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school. I read it again, and a third time, before I worked out that it was about a ship sinking in a storm. That was as far as I got when a groan behind me made me look up.
‘Salim?’ It sounded as if Aunt Gloria was speaking in her sleep. ‘Salim?’
I crept over to the side of the bed, The Tempest open in my hand. ‘No, Aunt Gloria,’ I said. ‘It’s Ted.’
She looked at me. The whites of her eyes were bloodshot, which is what happens when you have been crying or staring too hard for too long at something.
‘Ted?’ she said. She saw the copy of The Tempest and smiled. ‘I was reading that just now, to help me sleep. Salim was in it last term.’
‘I know, Aunt Gloria. He told me.’
She smiled. ‘The dashing young prince.
Ferdinand. My Salim.’
She turned onto her side and curled up, crying. I stood there in silence, not sure if I should put my hand on her shoulder or do nothing. After a while I 255
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realized she had gone back to sleep. I put the play back down by her side and left the room. Out on the landing I stood and listened to the house. It was quiet. I wondered why nobody could hear me when it was so quiet. Then I started to hear the sounds houses always make when the people in them are silent. Boards creaking as they settle onto the foundations. Pipes gurgling inside the walls. Central heating humming. I clung to the banister at the top of the stairs. I heard something else: my heart thumping, blood pumping in my ears, the distant tick of the clock in the hallway downstairs. It was time. Time had a sound too. I’d never heard it before. I put my hands over my ears. It was deafening.
Mum appeared at the bottom of the stairs. She came up silently and gave me a hug. I squirmed.
‘Ted,’ she said, ‘I apologize. To you. But especially to Kat.’
‘Mum . . .’ I said. ‘I’ve worked it out.’
She patted my head as if I’d said nothing, went past me and knocked on my bedroom door. There 256
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was no reply, but she turned the handle and went in. She shut the door behind her. I heard her voice, soft and sad, coming from the other side. Then I heard Kat’s. I couldn’t hear their words.
I went on downstairs just as Rashid let himself in through the front door with the spare key. He stood in the hallway, looking ahead with no expression on his face that I could decipher.
‘Uncle Rashid . . .’ I said.
‘Sorry?’ he said. ‘Oh. Hello, Ted.’
Dad came out of the living room and greeted him by saying, ‘Do you want a can of beer?’ and they went into the kitchen.
Just as if I didn’t exist.
Then I went into the front room. I went over to the mantelpiece and picked up Detective Inspector Pearce’s card. I stared at it. I’m no good at telephone conversations. But I remembered how she’d smiled at me when I told her about Salim getting a call on his mobile and said how she wished her officers had half my brains. She’d listened then.
I normally only use the telephone about once a 257
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week. This is because I have nobody I need to telephone but sometimes Mum makes me call the Directory Enquiries number as she says I need the practice. Today, I was about to use the telephone twice, which was far more practice than I wanted. I sat on the side of the sofa, on top of my flapping hand. I picked up the phone with my other hand. Then I dialled Detective Inspector Pearce’s number. 258
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Smoke
T ime passed.
Kat and Mum came downstairs arm in arm. I hadn’t seen them like that in a while. I was able to deduce from their body language that they had made up and this made me pleased because it showed how much better I was getting at reading body language. Then Aunt Gloria came down in her dressing gown. Her lips were flat and her eyes empty-looking, so I didn’t know what her body language was saying and I was less pleased.
Dad and Rashid went out to fetch an Indian takeaway for everyone. They returned with a dozen foil containers of steaming food. I had two samosas, a chicken biryani and most of Kat’s chicken korma, which she couldn’t finish. Dad got most of the way through a prawn bhuna. As for the others, mounds of food got left on their plates. Aunt Gloria nibbled on one side of an onion bhajee for about half an hour. Mum’s fork went round her plate, pushing the 259
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same chickpea. Rashid sipped a beer and stared at his food without even starting.
‘How was work?’ Mum said to Dad.
He shrugged. ‘Quiet. I was out Peckham way today. On another job.’
Then nobody spoke.
I wanted to tell them what I knew and all about my conversation with Detective Inspector Pearce but she had told me to say nothing for now in case people started to hope. She explained that normally hope is a good thing, but if you hope a lot for something and it doesn’t happen, then you are disappointed and it’s called being let down. I asked her if ‘being let down’ was like coming back to earth with a bump if you let air out of a hot-air balloon too fast, and she said yes, it was like that. Then that started another train of thought – that hot-air ballooning was something I’d try one day, but only when the weather was set fair, and I’d bring instruments for measuring air pressure and temperature and make recordings and—
‘Houston calling Planet Pluto,’ Dad said. 260
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I looked over at Dad. This is what he says to get my attention when my thoughts are far away from where my body is.
‘Pass the rice, Ted,’ he said, smiling.
I passed the rice. There was silence again. It was as if everybody had decided that Salim was not to be mentioned. Kat kept winding a brown curl of hair around her finger. Aunt Gloria lit a cigarette but forgot to smoke it. I watched it burn away, and followed the trail of smoke through the air as it burned. It was deflected to the left over her shoulder, although there was no window open and no air in the room. This made me think of the Coriolis effect again and how it is invisible but can make things change direction.
‘Aunt Gloria—’ I said.
‘Shush, Ted,’ Mum said.
‘No – let him say what he wanted to say,’ said Aunt Gloria.
‘Why are you lighting cigarettes and not smoking them?’ I asked.
‘Ted!’ said Mum. ‘Give your Auntie Glo a break.’
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Aunt Gloria gave a tiny smile. ‘I didn’t even notice I’d lit one, Ted. I tell you what. When this is over – if Salim – if he comes back safe, I’ll give the damn things up. That’s a promise.’
She sat back, tears going down her face, and took a long drag. I wasn’t sure if she was crying at the thought of having to give up cigarettes or because Salim might not come back safely. The room went quiet again. ‘If he comes back safe,’ she repeated. Which was how I knew she was crying because of Salim, not the cigarettes.
I carried on eating. When I put my knife and fork down, I listened to the silence. I heard the clock ticking again. Then I felt blood pounding in my ears. It was like railway wheels going round in my head, trains of thought running out of control, couplers snapping. The boy on the slab, the boy on the train. Mum made a pot of tea. I heard a spoon rapping against china as Dad stirred in his sugar. Salim or not Salim.
‘I can’t stand it any more,’ Aunt Gloria said. She leaped up. ‘The waiting. I can’t stand it.’
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Mum reached out and put a hand on Aunt
Gloria’s wrist. ‘I know, Glo. Sit down.’
‘You don’t know. You can’t know. Kat and Ted, they’ve never disappeared. Not like this. Not for more than two days. And nothing. No news. Nothing.’
‘Calm down, Gloria,’ said Rashid.
‘How can I? You’re all sitting there. You’re all looking at me. And I know what you’re thinking.’
/>
‘Glo—’ Mum said.
‘Don’t you start – I overheard you today on the phone to Ben. You think Salim’s run away, don’t you? You think he’s hiding – hiding from me, don’t you? Why don’t you just say it?’
‘Glo—’ Mum said.
‘Go on – say it.’
‘Maybe – if the choice is between Salim being kidnapped by some evil person – or his hiding somewhere, unaware of how much distress he’s causing you – then, yes, I do think – that is, I—’
‘You’re saying it’s my fault. That I’ve brought this on myself.’
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‘No, Glo, not that, but maybe going to New York, for Salim, that was a step too—’
‘It wasn’t, it wasn’t,’ Aunt Gloria cried out. ‘I know my own boy. He wouldn’t do this to me, I know . . .’
She turned from the table. The sleeve of her dressing gown caught her plate and an onion bhajee went flying. Her shoulders shook. ‘I’m going to go out there and find him. I am. I don’t care if I have to walk from one end of London to the other.’ She staggered through the door into the hallway. Mum jumped up. ‘Glo! Don’t go! I didn’t
mean . . .’
From where I was sitting I could see Aunt Gloria opening the front door, fiddling with the handle.
‘Get lost, Fai,’ she shouted.
‘Stop her, Ben,’ Mum said. ‘She’s out of her mind.’
Dad, looking dazed, got to his feet. Kat got up too. Rashid sat still, his mouth hanging open. Just as Aunt Gloria opened the front door, a siren came wailing up right outside. Lights flashed. There were voices in the front garden, people moving, 264
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confusion. A chair fell over and Rashid rocked on his chair and started groaning. ‘Please, God, please, no,’ he said.
A bad feeling went up my oesophagus.
The police had come, just when Detective Inspector Pearce had told me they would. But I hadn’t expected the siren.
And it didn’t sound like the sirens did when I’d played ambulances with Kat.
It sounded real and near and loud and bad. The boy on the train. The boy on the slab. Salim or not Salim. I put my hands over my ears. The general synopsis at nineteen hundred: low Fitzroy a thousand and eight expected just west of Rockall . . . 265
THIRTY-FIVE
The Boy on the Train Again
D etective Inspector Pearce entered the house, leading Aunt Gloria by the elbow. She guided her into the kitchen and sat her down.
‘She looks like she needs a warm drink,’ the inspector said. ‘She’s in a state of shock.’ Kat poured a cup of tea. Rashid got up to give his place to Aunt Gloria. He sat her down and stroked her hair. Her hands shook and her lips chattered together as if she’d just come in from a snowstorm although it was warm and humid outside, about eighteen degrees.
‘Is there news?’ Mum said.
Detective Inspector Pearce didn’t reply until Aunt Gloria had taken a sip of her drink.
I felt Kat’s hand in mine, gripping hard. Inspector Pearce shook her head. ‘Some news, but neither good, nor bad. It’s more an update. Courtesy of Ted.’
Everybody stared at me.
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‘Ted?’ said Mum.
‘Ted?’ said Dad.
‘Ted?’ said Kat.
I didn’t say anything. I looked at the kitchen floor.
‘Ted has worked out what happened to Salim the day he disappeared,’ Detective Inspector Pearce continued. ‘His conclusions agreed with where our enquiries were heading, but I have to say he got there before us.’
‘Ted!’ Kat said again. Her mouth was open and her jaw hung down.
‘We followed up on what Ted told us, but as yet we still don’t know where Salim is.’
Aunt Gloria moaned and put her head in her hands.
‘But we know who the boy on the train was.’
‘Salim?’ said Mum.
Detective Inspector Pearce’s hands went apart.
‘Not Salim,’ she said. ‘This is the boy on the train, here.’
Another woman police officer, in uniform, came into the room. With her was a boy, about Salim’s 267
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age, but not Salim. He was half hiding behind the officer’s tall body. He was chubby around the cheeks, dark-haired and Asian-looking, although it was hard to see him properly as he wore the hood of his sweatshirt over his head and part of his face.
‘ You! ’ Aunt Gloria gasped.
‘Hello, Marcus,’ I said.
268
THIRTY-SIX
Weather Detection
I suppose you want to know how I worked it out. Or maybe your brain works on a different operating system from other people’s like mine and you’ve worked it out too.
I’d done nothing but think from two minutes past noon on the day Salim disappeared, Monday, to when I’d phoned the police at 18.04, Wednesday. That’s fifty-four hours and two minutes of thinking, if you count sleeping time, which I do. You go on thinking in your sleep.
I’d gone over the nine theories again and again. We’d discounted theories one, two and eight by checking them out. Salim couldn’t have stayed on the pod for another ride, nor had my watch gone wrong, nor could he have hidden under somebody’s clothes without our noticing. Kat had convinced me that theory nine, that Salim had never got on the pod in the first place, was wrong. Theories five and seven (spontaneous combustion and the time warp) 269
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Kat had dismissed out of hand. I hadn’t. But there was another reason I’d finally agreed to cross them off, one I hadn’t told Kat. I’d counted the number of people who’d got on the pod. Twenty-one. And I counted the number who’d got off. Twenty-one. I realized that if Salim had spontaneously combusted or slipped into a time warp, only twenty people would have got off.
That left theories three, four and six. Three and four both depended on us having somehow missed Salim when he got out. I’d told the police there was only about a 2 per cent chance of our having missed him. Which meant there was a 98 per cent chance that Salim had emerged from the pod in disguise. At first we’d thought this theory unlikely. But the more I considered it over the fifty-four hours and two minutes, the more possible it seemed. When we went up in the London Eye with Dad the next day, I’d noticed a time when you could put a disguise on with nobody noticing. It’s when everyone turns to have their souvenir shot taken. Everyone faces one way for almost a full minute until the flash goes off. 270
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So I’d given the souvenir shot of Salim’s pod that Kat bought another look. I kept coming back to the pink sleeve – the one that we thought was the girl in the pink fluffy jacket at the back of the picture, waving at the camera. I don’t know when I first realized. Maybe it was the eighteen pictures that Kat took of our washing line when she was using up Salim’s film, with the sleeves of sweatshirts, jumpers and blouses waving in the wind. Or maybe it was the way I’d seen Kat struggle into her fur-collared jacket, the morning she’d rushed out to get the photos of the strange man enlarged. The sleeve in the souvenir shot was not somebody waving. It was somebody changing.
A pink sleeve. Waving or drowning. Waving or changing. It depended on how you looked at it. The girl in the pink fluffy jacket was Salim’s accomplice. They’d swapped identities in the pod. A wig, a jacket, sunglasses. That was all it needed. And I remembered Aunt Gloria saying how Salim was a practical joker. Not a theoretical joker, like me, but a practical one, which means he actually 271
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carried out his jokes. Maybe this was a practical joke on a big scale.
For a brief period I wondered if Salim had a girlfriend. A girlfriend whom nobody had mentioned. Maybe a girlfriend even Aunt Gloria didn’t know about. A factor X in the equation. The Coriolis force. The thing that had deflected Salim off his course. Then, in the fifty-four hours an
d two minutes of thinking time, another possibility occurred to me.
Marcus. The ‘Paki-Boy’. The ‘mosher’. The boy in The Tempest.
Salim said a ‘mate’ had called him from Manchester while we were crossing the Jubilee footbridge on the way to the Eye. Later we’d heard from the police that everybody questioned in Manchester, including Marcus, had said they’d not heard from Salim since he’d left. It was an inconsistency. Someone was lying.
Marcus, maybe.
The police reported on Salim’s friends’ alibis the day he disappeared. Marcus’s mum had said he was 272
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on a day out with the scouts. So I thought, maybe Marcus was out with the scouts the way Kat and I had gone swimming, or the way Kat was supposed to be at school that day when really she’d gone up to town to have her Hair Flair consultation. I didn’t know much about Marcus. Only that he and Salim were friends. That they were both half Asian, at an all-boys school. That they were moshers, which means casual, cool dudes. That they’d starred in The Tempest at school. Salim had played Ferdinand. Somebody must have played the only female role –
Miranda, who Kat had told me was a dishrag. Maybe it was Marcus. Maybe that’s how they’d had the idea. Marcus. Very likely.
When the girl had got off the motorbike at the scooter show freestyle jumps, everybody had assumed she was a man, until she’d taken off her helmet and loosed her long hair. Maybe Kat and I had done the reverse: assumed the person in the pink fluffy jacket was a woman, just because she had long hair. Male or female, it depended how you looked at it.