The Beast of Seabourne

by Rhys A. Jones

  “Wow, is that the time? Said I’d be back by seven. Mum’s making lasagne.” He got up quickly. “Thanks for having me over and letting me practise.”

  They both tilted their heads in opposite directions and smiled. “Thanks for telling us all about Soph,” Savannah said brightly.

  “And for letting us see her,” Sydney added.

  “We knew that you and Ellie and Ruff were up to something, but we didn’t know what.” Savannah’s eyes sparkled.

  “Now we do. And we’ll help…if you like?”

  Oz nodded enthusiastically. “It would be brilliant if you could keep an eye on Heeps and Gerber. Let me know if you hear them saying anything…you know…anything weird.”

  The twins smiled. Together, they said, “We like weird.”

  Oz turned to Soph. “We’d better go.”

  Instantly, she disappeared. The twins saw him out and stood on the doorstep to watch him leave. Oz thanked them one final time and turned toward the gate, to barely avoid a man in a fawn trench coat who was bustling along the path, head down in distracted thought. Just at the last moment, the man looked up, and Oz recognised the coiffured hair and the neat beard immediately.

  Lorenzo Heeps didn’t look his usual well-groomed self at all. His face was drawn and grey, the tie at the collar of his blue striped shirt awry. For a second, their eyes met, and Oz saw something move behind Heeps’ normally calculating gaze. It was just a momentary flash, but Oz could have sworn he’d seen panic flare there.

  “Sorry,” Oz said as he sidestepped to avoid Heeps.

  “No, my fault. Not looking. Lot on my mind.” Heeps’ tone was awkward and hesitant. Not at all like the brash confident plotter Oz was used to.

  “How’s Phillipa?” Oz asked.

  “Phillipa?” Heeps frowned, surprised by Oz’s question. Then his gaze focused and recognition dawned. “You,” he blurted. “Is this some kind of a joke?”

  “Joke? No…uh, I saw her leaving school in an ambulance.”

  Heeps peered at Oz, searching his face as if for another meaning. Oz took a deep breath. Now was as good a time as any. “Look, the school…they think I did something to Phillipa.”

  Heeps face had become almost comically quizzical as he tried to understand what Oz was saying.

  “Miss Swinson…she sort of blames me for everything anyway. She blames me for what happened to Phillipa, but it wasn’t me.”

  Heeps’ expression had now changed into confused irritation. “Of course it wasn’t you. How could it be you?”

  Now it was Oz’s turn to blink in confusion. Agreement was the last thing he’d expected. They’d done a sort of pirouette in the path such that Oz was now facing the front door of Number 3, where he could see S and S watching them avidly. “Uh…exactly. How could it be me?” Oz said, quickly grasping this new little twist with both hands. “I mean, I know me and Phillipa don’t get on that well, but…”

  “Just bad luck on her part,” muttered Heeps, lapsing again into preoccupation. “Could have been much worse. Frightens easily, does Phillipa.”

  “I suppose,” Oz said, frowning again.

  Heeps seemed to be largely talking to himself now, as if Oz’s questions had somehow unzipped the top of his head and allowed the thoughts preoccupying him to emerge unchecked. “So many people in a school that size. Accidents can happen…”

  There was a sudden noisy clearing of a throat from behind Oz. He snapped his head around.

  A spindly man dressed in a midnight-black coat was standing just inside the gate. The coat was unbuttoned over a waistcoated suit of the same colour and a peculiar high-collared white shirt. He held a long, thin cane in one hand and wore an old-fashioned fedora on his head. Beneath was an expressionless face caught in the low evening sunlight, the skin unnaturally taut except for around his hollow, dark-rimmed eyes, where thousands of lines radiated away from his orbs like rays from two black, glittering suns. And those eyes were staring right past Oz at Heeps, who, on hearing the throat-clearing, had frozen. When Oz glanced back at him, he saw an expression of stricken terror on Heeps’ face. There was a stretched-out silence while the two men regarded one another. It was broken only when Jack Gerber began striding briskly along the path.

  Oz stood to one side as Gerber passed, and it looked as if he would be ignored. At the last moment, Gerber paused abruptly, swivelled his head, and threw Oz a piercing glare loaded with such contempt and anger and malevolence, Oz was sure he heard the hair on the back of his neck prickle. Gerber deftly grabbed the cane in his left hand and put his right hand on its yellowed ivory head.

  Oz caught a glimpse of a red jewel nestling in the crown of the handle before there was a click and a flash of silver as something slid from the wooden cane shaft.

  From near the front door, Heeps gasped. The noise drew a jerky glance from Gerber. When he looked back at Oz, the glittering malevolence had been replaced by a calculating sneer. Oz heard another click as the ivory head of the cane slid back into its metal collar. Gerber swung his gaze away and started walking again, striding toward Heeps, so the smaller man had to step aside and look up as Gerber leaned in.

  Although Oz could only just hear Gerber’s rasping voice, there was no mistaking the words that emerged or the furious, whispered reproach they contained.

  “We have business here. Though it is very tempting to do otherwise, we will ignore the brat.” He glanced back at Oz and muttered loud enough this time to ensure Oz heard. “His fate is already written.”

  Heeps snapped out of whatever mental fog he was in. He looked at Oz as if seeing him for the first time, and Oz thought he saw something wash over his face, like someone wiping clean a blackboard. But the emotional turmoil inside was still trying to push through. Heeps’ confusion had gone, but in its place was something else. Was that a pang of guilt that suddenly dragged down the corners of his mouth? Regardless, Oz’s impression lasted for mere seconds before Heeps turned and followed Gerber.

  In the doorway, S and S were suddenly yanked back by an effusive Mrs Fanshaw, who welcomed her guests inside. Neither Heeps nor Gerber gave Oz another backwards glance, but when both men had disappeared from view, Sydney stuck her head around the front door and pretended to stick a finger down her throat in a gesture that required no interpretation.

  When Oz got back to Penwurt, he went straight to the library, because his mind was doing cartwheels. He couldn’t forget the way Gerber had looked at him as their paths crossed. More than venomous, more than disdainful, it was more like viciously hateful. Oz knew Gerber would quite happily have paid over the odds for Penwurt, and knowing Oz had been instrumental in scuppering his plans for acquiring it might go some way to explain the way Gerber had acted. Yet that didn’t explain the menacing hostility that Oz had sensed oozing from the man’s gaze.

  On impulse, Oz fetched a small wooden ladder and reached up to the very top shelf to pull down a worn and dusty photograph album. Inside was a jumble of ill-assorted, faded prints, but Oz knew exactly which one he wanted. He found it tucked in behind a wedding list—a group photo of fifty or more children ranging in age from four to sixteen.

  The heading read Colonel Thompson’s Orphanage 1892. He studied the front row and zoomed in on two figures. The first was a happy, gap-toothed boy called Daniel Morsman, the man whose research had rekindled Michael Chambers’ interest in the artefacts, and whose name the artefacts now bore. Morsman sat cross-legged on the floor with his arm around the neck of the slightly younger orphan next to him. The faded name beneath read John Tanner. Tanner was a thin and gawky boy who, exactly like Gerber, sported a large birthmark on the side of his neck.

  Oz reached into his pocket for the pebble and called up Soph.

  “Can you find out about this John Tanner who was at Colonel Thomson’s orphanage at the same time as Daniel Morsman?”

  “Records have been collated for all institutions in Seabourne since the 1871 census.” Soph’s eyes glowed with silver light, and Oz knew she was accessing
computer systems somewhere. “John Tanner entered the orphanage in 1886 when he was six years old. His father had been killed at the battle of Abu Klea in the Sudan with the Essex regiment in 1885. His mother had three children, and placed her eldest, John, in the orphanage, and took the younger two—a girl and a boy—with her to East Anglia.”

  Oz looked at her, trying to imagine what it would have been like for John Tanner at six years old, as his mother walked away and the door of the orphanage closed behind her.

  “Blimey,” he said. “Did she visit him?”

  “There are no records of visits,” Soph said.

  Oz nodded. The troubled-looking John Tanner had become, by the most circuitous of routes, the very nasty Jack Gerber; of that, Oz had no doubt. Yet it was hard to understand just how desperate things must have been for John Tanner’s mother to have to abandon one of her children like that. Soph, as usual, was able to read his thoughts. “It was a time of war and great poverty, Oz.”

  Oz nodded. “Still, must have been pretty awful to be left.”

  The dread memory of a black emptiness where his insides should have been blew icily through him. It was an echo of how he’d felt when he’d woken up one morning a few years ago to find his own mother missing. Confusion, brought on by the depth of her grief and made worse by the brain-fogging medication she’d been taking, had led to a kind of breakdown on the anniversary of his father’s death. Ellie’s mum had eventually found her in one of the town’s hotels and brought her home.

  That sick, gnawing, empty feeling he’d had in the pit of his stomach was something he was never going to forget. It wasn’t an excuse for Gerber being the horrible piece of work he was, but perhaps it went some way towards explaining why he seemed hell-bent on making Oz’s life miserable. Maybe he hated everyone with a family, even a fractured one like Oz’s.

  In addition, as if that wasn’t bad enough, Oz had Heeps’ phone conversation about Bendle to contend with. What on earth had Heeps meant by saying someone had spilled the beans? Once again, Oz’s insides lurched. He knew what it meant, all right. It meant that someone was telling Heeps and Gerber what the three of them were up to. But who? The only people who knew about going to visit Bendle were the three of them. They had told no one else.

  “Can you run that conversation between Heeps and Meecher again?” Oz asked Soph.

  He listened as she replayed the whole thing once more.

  “What do you think Heeps means?” he asked when the message had finished.

  “The implication clearly is that either you, Ellie, or Ruff have told Mr Heeps about your visit to Chivyon House.”

  “That’s the way I read it, too. One of us is a mole.”

  The idea was so preposterous and disgusting that Oz suddenly felt sick. It was crazy and insane, and yet what other way was there of explaining it?

  “But Ellie and Ruff…they would never do anything like that.”

  “Logically, that leaves only you,” Soph said calmly.

  “Me? But I haven’t said anything to anyone except Ruff and Ellie.”

  Soph watched him impassively.

  “Right, tomorrow at school, I want you to check all our phones, mine included. That way the others will see I’m not picking on them. See if anyone’s been sending or getting any messages from Heeps. I need you to do whatever you must to get to the bottom of this, understand?”

  “I understand, Oz,” Soph said.

  “At least I can trust you, Soph,” Oz muttered.

  Soph said nothing in reply; that evening, knowing she was on the case gave him little if any comfort. Because whatever the outcome, it was not going to be an easy one to deal with.

  He fell asleep quickly but dreamed he was in the corridor in Bendle’s house being pursued by a dirigible bomber drone that kept dropping bombs with Gerber’s face on them. As they landed, they released a loud voice that cursed the air. All around him, Oz kept hearing the same sentence in Gerber’s rasping voice.

  “His fate is already written. His fate is already written. His fate is already written.”

  When he woke up, it was half past four in the morning. Sleep was a stranger for the rest of the night, as worries over exactly how he could get Ellie and Ruff to let Soph check their phones pressed down on him like a great anvil on his chest. No matter how he phrased it, it always sounded like he simply didn’t trust them.

  It was with a sense of exhausted relief that he heard the alarm beeping at half past seven. Oz dragged himself out of bed with the dreadful realisation that he’d never felt less like going to school in the whole of his life.

  Chapter 13

  Lava Toothpaste

  There were two police cars parked in the bay outside the headmaster’s office when Oz got to school that morning. Oz gazed at them with a sinking feeling. Somehow, he knew he’d be meeting one or more of their occupants again that day.

  However, it was the way his fellow students reacted to him that made Oz realise it wasn’t just the Volcano who was putting two and two together and coming up with Oscar Chambers as the answer.

  Conversation fell away as he approached the little knots of people congregating in the yard while they waited for the bell. A whispered commentary followed him wherever he went, yet when he turned to look for the source, the murmurs died and eyes cut away.

  He got to Room 33 early. There was no sign of Ellie or Ruff, so he sat at his desk and went over what he was going to say to them when they arrived. His mind had settled on the firm conclusion that confronting them with Heeps’ conversation with Meecher was the only way to sort things out. Yet the prospect hung over him like a storm cloud.

  He’d been unable to face any breakfast at all that morning, and now his stomach was rumbling and groaning in protest. He took a deep breath to try and calm his nerves, but still it felt like there was a huge boulder pressing down on the top of his head.

  “Come on. Where are you?” he whispered to himself. If they came now, he could get it over with and…and what? What if one of them had informed? It would mean no more Ballista’s on Saturday mornings, no more sleepovers at Penwurt, no more searching for artefacts. He was dwelling on that unhappy thought when his attention was drawn by a weird noise at the door. Jenks’ weaselly face appeared. He was quacking loudly as he delivered the punch line of some joke. Although Skinner, Jenks’ main partner in crime, was still absent, there were other hangers-on prepared to dote on Jenks’ every burp. Oz had to hand it to him; despite appearances to the contrary, Jenks was no fool. He had long ago realised that for him to get away with the things he said and did, there was a need for safety in numbers. This morning was no exception, as three large devotees followed him in, sniggering.

  And today, as usual, Jenks was revelling in making as much noise as he possibly could. But as soon as he saw Oz was alone, he stopped quacking, and his ferrety features quickly became sly and calculating.

  “Well, well. If it isn’t pizard of Oz all alone. Whossammatter, Grizzly Adams and Minger Messenger ditched you, have they? Realised that you’re a loony freak at last.”

  “Get stuffed, Jenks,” Oz said automatically.

  Jenks, a malicious glint in his eye, was clearly delighted with this unusual opportunity of finding Oz alone and the chance it provided for taunting. Ignoring Oz’s reply, he and his followers swaggered across to where he sat. “Kieron’s out of hospital and really looking forward to meeting you again,” Jenks said belligerently.

  “I heard,” Oz said.

  “Bet you hadn’t heard that he has a seventeen-yearold brother at the Tech who’s going to be waiting for you outside the school gate one afternoon.”

  Oz just shook his head. This was standard Jenks stuff. “And what am I supposed to have done now?”

  “What have you done?” Jenks guffawed. “Think we’re all stupid? We know it’s you. We know you’ve been picking off your enemies one at a time when they’re alone.” Jenks shook his head. “Even for you, that’s freaky stuff, Chambers.”

 
Oz pushed himself up from his seat. He wasn’t scared of Jenks, but there were four of them, and suddenly, Oz felt he’d rather be on his feet with his back against the wall than sitting. He should have ignored them, he knew, but he could just glimpse the rest of the class over Jenks’ shoulder and saw that they were all listening avidly. He knew he couldn’t simply let Jenks get away with this stuff without reply.

  “I didn’t touch Skinner or Pheeps,” Oz said calmly. “If you bothered to ask around, you’d know that I was somewhere else at the time. So get that into your thick skull.”

  Jenks sneered. “Oh, yeah? Well that’s not what everyone’s saying. And the Volcano thinks it’s you, doesn’t she? And don’t tell me that the cops are here to check the plumbing.”

  The cronies sniggered.

  “The Volcano can say what she likes. I didn’t do it.”

  Jenks made a two-tone buzzer noise in his throat and said, “Wrong answer, Chambers. You lose.”

  Oz shook his head, but he could feel a flush spread up from his throat. Jenks was irritating at the best of times, but this morning, he was like a terrier after a rat. Yet it was the triumphant gleam in his eye that really unnerved Oz. Jenks looked exactly like the kid at the Christmas party who knew who the bloke dressed up as Santa Claus really was and was bursting to tell all his mates the secret. His smile melted into a slithering grin.

  “Martha Trump’s mother works in a chemist on the high street. She says your mum used to come in to get tablets. The kind they give people who are really bonkers. Were they for you, Chambers?”

  “I’m warning you, Jenks. Just buzz off,” Oz said, feeling his fists start to bunch at his sides.

  “Or does loony stuff run in the family?” Jenks’ eyes glittered with pleasure as he saw the effect his goading was having on Oz. “Oh, wait. I get it. The tablets weren’t for you, were they? They were for her.” He looked around at his followers before delivering the punch line with a derisive chuckle. “Wow, Chambers got the double. His dad’s mad enough to top himself and his mother’s mental.”