Five Seconds to Doomsday

by Simon Cheshire

  ‘Even so,’ I said, ‘that number of discs must take up a lot of space. Let’s see . . . if a disc, in a little plastic wallet, is about, umm, a hundred and thirty millimetres square, and about three millimetres thick, that means . . . umm . . . er . . .’

  I reached into my desk and took out a pocket calculator. ‘One thirty . . . times one thirty . . .’ I mumbled, tapping at keys, ‘times three, times the number of copies . . . no, I need to do that in metres, don’t I . . . umm . . .’

  The calculation for working out the total volume that all those discs would occupy was 0.13m x 0.13m x 0.03m x 129,996. I’m sure you can find the answer faster than I could . . .

  ‘A-ha!’ I cried at last. Then I squinted at the calculator. ‘Hang on, this is the size of a pizza box, that can’t be right.’

  Tutting, Luke took the calculator from me and worked it out for himself.

  ‘Yeah, Danielle said you’re surprisingly dodgy at maths,’ commented Luke.

  ‘Did she, now,’ I said. ‘I’m rapidly going off her.’

  Luke finished tapping out numbers. ‘The total volume is 65.9 cubic metres. Yeah, it’s a lot, but that’s still less than an average classroom.’

  I hmmm-ed again. Something still bothered me.

  ‘If you have thirty-six discs to a box,’ said Luke, ‘that’s [tap tap tap] about a hundred and fifty boxes per pallet, that’s [tap tap tap] only about twenty-five pallets.’

  ‘What’s a pallet?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s like a flat wooden platform, about a metre and a half across. You see them in warehouses being moved around with forklift trucks. Things get stacked on to them, then they’re often wrapped around with that kind of giant-sized cling film.’

  ‘Ah, yes, I know what you mean,’ I said. ‘You know a lot about this . . .’

  ‘My friend’s dad works for Dales Ltd. He took us over there to have a look around once, on a Sunday when nobody was working. It’s a big place.’

  ‘And they import things from abroad?’ I asked.

  ‘Quite often,’ said Luke. ‘Companies hire them to collect large quantities of whatever, and then deliver them, either to high street shops or to other depots. They mail out stuff for online shops, too. They do games, toys, electrical goods, books, furniture, all sorts.’

  ‘So this truck-load was a routine job?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, except that it was supposed to be secret,’ replied Luke. ‘Gamers have been itching to get their mitts on March of the Zombies 3 for months so Dales had to promise the software developers that they’d keep the discs under lock and key until next week. They weren’t even going to tell their staff until next week that they were handling the game. The only people who knew that March of the Zombies 3 was arriving were the owner of the company, Len Dale, his son Stephen Dale, who runs the company’s office, and the truck driver who was collecting the discs, a man called Peter Lyndon.’

  ‘I see,’ I said. ‘So how did your friend’s dad’s brother’s next-door neighbour get to hear about it?’

  ‘He’s Peter Lyndon.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Yes, he works for my friend’s dad, who’s a supervisor. This Peter Lyndon was only hired by Dales about a month ago. He’d been in prison for a couple of years. He’d stolen a security van full of cash when the driver hopped out to have a wee. People who’ve been in that sort of trouble have problems finding a job, as you can imagine, but Len Dale had signed up for a government scheme which helps ex-prisoners. Peter Lyndon was a qualified truck driver so Dales was an ideal place to work.’

  ‘And he was given the job of transporting March of the Zombies 3,’ I said, jotting a few things down in my notebook.

  ‘Yes, the night before last,’ said Luke. ‘It was done late at night because the delivery was so secret. The truck was due to get back to Dales at about one in the morning. Len Dale arrived next day and found that the truck hadn’t returned. When Stephen Dale turned up for work a few minutes later, Len got him to check the truck’s location.’

  ‘They have a system for pinpointing their vehicles?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, some sort of sat-nav thing,’ said Luke. ‘They found out that the truck was on a road a couple of miles outside town. Then Len Dale and a couple of workers from the depot – including my friend’s dad – went out to see what had happened. They found a field covered in tyre tracks, where the truck must have been unloaded. The truck itself had been abandoned a few hundred metres further on, hidden away behind a farm building, out of sight of the road. It was empty and there was no sign of where the games could have gone.’

  ‘So where was the driver, Peter Lyndon?’

  ‘Well, at that point, Len Dale called the police,’ said Luke. ‘He was worried that whoever dumped the truck had dumped Peter Lyndon too. The police called at Lyndon’s house —’

  ‘Next door to your friend’s dad’s brother,’ I prompted.

  ‘That’s right. Lyndon was at home. He said he’d been given the day off by Dales because he’d worked late the night before. Which was perfectly true. He said he’d driven the truck to Dales, as arranged. He said he knew nothing about the missing discs.’

  ‘Aren’t there security cameras at Dales, to back up his story?’ I asked.

  ‘There are cameras, but the recorder broke months ago. Dales have never had a problem like this before and they just never got round to having it fixed.’

  ‘And there wasn’t any kind of log of Peter arriving at the depot with the truck, or anyone else there?’ I said.

  He shook his head.

  ‘So the police didn’t believe what Lyndon said?’

  ‘No. They thought he’d stopped the truck in that field, then called in a load of criminal, underworld-type ex-convict friends to help unload everything. Then, with the discs whisked off by his mates, he’d dumped the truck and walked home. The police said that this was clearly what Lyndon had planned because it left him in a his-word-against-Dales situation. His helpers had taken away all the evidence. He could sit there and say “Nothing to do with me, mate”. The police searched his house, but didn’t find anything relevant.’

  I hmmmed yet again. Another something was bothering me. ‘You said before that he had a motive. I can’t really see one.’

  ‘What? The money he and his mates would make from selling the games, obviously!’ exclaimed Luke. ‘Even if he sold them at one pound each, he’d make a huge pile of cash! And they’re worth a lot more than a pound.’

  ‘But no matter how strong your motive for committing a crime might be,’ I said, ‘you won’t actually commit it unless you thought you’d got a fair chance of getting away with it. Why would you steal something if you knew you were going to be top of the suspect list?’

  Luke wrinkled his nose up. ‘The police say he’s trying to bluff his way out of it. They don’t have firm evidence against him yet, remember. That’s why they’re still questioning him. They’re trying to get him to reveal who his thieving partners-in-crime are.’

  ‘Bluff his way out of it?’ I pondered, mostly to myself. ‘That’s a risky idea.’

  ‘Everyone at Dales is really upset,’ said Luke. ‘My friend’s dad says Lyndon seemed like a nice chap who was trying to put his past behind him. Len Dale is upset because he personally hired Lyndon and he feels his trust has been betrayed. Stephen Dale is upset because the software company behind March of the Zombies 3 is never likely to use Dales again.’

  ‘What happens if the discs aren’t found?’ I asked. ‘Will Dales end up owing the software company a lot of money?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Luke. ‘I guess so. It’s the breach of security they’re more worried about at the moment. You see, they can’t work out how someone outside Dales found out about the discs. So they’re coming to the same conclusion as the police: that Lyndon must be lying. But he’s not. He delivered that truck to Dales, just as he said he did. That’s where you come in. You have to prove that someone, somewhere, somehow, knew those discs were on their way
to Dales and that they’ve framed Lyndon for the theft.’

  Luke paused. He shuffled forwards on my Thinking Chair. ‘Well, those are the facts. What do you think?’

  ‘I think there’s more to this mystery than first meets the eye,’ I said. ‘Saxby Smart is on the case!’

  A Page From My Notebook

  I need to be careful. So far, it’s perfectly possible that the police are right, that Luke is wrong, and that this Peter Lyndon really DID do it. I must keep an OPEN MIND. However, there are some puzzling things about this case:

  PUZZLING THING 1: If Lyndon DID do it, then WHY? He MUST have known the police would come straight to his door. He’d have to be crazy to think they wouldn’t. Or . . . maybe he IS crazy?

  PUZZLING THING 2: If Lyndon DIDN’T do it, we’re left with a couple of problems. FIRST: the thieves must have removed the truck from Dale’s – after Lyndon had driven it back to the depot at one in the morning – and taken it to that field. WHY? Why not just unload it at Dale’s? SECOND: If they took the truck from Dale’s, why unload it AT ALL? Why not just disable the sat-nav locator-thingy, and steal the truck too? Why bother swapping trucks?

  PUZZLING THING 3: Despite what Luke said, those discs DO take up a large amount of space. WHERE could you hide that amount of stuff? It’s not like you could sneak it under the sofa and hope nobody will notice!

  Important Question: Is it TRUE that only Len Dale, Stephen Dale and Peter Lyndon knew about the delivery of discs?

  If the answer to the question is NO . . .

  • Did someone else at Dale’s know? If so, HOW?

  • Did someone from the software company arrange the robbery? If so, WHY?

  • Did someone else entirely find out? If so, WHO?

  And if the answer to the question is YES . . . then Peter Lyndon definitely looks guilty, because Len and Stephen Dale certainly have nothing to gain from the crime. Which brings us back full circle to PUZZLING THING 1 . . .

  I think my brain just went phrrhhhtt.

  CHAPTER

  THREE

  THERE WAS NO TIME TO lose. Luckily, we were in the middle of half-term week, so school wasn’t a factor.

  The first thing I did was phone my friend Isobel ‘Izzy’ Moustique, that well-known Commander of Cyberspace and Mayoress of Knowledge City. I gave her the basic facts of the case and asked her to dig up all she could on Dales and anything else she thought might be relevant. I arranged to meet up with her the following day.

  The second thing I did was go and borrow a bike from Muddy. Luke had parked his bike at my garden gate – a really smart, shiny model in metallic blue, with an extended, arching mudguard at the back which looked like a tail streaming out behind a puma. It made my own bike – a really grotty, scratched model in unsightly rust – look a bit feeble. Using one of Muddy’s specially modified vehicles would look far more detectivey. (Plus, my bike had only one wheel. And it was slightly bent. And I wasn’t even sure where I’d left it.)

  I’d decided to take a look at the crime scene – the field where the truck had been unloaded. Luke went on ahead, while I hurried over to Muddy’s house. He was busy in his garage (or Development Laboratory, as he prefers to call it), putting the finishing touches to a device for seeing around corners. As always, his clothes were almost as covered in grime and food stains as his face.

  ‘You could borrow that go-cart,’ said Muddy. ‘Just finished. Twelve gears.’

  ‘No thanks,’ I said. ‘I want to look cool and detectivey.’

  ‘It’s got a really stylish curved section at the front,’ he said, with a grin. ‘Makes it look a bit like a car.’

  ‘Thanks, no, just the bike.’

  He pulled an OK-please-yourself face. ‘You can have the Whitehouse SpeedMaster 5000, over there in the corner. But it’s not as trendy as that go-cart, I’m telling you.’

  Half an hour later, I’d cycled out of town, along a long, curving road which skirted the area beyond the bus station and the shopping mall. To one side of the road were lines of tall trees, swaying and swishing in the wind. On the other side was a series of squarish fields, marked out with scrappy hedges, one or two of them accessible from the road through broad metal gates.

  By the time I caught up with Luke, I was totally exhausted. One of these days I really must start to get more exercise.

  ‘What kept you?’ asked Luke.

  ‘I was . . . er . . .’ I gasped, wheeling to a stop and trying to catch my breath.

  Luke propped his bike up against a hedge. ‘Yeah, Danielle said you’re surprisingly unfit.’

  ‘Did she, now,’ I wheezed.

  ‘This is the field,’ said Luke. ‘You can see there are loads of tyre tracks coming in and out past the gate.’

  I left the Whitehouse SpeedMaster 5000 next to Luke’s bike and walked across soft, rutted grass into the field. I walked quite slowly, partly to examine the tracks and partly to recover from all that cycling.

  As Luke had spotted, there were deep, overlapping lines of tracks by the gates. All the tyre marks were the same: wide, chunky and obviously made by something large. Past the gate, the tracks spread out into a wildly criss-crossed pattern. The ground was still quite damp from all the recent rain and had been mashed into a brown and bumpy paste. Here and there, a few lonely blades of grass clung together, like shipwrecked sailors on a sea of mud.

  All the indentations in the ground were clear and fresh. I tried to make sense of them, following one track after another, to see if I could piece together the sequence of events from the way the tracks twisted and turned.

  ‘What can you deduce?’ called Luke from the gate.

  ‘Very little,’ I cried, taking a big step over a patch where half a dozen lines appeared to cross each other. ‘I don’t understand this at all. With tyre tracks, you can always tell which were made last because they go over the top of the others —’

  ‘Yeah, that makes sense,’ said Luke.

  ‘But these seem to go all over the place. They look so similar, I can’t be definite about anything at all.’

  Feeling frustrated, I glanced back at the route I’d taken around the field. Heavy tyre tracks formed a large, tree-like pattern in the mud, and through the middle of it all were the oval shapes of my own shoes as I’d tiptoed about.

  ‘On second thoughts,’ I said, ‘there is something I can be definite about.’

  ‘What?’ called Luke.

  ‘Clearly, that truck was here,’ I cried. ‘But I don’t think it was unloaded. Not in this field.’

  ‘Huh?’ called Luke. ‘What makes you say that? What have you seen?’

  ‘It’s what I haven’t seen that’s the important thing,’ I said.

  Have you worked it out too? Can you spot the missing element?

  ‘Look all around here,’ I called over to Luke. ‘Heavy vehicle tracks. And what else?’

  ‘Er, nothing,’ said Luke.

  ‘Exactly! I’ve just walked around this field and left a clear line of footprints. A truck is supposed to have been unloaded here in the middle of the night, by this bunch of crooks Peter Lyndon is supposed to have organised. So how come there’s not a single one of their footprints anywhere? The police must have only looked in the field.’

  Luke frowned, then stared, then frowned again. ‘Huh? That doesn’t make sense! Why would anyone drive the truck in here and not unload it? Hey, wait a minute, if the truck wasn’t unloaded that means Lyndon is telling the truth, right?’

  I hopped over the mud, back to where Luke was standing. ‘No, what it means is that the story the police and Dales have put together is wrong. As far as this field goes anyway.’

  ‘So, which version of events is right then?’

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ I said. ‘Yet.’

  ‘What do we do now?’ said Luke, swinging himself back on to his bike.

  I thought for a moment. ‘Your friend’s dad, the one who works at Dales. Do you think he could get us in there, right now, to have
a look around? Using a cover story, of course, so that nobody else would know we’re investigating the robbery.’

  ‘Dunno,’ said Luke. ‘Probably, if it’ll help solve the case. I’ll phone my friend, he can ask for us.’

  Luke quickly made arrangements. Then, suddenly, I had a thought which set my heart thumping, a thought which made my head spin and my legs go weak: going over to Dales would mean another long bike ride.

  CHAPTER

  FOUR

  DALES ROAD HAULAGE & TRANSPORT LTD was a big place. Really, really, big. Biiiig!

  Beyond a high metal fence was a row of enormous, warehouse-style buildings, each of which could easily have fitted the whole of St Egbert’s School into it. Twice. A small, two-storey office block stuck out in front of the first building and it was here that Luke and I were met by his friend’s dad, who turned out to be called Reg Pratt.

  Mr Pratt was a rosy-cheeked, gravelly-voiced man, who blinked a lot and had a habit of tugging at his nose every now and then. He wore blue overalls with Dales Ltd sewn across the back in large yellow letters.

  ‘Right then, lads,’ he said, in a broad Welsh accent, as he led us towards the nearest warehouse, ‘remind me again, what are you pretending to be here for?’

  ‘The St Egbert’s School newspaper,’ I said. ‘We’re doing a project called Important Things in our Community.’

  ‘Right then,’ said Mr Pratt. ‘You tell me what you want to see, and I’ll pretend you’re doing a project and not investigating those stolen games.’

  ‘Excellent,’ I said. ‘Let’s take a look at the truck.’

  As the three of us entered the building, I was wowed by three things: its size, its noise and its temperature. Even though I’d been impressed by the hugeness of these warehouses from the outside, the sight of the inside impressed me all over again. The place was alive with bumps, clangs, shouts, beeps, mechanical whirrs, and here and there the squawk of a radio. It was also very cold.