“Blast! There’s that fool Bontempi. What’s he doing here?” he’d grimaced, seeing the Headmaster shut his car door. “Hmm… he must have come looking for his beloved Benedicta.” Diving behind a low wall, he’d watched him: Mr Bontempi was peering over at his car parked some distance away in the car park. McGraw had waited a few more minutes, then he’d discreetly crept back to his own car in the dark and, reaching underneath, had ripped out a cable. Finally, casually, he’d stood up and walked resolutely and smugly towards the centre of the city.
After walking around all the school classrooms and offices, the two policemen were standing in the middle of the wrecked lab, taking notes.
“Who were the last people to leave the school?” one of the men asked Mr Bontempi.
“Dr McGraw. He’s the teacher who has a lesson with Year 8 Hydrogen until 5.30 on Thursday evenings. Every week, a student helps him to put everything away in the lab. That doesn’t usually take more than ten minutes.”
“Who helped him this evening?”
“I don’t know. As I told you, I wasn’t there. I’d received a call about a burglary. I had to rush home—which proved to be a totally pointless exercise since there hadn’t been a break-in at all. A bad joke, at a guess. So I came back to school and got here a few minutes after six. I was supposed to meet Benedicta; her car was in the car park and I saw Dr McGraw’s car was there too, which intrigued me because no one stays as late as that. The rest, you know.”
“Does everyone have access to the school?”
“No. During the daytime you can only get in by ringing the doorbell. Then the porter checks your identity, ascertains the reason for your visit and lets you in. Other than that, a close watch is kept on the students coming in and out.”
“Even this evening?”
“A porter is always there until 5.30. After that time, no student has any business being inside the school. Except those who have to help a teacher, like Dr McGraw on Thursday evenings. In that case, he’ll accompany the student in question to the exit. All the teachers have a swipe card allowing them to lock or unlock the porch gate.”
“So you need that swipe card to get in or out after 5.30 p.m., is that correct?”
“Exactly,” nodded Mr Bontempi. “Having said that, I didn’t notice anything unusual and no one has reported losing their swipe card. But you can never rule out a break-in. I’m very worried about Benedicta, gentlemen, very worried.”
“Do you have any idea what could have taken place in this room? Someone’s gone completely crazy in here, everything was destroyed!”
“No idea at all,” replied the Headmaster despondently.
The three men looked around the vandalized lab. The reek of chemicals, which was still very strong, pricked their eyes and nostrils. The two policemen conscientiously inspected every nook and cranny, carefully threading their way between the overturned pieces of furniture. Fragments of glass from the broken windows and shattered bottles cracked beneath their feet. Not even the ceramic worktops had survived.
“One last question, Mr Bontempi: do you have an address for Dr McGraw?” asked one of the two policemen.
“Dr McGraw? Police. We’re carrying out a routine inquiry and we’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“Come in, please,” said McGraw pleasantly. “What’s this about? Nothing serious, I hope.”
The two policemen ignored the question and sat down on the chairs he’d offered them.
“What time did you leave school this evening?”
“At about 5.40 I tidied up the lab with the help of Oksa Pollock, a student in Year 8 Hydrogen. Then I accompanied her out and unlocked the porch gate for her. I wanted to take my car, but it wouldn’t start, so I left it in the car park. I didn’t feel like phoning the breakdown company—it had been a tiring day so I decided I’d rather take a taxi home.”
“You did say ‘Oksa Pollock’, didn’t you?” noted one of the two policemen, scribbling in his notebook.
“That’s right,” replied McGraw, frowning suddenly in concern.
“Did you see anyone before leaving the school?”
“No, no one.”
“Did you notice anything unusual?”
“No, nothing. The corridors were deserted like they are on every Thursday evening. I didn’t notice anything strange,” replied McGraw casually.
“When did you last see Miss Heartbreak, your colleague who teaches history and geography?”
“Miss Heartbreak? Let me think… it must have been after lunch in the staffroom. I may have bumped into her in the corridor, just after lessons started again, at two—I really don’t remember. But why do you ask? Has something happened to her?”
“How did you do that?” asked one of the policemen, pointing to the scratches on McGraw’s face and hands.
“My cat,” replied the man, without batting an eyelid. “Lately the damn thing has been a real handful!”
At that very moment Mortimer McGraw burst into the living room, holding a cat which was struggling furiously.
“Calm down, Leo. Dad, this cat is bonkers! Oh, sorry,” he said, suddenly breaking off. “I didn’t know you had company.”
He turned round and headed back out into the hall. Then he unceremoniously pinched the cat, which wailed and struggled to get free.
“Ouch! Horrible creature, you scratched me!” he yelled, loud enough to be heard clearly from the living room.
And if they hadn’t had their backs turned, the policemen would have seen the satisfied grin on his face…
66
SUPERIOR SEAMSTRESSES
THE DERMI-CLEANERS DID AN EXCELLENT JOB ON Oksa’s injury. They spent all night meticulously cleaning the suppurating wound, eating away every particle of decaying flesh, while Dragomira and Pavel took turns sitting by the brave patient’s bedside. When Oksa woke up Dragomira was nearby, preparing a mixture in a marble pestle.
“Baba?”
“Dushka! How do you feel?”
Pavel, who was lying on a camp bed next to Oksa’s bed, opened one eye and sat up. He had large, dark circles under his eyes, and his anxious gaze immediately strayed to his daughter’s knee, which looked much less revolting than the evening before: the skin, which was no longer a hideous boggy colour, appeared to have regenerated. And it didn’t smell anywhere near so bad. The Dermi-Cleaners went on wriggling slowly, which made Oksa screw up her face. The Insiders’ pharmacopoeia—worms and slugs, etc.—took some getting used to.
“Wonderful!” exclaimed Dragomira. “It’s worked a treat. No one would think you’d done anything worse than fall over rollerblading. Would you bend your leg for me?”
Oksa obeyed cautiously. The skin stretched, giving a clear view of the writhing mass of mending worms.
“It doesn’t hurt so much now. That’s fantastic, Baba!”
She threw her arms around her gran’s neck, pulling her father over too so she could hug them both very tightly. What a relief! She’d been so scared.
“Now that your knee is out of danger, I’ll take care of your face, Dushka.”
“My face?” asked Oksa in alarm, feeling her cheeks and forehead with her fingertips. “What’s wrong with it?”
Then she remembered the state of her hand when she’d wiped her face with it after the lab windows exploded: it had been covered in blood.
“Am I disfigured?” she asked in a strangled voice.
“No, Oksa, you’re not disfigured,” said Dragomira gently, making her lie down. “You just have a few scratches from broken glass. I’ll deal with those in less than no time. First the cuts, then a cream to make them disappear without a trace. You’ll see, it’s incredible.”
“You’re going to stitch me up? No way, Baba, I don’t want you to. No needles!”
Oksa squirmed on her bed and her reluctance intensified when she saw what was going to be stitching her up: spiders. Minute spiders with ultra-thin legs, admittedly—but still spiders!
“No, no way, I can’t, Baba! I�
��ll throw a fit.”
To everyone’s surprise, this made Pavel roar with laughter until tears came to his eyes. His mirth was so infectious that Dragomira followed suit and the delicate spiders seemed to share their mistress’s amusement, jigging up and down on her hand.
“Oh look at them, Oksa-san! They are Spinollias, they’re completely harmless,” cried Pavel. “And, what’s more, they’re wonderful seamstresses.”
“The son of the Old Gracious possesses truth in his mouth, Young Gracious,” broke in the Lunatrix, who had just entered the room bearing a tray laden with bread and butter and steaming bowls. “One day a finger belonging to myself was guillotined by a large kitchen knife during a severing manoeuvre performed on carrots; the Spinollias sewed it back on with the delicacy of lace. Look, my finger belongs to my hand again! Feeling was absent, totally absent, you must have confident belief, accuracy is in my words.”
Oksa grimaced, then closed her eyes with a resigned sigh:
“Fine, go ahead, do what you want to me. No one told me that I’d be giving my body to science… and during my lifetime, too.”
Pavel and Dragomira exchanged a knowing smile. Then Dragomira gently picked up one of the three spiders stretched out on her hand and placed it on Oksa’s face. She shuddered and screwed her eyes shut so tight that her forehead was furrowed with worry lines.
“Relax, sweetheart,” said Pavel, taking her hand. “If you tense your forehead too much, the Spinollias will sew the wrinkles together… and thirteen’s a bit young for a facelift, don’t you think?”
“Great,” muttered Oksa between gritted teeth, gazing up at the ceiling.
The three Spinollias were now on her face. She could feel their thin legs busily moving around on her skin. It was a weird feeling. Very, very weird, though not unpleasant, if you managed to forget there were spiders on you. Until then Oksa hadn’t realized her face was cut, since all her attention had been focused on her injured knee. The Spinollias’ activity refreshed her memory, though, bringing back a handful of images: the whole lab exploding, the disgusting reek of the chemicals, furious McGraw doing his utmost to catch her… and Miss Heartbreak.
“All done, Dushka! Your cuts are a distant memory. Now I’ll apply this cream. It’ll remove the scars and make your skin as soft and smooth as a baby’s bottom again.”
“I know someone who’ll be very glad to see you looking so… bright-eyed and bushy-tailed,” murmured Pavel in her ear.
He unfolded his tall body and left the room.
“Marie!” they heard his voice ringing out in the corridor. “Do you want to see your brave daughter?”
He returned a few seconds later, pushing his wife’s wheelchair. Seeing Oksa, Marie’s face broke into a broad smile, although her eyes didn’t lose their profoundly anxious expression. Pavel pushed the wheelchair over to Oksa’s bed.
“Did you see that, Mum?” said the girl, indicating with her eyes the Spinollias which Dragomira was carefully returning to a glass container. “How gross is that! Er, Baba… while we’re on the subject of disgusting things, what exactly is in this cream?”
“Ever suspicious, aren’t you?”
“Well, that is… YES!”
Dragomira and Pavel smiled, while Marie thought privately that she shared her daughter’s disgust.
“Don’t worry,” explained Baba Pollock, “it’s just a few dried and crushed yarrow leaves mixed with a drop of Goranov sap and some rose juice.”
“Promise?” asked Oksa severely.
“Promise!”
“Fine, then under those conditions, I’ll continue to lend—and I do mean ‘lend’—my body to science.”
And she stretched out on the bed, her arms outspread, in a pose of total resignation.
“I am going to school today, aren’t I?” she said hesitantly.
“Yes,” replied her father. “We’ve thought it over and even if you find it very hard after what you went through yesterday evening, we think it would be safer and more sensible for you to go. The police will almost definitely have been called, if only because of the damage to the lab. And from what you and Gus have told us, McGraw is bound to have done whatever he had to do to silence Miss Heartbreak. She saw too much. If anyone asks you, and they’re bound to, you must act as though nothing happened, as if McGraw had accompanied you to the exit as he usually does with the others. Do you understand?”
Oksa nodded.
“We know this is hard for you, very hard. But it’s essential for all of us that no one knows exactly what happened,” continued Dragomira. “Keep your eyes and ears open and you’ll see that McGraw will behave in the same way. He can’t afford for anyone to guess anything, about him or us. Even if we haven’t done anything wrong, you must bear in mind that we’d be in big trouble if anyone discovered who we are and, most importantly, what we can do. You realize now how different we are and what that might mean to those who don’t share our abilities… you weren’t far off the mark when you thought that people in the secret service or various government agencies would give their eye teeth to examine individuals like us. And when I say ‘examine’, that would just be the start of it. By saying nothing, by not raising the alarm, we’re protecting ourselves and that’s your responsibility today. I’m sorry to have to ask this of you—I know it’ll be hard. But for over fifty years, we’ve managed to preserve our anonymity and our secrecy.”
“Yes, I know,” replied Oksa, sounding overwhelmed. “But what about Miss Heartbreak?”
Pavel replied in a strangled voice:
“We can’t do anything for her at the moment, darling.”
When Pierre Bellanger dropped Gus and Oksa off in front of St Proximus he sensed, as they did, that the whole school was seething with agitation. He gave them one last encouraging look and made sure they were safely inside the courtyard before leaving.
“Everyone seems very uptight,” Gus whispered to Oksa, glancing anxiously at her out of the corner of his eye.
Oksa didn’t reply. She felt tense and tired and, despite her best efforts, it showed on her pale, unmarked face. The two students threaded their way among the noisily chatting groups of students. The words “police” and “lab” seemed to come up in every conversation, which did nothing to calm Oksa’s escalating stress levels. Merlin Poicassé, who was waiting for his friends in front of the lockers, was the first to give them some information:
“Hiya, Oksa! Hiya, Gus! Guess what? The science lab was wrecked yesterday evening, it’s a real mess. Absolutely everything was destroyed. Even the ceramic worktops, can you believe it? The police were called; no one seems to have the slightest idea who might have done it. It’s crazy, isn’t it?”
Although Oksa and Gus thought they did a really good job of pretending to be dumbfounded at the news, it obviously wasn’t good enough, because Merlin, gazing shrewdly at Oksa, soon edged nearer and whispered confidingly:
“I know what happened, Oksa… I saw everything!”
Those two short sentences hit the two friends like a bombshell. Gus felt the blood drain from his face as he moved closer to Merlin.
“What are you on about?” he asked with feigned astonishment.
“I followed you when you slipped inside behind Miss Heartbreak after she unlocked the porch gate,” replied Merlin, watching his reaction. “I had a feeling that something weird was going on—I saw Oksa send McGraw flying to the other end of the corridor without laying a finger on him and I saw you both rise into the air and go over the wall.”
“You’re talking rubbish!” Gus snapped angrily.
“You looked in a really bad way, Oksa,” continued Merlin, completely unflustered. “But I’m glad to see you’re much better—the night seems to have done you good. One might almost think it was a magical recovery.”
“You’re out of your mind, Merlin,” muttered Gus, going pale.
“Leave it, Gus,” said Oksa in a resigned voice. “You can see he’s realized…”
“So you are a sorcere
ss?” continued Merlin.
“You’ve suspected that for some time, haven’t you?” retorted Oksa, looking him straight in the eye. “But please don’t say anything. The lives of several people depend on it.”
“Really?” stammered Merlin, taken aback by the impassioned appeal in the girl’s eyes.
“I promise I’ll explain everything if you swear not to breathe a word to anyone about this.”
“Oksa!” exclaimed Gus, shocked.
“We don’t have any choice, Gus,” said the Young Gracious quietly, turning to her friend. “If we deny it, he’ll go on nosing around and that’ll be even worse… and I’m sure we can trust him,” she added in a louder voice, turning to look intently at Merlin again. “Can’t we, Merlin? I repeat: if you breathe a word, you endanger the lives of quite a few people, starting with me.”
The boy flinched, flustered not only by the solemnity of her request but also by being stared at so intensely by a girl he liked so much.
“I understand,” he agreed. “You can count on me. What about McGraw? Is he like you?”
“McGraw? It’s worse than that,” replied Oksa, seeing the dreaded teacher walk into the courtyard.
“Well, you certainly gave him a going-over,” remarked Merlin enthusiastically. “Wow, look at the state of his face! He looks like he fell into a rose bush.”
McGraw’s gloomy face was covered in scratches. All the students who passed him shot him quizzical glances. Some were even amused and dared to burst out laughing. Gus and Oksa, on the other hand, had no inclination to share their amusement, particularly when McGraw started heading in their direction. Without taking his eyes off them, he slowed down as he drew level with them, and Oksa noticed a hint of surprise in his expression as he glared at her, probably because he couldn’t understand how she could appear completely unscathed by their terrible battle of the evening before. He walked past, his head high but his back bowed, and disappeared around the corner of the corridor.
Oksa Pollock: The Last Hope Page 39
