The Messenger Bird

by Ruth Eastham

  Rose sighed. She looked like she was working something out a moment. The end of the gun quivered slightly. Then she drew back from the gap. “I actually don’t need the phone anyway,” she said. “You can keep it.”

  Alarms went off in my head and Sasha frowned at me. I craned my neck to see what Rose was doing and I saw her pick up one of the jars the painters had left. She screwed open the top and sloshed the contents on the panels round us. A sharp acidic smell hit the back of my throat, the smell of turps or something, that stuff you use to clean paint off brushes. That really highly flammable stuff.

  We started to scramble forward from the gap, but Rose swivelled the gun towards us. “Stay there, please.”

  I shunted back. Josh tugged his hair and put a hand over his mouth.

  I knew suddenly what she was going to do. Destroy the phone; destroy the evidence. But just getting rid of the evidence wasn’t enough, was it?

  Us kids knew way too much.

  It would look like an accident, I thought, panicking. The painters would get blamed most probably – they both smoked, didn’t they? Or we’d get the blame. Three trespassing kids with stolen keys, found in the burnt-out ruin that was left. An arson stunt gone wrong.

  “Why are you doing this?” said Sasha, her voice thick.

  Rose’s eyes were blank. “It’s not just me,” she said. “There’s a whole group of us, but then you knew that. Do you know the kind of power some of these people have?” For a second I saw a look in her face, something desperate; a look of someone in too deep? Her face switched back. “They know I’ll finish the job.”

  Gun still pointed, she opened up more jars. “There’re people in high places,” she said, like she was talking half to herself. “People a lot more important than three kids. Things you wouldn’t understand. Secrets.” Turps and paint thinner splashed across the room. “Have you any idea how much secrets are worth? Secrets about soldiers’ movements; military manoeuvres. Do you know what people will pay to get hold of that kind of information?” She laughed, a hard, bitter laugh. “How ironic to end up here, in Bletchley Park of all places! But people always did make good profit from war, whichever side they were on.”

  “Soldiers got killed because of what you did!” shouted Sasha.

  “There are always casualties. Soldiers know the risks.” With a sharp downward movement, Rose ripped the plastic off a velvet curtain and doused it with liquid from a bottle. “Leon Vane got too clever for his own good. He found out secrets were going missing and landed himself in it.” She sloshed the liquid in a trail across the floor. “All this wood panelling,” she said to herself. She kicked a plastic bucket, and brushes and rollers and foul-smelling sludge splatted across the floor. “A real fire hazard, and with the fire alarms I disconnected…”

  Sasha was looking at me wild-eyed. Josh still had his hands over his mouth. She’d had this as an option all along, had she? Burn down the ballroom with us still in it.

  “They must be paying you a lot,” said Sasha. “Killing three kids!”

  Rose lit a cigarette with a lighter, then snapped the lighter closed. She turned the cigarette between her fingers and gently blew the end. For a moment the orange glow lit her face, and for some reason I thought about the guy on the bonfire with his smiling mask. I had to think straight! I had to do something!

  “There are always casualties,” Rose said again, like she was programmed. But she didn’t look at us as she said it.

  I knelt there trembling, eyeing the glowing tip of the cigarette. I had to keep her talking. Had to buy time to think…

  Think, Nat, think! Literally and laterally.

  Memories swept through my mind like ghosts. I couldn’t stop them – the memories of Dad and me poured through my head; everything the trail had made me remember. Bedtime stories and birthday breakfasts. Football matches and sweet hot chocolate. Me on Dad’s shoulders so I was taller than anyone. Writing our names with sparklers, round and round, faster and brighter, in a fizzing spinning burning eye.

  Suddenly I knew what I had to do. All at once, it was clear, like something magical, a secret code broken. My fingers closed round the glass bottle in my pocket. Keep calm and carry on. I was edging the lid off with my fingertips.

  I held Dad’s phone out to Rose through the open panel. “Take it!” I shouted.

  “Don’t, Nathan!” Sasha cried. “Please!”

  My other hand ran over the cold surface of the perfume bottle. I was using touch to align the nozzle. “It’s over, Sasha,” I told her. “It’s not worth it.”

  My head turned so only her and Josh would see, and I winked.

  There was a slight pause, but Sasha cottoned on fast. She narrowed her eyes, then shouted, “How can you say that? After everything we’ve been through? What’s going to happen to your dad?”

  “Take it,” I pleaded, shifting towards Rose, hand outstretched, “please. Just let us go.”

  A bit of ash dropped from the tip of the cigarette. “It’s too late for that now, I’m afraid.”

  “Please, Rose,” I begged. “Please.”

  “But Nathan,” called Josh in a fake whisper, “a fire might not completely destroy the phone. The computer chip inside could stay intact. I read an article that said the newest models are made with a special kind of heatproof plastic and…”

  Rose seemed to take the bait. She looked unsure a moment, and you could see her calculating what might happen if anything on the phone turned out intact. She looked annoyed. Keeping the gun in her hand, she balanced the smouldering cigarette on the edge of a nearby tin of paint and came forward to take the phone off me.

  Keep calm. You need to get the timing exactly right. I held the phone just out of her reach. “Pass it,” she said, her voice spiky with impatience. She crouched in front of us with the gun and her forehead glistened with sweat. Closer. A little closer…

  Her face came near to us and I pressed the phone into her palm. “Sorry, kids,” she said, her eyes blinking in the gap. “This is nothing personal.” Then she started to slide the panel shut, and for a second the gun was pointing away from us and I saw my chance.

  My

  one

  chance.

  I whipped the perfume bottle out of my pocket and blasted the spray in her face as hard as I could. Rose reeled away with a cry, rubbing madly at her eyes. She staggered back, and the gun spun out of her hand, going off, and one of the fancy light shades on the ballroom ceiling shattered in an explosion of glass.

  I squirmed out of the secret room. I saw her knock the paint can with her foot so the cigarette flipped up and made an orange arc towards the window. There was the smell of melting plastic, and flames snaked up a curtain. I stood there, staring. Rose tripped on a crinkled-up painter’s sheet, her feet getting wound up in it. Her arms waved blindly to stop herself falling. She grabbed at the stepladder, making it lurch. Making the latch unhook again from its metal loop.

  Sasha and Josh were beside me, about to run for the door, but I held their arms. “Get back behind the panel!” I told them. “The scaffolding’s going to fall!”

  “It’s going to fall!” I shouted at Rose as I dived back towards the opening of the secret room and crouched there with Sasha and Josh.

  The ladder swayed, then swung uncontrollably, and the scaffolding attached to the top of it started to swing too. There was an ear-splitting wail of metal under strain and hooks forced loose. The scaffolding was leaning, toppling, pieces of steel and wood shifting, tipping, crashing down. Screams echoed all around. Sasha’s, Josh’s. My own.

  And then Rose was gone. Disappeared under the wreckage.

  I stared as Dad’s phone slid across the floor. It spun in the middle of the ballroom floor in the moonlight and I couldn’t take my eyes off it. Round it went, round and round in graceful, shuddering circles, gradually slowing to a stop.

  There was an eerie silence. Then the steady crackle of flames. I pulled myself together. I got out from the cramped space and ran over to
scoop up the phone.

  “Rose…” Josh panted by my ear. “Is she…?”

  We looked at the pile of twisted metal and smashed wood.

  “We have to go,” I said.

  “Yes, like right now!” coughed Sasha. “Come on!”

  The stench of smoke was already filling the air and we raced for the ballroom door, but after Sasha and Josh had gone through, I paused.

  The Enigma code in the secret room – it’d be destroyed and then we’d never be able to read Lily’s message. I still had Sasha’s phone in my pocket – I could use the camera to photograph it and…

  “We have to go, Nathan!” Sasha was beside me again, tugging at my arm so I winced with pain. I pressed Dad’s phone into her hand. “What are you doing?”

  “You get out!” I shouted as I ran back across the ballroom floor. I saw the fire reach the curtain rail and spread along it. “Get out, now!” I pulled my scarf over my nose and mouth and ducked back into the secret room. I heard the flames spit and a sound like ripping wrapping paper as I desperately tried to take the photos I needed.

  The smell of burning got stronger. Smoke began to coil through the secret room making my eyes sting, but I still hadn’t photographed all the message. I doubled over, coughing and dropped the phone, the camera flash going off like a firework, blinding me. The flames got louder. The air crackled and gasped as I crawled around to find the phone…

  Then there were other noises. Feet pounding across the wooden floor. A voice all high and giving orders – it couldn’t be! I nearly stumbled over in surprise – Hannah? Swearing. Gavin? There was a deafening hiss, then a rancid smell of fumes and foam and wet.

  I came out of the secret room in a daze. The curtains still smoked, but the fire was out. Gavin stood there with a fire extinguisher and his mouth hanging open, and there was soot on his nose and his skull-and-crossbones jacket.

  Then Hannah was there and she had hold of me, clutching me. “Nathan,” she said. “Nathan,” and my throat was all choked up, and then she was pulling me. “We’re going somewhere safe.”

  Car headlights swung across the ballroom from outside, making our shadows glide like ghosts across the panels. I gripped Josh’s arm and Sasha’s hand and we gazed out of the window at the flashing blue light.

  “My uncle’s in the police,” said Gavin, the first words he’d ever said to me. “So shift.”

  22

  Nothing ßut the Truth

  I’m up in the attic library, sitting stroking Bones, and I’m sitting by the window looking at the newspaper cuttings, remembering that night all those weeks ago.

  TOP CIVIL SERVANTS ARRESTED FOR SELLING STATE SECRETS

  and

  INNOCENT MAN GOES FREE

  Birds peck at old crusts of bread scattered on the lawn. I can hear Hannah laughing somewhere downstairs, my crazy big sister. Trust her to sneak a look in my wardrobe and find the Bletchley Park keys and the bike helmet and put two and two together. Rose hadn’t been the only one good at eavesdropping, put it that way.

  Hannah had put one of Mum’s sleeping tablets in the fake Mrs Atkinson’s cocoa. It turns out it was Gavin’s car that went past us when we were on our bikes, complete with a pair of wire cutters in the boot.

  More birds fly down and dodge between the others, looking for crumbs.

  And while Gavin got talking to his policeman uncle and we were bundled off to a safe house, Hannah got using her journalist contacts and we forwarded the files of Dad’s evidence, and it wasn’t long before a load of newspaper people were parked outside the MoD.

  The birds flap and hop in circles like they’re dancing.

  All the evidence we needed was right there, on Dad’s phone. Everything. Dad buying information in the abandoned car park, not selling it. Photos of documents and video clips of the corrupt staff at their secret meetings. Computer logs that showed how they’d set Dad up. Taped conversations that proved they were guilty, not him.

  Bones sprawls out on the old rug, the sun beaming in on him from the skylight, and gives a contented little yowl.

  I still have bad dreams about the gun going off and the scaffolding collapsing, but Rose was OK in the end, just a couple of broken legs and a broken arm, and she confessed all from her hospital bed to get a lighter sentence, and so that pretty much sealed the prosecution’s case.

  The lawn is a mass of whirling wings.

  It turns out it was true Dad realized his solicitor had been got at. When backup files of evidence he gave Mr Edwards access to all disappeared, he knew he couldn’t trust him.

  So Dad had been forced into Plan B.

  Messenger Bird.

  Me.

  Mum comes up and pops her head into the room. “Nearly ready for our walk?” she asks, and she smiles at me and then goes back down.

  Carefully, I fold up the cuttings. Course, it was in all the papers. Miscarriages of justice make good headlines, and corrupt government people, and incredible happenings at Bletchley Park. Luckily Percy didn’t seem too worried about his nicked keys or the singed curtains once we showed him the secret room and the Enigma Machine, though he did have to sit down while Josh fanned him with an information leaflet.

  After all, apart from that soundproofing, we didn’t break anything.

  Only Lily’s code.

  Yeah, we finished Lily’s message. Dad admitted it had taken him months to solve her trail when he was a kid, and he guessed I’d be stuck on the moon and star drawing and need some extra help there because that one took him weeks and weeks to crack.

  Why had he never told me about the trail? It turns out he had been planning to, on my thirteenth birthday, because that’s how old he was when he found Lily’s first clue.

  LILYKENLEYNOVEMBERNINETEENFORTYONEDAYIDLIKETOTHINKTHEYLLKNOWTHETRUTH…

  I look at the piece of paper in front of me where I’d written out Lily’s message from the secret room. In my head I imagine her own voice, reading the words out aloud.

  Lily Kenley, November 1940

  One day I’d like to think they’ll know the truth.

  I am a traitor.

  I stole an Enigma Machine. I made copies of intercepts. I broke the code of silence and compromised others.

  But I refused to speak of any of this at the time, for there were people who helped me. Friends I had sworn to protect. I’d made them also swear a promise never to say a word.

  So I laid a trail, of sufficient complexity to hope my friends would stay protected long enough. The truth can be a dangerous thing.

  I must write fast. I fear they will come for me soon. I must tell and then hide my story while I have time.

  I pleaded with my father to get out of Coventry, but he refused to act on what he called “a whim”. After Mother died, and then my brother, he was so hard to reason with. There must be evidence, he told me, proper evidence, or he’d not believe it. But though I worked night after night in this secret room, I failed.

  Yes, I am a traitor. I accept my fate, as any good traitor should.

  But a traitor to whom? My country? My family? My friends? Myself? For what is loyalty? What if each of these loyalties is divided? Which one of country, family, friends, self is to be saved then?

  My family are all dead. I do not care what happens to me. But I care that someone, one day, might follow the clues I laid and know the truth. That all I ever wanted was to save my father. This thought gives a little peace to my troubled mind.

  I admit my guilt. I confess to all my crimes. And if loving someone too much is a crime, I confess to that as well.

  A bird flies past through the skylight and Bones looks up and wags his tail, thumping dust off the rug.

  The display board at Bletchley got changed.

  BP’S INCREDIBLE SECRET the title says now.

  HUT 6 WORKER GRANTED ROYAL PARDON

  I put the cuttings back in their envelope and smooth the flap shut.

  Do you believe in ghosts? I do. I believe in the past, anyway. How it can come b
ack and touch you even after years and years. Is that what being haunted means?

  Bones’s muzzle twitches. I think about Lily in her prison cell, blaming herself and all alone. Only she wasn’t alone, not really. She had people who cared about her. The people at Bletchley who helped her and she wanted to protect. Her landlady. Hilda. Dad, and now me.

  I’ve put one of Auntie Hilda’s old war medals on the windowsill for Lily, below the eye she etched. She might not have saved her own dad, but she helped me save mine.

  I go downstairs and get my coat on and I go outside, and they’re waiting for me in the garden, smiling: Mum and Hannah. And Dad.

  We step into the woods, arm in arm, the four of us. Brother, sister, mother, father. Striding through the shadows and the sunlight, keeping walking on until we’re hidden by the trees.

  “The temptation now to ‘own up’ to our friends and families as to what our work has been is a very real and natural one. It must be resisted absolutely.”

  Commander Edward Travis, Director,

  Bletchley Park, VE Day, 1945

  There was no Lily Kenley. There’s no moonbeam in the ceiling; no secret room behind a shifting wooden panel of the Mansion ballroom (although you ought to visit Bletchley Park and check these things for yourself to be sure).

  But there were griffins either side of the Mansion doorway the last time I looked, and during the Second World War there were real life code-breakers who were very, very good at keeping secrets. And so good at what they did that their work probably chopped two whole years off the War.

  But once-upon-a-time there were plans to get rid of Bletchley Park. Plans to flatten the site; maybe one day build a supermarket and concrete it over with a car park. Luckily some people didn’t like that idea. That couldn’t be allowed to happen to somewhere so important, could it? So a few years ago a campaign was started, and the word began to spread, and the message travelled fast, and in July 2011 the Queen unveiled a memorial at Bletchley Park to honour the people who worked there, at last. In October 2011, funding was announced to continue restoring the site, including the precious, tumbledown Hut 6 I saw when I was first there. Which all goes to show just what can be done when there’s something worth saving, and people who care enough about saving it.