by Paul Gamble
Trudy laughed and didn’t hit him. Jack wasn’t sure exactly what he’d done, but if he could figure it out, it might well save him a considerable amount of pain in the future.
The mobiles were large, rectangular, mushroom-colored boxes. Their windows were covered on the inside with brown paper.
Trudy walked around to the other side of the mobile, circling it in case one side was more suspicious than the other. “Didn’t find anything,” she said.
“If there’s something in there that we’re not meant to see, I want to see it.” Jack always felt that way about things. It was one of the reasons his parents had such strong filters and access controls on their Internet.
“Let’s try the door,” agreed Trudy.
The door was a large, dark brown slab of wood with a small window set in its center. As with the other windows, this was covered with brown paper, preventing Jack from looking inside. Trudy turned the handle and shoved the door with her shoulder. It didn’t move an inch.
“Stand back,” said Jack. “I’ve got this.” Jack decided to use The Speed. He focused his mind on the training session with the Misery and how unhappy he had been. Then, just to make himself slightly sadder, he thought about all the times at Christmas when he had been given jigsaws, socks, and pants instead of proper presents. When his mind was sufficiently focused on unhappiness he threw a hundred punches into the door in a matter of seconds.
As a result of this, Jack hurt his hands a hundred times in a matter of seconds. After he had finished, the door looked both distinctly unimpressed and completely unharmed. His flurry of punches hadn’t even dented the surface.
Jack massaged his hands. “How come that didn’t work?”
“The Speed makes you faster. It doesn’t make you any stronger.”
“Right,” said Jack. “Important lesson there. Could have done with being told it about five minutes ago, but important to learn nonetheless. I don’t suppose the Ministry has supplied you with a set of skeleton keys?”
Trudy shook her head. “You don’t get any standard equipment. If you want something, you have to go and requisition it from the quartermaster. And apparently that isn’t a good idea.”47
“Why not?”
“Not sure, just what Grey told me one time I asked for equipment. Anyway, I think I can probably make a skeleton key.”
Initially Jack was impressed that Trudy was such a skilled locksmith. However, it soon became apparent that Trudy’s definition of what constituted a skeleton key was profoundly different from Jack’s. She looked around the playground until she found half a brick and then used it to smash the small window in the door. Trudy carefully reached through the hole in the glass and turned the lock from the inside.
It turned out that the mobile wasn’t a classroom at all—instead it was a storeroom, filled with digging supplies—spades, shovels, and picks. There were also medical supplies—crutches, surgical scalpels, bone saws, and bandages, among other things.
“This isn’t school equipment, is it?” Jack asked.
“No, it looks more like … I don’t know … Is the school going to landscape the playing fields? Maybe plant some flowers?”
“But, then, what would the crutches be for?” Jack wondered.
“Why would anyone want to dig at a school?” asked Trudy.
“And kidnap children?”
“And why did Chapeau Noir give us school uniforms, carpets, and a wind turbine?”
Jack and Trudy stood still for a while and felt confused.
* * *
MINISTRY OF S.U.I.T.S HANDBOOK
AQUATIC MAMMALS
READING HABITS
Generally speaking, aquatic mammals, because they live in the sea, don’t get much reading done. And because they don’t read a lot, they generally aren’t that smart. Which is why there has never been a world leader who was a whale. You may have heard that dolphins are the smartest of all aquatic mammals, and this is true. The reason is simple and you will be aware of it if you have ever visited a sea park. Dolphins can perform the most amazing jumps out of the water. Therefore, while they are out of the water they can get little bits and pieces of reading done (without the need for enormous amounts of arduous lamination). Whales can’t jump as high out of the water and therefore have less time to read.
Because dolphins get their reading done during shortish jumps out of the water, they tend to prefer books with short chapters. Which is why The Da Vinci Code topped the “Undersea Mammals Fiction Chart” on Amazon for three years. Dolphins also love conspiracy theories.
Because of their water-based lives, dolphins rarely if ever use a Kindle. Because (a) electronic devices are dangerous in their environment and (b) salt water invalidates the warranty.
* * *
26
SUSPICIOUSLY UNSUSPICIOUS
It wasn’t even lunchtime, but Jack and Trudy decided to go to the Ministry to talk to Grey. Jack persuaded Trudy to get the bus to the museum rather than calling for one of the unpleasant-smelling Ministry cars.
Jack paid their fares and Trudy got them seats right at the back of the bus. She was fidgeting when Jack sat down next to her.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Can’t you feel it? Someone’s watching us.”
Jack panicked just a little. “A teacher? Are we going to get caught for playing truant?”
“It’s not that…”
“Just to clarify something, Trudy, if we do get caught, you do realize that I’m not going to be like one of those tight-lipped gangsters in the movies. You know, the ones who they question for hours and they never break. The minute they start asking me whose idea it was to skip school I’m going to say that it was all down to you, that you made me do it, and I might also tell them that you are plotting to take over the world.”
Trudy gave Jack a withering stare. “I sort of assumed that’s what you’d do.”
“So, is it a teacher?”48
“I’m … just not sure. But it’s, like…”
And then Jack felt it. It was like a tiny insect creeping along the back of his spine. Jack looked around the bus. “I feel it now too. What do we do?”
“We need to keep an eye out for someone acting suspicious,” said Trudy.
Jack shook his head. “No, that’s the exact opposite of what we need to do.”
Trudy looked at Jack as if he was crazy. When people look at you as if you are crazy, most of the time it is an indication that you have said one of the sanest things you will have ever said in your life. This time was no exception to that rule.
Jack explained his thinking. “Someone has been sent to follow us. Or at least that’s what we think. And they haven’t said hello, have they?”
“Well, of course they haven’t. They don’t want us to realize we’re being followed.”
“Precisely!” said Jack. “They don’t want us to know that they’re following us. And because of that they won’t act or look suspicious. In fact, they’ll go out of their way to look deliberately unsuspicious … if that’s a word.”49
Although Trudy was clearly disappointed that Jack was right, she couldn’t fault his logic. Whoever was watching them wouldn’t want to be noticed and so would behave, act, and dress in as unsuspicious a manner as possible.
They looked around the bus. There was a man with a Mohawk wearing a long leather trench coat who seemed to be hiding something underneath it. It could have been a gun or a knife or something even more sinister. He was acting very suspicious indeed. So they knew it couldn’t be him.
Farther along the bus there was an older man who was wearing a tracksuit and a hooded top. The hood covered his eyes and so you couldn’t be sure who he really was. Again, this was suspicious and so Jack and Trudy ruled him out of their consideration.
There was a young mother who was sitting with a pram. Inside the pram was a smiling baby. The mother was leaning over him and dangling keys in front of his face. The baby was trying to reach for them, and both mot
her and baby were making goo-goo gah-gah noises at each other.
Trudy nudged Jack. “What about them?”
Jack considered for a moment: They certainly looked less suspicious than the others, but he felt that they were suspicious enough. “I don’t think so; they’re still slightly suspicious.”
“In what way?”
“Well, the baby keeps trying to grab the car keys. Why would a baby want car keys? It’s clearly too young to drive and it’s certainly too small for its feet to reach the pedals. Also, that goo-goo stuff always worries me. It could be a code. I mean, parents are meant to teach their children to speak. So why would they say goo-goo gah-gah? That isn’t going to help them learn to say anything worthwhile.”
The elimination of the baby and the woman left only one other person on the bus.
At the front of the bus sat a sweet, little old woman. She had short, silver-gray hair and wore a pair of glasses that were fastened around her neck by a long gold chain. Beside her was a tartan shopping bag filled with Mr Kipling Battenberg cakes and Angel Slices.
If you had asked an artist to draw you a picture of a typical innocent-looking grandmother, they would have drawn the woman with the tartan bag.
“Bingo,” said Jack.
“That’s probably where she’s headed to, all right,” agreed Trudy.
“No—I mean bingo in the sense of that’s the person who’s following us. I mean…” Jack tailed off as he realized that Trudy knew exactly what he meant and was just making fun of him.
“Anyway, she’s definitely the least-suspicious-looking person on the bus, so she’s almost certainly the person who is following us.”
“So … what next?”
“Well, our stop is coming up. We get off and see if she follows us.”
Jack and Trudy walked down the aisle of the bus nervously. The old lady didn’t turn or acknowledge them in any way.
They jumped off the bus and headed toward the museum. It was only a hundred yards away. They turned right at the metal railings that stood outside the park in which the museum was located.
“Do we turn around and check yet?” asked Jack.
“Let’s wait until we’re a little closer to the museum,” said Trudy. They walked until they got onto the first of the stone steps that led up to the museum’s front door.
“I think we turn and look now.”
The old woman was standing there, watching them. Initially she had a smile on her face that reminded Jack of Christmas holidays—it was sweet, pleasant, and it made you feel warm inside. It was a smile that felt like a hug from a six-foot bunny rabbit.50 But then her face changed as she realized her cover had been blown. There was no need to look unsuspicious anymore. Her face stopped looking like that of a kindly and sweet granny and started to look like that of a sinister and evil granny. The kind of granny who would bake you an apple pie filled with razor blades for Halloween and give you a real egg for Easter.
Jack and Trudy stood transfixed for a moment.
“She’s definitely following us,” Jack whispered to Trudy.
“I know,” Trudy whispered back.
“And she knows we know.”
“I know she knows we know.”
“So what do we do?”
Trudy paused. “I don’t know.”
“Let’s go inside the museum. We’ll be safe in there … probably.”
“I don’t like the sound of probably,” said Trudy. “She’s an old woman. I could use The Speed to beat her up.”
“You want to beat up an old woman?”
“She’s clearly evil.”
“Might be hard to prove that if the police turned up.”
Trudy acknowledged Jack’s point. They both turned and started walking up the steps toward the museum. Jack could feel the old woman’s eyes burning into their backs. It felt like at any moment she would attack and beat them to death with her Battenberg-cake-filled tartan bag.
It was a relief when they walked through the door and into the large entrance hall. “We’re safe!”
They turned around to see that the old woman had followed them inside.
“So what do we do now?” asked Jack.
Without a better plan, Jack and Trudy walked through the museum. They went neither to the elevator nor to Takabuti’s mummy case as they didn’t want to lead the old woman inside the Ministry itself. They climbed a central flight of stairs, went through the Spanish Armada exhibition, passed an exhibition on fossils, and finally found themselves in a long art gallery.
A metallic voice came over the loudspeaker. “The Museum will be closing in fifteen minutes. Could all visitors please make their way to the front exit. Thank you.” The other visitors in the art gallery made their way to the door at the far end. Trudy and Jack turned around to see the old woman walk into the gallery.
She was practically snarling at them now.
Jack spoke to Trudy out of the side of his mouth, hoping that the old woman couldn’t hear. “Is this going to be one of those moments when the old lady turns out to be some kind of horrific monster with enormous teeth and claws?”
“Possibly.”
“Oh, good.”
All three stood looking at one another.
The old woman broke the silence first. “Now that we’re alone I don’t suppose there’s any point in pretending anymore.”
“You were following us.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I work for Chapeau Noir. All I was supposed to do was follow you, keep an eye on you. But you figured out that I was following you. And if you figured that out, my orders are to eliminate you.”
“Oh, good,” said Jack. “So you’re going to kill us because I figured out you weren’t acting suspiciously. This is exactly what my mother meant when she said that I was too smart for my own good.”
Trudy turned to Jack. “Did your mother really say that to you?”
“No, but it would have been appropriate if she had. Don’t you think?”
“Well, not…”
“Shut up!” yelled the old woman, becoming impatient. “Get ready to die.”
“Okay,” said Jack. “If you want me to get ready to die, I’m going to need to make a will. So I’ll probably need a lawyer. And obviously an undertaker for the funeral and everything.” Jack found it hard to take threats from a little old lady seriously.
“Is this really the time for jokes, Jack?” asked Trudy.
“Yes!” laughed Jack. “She’s an old woman—what’s she going to do, throw a Battenberg cake at us?”
The old woman set her tartan shopping bag on the ground and reached into it. Jack felt less confident than he had. Maybe there were more than Battenberg cakes in the bag. Maybe she had a knife, or even worse, a gun. Or maybe Battenberg cakes were heavier and more aerodynamic than he thought. Were Battenburg cakes explosive under the right circumstances?
* * *
MINISTRY OF S.U.I.T.S HANDBOOK
BEING FOLLOWED
PEOPLE LOOKING SUSPICIOUS
People who are up to no good will go out of their way to look innocent.
Often the police investigating a crime will ask, “Have you seen anything suspicious going on?” Which is clearly the wrong question. Thieves, not wanting to get caught, do everything in their power to avoid attention. As a result they act in a very unsuspicious manner.
Detectives in whodunit novels often claim they are suspicious of an individual and therefore they investigate them further. What they should really say is, “That bloke Simon is acting in a very suspicious manner; therefore I know he can’t be the murderer.”
If the detectives on television were smart enough to show up on the scene of a crime and arrest the person who seemed to be acting in the most unsuspicious way, there would never be the need for Midsomer Murders or Columbo to last a full hour.
* * *
* * *
MINISTRY OF S.U.I.T.S HANDBOOK
BATTENBERG CAKES
&nbs
p; POTENTIAL LETHALITY
Theoretically it is possible to kill someone by throwing a Battenberg cake at them. But only if they have a nut allergy. Because the yellow slices in the cake have almond in them. But the individual you are trying to kill has to be very, very, very, very allergic to nuts indeed. And you’d have to throw the cake at them, very, very, very hard. I’m not saying that it’s impossible to do, just very unlikely. To put this in context, assassins and secret agents often carry guns, knives, blowpipes, throwing stars, and Tasers, but they rarely carry any Mr Kipling products. Not even the Angel Slices. And they are delicious.
* * *
27
JUST WHISTLE
The old woman’s wrinkled hand slowly emerged from her tartan shopping bag holding a silver whistle. She put it to her lips and blew as hard as she could.
Nothing happened. The gallery was silent.
Trudy looked around. Jack just laughed. “That’s it? That’s how you’re going to kill us? With a whistle that doesn’t even work?”
Jack noticed that Trudy was scanning the room around them. If Trudy was worried, something had to be wrong. “What is it?”
“Jack, some creatures hear at a higher pitch than us. Think about it: It could have been a dog whistle … or worse.”
“Oh.”
At that moment there was a brief scrabbling and the doors to the gallery burst open. Galloping through them were two creatures that looked as if they were half-man, half-dog. They had hairy legs and arms and ran on all fours with their hands touching the ground and propelling them through the air. Their eyes looked human but their noses and mouths were swollen and puggish.
“Not good,” said Jack. And although Jack’s analysis of the situation was reasonable, it was not entirely accurate, as not only was it not good … it was about to get worse.
The man-dogs were the first creatures to enter the building, but they were followed by others. Another three creatures entered that were a hideous mishmash of human and bluebottle flies. They walked in a crouched fashion and had two pairs of buzzing, silvery wings affixed to their backs. It didn’t seem as if they could fly, but as they walked they occasionally took a gigantic hop powered by two or three buzzing flaps from their wings. Instead of hands their arms finished in two long, black, serrated pincers. Their eyes were a honeycomb pattern of silver mirrors and below that there was a small black tube, which must have served them for both a mouth and a nose.
