The London Eye Mystery

by Siobhan Dowd

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  Marcus. Almost certainly.

  Of the twenty-one people leaving the pod, there had been no extra woman, no female who could have emerged from under the wig and sunglasses disguise. But there had been a lad. The lad we’d taken for the girl in the pink fluffy jacket’s boyfriend. The boy with chubby, brownish cheeks.

  Marcus. Definitely.

  That’s when I remembered Salim shaving off his moustache. If he was to become the girl in the pink fluffy jacket, he needed to be clean-shaven. As did Marcus. Everything pointed to Marcus. Then the final jigsaw piece fell into place: what the woman security guard said as we left Earl’s Court. I didn’t slot it into the rest of the pattern until the eightyseventh kick of the garden shed. Kat had asked her where the strange man called Christy had gone. She’d replied he’d gone home with a stomach bug. A bug she didn’t believe in. With him it’s always the same

  . . . Sick this, dentist that, dead uncle the other. Never rains but it pours . . . Just like his name. Detective Inspector Pearce had mentioned 274

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  Marcus’s surname to us only once, but once was enough. Enough for me, at least, because I am going to be a meteorologist when I grow up. The name Flood had struck me as interesting all along. The strange man had lied to us in Earl’s Court and lied to us again in Mile End. Both times he’d known more than he said. He and Marcus were related. They were both called Flood. For some reason he had helped Marcus and Salim carry out their practical joke, maybe because that’s all he thought it was. But it wasn’t just a practical joke. It was also part of a bigger plan. A plan for Salim to run away. Because I think everybody knew by then. Salim hadn’t been abducted. He’d vanished by his own choice. He’d never wanted to go to New York. A clue to this had been the guidebook in his backpack. There were no creases on the spine, which meant Salim had never opened it. Which meant going to New York didn’t make him excited. But the London Eye did. And vanishing while riding it was the best and most exciting way of running away he could think of.

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  A weather detective is somebody who uses observations and measurements to make theories, and if the theories are right, they will correctly predict weather patterns. Finding out what had happened to Salim and where he was likely to be was exactly like that. I made observations and constructed theories and then found out more facts with Kat’s help, and when the facts and the theories fitted, I thought we’d be able to track Salim down, just like you track a storm system and predict where it will make landfall.

  Only something had gone wrong.

  Salim hadn’t appeared at the end of the trail. There was only Marcus.

  And Marcus stood in the kitchen staring at the floor, and when everybody started talking at once to him, he started crying. His head was down but you could hear him and see his shoulders moving. And I got a very bad feeling in my oesophagus again.

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  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Salim Supreme

  A unt Gloria loomed over Marcus in her dressing gown like a force-ten gale. ‘What do you know, Marcus? Where’s Salim?’ She grabbed Marcus’s sleeve. ‘Say something! Speak!’

  Detective Inspector Pearce led her back to her chair. Mum brought Marcus a drink of lemonade and led him to another chair, but he refused to sit down or take the drink. He shook his head and his hood fell back. Then he wiped his face on his sleeve and looked up and stared at me. I remembered to lift up my lips, which Mr Shepherd says to do when you meet somebody new because it means you can be their friend. But Marcus’s lips didn’t move, which meant he didn’t want to be my friend.

  ‘Marcus is here to say sorry,’ Detective Inspector Pearce said. ‘He was too frightened to come forward earlier. He thought he’d get into trouble. Now he’s told us what he knows. I have here the statement he made earlier. And his story starts out just as Ted 277

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  worked it out.’ She nodded at Kat. ‘With Kat’s help, I understand.’

  ‘My help?’ said Kat.

  ‘I’d never have worked it out without you, Kat,’ I said.

  Detective Inspector Pearce continued. ‘Marcus’s mum is outside in a squad car, with another officer, waiting. She wanted you to hear his story too. When he’s done, we’ll take them home.’

  ‘But I don’t understand . . .’ Rashid squeezed his knuckles into his head.

  ‘Marcus and Salim spent several hours together the day Salim disappeared,’ Inspector Pearce explained. ‘Didn’t you, Marcus?’

  Marcus nodded.

  ‘By arrangement. Then Marcus went back to Manchester on his own. Salim didn’t go. But he was supposed to, wasn’t he, Marcus?’

  Marcus nodded again.

  ‘You see, Salim had planned to run away.’

  ‘No,’ Aunt Gloria moaned, putting her head in her hands.

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  ‘But he didn’t. Not in the end. He changed his mind.’

  Aunt Gloria looked up. ‘He changed his mind,’

  she said softly. She nodded. ‘That’s right. He changed his mind.’

  ‘Do you want to explain, Marcus?’ Detective Inspector Pearce asked. ‘Or would you rather I read out your statement?’

  There was a pause. Marcus put his hood back up so his face was hidden again. A voice you could hardly hear said, ‘The statement, miss.’ So Detective Inspector Pearce read out Marcus’s statement and this is what it said.

  POLICE TRANSCRIPT OF STATEMENT MADE

  BY WITNESS MARCUS FLOOD My name is Marcus Flood and this is the truth. Salim is my best mate because before he joined my school last September they called me PakiBoy but now they don’t. I’m not from Pakistan. My mam’s from Bangladesh and my dad’s Irish 279

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  but that didn’t stop Jason Smart grabbing my sandwiches every day and saying what’s the curried goat like today, Paki-Boy, and throwing them on the floor even though they were just cheese and tomato.

  Then Salim joined my class and sat next to me. They called him Paki-Boy Number Two but he didn’t take any notice, even when Jason Smart grabbed his sandwiches and threw them on the floor saying they smelled worse than a yak’s bum. The next day Jason Smart opened his own sandwich box and there were thousands of maggots heaving in it. The whole class was in fits. Salim went from Paki-Boy Number Two to MosherSalim-Supreme and since I was his friend, we were moshers together. We had our shirts half tucked in, half out, the top moshers of 9K. When you’re a mosher you’re not supposed to be keen. You sit at the back of the class and look dead bored. But with drama it was different. We were the mosher keeners because Mr Davison was so cool. He chose us to star in the 280

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  school play at Easter, The Tempest. Mr Davison played Prospero, Salim was Ferdinand and I was Miranda. Ha-ha. The girl. My voice hadn’t broken then. I’d a long dark wig to wear and a white dress and every time I said I was ‘certainly a maid’, the whole class cheered and stamped their feet and I’d roll my eyes and everybody went ‘ooh-la-la’. Mr Davison said I was a comic genius.

  Then, after Easter, Salim came back to school with bad news. His mum was moving to New York and taking him with her. I was gutted. I sat in science and technology, thinking how I’d pinch some chemicals and swallow them whole because I couldn’t stand the thought of going back to being Paki-Boy. Without Salim, that’s what I’d be.

  Salim didn’t want to go either. He asked his dad if he could go and live with him, but his dad said no. Then his mum booked the tickets. They were to fly out from London so that she and Salim could visit these relations they hadn’t 281

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  seen in years called the Sparks. Salim said the Sparks could burn in hell. I said at least he’d get to fly the London Eye, which was something we’d always dreamed of doing together. But Salim said flying it without me wouldn’t be any fun. That’s when we had th
e Big Idea.

  We’d meet up, me in my Miranda disguise, and ride the London Eye together. Then he’d take the disguise and vanish and together we’d run off, leaving his mum and the Sparks behind. We’d get a train back to Manchester together later that day and he’d hide out somewhere and I’d bring him food, and when his mum’s flight had taken off to New York without him, he’d go and live with his dad and his dad would have no choice but to say yes. Then he and I could go on being the top moshers of 9K.

  The first thing I did was ring Christy, my big brother. Christy’s down in London and he’s always calling to ask for money and Dad tells him he’s not a Bottomless Pit and to get lost. This time I rang him. I said if he met me at the 282

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  London Eye and helped me and my mate Salim carry out this joke we were planning, we’d give him a tenner. And he said yes.

  Salim went down to London with his mum on Sunday. The next day I told my mum I was off out for the day with the scouts, and she believed me and even gave me some money. Plus Salim had given me his savings, so I had more than enough to buy two London Eye tickets. Then I hopped on an early train to London and didn’t pay a penny because there’s this trick I know to dodge the ticket collectors. I got off at Euston Station and found my way down to the river and there was the Eye. You couldn’t miss it.

  Christy showed up first. I put on the wig I’d worn as Miranda and these slick sunglasses I bought in the Costa Del Sol last summer, plus a jacket I’d pinched from Shannon, my older sister. Christy roared his head off and said I was a crazy transvestite and Dad would skin me alive if he could see me. We bought two tickets. I didn’t tell him that Salim was going to run 283

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  away and I was going to hide him. I said we were playing a joke on Salim’s cousins, the Sparks. My voice had broken since being in the play. No way could I go up to these Spark cousins myself. You’d have spotted I wasn’t a girl the moment I opened my mouth. That’s why we needed

  Christy. Plus he was an adult and nobody would ask any questions when we bought the tickets. We’d got the tickets. I called Salim to see where he was. ‘Hurry up,’ I said. ‘We’re boarding at eleven thirty.’ He said he was just coming over the river and minutes later he arrived. The mums went off for coffee, just as we’d

  planned, and Salim and the two Spark cousins joined the ticket queue. Christy went over, pretending to be a stranger, although he’d met Salim once before. He gave Salim the ticket and showed him his place in the queue and then he dashed off to work because he was running late. I nearly died laughing pretending not to know Salim. I’d to bite my cheek all the way to the ramp and still Salim didn’t look at me, not 284

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  until we were on the Wheel itself. Then the capsule doors closed and we went up and we split our sides. It was magic. Air and light and miles of London, all to ourselves. We were happy.

  Then when we got to the top Salim went

  quiet. He was looking straight at the sun.

  ‘Salim,’ I said, ‘what’re you staring at?’

  ‘Manhattan,’ he said.

  ‘It’s London,’ I said, ‘not Manhattan.’

  ‘It’s my fate, Marcus. I’ve got to face it.’

  I was sad then. It sounded like he’d changed his mind about swapping identities, disappearing and coming back with me to Manchester to hide. But when everyone turned to get the photo taken, he laughed and took the wig off my head and stuck it on his. I took off the jacket. He put it on. I straightened the wig, popped on the sunglasses. It took seconds. Nobody saw us. They were all looking the other way for their souvenir shot.

  Then the pod landed. We walked out right 285

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  under the noses of the Spark cousins and you should have seen their freaked-out faces. Salim put on this fancy walk, just like a girl. Next he cruised past where his mum was sitting having coffee and she looked straight at him and didn’t recognize him.

  I dragged him off before she noticed me and we disappeared into the crowd. He got his mobile phone out and turned it off. ‘The day’s ours, Marcus!’ he shouted. He thumped me on the back and took off the wig. He’d left his camera behind with one of the cousins, but between us we still had some money, so he bought a

  disposable camera at a chemist’s and snapped one of me on the bridge, and then he bought hot dogs and Mars bars and Cokes and we picnicked in this park by the river and I pretended to be a duck squawking and Salim said I was a comic genius. Then we went to this square where all the buskers perform. They were dead funny – a juggler on stilts with a tear in his pants, a magician with a silver globe that rolled over 286

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  his body, a clown that did ten somersaults and landed on his nose. After the show Salim gave the clown his last pound. We walked up

  Tottenham Court Road and found this shop that sells electric pianos. You could do organ, strings, trumpets and drumbeats all at once. It was great, the best day I’d ever had. I wanted it to last for ever. But it didn’t.

  We got to Euston Station. That’s when Salim told me he wasn’t coming with me.

  ‘I can’t, Marcus,’ he said.

  ‘You can. It’s easy. You hop on and hide in the bog.’

  ‘It’s not that. I can’t run away. Not from my mum. She’s some mum, my mum. But she’s the only mum I’ve got. And it’s not just her. It’s the cousins. Ted and Kat.’

  ‘The Sparks? Thought you said you couldn’t care less about them.’

  ‘That was before I met them again. They’re great, Kat and Ted. If I don’t go back,

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  on the Eye by myself. And Mum will be frantic.’

  I didn’t know what to say. People rushed by, dashing for trains. Announcements droned on. I heard one for Manchester: my train.

  ‘You’re just a mosher-wannabe,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah. You’re the real mosher, Marcus. I’m not in your league.’ He smiled. ‘You did the maggots, didn’t you?’

  ‘How d’you know?’

  ‘When I was round your house last, your dad told me about his hobby. Fishing.’

  Then he gave me back Shannon’s pink fluffy jacket and I put it in my backpack along with the wig. But I made him keep the sunglasses. They looked good on him. A whistle blew. It was my train. We said goodbye and he hugged me.

  ‘Run, Marcus. I’ll send you a card from the Empire State Building.’

  So I ran. Doors were slamming and I heard him shout after me, ‘Don’t let them call you PakiBoy. You’re Mosher Marcus, remember? You’re a comic genius.’

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  A guard saw me and shouted. I jumped on the train. I only just made it before they locked the doors. I saw Salim waving as the train pulled out. It was the last time I saw him.

  I hid in the toilet until after Stoke-onTrent. At Manchester I got off without getting caught and went home. ‘How was the scouts?’ Mum asked.

  ‘Fantastic,’ I said.

  Later that night, when I was sneaking

  Shannon’s pink jacket back into her wardrobe, I found Salim’s mobile phone in the pocket. He’d left it behind, just like he’d left his camera with the cousins. I’d mail it to him when he got to New York, I thought, and put it in my desk drawer.

  The next day the police came. They said Salim had gone missing. Mum was there. If I’d

  admitted to having been with Salim the day before, she’d have been livid. So I stuck to the scouts story. But after the police left, I started worrying. Where was Salim? Why hadn’t 289

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  he gone back to the Sparks’ house like he’d said?

  I tossed and turned all night. Then today I couldn’t take it any more. I took out his phone, meaning to call his mum and tell her what I knew. So I did. I turned it on. There were about twenty voicemail messages waitin
g, all from her. She sounded terrible. I put through a call but it rang and rang. Then she answered and I realized I couldn’t face talking to her. I hung up and switched the phone off again. I hid it under my mattress.

  Then, later, Christy rang me on my mobile. He said Salim’s cousins had bumped into him at this motorbike show where he’s working. He hadn’t given me away, but if I knew where Salim was, I’d better go straight to the police and leave him out of it. He shouted his head off.

  I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t go to the police. I’d get into trouble. Then, tonight, the police showed up. And they knew everything. Salim’s cousin Ted had worked it out, they said. 290

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  They said how it had been with the wig and the Eye and jumping on the train. It was like Ted Spark had been in my head, seeing my thoughts. And I remember Salim saying how he had some weird syndrome that made him think like a giant computer.

  So this is the truth and nothing but the truth. I last saw Salim at Euston train station. This is all I know.

  Marcus Flood

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  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Retracing the Steps

  W hen Detective Inspector Pearce finished reading out Marcus’s statement, it was 10.03 p.m.

  Aunt Gloria looked at Marcus with an expression that was off the Richter scale. Her bottom lip hung down, tears fell down that she didn’t bother to wipe away. Rashid sat on the dining chair completely motionless, his head between his hands. Detective Inspector Pearce leaned forward, her knuckles tight.