by Nick Green
Ben decided to gather the plates.
‘Shall, er…shall I put the TV on?’
Tiffany checked her watch. ‘I ought to be going. Even my family might be wondering where I am by now.’
‘Sure,’ said Ben. He felt relieved and disappointed. ‘I’ll give you a call and we can do some more—’
‘Yeah…’ Tiffany looked distracted. ‘What’s that?’
Ben heard the footsteps in the lobby.
‘You see?’ he sighed. ‘My mum doesn’t even like staying out late anymore.’
He went to open the door. Tiffany got in his way.
‘Don’t.’
‘Huh?’
‘That’s not your mum,’ she whispered.
A keyring jingled, faint.
‘Of course it’s her.’ Ben hated the fact that he was whispering too. ‘No-one else has a key to this place.’
‘I don’t know how I know. I just do.’
The hairs rose on his neck and he had a sudden, stabbing pain in his gut. He had no idea who stood on the other side of that door, but she was right, it wasn’t Mum. A key scratched in the lock.
‘Hide.’
He opened the linen cupboard and scrambled to the top rack. There was just enough space to curl up. Tiffany dived into a lower shelf. Ben pulled the closet shut just as the front door opened.
Through a crack he saw a blond man in a suit. For a moment John Stanford stood there listening, then made for the bathroom. Ben heard him running the taps, opening and closing the medicine cabinet, shaking bottles of shampoo. He flushed the loo.
Stanford. He was here. Here in their home. He had a key to their home.
Ben’s blood, already cold, went arctic. This wasn’t an ordinary landlord’s key. They’d replaced the original lock when the door got smashed. Stanford must have come here, in secret, to have his own key specially made. When? How many times, for heaven’s sake, had he been in here without them knowing?
‘Is that…him?’ Tiffany whispered.
Ben couldn’t speak. His mind was in freefall.
Stanford crossed his thin field of vision, entering the kitchen. Praying the cupboard door wouldn’t squeak, Ben eased it open a centimetre. Stanford was banging drawers. He opened the fridge, took the top off the milk bottle and tossed it in the bin. He found the bottle of whisky on the windowsill, chose a glass off the draining board and poured himself a huge measure, swigging it as if it were orange juice.
‘What’s he doing?’ asked Tiffany.
Ben didn’t dare shush her so he poked her with a folded section of Christmas tree. Stanford had another whisky, finishing the bottle, then rifled in the kitchen cupboard. He fished out the bag of sugar. Ben watched in sick astonishment as Stanford dug into it with a dessert spoon and helped himself to a generous mouthful.
‘I’m going to get him.’ The words just broke out. ‘I’m going to rip him to pieces.’
‘Sssh, Ben.’
‘When he comes out of there I’m jumping on him.’
‘No, Ben. He’s twice your size.’
‘We could take him together. We’re faster, we can do things…’
‘Mau claws or not, he’d be too strong.’ Tiffany’s voice was almost inaudible. ‘Ben, listen. You know pashki doesn’t work properly if you’re afraid. And I am.’
Ben was too. Mortally so. He wanted to bury himself under the spare blankets. But John Stanford in his home, unchallenged…he couldn’t stomach it. He steeled himself. Stanford sauntered back into the hall, wiping his mouth and dusting crumbs of sugar off the lapel of his sharp suit. Ben tensed. He had to do it. Now.
A terrifying racket turned his limbs to jelly. Wild dogs barking, gnashing their prey. He shrank back into the darkness. He heard a beep.
‘Hello?’
The barking had stopped. Ben peeped out of the cupboard. John Stanford was holding a phone to his ear. That noise must have been his ringtone.
‘What, tonight?’ Stanford’s face wrinkled. He glanced out of the window. ‘Yes, I am in the area, but…All right, if you insist. See you in twenty minutes.’
He touched his jacket pocket.
‘Make that forty. I’ve left the plans at home.’
Not for the first time, Ben clocked something odd about Stanford’s voice, in the way he pronounced certain words.
‘Yes, you’re busy, everyone’s busy. I’ll be as quick as I can. The traffic tonight would give Buddha a migraine.’
Stanford mouthed something at the phone and turned it off. There was a watercolour painting on the wall, one of Mum’s. He nudged it askew before going out, slamming the door. His footsteps crossed the lobby.
Ben burst from the cupboard. Tiffany rolled out tangled in a bedsheet.
‘What was all that about?’
‘The scum!’ Ben balled his fists. ‘I’ll kill him.’
‘Shouldn’t you—’
‘Call the police? Talk sense.’ He thumped the wall. Think, think. Why had Stanford come? Thank heaven Mum had been out. Stanford had a key. He could return again, and again, and again…
Ben stopped dead.
‘I’ve got to follow him!’
‘Why?’
‘He’s meeting somebody. He said something about plans, you heard.’ Ben was gabbling now. ‘It’s to do with this place, I know it is. And you can bet it’s not kosher.’
‘So?’
‘Tiffany, if I can prove he’s doing something illegal,’ cried Ben, ‘those lame coppers might finally lift a finger! I can’t let him get away.’
He tore across the lobby and opened the main door just in time to see Stanford’s silver saloon pulling away from the kerb.
‘He’s gone,’ said Tiffany. ‘You can’t chase him without a car.’
‘That’s what you think.’
Ben sprinted to the corner. Lonely trees grew beside the main street, their leaves styled into overhanging quiffs by the constant passing of tall vehicles.
‘We’re not going to catch him,’ panted Tiffany.
‘No,’ said Ben. ‘We’re going to catch a bus.’
Amazingly there was one around when they needed it. Stiff and awkward in their everyday clothes they climbed to a branch that grew over the road, just as a shiny red 73 came chugging round the bend.
‘This is a seriously bad idea.’
‘My family’s in serious trouble,’ Ben replied.
‘It’s impossible to move properly in jeans. And I’m wrecking these shoes.’
‘Maybe I can ask Mr Stanford to wait so you can go back and change.’
‘Maybe you can stop being so sarcast—’
‘Jump!’ Ben interrupted.
He landed with a thud on the bus’s curved roof. Tiffany dropped behind him. They threw themselves flat as another low branch whipped past. The bus crunched over a speed hump and Tiffany was nearly bounced off.
‘I don’t believe it. I followed you again.’
Ben grinned. ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t always wanted to do this.’
Windows of first-floor flats flickered by as the bus picked up speed. A woman at a kitchen sink emptied a teapot over her clean washing-up as she turned in astonishment to watch them pass. Early streetlamps blinked on.
‘Anyway,’ Ben added, ‘we need to be mobile.’
‘Mobile?’
Ben’s hunting eyes found their target. The silver-grey car was shouldering its way through a junction about a hundred yards ahead. Their bus caught up with another as they neared a set of traffic lights. The lights switched to amber.
‘Quick!’ Like an athlete off the blocks Ben ran along the roof. He leaped onto the top of the next bus as it accelerated through the changing lights, leaving the other standing at red.
‘Oh,’ said Tiffany, ‘mobile.’ She gave him a sour look and rolled away from the roof’s edge. She had barely made the jump in time.
Ben struggled to keep Stanford’s car in view. It was a long way ahead, jostling with vans and taxis, a grey mouse in a maze. The t
raffic thickened like syrup. More and more buses filtered into their road until they were stuck in a crawling train of them.
‘Hurry up.’ Ben slapped the bus as if it were a lazy horse. Then he realised how daft he was being. Beckoning Tiffany, he took a running leap onto the next red roof in the queue, then the next, using each one as a stepping stone. By the time they reached the leading bus, Stanford was clearly visible, swerving right at a crossroads without indicating. Their new ride pulled away and Ben whooped in triumph. Then a thought struck him.
‘What number bus are we on now?’
‘How should I know?’ Tiffany demanded.
‘We need one that’s going his way!’ He caught the bus’s reflection in a shop window as they approached the crossroads. It was a 38. That meant it would go straight on. In the corner of his eye he saw a bus turning.
‘Get the Four-seven-six!’ he yelled. Its rear-end swung out and they flung themselves onto it. Ben fought a wave of dizziness.
‘This is the last time I’m going out with you,’ said Tiffany.
Shouts rose from behind them as more and more pedestrians caught sight of the two crazy kids clinging to the bus’s roof. Riding down a one-way street, Ben saw the silver car take a left.
‘Here’s our stop.’
They hopped onto the next bus shelter and scrambled down to the pavement, ignoring the dumbstruck looks from waiting passengers. Stanford had driven into a road lined with dignified Victorian terraces. A short way down it they found his car, parked at an angle outside a three-storey town house.
‘What now?’ asked Tiffany, breathless. ‘Do we go in?’
Ben shook his head. ‘He said he was on his way somewhere. He’s just picking something up. I want to know where he’s going.’
‘We can’t bus-surf around London all night.’
‘No.’ Ben tried the boot of the car. It opened.
‘Tell me you’re joking.’
‘I’m not asking you to come, Tiffany. It’s not your problem.’
‘It is, if you get in there,’ she said. ‘Don’t be an idiot.’
The tremor in her voice was enough to make him reconsider. Then a lit window of the house went dark. Time to decide. To his dismay he found himself climbing into the boot.
‘Ben, please!’
‘Go home and wait,’ he said. His heart was hammering. ‘If you don’t get a call from me in the next two hours, phone the police.’
Tiffany ground her teeth. ‘Oh, you fool. Right. Shove up.’
‘What?’
Tiffany crawled in beside him. There was barely enough room for them both and he got her feet in his face. He curled up smaller and squirmed to find a more comfortable position.
‘Now who’s being stupid?’ he muttered. ‘Nobody knows where we are.’
‘Then we’ll just have to take care of ourselves, won’t we?’ said Tiffany.
Ben eased the hatch of the boot down, being careful not to close it all the way. Under him something rustled in the darkness, maybe a plastic bag.
He heard Stanford come out of the house and open the driver’s door. Then Stanford muttered to himself. His footsteps drew nearer and Ben knew, with horrible certainty, that he had walked round to the back of the car. A heavy hand shut the boot hatch with a firm and final clunk.
The car roared into life and began to move. Muffled music reverberated through the chassis. Then they were speeding off in an unknown direction, locked in the boot of John Stanford’s car.
THE FUNNY FARM
‘And now…the end is near…And so I face…the final curtain.’
Two muffled voices seeped into the cramped darkness, one smooth as brushed velvet and accompanied by a band, the other singing along almost half a tone off-key. The car veered, tyres squeaked, and the second voice broke off to curse at another driver. Ben banged his head on a wheel-arch.
‘It’s locked.’ Tiffany was struggling with the boot mechanism. ‘Ben, we’re stuck in here. He locked us in. We’re—’
‘Stop saying that, okay? And move your foot, it’s in my face. Ow, not there!’
‘Sorry.’
‘We’ll be all right,’ said Ben, trying to keep the fear out of his voice. ‘He’ll open the boot sooner or later and then we’ll leap out and disappear.’
‘I did what I had to do…’ sang the voices, ‘and saw it through…without exemption.’
‘Why?’ breathed Tiffany. ‘Why do you think he’ll open the boot? There’s nothing in here.’
Ben tried to straighten his crooked neck. ‘Doesn’t feel that way.’
‘Please be serious! Nothing that he knows about, I mean. We could be trapped for hours. Days. We’ve got no water or anything. Ben, we could suffocate in here! We could—’
‘Ssshh!’
The stereo had gone silent. A lone voice quavered, ‘I did it myyyy wayyyy…’ and trailed off. The car slowed and swung to the left.
‘What’s happening?’ Ben couldn’t help himself.
‘We’re stopping.’
‘I guessed that part.’
‘Oh no,’ whispered Tiffany. ‘He got out of the car.’
The door clunked. Amidst the swish of passing vehicles Ben caught the sound of Stanford muttering.
‘He’s coming round to the back!’ he hissed. ‘He must have heard us!’
Leaping out of the boot suddenly seemed like the worst plan ever. But that hardly mattered since it wasn’t going to happen. Ben found his legs had gone to sleep. If the boot opened now, Stanford would find them lying here, helpless as sardines. Ben tried to shrink into the floor of the boot, seeking a hidden spot, anything. Something dug into his back. He was lying on a polythene bag with knobbly objects inside. In desperation he pulled it free, just in case the bag was big enough to cover them like a blanket. It wasn’t.
The boot opened. Cool air and car headlights swept in. A foolish instinct made Ben shut his eyes, as if this could make him invisible.
‘Excuse me, sir.’
A deep, unfamiliar voice.
‘What?’ Stanford barked in annoyance. Ben opened one eye. Stanford was turned away from them, holding the boot ajar with one hand. He hadn’t yet looked inside.
‘You can’t park here, sir.’ Ben glimpsed the luminous sleeve of a traffic policeman. ‘It’s a zebra crossing. I must ask you to move.’
‘There’s something wrong with my car, you—’ With a visible effort Stanford wrestled himself under control. ‘I mean, I’m terribly sorry, officer. I was checking a fault in the boot. I heard noises. Probably didn’t shut it properly.’
At this Ben snapped out of his daze. He wouldn’t have another chance. He twisted the plastic bag into a rope.
‘Sympathising as I do, sir, you’ll have to deal with it elsewhere.’ The policeman indicated the angry hoards of traffic that were massing behind the silver saloon. Ben hooked the twisted carrier bag around the boot door’s locking mechanism just as Stanford, with a petulant sigh, slammed it shut. Ben checked the door just in time to stop it bouncing back up.
A jolt, a screech of tyres, and they were moving again. They had been thrown around three sharp corners by the time Ben trusted himself to speak.
‘That was close.’
‘You idiot. Why didn’t you shout to the policeman? He would have helped.’
‘I didn’t hear you shouting very loud.’
‘Your foot was in my mouth!’
‘Well, it doesn’t matter, look…I can open the door now. So we’re safe.’
‘I’ve been safer, thanks.’
‘Like I said, I want to know where he’s going.’
Eventually the car drew to a lazy halt. Ben felt the chassis rise as Stanford got out. He held his breath until he could no longer hear footsteps.
‘He’s gone.’
‘Can we get out now, please?’ begged Tiffany.
Ben lifted the door. The evening smouldered orange with street lamps. They were in a deserted alley bordering a patch of waste ground. Far off he
saw a gang of youths bouncing on a discarded mattress. Shadows of trees moved like eels in oil against a towering wall to his left. He had a strange feeling. At points on the journey he’d been convinced that he knew where they were going. Insistent tugs in the pit of his stomach while the car veered through the winding streets, as if he had swallowed a glowing, pulsing red magnet… Oshtis feels and knows. But the sensation kept slipping away. Now he strained to recognise the view before him. Finally it clicked.
‘The old factory…’
‘What?’
‘We’re back where we started,’ said Ben. For some reason this made him more uneasy than ever. Over there was his own apartment block, a ghostly outline, and looming above them…
‘That building,’ he whispered. ‘You can see from our flat. It’s been deserted for years.’
‘Is that where Mr Stanford went?’
‘Might be.’
A great black chimney, like a wizard’s tower, loomed against the paler sky.
‘You said it was a factory?’
‘A long time ago, yeah.’
‘I think my dad mentioned it once,’ said Tiffany. ‘He grew up in this borough. He said they used to make dog biscuits here and it stank for miles.’
Whatever this place had been, once upon a time, it was dead and silent now. Or appeared to be. Ben clambered out of the car. The carrier bag that he had used to jam the lock fell to the ground. Tiffany picked it up.
‘Hey.’ She reached inside. ‘Oh my—Ben! I don’t believe this.’
Something had drained the colour from her face. She pulled out a brown jar, a cardboard packet and some printed leaflets. Each bore the same bold word.
Panthacea
And under this, in yellow: For strength, for health, for life.
Ben didn’t get it.
‘This is the medicine!’ She shook it at him. ‘It’s what my little brother takes for his muscular dystrophy. What was it doing in the back of this car?’
‘Search me,’ said Ben. ‘Do you reckon Stanford’s ill with it too?’
‘Of course not. You don’t know anything. He’d hardly be able to walk around.’
‘Well…’ Ben was at a loss.
The dusk light cast two tiny images of the factory in Tiffany’s eyes.
