Evil Star

by Anthony Horowitz

  “He wants me to be there,” Matt said.

  “He wants to meet you first, alone. He’s given us a place and time. On Thursday: three days from now.”

  “We’re just asking you for one day of your time,” Fabian said. “If Morton sees you and believes you are who we say you are, maybe then he’ll sell us the diary. Maybe he’ll give it away. I honestly believe that he wishes now that he had never found it. He wants to be rid of it. We just have to give him an excuse, a good reason to hand the diary to us.” He gestured at Matt. “You are the reason. All you have to do is meet him. Nothing more.”

  There was a long silence. At last, Matt spoke.

  “You keep on saying that I’m one of the Five,” he said. “And maybe you’re right. I don’t really understand any of it, but I know what happened at Raven’s Gate.” He paused again. “But I don’t want to get involved,” he went on. “I had enough the first time and right now I just want to get on with my life and I want to be left alone. You say it’s just one meeting in London but I know it won’t happen that way. Once I get started, I won’t be able to stop. Something else will happen and then something after that. I’m sorry. You can find Morton without me. Why don’t you just offer him more money? That seems to be all he wants.”

  “Matt …” Susan Ashwood began.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Ashwood. You can manage without me. You’re going to have to. Because I don’t want to know.”

  Richard stood up. “I’m afraid that’s it,” he said.

  “You’re only here because of the Nexus,” Fabian snapped – and suddenly he was angry. His eyes were darker than ever. “We pay for your school. We have made it possible for you to stay here. Maybe we should think again.”

  “We can manage without you.” Now Richard was getting angry too.

  “It doesn’t matter!” Miss Ashwood got stiffly to her feet. “Fabian is wrong to threaten you. We came here with a request and you have given us your answer. As you say, we must manage without you.” She reached out and Fabian gave her his arm. “But there is one thing I will add,” she went on. She turned her empty eyes on Matt and for a moment she sounded genuinely sad. “You have made a decision but you may have less choice than you think. You can try to ignore who you are but you may not be able to for much longer. You are central to what is happening, Matt. You and four others. I think you will have to accept it before too long.”

  She nudged Fabian and the two of them left together. Richard waited until he heard the front door close, then he sank back into a chair.

  “Well, I’m glad they’ve gone,” he said. “And I think you’re absolutely right, by the way. What a cheek! Trying to drag you back into all that. Well, it’s not going to happen. They can get lost.”

  Matt said nothing.

  “You must be hungry,” Richard went on. “I managed to look into a supermarket on the way over. There are three bags of food in the kitchen. What do you fancy for dinner?”

  It took Matt a few moments to absorb what he had just heard. Richard had been shopping? It had to be a first. Now he remembered his surprise when he had arrived at the flat, seeing Richard there at all. “What’s happened?” he asked. “How come you’re home so early?”

  Richard shrugged. “Well, I was thinking about what you said this morning. About you and me. And I realized you were right. I can’t look after you when I’m travelling back and forth to Leeds all the time. So I threw the job in…”

  “What?” Matt knew how much the job meant to Richard. He wasn’t quite sure what to say.

  “I just don’t want you to go back to the LEAF Project. I said I’d look after you and that’s what I’m going to do. I can always find a job in York.” Richard sighed. “Anyway, you’re lucky I was here tonight. Did you really want to be left alone with Mr and Mrs Creepy?”

  “Do you really think it was OK to say no?” Matt asked.

  “Of course it was. If you didn’t want to go, then why should you? It’s your choice, Matt. You must do what you want.”

  “That’s not what she said.”

  “She was wrong. You’re safe here. Nothing’s going to happen while you’re in York except – possibly – food poisoning. I’m cooking tonight!”

  Seventy miles away, on the M1, a man called Harry Shepherd was just coming out of a service station. He had started earlier in the day at Felixstowe and was on his way to Sheffield. As darkness had fallen, he had stopped for a bite to eat and a cup of tea. He was only allowed to drive a certain distance without a break, and he liked this service station.

  There was a waitress he always chatted to.

  It was now properly dark as he drove out. Also, it had begun to rain. He could see the streaks of water, lighting up as they slanted across his headlamps. He slammed the engine into second gear, preparing to rejoin the motorway – and that was when he saw her, standing on the slip road, one thumb out. The universal symbol of the hitch-hiker.

  It wasn’t something he saw very often these days. Hitchhiking was considered too dangerous: nobody in their right mind would get into a car or a truck with a stranger. Not with so many weirdos around. And here was something else that was odd. The hitch-hiker was a woman. She looked middle-aged, too. She was wrapped up in a coat that wasn’t doing much to protect her from the rain and her hair was dragging over her collar. He could see the water running down the sides of her cheeks. Harry felt sorry for her. Somehow she reminded him of his mother, who was now living on her own in a bedsit in Dublin. On an impulse, he took his foot off the accelerator and pressed the brake. He slowed down. The woman ran forward.

  Harry knew that he was breaking every regulation in the book. He wasn’t allowed to give lifts. Especially when he was carrying fuel. But something had persuaded him. An impulse. He couldn’t really explain it.

  Gwenda Davis saw the petrol tanker as it slowed down. The motorway lights reflected off the great silver cylinder with the word SHELL in bright yellow letters. She should have been further north by now. It had definitely been a mistake leaving Eastfield Terrace without any money, and she had almost given up trying to hitch-hike. She knew she had let Rex McKenna down. She hoped he wouldn’t be angry with her.

  But now her luck had changed. She wiped the rain from her eyes and ran to the passenger door. It was a big step up but she managed it, her bag swinging. The driver was a man in his thirties. He had fair hair and a silly, schoolboy smile. He was wearing overalls with a logo on his chest.

  “Where are you going, love?” he asked.

  “North,” Gwenda said.

  “A bit late to be out on your own.”

  “Where are you heading?”

  “Sheffield.”

  “Thanks for stopping.” Gwenda closed the door. “I thought I was going to be there all night.”

  “Well … put your seatbelt on.” The man smiled at her. “My name’s Harry.”

  “Mine’s Gwenda.”

  Gwenda did as she was told. But she made sure that the seat-belt didn’t restrict her movements. She had her bag next to her with the axe handle sticking out of it and she’d decided she was going to use it as soon as they slowed down. It would be so easy to bring out the axe and swing it into the side of Harry’s head. She had never driven a petrol tanker before but she was sure she would be able to manage it. Rex McKenna would help her.

  Ten thousand litres of petrol might well come in useful too.

  FIRE ALARM

  Matt went back to school the next day with a sense of dread.

  None of the adults would blame him for what had happened the day before, but the boys might have a different view. He had been there. He was weird. He was involved. It occurred to Matt that he had probably given them yet more rope to hang him with.

  And he was right. The moment he stepped onto the school bus, he knew that things – which had always been bad – were now set to get much worse. The bus was just about full but somehow the one empty seat always happened to be next to him. As he walked up the central aisle, the whi
spers began. Everyone was staring at him, then looking away when he tried to meet their eyes. As the doors hissed shut and they began to move, something hit him on the side of the head. It was only a rubber band, fired from the back, but the message was clear. Matt was tempted to stop the bus, to get off and go home. He could get Richard to phone in and say he was sick. He resisted the idea. That would be giving in. Why should he let these stuck-up kids with their stupid prejudices win?

  The dining hall was closed for the day. Lunch would be served on temporary tables set up in the gym while the damage was repaired and electricians tried to work out what had caused it. The rumour was that there had been some sort of massive short circuit in the system. It had caused a power surge and that was what had made the chandelier explode. As for Gavin Taylor (he had needed three stitches and had come to school with his right hand completely bandaged), it seemed that he had broken the glass he was holding himself. It was a perfectly natural reaction to the chaos that had been happening just above his head.

  That was what the boys at Forrest Hill were told. The headteacher, a grey-haired man called Mr Simmons, even mentioned it at morning assembly in the chapel. The teachers, sitting in their pews at the very back, nodded wisely. But of course a school has its own knowledge, its own intelligence. Everyone understood that what had happened must have had something to do with Matt, even if nobody knew – or wanted to say – exactly what it was.

  They sang another hymn. Mr Simmons was a religious man and liked to think that the rest of the school was too. There were a few announcements. Then the doors were opened and everyone flooded out.

  “Hey, weirdo!” Gavin Taylor had been sitting just a few places away from Matt and stopped him on the other side of the door. His blond hair was cleaner than usual. Matt wondered if they had insisted on washing it when he was at the hospital.

  “What do you want?” Matt demanded.

  “I just want you to know that you might as well get out of this school. Why don’t you go back to your friends in prison? Nobody wants you here.”

  “I wasn’t in prison,” Matt said. “And it’s none of your business anyway.”

  “I saw your file.” It wasn’t true but Gavin taunted him nevertheless. “You’re weird and you’re a crook and you shouldn’t be here.”

  A few other boys had hung back, sensing a fight. There were five minutes until the first lesson but it would be worth being late to see the two of them slugging it out.

  Matt wasn’t sure how to react. Part of him wanted to lash out at the other boy but he knew that was exactly what Gavin wanted. One punch and he would go running off to a teacher with his bandaged hand and Matt would be in even more trouble.

  “Why don’t you just get lost, Gavin?” he said. And then, before he could stop himself, “Or would you like me to rip open your other hand too?”

  It was a stupid thing to say. Matt remembered what he’d been thinking as he walked home only the day before. The idea that he could actually use his powers to hurt someone his own age horrified him. So what was he doing making threats like this? Gavin was right. He was weird. A freak. He didn’t deserve to have any friends.

  He tried to backtrack. “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said. “And what I said just now, I didn’t mean that either. I know you don’t want me here, but I didn’t ask to come to this school. Why can’t you give me a break?”

  “Why don’t you get lost?” Gavin replied.

  “I just don’t understand you!” Matt exclaimed. Despite himself, he was beginning to get angry again. “What have I ever…?”

  He stopped.

  He could smell burning.

  He didn’t need to look around. He knew there was nothing on fire. What he could smell was burnt toast…

  …and if he closed his eyes he could see a sudden flare of yellow, a teapot shaped like a teddy bear, his mother’s dress on the morning she was killed…

  And he knew that it meant something was about to happen. That was what he had learnt at Raven’s Gate. The smell of burning was important. So were the brief flashes of memory. There had been a teapot shaped like a teddy bear in the kitchen that morning, six years ago. The morning his parents had been killed. His mother had burnt the toast. Somehow, the memories acted as a trigger. They were a signal that everything was about to change.

  But why was it happening now? Everything was under control. He wasn’t in any danger. There were no chains he needed to smash, no door to be blown open. He forced himself to ignore it and was relieved when the smell faded away.

  He looked up and saw that Gavin was staring at him. There were half a dozen other boys grouped around too. How long had he stood there, frozen like some sort of idiot? One or two of them were smirking. Matt struggled to finish his sentence. But he had nothing more to say.

  “Loser,” Gavin muttered, and walked away.

  The other boys went with him, leaving Matt standing on his own outside the chapel door. It was half past nine. First lessons began.

  Thirty miles away, the police had closed an entire street, sealing each end with blue-and-white tape and the usual signs: POLICE – DO NOT CROSS.

  The unconscious man had been discovered by a milkman. He had been lying on the pavement about a hundred metres away from a Shell garage. The paramedics had arrived and they had quickly established that he had been hit once with a blunt instrument … possibly a hammer or a crowbar. His skull was fractured but the good news was that he was going to live. He’d sustained other injuries too and the police suspected that he might have been a passenger in some sort of truck. Perhaps he had been pushed out while the vehicle was moving at speed.

  It had been easy to identify him. There was a wallet in his back pocket complete with cash and credit cards. The fact that it hadn’t been taken automatically ruled out theft as a motive. His wife in Felixstowe had already been contacted and taken at high speed to the emergency ward of the hospital where he was being treated. From her, the police had learned that Harry Shepherd hadn’t been a passenger. He had been a driver. He worked for the Shell Petroleum Company and should have been delivering ten thousand litres of fuel to the garage close to the spot where he had been found injured.

  Almost unbelievably, the police wasted a whole hour before they realized that something was missing. The petrol tanker itself. Perhaps if it had been less obvious, less huge, they might have noticed sooner. But at last they put two and two together and acted with urgency. They had already contacted Shell’s office at Felixstowe and the registration number of the vehicle (there was no need for a description) was being circulated to all units.

  The petrol in the tanker was worth many thousands of pounds. Was this why the driver had been knocked out? The police hoped so, because simple theft was something they could handle. It was certainly a lot less worrying than the alternatives.

  But the thought was still there. This might, after all, be a quite different sort of crime. Suppose the tanker had been taken by terrorists. The local police put a call through to London and a news blackout was ordered. There was no reason yet to start a panic. As they searched the roads up and down Yorkshire, the police remained tight-lipped. But they all knew. Ten thousand litres of petrol could create a very large bonfire indeed. They didn’t want to admit they were afraid.

  * * *

  The morning only got worse.

  Matt arrived five minutes late for his first lesson, stumbling into the classroom while the teacher – Miss Ford – was in full flow.

  “I’m sorry I’m late, miss…”

  “Why are you late, Matthew?”

  How could he explain? How could he tell her that he’d had some sort of premonition outside the school chapel that had left him paralysed, uncertain what to do?

  “I forgot my bag,” he said. It was a lie. But it was simpler than the truth.

  “Well, I’m afraid I’m going to have to put you in the detention book.” Miss Ford sighed. “Now, will you please take your seat.”

  Matt’s desk was
right at the back of the classroom and, although he kept his eyes fixed on the floor, he felt everyone watching him as he took his place. Miss Ford was one of the better teachers at Forrest Hill. She was plain and old-fashioned, which somehow suited her as she taught history, but she had been kind to Matt and had tried to help him fill in the gaps in his knowledge. For his part, Matt had done his best to catch up, reading extra books after school. They were studying the Second World War and he found it more interesting than medieval kings or endless lists of dates. It might be history, but it still mattered now.

  Even so, he was unable to concentrate today. Miss Ford was telling them about Dunkirk, May 1940. Matt tried to follow what she was saying but he couldn’t make the words link up. She seemed a long way away, and was it his imagination or had it become very warm in the classroom?

  “…the army was cut off and it seemed to many people in England that the war was already lost…”

  Matt looked out of the window. Once again he became aware of the sharp, acrid smell of burning toast.

  And that was when he saw it, floating through the air, making no sound. It was some sort of lorry. There was a figure hunched behind the wheel but the sunlight was reflecting off the windscreen and he couldn’t make it out. Like a great beast, it soared towards the school, plummeting out of the sky. Its headlamps were its eyes. The radiator grille was a gaping mouth. The tanker seemed to stretch into the distance, a huge, gleaming silver cylinder on twelve thick tyres. Closer and closer it came. Now it filled up the whole window and was about to smash through…

  “Matthew? What is it?”

  Everyone was staring at him. Again. Miss Ford had stopped whatever she was saying and was looking at him with a mixture of impatience and concern.

  “Nothing, Miss Ford.”

  “Well, stop staring out of the window and try to concentrate. As I was saying, many people thought that Dunkirk was a miracle…”

  Matt waited a few moments, then glanced out of the window again. The classroom looked across to the sports centre, a solid, brick building on the other side of a field, separated from the main part of the school by a single road which rose steeply and then continued back towards York. There was no traffic. It was a beautiful day. Matt pressed a hand against his forehead. When he drew it away, there was sweat on his palm. What was wrong with him? What was going on?