Put Out the Light

by Terry Deary

  ‘Thanks, kids,’ Dad said. ‘I’ll give you a shilling each. You can spend it at the sweet shop, maybe? Get some wine gums and eat them while you listen to the radio. Sexton Blake’s on tonight, isn’t he?’

  ‘Thanks, Dad,’ I grinned. Sally caught my eye. We both knew we wouldn’t be listening to any radio. There was a burglar to catch and Sherlock and the real Sexton would be cracking the crime.

  Dad went into the kitchen to tell Mum about his plan. She argued that it was wrong to leave us in the house alone.

  ‘It’s my last night,’ Dad said firmly. ‘I get the bus back to Firbeck tomorrow evening. I won’t take no for an answer.’

  And so it was settled. Mum took so long getting ready, I thought Dad was going to wear out the carpet with all his marching up and down. ‘We’ll miss the main film never mind the B movie if you don’t hurry up!’ he shouted up the stairs.

  ‘I’m just putting on a bit of that perfume you got me last Christmas.’

  ‘Will you be ready before this Christmas?’ Dad cried. Then he came back into the living room and sat down to wait. ‘So what happened in your Blackout Burglar story?’ he asked us. ‘Did he get caught?’

  I took a deep breath so I could get my thoughts together before I explained – I didn’t want to mention that we’d become the chief suspects.

  ‘We have four main suspects. The trouble is, our detectives haven’t any evidence. We’re a bit stuck.’

  ‘We had the same thing at Firbeck camp. When the pilots went on a mission, someone was going through their lockers and taking small amounts of cash – just a half-crown here and there so the pilots hardly missed it, or didn’t want to make a fuss about it.’

  ‘Same as the Blackout Burglar,’ Sally said.

  ‘There was a smudge of oil on one of the lockers that was robbed, so we thought it could be one of the mechanics that look after the planes. The trouble is there are twenty of them on the base. Nineteen were innocent but they were all suspects.’

  ‘It’s awful being a suspect when you know you’re not to blame,’ I muttered bitterly.

  ‘So what did you do, Dad?’

  ‘Set a trap. We got one of the pilots to carry a bag of money into the workshops and complain that his wife had sent him the winnings from his football pools coupon. She had cashed the cheque and brought the money to the base. He’d only have to put it in the bank tomorrow. I said I’d put it in his locker and he said it was locker 24, but he had no idea how much was in the bag.’

  ‘And the thief fell for it?’

  ‘Oh, yes. The pilots were scrambled that afternoon and as soon as they took off I was hiding in the locker room, watching. The mouse nibbled at the cheese within ten minutes, and I nabbed him.’

  ‘Did you hang him, Dad?’ Sally asked.

  Dad laughed. ‘No. We didn’t even give him a trial. I mean, he could have said he wasn’t to blame for the twenty other little thefts. We just made sure the officer in charge of the workshops gave him every filthy, smelly, heavy and dangerous job he could – emptying hot oil from the engines, sweeping up when the rest of the mechanics had finished work, weeding the flowerbeds outside the huts, unloading the food lorries. There’s more than one way to punish a thief!’

  At quarter to seven, Mum came downstairs, looking like one of those dummies you see in clothes-shop windows and wearing a hat with more feathers than a pigeon. As it was so late, they rushed out of the door with a quick, ‘Goodbye, be good,’ finally leaving us on our own.

  Sally and I sat back. She reached inside her gas mask and pulled out our list of suspects. ‘One of these is phoning the Home Guard and getting the air-raid siren started,’ she said. ‘All we have to do is follow them.’

  ‘How do two of us follow four people, Sherlock?’ I asked.

  ‘Good question.’

  ‘Do you have a good answer?’

  ‘Mmmm. That’s the sort of thing Dr Watson can work out.’

  ‘Thanks, Sal.’

  And after five minutes, while we found our hats and coats, scarves and torches, I had an idea. ‘We set a trap, like Dad said. We tell them we know someone who is really careless with their money and leaves their house open. Then we watch the house like a mousetrap.’

  Sally shook her head slowly. ‘If I was the burglar, I’d set a false air-raid warning off.’

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘But they won’t have time to do that tonight.’

  ‘They’ll do it tomorrow night,’ I said.

  ‘And we’ll be stuck in the house with Mum again tomorrow night,’ she said. ‘If the air-raid siren does go, she’ll drag us off to the shelter. We can’t watch our mousetrap.’

  ‘We need to tell her we’re going to a different shelter – that’s it! There’s a church youth club on a Thursday night. We tell her we’re going there. If there’s a siren, we’ll go to the cellars of the church hall the way they do.’

  ‘So we pick a house – let’s make it Mrs Grimley’s. We tell our suspects she’s had a win on the football pools and she’s stuffed the money in that teapot of hers.’

  ‘We can’t tell all our suspects tonight,’ Sally said.

  I agreed. ‘I think Mr Cutter the teacher and Mrs Haddock at the sweet shop are into the black market,’ I said. ‘But Vicar Treadwell and Sergeant Proctor from the Home Guard are the ones that shouldn’t be wandering round the streets in the blackout.’

  ‘I’ll go to the vicarage and tell the vicar about Mrs Grimley’s winnings,’ Sally offered. ‘I always wanted to have a look at the graveyard at night. See if there are any ghosts around.’

  I never understood Sally.

  ‘I’ve got to track down Sergeant Proctor, then. If I find Warden Crane, maybe he’ll be able to tell me where Mr Proctor hangs out.’

  We stepped out into the street and looked up at the sky. Flurries of sleet blew in our faces as clouds raced across the moon. ‘There’ll be no raid tonight anyway,’ I said. ‘Make sure you’re back here before ten o’clock. We don’t want Mum to know we’ve been out. Best of luck, Sherlock,’ I said.

  ‘Best of luck, Watson,’ Sally replied.

  Chapter 29

  It wasn’t hard to find Mr Crane. ‘Put out the light!’ he was crying in the damp streets.

  He caught sight of me on the corner of Attercliffe Road. ‘Why, if it isn’t young Billy Thomas. Haven’t seen you for a few weeks. I thought you and young Sally were my runners?’

  ‘Mum kept us in for bunking off school,’ I lied.

  ‘Can’t say I blame you,’ he chuckled. ‘I made a good living on the stage as an actor, you know. School never taught me that. School just taught me to pass my exams so I could get a good job in the steelworks.’

  ‘I want to be a policeman when I leave school,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what good learning about William the Conqueror’s going to do me.’

  We walked along, huddled against the flurries of sleet. ‘Time for a tea break,’ the warden said, before I could ask him about Sergeant Proctor.

  ‘Are you going to the wardens’ post next to the Stanhope Street shelter?’ I asked.

  ‘Ah, no, that’s a boring place, my boy. It’s full of wardens! I have struck up a friendship with a generous lady in the area. She expects me to drop by for a cup of tea most evenings around eight, unless there’s an air-raid warning, of course. I’m sure there’ll be enough in the pot for you,’ he said.

  So I found myself turning into the back yard of Mrs Grimley’s house. Music was playing on the radio and Warden Crane had to knock twice to be heard. At last the door was opened by a young man in a pilot’s uniform – Paul Grimley.

  ‘Hello, Warden! Mum’s just been telling me she expected you around this time. And you’ve brought your young runner with you, too? Billy Thomas, isn’t it? There’s plenty of tea in the pot. I got a pound of the stuff from one of the spivs that sells it at Firbeck.’

  Warden Crane brushed the damp off his coat as he led the way into the warm living room. ‘Black-market te
a, Mrs Grimley!’ he cried. ‘Better be careful – young Billy here is planning to be a copper when he grows up. He might report you – get in a bit of practice!’

  The Grimleys laughed and set a place at the table with a scone Mrs Grimley had baked for Paul’s visit.

  ‘I finished my training yesterday so I start flying missions tomorrow. We get twenty-four hours’ leave before we start flying into real action,’ he explained.

  ‘We’ve had nothing but false alarms round here,’ his mother complained. ‘My shoes have worn a path from here to the shelter the times I’ve been there and back. I’m thinking of staying in the house next time.’

  ‘Don’t!’ her son said. The pilot put down his cup and leaned forward so we could hear him speaking in a low voice. ‘Everything could change this week,’ he said.

  ‘We’re going to be bombed?’ Mrs Grimley squawked.

  ‘Hush, Mother. Careless talk costs lives. I shouldn’t say anything, but there’s a rumour going around the base that there’ll be a raid on a northern town while there’s a bomber’s moon – over the next few days.

  ‘Hull, Manchester, Leeds or Sheffield. We’re not sure. But Mr Churchill has spies in Germany that tell us it’ll be this week.’

  ‘Ohhhh!’ Mrs Grimley said. ‘What if they hit this house? When your dad died, I cashed his insurance. Over a thousand pounds. That’ll go up in smoke if the house gets hit. I was saving it for you, Paul. After the war, you can buy a house of your own with that sort of money.’

  ‘Put it in the bank, Mother.’

  ‘Oh, we’ve had that discussion,’ Warden Crane said. ‘Mrs Grimley reckons banks get robbed – she’s seen it in the cinema.’

  ‘Houses get robbed, too,’ I reminded her.

  She shook her head crossly. ‘Nobody’ll find it under me mattress,’ she said. ‘Nobody knows it’s there and I’m not telling anyone.’

  ‘A German incendiary bomb would find it,’ Paul told her.

  ‘I’ll go to the bank tomorrow,’ the woman sighed.

  ‘I’ll give you a reference,’ Warden Crane said.

  ‘A what?’

  ‘The banks won’t take money from just anyone – I mean, you could be a spiv trying to stash away your illegal earnings,’ Paul explained.

  ‘I’m not! If anyone in the bank says I’m a spiv, I’ll … I’ll crack them with me umbrella!’ Mrs Grimley snapped. ‘I sell the odd ration of sugar to somebody what needs it, but I’m not a crook.’

  ‘No, Ma,’ Paul said quietly. ‘Go to the bank tomorrow and open an account. Mr Crane here will write a letter to say you’re a respectable citizen –’

  ‘I’ll drop the letter off in the morning,’ the warden promised. ‘You can start paying in your money on Friday morning.’

  Mrs Grimley nodded in resignation.

  ‘You’ll just have to take a chance and hope the house isn’t hit by a bomb tomorrow night,’ Warden Crane added. ‘The money will be safe after that. I’ve been telling you for weeks, haven’t I, Billy?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Crane,’ I agreed.

  Now I knew where Mrs Grimley kept her money, I could use it to bait the trap. I’d find Sergeant Proctor of the Home Guard tonight and drop the word to Mr Cutter in class tomorrow. Sally would be telling the vicar tonight and we’d call in to Mrs Haddock’s sweet shop and gossip about the Grimley money while we were there. The Blackout Burglar would arrange a false alarm for tomorrow night, go for Mrs Grimley’s money, and we’d be waiting.

  Perfect. Sherlock Holmes never laid such a perfect trap in his life.

  I really enjoyed my tea and scone and couldn’t keep the smile off my face.

  Perfect. Nothing could go wrong.

  Cambrai Luftwaffe aerodrome, France 11 December 1940

  Ernst made up a bed for Irena and his brother on the floor of his room. Manfred was amazed at the food the pilot brought them.

  ‘Yes, we are the knights of the air and Herr Hitler makes sure we eat well. Fresh vegetables, good cuts of meat, well cooked. We even have sugar for our coffee and real eggs for breakfast.’

  Irena ate like a sparrow. Her stomach was so shrunken by starvation she struggled to swallow the tender steak in rich gravy. Even Ernst’s heart began to soften. ‘In England – when you land – they will put you in a camp like Dachau,’ he said gently.

  Irena nodded. ‘But at least they will treat me like a friend – a Pole – not an enemy and an under-human.’

  ‘We’ll put you in the bomb bay with some blankets,’ Ernst said. ‘It will be a cold and noisy couple of hours.’

  ‘Just like the factory,’ Irena said and gave a faint smile. ‘I am used to it.’

  ‘When the last bomb has gone, you will count to ten then jump – no point in you jumping into the fire that last bomb makes!’

  ‘Are you bombing London?’ Manfred asked.

  ‘We don’t know yet. They’ll tell us tomorrow afternoon before we set out. If everyone knew about tomorrow’s targets today then an English spy could pass on a message. They would be waiting with their Spitfires and Hurricanes. All I know is the moon is nearly full and the weather forecast says there will be a clear sky, so we are sure to attack somewhere in England. Now, make yourself comfortable.’

  ‘Can I have a look around your bomber before I leave?’ Manfred asked.

  ‘Of course. We’ll ride across on the bomb loader tomorrow night and I’ll show you the controls while we load. Irena can slip into the bomb bay and you can jump out before takeoff. Ride back in the empty bomb loader and we’ll make sure the truck back to Dachau is waiting for you.’

  Manfred lay back on the blanket bed and smiled. It was all going to plan. Irena would escape and he would have had an exciting few days away from Herr Gruber and school. Perfect, he mumbled as he dropped off to sleep. Just perfect.

  Chapter 30

  Sheffield, England 12 December 1940

  Mum helped us on with our coats. ‘These are damp. I thought you stayed in last night?’ she said, suspicious as a policeman’s wife.

  ‘We went to the sweet shop to spend the shillings Dad gave us,’ Sally said quickly. She said it quicker than I could think it. Sometimes she really made me feel like dim Dr Watson to her Sherlock.

  ‘What did you buy?’ Mum asked.

  ‘Gobstoppers,’ I said, at the same time as Sally said, ‘Liquorice allsorts.’

  ‘I had liquorice allsorts,’ Sally explained, ‘because they’re made in Sheffield and Miss Goodwin at our school says we shouldn’t waste petrol moving sweets around the country when there’s a war on. Save fuel for battle, the poster says. Billy had gobstoppers because he has a big gob that needs stopping.’

  ‘Did you save me any liquorice allsorts?’ Mum asked.

  ‘No, sorry, Mum. Billy finished his gobstoppers then ate the last of the liquorice allsorts.’

  ‘I never!’ I cried. And that was the truth. We hadn’t even been to the sweet shop, we’d been too busy.

  ‘You’re a greedy lad, Billy,’ Mum said.

  I chewed my lip and glared at Sally. She smiled sweetly.

  ‘Mum’s right, Billy,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll see you tonight,’ Dad called from the living room. ‘I’m catching the seven o’clock tram back to Firbeck.’

  ‘Will we have time for a kickabout in the back lane after school?’ I asked.

  ‘We can kick a ball in the front street if you like. It’s safe enough. Not many people have the petrol for cars,’ he said.

  ‘But lots of people have windows,’ Mum said. ‘Now get off to school, and no hanging about on the way back.’

  Sally and I hurried down the street. There were puddles on the cracked pavement and in the tram tracks, but the sky was clearing and the cold wind was pushing at the silver-grey barrage balloons. Trams rattled by making as much noise as the steelworks. It would be a bomber’s moon tonight with no cloud to save some poor northern town, if Paul Grimley’s spy report was right.

  ‘I told the vicar about Mrs Grimley hav
ing her savings in the larder, in the meat safe at the back,’ she said. ‘He said he’d call round and have a word next Monday.’

  ‘Her savings are under her mattress,’

  I said. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘She told her Paul last night.’

  ‘Eeeeh!’ Sally cried and pointed at a faded poster warning about careless talk. ‘She wants to read that.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter where the money really is – we just want to see if the vicar goes into the house now he knows there’s money there. Let’s tell Mrs Haddock. Have you still got the shilling Dad gave you?’

  ‘Yes, but we might as well spend yours. We need to get you out of that bad habit of being greedy,’ Sally laughed, and ran off before I could kick her skinny backside.

  My sister was already in the dusty shop chatting when I got there. ‘And have you had any more trouble with the burglar trying to break into your safe?’ she was asking.

  ‘No, I haven’t, child. But I keep the key in me knickers so any burglar would have a job to get in.’

  ‘Eeeeh, our Billy was round at Mrs Grimley’s house last night and she has thousands of pounds in the house and she doesn’t have a safe or a key in her knickers,’ Sally said.

  ‘Always was a stupid woman, Ada Grimley,’ Mrs Haddock said and folded her arms as if she were disgusted. ‘Went to school with her, you know.’

  ‘She’s got the insurance money from her husband dying,’ Sally went on. ‘She keeps it under her mattress.’

  ‘He’s a lucky feller, her husband,’ Mrs Haddock said, with a smirk.

  ‘Lucky being married to Mrs Grimley?’

  ‘No. Lucky to be dead. Sharing a spot in the churchyard has got to be better than sharing a house with a miserable trout like her. I never liked the woman. Never.’

  ‘Her Paul’s getting her to put the money in the bank on Friday,’ I put in. ‘I guess the Blackout Burglar needs to get there tonight.’

  Mrs Haddock turned her little eyes on me. ‘There’s some people say you know more about this burglar than most.’

  ‘It’s not true!’ I shouted.