by Ben Jeapes
“Keep it that way. Now, you are of course entirely innocent of any law-breaking but, sadly, you are massively guilty of all the charges Barry will bring against you. I don’t think Barry would ever believe the facts as they stand–” Ted rolled his eyes at the understatement, “and so, to avoid you receiving an unjust punishment, I must regretfully advise you–”
“Not to be one hundred per cent factual?”
“Off the record, I wouldn’t even go up to ten per cent without a damn good reason. On the record, with that understood, may I put to you a version of events that your stepfather might find easier to grasp–”
*
Of course, it hadn’t been quite so obvious as Malcolm coming round and immediately donning his wig and gown. He had dropped by as a concerned employer to check that Ted was all right. What’s that, Barry? You want to know what happened last night? Well, there’s a perfectly simple explanation. Let’s call him down and we can go through it now ...
“So, the idiot boy has a low opinion of the police,” Barry now said. “But you, Malcolm? Why didn’t you call them?”
“I might well have,” Malcolm agreed, “but then we had our little trouble in New Canal–”
Barry winced in sympathy. The local radio had been full of the mysterious blast in New Canal that had demolished a building and blocked the road.
“Yes, what the hell happened there? Do they know yet?”
“Perhaps they’ll put it down to a gas explosion,” Malcolm said calmly, “because what else could it have been? Anyway, by the time we’d got ourselves back together, Ted had vanished. I didn’t know where he’d got to, I thought he’s big enough to look after himself and I did have other concerns on my mind.”
Barry turned to Ted.
“And you found Robert,” he said without expression. “In the guy’s car. In the Close.”
Ted nodded. These facts were incontestable. He and Sarah and Robert had waited there for Barry and their mum to come and get them.
Malcolm took a long final sip of tea, smacked his lips and put the cup down. “Surely what really matters, Barry, is that you got everyone back.”
Ted’s stepfather and employer locked gazes as if a broadband telepathic conversation were buzzing between them. Barry blinked first. He looked down, looked up again, and nodded.
Malcolm and Ted made their way back to where Malcolm had parked in Henderson Close. Ted’s hands were shoved into his pockets and his feet scuffed the drive. They stopped at the car and their eyes met.
This, Ted realised, was the point where their relationship returned to normal. Neither of them owed anything to the other any longer. At this point Malcolm could quite reasonably sweep Ted out of his life and Ted wouldn’t blame him.
There were no clues on his face as to his intentions. Ted’s heart began to beat more heavily as Malcolm spoke.
“You’d better take the rest of the day off, Ted. You could do with a rest and the police will want to talk to you about how you came to find Robert. Stick with the same story and you’ll be fine. Tomorrow ... I may be a little tied up. Insurance and so on. Could you come in as normal and look after things with Zoe? Answer phone calls, take orders, make a note of any queries you can’t handle. Just keep it ticking over.”
Ted held his gaze for a moment.
“You’re not afraid I’ll nick anything?”
Malcolm sort-of smiled, shook his head a fraction.
“I know where you live if you do.”
Ted couldn’t play the game as well as Malcolm. His own smile grew a lot wider.
“Sure. I’ll come in tomorrow.”
“I’ll try and pop in.”
“Right.”
“Goodbye for now.”
“Bye. Say hi to Diana.”
“I will. Goodbye.”
“Bye.”
And Ted waved Malcolm off down the Close.
Chapter 31
Ted sat on the sofa next to Barry opposite two police officers. They looked back with a measured, calm sympathy that in no way was going to prevent them from doing their job.
“Ted, do you know a Stephen Miller?”
Salisbury was in gridlock because New Canal was closed while the authorities made absolutely sure there wasn’t going to be another gas explosion. Barry was working from home. Ted’s mum was still at hospital with Robert, and so Ted and Barry had spent the rest of the day orbiting mutually at a distance. Until the police came round.
Ted opened his mouth to answer but Barry got there first.
“’Course we do. He lives across the road.” He pointed out of the window.
“Yes,” Ted whispered, throat dry.
“Do you know him well?”
“Sure, they’ve known each other since nursery school,” Barry butted in, just as Ted was opening his mouth again. Ted rolled his eyes up at the ceiling.
“Yes,” he said again.
The policeman looked even more sympathetic, projecting earnestness out of large round eyes. “I’m very sorry to have to tell you that a body was found in the Cathedral Close this morning, and it has been identified as your friend Stephen. He had a wallet in his pocket with his student ID and dental records confirm it was him.”
Ted said nothing, though he had to bite his lip very hard. He hoped that would come within the range of reactions they would have expected.
“Christ!” Barry looked shocked. “That’s terrible. Do you know what happened to him?”
“We’re not at liberty to say yet, sir. Ted, when did you last see Stephen?”
Ted breathed steadily to calm his trembling jaw and prepared to speak.
“And what’s this got to do with Ted, anyway?” Barry demanded. Ted let the breath out again with a quiet growl.
“Ted’s number was the most called on Stephen’s phone, sir. Voice and text. Ted?”
“So why did you bother asking if Ted knew him?”
Ted got in quickly to answer the original question.
“A-a few days ago. He came round here. Uh. Tuesday evening.”
“Did he seem okay?”
“Yeah.” As always, Ted found it a huge relief to fall back on the simple truth. “We, uh, played some games and we, uh, did some work. We’re working ... we were working on some software. A programming project.”
“Clever buggers, the pair of them,” Barry said fondly. “All day, tappity tap on the computer – zero social skills but Ted’ll be a millionaire before he’s thirty.”
And you’ll be throttled before Ted’s seventeen if you don’t shut up, Ted thought.
“Ted, could Stephen drive a car?”
Ted had been expecting that. It must have taken about thirty seconds for the police to identify the car as belonging to Nigel, from St Ossie’s, who had apparently burned the place down. But of course Nigel hadn’t been Robert’s abductor because he had already been dead by the time the car got to the Close, so who had taken it?
“N-no. He hadn’t had lessons. Neither of us have. Had.”
“Did he often go out at night?”
“No, he–”
Barry butted in once more. “Stephen left his house to go to school or to come over here. He was your archetypal computer nerd, wasn’t he, Ted?”
Nowhere near, Ted thought, but within Barry’s frame of reference it was probably true.
“Yeah,” he whispered.
“Have you any idea why Stephen might have been out on Wednesday night or Thursday morning?”
Ted felt his eyes start to swim.
“No.” It came out more as a breath than a word. He so wasn’t going to cry in front of Barry. He stared at the floor and willed the tears away.
The cops didn’t have many more questions, apart from asking if they had seen Stephen’s mother recently. He just shook his head, still looking at the floor, and they didn’t follow the question up. Ted stayed where he was as Barry showed the cops out.
“Louise – Stephen’s mother – she’ll be identifying the body, I suppose?” h
e asked out in the hall.
“She might, sir, if we could find her–”
Ted bit back a sob and gnawed on a finger to bring himself under control. Barry came back in and stood in front of him, filling his vision so that he had to look up.
“Christ almighty, Ted, you poor sod. Your best friend ... I’m so sorry.”
“Thanks.”
“I–” Barry shuffled a little. “I talked a bit much back then, didn’t I?”
Ted waggled his hand from side to side.
“It’s just ... the fire, Robert, this ... I know it’s not your fault ... I just thought I might not have done enough to help you keep out of trouble before. Maybe I could be more supportive.” Barry coughed. “Anyway. I was in the middle of ... um. When they called–” He shuffled out of the room, and Ted could have sworn he started to flee just before he was out of the door.
Bloody hell, he thought. Barry defending him? That had to be a first ...
FRIDAY
Chapter 32
“I heard on the radio,” Zoe said, “they’re still trying to trace any aircraft that flew over Salisbury in the small hours yesterday morning.”
New Canal was open again. The staff of the Agora Bookshop were crammed into the shop’s small kitchenette for pre-opening coffee. The discovery of a body in the Close, which had obviously fallen from a considerable height, yet was some distance away from the cathedral, had made the national papers.
In Henderson Close, the police had been crawling over Stephen’s house while journalists swarmed outside and up and down the road, talking to neighbours. Others had tracked down Nigel’s family, already raw with grief, who now had to live with the knowledge that their loved one had apparently gone mad and caused the death of three children.
Even though the thief had gone, Ted thought, the bastard had left a stain behind him that would take a long time to disappear.
“Good luck to them,” Malcolm said now. He was looking into the middle distance over his cup, absently bumping his chin against the rim.
“Um, how’s the insurance?” Ted asked. Malcolm smiled a little without moving his cup from his mouth.
“They’re not buying that it was subsidence or termites. On the other hand, we do clearly have a shop with no windows, as does every other business and home in the street. Don’t worry, we’ll squeeze something out of them.”
The shop’s windows were currently covered up with large, flapping sheets of translucent plastic. A sign outside proudly displayed “business as usual”. It reminded Ted of his Year 7 project on the Blitz. Life went on.
“What about you, Ted?” Zoe asked. She didn’t specify anything. It was up to him to answer in any way he chose.
“Well, I’ve not flown again–” he said, trying to make light. Though he had tried, once or twice, in private with no one else watching. Stand on tiptoes, lift one foot in the air, bring it down again ... The air was as supportive as it usually was and his foot hit the floor with a thud.
Ted suspected his grasp of the Knowledge was like his ability to play a diminished seventh on the guitar. It was something he had managed to do, once. It had never got further than his short-term memory and now he was losing even that. He was happy to let it go.
“And they’re bringing my brother home today. The hospital want to keep him but he’s obviously not ill and my mum said no way, so–” He felt a pressure growing inside him and suddenly it blurted out. “What did he do to me? He said ... stuff to me – I mean, he despised me for being so easy to work on. And maybe he was right and I’ve just got to do better. But am I going to be a compulsive klepto for ever? Will I always have to look out in case I nick something?”
Zoe opened her mouth, closed it again, looked embarrassed.
“Maybe you will,” Malcolm said casually. “But, do you enjoy being a shoplifter? You’ve told me how it feels at the time, but after? Do you feel good?”
“No! I hate it!”
“Exactly. Why? If you’re such a perfect creation, why don’t you enjoy being what he made you?” He answered his own question. “Because there is a place inside you he just couldn’t get at. You found it once before, you told me. You can find it again and it’s an excellent place to start from, to begin the reconquest of Ted Gorse. And you have friends and family to help you.”
Ted wasn’t quite sure how but Malcolm had brought the conversation to the point he had intended to approach, elliptically, in about ten minutes’ time. Friends and family. He had to talk about it to someone. He had planned to do it here, on safe ground; let it out little by little ... but Malcolm’s off-hand comment pricked the bubble and to Ted’s horror it all came pouring out at once. He felt his eyes start to swim and he just had time to put the cup down, slopping coffee onto the counter, before he buried his face in his hands and bawled like a small child.
Immediately Zoe’s arms were around him.
“Hey, hey, Ted, hey–”
Tears blinded him. She led him to a chair and he felt it bump into the backs of his legs, so he sat down. She crouched beside him and held him close and let him howl into her hair.
He very faintly heard Malcolm murmur: “I wondered when that would happen.”
“Hey, Ted, sweetie–” A pause while Zoe shot Malcolm a glare. “What started that off, then?”
“Oh–” he mumbled. His head was resting against her chest and he felt absolutely nothing. “Everything.”
“Tell us about it.”
Stephen Nigel three dead kids Stephen’s mum can’t bring Stephen back I’m pathetic he despised me Stephen was in love with me ...
But none of those were Ted’s main concern.
“S’Barry,” he mumbled.
“What about him?”
“You know ... you know what he did? He–”
Zoe hugged him harder. “Ted, I know you don’t get on–”
“He defended me!” Ted wailed. “But–” He gulped. “But ... the thief made it pretty clear that ... that Barry was part of the plan to shape me too ... you know, I try to be as unlike him as I ... can ... but anyway, if that’s all Barry is, if Barry’s just a guy who got planted on my mum ... well, maybe it’s not his fault but she shouldn’t still be married to him, should she? But it would hurt her so much if he went, and Sarah too, and ... and–” His voice felt as if it was driving over road bumps as the sobs came back. “I don’t know what to do!”
“Did he say as much?” asked Malcolm after a pause. “Did he say, ‘I planted your stepfather in your life’?”
Ted reluctantly went back in his mind to that conversation.
“Yes–” But his voice trailed off. The thief hadn’t actually said it, in as many words. He hadn’t denied but he hadn’t said. “No.”
“Does Barry abuse her, dear?” Zoe asked. “Or you, or your sister or brother?”
“No!” Ted frowned and snuffled. His nose was running but he was beyond embarrassment. “No. I mean, he criticises me all the time but–”
“Is he a crook? Does he sleep around? Does he drink or do drugs?”
“Well, no and no and no, but–”
“Then I think it’s for your mum to decide if she falls for him, don’t you? So what if he was planted on her? Every couple has to meet somehow.”
Ted blinked at her out of salty, red-rimmed eyes. “You think?”
“Ted, if she ever had to choose between you and him, she’d choose you,” Malcolm said. “Then she’d hate you for making her choose at all. If your mother’s marriage is another of the thief’s lies and it all comes apart now he’s gone, then she’ll need your support, but I promise, you don’t want to be the one who caused it. Take the day off, Ted. It looks like you’ve got unfinished business at home.”
*
The car overtook Ted on his bike just before he turned off the main road. By the time he got up to 34 Henderson Close they had pulled up on the drive. Sarah got out on one side. On the other, Barry held the door open while Ted’s mum helped Robert out. Barry threw Ted a
surprised look.
“Malcolm gave me the day off,” Ted mumbled. “Thought I’d do more good here.”
His mum’s face shone and she turned Robert round gently.
“Look, darling. Here’s Ted.”
The brothers took each other in. Robert’s was a look of frank, wide-eyed awe. He’s still only nine, Ted reminded himself. Nine, in the body of a thirteen-year-old. It was Ted’s job to help him catch up.
“Hi, mate,” he said cheerfully. “You’re looking good.”
“You’re different too,” said Robert, in a voice barely audible through shyness and lack of practice. He looked sadly at their mum. “Everyone’s different.”
“I’ll show you the games we’ve got,” said Ted. “They got way cooler while you were away.”
“Let’s get you up to your room, shall we?” said their mum, flashing Ted a grateful smile. “That’s still the same. And then you can play with Ted.”
She took Robert’s hand and led him into the house. Sarah scampered after them, flashing Ted a big smile which he only returned with a twitch of the mouth.
And then there was Barry ...
Barry pushed the car doors closed and walked round to the driver’s side to put the car away. He found Ted there, waiting for him. Man and boy looked appraisingly at each other.
“Yes?” Barry asked.
If I still had the Knowledge I could reduce you to jelly ...
But he had Malcolm and Zoe’s advice still ringing in his ears.
“Thanks,” said Ted. “For bringing Robert home.” He held out his hand.
[The End]
Acknowledgements
David Fickling took a badly flawed manuscript and gave it the shove that helped it become what you are holding in your hands. Chris Amies, Tina Anghelatos, Liz Holliday, Andy Lane, Janet Mattes and Gus Smith suffered patient and sometimes impatient exposure to multiple drafts. David Challis acted as geek consultant. Paul Beardsley (who bought the story that mutated into this novel), Peadar Ó Guilín and above all Liz Williams gave disinterested adult perspectives. Simon Bradshaw advised on appropriate barristerial conduct; any errors or liberties taken are my own fault, or possibly Malcolm’s.
