris in his first precognitive dream was an unknown soldier who only once revealed his name as Robert, and then only in passing. Possibly the most contentious name to have emerged from Chris's spirit world over the past few years is that of Yvonne Fletcher, the woman police constable who was shot down by a sniper's bullet outside the Libyan Embassy in London in 1984. One of the most active spirits to have visited Chris, she was involved in a number of foiled IRA attacks and in predictions of IRA hits. Such a high-profile spirit presented its own problems to Chris. Even now, several years after her first appear¬ance, the mention of Yvonne Fletcher is still inclined to raise the hackles of police officers who have little knowledge of Chris and his record with the security services. As recently as 1994, on a cable television show in Bristol, a phone-in guest who was an ex-policeman raised objections and insulted Chris on air when the question of Yvonne Fletcher was raised. Even Chris was a little bemused when the spirit of Yvonne first identified herself to him. However, the circumstances surrounding her description of how she came to find Chris were so convoluted and particular to himself that he was left in little doubt that she was a spirit - after all, she knew things about his friends that he didn't know himself . . . This might sound mysterious, but will become startlingly clear later. By a strange act of synchronicity, Yvonne entered Chris's life at around the same time as Detective Inspector Alex Hall, who has already featured in an earlier chapter. Paul Aylott •was promoted and moved to a position at a training school; Chris Watt had little to do with Chris any more. For a while it seemed that there was little interest in Chris and that nobody was interested in monitoring his dreams any longer. All of this changed at the beginning of June 1991. The night of Saturday, 1 June, had been disturbed. Chris had slept only htfully, and the welter of dream images had made little sense to him. He had been engaged on a repair job, connecting wires. Then he had driven oft with a man in a big black car, which had been following another car, driven by a woman. They had tailed this car round a maze of streets and down an alleyway that stopped in a dead-end. The driver told Chris that his name was Ben Holloway, and they then picked up two young girls who were looking for a lift. The next thing Chris was aware of was that Holloway was getting out of a taxi, and Chris was dropping the girls at a filling station, asking them to get out of the car . . . None of it seemed to make much sense and when he woke Chris felt terrible: his head was muzzy, and there was a sour taste in his mouth. He got up and had a bath before making himself some coffee and trying to sort out what the dreams might mean. He was astonished to find a reference to writing a letter to Chris Watt - he hadn't been in touch with, or even thought of, Watt for some time. He was still puzzling over the dream diary when the phone rang. He answered it to find Sergeant Glen Clements on the other end of the line. 'Can I come and see you this morning?' Clements asked. 'Yeah, I'm not doing anything much,' Chris replied cautiously. He vaguely knew Clements, but had had no real contact with him over dream matters. He wondered what this could be about. 'Good. I'll be up in about half an hour,' the Ser¬geant replied. Before the half-hour was up there was a knock at the door, and Chris opened it to be greeted by Clements. 'All right, let's not play games,' said Chris, 'what's all this about?' 'I'd like you to come down to the station for a bit. There's someone down there who wants to have a word with you about your dreams.' 'Okay - I suppose it can't do any harm,' Chris replied. It may have sounded offhand to Clements, but inside Chris was relieved: someone actually wanted to talk to him. That meant that they were still taking him seriously. Clements drove Chris to the Bedfordshire Police Headquarters in Luton. Chris was familiar with the building, and knew several of the officers they passed on their way to a quiet office. Clements opened the door without knocking and ushered Chris into the room. 'Sit down,' said the man sitting behind a desk, his back to Chris as he stared out of the window. When Chris was seated, the man swivelled round in his chair and looked Chris full in the eye. 'Would you like a drink?' he asked. Chris nodded, so the officer took a bottle of whisky out of a desk drawer and brought it down onto the desk top with a loud bang. 'Let's get this straight from the start,' he said with a smile. 'The only spirits I believe in are these. It's up to you to convince me otherwise. All right?' He took two plastic cups from another drawer and poured two shots of the whisky, pushing one towards Chris. 'Have a drink - and tell me all about it.' Chris took the cup. Where would he begin? So much had happened in the last twenty months that he wasn't quite sure. Taking a deep breath, he decided to start at the beginning with the first appearance in his dreams of the soldier Robert. Two hours and half a bottle of Scotch later, the story was complete. Along the way the man opposite Chris had asked him numerous questions, and had sidetracked Chris away from the main story in order to check up on minor details. At last he seemed satisfied. Til make a deal with you,' he said finally. 'There's a lot in what you say that's really interesting. If you keep sending your dreams to me, and there are things in there that get results, then I'm prepared to monitor you indefinitely. Can't say fairer than that, can I?' 'As long as you'll be reporting to someone, and you haven't just done this off your own back,' Chris replied. 'You know better than to ask stupid questions like that.' And so ended Chris's first encounter with Alex Hall. It was only afterwards, when he got home and looked again at the diary, that Chris realised that this meeting had been shown to him in his dreams. The writing concerning Chris Watt read: [Stanmore] - Tell Chris Watt - Write a letter [2] him - he may be allowed [2] talk [2] you again -outside Stanmore station. It seemed strange that after an 8-month gap between his last official liaison and this sudden meeting with Alex Hall he should have had a dream the night before about Chris Watt in which the figure 2 was so prominent -two policemen, perhaps? Whether or not he was searching for a meaning that wasn't there, Chris now felt that he was being taken seriously again. Three days later, on the night of Wednesday, 5 June 1991, Chris dreamt that he was in Hemel Hempstead, a town just over the county boundary in Hertfordshire that he knew well. He kept passing a road called Fletcher Way. In fact, he seemed to be going round in circles, as he passed it several times. What Chris couldn't work out was why he should keep passing it. In the dream he was talking to Sergeant Sparrow, who was the officer he had dealt with during his attempt to help find Simon Jones in the October and November of the previous year. They were discussing Simon, and then Chris noticed that there was a uniformed woman police constable with Sparrow. She was trying to break into the conversation. 'Listen,' she was saying urgently, 'there's going to be something about me in the paper tommorow. I was with the Met until I died, and there's going to be a large cheque.' She went on to talk about a plane going down, but the dream began to get muddled and Chris lost the sense of what she was saying. When he woke, he looked at what he had written. Among all the usual verbiage that he couldn't decipher were the phrases: Large cheque — Front page - I died from the MET PLANE DOWN - Bless you This all related to what the police constable had told him, but what 'PLANE DOWN' meant Chris just couldn't work out. He came to the conclusion that a policewoman from the Metropolitan Police Force would be killed, and that it would make the front page of the newspapers. It was a feeling reinforced by the appearance of another woman police officer — this time a woman Detective Constable — in a later portion of the dream, where she was questioning a prostitute. Chris phoned Alex Hall. 'There's going to be a front-page story today about a dead policewoman and a large cheque. She's going to be from the Met.' 'I haven't seen anything in the papers,' Hall replied, 'but on the other hand I haven't actually seen all of them.' Chris went out and bought as many of the daily papers as he could find, but there was nothing on the front pages that could possibly fit with what he had seen in his dream. He was despondent, and more than a little confused. It had seemed so definite in his dream, and yet there was nothing — not even on the inside pages — that seemed connected. There was one more chance for him to be proved right: the early edition of the Evening Standard, the evening paper for the London area, hits the streets around midday, and Chris was at his local newsagent when it arrived. The headline took his breath away: YVONNE'S MURDER: GADAFFI ATONES Huge cash payment. To the right of the headline was a grainy black-and-white photograph showing the head and shoulders of a young woman in police uniform. The photograph was captioned: 'WPC Yvonne Fletcher: she fell dying into the arms of her fiance Michael Liddle. People still leave flowers at the spot.' Chris stood in the middle of the pavement staring dumbstruck at the front page. He instantly recognised the photograph as showing the WPC who had spoken to him in his dream the night before. He had almost forgotten about WPC Fletcher, who had been in the headlines seven years ago. As he read the story it all came back: 25-year-old WPC Fletcher had been policing an anti-Gadaffi protest outside the Libyan People's Bureau - the name given by the left-wing dictator to his embassies - when a shot rang out from the first-floor window. It hit Yvonne in the back and she fell dying against the garden railings in the centre of the square, where she was comforted by her fiance, who was also policing the demonstration. From inside the building a Libyan official with a machine gun was peppering the square with shot. Eleven protestors were also hit in the hail of fire. Yvonne was the only fatality. The country was outraged at the killing, and the Libyan People's Bureau was under siege for eleven days, but despite Britain severing all diplomatic ties with Libya, none of the Libyans was ever charged with the murder: the thirty officials claimed diplomatic immunity and were simply expelled without arrest. Among them was the man who had fired the shot that killed Yvonne Fletcher. The Libyans had left a cache of arms inside the building, and a legacy of hate. A pavement plaque was later placed in St James's Square, reading simply 'Here fell WPC Yvonne Fletcher, 17 April 1984'. As Chris read on, he realised that the spirit who had spoken to him the night before had belonged to Yvonne Fletcher, and she had been trying to tell him about the six-figure offer of compensation that Colonel Gadaffi was offering a police charity under the auspices of Conservative MP Teddy Taylor. When Chris phoned Alex Hall, the policeman was more than impressed by what Chris had told him: 'After all,' he said to Chris, 'it's not often that a dead woman police officer makes the front page of a newspaper — especially in connection with large sums of money.' It was only afterwards that Chris looked back and realised that she had also tried to tell him her name in the dream — after all, he had met her in Fletcher Way. But why, when she had been dead for over seven years, and Chris had been meeting spirits in his dreams for almost two years, had she chosen that moment to visit him? Chris believes that it was precisely because he had a new police contact who had started to monitor his dreams that week. It was, in effect, the most opportune moment for her to appear. Years later, 1 asked Chris why he thought WPC Fletcher had come back at all — had she ever given him a reason? He told me that she hadn't, but he believed she wanted to carry on her work. When she was alive she was a conscientious police officer who loved her job. Now that she was dead, she had a chance to carry on her work in a different way: she could, as it were, act undercover and find out things that it would be physically impossible for anyone else to discover. Having done that, she was then faced with the problem of relaying that information to the physical plane. Chris just happened to be there: able to pick up her signals from some other plane. And those signals were to prove extremely interest¬ing. Chris was looking through his telescope, with Yvonne standing beside him. There was a full moon in the cloudless sky, shining brightly. As he looked, it was almost as though he could see every detail of the moon's surface. While he looked at the shining orb, Yvonne spoke to him, 'There's going to be a bomb. A bomb on the full moon. You must tell them that.' The postcodes that were contained within the dream told Chris that it would explode somewhere on the M4 corridor, near Heathrow. But, frustratingly, he could get nothing more accurate than that. On Tuesday, 11 June 1991, Yvonne came through with another message and a new set of symbols and codes for Chris to decipher: 'Bolt the [doors] - no, I will do it [4 YOU].' 4 You = Four You: an initial-letter code. A Y and an F, for Yvonne Fletcher. Either way round, this was how her messages would in future be prefaced on the pages of the diary. This did present a bit of a problem for Chris, as FY was also a postcode - for Blackpool. In future it would always be quite difficult for him to differentiate between a message from Yvonne and a message about Blackpool. In the dream she was showing him a series of clocks, and telling him that there would be a problem connected with them. The next night she was back — and Chris was looking through the telescope once again. Yvonne was trying to tell him the date of the bomb - it would be on the full moon, but which full moon? The one forthcoming, or the one after, or ... 'June [21st] mid-summer - soon -is it summer [or] winter.' The next full moon wasn't on 21 June — it came a week later, on 28 June. But Yvonne hadn't been trying to tell him that it would actually occur on 21 June — after all, the date had a box round it. Chris could only surmise that she was trying to tell him that it would be on the next full moon — in sixteen days' time. The next night he saw more telescopes and found himself at Jodrell Bank. He began to realise now that a telescope didn't just refer to his own telescope: it was another symbol. Because Yvonne was trying to tell him information that wasn't in the immediate future — the next two or three days — she was showing him a telescope to indicate that it would happen a bit further on than that. It was remote information, something that Chris had to look some distance to see - like looking through a telescope to see a far-away object. On the night of Monday, 17 June, Yvonne and Chris were looking through the telescope once again. The moon was out, and she told him that there would be a bomb on the occasion of the full moon - and she was getting worried as that time was fast approaching. As if to emphasise this, the moon began to move, and as Chris watched it through the telescope it began to move towards him at speed, filling the whole of the lens, coming closer and closer, faster and faster, until he could see every crater in incredibly close detail . . . I le woke up sweating, his heart pounding. He looked over at the page he had been writing, to find: A bomb is planned for the ( Strand ) ( full moon|) is fast approaching The reference to Strand baffled him - it didn't fit with anything he had previously "written. On the other hand, it had a box round it, and so might be a cryptic clue to something else. Yvonne was new to contacting Chris and it was rather like a bad phone connection, where some of the words get lost. Later in the morning he rang through to Alex Hall's office and spoke to Glen Clements. 'This bomb is definitely going to be on the full moon, wherever it is — but I'm not sure when the next full moon actually is. Can you find out for me?' Clements glanced at the wall behind him. There was a calendar hanging up, and by chance it was of the type that marks the stages of the moon each month. 'Yeah, that's easy,' he said. 'The full moon this month is over the night of the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth.' 'I thought so. This one isn't going to go off, you know. Yvonne's going to do something to stop it. But I'd feel easier if I knew what.' 'What about the Gulf Parade?' asked Hall, suddenly coming on the line. 'What about any bombs there?' Chris had to think about this one: for some weeks there had been concern that the IRA would attempt to bomb the parade being held for the forces who had returned from the short and savage Gulf War. Operation Desert Storm had taken the spotlight away from terrorism for a few weeks, and the parade for returning soldiers would be an excellent target for the IRA propaganda machine. Could this be what the reference to the Strand was all about? Chris didn't know the route of the parade, but it would certainly be through the City and the centre of London. 'I don't know,' Chris muttered, as he thumbed through the pages of the dream diary. 'I don't think — no, I don't think there will be.' A random phrase in the diaries had triggered a memory: very thick snow had carpeted the ground, and there had been dogs. As Chris had stood looking at them, the dogs had turned around and slowly walked away. The snow meant danger, and the dogs were the terrorists: they were walking away from the danger, turning their backs on the opportunity to create havoc. He explained this to Hall and finished by saying: 'I don't know why they won't do it, I just know that they've changed their minds.' For whatever reason all their energies were to be concentrated on the attack that Yvonne had vowed to stop. A dream on Wednesday, 19 June, gave Chris a clearer indication of the cryptic direction that his dreams were destined to take. Subway train - [american] [coins] all over the floor — stuck in chewing gum Indian [head] on coins Chris had drawn four coin shapes, with '25c.' written on them. American 25-cent coins, with Indian heads on them: what did this mean? Further down the page, things became even stranger. [I] am a policeman now — they have given me a job — when do I start Tomorrow — morning — put [2] trains in my bag Who's passport is that in there — you are not supposed to have someone else's passport. Better put it back. In the dream Chris had been in Petty France, the part of London where the main office for the issuing and administration of passports throughout the country is housed. He couldn't remember the last time he had been there, so it struck him as extremely odd that he should dream of it now. And why had he been made a policeman? Sitting down to decipher the dream, he began to write on the blank sheet opposite the dream page. The first thing he wrote, concerning the coins, was 'Indian heads — Head Quarters'. Then, further down the page, he wrote the initials 'PF', to remind him that he had been in Petty France. It struck him that, although this wasn't a postcode, when the letters were reversed he could get Finsbury Pavement — would the Gulf Parade be going down this part of the City of London? After puzzling over the page for some time Chris decided that it must just be one of those nights when everything was coming through garbled. He faxed the dream and his interpretation, as usual, then forgot about it. It was two days later, on the afternoon of 21 June 1991, that the dream came back to him with a jolt. While flicking though the Teletext service to try and catch the news, an item caught Chris's attention: there had been a bomb at the Indian Army Headquarters in Colombo. Indian? Head? Quarters? Chris scrambled to his feet and fetched the current dream diary from the bedroom. There it was: Indian heads on quarters. That bit was right . . . but why did Colombo ring so many bells in his head? Looking down the page, he could see that there were lots of references to police. Suddenly it leapt out at him: 'PF' might stand for Peter Falk, the actor who plays a policeman called . . . Columbo. So Chris could easily claim to have seen this attack in his dream two nights before, yet it was only with hindsight that he was able to piece it all together. What's more, he worried that perhaps he was reading something into the dream because he could make it fit, rather than because it was genuine. He had experienced similar doubts when the dreams began, but a steady system of code use and a number of very literal images had laid those doubts to rest. Now they were flooding back: this dream did seem precognitive, but there had been a new type of code in use, one that was much more cryptic than before. If this was going to become the norm then it would involve a lot more work on the dreams than Chris had put in recently. He could only hope that the work would reward him with even better results. Yvonne returned again on the night of Saturday 22 June. She left Chris with another clue as to the whereabouts of the forthcoming bomb, which tallied with his earlier feelings. Paddington - goes west - other stations - Direct Can the river be opened [2] Bigger [Boats] -there is a campaign [2] do it. [7 Railway Bridge] Looking at this, Chris could remember what Yvonne had told him in the dream: 'Draw a line along the M4, from Paddington to Wales. The bomb will be on this line.' Later in the dream he was back in familiar territory: 'Telescope at the moon — Full Moon in the sky.' Over the page Chris had written about looking through the telescope, and then 'Do not touch it, Just look', which brought home to him that Yvonne had promised to look after this one herself. Chris was left in a quandary: did he trust her spirit to stop the bomb, or did he simply assume that this was some other part of a code? In the final analysis he couldn't let himself take a risk like this, so he contacted Alex Hall again. 'I'm sure there's a bomb on the full moon, and I'm sure it's along the M4 corridor. I think it's near Heathrow, but I don't know why.' Hall considered this. 'Come into the station. We'll go over everything again, in case there's something you've been missing.' The two men spent some time poring over the dream diaries, Hall throwing questions at Chris concerning obscure entries that might have some deeply personal meaning. There was nothing new that could be deduced from what had already been written. It was now Monday, 24 June. According to the dreams, the bomb was due to go off on the night spanning 27 and 28 June: three days away. Monday and Tuesday yielded nothing: despite Chris's requests, Yvonne failed to appear in his dreams and he was beginning to get despondent when something finally happened on the Wednesday night. Chris went to bed early: he was tired, and also hopeful that he might get a relevant message in his dreams. He was not to be disappointed. Yvonne came to him in the dream. As usual, she was wearing her uniform, and she was looking pleased with herself, patting the breast pocket of her tunic. 'I've got the fuses,' she said with a smile. 'I've got the fuses here in my top pocket. The bomb can't go off without them, can it?' 'I'm not with you,' Chris said. He was confused, because the whole of his dream before she turned up had been concerned with his past as an engineer. He had been working in a repair shop and had taken the van out, when he had been attacked by a swarm of bees. When he arrived at the job he had been assigned, he had found that he had no fuses for the television among his box of diodes and other spare parts. He searched through the cardboard box he was carrying, but had been unable to find any. And then everything had changed, and he was stand¬ing on a piece of waste ground, talking to Yvonne. She was laughing. 'The fuses on the timer. I've got them here.' She patted her pocket again. 'No bomb's going to work if the timer isn't set, is it?' 'But how did you manage that? I mean, what hap¬pened?' The thought of what had occurred made her start to giggle again, and she had to compose herself before beginning her story. 'I haven't been able to get through to you exactly where this bomb's going to be, right? But that's all right, because I've already told you that I'll see to it myself. So I followed these scum when they set out to plant it. They came round here —' she gestured at the waste ground around them. Chris wished that he recognised it, but it was unknown to him. Yvonne continued, ' — and left their van. The guy who was supposed to set the bomb brought it over here, and started to set the timer. Well, I was going frantic, because I didn't know exactly what to do to stop him. 'He was about to set it, so I knew I had to do something fast: I did what any spirit would. I crept up behind him and went "boo" in his ear.' She burst out laughing. 'I've never seen anyone run so fast in my life - or whatever you call this now. He was so shocked that he just dropped the fuse for the timer and legged it out of here, right over that fence -' she pointed to a distant wire fence ' - and into the van. They shot off like the proverbial bat out of hell. And I just scooped up the fuses and put them in my pocket.' She smiled broadly. 'I'd like to see him explain that to the rest of the cell.' Chris could remember this vividly when he awoke. There were also several parts of the night's writing that backed up his memory: DREAM DETECTIVE 275 Take out a fuse - 2 fuse Taken out — 1 put in a box I put in my top pocket. The [HT] fuse in My Top Pocket There was also something else, which he couldn't recall figuratively from the dream, that he was sure was of some importance: [SKIRT] - Home Made - Waist Band it is 2 tight - will it fit over my head - YES it will but it is still 2 tight - He couldn't immediately work out the significance of this, but didn't want to waste time on it at the moment: he had to phone Alex Hall. 'Look, there definitely is a bomb. It is on the M4 near Heathrow, and it is planned for the full moon. But it won't go off— Yvonne's got the fuses.' 'Are you sure about that?' 'Positive . . . trust me.' Chris believes that Hall passed his information on to military intelligence, but in the meantime something unconnected but also quite astounding happened. The actual question Chris had written in his diary on the night of 26 June had nothing to do with the forthcoming bomb. Instead it concerned one of two traffic wardens who had come to see Chris that day. They had heard about his abilities, and one of them had a twin with whom she had lost contact. She wanted to know if the twin was all right, and possibly where she was. In the excitement of Yvonne's message, Chris had forgotten about the traffic wardens until they returned to see him that evening. It was then that something came back to him: Yvonne's uniform was very like that of the wardens, and at one point she had told him that her father had worked in Canada, and that he was either a doctor or had something to do with the navy — this became hazy, as he hadn't paid much attention to it at the time, and his memory was playing tricks on him. When the two wardens were seated, Chris turned to the one who had asked about her twin. 'Your father was a doctor, wasn't he? And he worked in Canada?' She was speechless for a second, then replied, 'Good lord, how did you know that? As a matter of fact, I was born in Nova Scotia.' Chris was able to tell her something about her twin, something too personal to repeat without permission. She was, however, glad to hear what he had to say. Talk turned to the bomb and Yvonne's warning. The wardens left Chris's home more than satisfied with what they had heard. The night of the full moon - 27-8 June - there was no sign of Yvonne and nothing in the dreams about the bomb. Instead Chris's dream was occupied by Patrick Frater and the first appearance of Ernie Bandoo, as recounted in an earlier chapter. With no bomb and no Yvonne, Chris wondered if anything had actually happened along the M4 corridor. At 3.10 a.m. he had woken up and known immediately that the bomb had been planted. But this interpretation might have been false; when he woke again at 9.45 he immediately phoned Glen Clements and asked him if a bomb had been found. 'Not that I know of,' the officer replied, 'but I'll check.' The next couple of hours were nail-biting for Chris: not only did he want to know whether his prediction had been accurate, but there were a number of matters riding on this dream precogmtion tli.it would determine the way he looked at his dreams tor the foreseeable future. The way in which some of the clues had been presented to him revealed not only a new set of symbols to be learnt, but also a twist to the cryptic manner in which some of the information was conveyed. If the dreams had been correct, then he had to get to work on cracking this new code — if not, then he could disregard it as an aberration. Was Yvonne 'real', or was she just a dream figure talking rubbish? He had to know, as she had been a frequent visitor. If she was 'real', then the dreams were continuing as before. If not, then he would have to watch for his own subconscious playing out dream fantasies on a field that had previously been used as an information channel. Finally, the big one: if a defused bomb were found, then could it be that Yvonne — a spirit — had caused this to happen? Did she just tell him in a roundabout way that it would be defused, or did she actually appear to haunt the bomber? The last question could not really be answered satis¬factorily - but if the fuses were missing from the timer, then Chris knew what he would believe, even if others found it hard to accept. Chris phoned Clements three or four times in the next couple of hours, asking if he had found out anything: each time the policeman told him that no reports had filtered through to him. The morning had been written off in worrying: Chris hadn't even looked at his previous night's dreams yet. Feeling unsettled and on edge, he turned on the television in the hope of finding something to take his mind off the morning's anxiety. It certainly did that: it was coming up to noon and the midday news started. The first item was about a bomb that had been found in Hayes. It had been found defused - and Hayes lies in Middlesex, less than a mile from the M4 as it runs past Heathrow. Chris ran to the phone. Clements picked up at the other end. 'What about this bomb in bloody Hayes, then?' Chris was almost shouting with frustration. 'Why didn't you tell me about that, then?' 'Because I've only just found out about it myself/ Clements replied calmly, before telling Chris all that he knew. The bomb had been found at the Beck Theatre, in Hayes, during a routine check: routine because the Band of the Blues and Royals — a military band, and therefore a likely target — was due to play the venue. The bomb had been planted at the back of the theatre and had been primed to explode: it was a fully functional bomb in every way. Yet it was perfectly safe. Chris asked why. Clements laughed and told him that the start button on the timer hadn't been pressed: a digital watch was being used and the stopwatch function used to time the bomb. A time had been set, but the button to start the countdown had been left unpressed. 'God knows why they forgot that,' Clements said, 'unless . . .' 'Unless it was Yvonne,' Chris finished. When he put down the phone and returned to the dream diary for a few nights before, he could still clearly remember Yvonne telling him how she had scared the terrorist planting the bomb. Could it really be that she had broken through to the physical world sufficiently to frighten away a bomber? Suddenly the significance of'waistband' in the section of dream about the tight skirt became apparent: this was a coded warning that a band would be involved. If Chris had deciphered that, then it might have been easier for him to trace the exact location of the bomb. Conducting a small experiment with himself, Chris looked back through that ye.ir's dream diaries to see how often he had written the word 'band'. It didn't occur at all: the only time it had been written •was on the night of 26 June. Shortly afterwards, when he saw her in a dream, Chris asked Yvonne why she hadn't told him exactly where the bomb was planted. 'If I'd told you then there would have been people chasing around all over the place, looking for it. I wanted this one for myself. You see, Chrissy, the future was set: that bomb was going to be planted, and you couldn't stop that. What you could do was stop it going off. But I wanted to do that: I wanted to scare this monkey -and did he run when I whispered in his ear. Over the fence, into his van, and away. I don't know what he told the others, but he better have had a good reason why he didn't set the timer - after all, who'd believe that it "was a ghost?' CHAPTER EIGHTEEN In July 1991 two IRA prisoners escaped from Brixton prison and were on the run for several weeks. Chris Robinson not only foresaw their escape, but was also able to track their progress through his dreams. Was he instrumental in helping to catch them? At this point it's hard to tell: certainly he was faxing his dreams to Alex Hall every day, and Hall was passing on information contained in them that may have been of use. Perhaps the truest thing to say is that, as with all his activities, Chris's dreams were treated on a par with information coming in from all kinds of informants, and were assessed as to their individual worth on a daily basis. The story really begins on 4 July . . . Dr Keith Hearne was staying with Chris at the time, carrying out one of his periods of in-depth study. During these sessions he •would stay with Chris and assess the information with him on a day-by-day basis. He would also observe Chris while he slept, noting how he moved in his sleep, his REM and the manner in which he recorded information by the process of automatic writing. Although he has his own facilities, Dr Hearne is one of the few parascientists in Britain to realise that studying subjects outside their own environment can be counter-productive: the kind of forces and energies concerned in precognition are not yet quantifiable, and could be easily upset by the stress of strange surroundings and the tension of a laboratory atmosphere. It is actually more productive to study the subjects in their own environment, and just as easy to apply the controls that can prevent fraudulent — or even unintentionally false — results. The dreams of 4 July were extremely interesting to both Chris and Keith Hearne: Bird [in a] cage Don't let it fly away. Fireworks or rockets. Chain - does it go to a foot or boot or plug Analysing it the next morning, Chris told Hearne that the birds in a cage meant that there were prisoners about to escape - 'don't let it fly away'. He was also sure that they were IRA prisoners. 'How do you get that?' asked Dr Hearne. 'Look at this,' Chris replied. 'Where it says birds in a cage, the "in a" is boxed, which means that it's not quite that. If you change one letter, then you get IRA.' 'But that's a bit spurious, isn't it?' Hearne asked, playing Devil's advocate. 'I suppose you could say that . . . except that I've had this before, and experience has taught me how to read it.' It was another example of how Chris has learnt to decode messages that may seem nonsensical to anyone else. Going on with the analysis, Chris told Hearne that he believed the prisoners would escape on foot — hence the part about a chain, meaning prisoner, being attached to a foot or a boot. He was also sure that there would be two of them, as the number 2 was a recurrent feature of the night's dream writing. Now they had to determine where the escape would occur. Looking at the dream, he could see that there were postcodes for SW, and also for Central London. However, the SW ones were more prevalent, so Chris went to his computer and punched up the postcode map for the SW area of London, part of whose codes cover Brixton. On Brixton Hill stands Brixton Prison. Chris faxed this to Alex Hall without delay, and both men were excited by the prospect of the following night's dream results. On the night of 5 July the number 2 was again spread all over the page, and Chris knew this referred to the two prisoners — the birds in the cage — of the previous night's dream. In this dream he saw them getting on the Metropolitan Line at Baker Street, and also saw Detective Sergeant Holmes — one of the policemen who had interviewed Chris over the Stanmore affair. There were also several references to Harrow: and the Metropolitan Line goes out past Harrow. Looking at the dreams with Keith Hearne, Chris again attempted to analyse them in depth. 'Look at this: "they both have gold lighters in Harrow or Wealdstone", then there's this bit about "2 in my camper - in Harrow" over on this page,' Chris said, turning over the two pages he had written during the night. 'Back here we've got something about "Detective Sergeant Holmes will get a shock soon", only the word sergeant is boxed, so I think it means just a detective called Holmes - Sherlock Holmes. He lived in Baker Street, right? And this bit immediately after it says "Met line 2 Baker Street". So I reckon these jokers will get on the tube after they escape — and if they don't get out to Harrow, then Harrow police station will have something to do with their arrest.' Once more, the material was faxed to Alex Hall, along with the proviso that both ('liris and Dr Hearne believed that the escape would happen some time on Sunday. This was a conclusion they h.ul arrived at because the dreams concerning the escape had occurred two nights running. After nearly two years they had established between them, by careful study of those precognitions that had come true, that there were different cycles of dream frequency, dependent on how far away the actual event was and how major it would be. For instance, an IRA bomb attack would build up over a period of weeks, possibly months, and the dreams would come at increasingly frequent intervals — from once a week to every night. Small, everyday events would crop up in dreams the night before. But events like this - where it would be a big news story but not particularly life-threatening — would occur in three-night cycles: three nights, and then it would hap¬pen. Saturday 6 July was the third night. In the dream Chris was camping out in a bell-tent. Two killers with guns came looking for him, then decided to try and get away quickly when they couldn't find him. They had a hire car, but it refused to start, and they were left desperately looking for another car in a blizzard, with blankets of snow covering everything in sight - more snow than Chris had ever seen before in a dream. From this, he was sure that the escapees would be trying to get away in a hire car, and that the car wouldn't work. They would have to take another one, and in so doing would put someone in danger. He also had a definite postcode: '2 See Who is' on one line. Taking the capitalised initials, you get SW2 - the postcode for Brixton. Chris was awake at 5 a.m. and couldn't get back to sleep. Yvonne had visited him and shown him all of this happening. In his diary he had written: In a hire car Very thick snow on the road — car can't move — gets stuck — have 2 get out and walk — 1 goes one way one the other It was all so vivid still. He woke Dr Hearne and told him about it. Hearne could see for himself how agitated and unsettled Chris became when a dream premonition was that vivid, and suggested that he fax it through right then. The two men waited all morning, occasionally glanc¬ing at the Teletext service on television to see what was going on. It happened at 10.30 a.m. Convicted IRA terrorists Nessan Quinlivan and Pearce McAuley escaped from Brixton Prison after morning service in the prison chapel. It was 9.40 a.m. and as they left the chapel McAuley bent down as if to tie a shoelace. As he straightened up warders were astonished to see that he had a gun in his hand. Somehow he had secreted a smuggled pistol inside his shoe. Firing four shots into the air to discourage would-be heroes, he and Quinlivan grabbed the prison officers' keys and rushed through several sets of security gates leading to the prison yard. Once there, they stacked a wheelbarrow on top of a dog kennel and scaled the perimeter wall. Once the other side, and down into Jebb Avenue, they threatened a prison officer who was just getting into his car, and after warning him off with the gun, screeched away. Jcbb Avenue is, however, actually more of an alleyway than a ro.id, with the looming shadow of the prison on one side, and the prison officers old quarters on the other. There is b.ircly room tor two cars to pass, and so it was easy tor anothei prison ottu IT to use his car to block the road before the esc apivs had .1 rh.ince to speed past. The two fugitives dumped the i ar where it stood and ran out onto Brixton Hill, where they tried to flag down passing vehicles. In any area of London two men trying to flag down cars would be an indication for drivers to speed up - even more so in an area with a reputation for violence and crime. But there are always those motorists who worry that they might truly be passing someone in need. The driver of the red Vauxhall Cavalier that pulled in to assist Quinlivan and McAuley won't make the same mistake again: McAuley wrenched open the door on the driver's side and yelled at him, while Quinlivan opened the passenger door and dragged the driver's wife onto the road. The terrified driver was too scared to move. McAuley did just what one might expect of him: he shot the driver of the car and dragged him from his vehicle. Fortunately he was too hyped-up to take aim and the shot passed through the man's thigh. Painful, but not life-threatening. Leaving the distressed and wounded couple in the road, the gunmen roared off. Two miles from the prison, at Lambeth Town Hall, the fugitives abandoned the car in Porden Road before calmly walking into Acre Lane and hailing a black cab. They told the unsuspecting driver to take them to Baker Street Underground station and even had the audacity to give him a £12 tip. There they entered the station and disappeared tem¬porarily from view. Page c284 As the drama unfolded over the Sunday, both Chris and Keith Hearne watched the reports, astounded. The events of the day had been mirrored in Chris's dreams of a few nights before. Both men looked back over the dreams of the nights preceding the appearance of the birds in a cage. In one of them there was a reference to Shooters Hill and Shooters Road: there is a Shooters Hill not that far from the prison, but Chris was loath to accept this, as he believed it was more likely to refer to Shooters Avenue, in Harrow. Chris had an aunt who lived there and although he hadn't seen her for some time, he was sure that the dream was more likely to refer to her than to the forthcoming escape. About six weeks later Chris actually had cause to visit his aunt, and in the course of their conversation he mentioned that he had dreamt about her, and that there had been an attempt to tie her in to the Brixton escape. 'It's funny you should say that,' his aunt began - and Chris felt a familiar shiver run down his spine. The long arm of coincidence or synchronicity was about to reach out to him again. 'It's a pity you didn't come and see me sooner,' she continued, 'because on the Monday after they escaped, they came into the shop.' She worked in Littlewoods department store in Harrow, which is, of course, on the Metropolitan Line from Baker Street. She continued, 'I recognised them, and said to my supervisor, "Here, that's those two who got out of Brixton yesterday." But she wouldn't let me phone the police or anything, as she was frightened of Littlewoods becoming a target — well, it might, I suppose, if they were recaptured there. Anyway they went out of the shop and that was that.' After this there was something of a quiet time for Chris throughout the rest of the summer. Yvonne was still around, but her information -wasn't getting through clearly. For instance, he knew that there would be bombs in Blackpool, which would be planted at around the time of the Labour Party conference, but that they wouldn't go off until afterwards. He also knew that they were hidden under something. That was all. Perhaps, for some mediums and psychics, that would be enough to trumpet as a prediction, but Chris was unsure and as a result was none too happy when the editor of his local paper splashed it across the front page as a 'local psychic predicts' story. It was basically concocted from an aside that Chris made to a reporter on the paper, and although there was nothing false in the story, it wasn't the type of insubstantial claim that he would have liked to see on any front page. At the end of October a series of firebombs, which had been hidden some time before, detonated in depart¬ment stores throughout Blackpool. Ten stores were damaged by fire. When this made the national news, the editor of the local paper rang Chris and said, 'You really can do it, then, can't you?' 'Oh yeah, I can really do it,' Chris replied with as much irony as he could muster. He could do it all right - but with much better results than those that had impressed the newspaper's editor. As November arrived the messages began to get clearer in Chris's dreams and the build-up started for another major bomb warning. Chris would also find out how Yvonne Fletcher had first come to him. In his unusual and varied career Chris had met many people who flirted with the wrong side of the law. This had brought him into contact with police officers several times before the dreams began, and he's convinced that sometimes everything was laid out for him, enabling him to contact the right people at the right time when the dreams began. As may be recalled, Chris first met Paul Aylott when he was approached about a blackmail plot against Graham Bright. On 12 November 1991 he had a dream that began, 'Write a note 2 Glen.' This meant Glen Clements. In the dream there were two dead people. They had been blown up, and Chris was sure that they were terrorists. There were also two banks, next to each other, and these had also been blown up. Chris was walking down a road called French Road. It was in St Albans, a market town in the commuter belt of London. He crossed the road and came to the banks. He was following two dogs . . . CHAPTER NINETEEN The first intimations about St Albans had come to Chris eight days earlier on Monday, 4 November 1991, when he started to receive postcodes in his dream. He dreamt about driving a car down the central reservation of a motorway, then being in a classroom. Later on he was telling someone that he couldn't remember the phone number of his friend Philip. Looking at the dream diary in the morning, he saw: Drive on Central Reservation Ina Class Room - make a phone call Can't Remember Philip's No! The preponderance of CRs signified a St Albans postcode. Also interesting was the way he had written 'in a' as 'ina' in the second phrase: previously the use of 'ina' had been confined to a box and was a code for the IRA. Did this mean that a bomb attack on St Albans was being planned? On the night of 6 November Chris dreamt ceaselessly about dogs - they were chasing him across a farm, almost catching and biting him. Three dogs waited for him, two in one room, one in another. One of the dogs went after him, and he found himself grabbing a man's wife and threatening her if the dog wasn't called off. Then he was talking to someone, saying that it was worth serving six months in prison for killing a dog if it taught the owner a lesson. He woke up sweating: were the dogs after him? He looked at his diary: teach the dog owner 'a lesson' - AL was the postcode for St Albans town centre. Were the dogs massing for an attack there? But why? It was only a small town, with little real significance. As a target it was almost too soft to bother with. The next night he dreamt of his son Aaron and his friend Curtis: they were trying to fly, and when he woke Chris found that he had written, 'Aaron and [Curtis] try 2 take off And Fly.' So now he had a postcode for AL2. St Albans again. On the night of 11 November he was looking out on a field where it was snowing heavily, and there were dogs running through the field. He was in a house belonging to a friend of his, who lived in St Albans. Something big was brewing. The next night he dreamt of writing a letter to Glen Clements. Yvonne was telling him to write it, and she handed him two cups of coffee - signifying two dead people. Then he was in St Albans again, walking up French Road, crossing at the lights and continuing towards two banks, one of which stood on a corner. He was following two dogs, which were also walking along this way. The dogs turned into people: so now there were two people in front of him, one of them carrying a package. They walked up to the banks and put the bomb through the letter box. As it went through it exploded, and they were both blown up in front of his eyes. When Chris looked at the dream diary, it read: 2 banks — blown up in St Albans last night Put through letter boxes — after [MT] [3] bombs in Holland or is it 2 The reference to bombs in Holland were somewhat confusing, as he could remember nothing of this: the vision of St Albans was too clear in his mind. It was only when Chris scanned the Teletext pages that he discovered some bombs had gone off in Holland during the night. They were nothing to do with the IRA, but it was possible that he had picked up something about them because they were current. He was relieved to see that there had been no bombs in St Albans. His diary might have said 'last night', but Chris had no doubt now that this was a prediction. Later in his dream he could recall that he was in a police station talking about what he had seen: a clear indication that now was the time to act. He was prompt in faxing the dream through to Alex Hall and Glen Clements. There was, however, one problem that he had to face: as yet, he had no real time frame for the event. Wednesday night saw him standing outside a branch of the Midland Bank. To Chris, this was confirmation that the bomb was imminent. But still no actual time . . . Thursday, 14 November, saw him back in St Albans in his dream. He was with Yvonne Fletcher, in his car, and they were driving into town. Chris knew that he was heading for a shop called Video Viewpoint, in the town centre, where he used to buy equipment and supplies during his days as a video dealer. They went past the shop and continued on towards the banks, where Chris saw meat pies scattered on the pavement. He recognised these as a symbol for badly butchered corpses — meat from a butcher's shop, or in a pie, always meant the same thing. Yvonne turned to Chris. 'Don't worry about this,' she said. 'It's not like the other one, but it's in my pocket.' 'What do you mean?' She smiled and pulled out a coin. 'Like this,' she said. When he woke, Chris had written the following: [Video] recorder - black front - [brand] new £150 - trade price - Video Viewpoint - repair it today. [Meat] pie [Yvonne] Fletcher coin in my pocket — [Hole] - gone in 2 There had been other aspects of the dreams that Chris found to be of possible significance. There were the two people that he had seen approaching the banks - the two who had been dogs and were then blown up. They were now in bed, and there was snow all around the bed. He had also written a reference to a 'Terminal 2'. Ordinarily he would connect this with an airport, but under the circumstances he was sure that it referred to the two dead people he had seen - the two dead people that there would be that very night. On Friday, 15 November, he phoned Glen Clements and told him that he was absolutely convinced that the incident would happen in St Albans, and that it would happen that night: the dream had come to him this strongly three nights running and he had little doubt now about the timing. Clements took this in and could see how con¬cerned Chris was by what had happened to him during the night. 'Okay,' he said, 'the best thing you can do this evening is stay in all night. Don't go anywhere, and for God's sake don't disappear. Just in case we need you.' Chris agreed. If Glen was prepared to ask him to do this, then it meant they were taking him more seriously than they had for some months. He was on edge for the rest of the day and found it hard to settle to anything: come the evening, he was stretched out on the floor of the caravan, going through the back pages of the diaries, to see if there was anything that he might have missed. It was about quarter to ten when the phone rang and Chris answered, half-expecting it to be Clements or Hall. In fact, it was a friend called Tony Centrachio, •who had been interested in Chris's dreams for some time and had given him a photograph in the summer: the photograph was of a girl he had met in Italy. She was a small girl with long, dark hair, and there was a strange white blur in the foreground of the picture that had not been there when the picture was taken and could not be attributed to a reflection. Interestingly, the night before Tony had shown Chris this picture, he had dreamt of a photograph featuring a small girl with long, dark hair. It was shown to him by a spirit who claimed to have been there when the picture was taken. Tony had been astounded when Chris told him this, and since then had called regularly to talk about both Chris's dreams and his own. Chris spent some time talking to Tony and when he put the phone down he heard a shout behind him, 'It's gone off.' 'What —' Chris looked round, expecting to see his wife . . . and then he remembered that he was on his own that evening. Besides which, he recognised the voice: it was Yvonne Fletcher's. It was unusual for him to hear a spirit's voice outside a dream: the last time had been when he had driven past the cemetery where Patrick Frater and Ernie Bandoo were buried. He had no doubts that the bomb had just gone off in St Albans, and that the two terrorists had just died. Chris was now on edge, pacing about the floor and waiting for Clements to ring. The suspense was killing and at ten-past ten he decided to do the ringing himself. He put a call through to Clements's paging service and within a few minutes the policeman had rung him back. 'Have you heard anything yet?' Chris demanded. 'No - why?' 'I've just been standing here, and I heard Yvonne's voice - I wasn't even asleep. I actually heard her, and she told me that it's gone off 'Well, look,' Clements said, thinking on his feet as he spoke, 'I'm in the middle of Bedfordshire at the moment. Let me ring through to St Albans and see what they say. Don't go anywhere - just wait for me, okay?' Chris agreed and waited by the phone. Each second seemed like an eternity, but it was in fact only a couple of minutes before the phone shrilled in the silence and Chris snatched up the receiver. 'All hell's broken loose in St Albans,' Clements said. 'They want you over there — now. Just get over to St Albans as fast as you can.' 'Right.' It was only when he put the phone down that it occurred to Chris that getting over to St Albans might prove a bit difficult, as earlier in the week his car had broken down. All he had in the •way of transport was a battered old moped. It was 15 November - freezing cold weather, and it was now half-past ten at night. The prospect of traveling from just outside Dunstable to St Albans on such a machine did not fill Chris with joy. But it was something he had to do. Dressed in reflective yellow clothing for the quiet country roads and ill-lit AS, Chris felt a bit of an idiot as he set off for his destination. Even more so when he reached the turn-off that would take him onto the A5 - the main road to St Albans — and the moped spluttered to a halt. He got off the machine and looked at it in the dim light. As far as he could see there was nothing wrong with the engine. Then he looked at the petrol gauge . . . Of all the stupid things to do, he had run out of petrol. Cursing to himself, Chris began to push the machine towards the nearest filling station, which was about a mile and a half away. In the bitter night air, with the hint of rain, it seemed to take him hours. After he had filled up the moped and set off again there were no further delays on his way to St Albans, but the moped wasn't fast and his detour for petrol had eaten up a fair amount of time. So it was nearly a quarter to twelve when he reached the outskirts of St Albans. A complete security cordon had been thrown around the town by this time, and Chris came up against it as he rode towards a bored policeman leaning against his car. The policeman held up his hand to stop Chris as he approached. 'This is really important,' Chris said as he slowed to a halt and got off the moped. 'My name is Christopher Robinson, and I'm a psychic. I've been told they want to see me in there.' He gestured towards the town centre. The policeman eyed him sceptically. 'Yeah, and I'm Father Christmas,' he said slowly, 'so turn your bike around and go back home. You must be joking.' 'No, look,' said Chris desperately, 'You've got to understand. I've been talking to a police officer and he told me to come here. They want to see me.' The policeman sighed. 'And I'm telling you that I'm Father Christmas, right? Just get on your bike and get out of here before I arrest you.' 'Well, you can do that if you want,' Chris replied, knowing the results that had come from being arrested in such a situation before. He dug into his coat and produced a crumpled bundle of papers, which included some of his press clippings and a few letters: the letter from the Ministry of Defence and one from Graham Bright among them. He had grabbed them before leaving, just in case he needed to prove what he was saying. With hindsight, perhaps he should have mentioned Glen Clements by name, but the attitude of the policeman on duty was such that he probably wouldn't have bothered checking. Chris handed the bundle to the policeman, who started to read them by the light of his car. He wasn't particularly interested in them and made that clear, but he was bored and cold, and it gave him something to do on this quiet stretch of road. Nearly half an hour passed, and Chris felt frozen to the bone. The policeman had finished reading the clippings and discarded them. He was now beginning to get irritated that Chris was still hanging around. 'Look, mate,' Chris said to him, time and again, 'if I have to try and get in, and get arrested, then I will — because they want to see me in there.' 'Yeah, of course they do,' the policeman replied dismissively, with more than a hint of annoyance in his voice. The sparring went on a little longer before another car rolled up to the checkpoint. It was occupied by a uniformed Sergeant, who got out and came over to the patrol car. 'Who's this?' he asked the policeman on duty, casting only the barest glance at Chris. 'He says he's a psychic,' the policeman replied, his voice weary, 'and he says that they want to see him inside. He's been here ages, and he won't go away. I'm going to have to arrest him at this rate.' 'They want him, do they?' The Sergeant's eyes nar¬rowed, and his mouth set firm. 'We'll soon see about that.' He returned to his car, where Chris could see him talking over the radio. Obviously he hadn't wanted to speak in the open, where Chris could hear him. 'Your number's up, boy,' said the policeman with a chuckle. It was a chuckle that died in his throat as the Sergeant emerged from his car and walked back to where the policeman and Chris were standing. In the reflected glare of the car headlights he looked completely white, and his voice was shaking as he reached them. He addressed the policeman. 'They only want to see him, don't they,' he said in a quiet voice. 'They've only been standing around waiting for him.' 'You see? I told you,' said Chris, unable to keep a triumphant note out of his voice. He was tired and fed-up, not to mention cold to the bone after standing around in the cold November night. He was bundled into the Sergeant's car and rushed through the streets of St Albans to the central police station. To Chris, coming in out of the night, the station was a hive of activity and light - and, most importantly, warmth. He was taken down a corridor and left in an interview room, given tea and biscuits, and shortly two plainclothes officers came in. They didn't introduce themselves, and to this day Chris has no idea who they were: CID, Anti-Terrorist Squad, Intelligence services, or whatever. But they knew plenty about him, and about his dreams. He spent a couple of hours in the interview room, going over the dreams that had occupied him during the last fortnight, particularly those of the last three nights. The officers had copies of the faxes he had sent to Alex Hall, and they kept returning to points in the dreams, going over and over them to try and extract more details from him. From their questions and their demeanour, Chris eventually deduced that one of them was probably a military man and the other a police officer of some sort. 'Look,' Chris said, 'you've got to believe me about this, I'm not just making it up —' He was cut short by one of the men. 'Christopher,' he said slowly, 'you don't have to sell yourself to me. I believe you. But can we ever do anything about this?' It was something Chris had often wondered: was the future pre-ordained and he was merely seeing snatches of it? Or was it possible to alter events, and it was simply a matter of the right action being taken quickly enough? 'I don't know,' he said finally, 'but if we don't try we're never really going to find out, are we? I don't know if I'm seeing what's going to be, or whether Yvonne really is there and playing tricks: she said she was going to sort this one out. Maybe she did - maybe as the bomb was going through the letter box she blew it up, just as she went 'boo' behind the guy planting the bomb at the Beck Theatre. I don't know - all I really know for sure is that the circumstances of the dream exactly fit the circumstances of the reality.' 'Okay,' said one of the men, 'so this is what we want you to do. We've got some bits of body —' he smiled grimly as Chris went pale '— yeah, that's all that was left. But that's all there is. Just bits. What we really need to know is who they were, and how many of them.' 'Well, I'm perfectly happy that there were two of them, and that they were the bombers —' 'Going by your record, I'd say that's probably right,' the man replied. 'But what we really want you to do is go home now and get hold of Yvonne. Ask her who they are.' Til try — but I don't think you'll get much change out of it yet,' Chris replied, looking at his watch: it •was now 5 a.m. The police took Chris back to his caravan and left him to get on with things. 1 le tried to sleep, but after the tension of the night before it was impossible, and any dreams that there were became lost in an almost-waking state. He spent most of the Saturday feeling tired and depressed: lack of sleep always made him feel like a zombie, and today was no exception. When he finally did go to bed in the evening, he wrote down the question that had been requested of him and hoped that he would get an answer. He didn't get one. He did, however, get some interesting messages from Yvonne: [Remote] [Control] are you pointing it in the right direction - if the LED's are at the front I will make sure it is when the time is right -But the police are still not ready [2 BE] give any more - what would have happened if I told you more at St Albans — 2 dead or property damaged - I decided [WATTS] best [4 You] but you must try to rest more Further on down the page, he had added: send it all if you want but they still don't talk it [THROUGH] With You. Ask Him 2 interview all the people you told about St Albans — he can't be bothered — why — Ask Him that Yvonne had appeared to Chris throughout that night's dreams - there were three scribbled pages, mostly meaningless nonsense - and she seemed determined to lecture him about the way he was treating his dreams. 'Remote Control' referred to Chris: anything electrical with the initials CR or RC is a code for Chris Robinson, the ex-engineer. Yvonne obviously felt that Chris was receiving the information, but that it wasn't being treated with respect by the police who were handling Chris. Her coded references to Chris Watt — the boxed 'Watts' - and Alex Hall - the initialed 'Ask Him' - showed a certain contempt for the way they had handled the dream information. It was a view that Chris didn't share: from his own experiences with officers who turned up out of the blue to question him, he knew that his dreams were definitely being passed on to a higher authority. Yvonne was also concerned that Chris was not devoting enough time to his dreams: her imprecations 'but you must try 2 rest more' and 'go 2 bed at nine o'clock' were commands that she felt he should take notice of. She even signed herself, by telling him that she would decide what's best '[4 You]' — FY, or Yvonne Fletcher reversed. So, an interesting night's dreams, but Chris was still no closer to getting the information he wanted to know. The night of Sunday, 17 November, he asked the same question, and this time he got five pages of dreams, which told him the names he had asked for. Whether or not they were correct, he didn't know — but they were names. The first clue was the appearance of a girl, who looked like the girl he had followed to the bank. She was in a flat in Chesham, and there was no running water. Instead, Chris had to take the kettle outside the flat to fill it from a tap. The girl was called Pat - tap backwards - and she was dead. This was certain, as the tap was outside, and 'out' meant dead. The next section that related directly to the names came a little later, when Chris was looking at a baby in a pushchair. It looked like his son Paul when he was small, but the child was covered in gravy. He drew a box around the word gravy, and knew that this meant the colour was important, not the gravy itself, a feeling backed up by the next section: She says his Father is [Mick Brown] From Harlington. Does he still live in Lincoln Road — I bet it's not his — a blood test will prove it. Could one of the names have been Mick Brown? But this section also contained a reference that was entirely personal, and to do with people Chris knew. From the writing he could also get the name Ryan. The use of the word Father triggered off another personal reference point, as Chris remembered a Father Ryan he had once known. Could his name have something to do with it? Underneath he had written 'Don in a van' — but he knew instinctively that Don wasn't a forename, but part of the surname belonging to one of the terrorists. At the start of the next page was the fragment of dream that caused him the most puzzlement: 4 bar electric fire — don't touch the electric while is switched on - electric drill, handle broken -council house - is the [drill] powerful enough to keep turning The only make of drill with which Chris was familiar was a Black and Decker, and this was what he saw in his dream. He was holding it, with the handle snapped away from the main body of the drill. He knew that the make of drill was important, and also that the handle being broken was significant — but why? A broken handle — handle as in name? Did this mean that one of the terrorists had a broken name? Double-barrelled, perhaps? There were two references to the name Duggan within a few lines of each other: 'Duggan in another tram' and 'Duggan tells her' at the end of a long section concerning Chris being on a tram in Holland, trying to speak Dutch to a young girl and not making himself understood. From this he was sure that Duggan was an important name, but that it didn't refer to one of the dead terrorists. If anything, Duggan might have been the man who sent them to plant the bomb. Certainly there were a lot of IRA cells that used Holland as a base, and there had been a strong Dutch theme to this part of the dream. Most of the fourth page of dreams made little sense in the cold light of day, but there were snatches that he could remember that seemed to be significant. He filled a glass from a Coke bottle, and also dropped a glass ashtray. Glass had been associated with the girl Pat, at the beginning of his dreams. Why glass? Further down the page there was a reference to a television crew filming. Except that Chris had written it as 'TV Crewe' — a very particular spelling error. There was only one thing that Crewe meant to Chris: his friend Frank, another ex-video dealer who lived in the Cheshire town. The two men had become very close as they each fought a court action against the same company. The 'Crewe' spelling was such a strong clue that it had to signify the name Frank. On the last page there was a section of the dream where he was being investigated by private detectives who had newspapers all over their office floor. The investigation was connected with video films, and they had a series of cassettes on their desks. There were girls on the covers of the videos, and Chris wrote, 'Video tape covers — what has it got 2 do with Donnelly?' The figure '2' signified that this was connected with the two dead bombers, and there were girls on the covers of the tapes: the surname of the girl Pat must be Donnelly. He now had the following names: Patricia Donnelly for the girl; for the man, there were several possibilities: Mick Brown, Ryan something or something Ryan, and Frank something. Looking over the dream writing and his attempts to translate and decode, he could see that Ryan had meant Father Ryan to him; was it too much of a leap to assume that the 'F' was supposed to be an initial, and that Frank went with Ryan, giving him Frank Ryan? So now he had three names to give to the police in St Albans: Patricia Donnelly, Frank Ryan and Mick Brown. One of them also had a Black in their name, as part of a double-barrelled name. He suspected it would be either Frank Ryan or Patricia Donnelly, as Mick Brown was a name that Chris believed simply led him to Frank Ryan's name — it was a signpost, but he included it on the grounds that exclusion would be a dangerous omission. One puzzle remained: what did glass have to do with Patricia Donnelly? That was something he would have to worry about later. On Monday morning Chris met Alex Hall and Glen Clements. Also present was a reporter from the Sun newspaper, Keiron Saunders, and Ron Fairley, the owner of the Bedfordshire news agency, who regularly put stories about Chris on the wires to the dailies in London. Chris had requested that the latter two be present when he met Hall and Clements to go over Sunday night's dreams: if he was right, he wanted the world to know about it. He might still want to help the police, but his primary objective, as always, was to gain recognition for the phenomena he was experiencing, and hopefully to encourage research and experiment on what was happening to him. For this, publicity was essential. The five men went to a Chinese restaurant for lunch, as it was the middle of the day by the time they had all assembled. Chris waited until the food arrived before he began to explain to the two newspaper men what had happened: he started with his dreams leading up to the bombing, and then revealed what had been requested of him. 'This is the first time any of you •will have seen this,' he said, primarily addressing Clements and Hall as he took the dream sheets out of a bag. He laid them on the table for all to see. There were some minutes of silence while all four men pored over the scribbled sheets of paper. 'So what's the conclusion?' asked Hall finally, as the men sat back. Chris took a deep breath. 'I'm convinced that the girl was called Patricia Donnelly, and there may be something else in her name — Black, maybe. Yvonne handed me a Black and Decker drill in the dream, and I was holding it with a broken handle. That's CB language — slang, right? Means name. So maybe there's a Black in there — I'd be surprised if it was Decker.' He laughed, and a ripple of amusement ran round the table. 'As to the man — I think it was Frank Ryan. I've got Mick Brown down here, but really that had other associations, and I think it's just a sort of leftover on the way to these names.' 'That's pretty far-out,' said one of the newsmen. 'You think I don't know that?' Chris smiled. A few days later the IRA released details of the terrorists killed in the bungled attack on St Albans. The woman was named Patricia Black-Donnelly and the man was Frankie Ryan. The police in St Albans already knew that: they had been told by Chris Robinson. Ron Fairley also knew, and as soon as the news story came through to him on the wires he phoned Chris. 'How the hell do you do that?' he asked. It was the one question Chris was always asked, to which he had only one answer. 'I don't know, mate,' he sighed. '1 only wish I did know — then I might be able to do something about it, control it better, find out what causes it.' 'But aren't you frightened that the IRA are going to catch up with you?' 'No, not really . . .' There was silence at the end of the line, but it was something that Chris had thought about long and hard. He continued, 'I look at it this way. The spirits keep giving me messages, they want me to do this. It's not like I can really ignore it — well, I could, but I just think I'd never sleep properly again. I'm not like that. Anyway, they keep giving me messages because they want me to pass on all this information. So they're not going to let me get hurt, and cut off their way of getting it through. I think that they'll let me know if someone's coming after me and protect me in some way.' 'You really believe in this afterlife, don't you?' said Ron. Chris laughed. 'If a few of these terrorists believed in an afterlife, then things might change - because it's only if you believe there's nothing after this life that you can go around being greedy, and selfish, and harming people. If you realise that you're going to be judged in the next world on what you do in this, then you're soon going to buck your ideas up and stop being stupid about things.' Over the Christmas of 1991 there was one final bomb warning that showed Chris that his fate was in the lap of the Gods — or, rather, the spirits. He actually tried to see a bomb go off, and missed it by fifteen minutes. It began in the third week of December, when Yvonne was telling him about a bomb that was going to be planted, and that this would occur in Central London. The postcode was SW1 or WC1 or 2, which would make it the Trafalgar Square area, and he also saw himself shopping in Sainsbury's. He actually wrote down 'Sainsbury's shopping trolley'. When he checked, he found that there were no branches of Sainsbury's in that part of London. However, he still passed the information on, reasoning that he had misinterpreted the visit to Sainsbury's and that it must mean something else. The warnings continued for three nights, and on the third Chris decided to see for himself what actually happened when a warning was passed on. So in the late evening he got into his car and drove up to London. Parking where he could, he walked through to Trafalgar Square. It was Saturday, 28 December, and even late at night it was still fairly busy. Chris felt uncomfortable sitting on a bench in the middle of the square. He dislikes London at the best of times, but on this night it seemed to be particularly oppressive. He found himself continually checking his watch, but there was no sign of anything happening as the time crept round into the early hours of the following morning. At half-past two, tired and cold, Chris decided to go home, chalking the trip up as a failure. Fifteen minutes later, at a quarter to three in the morning, a bomb went off in the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery. Perhaps he's just not supposed to see these things actually happen. If he did, it might prove just too horrific to contemplate, and the dreams might stop, as his subconscious blocked them out. One thing that had always puzzled Chris was how Yvonne Fletcher had found him, and why she had chosen him to give her messages to the world. At first he hadn't really wanted to question her, but one day he asked her outright. She told him to look back at his diary for June, then she would reveal all. Looking back over the June 1991 diary, he found an entry for Saturday, 29 June, when he had been visited by the spirit of his old friend Trevor Kempson, who had this to say: Look in the News of the World? 2 pages — Chrissy — why are they the same? He had gone out and bought the paper the next day. There weren't two pages the same, but there was a two-page story that had caught his eye because it concerned Prince Kahled, nephew of the Saudi King Fahd, and his affair with the actress Brigitte Nielson. Particularly interesting to Chris was the paragraph that ran: Kahled was also in the headlines when two of his British bodyguards were fined for illegal possession of machine guns, revolvers and ammunition. The story had a particular resonance for Chris because one of those bodyguards was a man called Gary — he doesn't want his full name used — who was very close to Chris at the time. The weapons with which they were found belonged to the armoury of the Saudi royal family and were in Britain without an appropriate licence. But this still didn't explain why Yvonne had chosen him. So the next time she appeared in a dream, he asked her again. Her answer was quite astounding. Yvonne Fletcher was shot in April 1984. It was around this time that the bodyguards of Prince Kahled were being investigated by the police following the discovery of the illegal weapons. After she had been shot Yvonne Fletcher was shocked and frightened to find herself a spirit. However, being as practical in death as she had been in life, she decided to find out what was going on, and so followed members of the Anti-Terrorist Squad back to Scotland Yard. There she had the novel - if not unique - experience of seeing her murder investigated. As it became apparent that the investigation had reached a dead-end — the Libyans had claimed diplo¬matic immunity en masse and were simply waiting to be deported without further action being taken, in the meantime living in their embassy in a state of siege — Yvonne became bored and decided that she would have to search around for something else to do. In her new-found spirit state, she was able to wander freely around Scotland Yard, looking in on anything that took her fancy. And it was here that she came across the name Christopher Robinson. One of the offices into which she wandered was devoted to the investigation into the firearms offences committed by the bodyguards of Prince Kahled. Because of the amount of weapons involved, and also because of the delicate situation that always existed between the Israelis and the Arab nations, the men involved were being closely monitored. One of these men was, of course, Chris's friend Gary. And there, on the blackboard in the operations room, was chalked the name of Christopher Robinson. Yvonne knew that Chris was the one she must find. She never explained to him why she knew this, but he speculates that it was because she somehow knew that he had psychic abilities: although the dreams didn't start until 1989, Chris freely admits that he had several experiences previously that could be classed as premonitions, or examples of mediumistic ability. Until they began in earnest, however, he was always too busy actually getting on with his life to take full notice of them, and what their consequences might be. Yvonne followed the surveillance team that was keeping an eye on Chris, and settled down to wait until his abilities were developed enough to receive her messages. When he woke from this dream Chris was dumb¬struck. It seemed such a ridiculous, convoluted story. Yet it might be true: the only thing that didn't ring true to Chris was Yvonne seeing his name on a blackboard at Scotland Yard. He had to check out if this was possible. If he asked Hall or Clements, there would be no way that they could give him a straight answer, even assuming they could find the answer out themselves. There was only one person to ring. He immediately picked up the phone and dialled, biting his lip impa¬tiently while he waited for an answer. Finally a sleepy voice came on the other end. 'Gary, I've got to see you today,' Chris said. 'Christ, do you know how early it is?' 'Never mind that, can I come over later?' 'Yeah, sure . . . now let me get back to sleep.' Later that morning Chris drove over to Gary's house. The two men hadn't seen each other for a few weeks, and there was some small talk as they caught up on each other's lives. Finally there was a lull in the conversation, and Chris decided it was time to broach the subject. It was something he was nervous of doing. Not because of the nature of his dreams: everyone who was close to Chris was familiar with his dream precognitions, and most were comfortable with them. They knew him, and they knew how honest and also confused he had been about them. Rather, he was nervous of raising the subject of Prince Kahled. Gary had done many things in his time skirting the edge of the law, and being a bodyguard was one of those. Walking around 'tooled up' with guns from the Saudi armoury was one of the more illegal moments in his career. It was also the closest he had come to being jailed. The Prince had gladly paid his fines, but as Gary was a British citizen diplomatic immunity could not have been claimed, if the sentence had been imprisonment. It was something Gary was still sensitive about. Chris explained to Gary about the dream in which Yvonne had told him how she had tracked him down. Gary listened in silence. Finally, Chris said, 'So, do you really think that my name was on that blackboard?' Gary exploded into laughter. 'On it? I reckon they must have written it three or four times at least.' 'But why would they do that? I wasn't a bloody body¬guard - Christ, I can't think of anything less likely.' 'No, but you think about it ... back then, you and me were like brothers, always in and out of each other's houses. So if they've got me under surveillance, then they're sure as hell going to be keeping an eye on you. What? They see me going in and out of your place and they're going to be thinking: who is this geezer Robinson, and what's he got to do with it? Of course you were on that bloody blackboard — I'd be more surprised if you weren't.' Chris thought about it, and had to admit that Gary was right: the long arm of synchronicity had reached out and grabbed him yet again. If Yvonne was real, then it would make sense for her to follow him up from a name on a board at Scotland Yard. If, on the other hand, she was not real, then how had Chris managed to concoct this story to explain whatever he saw as Yvonne? The revelation that his name had been on a blackboard at Scotland Yard came as such a shock that he didn't think his subconscious could have pulled it out and presented it to him as a rationale. In the final analysis it brings Chris back to the conclusion that the spirits — or whatever outside force presents itself in this way - have been grooming him for this role throughout his life. The out-of-body experiences, the occasional flashes of psychic insight, and now the years of precognitive dreams: they had to be planned for him in some way. Otherwise, how could a television-repair-man-turned-video-dealer end up being validated by the then-current Commander of the Anti-Terrorist Squad, George Cluirchill-Coleman, when he was in a police cell after his arrest at RAF Stanmore? If not for the web of coincidence that surrounds him, would Chris have met Paul Aylott, and would that policeman have known Chris well enough to believe him when Aylott was first approached about the dreams? All that can finally be said is that even Chris doesn't know exactly how or why these things happen. But the results speak for themselves, and as long as they continue Chris will keep trying to find the answers. Answers to something that is far more than just coincidence. CHAPTER TWENTY Although this book ends as 1991 draws to a close, that isn't to say that the dreams have ceased to happen, or that they have ceased to mirror real events to a degree that goes beyond mere coincidence. All it really says is this: the first two years of dreams contained amazing stories - so many that they fill this book. There are more, but there is simply not enough room in this volume to do them justice. Chris still faxes his dreams to Alex Hall, who remains his liaison officer. As the years have passed Chris has become a minor media personality, as newspapers and magazines have heard about his incredible predictions. He has appeared on radio and television shows discussing his dreams; he takes part in tests, and is always scrupulous to dismiss anything that isn't accurate enough. In many ways this makes him unique, as numerous psychics who have appeared on television and failed then compound their error by trying to make tenuous links between the truth and their predictions, or by trying to explain away their sudden failure. Chris Robinson doesn't do this: he asks researchers whom he knows are sceptical to study him and help him understand what is going on. He makes no great claims, other than that he gets results and doesn't really know how . . . Compared to a whole field of mediums-for-money, this approach tends to floor most sceptics, who can't for the life of them work out why he should be faking. But he must be, they say, because isn't everyone? There are, however, a growing number of hard-nosed journalists, television and radio producers who can attest to the fact that when Chris gets a result, it's spot-on. It was this ability that led to Chris's appearance on British television three times in one day while this book was in progress. And in that synchronistic way in which things happen to Chris, an appearance on one show led to his involvement in the search for a body. 28 October 1994 was an amazing day for Chris Robinson: he would be on three separate television programs throughout the day. It was only the wildest of chances that could schedule two pre-recorded programs on the same day as a live show in which he was to take part — all three on different channels, and none of them clashing in any way. Perhaps the least important was Esther, a chat show helmed by Esther Rantzen, which was shown on BBC2 at five o'clock in the afternoon. The viewing figure would be relatively small, and the show itself was something of a disaster. Esther introduced a psychic who charged by the hour and made the appalling claim that she would tell people when they were going to die — if that was what she saw. To do such a thing is dangerous in the extreme, whether or not the psychic is genuine: the phenomenon of the 'self-fulfilling prophecy' is well-known. This occurs when someone believes they are going to die, and as a result they have accidents caused by their carelessness, as their minds are on other matters; or they will themselves to death by believing that the slightest illness will develop into something serious; or - in extreme cases - they commit suicide. This psychic — who may or may not have been genuine, but could produce no real evidence either way - was followed by a supposed psychic who performed a first-class piece of trickery before revealing himself as an illusionist. The point of this was supposedly to demonstrate how easy it is to fake a psychic result. However, the illusionist ruined his case by claiming that he could not reveal how the trick was executed: surely this was a golden opportunity to inform people how frauds can deceive, so that they can be detected? Also on the platform was Dr Susan Blackmore, a psychologist who has made a career out of being a sceptic. Unfortunately, like James Randi and his ilk, she ruins a good standpoint by being vehemently opposed to any kind of psychic phenomena. Chris was in the audience: although he had been invited to speak, he was given only a few seconds, and when he began to talk about his experiments at Hatfield College, in which he had been studied under test conditions and had achieved interesting results, Dr Blackmore cut him short with a curt 'I've heard differently', before going on to something else. In refusing to explain herself, and refusing to let Chris explain himself, she cut short an intriguing argument. Also in the audience was Professor Arthur Ellison, who has spent many years studying phenomena for the Society for Psychical Research, a parascientific body established in the 1880s for the investigation of mediumistic and other phenomena. When called upon to speak, he said briefly that statistical evidence proves that there are some kind of phenomena within the broad area of extra-sensory perception, but he was suitably sceptical about psychics who make claims and have no evidence to back them up. He was also cut short, to allow someone in the audience to rant about how this was all rubbish because we live in a set universe . . . itself nonsense, as quantum physics has proved otherwise. The aim of the show was obviously to disprove psychic phenomena, but unfortunately no-one came out of it well. The only positive thing to emerge was that Chris publicly challenged I )r Blackmore to test him, and she accepted. This was confirmed in print in the issue of Psychic News dated 12 November 1994. These tests were to prove inconclusive for varying reasons, as will be explained. In order of importance, the next programme to feature Chris was the first episode of Strange But True, a networked ITV show made by London Weekend Television. The format of the show is simple: each week Michael Aspel wanders around the Harry Price Library (Price was a noted psychic researcher in the early years of this century) and introduces two ten-minute films. Each film features a psychic, or a group of people who have had encounters with anomalous phenomena. The show covers everything from poltergeists to alleged UFO abductions. The first film, in that first episode, was about Chris. Interspersed with interview film of Chris, describing \vhat happens in his dreams and recounting some of the things that have occurred to him as a result, were reconstructions of some of the incidents that have followed his dream precognitions. The actor who played Chris was excellent and captured his mode of speech well. The most notable reconstruction was that of Chris's visit to RAF Stanmore. The film was made earlier in the year and its timing alongside the Esther show, recorded a week or two earlier, was coincidental. The same cannot be said of the most important appearance that Chris made on television that Friday. This Morning with Judy and Richard is ITV's daytime flagship show and is broadcast live from a studio in Liverpool. Using a magazine format, and hosted by the husband-and-wife team of Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan, it is one of the most watched daytime shows in Britain. Chris was appearing on the programme to promote the start of the Strange But True series later that day. In the process, however, he managed to do something on live television that not only stunned the studio audience - particularly Richard Madeley -but also validated everything that was later broadcast on film. I am only sorry that the Esther show was recorded, as it would have been interesting to see what Dr Blackmore made of the events that occurred on the Friday morning. It began a few days earlier, when Chris was invited to appear on the programme, and was asked by a researcher to perform a test for use on the show. I had seen a similar test done once before, when Chris was due to appear on the cable channel Wire TV. On that occasion Chris had not been happy with the result when the sealed box was opened, and so had not wanted the test used on television. This time there was no such chance for him to assess the evidence beforehand: the sealed box — the contents of which were his to dream — would be opened on air. Chris would be travelling up to Liverpool on Thurs¬day, and arrangements had been made for him to stay the night at a hotel in the city. That one night was all he had in which to dream about the contents of the box. As must be obvious from the preceding chapters, Chris usually prefers to dream for at least three nights before drawing firm conclusions: the frequency is an important establishing factor in divining the precognitive elements of his dreams. However, he felt that the show would be important for him and so agreed to the test, trusting to the spirits and to his own powers of judgement in translating the dreams. That night the dreams were vivid and clear. He was walking down a road until he came to a phone box. In the phone box was his friend Raymond, making a call. Raymond's nickname is Dolly, so Chris wondered if this was significant. This was confirmed by the sudden appearance of Chris's friend Trevor Kempson, who stood behind Raymond, waving a small doll at Chris. 'This is what it's all about, Chrissy,' he said. The dream changed, and Chris was watching Trevor empty a post-office sack onto the floor. A lot of boxes came tumbling out of the sack, wrapped up as Christmas presents. When he woke Chris was left with some pretty clear ideas about what lay inside the sealed box. After a leisurely breakfast he was taken to the studio. The show begins at half-past ten, and Chris wasn't scheduled to appear until after eleven, so there was no rush for him to be made up. The production team did, however, force him to wear a tie, a hideously patterned affair, and it was this rather than anything connected to the dreams that made him feel nervous. After all, who wants to look like an idiot when he appears on national television? He was shown into the studio and came face to face with a burly security guard, who had stood over the sealed box all night. It was faintly absurd: Chris is all for precautions and controls in experiments, but did they think he was going to try and break into the studio just to get a look inside the box? While they were waiting to go on, Chris tried to make conversation with the guard, but the man was uncomfortable. Perhaps he was afraid of unwittingly giving something away and being accused of wrecking the show. Chris was announced as a guest who was 'coming up after the break', and a camera focused on both Chris and the security guard - before zooming in for a close-up of Chris, who looked understandably startled at this sudden movement, as his face filled the screen. There was a brief moment of relaxation as the advertisement break gave everyone a fewr moments' respite from the tension of live television. Then there were the cues, and the show was back on air. Richard and Judy went through the link, and there was an excerpt of the Strange But True film as Chris was led onto the set, accompanied by the security guard and the sealed box. Film clip over, Richard explained what the box was doing sitting on a table, and Judy asked Chris a few questions about himself. She also asked the guard if the box had been in sight all night. Quietly and nervously he affirmed this. Finally came the moment of truth, and Chris was asked what he believed to be inside the box. Chris began to explain — wisely leaving out the references to Trevor, as mention of spirits can easily sidetrack a conversation of this kind. 'In my dream I saw a man in a phone box. This man was my friend Raymond, but we always call him "Dolly". So from that, I'd say that there was a dolly in the box. But where I've written down the word dolly as I sleep, I've put a box around it, and that usually means it's "not quite" what I've written.' Chris had the dream diary sheet with him, as proof of what he was saying. He continued, 'Later on in my dream, I was with a man who was emptying a post-office sack, and this sack was full of boxes. They were wrapped up like Christmas presents. Boxes again, and like presents . . . I'd say that there was a children's toy in the box, possibly a dolly.' 'Well, we don't know what's in there, so let's open it up and see,' Richard said. When the box was opened, Richard pulled out a teddy bear - small, old and battered. 'I bet that's either called Trevor or Edward,' Chris added promptly. He didn't explain why on air, but was thinking of Trevor Kempson holding up the dolly in the phone box - Kempson's full name being Trevor Edward Kempson. 'Hang on . . .' Richard paused as he received a message through his earpiece from the producer. 'Yes, right . . .' He turned to the camera, and was obviously amazed at what he had just heard. 'The teddy bear belongs to our producer, Helen Williams, and it is called Edward.' He turned to Chris. 'That was remarkable.' 'Well, I did say a dolly, or like it. I didn't actually say a bear.' 'But Helen's just told me that her parents used to run a post office when she was a child, which could be where the post-office sack comes in. What's more, she was born on Christmas Day, which would account for the presents in the sack. And you knew what the name could be.' He was still a little stunned as he introduced the next item. And no wonder: Chris had forecast that a child's toy, like a doll, would be inside the box. A teddy bear is a figurine, like a doll. There are many other types of toy that could have been used, from a model car to a football. He also knew that the bear would be called either Trevor or Edward, because of the link with his friend Trevor Kempson. Perhaps most interesting of all is the fact that he perceived a link between Christmas, a post office and the contents of the box - without even being aware of the connection until someone else told him. Statistically, the amount of information contained within the dream and translated from symbols by Chris is phenomenal. The odds of him simply guessing this much about the contents of the box are stratospheric. This was proof, if it were needed, that something strange and unusual is happening to Chris Robinson. What is important now is that his powers are investigated and that attempts are made to help Chris understand what lies behind his dreams. After the show Richard and Judy were eager to talk to Chris and find out more about him. It's not often that presenters on a show are touched in this way: so much passes by them on a five-days-a-week basis that it's difficult for anyone to keep track of who is on the show on any given day. Chris, however, made such an impression that they made a particular effort to speak to him, inviting him to come and stay with them, as they had friends they wanted him to meet. Psychic News reviewed the show, and quoted Richard Madeley as saying, 'We didn't believe Chris could do this, which is why we arranged the test. And yet it just about worked.' In the same review Chris also told the journalist that he had been contacted by a woman living on Merseyside who had seen the show, and wanted Chris to help her in the search for her missing daughter. What he didn't mention was that the daughter was already known to be dead. A man had been convicted of her murder and was serving a prison sentence. What the woman dearly wished for was to find her daughter's body - the location of which the killer refused to divulge - and lay her to rest. What Chris didn't realise was that the spirit of the daughter had already visited him, and had also asked him for his help. Marie McCourt is a middle-aged housewife from Liverpool. Her daughter Helen disappeared one night and was never seen again. An investigation ensued arid a man was arrested for the murder of Helen McCourt. He stood trial, was convicted and sentenced. Throughout the investigation he refused to tell police where he had buried the body. Even when he was in prison, and had nothing to lose by revealing the location of the corpse, he still kept silent. For Marie, this was torture: it was strain enough to know that her daughter had been brutally murdered, without the added burden of not knowing where her daughter lay. All she wanted was to give her daughter a decent burial, but even this had been denied her. It was now six years since the murderer had been convicted. While her daughter was missing Marie had appeared on This Morning and knew exactly who to ring when she saw Chris Robinson on air. She knew that if anyone could help her achieve the impossible, and find Helen's body, then it was Chris. What Marie could not know was that two days before Chris had traveled to Liverpool to appear on This Morning, he had a dream in which he was visited by a young girl. She was lost, and had been murdered. Her spirit was not in torment, but she wanted her mother to know that she was well, and to help her mother find where she was buried. For Chris, this was somewhat alarming, as only rarely does he dream of a straightforward murder, such as that of Patrick Frater. Usually his dreams are to do with events that may or may not end in death, such as bomb warnings. To see a murder victim close up, and to talk to them in his dream, is an experience of such emotional intensity that it tends to leave him drained. What made this situation even more alarming was that he had had a dream two nights before his appearance on Esther, in which he had seen a friend who was a used-car dealer shot and killed by a hitman. He told Professor Ellison about this when they were chatting after the recording, and later phoned a stunned Ellison to report that his friend was actually shot in a nearby village the day after the recording — thus exactly mirroring Chris's three-day window for events. The girl hadn't told Chris her name — the dream was rather unclear, and the connection between them was prone to interference from other dream factors — but she did reveal some personal details about herself. So when Marie McCourt wrote to Chris, following up her phone call to the This Morning production office, he was able to ring her immediately and talk to her about the girl he had seen. By the time he had finished describing her, and relating some of the details she had told him, Marie was in tears. She had no doubt that the girl was her daughter, as there were things Chris told her that only Helen could know about. 'You've got to help me find her,' she told him. 'I won't be able to rest happily until she's properly buried.' Chris could see that Marie's desire to see her daughter given a decent burial was not just due to religious conviction, but was part of her grieving process: in order to grieve properly, she had to see that her daughter was dead and her body carefully laid to rest. It broke Chris's heart to hear Marie on the end of the phone, so he agreed to help. He told her that he would write down some questions and invite Helen to talk to him again. He also warned Marie that he might not be able to get much more detail from the spirit: sometimes they could only say so much in the dreams. It's difficult to describe exactly why the messages can be so erratic, and why seemingly inconsequential details may emerge when the sought-after, more important details may be kept back. Even Chris finds the manner in which communication happens hard to put into words: perhaps the nearest analogy is to say that the dream communication with spirits is a little like using a mobile phone - sometimes the transmission can break up because of an imperfect connection, and parts of the conversation may be lost. Marie was overjoyed that Chris was to try and help her, and even had a suggestion of her own. 'Why don't you come and stay up here?' she asked. 'You could sleep in Helen's bed - her room hasn't been touched since she died, and it may be that the vibrations are stronger there.' Chris thought about it. His dreams were constant wherever he was at any given moment, but he did wonder if an aspect of psychometry might enter into it if he stayed in Helen's room. Psychometry is the gift of holding an object and being able to divine from it impressions and scenes from the life of the owner. If he slept in Helen's bed, surrounded by her belongings, was it possible that some kind of psychometric powers would infuse his dreams, and perhaps make it easier for her to communicate with him? Certainly, Chris has an aptitude for psychometry. He agreed to travel up to Liverpool within the next few weeks and stay with Marie. In the meantime he would continue to ask questions of Helen, and hope that she was able to communicate with him. Chris knew that this had something to do with Helen McCourt, but she was nowhere in sight. Instead, he was sitting in a prison cell. There was one man with him, but he didn't seem to know that Chris was there: he sat looking at the wall in silence, every muscle in his body poised. It must have been ten o'clock at night, because the lights suddenly cut off — Chris knew that ten was the time for 'lights-out' in prison. As soon as the darkness descended, the man rose to his feet, a shape uncoiling in the darkness. He stood facing the door of his cell, and with a voice that rang in the sparse confines of the four brick walls, he began to quote verses from the Bible in a declamatory tone. The voice was deafening in the darkness, and Chris couldn't follow the sense of what the man was saying, as his voice took on a sing-song tone, becoming almost a meaningless chant. He was intoning Old Testament verses, about begetting and begatting, going on and on, into the night. Helen appeared one night and took Chris to a piece of waste ground, where there was a steep incline. Together, they climbed the incline, and when they reached the top Chris could see five ponds, stagnant and still, like small gravel pits. 'I'm in there,' she said, indicating them. But which one? When Chris woke, he looked at the dream diary. He could see that there were recurring letters, which must be giving him a postcode, but arranged either way, it was not one he was familiar with. Using his postcode map on the computer, he found that it covered the area around a small Lancashire village called Billinge, near St Helens. It was some way from Liverpool, but not so far that it was impossible to suppose that the killer had taken her there. He had something to tell Marie. A few days later, when the telephone rang, Chris found himself talking to a police officer named McKay. 'I understand that Marie McCourt has asked you to help her find her daughter,' the policeman said. 'Yes. I said I'd help, and I may have something.' 'That's good. You do know you'll have help if you need it?' 'What do you mean?' 'I mean that we're willing to help you look for the body. I can't go too far, as our part in things is really over and done with - the killer's in prison, and that's the end of it. But it must be awful for the mother. If we can help her get her daughter's body back, then it'll be a lot better for everybody.' Chris was pleased to hear this. He's found, time and again, that it's hard for him to get a result if the police are unhelpful or uninterested. By far the best results have been on those occasions when the police have trusted him and given him co-operation. He thought it politic, however, not to say this in so many words. 'I'm really pleased you feel like that, because I've got a few ideas. For instance, I work on postcodes a lot, and I've got one that fits a place near St Helens called Billinge. Does that mean anything?' McKay thought about it. 'It may,' he said finally. 'Anything else?' 'Well, yes — I've got an idea that she may be buried in or near these ponds — a bit like gravel pits. There are five of them. Are they anywhere near this place Billinge?' McKay whistled softly. 'There's a place called Moss Bank, which is just a couple of miles from Billinge. They've got five ponds there. And we know that this guy used to hang around near the village.' Chris was encouraged by this and felt confident enough to broach a subject that had been worry¬ing him. 'Look, I know this is going to sound really strange, but I've had this peculiar dream that I feel has something to do with Helen — but I just don't know how or why. Can I tell you about it?' 'Sure, why not?' McKay said after a pause. Chris took a deep breath and began: 'In the dream I was in a prison cell, and there was this guy in there. When the lights went out, he stood up and started ranting and raving. It was some sort of biblical nonsense ... It might not even be actually from the Bible, but it sounded like all that Old Testament stuff about Isaac begetting Jacob - or was it the other way round? Anyway, you know the sort of thing. Does that ring any bells?' There was silence on the end of the line. 'Hello?' Chris said after a few moments. 'Are you still there?' McKay's breathing told him that the police officer was still on the end of the line. Finally, he said, 'How on earth did you know that? How the hell could you possibly know that?' He laughed shortly, and said after a brief pause, 'The man we've got banged up for the murder — you know7 what he does? Every night, at lights out, he gets up in his cell and starts shouting verses from the Bible. It drives all the other prisoners mad, and most of the staff. He shouts so loud that they can't ignore him, and he does it every single night, without fail. He has done so ever since he was convicted.' Chris was silent. Now it all made sense: Helen had been showing him the face of her killer. Except that he had been caught, and didn't help Chris at all in his attempt to find her corpse. After half a decade of the dreams, Chris had become used to the unusual seeming commonplace, but this stunned even him. To be able to tell the officer who had been on the team investigating the murder exactly what the convicted killer did every night, without ever having seen or heard him ... At least he was sure of the police's co-operation. 'Look,' said McKay finally, 'you just get yourself up here, and we'll try and help you find that body.' Less than two weeks later Chris was in Liverpool, staying with Marie McCourt. He slept in Helen's bed, and spoke to her in his dream. Still she showed him the five ponds, but there was no additional information. In some ways the idea of staying in Helen's bed was counter-productive. Chris felt there was a pressure on him to succeed that perhaps inhibited his faculty to dream. It was not a conscious awareness, but studies into those people who score highly in ESP tests have shown that they perform less well 'when they have been told that they are able to do it. It seems as though the subconscious rebels at the idea of being forced into a position where it is precognitive. Uri Geller has a view on this: in his work with the police he has felt that the more his success has been willed by those around him, the more of an inhibiting effect it has had upon him. This also explains why, when he was performing on the show business circuit in the 1970s, Geller sometimes resorted to faking in order to produce results for the cameras. Interestingly, he was 327 DREAM DETECTIVE always caught out when he did fake. Since retiring from public life, Geller has made a fortune dowsing minerals on a freelance basis. He is paid no fee, only commission on what he finds. He is now a millionaire: the conclusion is obvious. Chris had previously experienced no problem when asked by the police to perform certain tasks: the way in which he obtained the names of the terrorists killed in the St Albans bomb attack is ample proof of this. However, there's a world of difference between going home and trying to get a result and trying to obtain the same result when someone in the next room is willing you to succeed. Should he have stayed at home? While he was in Liverpool Chris met McKay, and the two men traveled out from the city to Billinge. It gave Chris an opportunity to see a place that had otherwise been no more than a postcode to him. Afterwards they went to look at Moss Bank. When they reached the desolate and derelict area, Chris felt a shiver pass through him: a strong feeling of deja-vu. He had never been here before in his life - yet he had in his dreams. This was the area Helen McCourt had taken him to; this was where she claimed to be buried. Chris got out of the car, and looked up the grassy incline. 'Do you recognise it?' McKay asked, seeing a look cross Chris's face. Chris nodded. 'Yeah. She brought me here and showed me the ponds. They're up there, right?' He pointed up the slope. McKay acknowledged this. 'That's right. Want to take a look?' Chris took a deep breath. 'Might as well, while we're here.' They set off up the slope. It was a much steeper gradient than Chris remembered from his dream, and he was puffing by the time they reached the top. What he saw made the breath catch in his throat. The five ponds were laid out as in his dream. And he was standing at exactly the same point he had stood with Helen: the perspective was identical. 'This has got to be them, right?' McKay queried. 'There aren't any other ponds around here.' Chris sighed. 'This is them, all right. Five ponds. And Helen's in one of them.' 'Which one?' 'That's the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, isn't it? I know it's here, but I don't know which one. She either won't - or can't - tell me.' 'Can't?' 'She was dead, just. Her spirit must have been confused, right? Everything is going to be confused. I mean, she must have been terrified.' 'I guess so ... well, I guess we'll just have to drag all of them,' said McKay. 'How long will that take?' 'By the time I get the manpower together — and let's be honest, the killer's locked up, so I can't make it a priority — I'd say it'd be too late to do it this year because of the winter. We'll have to wait till spring.' Chris looked at the ponds. He was sure Helen was buried in one of them, and he just wished that he could be of more help. Now Marie McCourt would have to wait for the seasons to allow her daughter to be found. Chris Robinson returned home. Home to more dreams. More and more people are accepting that there is something paranormal about his dreams, and that he does have powers of precognition. Chris firmly believes that we can all do this if we train ourselves to remember our dreams, and learn how to interpret them correctly. He will keep on studying his dreams until such time as they cease, and until he has the help to research properly the reasons why this strange power has touched his life. However long that takes. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE The Hatfield Tests that Susan Blackmore had been so dismissive of had come about as a result of an approach made by Sadie Holland, a researcher for Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious Universe, a series of half-hour documentaries linked by the scientist and science fiction writer from his Sri Lankan home. Considering his sci¬entific background, Clarke is refreshingly open-minded towards anomalous phenomena, and although he does little more than link the shows, this attitude permeates throughout the production team. Thus, when Chris was asked to participate in an experiment to be conducted by Dr Richard Wiseman at the University of Hertfordshire in Hatfield, he had no hesitation in accepting. Sadie told him that the tests were designed so that a series of psychics would be called into a room and shown three predetermined objects. These were the responsibility of Dr Wiseman, and only he would know what they were until the day. 'Well, you do realise that I don't actually work like that, don't you?', Chris said over the phone. 'I may be able to dream about them in advance, but I won't just be able to look at them and give you an instant history. It doesn't work that way.' Time and again, he found himself having to explain how it worked, getting the feeling that people thought he was making excuses. Sadie seemed a little doubtful about the manner in which he wished to work, and was insistent about the tests being carried out according to Dr Wiseman's method. She was, however, keen for him to participate, and there were no real problems anticipated. 'Is there anything you particularly need?' she asked finally. 'The only thing I ask is that you put the objects in boxes, and label the boxes A, B and C. Then I can ask the spirits questions about box A on Friday night, box B on Saturday night, and box C on Sunday. I can then fax you the dream notes the next morning, and you can compare them later to the history of each object, and see if there is any correlation.' Sadie Holland agreed to this, and Chris put down the phone trusting that the experiment would accommodate his methods of working. He did exactly what he had said and repeated the method the following week. This way he had two sets of dream notes and a chance to find any recurring patterns. On the first night, the dreams were confused. Chris slept more fitfully than usual, and the only really memorable thing when he awoke was that a woman had been attacked and murdered. He knew that she was acquainted with her killer, and that she had been killed with a gun, but beyond that was nothing concrete. The second night was better. Chris was visited by PC Keith Blakelock, who was killed in the Broadwater Farm riots of 1985. On that evening, Chris had been in North London, only a few miles away from the Tottenham location of the riots, and so had been near enough for the spirit of Keith Blakelock to search him out. As with Yvonne Fletcher, it had taken some time for the spirit to establish contact, but now Blakelock (or something that purported to be Blakelock, and represented itself in this way) was a regular visitor to Chris's dreams, and sometimes worked on dream solutions in tandem with Yvonne. This night, Blakelock was on his own. He told Chris of two murdered policemen. One death was his own and the other related to the second object — box B. Like Blakelock, this constable had died of wounds to the head. However, these wounds had been caused by a gunshot. So, things were beginning to get clearer. On the third night, the dreams were equally vivid. Chris and Blakelock sat on a grassy bank, watching a steam train pass in a leisurely way. That part of Chris -which is always in touch with his conscious mind was aware that Blakelock's presence was an indication of a clue about the third box. As if this realisation was the trigger, Chris found himself in a change of scene. He was observing a woman preparing a bottle for a small baby. Yvonne Fletcher appeared by his side, and said words which he wrote down in his diary: KEEP YOUR FINGERS AWAY -BOILING OVER - TURN HEAT OFF With this, the scene melted, and Chris found himself standing in a flat which he knew was in London. The room caught fire, and it began to spread around him. As he was beginning to panic, the scene changed yet again: he was sitting at a desk, writing a book about murderers. This changed before he had a chance to really take much in, and he was now in a plane which had a fire in the right engine. The shock of this made him wake up: he looked down at the diary and saw what he had written. As he looked, the name of the powdered milk came back to him. It was called Progress - would this be significant? Eight days later, Sadie Holland rang again: the test was to take place next day in Hatfield, at the C1J Snow Building. This was the location of Dr Wiseman's lab, and Chris was to report at 9 a.m. The TV crew hoped to start filming at 11.30. Chris told her that he felt confident about two of the boxes. On 13 September, a group of four psychics, a TV crew, and Dr Richard Wiseman assembled in his lab. Wiseman told the psychics about the design of his experiment: they would be taken individually into the room used as a studio for the day and shown the objects. They would then have to tell the camera and Dr Wiseman what they thought each object pertained to, and answer a questionnaire. On this document were eighteen statements. The psychics had to tick six which related to each object. All of them were a little surprised by the questionnaire — after all, what if the statements couldn't exactly fit in with what they were saying? For simple semantics, would their observations be discounted? However, all four had agreed to the test, and to back out now would look like admitting they were frauds, so all four agreed. An associate of Wiseman's came in with a large box. The objects were contained within. The man, accompanied by Dr Wiseman and Ms Holland passed into the studio room and there was an uneasy pause. Then they returned and informed Chris he was the first to go in. When he entered the room, he received a shock: the objects were laid out on a table. They were neither boxed nor labelled, as he had requested. Chris felt a familiar sinking feeling: the experiment had been designed to suit Wiseman, and not any individual vari¬ation in the way the psychics received their messages. 'Can these at least be labelled, as that's how I've worked,' requested Chris. Wiseman seemed put out: 'Very well,' he sighed, and asked a student to label the items A,B and C. This the student did in a manner that seemed somewhat desultory. Chris sat down in front of the table, facing the camera. He looked at the yellow labels, only just stuck on, with a heavy heart. Finally, he picked up object A, a lady's shoe. In an almost perfunctory manner, he told the camera what he had dreamt and that he expected the shoe to have belonged to a woman who had been shot. He had been expecting to see the gun which had killed her. Object B was the projectile part of a bullet, without the shell casing. He told the camera about his encounter with Blakelock, and how he expected that this was connected to the murder of a police constable. Object C was a red woollen scarf. As he picked it up, he experienced a rare flash of psychometry. As soon as it was in his hands he could see a woman being strangled: he put the scarf around his neck, and as he did he could see milk bottles. It was his opinion that the scarf had been used as a murder weapon, and that the murder was in some way connected to milk. After this came the questionnaire. It was a sheet of eighteen statements, many of which bore little relation to what Chris had dreamt. Ergo, he had to leave many of the statements unticked. However, there was no space for him to record his own observations. As a foolproof device for testing psychics - or the veracity of anything — this leaves a lot to be desired. Interestingly, Wiseman's questionnaire showed the psychics to have a worse success rate than chance would have given them. His control group of students, however, did much better than chance. I leave the reader to draw their own conclusions about the efficiency of such an experiment. It is, however, worth recording what the psychics were then told about the objects, which all came from the Essex Police Museum, based at the County Constabulary Headquarters. The shoe belonged to Miss Camille Cecile Holland, a 57-year-old woman shot dead by her common law husband, Samuel Dougal, at their remote farmhouse in Clavering. She was missing for four years before a digging party found her body at the farm. She was identified by her shoes, and Dougal was hanged on the evidence of a London cobbler who made the shoes. Miss Holland's dog Jacko had assisted in the digging party, and it was because of his sense of smell that the body was located. He was later stuffed, and is still on display at the museum. The bullet was that used to kill Police Constable George William Gutteridge at Stapleford Abbotts in September 1927. He was shot in the head on the Romford to Ongar Road by Frederick Browne who was later arrested with a gun in his possession. William Kennedy confessed to being with Browne when he committed the murder and the gun was proved to be the same as that which killed PC Gutteridge by the use of ballistics evidence — the first time it had been used in a murder trial in this country. The scarf had been used in a recent murder. The victim's name was not revealed, but she had been killed by her milkman in a row over her milk bill. He had reported finding the body on his rounds to try and cover his complicity. When he finally confessed, he claimed that it was an accidental killing, and that she had been strangled by the scarf when he had grabbed it to prevent her running away. Chris Robinson may not have been able to answer the questionnaire correctly, but what did he say to camera? Sue Blackmore, who had challenged Chris on the Esther programme, finally agreed to a series of tests over the Christmas of 1994. They proved inconclusive, even though they were designed to Chris's specifications. Unlike Dr Wiseman, Dr Blackmore agreed to place happen soon, and that because of what he had said the police would want to interview him. To be in a foreign country and at the mercy of their police, no matter how innocent you may be, is a daunting prospect, and Chris went out of his way to be surrounded by people until such a time as the murder would take place. On Christmas day, Chris had a surprise visitor: the constable he had discussed his dream with some days before. He came with his immediate superior and they took Chris to a nearby bar where they sat for three hours drinking and discussing the dreams. Mr Deleon, an ex-mayor of the village, joined them. He was still a man with influence, and he, too, wanted to hear about Chris's dreams. Once again, Chris went over them: the concensus among the men was that Chris had symbolically dreamt of the death of the constable's wife. 'Besides,' one of them added, 'even if there is a murder, what have you to fear? You won't be the culprit.' He laughed. 'Our police have never arrested the wrong person.' Somehow this was not reassuring. On Boxing Day Chris went to a resort called Paradise Mountain with a group of people. He didn't arrive back in Cavinti until 7.30 p.m., •where he was greeted by a roadblock at the entrance of the village. He discovered that there had been a murder: Billy Jean DeLeon Vamenez, a local girl of twenty-two, had been found in the river at lunchtime. She had been killed by multiple stab wounds. It took about thirty minutes for the police to realise that Chris had arrived back in the village. Because of what he had already said, they believed that he may have vital clues as to who was responsible. The local police sat with him and went over the pages of the dream diary with him. However, when the city detectives from Manila arrived at the village, they dismissed Chris's dreams. They had already decided that the killers (they believed it may be more than one) -were out-of-town drug addicts. Chris maintained that it was a local boy who knew his victim and had been to school with her. The funeral was held a week later. Chris \valked the half mile to the cemetary with Rollando Mesina, the local police chief, and Mr Deleon, the former mayor, who was the murdered girl's uncle. Chris felt helpless and sad. Despite his offers of help, he had been unable to be of any practical use. After the ceremony, Mr Deleon asked Chris to meet the girl's family. He wanted Chris to see the young child that Billy Jean had left. As he sat with the family, Chris remembered that Billy Jean had asked him to look after the child. Almost as if he had known Chris was thinking this, Billy Jean's father asked him if he would like to adopt the boy, named Dadrick. Chris declined, but agreed to become ninong, which is the equivalent of becoming a Godparent. He would send money to the child, and his status as ninong meant that Billy Jean's family would be able to ask for help from Chris's family in the village without any stigma being attached. The following day, a young man who had attended the funeral ran away from home. He had known Billy Jean all her life and had attended the same school. His mother reported his disappearance to the local police, who placed this against what Chris had told them. Within a couple of days the young man had been traced to a neighbouring village. He was arrested on suspicion of murder and confessed under questioning. However, there was one final twist: two days after this the young man escaped from custody, and has so far eluded his pursuers. Back in England, it was a matter of business as usual as Chris tried to demonstrate his powers to those who would listen. However, it sometimes seemed as though he was up against an army of sceptics determined to bend the rules to suit their own ends. Such •was the case with the James Wliale Show, for whom Chris had a slot in April 1995. The production team had agreed to a box test for Chris, and had placed some objects in a box. When Chris asked the spirits to help him, this is what he got: He was looking at a map of the Bristol Channel with someone he didn't recognise. They tore the map in half and gave the pieces to a woman who stuffed them in her bra. Because of rhyming slang, he wondered after if perhaps Bristol was the key (the map, and Bristol City = titty). The remainder of the dream was concerned with Chris driving a car. There were more maps and the car keys were prominent, as were some batteries. Chris turned up for the recording: the show was recorded about a fortnight in advance of transmission, which is in the early hours of a Saturday morning. Whale's show is known for its acerbic and somewhat contrived air of satire and pseudo-anarchy. Chris should have known he was being set up. Chris detailed his dreams, and showed pages from his dream diary. The box was then opened: there were four items. The first were two screwed up pieces of paper which Chris had mentioned. There was a piece of cardboard which had not been mentioned. Finally there was a toy car. Chris had been in a car in his dream. However, because there were no maps, batteries or keys, Whale denounced Chris as a charlatan. Angered by this blatant manipulation, Chris left the studio. When the programme was broadcast, most of the analysis of the dream diary was left out, and only Whale's rancour was left intact. If nothing else, it taught Chris to stick to live tests in future, and to make sure that there "was only one item in any one box. This contrasted heavily with his experience on Dial Midnight, two years previously. On the night before the show, on 1 October 1993, Chris had been visited by Yvonne Fletcher and Keith Blakelock in his dreams. They had warned him not to go near the studio, as a bomb would explode in Finchley Road which was on his route. The producer had naturally been upset when told that his guest was pulling out at the last minute, but had rapidly been on the phone when five bombs detonated along the Finchley Road on the evening of 2 October. That time he had been taken seriously. The same is also true of Wire TV, the now defunct cable channel, who invited Chris back on 7 March 1995 - a much better show for him than the James Whale debacle of a month later. Chris received a call from Sarah Dunn, a researcher at Wire TV, asking him if he would appear on a live lunchtime show in a fortnight's time. He would be asked about his dreams and they wanted to do another box test with him. Chris had appeared several times on Wire and was only too pleased to agree. He put no stipulation on the box -size, contents, etc - other than it be one item only. When he put the phone down, he realised that he might have already started to dream about this, as his dreams for the previous night had been strong, to say the least: Tape - Disk Must not let it stick to the spinning disk - so it stops turning. Below this was a drawing of a record in its sleeve. I he dreams woke Chris at 3.55 a.m., and it proved impossible to get back to sleep. Tuesday night's dreams followed a similar pattern, being about computer program disks and driving on an uneven road surface with no shoes as he punched at the brake and accelerator. Although he wrote nothing at all on Wednesday, he framed the following question at the top of the dream diary page: What will be in Sarah's box, please? Chris •was sitting in a cafe when two men came in. They sat down near him and began to discuss him in a manner that showed they wanted him to hear. He recognised one of them as an actor and the man •was condemning Chris as a fraud and a fool, saying that his dreams were nothing more than a delusion. Chris got up and hit the man around the head . . . Then he was standing on a bridge, looking down a river or canal. The rest of his dream was concerned with the steering wheel of his car and how easy it was to turn now that he had power steering. Yvonne Fletcher was with him, and she was showing him steering wheels, and also compact disks. When Chris woke, he felt pleased with the night's dreams. In his book were written the words 'BOXED HIS EARS', followed by 'steering wheel' and 'com¬pact disk'. The first was obviously a signal that the dreams concerned the Wire box. And as the latter had been shown to him by Yvonne Fletcher, whose messages generally needed little interpretation, he felt sure that the box would contain something to do with spinning. To this end, he wrote the same question on Friday night. When he woke, he had written: Resolution — Window. Settings change them back and forth. Return equipment — make sure you go to right house. Telescope. Point it at the sun. Gets very hot. Can burn paper. Don't look through it — just move it around. More round objects that could spin, but still nothing definite. He repeated the process on Saturday, and came up with: Train — models — Comes off the rails — gramophone motor. The dreams had seen him standing by a railway, looking at the wheels of the trains. After this he had been in a TV studio, with cameras pointing at him. Someone pointed a starting gun at him, and then at an old gramophone, which only played 78s. This he singled out as important, as a common link between many of the disc objects had been that they could be used for recording. Would something like this be in the Wire box? The journey from his home to Wire's Bristol studios and offices took less time than he expected, and even this seemed to fly by. Returning his radio on the way, Chris had tuned into Terry Christian's show on Talk Radio UK. A popular phone-in program, the show had been - by chance - about psychic phenomena, and Chris had used his mobile phone to call in and discuss his dreams. It was by now quite late in the evening, and when Chris and his son Aaron - who was with him on this trip - arrived at the hotel, there was little time to eat. So Chris ordered some sandwiches and they ate in the bar. It was deserted when they arrived, but before long a man whose face was familiar walked in. Aaron recog¬nised him as a former breakfast TV presenter and got quite excited. Chris, too, recognised the man, but was unable to put a name to the face. Urged on by his son, Chris introduced himself, and the two men soon fell into conversation. The man was Mike Morris, now a presenter with Wire — and neither knew that they would face each other over the cameras the following day: just another touch of synchronicity. The next morning, Chris took Aaron into the centre of Bristol before being picked up by taxi and taken to the old Georgian house used by Wire as a studio. Both men were surprised to be facing each other in a more formal setting, but it helped to break the ice, and the interview went well until finally Morris announced that it was time to guess what was in the box. Chris mildly admonished him: he wouldn't be guessing so much as interpreting the dreams to help him see what was in it. He continued: 'I started dreaming about a particular object even before I knew about this show, and I started to draw a particular shape. I'm still drawing a similar object over and over again. Last night I drew something similar. 'It's some kind of circle, possibly with a hole in the centre. It could be either a telescope mirror — which is a round, reflective circle — or it could be a compact disc, or recording disc of some kind. I have drawn discs constantly throughout. It's some kind of recording disc or mirror . . .' Mike Morris reached down beside his chair and drew up the box. When he opened it, the object inside was an old 78 in a paper sleeve . . . just as Chris had actually drawn. Even after all these years, the dreams still have a habit of getting Chris into trouble that he's not looking for. Take, for example, the dreams of 4 July 1995, which landed him in the middle of a riot the following day . . . In his dream, Chris was near the house of his friend Maria, who lived on an estate near him called Marsh Farm. Her car was on fire, and she was in danger. He could remember no more, woke up at half-past three, and when he finally managed to get back to sleep, the dream had vanished. The next evening, Chris decided to drive over and see Maria. He wasn't sure that the dream would come to anything as the months of July and August are always erratic. However, he didn't want to risk it. When he reached the estate, he noticed that the road layout had changed since his last visit a couple of months before: there were new mini-roundabouts, and some barriers had been erected to prevent joy riding. When he passed three blocks of flats, he noticed several groups of youths milling about. Perhaps it was the wrong time to visit: he swung round at the next mini-roundabout and headed back the way he had come. One of the groups of youths had moved and they were now milling around the newly erected barriers. He slowed, and called out to them, asking what was going on. A youth in a ski-mask, disguising his face, told him that the barriers had to go. Almost on cue, the mob began to batter the barrier with sledgehammers. Chris accelerated, wanting to leave as quickly as possible. He slowed beside a young man who was walking away from the mob. 'What on earth's going on?' he asked. The youth replied: 'They're going to smash all the barriers. It's been planned for tonight. I'd get out of here, mate. They've got petrol bombs, the lot . . .' Chris did get out, but not before he had put through a 999 call on his mobile phone and reported about a hundred armed and masked youths damaging the road signs and steel barriers. 'This isn't a hoax call,' he continued. 'There's going to be a serious disorder incident. I've been told they've got petrol bombs.' He had time to give his name and address before leaving the estate quickly. Over the next two nights 500 police and 250 rioters clashed on the estate. Cars were left blazing, three schools were burnt down and a policeman was stabbed. Once again, the dreams had put him on the spot when it came to trouble.