They’d waited until everyone was out of the room. They had a secret. And it was a big one. A really big one. A secret they didn’t want us to know about. A secret they didn’t want any of the other teachers knowing about.
And we were going to find out what that secret was.
I waited for an hour and a half and Mum finally came home from work. I stood up and pressed my ear to the door.
“Where’s Jimbo?” she asked Becky.
Once again, I heard Craterface explaining that he was going to kill me. A nanosecond after that I heard a loud crunch. I later found out that this was the sound of Craterface being hit on the side of the head by a briefcase with a combination lock.
He yelped in pain. “Wotcha do that for?”
“Out!” barked Mum, so loudly that even I jumped. “Get your greasy backside out of this flat now, or I’m calling the police.”
“Take it easy, missus,” grumbled Craterface.
“Keep your hair on, Mum,” whined Becky.
“And less of your lip,” snapped Mum.
The sound of heavy boots was followed by a loud slam. Then Mum rapped quietly on the bathroom door.
“You can come out now, Jimbo. That oaf is gone.”
I came out and shook Mum’s hand. “That was classy.”
At least there was one real man in the family.
After all the commotion it turned into a surprisingly pleasant evening. Dad spent so long in the shop, for fear of coming back and finding Craterface still in residence, that he’d done enough shopping for three weeks. Toilet rolls, J-cloths, washing-up liquid, scouring powder, the works.
So Mum was happy. And Dad was happy that Mum was happy. And I was happy that Mum and Dad were happy with each other. Plus, Becky was really unhappy, which always cheered me up. And anyway, she just stayed in her room, sulking, so we had a very nice time indeed.
After I’d washed up I decided to go to bed and plan tomorrow’s investigations. I got my hot chocolate and walked up to Dad, who was sitting in front of the TV, watching Police, Camera, Action!
“Spudvetch!” I said, catching his eye.
He looked at me in a puzzled way for a few seconds. Then he grinned and said, “Spudvetch!” and gave me the OK sign.
I grinned back and headed off down the hall.
Charlie and I were in complete agreement. We couldn’t ask them straight out. We had to be subtle. They had a secret, and they weren’t going to give it away to any Tom, Dick or Harry who wanted to share it.
However, there were plenty of other things we could get away with asking. And, since I’d lost the toss, it was me who got to ask first.
My target was Mr Kidd. We trailed him over the lunch hour and followed him into the school library, where we found him browsing the Arsenal supporters’ website on one of the computers.
I grabbed a book on Spain from the shelves, opened it, put my head down and bumped into him. “Sorry, sir,” I said, stepping backwards.
“That’s all right,” he replied, rapidly swivelling the monitor through ninety degrees.
“Sir…?” I asked, trying to force his eyes off the page.
“What, John?”
“It’s Jim, sir.” I took a deep breath. “I was thinking of learning some Spanish.”
“Really?” he said, looking at me rather oddly, as if I had food all over my face or a dangling bogey.
“We’re going on holiday there, sir. Do you speak Spanish?”
“No,” he said warily. “Why are you asking me these questions?”
“I was wondering how quickly I could learn a foreign language. Just the basics, I mean. If I really tried.” I took a second deep breath. “Do you speak any other languages, sir?”
“Languages aren’t really my strong point,” he sighed. “I’m a pictures bloke, really. Now they stick in my head. But languages…Well, it’s in one ear and out the other. I tried learning a bit of French in Brittany last year, but I sounded like an idiot. And if I’m going to sound like an idiot I’d prefer to do it in my own language.”
Charlie’s target was Mrs Pearce.
He got his first chance three days later when the subject of explorers came up. Scott losing the race to the North Pole and dying on the way, Livingstone trekking up the Zambezi River, Captain Cook sailing to Australia and eating biscuits with weevils in.
“Have you ever explored anywhere, Mrs Pearce?”
It was Charlie’s voice. I twisted round in my seat. There was a small, bandaged hand sticking up in the air.
“Of course not,” replied Mrs Pearce, smiling and shaking her head.
She was right. It was a pretty stupid question. With her tweed suit and her handbag, I couldn’t imagine Mrs Pearce exploring anything more dangerous than the freezer cabinet in Sainsbury’s.
“I mean, haven’t you been anywhere exciting?” Charlie soldiered on. “Like Africa or India or someplace?”
It all sounded a bit heavy-handed to me. Charlie had never shown much interest in history before. But she was delighted by his question.
“I’m afraid not,” she said, taking off her glasses and polishing them with her handkerchief. “I’ve never actually been abroad. I go to Scotland most summers, but I don’t think that counts as exploring.”
I was waiting for Charlie at the school gates, wondering what on earth we did now. If they had a secret, they were covering their tracks extremely well. So well that I was beginning to wonder if the conversation we overheard was nothing more than a very vivid dream.
“Jimbo,” panted Charlie as he ran up to me. “Sorry I’m late. Had to get the walkie-talkie out of the staff room.”
“And what story did you tell this time?”
“Got the headmistress to sign me off sport for a month. You know” – he held up his bandaged hand – “told her it was doctor’s orders.”
“So what happens when the headmistress talks to your mum at the next parents’ evening?”
Charlie shook his head. “She never gets a word in edgeways.”
“So,” I said, getting back to the important subject, “what do we do now?”
“We should have recorded them,” said Charlie. “If we could play the conversation back then maybe – ” He stopped mid-sentence and looked back towards the school. “I’ve had an idea.”
I turned and saw Mr Kidd walking across the playground towards us, juggling his briefcase in one hand and his car keys in the other.
“All this suspense is driving me up the wall,” said Charlie. “Let’s do this the simple way.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, feeling slightly panicky.
Charlie stepped out into Mr Kidd’s path. He waited until Kidd came to a halt in front of him, then said, in a cheery voice, “Spudvetch!”
Mr Kidd froze for a second. Then his briefcase slid out of his hand and fell to the ground. He didn’t seem to notice. His jaw started to move up and down but he was obviously having trouble getting any words out.
I started to feel a bit ill.
“But you’re not – ” said Mr Kidd. Then he stopped himself.
His fingers clenched and his back stiffened like an angry cat’s. And then something happened to his eyes. If Charlie hadn’t seen it too, I might have thought I was imagining it. But I wasn’t imagining it. For the briefest of moments there was a fluorescent blue light flickering behind his pupils, just like the eyes on Charlie’s robot piggy bank. Except that Mr Kidd wasn’t a robot piggy bank. He was our art teacher.
I was about to turn and run when, as suddenly as it had begun, it was all over. His eyes returned to normal. Slowly and deliberately he put his right hand over his left wrist, as if calming himself down. He breathed deeply and said, “You off home, boys?”
I tried to say, “Yes,” but it came out as a strangled squeak.
Charlie was on his knees, refilling Mr Kidd’s briefcase. He stood up and handed it back.
“Thank you.” Mr Kidd smiled. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then. Have a good evening, b
oys.”
We stood and watched him walk into the car park. He pressed his key fob and the indicator lights on his battered Fiat winked back with a little boop-boop noise.
“Crikey,” said Charlie.
A swarm of fizzy white lights started floating across my field of vision. The sky started to spin round, my knees went wobbly and I had to sit on the wall to stop myself fainting.
∨ Boom! ∧
5
Burglary
I woke up in the middle of the night, thinking that Mr Kidd was standing over my bed holding a bread knife, grinning broadly and saying, “Have a good evening. Have a good evening. Have a good evening,” as the fluorescent blue light flickered in his eyes.
I checked inside the wardrobe. I checked under the bed. I checked the balcony and the bathroom and behind the sofa. And I still couldn’t get back to sleep. So I found a packet of garibaldi biscuits and watched Star Wars until everyone else started waking up. Then I went into my room and pressed my forehead against the radiator for five minutes.
I came out and told everyone I had a sore throat and diarrhoea and it was clearly a very bad idea for me to go to school. Obviously I couldn’t say at home for ever. But for the time being I felt a lot safer lying on the sofa under a rug watching The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.
“You poorly, poorly thing,” sighed Becky, who could read me like a book. “I think we ought to call an ambulance, don’t you? Shall I ring for one now?”
“Mum?” I said. “I think I’ve got a temperature. Here. Feel.”
But Mum was too busy, whirling round the flat putting lipstick on and grabbing presentation folders. “Get Dad to feel it, darling,” she said, checking her hair in the glass front of the cooker. “I’m late already.”
“I’m ringing the hospital now,” announced Becky, picking up the phone.
“Act your age and not your shoe size,” snapped Mum, taking the receiver from her, slamming it back down and scooting through the door in a cloud of perfume.
Dad wasn’t much help either. “School is important,” he said, lying on the sofa, wearing his pyjamas and watching breakfast TV. “Every day counts. You need education. You need exam results.”
“But, Dad. Feel my head. Quickly.” My forehead was cooling off. The radiator was painful and I didn’t fancy doing it a second time.
“You need qualifications,” he said, giving me his top-grade, serious-father look. “Qualifications are what stop you ending up sitting on the sofa in your pyjamas watching breakfast television while everybody else goes off to work.”
“But…”
“Jimbo” – he pointed his toast at me – “you can still walk. You can still talk. You’re not coughing blood and none of your bones are broken. Go to school.”
I thought about telling him the truth. The walkie-talkie. Spleeno ken mondermill. The robot-piggy-bank eyes. But it sounded crazy. And the last thing I needed was a weekly session with the school psychologist.
I went to get dressed, then picked up my bags and slouched out of the front door to the lift.
As it happened, there was nothing to worry about. We weren’t bundled into the back of a van. We weren’t strangled in the toilets by men in black balaclavas. Mr Kidd nodded a polite hello to us in the corridor and Mrs Pearce did the Boer War without batting an eyelid.
By lunch time I had convinced myself that it was nothing. Mr Kidd wore strange contact lenses. Or we’d seen the blue light of a police car reflected in his eyes.
He and Mrs Pearce were members of an Esperanto club, or sharing some obscure joke. I didn’t care what. I just wanted to forget the whole thing and stop being scared.
Of course, Charlie wasn’t going to let that happen. “Come on, Jimbo,” he said. “This is hot stuff. Tell me the last time anything this exciting ever happened to either of us.”
The answer was ‘never’. I didn’t say it.
He soldiered on. “Perhaps there’s a boring explanation. Perhaps there isn’t. Perhaps Kidd and Pearce are bank robbers talking in code. Perhaps they’re drug dealers. Perhaps they’re spies.”
I mumbled incoherently.
“I’m going to follow them,” said Charlie. “I want to know what they do after school. I want to know where they go and who they speak to. Because they’re up to something. I know it. And I’m going to find out what it is. So…are you in? Or not?”
“Charlie,” I said, “I just need to get some sleep.”
“Suit yourself.”
I got home to one of Dad’s classic dinners. It was called shepherd’s pie, apparently. Though it wasn’t like any other shepherd’s pie I’d ever tasted. I think Dad just arranged a pile of meat and potatoes in a large baking dish, then attacked it with a blowtorch. It looked like something pulled out of a house fire.
I took a mouthful, then gave up. Becky took a mouthful, then gave up. Mum told us to stop being so fussy. Then she took a mouthful, retched visibly and used a word that parents really shouldn’t use in front of children. And we all had a double helping of pears and custard to make up for the lack of main course.
Craterface turned up at the door after supper but Mum told him that he wasn’t allowed into the flat until he’d apologized to me. Apologizing was not really his thing so he and Becky departed in a monstrous huff. Mum then went off to do some paperwork in the bedroom and Dad and I sat down to watch The Phantom Menace. It felt good sitting next to Dad. It was like being little again. All in all I had pretty good parents, I reckoned. Dad might occasionally try to poison me, but he never attacked me with secateurs.
I fell asleep just after Darth Maul tries to assassinate Qui-Gon Jinn. Dad must then have carried me to the bedroom because the next thing I knew I was waking up after eight hours’ quality sleep, feeling a good deal better.
Charlie was a bit stand-offish at school. I’d offended him by not wanting to be involved in Phase Two of the plan. But I’d made up my mind. I’d had enough stress over the last few days. I didn’t want to be caught stalking a teacher. I told myself to be patient. Charlie would get bored soon. Or he’d be caught and hauled in front of the headmistress and given a string of detentions. Either way the result would be the same. Life would return to normal.
We met up at the gates after school, like we did most days, and I asked if he wanted to come round to the flat.
He didn’t. “Things to do. People to watch,” he said, patting his pocket mysteriously and heading off to the bus stop.
So I wandered into town on my own, went to Waterstone’s and bought a copy of 500 Recipes for Beginners. I splashed out on gift wrapping then made my way home.
Dad didn’t know whether to be deeply touched or slightly offended. I told him I’d spent a large chunk of my pocket money, so he’d better use it. I didn’t want my parents getting divorced. And if that meant Dad learning how to make a proper shepherd’s pie, then he had to learn how to make a proper shepherd’s pie.
“It’s like building a model aircraft,” I said. “You just follow the instructions.”
I was wrong about Charlie. He wasn’t getting bored. And he hadn’t been caught. Every time I bumped into him he said, “Sorry, Jimbo. On a job. Can’t stop.”
I was getting lonely. And bored. And irritated.
On Sunday morning, however, I was sitting on the wall of the park opposite the flats trying to remember what I used to do with myself before Charlie came along and wondering which of my non-best friends I should ring. Suddenly Charlie materialized next to me.
“God, you made me jump.”
Using his unbandaged hand he slid an orange notebook out of his pocket. The word Spudvetch! was written across the cover.
“What’s this?”
“Open it,” said Charlie.
I opened it. It was Mr Kidd’s diary. Except that it wasn’t written by Mr Kidd. It was written by Charlie.
FRIDAY
6.30 Sainsbury’s (sausages, bran flakes, shampoo, milk, broccoli, carrots and orange juice).
8.00 Arsenal v. Everton on TV.
10.00 Takes rubbish out.
“Hang on,” I said. “How do you know what he’s watching on TV?”
“He didn’t shut the curtains,” said Charlie.
“Yeah, but – ”
“I was standing in his garden,” said Charlie. “There’s a gap in the fence.”
“You’re crazy.”
I returned to the book. There was a map. And there were photographs.
The second half of the notebook was devoted to Mrs Pearce. Diary. Map. Photographs. There was even a photocopy of her library card. It was the kind of notebook you find in a psychopath’s bedside table. Next to the voodoo dolls and automatic weapons. I began to wonder whether Charlie was losing his mind.
“They live like monks,” he said. “They don’t go to the pub. They don’t visit friends. They do their shopping. They weed the garden. They clean the car.” He looked at me. “Don’t you think that’s suspicious?”
“No,” I said. “Suspicious is when you have a bunker under the house, Charlie. Suspicious is when you leave home wearing a false beard. Suspicious is when you visit a deserted warehouse with a hundred thousand pounds in a suitcase.”
He wasn’t listening. “I’m going to have to get inside one of their houses. Mrs Pearce’s probably. Better access. Thursday evening. During the teachers’ meeting. I need to have a poke around.”
“No,” I said. “No, no, no, no, no. Have you any idea what will happen if you get caught? The police. The headmistress. Your parents…”
It was a stupid, insane, suicidal idea. Which makes it quite hard to explain why I decided to help. I guess it boils down to this. Charlie was my best friend. I missed him. And I couldn’t think of anything better to do. Really stupid reasons which were never going to impress the police, the headmistress or my parents.