The Grasshopper's Child

by Gwyneth Jones

  And the Demon Crace was a worse demon than he’d suspected.

  10: Changing The World Flamenco

  The interview room was the same. Same blue table, same blue walls. The Inspector wore the same suit, same tie. His clean red hands were posed, one on top of the other, exactly the way they’d been the first time. But Heidi knew there was somebody behind the avatar, and she believed that person would listen. All she had to do was keep calm, and make her point. The Exempt Teen session was waiting down the hall: she didn’t have much time.

  ‘I’m sorry you weren’t able to see your mother.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Heidi. ‘I spoke to her doctor. I’ll be able to see her soon. I’m here about something else.’

  ‘You’ve remembered something?’

  ‘Maybe; I don’t know. There’s something I need to ask you. What happened to my mum and dad’s rings? They had matching gold wedding bands. Dad had an engagement ring too, gold with six small rubies in a criss-cross pattern; that Mum bought for him. Mum didn’t like wearing rings, so Dad used not to wear his, either. He kept all three of them on a gold chain round his neck. Or sometimes he’d leave them in the hidey-hole, under a loose board in the bottom of their wardrobe. He wasn’t wearing the chain the day he died—’

  ‘You’re sure of that?’

  ‘He was all over blood, but anyway I know he wasn’t wearing the rings because Mum had been worried about them, and had asked him to put them away.’

  The Inspector looked at her sadly: Heidi’s palms began to sweat.

  ‘What I’ve remembered is that nobody said anything to me about the rings, afterwards. Were they in the hidey hole? There was an envelope with cash in it, too.’

  ‘Hm. One moment.’

  The avatar froze, the Inspector must be consulting the case notes or talking to someone. She waited until his face came to life again.

  ‘We know about the “hidey-hole”. A locked cash box was found there, nothing else.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about Dad’s cashbox. I mean, I knew it was there, but I don’t know what was in it. What about the three rings?’

  ‘We don’t believe anybody had tampered with the contents. The only fingerprints we found on it, or on the key, which was found in another location, were your father’s.’

  ‘The rings wouldn’t have been in Dad’s box. What about DNA?’

  The Inspector shook his head, smiling sadly. ‘DNA gets everywhere, Heidi. Your mother’s DNA traces were all over that ‘hidey hole’. Yours, too. But three rings such as you’ve described have not been found, nor has an envelope containing cash. They were not in the house, or in your mother’s possession.’

  ‘She wouldn’t have touched the rings.’

  The avatar froze again. She was pleased he wasn’t pretending to have his virtual self get up and walk out of the virtual room. It made her feel she’d taken a step up. He came back.

  ‘Thank you for this, Heidi. I’ll need you to talk to somebody, and look at some images, to make sure we have the best possible descriptions. Can you do that now?’

  ‘No, I have to get to Exempt Teens.’

  ‘Then I’ll be in touch. How are things going for you, down in Mehilhoc?’

  ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘Is “Angel Care” looking after you? That’s a private care provider?’

  ‘That the Loan Company uses, yes.’

  ‘I wonder how you came to be placed in Mehilhoc Garden House. Any idea?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘You had no connection with the village? No family links? Family friends?’

  ‘No. Look, my dad was a lovely man, a great dad, but he wasn’t good at making decisions. He trusted people too quickly. He could’ve let anyone into the house, and he could have sold the rings. He sold the rings, and then when he thought he was going to get paid, he got stabbed up instead. He was in debt, and he shouldn’t have been. He was scared, he didn’t want to tell me or Mum, so instead he did something stupid—

  ‘Do you know what confabulation means, Heidi?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It means making things up, without realising you’re doing it. It’s a big problem for us in police work. We do it all the time, and have to try to stop ourselves—’

  Heidi’s cheeks burned. ‘So my mum is still your only suspect?’

  ‘I can’t discuss that. I’m sorry, Heidi. I can only tell you the investigation is ongoing.’

  ‘Well, I’d better go.’

  ‘Enjoy your session, and thank you for the new information. Oh, by the way, we’ve traced your effects. They’ll be delivered to your placement shortly.’

  ‘My effects?’

  ‘Your luggage, yes.’

  ‘You mean the Purple Suitcase? Thanks. That’s great. Er, goodbye, Inspector.’

  Heidi hadn’t told the Inspector her suitcase was missing. She’d texted Virtual Verruca about it a couple of times, and been ignored. She’d been trying to force herself to phone the Angel Care inquiries number, but it was hard when she knew she’d get absolutely nowhere. She went along to the Exempt Teens session, dazed with triumph. The Inspector had listened to her, the rings were missing; and he was doing her another favour that she hadn’t even asked for. It had to mean something. Mum was still a suspect, but everything had changed—

  Gorgeous George’s wicked smile greeted her as she walked in.

  ‘Hello, Heidi,’ said Tanya. ‘We’re talking about Sharing the Care; I hope you’ll join in. I’ve asked people to share something they’ve learned from looking after the elders.’

  ‘Hope I die before I get old,’ said George, grinning at Heidi.

  Andy Mao, the undersized Traveller kid, stuck up his hand as if he was in Primary School. ‘It’s brilliant. Old Corporal Harris escapes, and his family gets me to hunt him down. He’s nearly a hundred and he climbs trees.’ Andy’s eyes shone. ‘It’s the best school project ever!’

  ‘I feel I’m benefiting,’ said Cyril, judiciously. ‘I don’t know my Elder’s views.’

  Dishwater blonde Elaine blushed. ‘It’s very hard work,’ she whispered.

  The group, which had been buzzing with the normal undercurrent of chat, went suddenly silent. Even Heidi knew the rumour that Elaine, who had mild learning difficulties, was brazenly getting treated like a maid of all work by her old dear’s family.

  Tanya changed the subject.

  ‘Good, well. We’ve heard that George hopes he dies before he gets old. We can all agree with that! It’s important to be young, as Dylan said. To be young at heart, to stay young in outlook: that’s essential. But you aren’t going to be “Exempt Teens” all your lives, important though that role is! What about career plans? Would anyone like to share? Clancy?’

  ‘I can’t answer that,’ muttered the Hooded Boy.

  ‘I’d settle for staying alive,’ said Brooklyn dryly.

  ‘I wanna be an airline pilot,’ growled Sorrel.

  ‘I don’t have any career plans,’ said Heidi. ‘I don’t mind what I do for a living. But I know what I want to be. I’m going to be a poet.’

  The whole group stared at her. ‘Wow,’ gasped Andy. ‘That’s brilliant! ’

  ‘Go on then,’ said George. ‘Prove it. Let’s have a poem.’

  ‘I’m not a poet now. It’s what I’m going to be. But all right, here’s one.’

  She didn’t tell them she’d only just thought of this poem, and she didn’t stand up, because this wasn’t Primary School. But she spoke the words fiercely, the way they sounded in her heart. The Exempt Teens were scarily dumb when she finished.

  ‘Impressive,’ said George. ‘Not the poem, I haven’t a clue about poems, I’m impressed that you just came out with it like that. You know no fear, Heidi.’

  Changing The World Flamenco

  You can scream,

  Or you can dance.

  It feels bad

  to crouch in a corner

  It hurts my throat to scream

  An
d nothing changes.

  I choose to dance

  My cries become my colours

  Red and Black

  My bruised and battered life

  Is the ruffled skirt I trail and sway

  The hammer blows upon me, are the snap

  Of my flashing heels.

  11: The Baroque Fountain

  Heidi had noticed a toolbox and a jumble of DIY oddments in the Utility room, when she borrowed her carpet tacks. She sorted out a small brass bolt for her door, and a screwdriver; after breakfast on a ferociously rainy day. Maybe she had no rights, but she’d feel better if there was something between her and the face. If anyone asks, she thought, I’ll say my door wouldn’t shut properly. Not accusing anybody of anything—

  There were fresh slug trails on the dirty concrete floor: they vanished under the rusted old tumbler dryer. Fired with positive energy, she hauled the heavy metal hulk out into the middle of the room. And there they were: a disgusting fat and happy crew of slime-puppies, on the damp grey wall. She’d found the slugs’ lair!

  She knocked them down onto a sheet of newspaper, massacred the entire colony; ran out in the rain to dump their corpses in the Dirty Organics bin —and then decided she might as well make a job of it. It was hard work, but before it was time to get lunch the operation was complete. The Utility room was scrubbed and neat for the first time, Heidi would bet, in about ten years. She’d found no more slugs, but she had found a tub of wildlife-friendly slug bait, wrapped in old newspaper. She guessed Brook’s mum was responsible, and decided that what Tallis didn’t know, couldn’t hurt Heidi. The songbirds would be fine. Any slug that found its way in here again, wasn’t going to be getting out to enter the food chain afterwards. This room would be its tomb.

  She hauled everything into the middle of the room, laid the poison all around the base of the walls (with an extra dose behind the dead dryer), and pushed everything back into place.

  The old tumbler dryer refused to fit. When Heidi shoved it brutally, there was an ominous crunching noise. She hauled it out again. Thankfully she hadn’t crushed a can of decaying old paint: only a rusty biscuit tin. It had been full of torn-up old photographs. Black and white prints, cut to bits, scorched, and even stabbed, as if someone had attacked them with the points of the scissors. Intrigued, Heidi crouched on the floor, trying to put jigsaw pieces together. Why would you destroy stuff in a mad rage, and then keep the remains? One of the fragments showed the back view of a little girl in a transparent white slip: headless, and raggedly cut off at the knees. The photo seemed to have been taken in the dark, but the child was perfectly visible, outlined in an eerie, silver glow—

  The hairs stood on the back of Heidi’s neck.

  So that’s what it’s about, she muttered. The friggy-froggy creep. Feeling guilty just for looking she stuffed all the scraps back, replaced the crushed lid as best she could, and hid the tin in the darkest corner of a top shelf. She listened. Was that the sound of bare, padding feet?

  She went out into the dank stairwell.

  ‘Is anybody there?’

  The Steel Door stared at her, poker-faced. Silence looked through the open door of the kitchen. She could hear the rain, rustling and pattering in the yard. Nobody. But she still felt watched.

  After her lunch chores she hurried to the small greenhouse, kitted herself out for wet work and went to meet Clancy. They had an ambitious plan to get one of the surviving fountains going again. The first step was clearing debris from the broken one: where the seahorse and merman statues had fallen into the great bowl and smashed it. So far they’d only succeeded in getting the Black Swamp geyser to spout a lot higher. But one of the display boards, in the herd in the small greenhouse, was all about the Baroque Fountains, and Heidi had studied it. She knew there was an access point to the plumbing somewhere near this broken bowl. If they could find that; maybe there was hope.

  It was fun trying, anyway.

  Heidi wore a pair of ancient men’s wellies, stuffed with rags, a waterproof jacket with a cavernous hood that reached her knees, and a cracked pair of gauntlets that came up to her elbows. No jeans, she’d left them in the greenhouse, she couldn’t afford to ruin them, but she felt warmer and cosier inside this get up than she’d been for weeks. It was like wearing a house. The Hooded Boy, hardened by outdoor living, just wore his cagoule over a teeshirt, shorts, and a pair of trainers he’d given up for dead anyway. They hadn’t a hope of lifting big chunks like the massive seahorse heads, but there was plenty you could do with leverage —as long as you didn’t mind getting splashed, or landing on your bum in the mud now and then.

  ‘They diverted a stream,’ said Heidi, as they worked. ‘It still has to be filling the tank, up on the downs. And the outflow from that tank still has to be connected to here, or there’d be no Black Geyser. They could shut off the fountains one at a time, for cleaning, and for the famous sequential displays—’

  A vision of glittering crystal fireworks dazzled her.

  ‘How great if we could get the jets going again!’

  ‘I don’t think there’s enough water in our geyser for even one fountain.’

  ‘Okay, there’s problems, but we can try. If we can start by closing off this outlet—’

  ‘Then if the pipes are watertight, the Geyser water should spout in the next fountain.’

  ‘Exactly. It used to work.’

  Rain burst on them again. They ran for shelter to a covered stone seat, dumping a seahorse foreleg on the way. They couldn’t get colder or wetter, but it was time for a break.

  ‘I have a horrible feeling the man I saw was family, or a family friend,’ said Clancy. ‘Crace knew he was coming, that’s why she let me take Mrs Scott-Amberley out.’

  ‘So why didn’t he wait?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything, that’s the point. I just have this feeling my old dear is being abused. Viciously. The way she sits there, not daring to move, and the look in her eyes. The way Crace smirked when we came back too late— It’s giving me the horrors, thinking how it must feel for a helpless old lady to live like that.’

  ‘Have you thought of talking to Tanya?’

  ‘Yeah, right. Has anyone tried talking to her about Elaine?’

  ‘You’ve got a point,’ said Heidi. ‘Tanya doesn’t want any trouble.’

  Heidi and Clancy were strangers, but it was all over the WiMax posts, though never in so many words. Elaine’s assigned Elder was the mother of one of the managers on the Carron-Knowells estate, so Tanya wasn’t going to say a word about how Elaine was being worked to death. Nobody dared offend the lord and lady of the manor.

  ‘Nor me,’ said Clancy. ‘I’m just passing through. It’s none of my business, really.’

  ‘So call an anonymous helpline.’

  ‘Don’t have a phone.’

  ‘There’s the Public Access Booth.’

  Clancy withdrew deeper into his cagoule hood, like a menaced snail. ‘Why d’you think I don’t have a phone?’ he muttered. ‘I don’t trust, I won’t touch, anything like that.’

  Since she’d got to know the Hooded Boy, Heidi no longer thought the Mental Health Issues thing was a stupid skive. Probably Mrs Scott-Amberley was a normal dementia case, and Irene Crace was just a bit snooty. The demons eating him were Clancy’s own.

  She changed the subject. ‘It’s weird about my two. Their cupboards are stuffed with off-ration food, but I never see anything coming in except the veg box. Tallis gets through her hooch like a trooper. I find the bottles, but I never see the deliveries. Did I tell you she’s got a proper Chinese i-face? She just uses it for listening to ancient pop-music, but it’s real, I’ve had a look. How did she get hold of that? Who’s supplying them? And why? And there has to be a hotspot, but I still can’t find it—’

  ‘D’you you really think you saw a ghost?’

  Heidi had told him about the midnight apparition. She hadn’t told him about the face at her door, and she wasn’t going to tell him ab
out the torn photographs either. She didn’t think she had a right. She shook her head. ‘Nah; not really. I woke up in the night. I’d left my phone in the kitchen and I went to get it. I was half-asleep. I saw something, but I was probably imagining it. If I’d seen a genuine ghost, I’d have been more terrified.’

  ‘You believe in them?’

  ‘I think there’s something in it. My mum’s told me you can’t see other people’s. If you see a real ghost you’re scared to hell because it’s yours and nobody else’s.’

  ‘She’s got schizophrenia, you said. Does she hear the voices?’

  ‘Sometimes. She gets therapy for that. She can handle them.’

  ‘Does she have hallucinations?’

  ‘No.’

  The rain came down in silver rods, a few inches from her eyes. Heidi stared into it, and couldn’t say another word. Clancy’s cold wet hand found hers and she returned his grip, gratefully. Clancy was okay. He was more than okay. He understood the worst, the very worst thing: even worse than knowing that her dad had casually sold her into slavery.

  And he understood not to say it.

  My Enchanted Mother

  Nimue in the rock, has lost her power to shock

  Her magic has turned against her,

  and wrapped her in barbed wire.

  She cannot stretch a claw so she relaxes,

  She relaxes.

  Mothers and small children, walk by her on the grass.

  If she could, she would draw in her shadow,

  So it would not touch them as they pass.

  12. Mother Courage

  Veg-sorting was held on a Saturday afternoon, the traditional time, same as at home. Brook’s mum didn’t risking coming into the house again. She texted Heidi from the track outside the back yard, and Heidi went out to join her in the veg.van.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Mrs Healey. ‘I’m on my boring own. Brook’s already at Knowells.’

  ‘That’s okay Mrs Healey.’

  ‘Please call me Rose. We were up at the crack of dawn, collecting the cottage garden element, I thought you’d be busy, so we delivered our van-load to Knowells, and Chall was already there so Brook stayed, but I do hope you can all be friends, supporting each other, it’s so important. Tim and I would love to see you at Heaven, by the way, if I didn’t say so. Don’t wait for an invitation, just pop along on your bike, you know where we are, don’t you?’