by Martin Booth
“Can we sit in the car?” Pip asked. “I’m exhausted.”
“Out of the question!” replied Mrs. Ledger with a finality both of her children knew only too well. “You’re coming to the supermarket with me. Tim, get me a large cart.”
The first area Mrs. Ledger visited was the fruit and vegetable section. At the far end were flower stands, by which an old lady stood inspecting bunches of tiger lilies and sprigs of waxy-petaled lilac-colored Thai orchids.
Her attention taken by the blossoms, the elderly woman did not notice a young man in a creased, mud-spattered leather jacket lingering nearby. He was in his mid-twenties, dressed in worn jeans, dirty sneakers and a sweatshirt. His jacket was zipped up the front, loose-fitting and probably several sizes too big for him, but the elasticated waist was tight around his belt.
“Scum alert!” Tim muttered to his sister.
When the old lady stretched for a bunch of flowers, the young man quickly reached for her shopping bag on the baby seat of her cart. In seconds, he had her purse and was about to slip it into his pocket when he spied Pip and Tim observing him. He immediately dropped the purse and kicked it under the woman’s cart. Then, he touched her elbow to catch her attention and, bending down, picked up the purse, saying, “‘Scuse me, darlin’, dropped yer purse, love?”
She thanked him profusely and he walked away with a crestfallen look.
“What a slimeball!” Pip muttered. “If we hadn’t seen him…”
It took them several minutes to find their mother. Much to Pip and Tim’s continual annoyance, she did not go around the supermarket according to the layout of the aisles but the make-up of her shopping list, which was categorized. Meat and fish, because they were main courses, were listed together despite the fact that the fish counter was at the opposite end of the store from the butchery department. When they caught up with her, she was by the bakery counter.
“Not much longer,” she said encouragingly as they came up to her. “If you like, I’ll meet you by the checkout.”
As they sauntered off, the man in the leather jacket once again caught Tim’s eye. He was in the beauty products and cosmetics aisle, facing a set of shelves loaded with men’s toiletries. On the floor by his side was a supermarket basket containing some ordinary groceries. Just as Tim caught sight of him, he saw the man take down a bottle of expensive eau de Cologne, study the packaging for a moment and then, believing he was not being watched, hide it inside his jacket.
Tim hurried after Pip, who had walked on ahead of him.
“Hang on,” he said, nodding slightly over his shoulder. “Slimer in action again at four o’clock high.”
“You play too many war games,” Pip chided him, but she gave a quick glance in the man’s direction just in time to catch him tucking another item into his clothing.
When he picked up his basket, and moved on, Pip and Tim followed him at a distance. He paused here and there to openly put items in the basket, but he also surreptitiously filched a half-bottle of whiskey and a full bottle of Southern Comfort, putting them into his jacket and easing them around the side so that they did not bulge in the front. Finally, zipping the jacket up to his neck, he made for the checkout lines.
“Do you think they’ve a store detective or a security guard or something?” Pip asked. “We ought to tell someone.”
“Naw to that!” said Tim dismissively. “This is a task for the punitors.”
Pip looked into her brother’s face. There was a mischievous glint in his eye.
“First test of PP,” Tim continued.
“PP?” Pip queried.
“Punitor power!” Tim answered.
“Sebastian said the power would come when we needed it,” Pip remarked. “Nothing happened when the boy pinched the purse.”
“Maybe it all happened too quickly,” Tim answered. “Maybe it takes a bit for the power to kick in.”
The man joined the one-basket-only line. When it came to his turn, he put his basket on the shelf at the end of the conveyor belt and began to unload it. Pip and Tim positioned themselves in the adjacent line to watch.
“We can’t just stand here,” Pip said.
“See his jacket?” Tim said. “Concentrate on it.”
“Concentrate? His jacket…!”
“Just do it, sis. Just do it!”
Tim half closed his eyes. He might have been praying.
When his basket was empty, the young man bent down to put it on the pile of others under the end of the counter. As he did so, Tim heard the jacket zipper start to unwind.
“Fun time,” he muttered to Pip.
The man remained bent double. Tim could see he was fumbling with the zipper, trying to tug it up. It would not budge. He stopped and it slipped a little further down. By now, he was gripping it hard, sweat breaking out on his brow. Yet the zipper would not fasten and, as soon as he relaxed his grip, it edged lower towards his waist.
“Are you all right?” the woman manning the checkout inquired, while all around, people were starting to pay attention to the man’s peculiar behavior.
By now, he was getting very anxious. The zipper was continuing its inexorable slide downward but, despite his increasingly frantic fumbling, he was unable to stop it. Finally, it reached the catch at the bottom, which suddenly snapped open. On to the floor fell a scattering of stolen items. The bottle of whiskey shattered, causing nearby shoppers to jump backward. Over the checkout, a strobe light started to flash as an alarm sounded in the ceiling. Two security guards appeared, running down the aisles. They apprehended the thief, marching him away towards the rear of the store.
“So that’s what being a punitor’s like!” Tim exclaimed with unsuppressed glee.
Mrs. Ledger knocked on Tim’s bedroom door, carrying a tray of corned beef and pickle sandwiches, three glasses and a bottle of lemonade.
“Room service,” she said cheerily.
“Thanks, Mum,” Tim replied, quickly followed by Sebastian, who courteously said, “That’s most considerate of you, Mrs. Ledger.”
“Sandra, remember?” Mrs. Ledger retorted.
“Toady,” Tim whispered, grinning.
Spread across the floor were Ordnance Survey maps, sheets of printer paper, pencils, scissors, a roll of tape, rulers, set squares, a pocket calculator, and a hiker’s compass.
“What are you up to?” Mrs. Ledger inquired.
“Planning what we’re going to do over vacation,” Pip answered non-committally.
When her mother had gone, Pip aligned Sebastian’s glass ruler with Rawne Barton, the hill fort, the Church of Saint Benedict and the Blessed Raymond Lull in Brampton, another church in a village two miles farther on and an ancient bridge over a river on a stretch of Roman road. Tim added another of his rulers with Sebastian adding a third and fourth. Finally, the line ended at a low headland on the coast not far from a small fishing village called Cockleton.
For a moment, Tim stared at the map and then said, “When was this published?”
Pip turned over a corner of the sheet, studied the bottom margin and replied, “Crown copyright, 1966.”
Tim pointed to the headland. Clearly printed over the sea next to it were the words: Jasper Point.
“I think,” he said, “we’ll find they’ve done a bit of building there since then.”
Getting up from the floor and taking care not to step on the map, Tim sat at his computer and logged on to the British Energy Web site.
” ‘The Jasper Point nuclear power station,’” he read as the screen cleared and a picture of it unrolled, “‘is an advanced gas-cooled reactor which went online in 1976. There are actually two reactors at Jasper Point producing 1,210 megawatts of electricity each at full capacity. This is sufficient to provide electricity to about a million homes.’ Now that,” Tim concluded, “is pretty major power.”
“Pretty major power,” Pip reiterated thoughtfully, “but what part does it play in Yoland’s scheme?”
Twelve
Power to Behold
For the first few days of vacation week, Pip, Tim and Sebastian decided there was little they could do. Pip cycled past Yoland’s bungalow a few times, but there were no signs of activity there other than a double-glazing worker putting the finishing touches to the new window. Twice, Tim took his mountain bike and risked riding at breakneck speed downhill through the wood in which Scrotton lived, yet all he saw were foraging squirrels and pheasants. As for Sebastian, he was absent throughout the daylight hours, only reappearing at dusk.
On the Wednesday evening, Sebastian summoned Pip and Tim to his underground chamber.
“I do not know exactly what Yoland’s course of action will be,” he stated. “I am not acquainted with the methodology of applying spell keys. However, I have drawn some conclusions. The first concerns the gold nobles. I do not think these are being employed in the making of the spell keys. I therefore deduce that they have another function. These coins are very valuable, both for their gold content and as historical artifacts. Gold is the best substance with which to engender greed. I believe the coins feature in the spell as a mechanism for corrupting others or for distracting them from the evil he is undertaking.”
“I’ve been thinking, too,” Tim declared. “One of Yoland’s aims is to spread evil. Right?”
“Indeed,” Sebastian concurred.
“Now, what is evil?” Tim went on.
“Evil is wickedness,” Sebastian explained, “a force the opposite of righteousness.”
“Exactly,” Tim said. “A force. And what is electricity if it isn’t a force of some sort? And, to use archaic speak, therein I deduce lies the crux of our conundrum.”
Pip scowled at Tim and remarked sharply, “You’ve got to be such a smart…” And then she fell silent.
“Penny dropped, sis?” Tim asked. “What does a nuclear power station do? It creates electricity and feeds it into the National Grid and, from there, to every building in Britain.”
“In ancient times,” Sebastian cut in, “power such as this traveled along ley lines…”
“… but now,” Tim continued, “it goes along copper wires to every wall socket in Britain. If Yoland has his way, every power point will become a portal for evil. Plug in your toaster and what have you got?”
“A gizmo radiating evil,” said Pip in a voice muted by the horror of the thought.
“One thing I just don’t get,” Tim said. “What’s the point of spreading evil about? How can Yoland benefit from it?”
“He benefits not from the evil itself,” Sebastian explained, “but the anarchy this creates in the breakdown of law. Broadcast evil and you will not only create widespread wickedness but cause the disintegration of morality and, in turn, society. By the widespread stealing of souls, Yoland will control many thousands, perhaps many millions of people.”
“So Yoland is out to rule the world!” Tim exclaimed. “Sounds like a case for the Caped Crusader!”
“Excuse me,” Pip interrupted. “This isn’t Spider-Man Two. It really is time you woke up and smelled the coffee, Tim.”
“Spider-Man doesn’t have a cape,” Tim replied pedantically.
“Whoever,” Pip retorted glibly.
“I am sure,” Sebastian remarked, “Tim is already awake—” he sniffed the air “—and I sense no aroma of coffee.”
Thursday morning dawned cold and clear, the sky a piercing blue, the sunlight stark but chill. The first of the winter’s frosts shone on the grass, catching the sunlight like powdered glass.
Tim left the house at eight o’clock, wearing a dark-green padded fishing jacket, his feet encased in Wellington boots and long woolen socks lined with newspaper, a trick his grandfather had taught him. He could hear Grandpa Ledger’s voice now: There’s good reason why those who have no home sleep under yesterday’s headlines. The layers of paper trap the heat. In his left hand, Tim carried an old army canvas gas-mask case and, in his right, a dark-blue fiberglass coarse fishing rod fitted with a rear-drag feeder reel, 300 meters of black four-pound-breaking-strain line and a lure made of rubber that looked like a newt. His fishing jacket was smeared with several seasons’ worth of fish slime and blood that had resisted his mother’s every effort to remove it.
Arriving at the river bank, Tim slowly made his way upstream, watching out for the telltale dash of silver in the pools that might indicate a school of fish being scattered by a pike. And he was after pike.
Downstream from the old bridge, the current had scoured out a deep, black pool next to the stone pier. If there was a pike worth catching in that stretch of the river it would, Tim reasoned, be there. Putting his bag down on the bank, he positioned himself upriver from the pool and cast downstream, pulling the artificial newt slowly up the current, at such a speed as would make its rubber tail waver from side to side as if it were alive and swimming.
On the fourth cast, Tim saw a jack pike of about three pounds swim up to it, inspect it, veer away and snatch a straggler from the rearguard of a shoal of minnows before swiftly heading across the river and under the roots of a willow overhanging the far bank.
The pike’s appetite temporarily satisfied, Tim reeled the artificial newt in and, sitting down on the bank, removed it from the thin steel trace at the end of his line. Putting it in his lure box, he studied his other spinners and chose a silver-and-green spotted spoon in its place.
There was no point in immediately casting for the pike, and Tim was reluctant to try and tempt it out from the willow roots for risk of snaring his line, so he leaned back, his spine fitting between two courses of the stonework on the bridge pier. Even through his padded jacket, the masonry was sharp and cold.
Across the river, austere and dark behind the trees, the concave bowl of the quarry face loomed upward, the top fringed with bushes against the morning sky. As Tim looked at the rock face, he saw something moving up it. At first, he thought someone was rappeling. Several times in the summer, he had watched rock-climbers making their way up the wall of stone when he was fly-fishing. However, this figure seemed different. The rock-climbers tended to move smoothly, with a careful deliberation. This figure was jerky, its legs and arms outstretched, the knees and elbows kept at right angles.
Curious, Tim put his fishing rod down in the grass and, finding a shallow stretch in the river, he waded over to the far bank and edged his way through the boulders and bushes. Gradually, he made his way closer to the quarry face.
Crouching behind a boulder, Tim cast his eye over the cliff before him. At first, he could make out nothing moving except a falcon strutting daintily along the edge of a fissure. Yet, no sooner had Tim seen it than it took to the wing, soaring into the air to ride an updraft, whisking away over the top of the quarry.
Close to where the bird had been perching, a figure appeared. Dressed in dark-brown clothing and seeming to hug the rock face with every curve of its body, it rapidly moved sideways across the sheer wall. Its jerking movement reminded Tim of a bat.
It was a moment before Tim realized what he was watching.
It was Scrotton.
Then, to Tim’s horror, another Scrotton appeared from the debris of loose stones at the foot of the quarry face, crabbing up to join the first. A third Scrotton materialized and ascended the sheer surface, following in exactly the same footholds and handholds as the other two.
Tim retreated to the river as quickly as his Wellington boots would allow, keeping as low as possible, but to no avail. He was still twenty meters from the water’s edge when he heard a thrashing of the undergrowth behind him. Glancing around, he saw the three Scrottons loping through the bushes, the branches lashing their faces. They made no attempt to brush them aside. When they came up to a bramble patch, the thorns snagged their hair and skin, but they paid them not the slightest heed.
“Hell’s bells!” Tim whispered.
He kicked off his boots and hurled them at the leading Scrotton. It batted them aside with a bunched fist, hardly breaking its stride. Barefoot and regardless
of sharp stones or thorny twigs, Tim accelerated to a sprint, his feet kicking up plumes of dusty earth on the path. He was grateful for the newspaper-lined socks.
At the river bank, he launched himself into the water, stumbling over the rocks just under the surface. The Scrottons slid to a halt, apparently reluctant to enter the water.
Reaching down by his feet, Tim picked up a smooth, round stone the size of an apple and hurled it at his pursuers, now less than five meters away. The first Scrotton ducked. The second took a glancing blow on its brow and started to growl loudly through bared teeth. It glanced from one to the other of its companions then began to gradually advance into the river, feeling carefully for loose stones underfoot. Tim edged backward. The water was icy. Already, he could barely feel his toes.
“Told you not to mess wiv me, didn’ I?” the first Scrotton muttered. His teeth were yellow, like an old dog’s, and chipped.
“Don’t learn too good, do ya?” asked the second. Its words were slurred as if it had a speech defect.
The third Scrotton hopped forward, its feet splashing. Tim jumped backward, almost losing his balance, flailing his arms to keep upright.
“’Bout this time tomorrer,” the third Scrotton prophesied, “they’ll find yer sorry little carcass a long way downstream, caught under an over’angin’ willer.”
“Much cryin’ ‘n’ wailin’ and gnashin’ of teeth in Rawne Barton tomorrer night,” predicted the second Scrotton.
“Diggin’ of ‘oles and sayin’ of prayers,” added the third.
Tim looked hastily around for a weapon. Riding directly towards him on the current was a stout tree branch.
“Forget ‘bout that!” the first Scrotton exclaimed. He reached under the water, picking up a large stone and tucking it into his neck shot-put style. “Told ya I was good at gym,” he chortled, his throat rattling as if it was full of phlegm.
Spinning around, Scrotton hurled the stone, striking the branch in the center, cracking it in two. The splash knocked it out of the current. Tim impotently watched his weapon drift away.
