The Sleepwalker

  ‘I thought she was going to that racing place on work experience with you,’ Andy said.

  James nodded. ‘Yeah, if she gets the other place.’

  ‘What work experience?’ Bethany asked.

  Lauren pointed at James. ‘All the fifteen-and sixteen-year-olds are doing two weeks’ work experience. Mr Campbell set James up with some university mate of his who runs a motorcycle racing team.’

  Jake shook his head. ‘He’s so lucky. Most kids end up working in a clothes shop or something like that.’

  ‘James is always lucky,’ Shak noted. ‘He’s got more jam than Sainsbury’s.’

  Everyone’s ears pricked up as it became clear that the distant drone of two motorbike engines had become the distant drone of one. The crowd went quiet and the rival crew members traded nervous glances, wondering who’d broken down.

  James felt his phone vibrating in his pocket. He slid it open and heard his girlfriend’s voice.

  ‘Is the flaming golf cart on the road towards the main building anything to do with you?’ Dana asked, clearly amused by the idea that James’ pride and joy was going up in smoke.

  ‘Flaming?’ James gasped. ‘Can you see the driver? Is he OK? Can you tell if it’s Stuart or Rat?’

  James was worried by the news of flames. He’d reattached a faulty fuel line before Rat set off. If he hadn’t done it properly it could easily break off and cause a fire when leaking fuel touched the hot engine casing.

  Lauren got pushed aside as the two teams of nervous boys gathered around the phone at James’ ear.

  ‘It’s some way from where I’m standing,’ Dana said. ‘The driver looks OK and a couple of the staff are running up there with fire extinguishers.’

  James was desperate to know whether it was his cart. ‘Can’t you run up there to get a proper look?’

  ‘I’m upstairs in my room,’ Dana explained. ‘I’d have to put some trousers on and wait for the lift. Mind you there is one thing. The first buggy that went by had a roof and this one looks like it doesn’t.’

  James broke into a huge smile. ‘A buggy with a roof went by before this one?’

  As soon as James said this, Andy and Jake started to grin.

  ‘Definitely,’ Dana said.

  ‘Why didn’t you say that in the first place?’ James groaned. ‘My cart has a roof; Shak’s team cut theirs off.’

  Shak didn’t stick around to hear James and his team-mates gloat. He raced off to check on his stricken buggy, with his two younger assistants behind him.

  ‘You’ve got to feel sorry for Shak’s team though, haven’t you?’ James said, before breaking into laughter and giving Jake a high five. ‘Not!’

  By the time James’ team had finished hugging each other and jumping up and down, Rat was driving up the hill to complete his circuit of campus. He’d seen the fiery demise of his rival and drove cautiously, not bothering to take any risks.

  But while James and his crew were ecstatic, the crowd was clearly underwhelmed as it drifted away. They’d spent over an hour waiting around. There’d been no proper race and they would have got a better view of the fire if they’d stayed in their rooms in the main building.

  ‘Boring,’ Lauren complained, as they headed for home.

  Bethany shrugged. ‘Remember a few years back when Arif built that powerboat? The rudder jammed and it went around in circles until it sunk?’

  Lauren nodded. ‘Now that was worth getting off your arse to watch.’

  4. DADDY

  For a minute it seemed like things had gone back to normal on the jet. People were shocked, a few reached into the aisle or around their feet to recover mobile phones. Up near the galley between economy and business class, an Asian doctor crouched over the steward who’d hit the ceiling and cricked her neck.

  But as air rushed noisily past the fuselage, the passengers were unsettled by intermittent shudders ripping through the airframe. The pilots couldn’t devote their time to staring out the side of the aircraft, so the stewards passed through the plane asking passengers in the window seats to look outside for anything unusual. Angus watched as his grandmother touched a stewardess, who stopped walking and turned back.

  ‘Is there going to be another announcement soon?’ she asked.

  The stewardess was as frightened as everyone else, but did her best to hold it in. ‘The pilots are trying to work out what caused the bang and made the aircraft roll. We’ll let you know as soon as we’re sure what’s going on.’

  At the opposite end of the strip of four seats, Angus scoured the carpet trying to see where his Gameboy had ended up, while the need to pee grew worse. Karen had reached into the seats on either side and held Megan and Angus’ hands.

  She clutched them a little tighter as another groan ripped through the aircraft. The lightweight cabin fittings flexed to such a degree that several overhead lockers popped open and luggage thumped dangerously into the aisle.

  An American at a window seat jumped up and shouted to the stewardess, ‘Ma’am, I think something just broke away.’

  ‘Did you see what it looked like?’ the stewardess asked urgently as she dashed down the aisle towards him. ‘Are you completely sure?’

  ‘Pretty sure,’ the man nodded. ‘We’re moving so fast, but it definitely looked like something. More of a glint in the sunlight than anything else.’

  ‘I think I saw something too,’ a woman in the row behind added. ‘Like he said. It was rectangular. A strip of metal or something.’

  The stewardess nodded. ‘I’ll run up to the cockpit and tell the captain.’ Then she raised her voice. ‘Can everyone at a window seat please keep lookout and report if you see anything unusual.’

  Angus felt a touch of relief as the words listen to announcements disappeared off his LCD screen. Maybe the pilots had decided that everything was OK. He slid his hand out of his mother’s grasp and flipped the channel until it came to the screen that showed flight information.

  The red trail behind the little aircraft on the screen had doubled back on itself and the nose pointed back towards

  North America.

  ‘We’ve turned around,’ Angus noted.

  Megan hurriedly flipped her own screen to the aircraft information channel. As she got there the woman sitting in front of her spoke with alarm.

  ‘We’re losing height: four thousand metres.’

  Angus looked at their position over the North Atlantic. He saw how far they’d flown in the two hours since leaving New York and he reckoned that they were at least an hour away from dry land, even if there was an airport right on the coast.

  Everyone went silent as an upbeat voice came over the intercom. ‘Hi, this is Maxine, your co-pilot. We’re still trying to understand precisely what occurred to the aircraft, but I can confirm that we are having some difficulty controlling the plane due to a partial failure of the hydraulic system. We have now successfully adjusted our course for the nearest airport and expect to be making a landing in Newfoundland as a precautionary measure in approximately eighty-five minutes. To help you relax we’ve taken the entertainment system out of emergency mode. However, we would ask that all passengers please remain seated for the remainder of this flight.’

  The co-pilot didn’t sound rattled. Once again Karen reached into the laps of her two children, but this time her hands rested gently rather than clutching tight.

  ‘I’m absolutely busting,’ Angus said.

  Megan looked across and managed a smile. ‘What is it about boys? You have to go every two minutes.’

  Karen seemed more concerned. ‘Well if you’re really desperate, I’ll have to ask the stewardess next time she comes by.’

  Angus looked at his screen and saw that the plane had dropped another five hundred metres. ‘We’re still going lower,’ he noted.

  His grandmother leaned forward in her seat. ‘Pilots change altitude all the time to avoid pockets of turbulence,’ she explained. ‘I was flying over Australia years back when we visited
your auntie Marian. It got so bad that your grandfather’s false teeth flew out.’

  Karen had heard this story before, but the kids hadn’t and they thought it was hilarious.

  ‘False teeth are so gross,’ Angus said. ‘Remember that time we stayed in the hotel and they were on the table beside Granddad’s bed?’

  Megan shuddered. ‘Don’t remind me.’

  Angus felt better now he knew where they were going and as if to prove his grandmother right he saw the numbers on the display. ‘We’re back up to four thousand,’ he said.

  ‘Holy shit,’ a big scouser in a Fred Perry shirt shouted. ‘Stewardess!’

  Angus looked down the aisle and saw the man standing up from his window seat a dozen rows behind. Several others jumped out of seats in the rows around him. There was too much commotion to understand any individual but the news rippled through the plane.

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Back there. Something about a crack.’

  ‘Huge crack in the wing?’

  ‘Jesus, you’ve got to be kidding.’

  ‘There’s a crack over the wing.’

  ‘Is that what’s going on down there?’

  The news hit Angus like an anvil dropped on a cartoon bunny. His mum’s wedding ring dug into his wrist, but he didn’t complain. The stewardess sprinted up to the cockpit as Angus noticed that they were losing height again.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is Maxine your co-pilot,’ came across the intercom, but this time she’d lost her cool. ‘I’m sorry to say we’ve received reports of a serious flaw in the airframe. Although we have some degree of control, we are currently finding it impossible to maintain height. We are in touch with engineers at our base in London and we’re doing all we can, but I must now ask you to listen carefully to the cabin crew who will instruct you on the safe use of your life jackets.’

  ‘We’re going to die,’ Megan blurted. It was a phrase the nine-year-old used when she dropped milk on a new carpet or scratched one of her dad’s CDs, but for once it didn’t seem over the top.

  Angus watched the numbers on his seatback screen drop below two thousand metres as a male steward began a tannoy announcement.

  ‘At this time we would like to ask all passengers to remove their life vest from the pouches beneath their seats and place them over their heads, in anticipation of a landing on water. Do not, I repeat do not, inflate the life vest until you have left the aircraft. Keep your laps clear and listen for an announcement from the cockpit. You must be ready to adopt the brace position as soon as you are told to do so. The cabin crew will now be taking to their seats and will not be able to provide passengers with further assistance.’

  ‘You can’t land on the sea,’ Angus said frantically. ‘I saw it on the Discovery Channel. They put life vests on aeroplanes, but nobody in history has ever used one successfully.’

  While the rest of his family pulled on their life vests, Angus went down the seatback pocket and grabbed the kiddies’ pack he’d been handed when he boarded the plane. He unzipped the plastic case and took out a tiny spiral-bound notepad and a cheap Biro.

  ‘Angus, put your vest on,’ his mother ordered.

  He didn’t think there was any point, but he didn’t want to argue with his mum so he snatched the yellow vest from beneath his seat and pulled it over his head. It had a horrible plastic smell.

  When Angus’ head popped through, he saw that the height displayed on the LCD was rapidly closing on a thousand metres. Through the gap in the seats he saw that the couple sitting in front had decided to go out in a bout of snogging and the adult nature of this made Angus feel young. He was never going to have a girlfriend, or get all hairy like his dad, or have a wife, or own a car. All that was left was a few minutes sitting in this seat, sweating and busting for a pee.

  He rested the pad on his knee and gripped the Biro in his shaking fist. He thought about writing how scared he was, but he knew his dad would be sad when he read it and didn’t want to make him feel worse. So he wrote about what was going on and finished by telling his dad that he loved him.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Megan asked, as she watched her brother tear the small sheet from the notepad and slide it inside a plastic bag.

  ‘I’ve written a message for Dad,’ Angus explained. ‘I’m knotting it in plastic so the paper doesn’t get soggy and make the ink run when we hit that water.’

  Angus watched as his sister started looking around for her kiddies’ pack. ‘I want to do one,’ she said.

  ‘Here,’ Angus said, as he passed the pen and pad over his mother’s lap. It felt like the right time to be nice to your little sister.

  ‘What did you write?’ Megan asked.

  ‘Draw him a picture,’ Angus suggested. ‘He’ll like that.’

  ‘We’re not going to die,’ their mother said warmly. ‘We’ve got jackets and life rafts. Someone will be on their way to rescue us already.’

  Megan wrote New York and started drawing a skyscraper as her grandmother searched for another bag to knot it inside. Angus looked up at the flight information on his screen and where the height had been he saw the word ERROR.

  The sound of the aircraft deepened as it closed on the water.

  ‘Brace, brace, brace,’ came over the tannoy.

  Angus pressed the top of his head against the seat in front of him and Megan screamed in protest.

  ‘I need to finish drawing,’ she shouted, as her mother bundled her forward.

  There was a noise a hundred times louder than anything Angus had ever heard as they hit the ocean. He could feel the hairs in his ears dance. For some reason he thought about the fact that he needed to pee and he hoped it was one of those dreams where you think a lot about peeing and wake up and have to run to the bathroom.

  Angus’ seatbelt tore into his stomach as his head hit the seat in front of him with such force that the plastic buckled. The man in the row behind was obese and his giant gut prevented him from leaning far enough forwards to brace properly. The bones in the man’s face shattered as it slammed into the back of Angus’ seat at more than three hundred kilometres an hour. Angus’ seatback crumpled under the fat man’s weight, crushing his body until his ribs shattered.

  Warm blood spilled up Angus’ throat as his airway flooded. All the cabin lights went out and he felt absurd relief as he glimpsed his Gameboy under the seat. He couldn’t breathe and he could hear people screaming, but only in one ear because the other was full of blood.

  Then the plane seemed to cartwheel. His feet were over his head and his mum made a peculiar kind of grunting noise. There was a flash of sunlight – perhaps the fuselage had snapped in half. Angus tried to work it out, but his head was numb and his own blood had clogged his eyes. His lids were stuck fast and he could see all kinds of crazy lights and patterns in his mind.

  They were the last things he ever saw.

  5. KNOWLEDGE

  Monday mornings on CHERUB campus always had a dull edge. Kids carried the weight of the week ahead on slouched shoulders and had bags under their eyes from lax weekend bedtimes. Cherubs could sit up for an entire season of Xbox ice hockey or an all-night party if they wanted, but got no sympathy from the staff if they were too tired to handle Monday morning.

  It was still getting light outside. A fierce wind blew and an occasional shower of red berries from a nearby tree pelted the windows of the campus dining-hall. James sat in his usual spot. Dana and the twins Callum and Connor were also there, and all of them kept at least one eyeball on the plasma TV hanging from a wall five metres away.

  Usually the screens had the sound way down so you could only hear if you sat close by, but it got turned up if something interesting happened and on this September morning the newsreaders were having a field day. One half of the split-screen showed a dark-skinned correspondent interviewing an FBI spokesman, while the other displayed a helicopter shot of a piece of fuselage bearing the Anglo-Irish Airlines logo bobbing on the c
hoppy sea.

  ‘… and you can confirm that there are no survivors from the three hundred and thirty-four passengers and eleven crew members on board?’ the reporter asked.

  The FBI spokesman had an odd voice, like he’d been sucking helium out of a balloon. ‘The official search and rescue operation has been halted. Coastguard and naval vessels are concentrating their efforts on recovering as much floating debris as possible in order to conduct a thorough investigation.’

  The reporter nodded earnestly. ‘Earlier information suggested that the crew heard an explosion aboard the aircraft approximately ten minutes before the airliner ditched into the Atlantic. Is there any indication at this stage that this was caused by a bomb?’

  ‘I can confirm that an explosion was heard, but no terrorist group has claimed responsibility. Presently the FBI is working closely with the Federal Aviation Administration and the British authorities to determine the cause of the crash.’

  ‘And with tomorrow being the sixth anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Centre, the finger of suspicion must surely be pointing at Al Qaeda or another militant Islamic group?’

  The spokesman cleared his throat and repeated himself firmly. ‘At this stage we’re ruling nothing in and nothing out.’

  James turned away from the screen and looked across the table at Dana. ‘Gotta be terrorists,’ he said. ‘The timing’s just too perfect.’

  Dana nodded as she stirred honey into a bowl of porridge.

  ‘I don’t mind flying, but when you’re all strapped in and you look at how many people are crammed between you and the nearest exit my stomach always does a somersault.’

  Callum – who’d got his ear pierced the same day as James – nodded in agreement, but his identical twin shrugged.

  ‘We’re all gonna die of something,’ Connor said. ‘I’d rather go quick in a plane than let something like cancer get me.’

  Shakeel was coming towards the table with a tray of food and a smile on his chubby face.