Hello Darkness (12 page)

“Like what?” Zofia sounded interested. If she was freaked by the whole thing she was doing a good job of hiding it.

“Oh, I don’t know. The angle of my desk or the way a leaf was blowing down the street. It’d be like it was all a
message
.”

“Sounds kind of cool.”

I laughed. “Yeah, well, I suppose it made each day into a sort of adventure. But then it stopped being fun, and I couldn’t leave my room because of all the crap in my head. That’s when my mum and dad got me to the shrink.”

“And he fixed you up?”

“It was a she. But, yeah, I guess. Well, she gave me some drugs. Strong drugs. And the world stopped talking to me the way it had.”

“You almost sound as if you miss it.”

I shrugged. Then there was another silence, and I slurped the last of my coffee.

“I suppose,” said Zofia, her voice quietly caressing, “all this … stuff that’s going on now must … be hard for you?”

“Tougher on the stick insects and the guinea pigs.”

“So what the hell
is
going on?”

“You want the facts or my interpretation?”

“Both.”

“Right, all we know for certain is that someone killed the sticks – probably poisoning them with ethyl acetate—”

“Nail varnish remover?”

“That’s the stuff. Then they – and I’ve got to assume it’s the same guy or guys – sliced up the guinea pigs.”

“But why?”

“That’s where the water gets muddy. As everyone knows, I got sucked into this because I was on the scene. Now I’m expected to sort it out. It’s my only chance of clearing my name. And if I flunk it, then the school play gets cancelled, and I’m going to end up dangling from a lamppost with a feather boa around my neck. And when they cut me down I’ll be expelled. The way I figure it, whoever’s behind this has a pretty neat twin-pronged manoeuvre going on. They want to break the Queens, which I’m guessing is the first objective, and they want to make it look like it’s me that’s responsible.”

“And you’ve got someone in mind? I mean the evil genius behind all this?”

“There’s only one man who has the right combination of cunning and power. The Sh—”

“Don’t say it,” she said, and suddenly she looked desolate, like the last flower in a muddy field.

“But why…?”

And I looked at her, at her downcast green eyes that were bright now with tears.

“He’s my father.”

“WHAT?”

“Shankley. He’s my father.”

“But you’re called…”

“Novak. My mother’s name. They are divorced.”

“So that’s why you disappeared at the lockers.”

There were black lines on her cheeks. I felt as numb as a novocained mouth.

The green eyes.

I should have known.

“I’ll get a napkin from the counter,” I said, meaning to use the few seconds it would take me as quality thinking time.

When I came back she was gone. She hadn’t touched her coffee. A man in another booth was staring at me. He was wearing a green hat.

“Did you see where my friend went?” I asked, but he just buried himself in his coat, and pulled the hat down over his face.

“Your hat sucks,” I said as I left.

I walked home the long way, which took me down past the school. I was trying to fit the new information into the pattern. But that was the problem. There was no pattern. There was only white noise.

And the Dwarf.

But I didn’t want to think about the Dwarf now, so I focused back on the girl. Zofia was the Shank’s daughter. Stated plainly like that it seemed insane. How could something so ugly produce something so beautiful? Ugly in spirit, I mean, although even physically the Shank wasn’t going to get a contract as an underwear model. The whole thing was yet another layer of complication slapped on top of what was already a head-banger. It was as if someone had hidden a Rubik’s Cube inside a massively knotted ball of string.

I tried to unknot the string. The key (and yeah, I know, keys don’t help you much with string) was our old friend coincidence. The Zofia–Shank–guinea pig nexus was just coincidence. Had to be. Someone had tried to implicate me, and, by pure chance, they’d stashed the bodies in Shank’s daughter’s locker by mistake. And even the fact that the Shank and Zofia were related – did that have to signify anything? We’d heard the rumours that the Shank had been divorced. And I supposed that once Zofia was kicked out of the convent she didn’t have much of a choice about where she’d go. But it must have been tough. Tough in all kinds of ways.

By the time I reached home my head was throbbing like a stubbed toe. I swallowed four aspirin, gagging on the chalky sourness. There was no sign of the cat. No sign of life at all. I went to bed and dreamed of nothing, for ever.

I
saw the mob as soon as I got through the school gates the next morning. I’d been thinking about Zofia. My plan was to find her and say sorry. Say sorry for what? Well, the rule is the same for God and for women. Just apologize and don’t worry about what it is you’ve done wrong – they’ll think of something. The thing was to get her on my side again. Someone to watch my back. Someone who’d give a shit whenever I got my head kicked in.

The crowd put Zofia out of my mind. It wasn’t the usual school ruck, the sort you get gathering around a fight or a nasty accident. It was silent and utterly still. I knew straight away what had happened. Not the details, of course, just the general outline.

It was the chickens.

I pushed my way to the front. I was too late for the first screams, and all that remained of the crowd’s emotion was the stunned fascination elicited by violent death.

The chickens – three pale-grey spinsters from the same brood – lived in a wood-framed wire cage, with a cosy, straw-packed wooden box at one end. The names “Olga”, “Maria” and “Irina” were written in white paint on the outside of the box. Some said that Olga was sensible and serious, that Maria was witty and vivacious and that Irina was rather silly and romantic, but to me they were just chickens, and I couldn’t tell them apart.

The only way into the cage was through the hinged roof, which was secured with a serious padlock. Well, that was the theory.

I peered through the wire. Blood and feathers and unidentifiable gobbets of flesh were smeared, scattered, sprayed all over the run. There was nothing left that looked remotely like a chicken. Except for a beak. A solitary beak, attached to nothing beyond its own symbolism. I also saw that a ten-centimetre square had been cut through the wire.

I closed my eyes and
saw
it happen. The early hours of the morning. A figure, dressed all in black, stealthy, furtive, unhurried yet urgent. The harsh
snick, snick, snick
of the wire cutters. The three sisters clucking nervously, edging back into the warmth of the straw. The dark figure finishes his work and slips silently away. The chickens emerge to sniff at the gap in the wire. Freedom beckons, but freedom to some is more terrifying than captivity, and the three sisters return to the familiar enclosure at the end of the run. And so, twenty minutes later, when the old dog fox comes padding along on his nightly rounds, he finds his supper as neatly packaged for him as a microwave pizza. In a few seconds of efficient butchery, the chickens are dead and dismembered.

“Why? Why? Why?”

I recognized the sad tones of Mr Vole and opened my eyes. I turned to see his bleak, grey face. He was speaking, it seemed, to himself.

“I told them. Bring them in. Bring them in. I sent a memo. They were not safe.”

Desolate though he sounded, it was the first time I’d heard the Principal speak without every other word being an “er” or an “ah”.

He looked at me. Recognition flickered, but then the flame went out. The kids in the crowd saw me, realized who I was, and a space opened up around me.

“Him,” said someone.

“Murderer,” hissed another.

“The mental kid.”

I saw teeth bared. I saw eyes filled with hate and vengeance. I felt spittle slap into my face. I felt the crunch of fist and foot.

I managed to spin and tear myself out of the hands that grasped, but it was Vole who saved me. He put his arms around me and dragged me out of the mêlée. At first, the kids, half-blinded with rage, didn’t heed the fact that it was the Principal who was protecting me, and carried on trying to land kicks and punches. But then other teachers arrived, along with a gang of prefects, and the crowd split up into smaller knots and solitary snarlers. They left, looking over their shoulders like a clan of hyenas driven off a kill by lions.

“Better get to your, er, ah,” said Vole.

It was good advice. I scampered with all the dignity of Rat Zermatt to my form room.

Out of the frying pan and into the scorching
merde
. As soon as I entered the form room, I knew things were going to get dirty. Pretty-boy Wilson, my official class tormentor, was waiting for me. He and three or four other boys were sitting on the desks at the front of the room. As I came through the door, he nodded, and I noticed someone slip out behind me.

“Psycho’s here,” Wilson said, in a whining, psycho voice. The faces around him were hard and fierce.

“Get screwed, Wilson.”

I wasn’t in the mood for a fight, and I tried to reach my desk. Suddenly the boys were standing in my way.

“You’ve gone too far this time, nutter,” Wilson said. “No one cared about the stick insects and the guinea pigs, but you shouldn’t have killed the chickens. They belonged to all of us. You’re a mental case and a murderer, and we don’t want you here.”

I looked behind the mob, trying to find a friendly face. But even the girls stared at me with hatred, and the only thing that diluted the hatred was fear.

“No one’s gonna help you, loser. You’ve no friends here. You’ve never had any friends here. You’re on your own.”

That hurt. It hurt because it was true. I had always been on my own.

“The teacher…” I began, but then stopped. It sounded lamer than a three-legged dog.

“Won’t help you. Mr Vass is going to be a bit late today.”

I thought about the kid that had left as I came in. I imagined him talking to Vass, using some ruse to keep him away. It wouldn’t be hard. Mr Vass was a good guy, and he’d looked after me as much as he could, but he would sometimes get distracted by a pattern in the carpet or a shadow on a wall.

“You know I had nothing to do with—”

I never finished the sentence. Someone punched the side of my face. It was a flapping, soft sort of punch, but I didn’t see it coming, and it’s always the one you don’t see coming that puts you on your knees.

I looked up. The faces were blurred. I knew why, and what it signified.

“Hey, look, the psycho’s crying,” said someone, not Wilson.

Wilson leered at me.

“Not so tough, eh, Middleton? Not unless you’re killing little insects and chickens.”

“What do you want?” I asked, feeling defeat on me, like skunk spray.

Wilson put on a face that parodied concern.

“We just want you to go.” He flicked his hand back towards the door. “Get out of this school and don’t come back.”

I got up and staggered towards the door. Snot was running out of my nose. I was a cur running with my tail between my legs. But I could still bite. I looked at Wilson, looked at them all. “You’re going to look back on what you did here. You’re going to remember it. And you’re going to beg me for mercy. Beg me on your knees.”

As I left I heard a huge sarcastic wail come up from the class, followed by guffaws and apelike laughter.

On the way out I bumped into Mr Vass and the sneak who’d been sent out to delay him. I careened into the wall and ran on. Vass was too surprised even to yell after me.

I’D
reached the lowest point. That sorry excuse for a punch had made me weep. And then I’d uttered a threat so feeble it wouldn’t have scared a nervous rabbit.

I crashed through the front doors of the school and stood out in the grey light. The rain had come on again, but I welcomed it on my face, where it washed away the tears and the snot, and brought me back to myself. I was in trouble. Serious trouble. It wasn’t just the Lardies and the Queens who were on my back now, but the whole school. The only way to save myself was to find the real killer. And I had one clue.

Our school caretaker, the Dwarf.

The story went something like this. The Dwarf had been a pupil at the school back when many of the parents of the current generation were there, and the tale had been passed on down to us, warped, perhaps, by the tricks of memory and the usual lies and exaggerations that creep into all stories, but true in its essentials.

The Dwarf was always a tiny creature: frail, crook-backed – even his face was contorted, as if invisible hands around his forehead and chin were twisting or wringing him out. Looking like that in a school like this was bad news for the kid. He was quick, so he could usually escape the big predators, but there were bound to be times when they caught him, and then a good old-fashioned goading would take place.

So things were always tough for him. But then he made a mistake, and things got a whole lot worse. His mistake – isn’t it
always
the mistake – was to fall in love. The girl he fell for was called Galadriel Curtain, and she belonged to another. That might not have mattered so much if the other hadn’t been Jud Fray. Fray was blond-haired and blue-eyed enough for any girl, and even his muscles had muscles. He was also a bad kid. You’d have called him evil, except that evil requires a rudimentary intelligence, and Fray was a bare evolutionary notch up from the gibbon. He was the kind of dullard whose mother had to write
This is you
in crayon on the bathroom mirror to stop him from punching it.

Now the thing about the Dwarf is that a silken poet’s tongue lurked inside his twisted mouth. From a distance he spied the fair Galadriel, and fell in love up to his armpits. Naturally, Galadriel didn’t think much of being courted by a creature that looked like it had just climbed off a church roof. But he plied her with sweet words and soft endearments and stolen gifts. He made her feel in turn as though she were an enchantress in a fable, a fair maid in a tale of knights and dragons, a witty Shakespearean heroine (although, of course, all the wit was his). And finally Galadriel overcame her revulsion, closed her eyes and, concealed from the world by the huge metal bins outside the school kitchens, submitted to a kiss.