I didn’t know what to do with myself. I sat in one of the guest chairs. Then I sat in Mr Vole’s chair. I gazed out of the window. Rows of houses. Four squat tower blocks of grim council flats. You could buy whatever you wanted in there, as long as what you wanted was sex or drugs. A sky made up of a thousand shades of dark grey. Somewhere in the world there was probably a connoisseur of greys, a collector of grey paintings, of grey statues, grey thoughts; he’d have loved it here.
I looked at the things on Mr Vole’s desk. You’d have expected it to be cluttered and muddled and chaotic like the guy’s brain. However it was almost psychotically neat. There was the large blotter in the middle of the desk, a penholder to one side, a squared-off stack of papers, a laptop. No stains, no biscuit crumbs, none of the tat and meaningless accretions that most desks build up over time. None of the stuff that says, Hey, this is what I am.
I opened the desk drawers. Half hoped I’d find something exciting in there: Vole’s collection of Edwardian erotica, perhaps, or an automatic pistol, complete with silencer. But it was just more office stuff: staples, elastic bands, a bundle of what looked like receipts. For want of anything better to do, I thumbed through them. About halfway down there was one from a place called Pete’s Pets. It said:
1 t. cadaver. £4.
I had no idea what it meant. Then I snorted at the thought that I was so bored I was reading receipts.
I tried to imagine what was going on down in the hall. But my mind was full of … other things. It was snowing static in there like TV reception at the North Pole. And when the static cleared, I saw things I didn’t want to see.
I thought about splitting, but Vole had been so adamant that I should stay. He must be expecting some sort of raid on his office, an attempt on the life of the tortoise. Assassins. Who? Hart? Yes, but not just him this time. Bosola and Funt would be there. Could I fight them all off? Hell, yeah.
I got up and wandered around again. I looked at the photo of Vole as a young man in his lab coat. It was the same face, but subtly different. Not just the fact that he was thirty years younger. He looked intelligent, ambitious. I suppose you need a certain ambition to become a Principal, even in a crap heap of a school like ours.
I moved on and found myself in front of the butterflies. You couldn’t deny their beauty. Each pinned specimen had a Latin name underneath, often bigger than the butterfly itself. Ochlodes sylvanus; Gonepteryx rhamni; Lycaena phlaeas eleus.
Vole must have really loved these things to collect and preserve them like this.
And then I began to think about how odd it was to love something and yet want to kill it. Did he do the deed himself, I wondered, or would he … well, I didn’t know what the alternative was. Of course he killed them himself.
And I remembered something.
Mrs Maurice… The correct way to kill insects.
Ethyl acetate.
And I heard the Dwarf’s voice. Paracelsus in his laboratory. Paracelsus the chemist.
I closed my eyes and leant forwards till my forehead touched the glass covering the dead insects.
Stupid.
Stupid.
Stupid.
Vole. It was Vole.
The Principal had played me like a ukulele. Like a child, I’d assumed that the bad guy had to be, well, the bad guy. I should have realized that it pays for the bad guy to look like a good guy. And if he can’t look like a good guy then he can at least look like a fool.
My mouth as dry as a lizard’s armpit, I fished the key from my pocket, threw back the butterflies, plunged the key in the lock and turned. I already knew what I was going to find. The safe would contain a butchered tortoise. He’d used those sharp bonsai-tree clippers to kill it while his back blocked my view. And I was going to be discovered here, holding the tortoise. The dead tortoise. There was no way out. If I ran for it, I’d still get the blame. How could I have been such a dumb-ass?
I opened the safe door, bracing myself for something horrific.
And found … nothing. Apart from the papers, the safe was empty. So was my head. What the hell was happening? Vole must have slipped the tortoise into his pocket while his back was covering the safe. Why? I tried to think it through. It was like a join-the-dots puzzle with all the numbers rubbed out.
Vole’s plan was so complicated, so intricate, that I just couldn’t fit the pieces together. Not with my mind throbbing and pulsing like a monster in a cheap sci-fi movie. I knew that I couldn’t be the main target of Vole’s scheming – I just wasn’t important enough. This was all aimed somehow at the Shank and the Queens. Nothing else was clear.
But one thing I did know. The empty safe meant that something nasty was planned for the Venerable Bede. Something nasty and, I guessed, public. On stage – a last great piece of theatre. Well, I had to prevent it. I went to the door.
And stopped.
A thought was nagging at the outer rim of my consciousness. Its shape was still vague, but I could feel it, like a face at a fogged-up window. I forced my brain to work. There was something … something I’d seen. Something that might help.
I returned to Vole’s desk, opened the drawer and grabbed the stack of receipts. I found what I was looking for and picked up the phone. As I dialled I happened to glance out of the window. A flash of white and orange caught my eye. A police car was pulling into the drive. Was this part of Vole’s plan? And now another vehicle. A white van. No, not a van, an ambulance. For me.
And then a voice in my ear.
“Hello, Pete’s Pets. Pete speaking.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
THE CAST ASSEMBLES
THE hall was one of the few impressive things about our school. We’d got lottery funding for it, partly on the back of the growing fame of the theatricals put on by the Drama Queens. There was a wide stage and, in front of it, a seriously big space that could be filled with chairs or cleared for action. At the back of the hall there was a raised level with a sound-and-lighting console, along with floodlights powerful enough to bounce off the moon.
As I approached I felt the hum and buzz from the crowd. Even hushed, there’s a noise that comes off a packed mass of kids: the scrunch and rustle of polyester blazers, the coughs and snorts of loosened mucus, the scrape and squeak of shifting chairs.
I crashed through the double doors at the back of the hall and fell smack into the arms of Bosola and Funt. As bouncers, they weren’t bad, and they got me in a decent lock. Funt took the opportunity to go for one of his spit-and-punch combos. I ducked the spit, but his fist landed in my guts like a Japanese bullet train. I folded like a deck chair.
But not before I’d taken a snapshot of the whole scene. A thousand kids, near enough, squirming on red plastic chairs. The Shank, centre stage, his skull-like head shining in the spotlight. Vole and a couple of other teachers were seated at one side. The Shank was talking, his voice cold and fierce, like a frozen snarl. “… these appalling events…”
Bosola and Funt still had a hold of me and I saw other prefects coming to their aid. There was no way through here. I twisted out of Funt’s grip and repaid a major debt by planting a solid right on Bosola’s jaw. It was the neatest, cleanest punch I’d ever thrown. Then I punched him again, a sloppier left. As he fell, I got in a third, a pile-driver down onto his temple. Funt had been admiring my work, but now he grabbed me around my neck, and so I gave him an elbow in the face. Nobody likes an elbow in the face. In a better world elbows and faces would never meet like that. They’d go for a coffee together, maybe, or take in a movie. But this is a bad world, and Funt’s nose sprayed blood like champagne after a Grand Prix.
I was thinking fast, my mind, for once, clear. There was a corridor running around the outside of the hall, leading to the stage door. I backed out and ran again, not even checking to see if they were behind me. In fourteen seconds I was at the stage door. I took the set of stairs three at a time, burst through another door, and saw the curtain dividing the backstage from the limelight.
&nb
sp; There were other people back here, dull shapes moving in backstage obscurity, but I didn’t pay them any attention. I was concentrating on what was out there, centre stage, and what I had to do.
Through a chink in the curtain, I could see the Shank’s back, cast in deep shadow by the high spotlight. I could hear him still riffing on the “appalling events”. I guessed he was building up to the climax, when he would announce the cancellation of the show and the suppression of the Drama Queens – all because of me. I still couldn’t work out Vole’s plan in all this.
Just then I saw a second spotlight piercing the gloom, like a clever thought in a dull mind. It was focused away to the empty stage right. I went to the crack in the curtains and looked. The Shank hadn’t noticed the new spot, but every eye in the crowd was drawn to the hard, cold circle of light and the horror it contained.
A moan came from the crowd, the way a smell comes from a tramp, unwilled and unwelcome. The Shank, still unaware of what was going on, looked up, trying to find the source of the sound. The moan rose until it became a wail. The wail split into screams.
For a few seconds, the grim-faced Shank still failed to understand what was happening. He was dazzled by his own spotlight, so couldn’t see where the hysterical kids were pointing. He checked his fly. He looked to the other teachers on the edge of the stage, but their view of the horror was blocked by the Shank himself. Finally, he turned towards the place where the spotlight fell. I could see his face in profile. The Shank’s mouth hung open, as though his brain couldn’t quite process the visual information being sent its way.
What he was looking at was a tortoise. But where the wise old head should have been there was nothing but a bloody stump. The severed head had been placed next to the body, where it gazed upon its own demise with a look of stoical acceptance.
That was when I decided to make my move. I swam through the slit in the curtains, meaning to grab the Shank’s attention while he was still stunned by the apparition. But he saw me coming. Suddenly he had something useful to do, and he came to life.
“You!” he bellowed. The sound, amplified around the hall, boomed like a starting pistol. “You! You!” he continued, pointing at the dead tortoise. “You did this!”
There are times when terror or excitement can heighten your senses, and now it seemed as though I was seeing the world with supernatural clarity. Looking down I saw that all the players in the tragedy were here. Ling Mei, demure and perfect, sympathy and horror playing over her face; Emma West, in her full Dorothy get-up; Zofia, tall and pale and green-eyed, who looked at me like a ninja assassin, and then smiled, showing her sharp, thin teeth. Mrs Maurice gave me a full-body pout, simultaneously managing to lower her top and raise her skirt by use of will power alone. The Lardy King was there, fat as an opera singer, his lips still greasy with his last meal. Each seemed more real and vivid than the other kids and teachers around them, as if they were made of a different stuff. Not dull, mute matter, but lines of pure thought. Energy given form and substance.
And then there, smiling benignly, was the Principal, Mr Vole.
I walked forwards, but was blinded by the light in my eyes and stumbled. I found that I was at the front of the stage. I had a speech prepared, but before I had uttered a syllable, the doors at the back were thrust open. Two police officers entered, followed by the paramedics from the ambulance.
The headmaster spoke out in a commanding, un-Volelike voice:
“Officers, this is the boy you want. Take him away – but be careful, he may be dangerous.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
THE BRIEFCASE
“GO on, go on,” urged the cat. “Don’t stop now. Is that when you ran for it? How did you escape?”
I was sitting on my roof. Not sure I could totally tell you how I got there. The cat was in my arms.
It was dark and the lights of the town glowed before me. It would be nice to say that they mirrored the stars, but there were no stars. There are never any stars.
“What? Sorry, I drifted off for a second. Oh, yes. I mean, no, I didn’t run. Not then. How could it end like that? Where’s your sense of completeness? In this story I’m the fat lady, and I haven’t sung yet.”
“Well, get on with it then. I haven’t got all night. And nor, I think, do you.”
“Where did we get up to?”
“The police are stomping down the aisle.”
“Oh, yeah.”
The police marched towards the stage. I was running out of time. I ignored Vole and appealed directly to the Shank.
“Mr Shankley,” I said, my voice sounding strained and breathless and slightly crazy even in my own ears. “Please just give me five minutes to explain. I’ve figured out what’s going on. The whole thing. All of it.”
“Ignore him,” said Vole mildly. “There is a medical history. The boy is deranged. He is ill. And, as I said, dangerous.”
The Shank stared at Vole and then at me. Whatever the true nature of the power relations between them, in public he usually deferred to the Principal. I didn’t know which way this was going to go.
“Let the boy speak,” he said, after what felt like hours, but must only have been a couple of heartbeats. Then he turned to me, his eyes burning. “Two minutes. Then you’re finished.”
I nodded. Two minutes would do. I took a breath.
“Let me tell you a tale. It’s the story of a bitter and frustrated man. A man devious enough to hide his true nature behind a kindly and bumbling exterior. A man bent on … revenge.”
I paused and looked around the audience. I had them. They were silent. They were listening.
“My mistake,” I continued, “was to think it was you, Mr Shankley. I thought that you wanted to destroy the Drama Queens because they represented everything that you despised. They were the spirit of misrule, of carnival, when you wanted order and discipline. You just needed an excuse to close them down. So I assumed that you’d sent your henchmen, Bosola and Funt, to do the dirty work, murdering the stick insects and then the rest of the animals.
“But then a mistake was made. The guinea pigs ended up in the wrong locker…” I cast a quick glance at Zofia, who looked back at me without emotion. “The right locker wasn’t mine, as I initially suspected. The bodies were supposed to be found in the locker of Emma West – our very own Dorothy.”
I gestured extravagantly towards Emma. There were gasps from the audience, and from some of the others on the stage, but she only raised an eyebrow, and curved her wide mouth into the slightest of smiles.
“And I know exactly who it was who planted them there. It was the same person who killed the stick insects and the chickens, leaving fatal clues each time. The first clue was the chopsticks thrown into the bin in the toilets. It took me a while to get my head round that. Then I came across someone who was so scared of bugs he’d go so far as to use a pair of chopsticks to avoid having to handle them directly. Someone who also had the opportunity to steal the chopsticks from their rightful owner.”
I looked at Ling Mei. I tried to squeeze into that look some of what I was feeling. The regret, the sadness, the love. The lost possibility of a shared life and a peaceful old age. Probably too much to expect from a glance that lasted three quarters of a second.
“It was the same person who cut a hole in the chicken wire, knowing that a fox would take care of the rest for him. But he got careless. He dropped a feather in the cage – a feather from a boa. A boa worn by one of the Drama Queens. But not any old Drama Queen. This was a Queen who was prepared to betray his leader and everything he stood for in order to get the chance to become Dorothy. A kid who is right now up there, behind you all.”
I pointed up to the control box, where Hart was manning (and I use the term loosely) the spotlight – the spotlight that had so perfectly picked out the tortoise. A thousand heads spun his way. I heard the word “traitor” coming from the luscious lips of Emma West. But I hadn’t finished, and the heads in the audience spun back to me as I carrie
d on.
“Yes, Hart was the killer. But when a throat is slit, we don’t blame the knife, do we? We blame the hand that holds the knife. So, Hart, come on down and join your boss, the real killer, our Principal, Mr Vole.”
Now I had to shout over the commotion in the hall.
“Yes, you, Mr Vole; it was always you. Our friendly, bumbling, absent-minded, senile Principal. Fake, all of it. You loathed the New Regime, loathed losing your power. You would do anything, use anyone you could, to discredit and destroy the Shank. You used Hart and turned the Queens into pawns. And you murdered those animals. You didn’t care who or what suffered as long as you could extract your revenge. You knew that if you could get the Shank to ban the play then he’d be the most hated figure in the history of the school.”
There was a tense silence in the hall. It was broken by a low, sad, soft chuckle. A chuckle that seemed both sympathetic and mocking. A chuckle that put an arm around you so that it could more easily hold you up to ridicule.
“My boy, my poor boy.” Vole sighed. “Nobody could think that I would dream of hurting any animal, least of all my old friend, the beloved Bede.” He shook his head, slowly, sadly. “I blame myself. I should have seen this coming, given your history of mental illness. But I’ve always believed in giving a child the chance for redemption. Alas, on this occasion, it was a mistake… I left you in charge of the tortoise in my office. Miss Bickersniff will gladly confirm that, I am sure.”
He looked over the top of his half-moon glasses at Miss Bickersniff – she nodded back. Of course she would. She didn’t know what I knew.
And suddenly I saw the genius of the man. Like all great conspirators, he had a plan B. Plan A was to frame the Drama Queens, forcing Shankley to ban the play, with the added humiliation of the tortoise’s big entrance. He’d be despised, a figure both of loathing and fun. Plan B, only to be used if Plan A was rumbled, was to set me up. It was a safety net that he had kept all along, ever since the moment he knew I’d been in that cubicle when Hart dumped the insects. I’d take the heat and he could carry on bumbling until he took his pension, or he thought up a new plan to get rid of the Shank. That was why he’d given me the key. Everything else that had happened to me – Big Donna’s hit, the faked video footage in the Underworld – was intended to make me look like a psycho.
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