The Turnarounders and the Arbuckle Rescue (42 page)

Ten days later, however, and Leo had made no progress. Ralf replayed the incident at Brindle’s in his mind as he unwrapped a new bone for Cabal one evening, just before bed. They hadn’t managed to discover anything new and the closer they got to The Day, the faster time seemed to be flying. With only five days now until the twenty-seventh, if Leo was going to discover Brindle’s secret before things started to happen, he was going to have to get a move on – and spend a lot less time scouring the newspapers for news of Charles Hart.

Urk calling Brindle a witch stuck in his mind. Had she been the one who’d started all this during some dark, arcane spell? Ralf wouldn’t have put it past her to dabble in things she didn’t understand but he thought that, on balance, the idea of her being a real, practising witch was a step too far. It was interesting he hadn’t heard fro
m Burrowes about Cabal, though.

The dog
was sitting to attention at his feet. Ralf held up the bone and Cabal took it delicately in his huge teeth then settled by the stove to gnaw on it.

‘Did you really come through a Fall to find me?’ he breathed. ‘Brave dog. And Urk broke you out all those times! He’s a few sheep short of a flock, but he’s definitely on our side!’

As he climbed the narrow stairs to his attic room, Ralf had a sudden urge to see his Christmas gift from the old man again. He took out his marble bag, rolled Niall’s galaxy in his palm then examined the rabbit’s foot and herbs.

‘They’re supposed to bring luck and ward off evil,’ he whispered to himself, as he got into bed. His mind ranged over Michael Arbuckle’s accident, the Hallowe’en dolls, the bloody writing on Grianstad, the silent
Shadows and the Black Door of his dreams. He turned the light off and closed his eyes. ‘Working well so far, then…’

Some hours later, Ralf eyes flickered open. What had woken him? A noise? He didn’t think he’d heard anything but he had a creeping feeling of dread. Steeling himself, he felt for his dressing gown and tiptoed downstairs.

From the dim red glow of the range Ralf saw Cabal was on high alert, his whole body quivering.

‘Easy, boy,’ Ralf crooned, but Cabal shook off his reassuring hand, cocked his head towards the living room door and growled. Frowning, Ralf tiptoed into the other room, which was, of course, in darkness. Hilda had taken the blacks down and he padded to the window to look out. A shiver ran through him.

Eyes now adjusted he peered on to the lane and past it to the sea, a swirling mass of slate grey shadow. There was nothing to be nervous about, he told himself, no one out there. There was nothing unnatural in the silence, nothing unusual in the quality of the night. But did it seem darker than usual? Where was the moon? And what was that moving there, a deeper shadow oozing along the road towards the cottage?

Quickly Ralf closed the shutter and locked it. He scuttled to the front door and made sure of the lock and then rushed back into the kitchen. He lit the paraffin lamp with trembling fingers. Cabal was really going for it now, hackles raised, a harsh growl emanating from deep in his throat. The lamp started to flicker and shadows crawled up from the floor. Even the red glow of the range dimmed and seemed to give off less heat. Boy and dog both faced the door, waiting. They watched as the handle slowly turned.

Ralf’s heart jolted in his chest as blur of bright colour rushed past them towards the door.

Hilda, hair a tangle and nightgown streaming, dashed to place herself in front of her brother.

‘GET AWAY FROM MY HOUSE!’ she yelled. Her voice wavered but she fought to master her fear and her aura flared from violet to bright white. She snatched up the broom from the corner and slammed it, with surprising force, against the inside of the door. The handle sprang back into place.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

The Fear Takes Hold

Ralf slept no more that night. He made the pretence of going to his room but he couldn’t shake the Fear. It crouched downstairs waiting to slink under the door the moment his eyelids drooped.

All was quiet. But that was alright, because the clattering in Ralf’s brain more than made up for the silence around him. He cocked his head, listening for something, anything, that might explain why he still felt so unnerved but there was nothing.

His mind raced. The clock screamed at him. Four days to go. But then what? Arbuckle, Sedley, Keen, Winters – the names danced a jig on the inside of his skull, faces swirling. Familiar characters taunted him with knowing smiles: King, wore his usual expression of haughty derision, the Munton’s sly and furtive, Brindle’s lumpy face seemed to have fused with the green one of the Wicked Witch of the West. She cackled with cruel glee. ‘I’ll get you my pretty...and your dog too!’

Shivering in sweat, Ralf stripped off his pj’s and threw a quilt round his shoulders. He spent the rest of the night at his attic window, Cabal curled at his feet, chanting the
Echoes’ names under his breath and watching shadows consume the moon and swirl around his house.

At dawn, Ralf went downstairs to find Hilda in the kitchen, fully dressed and cradling her third cup of tea. Neither of them said much over breakfast. The wireless crackled on the dresser. The Nazi push towards the English Channel continued, unstoppable. Ralf glanced at his sister. Her head was bowed as if in prayer. Her porridge sat, untouched, on the table in front of her.

As Ralf finished his tea he saw Hilda pick up Niall’s last letter home and slip it, like a talisman to ward off evil, into her pocket. Ralf rose filled with a sudden desire to tell her everything. If he was right and nothing happened to them between now and midnight Sunday, the Arbuckle brothers would be off to help in the evacuation of Dunkirk. The BEF would escape to fight again and Germany would be defeated.

But Ralf stopped himself just in time. He realized that he could offer her no real comfort. England would win the war but there was no guarantee that either the Arbuckles or Niall would make it home alive. He hugged her instead, desperately drinking in the smell of her, a combination of carbolic soap and English lavender.

Cabal would keep her safe today he thought as she waved him off. As he walked to road, something creaked. The door to the tool shed was swinging in the breeze. That wasn’t right. The shed was always kept shut – Niall was very particular about it. Tentatively Ralf closed it and made a circuit of the cottage. At the kitchen window he found what he hoped he would not – deep claw marks on the wood. He bolted for the road as if he’d been stung.

Something was wrong.  Ralf knew it the moment he reached King’s Hadow. The harbour was empty. Well, the boats were still there, but there wasn’t a person to be seen anywhere. Just as he was wondering where everyone had got to, he noticed the smell and, the instant he’d recognised it as the smell of burning, he saw the thin thread of smoke drifting upwards from the village.

He sprinted towards the High Street and whatever breath he had left was knocked out of him when he got there. It seemed the entire village was in attendance. They stood in a sombre group, staring at the burnt out remains of Kemp’s Bakery.

Ralf weaved in and out of the throng, passing grim faced villagers and uniformed policemen who were taking orders from a charcoal stained Inspector Burrowes.  As Ralf passed, the Inspector fixed him with a hard look before turning back to Sergeant Minter with a new set of instructions. Ralf stared back, adjusting his vision. Burrowes’ colour pulsed and changed from white to electric blue as he went about his grim task.

Valen, soot smudged and appalled, was at the front of the crowd.

‘What happened?’ Ralf asked, huskily.

Val gestured hopelessly. The Bakery was simply no longer there, a gaping hole between two other buildings in the terrace. It looked like someone with a giant shovel had just scooped it away, leaving a pile of blackened timbers and smoking rubble where it used to be.

‘It was about
two o’clock this morning. We got a knock on the door to come and help. Everyone else was already here. By the time the fire engine from Dark Ferry arrived it was too late.’ She nodded towards the four firemen, now without their hats and jackets, who were sitting nearby. ‘They did their best, but in the end they had to concentrate the hoses on the houses either side to stop them catching.’

There was a sick feeling in Ralf’s mouth as he asked the next question. ‘Where are the Kemps?’

Val’s face was curdled under the dirt, her eyes red rimmed. She’d stood in line passing buckets for three hours in the night, but would not give in to tiredness. ‘Mrs Kemp and the children are with her mother. Mr Cheeseman got them out through the bedroom window.’ She turned back to stare at the devastation.

Ralf tasted bile. ‘And Mr Kemp?’

Val looked at him. She made a strangled noise in her throat and tried to turn away.

Ralf didn’t move. ‘Val?’ he said, gently, touching her arm. ‘Where is Gordon Kemp?’

She wouldn’t look at him, just nodded at the mess in front of her. Her meaning was clear. Gordon Kemp had not been rescued. He, like everything else in the building had been completely consumed by the flames.

Ralf couldn’t speak. He walked slowly from the crowd back towards the harbour. At the end of the High Street, where there must have been a good view of the fire, the Muntons were sitting on a garden wall. As Ralf passed, he caught Gadd’s eye and in it there was a glint of something that looked very much like satisfaction.

Ralf stamped along shingle under a dull grey sky. A single tear slid from his good eye. He dashed it away. He threw stones into the rippled slate of the sea and cursed. A good man had died. Not being a hero or saving the world but in a house fire. A stupid accident. What had it been? An untended lamp? A blown fuse?

He felt like he was drowning. How could they possibly keep anyone safe? How were they supposed to fight Fate? He shouldn’t be there. None of them should be there. They should be living dull, ordinary lives, watching TV and worrying about how their football teams were doing.

At length, his anger spent, he trudged home, empty of feeling. Hopeless!

He found Hilda in the kitchen and there was no need for him to say anything.  The redness round her eyes and the thinness of her colour told him that she had already heard the news. Neither knew how much time passed before they heard a knock. Hilda dabbed her tears on her apron and hesitantly opened the door. Of all the people to have been standing outside it, Ralf least expected Burrowes.

He was still in his charcoal stained suit and he looked exhausted but his questioning glance took in everything, from the dog by the range to the tear stained faces, as he stepped into the kitchen. He cleared his throat. ‘Miss Osborne, I am most terribly sorry to intrude but I’m afraid I need to ask young Ralf a few questions’.

‘Questions
, Inspector?’ Hilda flashed a look at her brother but then motioned the officer to sit and busied herself filling the kettle.

‘Yes, there’s some, well shall we say, some confusion about the bakery fire. And you see, Miss Osborne, I need to follow up every possible avenue of investigation fully.’

‘Confusion? What investigation?’ Hilda looked horrified and moved protectively to Ralf’s side. ‘How can we help?’

Burrowes pulled his notebook from his breast pocket, extracted a stubby looking pencil and then turned to Ralf, frowning. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Just a few quick questions. You must answer them truthfully. Any fibs will land you in deep trouble.’

Ralf bristled. ‘I understand.’

‘What was your relationship like with Mr Kemp?’

‘I liked him,’ Ralf said simply.

‘And Mrs Kemp? The children?’

‘I like them too.’

‘When was the last time you saw them?’

The seemingly random questions went on and on. Burrowes verbally prodded and poked him for a good half hour, going back to check things and asking for more details when Ralf wasn’t immediately clear. Ralf didn’t have the faintest clue what was going on.

Eventually Burrowes stood and gave Cabal a pat on the head.

‘Well, Miss Osborne,’ he said. ‘Many thanks for the tea.’ He handed her the empty cup and grunted to his feet, stowing the notebook and pencil in his bulging pocket.

‘It’s a nice place you’ve got here. Lovely being so close to the sea.’ He hitched up his trousers and readjusted his belly over the tight belt. Ralf noticed it was done up on the very last hole. Burrowes smiled at them disarmingly. ‘Mrs Burrowes would love this. Mind if I take a look round? Ralf can show me, can’t you lad?’ Ralf stepped back sharply as the Inspector’s colour flashed a piercing shade of electric blue.

Reluctantly, Ralf walked him around the four room cottage and then outside to the tool shed and the garden. Burrowes picked up the odd thing here and there, commented on the view from Ralf’s attic bedroom and had a good peer inside the cupboards. Ralf quickly realised that what had been explained as a simple interest in the house was actually an on the spot search. He also realised the purpose of it as Burrowes prepared to leave.

‘Do you play in Tarzy Wood often, Ralf?’

‘Not especially. Why?’

‘No reason. It’s a great bit of land that. Just the sort of place I’d have played when I was your age. ‘Hide and Seek’, ‘Soldiers’ and that.’ He let the statement hang. ‘Been there recently?’

Ralf stopped walking. ‘Yes, I have actually,’ arranging his face in to as innocent expression as he could muster. ‘I had to walk Cabal.’

‘So you were there yesterday. What about the day before?’

‘Yes.’

‘Valentine was with you? And Leo Antwi, Seth Goldberg and Alfredo Lightfoot?’

‘Very likely.’

‘And did you see anything unusual while you were in the woods, Ralf?’

It was with this clumsy approach that Ralf rumbled the poor Inspector. All his questions had been leading to this moment but Ralf knew now what he was after. It was the bunker. Somehow the Zero Station was involved in all this. Burrowes wanted to know if he’d been there, but was obviously trying to find out without revealing that it existed.’

‘Something unusual? Like what?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Anything?’

‘No,’ said Ralf firmly.

‘Well, that’s fine then,’ said the Inspector. He shook Ralf’s hand crushingly and headed out of the garden to his Wolsely. Just as he opened the door he turned.

‘One last thing, Ralf,’ he said. ‘And think carefully before you answer. Have you ever taken anything that didn’t belong to you?’

‘Like from a shop you mean?’

Burrowes brow furrowed even more. ‘From a shop. Or somewhere else. You might have found something – in Tarzy Wood for example – and taken it because you didn’t realise it belonged to someone.’

‘I found a shilling there, once,’

‘Nothing else?’

‘No.’

So that was it. Something was missing from the bunker.

Ralf had a feeling. ‘How did the fire start, anyway?’

‘Petrol,’ said Burrowes. ‘Amazing as it may seem at a time when fuel’s so hard to find – someone poured a gallon of petrol through the Bakery letter box and tossed in a match.’ He turned then to fix Ralf with a cold stare. ‘Gordon Kemp was murdered.’

The next morning, after another sleepless night Ralf was up and out before dawn. Less than
three days to go, he thought, with a flutter in his chest. He checked his watch and the flutter became a thud. Sixty-eight hours, then they must do whatever it was they came for. He wasn’t due to go fishing that morning but his feet took him down to the harbour, which was eerily and inexplicably deserted. There was none of the usual noise. No talking or laughter as the fishermen compared their catch. The boats were in and silent.

Those few fishermen who had gone out the previous night had left their catch half unloaded on the harbour walls. Ralf glanced down as he passed and couldn’t supress a shudder. Even the sea gulls screeching too loudly in the still sky had left the baskets full of bottom dwellers and misshapen eels untouched.

On automatic pilot, he boarded
The Sara Luz
. Without thinking, he checked lines, secured the coracle, unloaded fishing gear, cleared the deck then checked and double-checked the engine. He didn’t know how long he’d been there when he looked up to find Leo working silently beside him. From the looks of the brush in his hand and the scrubbed deck at his feet, Leo had been there a while.

‘I’m sorry, Wolf,’ Leo said, staring down at his feet.

‘Me too,’ said Ralf. ‘Kemp was a good man.’

Leo shook his head, unable to meet Ralf’s eye. ‘No. I’m sorry. I should’ve known something was going to happen. I should’ve felt something.’ He looked up finally, frowning with dismay. ‘There was nothing, Wolf! Nothing! I didn’t know about the fire until it was too late.’

‘Neither did I. And I should have,’ Ralf said. ‘Ambrose practically told me something like this would happen. ‘Five will become four,’ he said. Don’t beat yourself up about it.’