ELEVEN

December 1970

For several weeks Metropolitan passed on to me a variety of crank calls from readers about my mind-control article. Several people claimed to have been subject to brainwashing while in perfectly ordinary hospitals, one woman insisted she had been attacked by a plastic daffodil that wanted to kill her and a farmer wanted to talk to me about how deadly nightshade was not deadly at all, if taken in small enough doses. What this had to do with mind control, he could not say, but he believed propaganda was just another form of mind control and he was sick of the campaign of propaganda against deadly nightshade.

These calls I humoured as best I could and investigated those worth even a second glance, all without success. Just when I was beginning to despair of ever learning more about the Glasshouse, I received a letter that had been sent to me care of Metropolitan. The letter had been written in a halting, hesitant scrawl with many erasures and additions. While the missive carried no surname or postal address, the content was enough to convince me the writer was certainly worth meeting. Her letter made mention of several different incidents I had been trying to tie together.

The writer, a young girl calling herself Dodo, had included a telephone number where she could be contacted during evenings only, and I spent an impatient day waiting to ring her. Finally, I got through to what proved to be a halfway house for the homeless. A new innovation to London, such places had been set up by the charity Shelter, which was formed after a controversial television documentary called Cathy Come Home had publicized the plight of the homeless.

'Hello? I wanted to speak to a woman called Dodo?' I asked, suddenly feeling foolish. Was this strange name real, a nickname or a codeword? For all I knew, the letter was an elaborate hoax or even an attempt to entrap me. The voice on the other end of the phone was confused for a moment before responding.

'Oh, you mean Dorothea! I'll just get her.' Less than a minute later a quiet, nervous woman spoke to me.

'Who is this?'

'My name is James Stevens, I write for Metropolitan magazine. You sent me a letter?'

'I'm not sure I understand...'

'It was about the Glasshouse.' A long pause followed. I almost thought she had hung up but I could still hear background noise from the hostel. Finally, she spoke again.

'I remember now, you wrote an article about mind control. I need to tell you about what happened to me at - that place...' She hesitated, almost saying the name but stopping herself, as though afraid of even speaking it aloud. What was she frightened of?

'The Glasshouse?' I asked.

'Yes...'

I wanted to press her further, but it was obvious she felt unable to talk over the phone. She seemed even more paranoid than me. We arranged to meet at a small café near Clapham Junction train station, late the next morning. 'How will I recognize you? I don't know what you look like,' I pointed out.

'Carry a copy of the latest Metropolitan. I'll find you,' she promised. In the background the level of noise in the hostel swelled to a crescendo. 'I've got to go now, it's dinner. We're having mince tonight!' She sounded excited, as if mince were the culinary highlight of her week. What kind of woman was this mysterious correspondent, who stayed in a hostel for the homeless and called herself Dodo? What did she know about the Glasshouse and why did it scare her so much?

So far I had only received warnings and threats about the Glasshouse. Its inclusion in the mind-control article had been a shot in the dark, now it seemed I might be close to a breakthrough. What happened at the Glasshouse, and why did the few people who were willing to even acknowledge its existence clam up when it was mentioned? Even my anonymous telephone informant who was happy to talk about UNIT at length had warned me away from the Glasshouse - why? Perhaps Dodo could provide the answers to at least some of these questions.

* * *

The next day was bitter, the start of a typical pre-Christmas cold snap. As I travelled to Clapham Junction, the papers were full of the Queen signing a state of emergency declaration about the power crisis. Industrial disputes with electricity workers were causing power cuts across Britain and it was going to be a long, hard winter unless the problem was resolved soon. I had already stocked up on candles for the house and was thankful the heating and kitchen were mostly gas.

Getting to the café thirty minutes early, I ordered a mug of scalding tea and read through the latest issue of Metropolitan. Around me the early morning trade of construction workers piled into plates of eggs, beans and chips with toast and tea, while office workers rushed in to grab two slices of toast and coffee to take away. The café was an archetypal 'greasy spoon', complete with a shouting cook in the kitchen and blousey manageress behind the counter who seemed to know every customer on sight.

The half-hour passed quickly but there was still no sign of Dodo. Not knowing what to expect, I had envisioned a wild-eyed woman in her late forties looking for a quick hand-out in exchange for some gossip she had picked up on her travels. On the phone it had been difficult to assess Dodo's age and origins, because her accent seemed to shift between well-educated Oxbridge tones and a coarser smattering of Cockney.