Five Seconds to Doomsday

by Simon Cheshire

  ‘You didn’t see Harry, or anyone else, approach the house?’

  ‘No, I was at the workbench at the back of my lab,’ said Muddy. ‘Someone could easily go to the front door without me spotting them. I’d run an extra power cable from inside the house out to the lab so the door was ajar. Oh no! I even made it easy for Harry to sneak in and take Norman!’

  I handed him the note and the photo. ‘You mustn’t blame yourself. This is absolutely typical Harry Lovecraft nastiness. Although I’m still not sure why he’s doing it.’

  ‘I thought you said it was revenge,’ said Muddy.

  ‘Well, yes,’ I said. ‘But I can’t help feeling he’s gone to a lot of trouble just to play a nasty game. Why make it a game anyway? He risks losing, doesn’t he? And that would be pretty feeble revenge.’

  ‘Look, this is Harry Lovecraft we’re talking about,’ said Muddy. ‘He’ll be one hundred per cent sure he’s going to come out on top. He only plays to win. Right?’

  ‘Hmm.’ I nodded slowly. ‘Worrying, isn’t it? For now, all we can do is play along and hope we can get one step ahead of him somewhere along the line. Remind me of that first question he’s set you. I mean, us.’

  Muddy read it out. There’s a lady eating chocolate by a blue fence while she waits to travel to London. Where is she pointing?’

  ‘OK, let’s think about it logically,’ I said.

  ‘How?’ cried Muddy. ‘It sounds like gibberish.’

  ‘Harry’s not going to give us a question we can’t answer, is he? Otherwise, why ask it? And anyway, we know he’s not cleverer than I am. Soooo . . .’ I wrinkled up my nose in thought.

  Muddy muttered to himself. ‘Why would eating chocolate make you point at something?’

  ‘The box we’re looking for is hidden in a secret location,’ I said. ‘He’s leading us somewhere. So my guess is that this question will take us to a place.’

  ‘We won’t have to go to London, will we?’ said Muddy. ‘That’s miles away!’

  ‘No, no,’ I replied. ‘I don’t think that’s what it means.’

  Some definite possibilities occurred to me. I could think of at least a couple of places which might fit this clue – real places where this mysterious woman might be waiting.

  Are you thinking what I’m thinking?

  ‘I think this refers to a bus depot or a railway station,’ I said. ‘Somewhere you’d wait to travel.’

  ‘How about the airport?’ suggested Muddy. ‘Or even a taxi rank? Or maybe this woman’s simply got her own car?’

  ‘If she was using her own car, why would she be waiting?’ I said. ‘And it sounds unlikely that she’d be taking a taxi, not all the way to London.’

  ‘Then what clue do we have to tell us which type of transport it means?’ said Muddy. ‘The chocolate?’

  ‘The blue fence!’ I cried, hopping to my feet. ‘Think about the bus station in town. Does that have a fence around it?’

  ‘Er, no,’ said Muddy, pulling a quizzical face and glancing at the shed ceiling.

  ‘And neither does the airport,’ I said. ‘Or rather, it does have a fence, ten metres high and covered in razor wire, but it’s not blue. We need to go to the train station! That has those metal railings all along the side by the street, doesn’t it?! Painted blue!’

  ‘So who’s the lady?’ said Muddy.

  ‘We’ll find out when we get there!’ I cried. I flung the shed door open. The rain pattered heavily against the legs of my trousers, blown in by the cold wind. ‘Come on, we haven’t a moment to lose!’

  I stuffed my notebook into my pocket and fetched my long, flappy, dark green raincoat and matching wide-brimmed hat from the coat stand in the hall.

  ‘Where did you get that hideous raincoat?’ gasped Muddy. ‘You look like you’re dressed up as a giant gherkin.’

  I paused, looking down at it with a hurt expression on my face. ‘I got it last year on holiday. English seaside resorts are the best places to buy rainwear. What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘It’s hideous, that’s what’s wrong with it,’ muttered Muddy. ‘And that hat is completely —’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, you’re starting to sound like Izzy,’ I said grumpily. ‘What’s the time now?’

  Muddy checked his watch. ‘Eleven fifty-five exactly.’

  ‘Right!’ I declared. ‘We have four hours and five minutes to save Norman the teddy bear. The race is on!’

  CHAPTER

  THREE

  WE ARRIVED AT THE RAILWAY station about twenty minutes later. Muddy held his big red umbrella down close to his head. The spokes kept prodding at the broad brim of my rain hat.

  We hurried through chunky sliding doors into the station’s main waiting area and ticket office. To one side of us were a newspaper stand and a large plastic partition, behind which a ticket seller sat reading one of the newspapers. To the other side were screens showing Arrivals and Departures, and warnings that luggage left unattended would be eaten by a trained leopard. Or something like that. I wasn’t really paying attention – Muddy and I were busy looking for the mysterious lady mentioned in the note.

  The station had two platforms, one on this side of the railway tracks and one on the other side. An assortment of people with suitcases and shoulder bags were milling about on each platform, checking their watches and looking annoyed. They stood out of the rain, under the huge canopies which covered the central parts of the platforms.

  ‘There are quite a few ladies here,’ whispered Muddy. ‘But I can’t see any of them eating chocolate.’

  ‘Hmm, I wonder,’ I mumbled, looking up and down the platforms. ‘The note says that the lady is waiting by the blue fence. Let’s go and see.’

  Pointy-topped metal railings ran all the way along the back of each platform. They were painted an identical, shiny shade of dark blue and were slightly nobbly-looking because the blue had obviously been painted on top of about thirty other coats of shiny paint.

  Every few metres, a tall, flat advertising poster box was fitted to the blue fence. The see-through fronts of the boxes were spattered with rain. The raindrops made the person in the nearest advert, who was washing her hair in a jungle waterfall, look like she was crying endless tears.

  ‘You’d think if she was stuck in a jungle,’ said Muddy, ‘she’d have more urgent things to worry about than the smell of her hair.’

  ‘A-ha!’ I said. ‘Look!’

  Next to the shampoo advert was a washing powder advert, and next to that was an advert for a really boring-looking novel with a lake on the cover, and next to that was a poster for Cosmik: The Gooey Chewy Bar. A famous movie actress was popping a slab of the stuff into her enormous mouth, as if she was posting a letter. She had one hand on the chocolate and the other was pointing to another Cosmik bar floating on the left side of the poster.

  ‘Ta-daa! The lady eating chocolate,’ I said. ‘I should have realised that the lady in the question wasn’t a real person. I can’t see Harry recruiting helpers into one of his sinister plots, can you? Especially an adult. Here is where the note is leading us!’

  ‘Or over there,’ said Muddy. He nodded at the opposite side of the railway tracks. A second copy of the Cosmik poster was on display at Platform 2.

  ‘Oh,’ I said.

  ‘Here she’s pointing one way,’ said Muddy, ‘and over there she’s pointing the other way. Which is right? In any case, all she’s pointing at is more chocolate, the greedy pig. Where does that get us?’

  For a moment or two, I was in a panic. Then I remembered what the note had said.

  ‘This is the right poster,’ I said. ‘The note said the lady is waiting to travel to London. You catch trains to London from this platform, Platform 1. And as to where she’s pointing, obviously it’s the direction we’re interested in, not the chocolate. Although, y’know, I quite fancy some chocolate, mmmm.’

  ‘But the direction she’s pointing in only leads back to the ticket office,’ said Muddy.

  I walked ov
er to the advert, stepping around the puddles of rain. As I approached it, I could see that there was something small taped to the side of the poster box at exactly the spot the woman was pointing to.

  It was a folded-up plastic bag. I pulled it free and opened it up. Inside was another envelope, exactly like the one Harry had delivered to Muddy’s house. Printed on it, was G Whitehouse and friend.

  I got a sinking feeling in my stomach. The rain was getting heavier again. Quickly, Muddy and I retreated to the ticket office. We sat on a metal bench beside the sliding doors and opened the envelope.

  As I read the printed note inside, that sinking feeling in my stomach got a lot worse . . .

  Whitehouse. Smart.

  Well done. You got the answer right. But oh dear, oh dear, Whitehouse – I did warn you not to tell anyone, didn’t I? You broke the rule, and so the timer in the box is now set to go off at 3 p.m., not 4 p.m. Tick tock, Teddy’s time is running out. Meanwhile, welcome to the game, Smart. Here’s what you’re playing for: also in the box, and also connected to the timer, is a cleverly adapted mobile phone. At 3 p.m., as Teddy goes all to pieces, this phone will send an MP3 audio file to everyone in the school, including the Head and all the teachers. It’s my secret recording of you being shockingly rude about the Head and confessing that you’ve framed suspects in the past, made up evidence, that sort of thing. Your days as a detective will be over. You might even get excluded, who knows?

  I’m really enjoying this game. Here’s your next question:

  ‘Two schoolkids are drinking Italian tea.

  They use the code 6-1-2-4-4-7.

  Where are they going next?’

  Don’t forget, you mustn’t tell anyone else about the game, and the timer goes off at 3 p.m. on the dot. Opening the secret box and disarming the timer is the only thing that can save the day. Bye for now.

  ‘Saxby!’ gasped Muddy, wide-eyed with horror. ‘When have you been shocklingly rude about the Head?’

  ‘I haven’t, you twit!’ I cried. ‘He hasn’t recorded me, he’s obviously faked my voice. This situation is getting more serious by the minute.’

  ‘Faked your voice?’ said Muddy. ‘You mean he’s impersonated you? Imitated the way you speak?’

  ‘Harry Lovecraft? I don’t think so,’ I scoffed. ‘He couldn’t manage an accent for the last school play. His smarmy tones would be far easier to imitate than mine.’

  ‘Then how?’ said Muddy.

  ‘Technical know-how?’ I shrugged. ‘You do that sort of thing every day. Don’t you remember, we used your voice-changing gear in the case of The Hangman’s Lair?’ (See Volume Four of my case files.)

  Muddy shook his head. ‘Making your voice sound different is fairly easy but making it sound like someone else’s is very hard. I’ve tried to make a phone attachment that’ll copy my mum’s voice so I can call school and give myself permission to be off sick. But I’ve never been able to make it work.’

  ‘So how’s he done it, then?’ I said, extremely worried that a low-down rat like Harry Lovecraft might be even better at making gadgets than Muddy. ‘And how did he get all the teachers’ phone numbers?’

  ‘Actually,’ said Muddy, ‘it wouldn’t be hard. You’d just need to —’

  I scrunched up my face for a moment and waved my hands about a bit. ‘We mustn’t get distracted,’ I said. ‘Right now, the most important thing is to answer the next question and get one step closer to this secret box. Let me have another look at this new message. Two schoolkids are drinking Italian tea. They use the code 6-1-2-4-4-7. Where are they going next?’

  ‘I didn’t know tea came from Italy,’ said Muddy.

  ‘It doesn’t,’ I said. ‘Let’s assume the two schoolkids are you and me. So, where would we . . .? I wonder if it means Lucrezia’s, that coffee shop in the mall?’

  ‘Is Lucrezia an Italian name?’ said Muddy.

  ‘I think so,’ I said. ‘I don’t really know. But we know someone who will.’

  I phoned my other great friend, Isobel ‘Izzy’ Moustique, that Supreme Ruler of Information City, St Egbert’s School’s Number One Brainbox. (No, I hadn’t forgotten what Harry had said in the note about telling other people. I was simply choosing not to be bullied into playing by his rules.)

  After a brief check, Izzy confirmed that I was right about Lucrezia being Italian.

  ‘I was going to call you in a minute anyway, Izzy,’ I said. ‘Muddy and I have got a teeny tiny bit of a problem.’

  I gave her all the details. Once she’d finished grumbling angrily about that low-down rat Harry Lovecraft, she agreed to meet me and Muddy at the coffee shop.

  I snapped my phone shut and turned to Muddy.

  ‘Time?’ I asked.

  Muddy glanced at his watch. ‘Eighteen minutes to one.’

  ‘We now have just over two and a quarter hours,’ I said. ‘We’d better hurry. Harry could have hidden that box anywhere.’

  A Page From My Notebook

  (A slightly soggy page, because I’m jotting this down on the way to the shopping mall.)

  PROBLEM 1: How has Harry made this MP3 audio file? Has he secretly been a better gadget-builder than Muddy all this time? No, that seems highly unlikely. He would surely have got involved in more high-tech crime before now.

  POSSIBLE SOLUTION: He’s getting help. Was I wrong to think he wouldn’t recruit helpers into one of his sinister plots? It would have to be an adult (because of Problem 1), but WHO? I already know that some members of his family are equally sneaky (see the case of The Fangs of the Dragon), but we come back to Problem 1 again. It would have to be someone with a lot of technical expertise.

  WAIT! POSSIBLE SOLUTION, SECTION B: Am I looking at this the wrong way? Has he done something else entirely? Has he used some other method to create that file? But if so, WHAT? Hmm, am back to square one here!

  PROBLEM 2: I still don’t understand – WHY stage this horrible GAME? Why go to all this trouble? If Harry wants revenge, why not just shred Norman? Why not just email that MP3 file? And SURELY he realises this could backfire on him? (If Muddy and I succeed, we’ll literally have a boxful of evidence against him! And does he REALLY think I, Saxby Smart, couldn’t prove that his audio file is a fake?) Harry’s sneaky, but he’s not stupid. SOMETHING ELSE is going on here. But what?

  POSSIBLE SOLUTION? None at all, yet . . .

  One thing’s for sure: So far, that low-down rat Harry Lovecraft has anticipated our every move PERFECTLY. Need to WATCH OUT!

  CHAPTER

  FOUR

  LUCREZIA’S CAKE ’N’ COFFEE IS a cosy little shop. It’s tucked away at the back of the town’s shopping mall, sandwiched between Everything for a Quid and a shop which sells clocks and watches.

  Most of the dark brown floorspace was taken up by a scattering of dark brown tables and chairs. Old-fashioned scenes of Italian cities stood out against the dark brown wallpaper.

  To one side was a counter, decked out with all kinds of hissing, shiny chrome coffee machines and teapots. Between the coffee machines and a tall glass case of cakes and pastries, a woman in a dark brown apron hummed cheerily to herself while she gave the counter a once-over with a wet cloth. There were only a handful of customers, all of them with shopping bags beside their feet and a mind-your-own-business look on their faces.

  By now, Muddy and I were both hungry. We bought something sensible and nutritious to eat and sat down at a table near the front of the shop.

  I sipped my hot chocolate and sliced at my slab of chocolate cake with a fork.

  ‘It’s no wonder you’re so out of shape,’ said Muddy, ‘what with all the sugary rubbish you eat.’ He took a huge bite out of his jam doughnut. ‘Do you think we’re supposed to wait for someone?’ he whispered.

  ‘Only Izzy,’ I said. I took Harry’s second message out of my raincoat pocket and read it through again. ‘Like I said before, Harry’s not going to ask us questions we can’t answer, so something in this shop will give us the key to that
code.’

  Muddy wedged the rest of his doughnut into his mouth and wiped his fingers on his sleeve. ‘Maybe it’s something to do with the arrangement of the tables? Maybe you count however many along?’

  ‘Good idea,’ I said, ‘but all the tables are the same. You wouldn’t get any sort of actual answer. This code indicates where we go next so it must give us a place name, or a map reference, or simply a direction. Perhaps it’s something to do with the pictures on the walls?’

  We took a long stare at the pictures. I think we must have looked a bit strange because the woman behind the counter gave us a nervous grin. She reminded me of a frog. I had another forkful of cake.

  The code and the pictures didn’t seem to fit together either. However, the code had to relate to something like the pictures, something that was fixed and didn’t change from day to day – because Harry would have to know that his code could be deciphered by Muddy and me whenever we happened to arrive at the shop. I looked around, frowning. What was there, in this shop, that would give us —

  ‘The menu!’ I said. I pointed over Muddy’s shoulder and he twisted around. ‘The food menu. It’s painted on to the wall behind the counter. That wouldn’t really change.’

  ‘Yeah, loads of words and numbers,’ said Muddy. ‘Perfect code-type stuff.’

  ‘I think we can discount the numbers,’ I said. ‘Look, those prices are chalked up, they’re probably changed from time to time. It’s the words that matter here. This code, 6-1-2-4-4-7, it must translate into letters. Probably a six-letter word. Probably the name of the next location.’

  We took a long stare at the food menu. The woman behind the counter gave us another nervous grin.

  The words on the menu looked like this:

  Crusty rolls: tuna/cheese/ham fillings

  Home-made tomato soup (with crusty roll)