I first met John J. Marley and his delectable wife Gloria (she’s his wife) on my bi-annual trip to the Water Treatment and Sewage Plant at Bognor Regis on a sultry day in November, 1967. I hadn’t noticed the commotion from the two-man camper pitched near the edge of the main septic tank at first, having just set up my own tent near waste-pump 9. However, the sounds of an unmistakable hullaballoo soon proved too strident to ignore and I promptly set down my reporter’s notebook (for recording pressure levels on the pumps) carefully and ambled quickly to the two-man camper that was by now shuddering violently to accompany the furore.

Having been brought up to observe other people’s privacy (despite the evident circumstances), I coughed once, loudly, to attract the attention of the (at least two) inhabitants within. The shuddering stopped abruptly, seemed to listen for a few moments, then resumed with renewed vigour. I cleared my throat once more (I have a condition which affects my mucus membrane from years of working with coal, so throat-clearing is no problem, no problem at all) and the convulsions ceased with a resounding yelp. There was the sound of frenzied whispering, muted as if emanating from within a sleeping bag, then the rasp of a zipper, then a noise not unlike that of clothes being thrown on hastily, then more whispering, then the sound of shoes being tied then the sound of standing up, then the sound of a zipper again. I watched as the tent zip seemed to move down by itself then the flap was thrown back and a head emerged within the triangular gap. It didn’t notice me at first, as it was dark and I was covered in coal dust, then when it spotted the whites of my eyes it gave a bit of a start.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hello,” the head said. It was a man. I can only describe him as being too little. He was too little, but big at the same time. That’s the first impression I have of the man that later turned out to be John J. Marley. He was also grey but completely bald but with fair or black hair at the back and he was definitely wearing glasses, or maybe it was later he was wearing the glasses. But the glasses he might have been wearing were an awful lot like the ones the little man in the Carry On films wears (I think he’s dead now), or that man from the Mr Muscle adverts (I don’t know if he’s still alive or not, or they might have used a few different men). Or he might not have been wearing glasses at all, I don’t remember, to be honest. And he might have had a moustache. John J. swears now he didn’t have a moustache (as he considers moustaches to be an affront to dignity) but I still say he had a moustache, or else it was a little beard without the moustache, a bit like Abraham Lincoln, but wispier. The other thing I noticed immediately about him was the squinty eyes and the awful thin-lipped ugliness, almost too much to bear.

Stuck for something to say to the head, I said the first thing that came into my own.

“I’m not a murderer,” I heard myself say. I laughed a little then, because it was a bit of a white lie.

“No,” said the head of John J. in a deep baritone. “I’m sure you’re not, otherwise why would you be telling me?” It seemed a reasonable assumption. A hand came out and scooped the lank greasy ginger fringe out of its big goggly eyes.

“I could be telling you because I want you to think I’m not a murderer,” I said, not knowing quite where I was going with this.

“Because you’re not?” said the head in its customary falsetto tones and  scratching its completely bald pate.

“No,” I said. “I’m definitely not a murderer. I’m a coal man.”

“Couldn’t you be a coal man and a murderer?” said the head, not unreasonably, in a voice that sounded like Mr Bean’s when he talks. I noticed his little withered hand then, like Jeremy Beadle. He waved it about in the darkness like a novelty backscratcher. “A coal man is your occupation and murdering something you do in your spare time?”

I nodded. “Yes, I suppose I could, at that. But I do this in my spare time. You know, check pressure gauges in sewage works round the country then record them in my notebook.” I patted my utility belt and realised I left my notebook over by my tent. I felt annoyed.

The head seemed interested.

“Really? My wife Gloria and I (I’m her husband) are big into waste levels. You know, the reason why there’s so much excrement in some areas of the country is because – ”

“What were you doing in there?” I interrupted and pointed at his tent. I heard a woman’s voice gasp from within.

The head of John J. Marley regarded me coldly for a moment. I felt like an insect beneath a microscope in that instant, like a piece of dog-doo that you take home to your wife to show her what you nearly stood on.

“We were…digging,” he said, his oversized hands gripping the edges of the tent flaps.

“Digging for what?” I asked.

The edges of his big fish lips twitched a little and a cold smile spread across his features, his yellow teeth glowing in the murky half-light.

“That is something you might be able to help us with.”

                                      *        *        *

Gloria and John J. Marley came to visit me in Wormwood Scrubs almost every third year after the incident at Bognor Regis. I got caught and they didn’t and I’m fine with that. Gloria even baked me a cake (chocolate and anchovie) with a file in it. I told her there wasn’t much need for ringbinders in prison, but thanked her for the kind thought anyway. I see them almost every day now, as I moved to the same street after I got out. (It took a couple of years of research, but I eventually found out where they lived). We’re even what you might call friendly (they asked me to write this foreword after all.)

I watch their house regularly, usually through a pair of binoculars. Occasionally I see plumes of green smoke mushrooming up from the back garden or catch glimpses of the pair of them building some device in their guest bedroom in various costumes at three o’clock in the morning. When I go through their rubbish, I usually find evidence of some weird experiment like the one involving shed snakeskin, pinecones and old 9-volt batteries. John J. Marley and his wife Gloria (he’s her husband) are not what you’d call run of the mill. They’re up to something and I’m going to find out if it kills them. I mean me. If it kills me.