Five Seconds to Doomsday

by Simon Cheshire

  The conference of teachers was returning to the main hall now, chatting in little groups, ready to hear more about the latest exciting developments in the world of education. Yawn. Mrs Penzler led us to the nearest classroom, stopping off briefly at the loo to gather paper towels for mud-scraping duty.

  ‘The first thing I want,’ said Mrs Penzler, putting on her I’m-A-Teacher-Don’t-Mess-With-Me-Buster voice, ‘is an explanation from you, Harry Lovecraft, as to why you’re here at school today.’

  Harry perched uncomfortably on a paper towel. He shrugged. ‘I forgot it was a teacher training day. Sorry about that.’

  ‘And it took you five hours to work that out?’ asked Mrs Penzler sarcastically. ‘Did you have anything to do with the box that Saxby and I found in the assembly hall?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about any box,’ smarmed Harry.

  ‘Then why were you running away?’ asked Mrs Penzler.

  ‘I was hurrying home, out of the rain.’

  Mrs Penzler snorted. She was getting frustrated.

  ‘Why?’ she barked. ‘Why would anyone do such an utterly dangerous, irresponsible, stupid, malicious —’

  ‘I think I’ve worked that one out now,’ I piped up. ‘We know that Harry wanted —’

  ‘Someone wanted,’ sneered Harry.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Someone wanted revenge on me. And revenge on my friends, too, who’ve helped me in my past investigations. But what form of revenge would be suitable? Something that would finish me as a detective, that’s for sure. And something that couldn’t be traced back to this someone, either.

  ‘It was the way the rain dissolved that smoke which gave me the final clue. I couldn’t work out why Harry – sorry someone – had led us here, to school, today of all days. But imagine the scene: big conference of teachers, lots of important people, the Head, and all of them sitting there surrounded by an absolute tonne of high-tech gear. Suddenly, in bursts Saxby Smart! Don’t panic, everyone, he cries! All under control! Then he dives under the table, pulls down the box and – thinking he’s disarming a timer – he opens the lid. Whoosh! Smoke everywhere. What happens next?’

  ‘The fire alarm goes off!’ answered Muddy.

  ‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘And then . . .?’

  Izzy gasped. ‘The sprinklers come on, thinking there’s a fire.’

  ‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘And then . . .?’

  ‘That section of the school gets sprayed with thousands of litres of water,’ said Izzy.

  ‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘Every last bit of computer equipment in that hall gets ruined. It might as well have been left out in the car park under the rain. There’s thousands of pounds – maybe hundreds of thousands of pounds – of damage. Not to mention the damage to the building!

  ‘And it would all be Saxby Smart’s fault. I could explain all I liked, but I’d have no proof that this someone had put me up to it. And anyway, would anyone listen when there was an eye-wateringly huge bill to pay and a school to repair? Plus, I’d have to admit to the world that I’d been totally fooled. My days as a detective would be pretty much over. I might well get booted out of St Egbert’s.’

  ‘But why would someone make up an elaborate game in order to pull such a stunt?’ asked Muddy. ‘Couldn’t they just, I dunno, say a pet bunny was trapped in the box and needed rescuing?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘because this someone knows me too well. I’d start asking questions, wouldn’t I? I’d start investigating. No, this someone had to wind me up – and you and Izzy, too – so that we’d be in a right panic. He had to get us believing that time was running out, and that if the box wasn’t opened right there and then in the assembly hall, bad things would happen.

  ‘Sure, yeah, he could have kidnapped Norman, and he could have altered my podcast, and he could have made Izzy look like a cheat. He could have threatened all sorts of things. The point is we had to believe it. He had to make us believe that we, personally, were going to suffer if that box didn’t get opened in time.

  ‘Of course, all that stuff about teddy bears and podcasts would be small-time stuff next to the smoke trick, right? But only he would know that. All along, I’ve been wondering to myself why he’d set up such a complex game when he seemed to have relatively little to gain from it. Until I realised the truth: that the entire thing, start to finish, was a con. A series of tricks to stop us thinking straight, so we’d walk blindly into the trap.

  ‘He must have been planning it for ages, waiting for good ideas to pop up. As you suspected, Muddy, he must have gone nosing around when he visited your lab. He found Norman, saw the kidnap-plot potential, and took a picture there and then, just on the off-chance. Same thing the other day, when our class did those podcasts. He saw that re-editing my recording was possible. He knew that he could upload entries to online encyclopedias. He didn’t have to actually do any of these things, just make sure that they were things we’d believe.

  ‘He waited until he had enough good ideas to piece together his game. He acted friendly with everyone for weeks so that when the game was sprung on us, we’d believe it. He knew we’d believe he’d double-cross us, and that we’d think to ourselves, “Hah! That low-down rat’s been pretending all along, and now he’s kidnapped Norman,” and so on, and so on.’

  ‘Can I go now?’ sneered Harry. ‘I’m wet and muddy, and having to listen to one of Smart’s dribbling speeches is only making matters worse. You have absolutely no proof to link me to this barmy scheme and you know it.’

  Mrs Penzler sighed. ‘I’m afraid Harry is right,’ she said, reluctantly. ‘Saxby it’s all very well you and your friends making these claims, but it’s well-known that the three of you have plenty of reasons to dislike Harry. Unless you can produce solid evidence, we’re going to have rather a long talk, you and I.’

  I looked at Muddy. Muddy looked at me. He tried not to giggle. Remember how he whispered to me after he’d caught Harry . . .?

  ‘Come on, then, Smart,’ smirked Harry. ‘Produce evidence.’ He stood up, arms wide, and twirled on the spot. ‘Look at me, the only thing I’ve got are my binoculars. I’ve been bird watching.’

  ‘In the rain?’ I said. ‘You’ve been lying low in an empty classroom, waiting for us to turn up in the staff room. You left a note to text you, so you’d know we’d arrived and that it was time for you to come out of hiding and watch your revenge cause chaos in the assembly hall.’

  ‘I see,’ grinned Harry. ‘So, where’s my phone? Have I swallowed it? Is it concealed inside a hollowed-out tooth?’ He took off his coat and handed it to Mrs Penzler, turned out his pockets, rolled up his sleeves and his trousers and rolled down his socks.

  ‘I’m getting fed up of the way you pick on me, Smart,’ he slimed. ‘Happy now? Have you humiliated me enough?’

  Before he could wriggle out of the way, I took hold of his tie. The look on his face changed from anger to horror. He tried to snatch it away from me, but I flipped it over and slipped a small phone from a slim pocket that had been sewn on its reverse side.

  ‘Muddy felt it when he hauled you over here,’ I said. ‘Great hiding place. That’s what I almost admire about you, Harry: you leave as little as possible to chance.’

  I handed the phone to Mrs Penzler. She switched it on and scrolled to the last text sent, then called the number. Muddy’s phone started ringing and she cancelled the call. Then she gave Harry the iciest look I’ve ever seen. I’m sure teachers get trained to do that.

  ‘I expect this phone was only bought a couple of days ago,’ I said, trying not to shiver at the sight of Mrs Penzler’s steely gaze. ‘No doubt Harry was planning to destroy it, or its SIM card at least, as soon as he was safely outside the school again. Then that text he sent would have been untraceable.’

  By now, the rain had started pounding again. We all made our way back towards the assembly hall. Muddy, Izzy and I got ready to leave, looking glumly out at the gushing skies. Izzy flapped her umbrella into shape, and I turned up the co
llar of my coat. Harry Lovecraft just stood there, staring viciously at us.

  ‘You three will need to talk to the Head about this on Monday morning,’ said Mrs Penzler. ‘Harry and I will see her as soon as the conference is over. Try not to get too wet on the way home. Oh, and Saxby . . .’

  ‘Yes?’ I said, turning back at the open door.

  ‘Where on earth did you get that awful raincoat?’ asked Mrs Penzler. ‘You look like a giant gherkin.’

  The Head suspended Harry Lovecraft immediately. A few days later it turned out that he’d stolen his latest stepmother’s credit card to pay online for the phone and all the stuff he’d used in that smoke grenade. His dad, after finally persuading the Head not to get the police involved, moved Harry to another school about twenty miles away. With luck, I thought, I’ll never see him again.

  I arrived back at my garden shed wet and weary. I hung up my lovely, keeps-you-warm, attractive-shade-of-green raincoat, and flopped into my Thinking Chair.

  I was about to start noting down a few facts about the case when I heard a plip-plip-plip coming from the corner. Oh . . . bottoms. I’d forgotten about that leak in the roof.

  The paint tin I’d placed under the drip was now almost full. With a deep sigh, I picked it up, stuck my arm out of the shed door and emptied the tin out on to the lawn.

  I glared up at the leak. Hmm. I was going to have to do something about that.

  Case closed.

  CASE FILE SEVENTEEN:

  MARCH OF THE

  ZOMBIES

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  OK. STAY CALM. DON’T PANIC.

  I took a deep breath. Then I took another deep breath.

  I was determined to get this right. There was a leak in the roof of my shed, my Crime HQ, and I was absolutely determined to solve the problem on my own.

  The rain, which had been bucketing down for days, had now stopped for a rest. However, from the look of the sky, it would start chucking down all over the place again just as soon as the clouds had gathered enough water again to chuck.

  So I didn’t have long. I’m a brilliant schoolboy detective but I’m totally hopeless when it comes to practical things like making 3D models for school projects, or doing toast without any burned bits, or mending leaks in sheds. I was fed up of getting this sort of thing wrong so I was determined that this particular little job would be done properly. Without botching it. And without leaving tatty patches.

  For advice, I’d turned to my friend George ‘Muddy’ Whitehouse, St Egbert’s School’s Crown Prince of Engineering. He’d told me exactly what tools and equipment I’d need to repair the shed, and he’d taken me through doing the job step-by-step.

  ‘You sure you don’t want me to do it for you?’ he’d asked, covered in grease as he adapted an old bike into a go-cart. ‘You know what you’re like with these things.’

  ‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘Thank you, no. I’m going to do this myself and I’m going to get it right. I’m determined.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Muddy with a shrug.

  I’d felt very confident after I’d talked to Muddy. However, now I was back in my shed and staring up at the wet patch in the corner of the roof, I was feeling rather nervous.

  Now the rain was having a tea break, water was no longer plipping from the roof into the old paint tin I’d placed on my filing cabinet full of case notes. It was time to begin.

  I checked my equipment: hammer, large scissors, little silver nails with a big flat bit at the top, roofing felt (thick wobbly sheet stuff, dark grey on one side, gritty green on the other). Check! Instructions: cut roofing felt to size, place over leaking area, nail down around the edge. Check!

  Half an hour later, I was done.

  And it looked pretty good! I gazed up at the neat rectangle of roofing felt I’d nailed into place directly above the filing cabinet and I was overjoyed. I almost hopped up and down with delight!

  A-ha! Do your worst, rain! I thought as I sat down victoriously in my Thinking Chair.

  At that moment, there was a knock on the shed door. ‘C’min!’ I cried.

  In came a short, thin boy with close-cropped hair and an expression of mild dislike. He was wearing baggy jeans and a chunky pullover which looked like it had been knitted from blue spaghetti. His face was round and small with a nose like a mushroom. I’d never seen him before.

  ‘Are you Saxby Smart?’ he said. His eyes flicked around the shed, glancing across the piles of gardening and DIY stuff. He didn’t seem impressed by my desk, or my filing cabinet, or even my Thinking Chair, the battered old leather armchair in which I’ve puzzled out many a mystery.

  ‘That’s me!’ I beamed. I pointed up to the new patch on the ceiling. ‘Look. I did that.’ I nodded eagerly at him and grinned.

  ‘Er . . . great,’ he said. ‘My name’s Luke. Luke Dixon. You’re a detective, right?’

  ‘A detective, and Highly Skilled Leaky Roof Repairer, yes,’ I said. ‘How can I help you? You’re not at St Egbert’s?’

  ‘No, I live across town,’ said Luke. ‘I know Danielle Plummley. She said you’d got her out of trouble once.’

  Danielle was in my class at school. I’d been able to help her out on the school trip to Paris (see Volume Three of my case files). ‘What’s the problem?’ I said, ushering Luke to my Thinking Chair while I perched on the desk.

  I was about to encounter a crime which had a strange and unusual motive. This case would leave me thinking serious thoughts about why people do what they sometimes do.

  ‘Well, it’s not me that’s got the problem,’ said Luke. ‘It’s my friend’s dad’s brother’s next-door neighbour.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ I nodded. ‘So, why isn’t it your friend’s dad’s brother’s next-door neighbour who’s coming to see me?’

  ‘The cops have got him locked up,’ said Luke. ‘He’s under arrest.’

  ‘What for?’ I asked.

  ‘Stealing one hundred and thirty thousand copies of a new video game,’ said Luke calmly.

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  ‘HOW MANY?!’ I GASPED.

  ‘It was the entire contents of one medium-sized truck,’ said Luke. ‘One hundred and thirty thousand games. Well, one hundred and twenty-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-six, to be exact.’

  ‘And why is he a suspect?’ I asked.

  ‘Because it looks like he did it,’ said Luke. ‘He had a reason to steal those games, he had the ability to steal them and he had a perfect chance to steal them.’

  I hmmmed for a moment. ‘Correct me if I’m on the wrong track, here,’ I said, ‘but doesn’t that mean he’s probably guilty?’

  ‘That’s the whole point,’ said Luke. ‘He isn’t. He’s been framed, stitched up, made a fall guy.’

  ‘What makes you so sure? If he had a motive, a method and an opportunity, he’d be at the top of my suspect list, I can tell you that.’

  ‘Because he doesn’t want to go to prison,’ said Luke. ‘Not again. He’s only just got out!’

  If I’d been drinking a glass of water at that moment, I’d have sprayed it out across the shed in a shower of surprise. However, I wasn’t, so I didn’t.

  ‘He’s got a motive, a method, an opportunity, and he’s committed crimes in the past!’ I spluttered. ‘Look, Luke, I don’t want to sound heartless but surely it’s a defence lawyer he needs, not a detective? And a defence lawyer who specialises in defending hopeless cases, at that!’

  ‘My friend’s dad’s brother knows this guy well,’ said Luke. ‘He swears on his life that someone’s framing him.’

  ‘How does your friend’s dad’s brother know him?’ I asked.

  ‘They were in prison together.’

  If my eyebrows had risen any higher, they’d have missed my head completely. ‘This gets better and better,’ I said. ‘Not only does this guy look totally guilty, but the person who’s most on his side is another villain!’

  Luke sighed. ‘I know it looks bad. But will y
ou hear the full story first and then make up your mind?’

  He was right. I was jumping to conclusions. What kind of detective would I be if I formed an opinion before knowing all the facts? A rubbish one, that’s what! I felt embarrassed. (My spectacular success at roof repairing must have gone to my head.)

  ‘Let’s fill in all the details,’ I said. ‘OK. First, this video game.’

  ‘What’s been stolen,’ said Luke, in a deadly serious tone, ‘is the entire UK supply of March of the Zombies 3.’ He seemed to be expecting me to start leaping around, tearing my hair out and shouting, ‘Oh no! Not March of the Zombies 3! It can’t be true! Nooooooo!’

  I stared blankly at him. ‘What’s that, then?’

  ‘You’ve never played March of the Zombies 2 ?’ he gasped.

  ‘I’ve never played March of the Zombies 1,’ I told him.

  Luke shook his head sadly. ‘Yeah, Danielle said you’re strangely out of touch.’

  ‘Did she, now.’

  ‘Yeah. March of the Zombies is, like, the best zombie shoot-’em-up franchise ever. Part 3 is set on a space station. It’s supposed to go on sale next Friday at 9 a.m., and until then it’s strictly under wraps. Nobody is allowed a copy and the shops that will be selling it won’t get their supplies until the Thursday afternoon. That medium-sized truck I mentioned was taking the whole launch-day supply from a ship, which docked somewhere on the south coast, up to the distribution depot that’s near the shopping mall – Dales Road Haulage & Transport Ltd.’

  ‘One medium-sized truck?’ I said. ‘Surely a quantity that huge would take up a couple of whopping great articulated lorries at least?’

  I tried doing a few calculations in my head to work out the volumes involved. My head didn’t like that idea at all. So I quickly gave up.

  ‘Yes,’ said Luke, ‘one hundred and twenty-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-six games would take up half a warehouse. But March of the Zombies 3 was being shipped disc-only, just as ordinary game discs in little plastic wallets, packed into boxes of thirty-six. The cases and instruction booklets and so on were going to be added at Dales. The covers for the UK edition have been printed in the UK, but the discs themselves have to be imported from China.’