The Borribles: Across the Dark Metropolis (39 page)

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Authors: Michael de Larrabeiti

Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Fantasy & Magic

BOOK: The Borribles: Across the Dark Metropolis
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‘Knocker,’ she said, ‘what do you think you’re doing? Don’t try to be a bloody hero.’ She began to push at the bricks that Knocker had. just laid in place. ‘Get in here with us, you fool. Quick.’
Knocker struck with the trowel and cut Chalotte’s knuckles. ‘Stop her!’ he called out. ‘Stop her or she’ll have the wall down.’
Chalotte was jostled and fell from sight. There was the sound of voices and then she reappeared. ‘All right,’ she said, looking behind her, ‘I’ll just talk. Leave me alone.’
Knocker jumped to the floor again, retrieved the bricks that had fallen and put them back in position. He laid another. Three more and the wall would be complete.
Chalotte’s voice was toneless, as if she had travelled to the very end of life and found nothing there. ‘Why, Knocker?’ she asked. ‘Why must you stay out there and be caught?’
Knocker flopped some more cement down. ‘Because there’s no other way, Chalotte. This is a good hiding place but it won’t be worth a light unless it’s disguised from the outside.’ Knocker put another brick up and went for more cement and two bricks. This was it. All he could see through the hole now was half of Chalotte’s face. She stared at him and he felt that he could not bear to leave her. At the same time he knew that if he did not everyone in that band of Adventurers, and the horse, would perish. He spread the last trowel of cement and looked at the girl’s filthy face.
‘It’ll be all right, Chal,’ he said. ‘I’ll be there with you, in Neasden.’
‘Let me come with you,’ said Chalotte. Her face looked smaller, distant even, through the brick-sized hole. ‘We could both lead the coppers astray. Do it together.’
Knocker’s heart swelled enough to break his ribs. He would have liked nothing better. ‘No, Chalotte,’ he said. ‘I’ve bricked up the wall
now and we haven’t got time to knock it down and build it again. The coppers will be here any minute. This way there’s a chance of you all escaping. I don’t want to get caught, sure I don’t, but I’d hate it even more if you were caught with me.’
Chalotte pressed her face close to the hole and looked at Knocker hard. ‘You’re not getting up to a Spiff trick, are you?’ she said. ‘You’re not after a third name: Knocker Burnthand Slaughterhouse?’
Knocker shook his head. ‘I’m past all that, Chalotte. I did a lot of thinking down Flinthead’s mine. If it hadn’t been for Sussworth after our horse I wouldn’t even be here now.’
‘Then what is it?’ persisted Chalotte. ‘I know you inside out. You’re up to something and if you expect me to stay in here with the others and do nothing then you’ll have to tell me or I’ll have this wall down, Stonks or no Stonks, coppers or no coppers.’
Knocker listened. There was no sound of movement in the tunnels. Something must have delayed the police in their advance. He looked at Chalotte again. ‘There’s eight dead dwarfs out here,’ he began, ‘and I moved them all so they were touching the power rail. When I came back to the control cabin I just wanted to switch the power on in this section, where the dwarfs were, just for a second or two, burn ’em to cinders. I didn’t want the power going all over the place and maybe frying the whole of the SBG. I just wanted it so the coppers wouldn’t be able to tell them dead dwarfs from dead Borribles. They’ll recognize poor old Napoleon lying there, and they’ll recognize me when I show myself in the tunnel, and then I’ll lead ’em a dance, see. Eight plus Nap plus me makes ten. That’s the number Sussworth will expect to find. I’m hoping he’ll think he’s done for the lot of us, and once they’ve had a look round they’ll leave. You lot will have to wait in that hole for two or three days maybe; you’ll be hungry but you’ll be alive. When you think it’s safe you just push the wall down and come out. It’s only a few hours’ march along the tunnel to Neasden and it’ll all be over. Lie low for a while and you can all go home.’
‘If you’re so sure you can give Sussworth the slip in the tunnels,’ said Chalotte, ‘you can come back here yourself and tell us when it’s safe to come out.’ The half of her face that Knocker could see had an expression of irony on it.
‘Yeah,’ said Knocker, ‘that’s it. Of course.’
‘You’re lying,’ said Chalotte. ‘I know you are.’
‘When Adolf got burnt to death in Rumbledom,’ said Knocker, his voice low, ‘I knew it was my fault. It should never have happened, but all I could think of in those days was the treasure and a second name. Compared to Adolf I wasn’t even a real Borrible. Remember it was Adolf who carried Vulge to safety and if that wasn’t enough he had to go and get himself killed saving me. And Napoleon when you think of it, he had to turn against Flinthead, turn against his own tribe, so that he could save us.’
The despair left Chalotte’s eyes but was replaced by the brightness of tears. ‘You stayed in the tunnel with the others,’ she said, ‘so we could get away in the boat.’
Knocker shook his head. ‘That was for the Rumble treasure, for a name,’ he said, ‘just to win. I wasn’t doing it for other Borribles. Can’t you see, I have to do something? It’s no good us all getting caught down here, not if I can get you out of it.’
Chalotte’s tears flowed now. ‘Oh Knocker,’ she said, ‘I don’t want you to be caught and clipped. I don’t want you to grow old and die.’
Knocker blinked and hefted the last brick in his hand. ‘I know,’ he said, ‘but you and the others have to survive and this is the only way I can think of. Sam must get away and you lot must get back to your boroughs so that you can tell this story over and over again so that other Borribles know the truth of things. Just think of the story the SBG will put out. If we don’t tell it like it happened no one else will. Borribles must be told to stay Borrible, and above all they must be told about Scooter. If adults can be changed into Borribes … well the sky’s the limit. Imagine! Can you see Sussworth telling anyone about that, even if he knew? He’d keep as quiet as the grave. Come on, Chalotte, you know it’s right; you know it better than me. If there’s any possibility of you getting out alive you have to. You know more about being Borrible than anyone.’
Chalotte lowered her head and the visible part of her face disappeared into shadow. ‘Oh Knocker,’ she said, ‘I love you.’
Knocker swallowed hard. ‘And I you,’ he said, ‘and all the others as well. That’s why I’m doing this. It may look like we’re losing to Sussworth at the moment, but we’re not, far from it.’
‘I know, Knocker, but what will you do if you get clipped?’
Knocker pretended to laugh. ‘There’s no chance of me getting caught,’ he said, ‘not the slightest … but if I did I reckon I’d try to write down as much of our story as I could remember before it faded from my mind, before they made me forget it. That would show people what being Borrible is about and how we fought for Sam and that. That’s what I’d do.’
There was silence for a while when Knocker finished this speech but Chalotte soon raised her wet face and looked at him, and he could control his sadness no longer and his tears fell and he let them.
‘Goodbye, Chalotte,’ he said. ‘Goodbye. Don’t ever get caught.’ And his voice cracked and he sobbed and as he sobbed he pushed the last brick into the last gap and, using his thumb, surrounded it with cement and saw Chalotte no more. Then he sank to his knees and rested his forehead against the wall. ‘Goodbye, you lot,’ he whispered, ‘and goodbye, Sam. Stay Borrible, stay Borrible.’
For several long minutes Knocker remained where he was and did not move, although in his heart of hearts he knew that he had no time to indulge his sadness. The police might arrive at any moment and there was still much to be accomplished.
With a deep sigh he stood and wiped his eyes on the cuff of his sleeve. When he could see more clearly he took up the trowel and dug a large hole and scraped what was left of the fresh mortar into it; then he buried the trowel itself, filling the hole with earth and rubbish. Next he scooped up large fistfuls of dirt and dust and threw them at the newly sealed doorway so that gradually the light-coloured wet cement took on the appearance of the black surrounding wall and became indistinguishable from it; just another section of the brick skin lining the London Underground.
Still Knocker was not satisfied. He sank to his haunches and smoothed the ground with his fingers, afterwards scattering handfuls of dust and gravel everywhere so as to obliterate the Adventurers’ footprints. When this had been done he found an ancient bench, a broken ladder and lots of old tools and he spread them about in what he hoped would seem to be a random manner. Finally he stepped back to survey his work and he had to admit that even with the full glare of the
overhead lighting to aid them, the SBG would have to be very fortunate indeed to discover the whereabouts of the transformer room entrance. Knocker smiled. Yes; with a minimum of luck the Adventurers would get away.
A rough shout from afar broke into these thoughts and with one quick glance around him Knocker ran towards the control cabin, jumped on to the track and looked into the northbound tunnel. Things were certainly happening now. The second half of Sussworth’s pincer movement could be seen in the distance: lamps, blue uniforms, helmets and riot shields, stretching across the railway line and advancing slowly.
With no hesitation Knocker leapt into view and waved his arms above his head and shouted, making sure that he was noticed. As soon as he had been he turned and ran back alongside the one train that was left, not halting until he reached the front carriage. There he peeped out to see what was happening by the Swiss Cottage tunnel.
What he saw was puzzling. Before him stood a force of about fifty policemen huddled in groups, talking but not advancing or even searching. They looked scared and worried. A smoky dust curled in the electric air above their heads; it shimmered with the vibration of the great crash.
What was wrong? The policemen were behaving as if some great calamity had struck them. ‘Better bring them back to a sense of duty,’ he said to himself and he leapt into view again, firing a volley of stones, and without waiting to see what action was taken against him, called out an insult and dashed away at speed.
Strangely there was no pursuit and Knocker slowed his pace, jogged for a while, and then walked until he came to the control cabin. He looked in at the door; the body of Napoleon Boot still lay on the table, alone, his arms still folded. Knocker entered the cabin, sat on a chair and stared at his dead friend. ‘I will stay with Napoleon, then,’ he said aloud, ‘and let them find me.’
And as Knocker waited the fearful loneliness came over him again, and he thought of Chalotte and the others waiting out their time in the hiding place. He hadn’t told Chalotte everything, not by a long chalk. There was a weak spot in his plan and it worried him. Sussworth might
wonder what had become of the missing dwarfs. Wouldn’t he have counted them all out, and counted them all in? Knocker hoped not. On that evening when he, Napoleon and Swish and Treld had gone into the caravan as dwarfs, Sussworth hadn’t seemed to take much care over the actual numbers of his auxilaries, or even their names. Perhaps that was still the case.
Knocker had kept this weak spot from Chalotte deliberately. It would have undermined his argument and she would have made even more trouble about letting him go. Knocker leant forward and straightened Napoleon’s jacket collar and smoothed it down. He knew that his plan did not have the slightest chance of working unless he, Knocker, were captured and recognized and could, under interrogation, tell Sussworth that the other Borribles were dead. But he must not give the game away immediately. On the contrary he would insist that the Borribles had escaped and Sussworth, being what he was, would be suspicious. Then, as the inspector threatened him, Knocker would pretend to crack and he would say just what the police wanted to hear, but he would say it as if it were the last thing in the world he wanted them to know. It was the only method of convincing Sussworth that the SBG had won. It would be a terrible sacrifice, the ultimate one, delivering himself up like that, and Knocker knew it would be a living death for him in the end, but there was nothing else to do, no other way.
He laid his finger on Napoleon’s cold cheek and thought about the past: about the Great Rumble Hunt, about the River Wandle and Flinthead’s deep mine and the chief Wendle’s fight with Spiff … both dead and gone now … and Napoleon dead too. Who would have thought it possible after so many adventures, after having so much life in him? ‘Damn the SBG,’ said Knocker. ‘If only they’d left us alone.’
Knocker’s head began to droop. ‘I must make sure,’ he said. ‘I must make sure that I remember every detail of these adventures. I must never forget. It mustn’t get lost, this story.’ And Knocker took Napoleon’s hand and laid his head on the Wendle’s arm. He closed his eyes, just for a second he meant it, to ease his aching heart and to shut out all the evil things in the world, but exhausted by lack of food and all the fighting and running, he soon fell fast asleep.
 
 
He was woken by a rough hand shaking him brutally by the shoulder. As he came awake another hand grabbed a fistful of his hair. Knocker was pulled to his feet, and as his eyes opened he saw that the control cabin was crowded with men of the SBG, their visors thrown back over their helmets, their big square teeth grinning and their faces shining with victory.
‘Come on you murdering bleeder, let’s be having yer,’ said a voice, and Knocker’s arms were pulled behind his back and he was handcuffed.

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