Boom!

5 Burglary

I woke up in the middle of the night, thinking that Mr Kidd was standing over my bed holding a bread knife, grinning broadly and saying, “Have a good evening. Have a good evening. Have a good evening,” as the fluorescent blue light flickered in his eyes.

I checked inside the wardrobe. I checked under the bed. I checked the balcony and the bathroom and behind the sofa. And I still couldn’t get back to sleep. So I found a packet of garibaldi biscuits and watched Star Wars until everyone else started waking up. Then I went into my room and pressed my forehead against the radiator for five minutes.

I came out and told everyone I had a sore throat and diarrhoea and it was clearly a very bad idea for me to go to school. Obviously I couldn’t say at home for ever. But for the time being I felt a lot safer lying on the sofa under a rug watching The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.

“You poorly, poorly thing,” sighed Becky, who could read me like a book. “I think we ought to call an ambulance, don’t you? Shall I ring for one now?”

“Mum?” I said. “I think I’ve got a temperature. Here. Feel.”

But Mum was too busy, whirling round the flat putting lipstick on and grabbing presentation folders. “Get Dad to feel it, darling,” she said, checking her hair in the glass front of the cooker. “I’m late already.”

“I’m ringing the hospital now,” announced Becky, picking up the phone.

“Act your age and not your shoe size,” snapped Mum, taking the receiver from her, slamming it back down and scooting through the door in a cloud of perfume.

Dad wasn’t much help either. “School is important,” he said, lying on the sofa, wearing his pyjamas and watching breakfast TV. “Every day counts. You need education. You need exam results.”

“But, Dad. Feel my head. Quickly.” My forehead was cooling off. The radiator was painful and I didn’t fancy doing it a second time.

“You need qualifications,” he said, giving me his top-grade, serious-father look. “Qualifications are what stop you ending up sitting on the sofa in your pyjamas watching breakfast television while everybody else goes off to work.”

“But…”

“Jimbo” — he pointed his toast at me — “you can still walk. You can still talk. You’re not coughing blood and none of your bones are broken. Go to school.”

I thought about telling him the truth. The walkie-talkie. Spleeno ken mondermill. The robot-piggy-bank eyes. But it sounded crazy. And the last thing I needed was a weekly session with the school psychologist.

I went to get dressed, then picked up my bags and slouched out of the front door to the lift.

As it happened, there was nothing to worry about. We weren’t bundled into the back of a van. We weren’t strangled in the toilets by men in black balaclavas. Mr Kidd nodded a polite hello to us in the corridor and Mrs Pearce did the Boer War without batting an eyelid.

By lunch time I had convinced myself that it was nothing. Mr Kidd wore strange contact lenses. Or we’d seen the blue light of a police car reflected in his eyes.

He and Mrs Pearce were members of an Esperanto club, or sharing some obscure joke. I didn’t care what. I just wanted to forget the whole thing and stop being scared.

Of course, Charlie wasn’t going to let that happen. “Come on, Jimbo,” he said. “This is hot stuff. Tell me the last time anything this exciting ever happened to either of us.”

The answer was ‘never’. I didn’t say it.

He soldiered on. “Perhaps there’s a boring explanation. Perhaps there isn’t. Perhaps Kidd and Pearce are bank robbers talking in code. Perhaps they’re drug dealers. Perhaps they’re spies.”

I mumbled incoherently.

“I’m going to follow them,” said Charlie. “I want to know what they do after school. I want to know where they go and who they speak to. Because they’re up to something. I know it. And I’m going to find out what it is. So…are you in? Or not?”

“Charlie,” I said, “I just need to get some sleep.”

“Suit yourself.”

I got home to one of Dad’s classic dinners. It was called shepherd’s pie, apparently. Though it wasn’t like any other shepherd’s pie I’d ever tasted. I think Dad just arranged a pile of meat and potatoes in a large baking dish, then attacked it with a blowtorch. It looked like something pulled out of a house fire.

I took a mouthful, then gave up. Becky took a mouthful, then gave up. Mum told us to stop being so fussy. Then she took a mouthful, retched visibly and used a word that parents really shouldn’t use in front of children. And we all had a double helping of pears and custard to make up for the lack of main course.

Craterface turned up at the door after supper but Mum told him that he wasn’t allowed into the flat until he’d apologized to me. Apologizing was not really his thing so he and Becky departed in a monstrous huff. Mum then went off to do some paperwork in the bedroom and Dad and I sat down to watch The Phantom Menace. It felt good sitting next to Dad. It was like being little again. All in all I had pretty good parents, I reckoned. Dad might occasionally try to poison me, but he never attacked me with secateurs.

I fell asleep just after Darth Maul tries to assassinate Qui-Gon Jinn. Dad must then have carried me to the bedroom because the next thing I knew I was waking up after eight hours’ quality sleep, feeling a good deal better.

Charlie was a bit stand-offish at school. I’d offended him by not wanting to be involved in Phase Two of the plan. But I’d made up my mind. I’d had enough stress over the last few days. I didn’t want to be caught stalking a teacher. I told myself to be patient. Charlie would get bored soon. Or he’d be caught and hauled in front of the headmistress and given a string of detentions. Either way the result would be the same. Life would return to normal.

We met up at the gates after school, like we did most days, and I asked if he wanted to come round to the flat.

He didn’t. “Things to do. People to watch,” he said, patting his pocket mysteriously and heading off to the bus stop.

So I wandered into town on my own, went to Waterstone’s and bought a copy of 500 Recipes for Beginners. I splashed out on gift wrapping then made my way home.

Dad didn’t know whether to be deeply touched or slightly offended. I told him I’d spent a large chunk of my pocket money, so he’d better use it. I didn’t want my parents getting divorced. And if that meant Dad learning how to make a proper shepherd’s pie, then he had to learn how to make a proper shepherd’s pie.

“It’s like building a model aircraft,” I said. “You just follow the instructions.”

I was wrong about Charlie. He wasn’t getting bored. And he hadn’t been caught. Every time I bumped into him he said, “Sorry, Jimbo. On a job. Can’t stop.”

I was getting lonely. And bored. And irritated.

On Sunday morning, however, I was sitting on the wall of the park opposite the flats trying to remember what I used to do with myself before Charlie came along and wondering which of my non-best friends I should ring. Suddenly Charlie materialized next to me.

“God, you made me jump.”

Using his unbandaged hand he slid an orange notebook out of his pocket. The word Spudvetch! was written across the cover.

“What’s this?”

“Open it,” said Charlie.

I opened it. It was Mr Kidd’s diary. Except that it wasn’t written by Mr Kidd. It was written by Charlie.

“Hang on,” I said. “How do you know what he’s watching on TV?”

“He didn’t shut the curtains,” said Charlie.

“Yeah, but—”

“I was standing in his garden,” said Charlie. “There’s a gap in the fence.”

“You’re crazy.”

I returned to the book. There was a map. And there were photographs.

The second half of the notebook was devoted to Mrs Pearce. Diary. Map. Photographs. There was even a photocopy of her library card. It was the kind of notebook you find in a psychopath’s bedside table. Next to the voodoo dolls and automatic weapons. I began to wonder whether Charlie was losing his mind.

“They live like monks,” he said. “They don’t go to the pub. They don’t visit friends. They do their shopping. They weed the garden. They clean the car.” He looked at me. “Don’t you think that’s suspicious?”

“No,” I said. “Suspicious is when you have a bunker under the house, Charlie. Suspicious is when you leave home wearing a false beard. Suspicious is when you visit a deserted warehouse with a hundred thousand pounds in a suitcase.”

He wasn’t listening. “I’m going to have to get inside one of their houses. Mrs Pearce’s probably. Better access. Thursday evening. During the teachers’ meeting. I need to have a poke around.”

“No,” I said. “No, no, no, no, no. Have you any idea what will happen if you get caught? The police. The headmistress. Your parents…”

It was a stupid, insane, suicidal idea. Which makes it quite hard to explain why I decided to help. I guess it boils down to this. Charlie was my best friend. I missed him. And I couldn’t think of anything better to do. Really stupid reasons which were never going to impress the police, the headmistress or my parents.

Looking back, I reckon this was the moment when my whole life started to go pear-shaped.

On Thursday evening we jumped onto a number 45 bus, got off at Canning Road and went into the park at the bottom of Mrs Pearce’s garden. Ideally we would have gone in after dark, but Mrs Pearce never left her house after dark so we had no choice.

We waited for a small group of boys to disappear from round the swings, then headed over to the fence. And it was only then that a really important question occurred to me.

“Charlie?”

“What?”

“How are we going to get in?”

He smiled and extracted a key from his pocket.

“You stole her house key?” I couldn’t believe it.

“No, Jimbo,” said Charlie. “I borrowed it. Last week. She puts it under the flowerpot when she goes out. I popped into town and got a copy made.”

I didn’t know whether to be impressed or horrified. Still, I reasoned, if you were going to break into someone’s house it was probably better to let yourself in through the door, rather than smashing a window.

“We don’t have much time,” said Charlie. “Let’s go.”

Once we were inside I began to see what Charlie meant. The house wasn’t just ordinary. It was super-ordinary. Creepy ordinary. Like a film set. Floral china. A tea tray. The Radio Times. A little silver carriage clock on the mantelpiece. A tartan shopping trolley by the front door. It really did look suspicious.

We opened drawers. We looked in cupboards. We looked under the sofa. Quite what we were looking for I had no idea. On the other hand, if were acting logically we wouldn’t have been in the house in the first place.

With every passing minute a cold hand was starting to close around my heart, and when the clock struck five I gripped Charlie’s arm so hard I left nail-marks.

Upstairs was just as characterless as down. There was a travel guide to Scotland. But that was the only piece of evidence that a real, living, breathing human being lived here.

“Right,” I said. “Let’s get out.”

“We haven’t done the loft,” said Charlie.

“Are you out of your tiny mind?” I whispered.

He was. On the other hand, I didn’t want to leave the house on my own. If I was going to bump into Mrs Pearce I wanted to do it with company.

Charlie climbed onto the banisters, lifted the square white hatch and moved it to one side.

“Please, Charlie,” I said. “Don’t do this.”

But Charlie wasn’t taking advice. He grabbed the side of the hatch and hoisted himself up into the darkness. He vanished briefly, then his head reappeared. “Now you. Climb onto the banisters.”

I climbed onto the banisters and he reached down and pulled me up. When I was inside the loft Charlie took a torch from his back pocket with his working hand and I followed the oval of light as it swept over the joists.

There was a box of Christmas decorations. There were some old floor tiles. There was an empty suitcase. There was a spider the size of a gerbil.

“There’s nothing here,” I said. “Please, Charlie. I want to go home now.”

But he was making his way over to the hot-water tank and the pile of elderly cardboard boxes sitting around it. One by one he started to open them and investigate the contents. I crouched next to him and started to help so we could get this over and done with as quickly as possible.

It was me who found it. A metal biscuit tin pushed into the recess beneath the tank. I pulled it out, blew the dust off, held it in the beam of Charlie’s torch and popped the lid open. Inside were seven brass wristbands, an Ordnance Survey map of somewhere in Scotland and a piece of paper. Except that it wasn’t paper. At least, not any kind of paper I’d ever seen. It was like tin foil, but smoother and softer. Yet when I unfolded it I could feel that it was as strong as leather. On it was printed:

“We have hit the jackpot, baby,” said Charlie.

And that was the exact moment when we heard Mrs Pearce come in through the front door downstairs.

“Don’t move,” said Charlie.

He stepped round me and slid the square panel back over the hatch, shutting us both into the attic, and for a couple of seconds I thought I might be sick, which would not have been helpful.

“Charlie?” I whispered. “What the hell are you doing?”

He tiptoed back round me and picked up the piece of stuff that wasn’t quite paper.

“Charlie?”

“Shhh!”

He slipped the orange Spudvetch! notebook out of one pocket and a pen out of the other. Putting the torch in his mouth and holding the notebook open with the bandaged paw of his right hand, he began to copy the incomprehensible message.

I sat with my face in my hands and breathed deeply and counted slowly to calm myself down. It didn’t work. Through the ceiling I could hear Mrs Pearce moving about, opening doors, rattling the cutlery drawer, filling the kettle. It occurred to me that we might very well be stuck in the loft until she left for school in the morning. And then it occurred to me that I would need to go to the toilet sometime between now and tomorrow morning. And then it occurred to me that I was going to be arrested for weeing through the bedroom ceiling of my history teacher.

“Done,” said Charlie, sliding the notebook back into his pocket and putting the message back into the biscuit tin. He pushed it under the water tank and repositioned the rest of the boxes. “Now, let’s make our getaway.”

“How, precisely, are we going to do that?” I asked.

He got to his feet, cracked his knuckles and said, “Rev your engine, Jimbo.”

He put his hands against the roof, jiggled it and wiggled it, and after a minute or so a slate came free. He pushed his arm further through the hole and frisbee’d the slate out into the night. There was a second’s silence, then the slate hit a greenhouse with an almighty shattering of glass.

“Now,” said Charlie. “Listen.”

We waited for the sound of the back door being opened, then Charlie said, “Go, go, go.”

I lifted the hatch, slid it to one side and lowered myself onto the banisters. Charlie did the same and slotted the hatch back into place. We’d just begun to go downstairs when Mrs Pearce walked into the hallway below us. We froze. She hadn’t seen us yet, but it was surely only a matter of seconds before she turned round.

She was standing very still, staring at the front door, watching something or listening for something. I felt a single drop of sweat make its way down my spine.

And then she did something we’d seen Mr Kidd do in the playground, just after his eyes went blue. Carefully, she placed her right hand over her left wrist and lifted her head for a few seconds. We couldn’t see her face, we couldn’t see her eyes, but something about the gesture gave me the willies.

Then it was over. Her arms dropped to her sides, she picked up her keys from beside the telephone, took her coat from the rack, opened the front door and stepped outside, shutting it behind her.

We sprinted down the stairs, along the corridor and through the kitchen. We unbolted the back door, ran across the garden and vaulted the fence before you could say, “Barnal ropperdonk.”

We didn’t stop until we’d left the park and run for five or six streets. We finally came to a halt at a bus stop on the main road. I was petrified. I was out of breath. I looked at my hands and I could see them actually shaking.

“God,” said Charlie, “that was fantastic.”

“Next time, Charlie,” I said, “you’re doing it on your own.”

I got home expecting a grilling. About where I’d been. And why I’d been there so long. And why I hadn’t told anyone beforehand. But Mum was working late, Becky was out with Craterface and Dad was so engrossed in his cooking that he wouldn’t have noticed me bringing a cow into the flat. I dumped my bag and sat down. He took a spoonful of something from the pan on the cooker and carried it carefully over to me. “Try this.”

So I tried it. And it was really very good indeed.

“Tomato and orange soup,” said Dad, “with basil and cream and a dash of cognac.”

“Wow,” I said. “Mum definitely won’t divorce you now.”