X-Isle (32 page)

And now she was continuing that tour, poking around the kitchen, delighted with all that she found.

“Oh, is this your little cooker? How sweet. And how amazing to have electricity – can I make a cup of tea?”

“Er... well, I ought to be thinking about cooking.” Baz looked doubtfully at the eggs. These were a real bonus, but how was he going to stretch six eggs between eight people?

“OK. Can I help?” Nadine had drifted down to the far end of the room, and her voice was less distinct. “What’s this then? 
All you need is her
. What does that mean?”

“Huh?”

“On this metal cupboard thing. 
All you need is her
, it says.”

Baz wandered down to take a look. He seldom had any reason to be in this part of the room, the defunct gas cooking ranges being of no interest to him. Nadine was standing in front of a tall metal cabinet, and she was right: scrawled across the two doors were the words... Awkward fingermarks in the dust.

“Did you start to write a poem or something? Who’s it for – your girlfriend?”

“What? I didn’t write it!” Baz was indignant. “Nothing to do with me.”

“So what’s in there?”

“Dunno. Just pots and pans, I think.” Baz had a vague memory of Cookie showing him where all the bigger utensils were kept. Was it Cookie who had written the words on the door? Why?

He grabbed the cabinet door handles and pulled. The doors opened with a judder, and yes, the inner shelves were stacked with large metal cooking pots – some of them very large indeed. Here was all the paraphernalia necessary for mass catering: deep metal trays with carrying handles at either end, round pans that fitted one inside the other, sieves, colanders, cheese graters. On the bottom shelf was a truly massive pot, a veritable cauldron of heavy-duty stainless steel, and resting against it stood a complicated-looking lid. The lid had big clamping devices all around the edge of it, and a gauge mounted on top – a bit like the gauge Baz had seen on the air-compressor in the hut where the diesel was kept. “Nothing here,” he said, “so I dunno what all that’s about.”

Nadine had already lost interest. She was fiddling with the knobs on one of the big gas ranges.

“Hard to remember what it was like,” she said, “when stuff like this all worked.”

“Yeah.” Baz started to close the doors of the cabinet – but then he noticed something tucked between the huge cooking vessel and the lid. A piece of paper? He stooped to pick it up, and found that it was a half-page torn from a recipe book. A pudding recipe – 
Bombe Surprise. Ingredients: 6 meringues... 250ml double cream...
what was that doing in there?

Baz looked at it for a moment, then shrugged and screwed it up. Not a recipe he was ever likely to have any use for. He pushed the doors of the cabinet closed.

All you need is her
. The dusty fingermarks relayed their puzzling message to him once again. 
All you need is her
. All you need is...
here?
 Could that be what it meant?

It had to be Cookie who’d written these words. The fingermarks were too fresh for it to have been anyone else. 
All you need is here
. Had Cookie been trying to leave him a message? But what 
was
 here? The huge cooking vessel... the torn recipe page... ‘Bombe Surprise’...

Baz opened the doors again. 
Oh my God...
He felt the back of his neck tingle as he understood. He’d finally got it. The thing they’d been looking for was right here – in this very cabinet – and Cookie had led them to it. That big cauldron with the clamp-down lid. Baz remembered then that Cookie had whispered something to him, the night before he was taken away. 
Baz... got something to show you...

And this was that something. But there had been no time to explain, no time for Cookie to even finish writing his message. He’d tried to help them, even though they’d all treated him so badly. Poor Cookie.

“We could make kedgeree.” Nadine was back down at the other end of the room, looking through a recipe book.

“What?”

“Kedgeree. It’s dead easy. Rice, smoked fish and hard-boiled eggs. Got any kippers?”

Baz couldn’t help but laugh. Kippers? This had to be the weirdest day ever.

“Er, don’t know. Might have something in a tin.” He searched through the food cabinet, and he was still smiling when he brought a large flat tin of kipper fillets over to where Nadine was standing. She’d put a pan of water on the two-ring cooker, and was getting ready to boil the eggs. Taking over the operation, just like that.

“You look cheerful all of a sudden,” she said. “Suits you.”

“Well... maybe things are looking up.”

“Really? Is that since I got here, then?” Nadine gave him a sideways glance, her tongue pressing against the inside of her cheek, her eyebrows raised.

Was she flirting with him?

“That’s right,” he said. “Ever since you got here. You and the eggs.”

Nadine pushed out her lower lip in an expression of mock-ruefulness. “Well, that’s put me in my place,” she said.

Yeah. This was definitely the weirdest day ever.

CHAPTER
 
NINETEEN

“
Sounds like it’s a pressure cooker,” said Gene. “Gotta be. Wow – I’d 
never
 have thought of that. How deep is it? D’you reckon the big Coke bottles’d stand in there upright, with the lid on?”

Baz pulled on his white jacket, getting ready for the morning’s work, and tried to recall the size of the metal container. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure they would.”

“Great. Maybe we’re in business then. OK, two things. Number one: can you get me the lid? Just the lid, so I can take a look at it? And number two: can you see if there’s anything on the casing that tells you how big it is? Like, how many litres it holds.”

“Er... I can try,” said Baz. “The lid’s huge, though. Don’t know how I’m gonna smuggle it out of the kitchen.”

But within a couple of hours he’d managed it. The dental surgery was in morning session, but Amos was the only one there apart from the dentist – and Amos seemed to have plenty of other things on his mind, judging by the noise he was making. Baz was able to hurry out of the kitchen with the heavy lid tucked under his left arm and partially out of view. He got itsafely to the slob room and hid it in the jakes before scurrying back to the kitchen.

Later that evening the boys gathered in the washroom to inspect their prize.

“Wow, that’s some piece of kit.” Gene knelt on the floor and lifted the edge of the lid.

“So what is it?” said Amit. “How does it work? What’s that clock thing on the top?”

“It’s a pressure gauge,” said Gene. “See, the lid bolts down onto the pot – that’s what all these clamp things are for: to make it totally airtight. Then the food in there’s cooked under steam pressure. There’s a safety valve on top – this thing here. Releases the steam if the pressure inside gets too high. Have to have one of those or the thing’d explode.”

“But that’s what we want it to do, isn’t it – explode?”

“Yeah, we do. So we’re gonna take that safety valve out and block up the hole. In 
fact...
 
.” Gene turned the lid over. “Yeah, I reckon I can get the valve out and put the spark plug in there instead...”

“Huh?”

“OK.” Gene seemed to realize that he was going to have to explain properly. “This is just the same as that little rocket toy I made, yeah? No different. The gas is in the container, and the spark plug is fitted in the lid. Then we clamp the lid down. Make the plug spark, the gas explodes, and 
whoosh –
 up she goes. I mean, I’m gonna have to think about it a bit more, but that’s basically it.”

“And we’re gonna put it on the boat?” said Ray.

“Well, I dunno. But it’s the best plan we got. We’d never do it like you reckoned, Ray. Trying to get ’em all gathered round the thing and then let it off – that wouldn’t work. But if we could blow a hole in the side of the boat while Isaac’s lot are all out on it... see what I mean?”

“But they’d be miles away,” said Robbie. “How would we set it off?”

“We wouldn’t.” Gene grinned up at him. “They would. Here’s what I’ve been thinking. Say we hide this thing in the cabin locker – Baz knows where I mean. Yeah? And say we ran a lead from the winch motor to the spark plug that’s on the bomb. And say it was a diving day, not a trading day. Now, they’ve got no reason to start the winch motor until they’re miles out to sea, and the divers are down below the water, and they need to haul something up. So then Moko pulls the rope to start the winch motor. But instead of the spark plug being in the winch motor, it’s in the bomb, see? So up she goes. 
Boom
. Boat sinks, job done.”

A wondering silence fell on the washroom. All were lost in the same vision, the same magnificent thunderous explosion playing and replaying in their imaginations. Great waterspouts rising from the sea... the 
Cormorant
 splintering into a million pieces... Isaac and his band of thugs flying through the air... blown into the stratosphere... vanishing without trace. And they, the X-Isle boys, blasting their way to a heroic and righteous freedom. It was a brilliant plan. Utterly brilliant.

“Oh, 
man,”
Jubo breathed at last. “You a genius, Gene. You the real Spartacus, man.” He gave a long sigh. “Eyyyy.”

“But what if—?” Dyson began to speak.

“Yeah, I know, mate.” Gene raised a hand to interrupt him. “I know. There are a helluva lot of ‘what ifs’. Like what if one of them opens the lid of the locker box and sees the bomb? What if they spot the HT lead? What if they try to start the motor and the bomb doesn’t go off? They’re gonna come sailing back here and they’re gonna kill us, that’s what if. Yeah, and I don’t mean just beat us up. Kill us.”

How quickly that brave vision of freedom then disappeared, fleeing to the corners of the room to hide among the cobwebs, a timid and insubstantial thing. And in its place came another image: the dark shadow of the 
Cormorant
 returning through the mist, solid and intact, its outraged crew vowing bloody revenge.

“Yeah, you see?” said Gene. “It’s still just an idea, that’s all. Only an idea. Whether we’d really have the guts to go through with it, I don’t know. And the other thing, the other 
big
 thing is... what about Preacher John? He’s not gonna be on the boat, is he? He never goes on the boat. 
But’ –
 he stood up and dusted off his bare knees – ‘what I say is this: let’s at least build it. We don’t have to use it, but we’ve come this far, so let’s get the job done. I’ll take this lid into the sort room and work on it, and we’ll think about it some more. Try and make it so we’re not dead if it all goes wrong.”

He looked around at the thoughtful faces. “Anybody got any objections? No? Anybody got any questions, then?”

“Yeah, me,” said Jubo. “When is old Baz gonna start sharing these girls around, hey? That’s what me wanna know, man. Me keep hearing ’bout them, but me don’t even 
see
 them yet! When he get so lucky?”

Which made everyone laugh of course, and changed the subject of discussion entirely.

Jubo soon got his wish, because within twenty-four hours the two girls, Nadine and Steffie, had been seen by all. They were spotted up on the playing fields feeding the goat, and again a little further along the coastline from the jetty, sitting beside the wooden dinghy that was beached there. It seemed that they more or less had the run of the island, although they never came near where the boys were working, or made any contact with them.

“They’ve been told that we’re very busy and that they must try not to disturb us,” Baz said. He was speaking to an open-mouthed audience on Tuesday night in the slob room. “It’s important that we continue our good work without any interruptions, Mr.
Eck
 says. If it wasn’t for us, the poor mainlanders would starve, and so we must all do our best not to let that happen.”

“You what?”

“Yeah, I know. They think Isaac’s a friggin’ hero. And they can’t 
wait
 to meet the wonderful Preacher John.”

“Well, I hope you put ’em straight,” said Amit.

“Don’t get a chance,” said Baz. “I have to take their meals up to their room, but there isn’t time to say anything much. Nadine – that’s the older one – she came down to the kitchen and helped me do some cooking. But I haven’t really talked to her since.”

“Woo-hoo – Nadine! “She helped me do some cooking.” Get you!”

“Yeah, yeah.” Baz could feel himself blushing. It was ridiculous, but once a blush began it was impossible to stop. He tried to divert attention from himself. “So what’s been happening, Gene? You got any further?”

“Yup,” said Gene. “I already told the others before you got here. I’ve fitted the spark plug into the lid, and it’s as tight as you like. The end pokes through to the other side, and that’s given me another idea. Tell you about it later. The other thing I had to do today was make some torches – like firebrands. Long sticks with a load of oily rag tied round the ends. Preacher John’s orders, and I can guess what they’re for. The altar. I reckon he’s planning on more sacrifices.”

But sacrificing what? More rabbits? Or something... else? It was a scary thought, and everyone was quiet for a minute.

“Yeah, well,” said Gene. “Let’s try and forget about that for now. But did you find out how big it was – the pressure cooker – how many litres it holds?”

Baz nodded. “Sixty-five. Says so on the bottom. Sixty-five-litre capacity. I tipped it up to have a look, and I can tell you it weighs a ton.”

“Sixty-five?” said Gene. “Blimey, that’s a lot. I’m gonna have to check some calculations – soon as Baz can get me up into that library.”

“I can get you up there tomorrow night,” said Baz. “No problem. You’ve only got to get as far as the kitchen door, and from then on you’re pretty safe.”

“Let’s do it, then.”

“Wow. I’m telling you – it is 
amazing
 up there. Perfect hideout. You guys are gonna love it.” On Wednesday night Gene returned to the slob room, full of all that he’d seen in the library. As Baz had predicted, it had been easy enough to get him through the kitchens. Armed with his wind-up torch and some directions, Gene had spent an hour alone at the top of the building.