Ribblestrop (32 page)

Miss Hazlitt was outside first, and in seconds she was standing over him. “Ruskin . . .” she snarled. “Where are the others?”

“My goodness, this is terrible!” said the headmaster.

“Where's he been?” said Professor Worthington. “It's freezing! Get the boy inside!”

Miss Hazlitt was leaning over him. “Red-handed,” she said. “A thief, caught in the very act! Out of bounds, stealing about, and look at this, just look at it . . . It's the coat. It's the coat that I paid for, I'll bet money on it! Get on your feet, child! I want my briefcase!”

She hauled Ruskin to his knees, and Ruskin felt the world spin under him. It was like being on a roundabout that the bigger boys had set going too fast; he was getting giddier and giddier and wishing he'd never got on. Miss Hazlitt's face was coming closer too, and was getting huge and fat as if he was looking into a spoon. He put an arm over his face and tried to curl up. “No!” he cried. He felt hands under his arms and caught a whiff of the woman's sweat. “Please!” he said.

“Get yourself up!” she was shouting. The words were echoing in his ears. “Where's the girl, Ruskin? You're in it together, aren't you?”

“Miss Hazlitt! Please!”

The headmaster's voice crashed in from a great distance, clashing like cymbals. The woman was ignoring it. Ruskin felt himself hauled up into a standing position, but his legs just wouldn't work. The world was a whirlpool. He felt more hands under his arms and he knew suddenly that he was going to be sick. He looked up into the deputy headmistress's angry, straining face. He looked around in panic and tried to warn those carrying him. Too late, the drive bucked him forward onto his elbows. He breathed deep and swallowed, but it was no good at all. It came from deep inside, a whole bucketful of rum, pie, vegetables, and red wine. Ruskin vomited noisily and the geyser emptied itself over the deputy headmistress's sensible shoes. She danced backward, slipped in the muck, and ended on her backside. Ruskin vomited again, rolled onto his side, and was unconscious.

*

Of course, the Ruskin distraction was the piece of lifesaving luck Millie and Sanchez so desperately needed. As their lookout was
weaving his way to the school gate, they were swinging down the thick, oily cables of the lift car, hoping there would be an emergency hatch. They knelt on the roof together, flashlights back in their teeth, and fumbled in the dirt. Millie scratched with her penknife and at last located some kind of channel and handle. They twisted and pulled and at last the hatchway gave. It took ten seconds to swing themselves into the lift car, and five more to negotiate the “up” button. All at once there was a surge of power and they were rising.

“Where's it go?” said Sanchez.

“Up—that's the main thing.”

“Sam said there was a lift. Do you remember? In the headmaster's study. He said the policeman came that way. Stop, Millie! What if the head's working late? What if Miss Hazlitt's there?”

“I don't care. I want to get out.”

“What did we see?”

“I don't know. We've got to do something, though, and do it fast.”

“They can't have Tomaz! He must have got home!”

“Sanchez, face the facts! They're getting him ready! They're mucking about with kids' brains, and we'll be next if we're not careful.”

“There was a train down there! I don't get it!”

“It was a research center—you knew that! During the war. We were told that. Listen. The government is paying the headmaster for all these orphans to come here. There's a lift from his office to the lab: what does that say?”

“But he wasn't there.”

“What was the name of the old man? The one in the white coat?”

“Jarman. Shh!”

“And the bent policeman was down there too.”

“We're stopping.” Sanchez's voice was a whisper. “I think we should go to the phone box and phone my father. You think this is the headmaster's study?”

Millie inched the grille back. “Let's get back to your dormitory.
I tell you one thing, you should carry your gun. And we should all stay together.”

There was a brass catch in the woodwork and, as Millie touched it, the door sprang gently open on oiled hinges. Both children stood poised and ready to run. Early-dawn light fell through the elegant windows; there was a familiar desk, a sofa they'd sat in, and the usual snowfall of paper. It was the headmaster's study and it was empty. Breathing quick, shallow breaths, they closed the grille and swung the paneling back into place. Millie tiptoed across the rug to the study door.

“It'll be locked,” whispered Sanchez. He went to the window. “Oh, no—Millie! Come here.”

“What?”

“They've got Ruskin! And there's people coming! Look—it's too late!”

Millie could hear a siren wailing and ran to Sanchez. They gazed across the park and found that once again they were holding each other in fear. The drive was clear in the moonlight and swimming down it there seemed to be a whole river of revolving lights. There were amber lights, red lights, and the fierce halogen lamps of what looked like motorway maintenance vehicles. There was a police car in there somewhere, but it seemed to be moving in the opposite direction and there was a great blaring of angry horns. The vehicles were fanning out over the grass and moving in like artillery. One after another they paused in a burst of airbrakes, and there was a flurry of door slamming. The figures in the courtyard were lit by a hundred headlights and stood shielding their eyes. Big men in gloves were leaping from cabs. There were boots on gravel and voices shouting.

“Come on,” said Millie. “Let's get out.”

“How?”

Millie pulled Sam's toothbrush from her pocket. “Don't you remember?” she said. “They gave it back.”

In seconds they were standing in the corridor. They would have to go downstairs, past the front door, and up again, so
Sanchez led the way, Millie keeping one eye behind. They hadn't reached the top step before they heard urgent footsteps racing toward them and there was nowhere to hide. Someone snapped on the lights and the children were caught like rabbits in the road, wide-eyed and openmouthed.

“Millie. Where have you been?”

It was the headmaster and he was almost running.

“Nowhere,” said Millie.

“Are the orphans up?”

“I don't know,” said Sanchez.

“We need Henry, urgently. This is all a bit of a mess, quite frankly.” He was moving past them, toward his office. “I really did not want to start the day this way. Ruskin's chosen this night of all nights, it's such a shame—Miss Hazlitt's furious. He's drunk as a sailor. Can you help me, please? I want to get everyone assembled in the courtyard so we can unload, and Captain Routon wants to get the crane into the construction area first. They're early, which is wonderful, but we've been caught totally on the hop.” He was opening the door; he didn't notice it was unlocked. “The trusses can be carried in,” he called, over his shoulder. “But tell Asilah there's a forklift for everything else. Oh, and Millie—will you get everyone to put overalls on? I don't want your blazers getting mucky.”

He was through the door. He didn't notice two sets of filthy footprints over his rug. Nor had he noticed the grime and oil on the children's faces and clothes, or their zombielike expressions. He needed his lists.

How many hours had been spent working out quantities of ironmongery, timber, and tools? So many lists, so many orders, all cross-referenced and ready to be checked, item by item. The headmaster was trembling with excitement: the roofing was about to begin.

Lady Vyner looked down at the scene with disgust.

There was a crane, two flatbeds, and too many support vehicles to count. It was a military assault, and the world was rolling in diesel smoke. They'd laid heavy ramps, and one truck was reversing round the fountain; a high-pitched alarm was wailing over the park. There were two articulated lorries carrying giant triangles, and orphans capered about, their cries floating upward as they leaped on and off the trucks.

“Pray for an accident,” she muttered. “Fall under a wheel, someone.”

Every ornament on Lady Vyner's sideboard was dancing as the crane moved through. When the old woman went to the other side of the room and peered down, there it was in the center of the courtyard. Seconds later its long arm was extending higher and higher, the greased steel flashing in the floodlights.

“Who is that?” she shouted. “There's a child on the crane!”

Caspar looked up in time to see a boy level with the window, waving.

“Anjoli,” said Caspar. “He's a show-off, Gran.”

The boy wore a bright yellow hard hat, and his gray shirt flapped in the breeze. He seemed to skip up the metalwork and then he jumped down to a giant hook that was now swinging over the walls. It lifted him higher.

Lord Caspar had no interest in the construction project. The
only reason he wasn't in bed was that a very special parcel had arrived the previous day and he'd been working on his own obsession all through the night. He'd ordered a length of high-tension cord from an archery specialist in London and it had finally arrived. There it was, on the table in front of him, long and rubbery. Next to it were the components of an ancient crossbow. He'd been restoring it for eleven weeks, ever since he'd lost his flintlock pistol to Millie. Bolts, pins, washers, timber sections, and metal rings: he'd cleaned and greased them all. He'd assembled and disassembled them; he'd rebored holes and regrooved channels. He'd fashioned a new trigger from an old coffeepot, and he'd sharpened three beautiful arrows that he'd found his gran using as backscratchers. He trimmed the cord with a razor and now he stretched it across the arms of the bow. He didn't notice the walls and floor shaking around him, not even when glasses smashed in the kitchen.

Caspar was ready for Millie; round two was approaching.

*

It took fifteen minutes to get the trusses in, then an hour to move the pallets of slate. With sixteen willing helpers, every piece of kit was in position by breakfast time. The drivers got their papers signed and piled into their trucks. They'd never seen a team like it; the children had terrified them and they were pleased to speed off out of the park. As day broke, the line of children worked, singing. Arc lights went up. A storage hut was hauled onto an earth platform and hooked up to power. Henry dragged in a cart laden with scaffolding boards, and soon the flat earth was duckboarded and a couple of narrow towers were tied into the walls. Everyone was hard-hatted and overalled, and all wore boots.

“Clarissa, are you down there?”

The children looked up and saw the headmaster at his study window. “We need to get the first truss up right away, so we need everyone on scaffolding. Routon suggests bracing it from about where you're standing. I've got to have a little chat with Miss Hazlitt about this briefcase business, so I wonder if you could
supervise the block-and-tackle. Millie? Can you and Sanjay sink a tent peg, just where you're standing? Then we'll throw a line down to you and use that as a cantilever. The first truss is the hardest!”

The tent peg he had in mind turned out to be a five-foot iron stanchion. It was so heavy the two children could hardly lift it. If it really was a tent peg it would have also anchored a boat. Several orphans assisted and Israel got to work with the sledgehammer. He sat up on Sanjay's shoulders as he swung it, smashing the top of the peg with such force sparks were struck from the metal. When it was in, Henry attached a rope and the end was flung up to little Anjoli who was still on the crane hook. He wore a headset and gave instructions to Professor Worthington, who was back at the controls.

Around her, the scaffolding was going up. This was bamboo, and the orphans had had enormous fun practicing their pole-vaulting skills. Several bundles had been lying ready for days, and the long poles were so bendy they could send a child up as high as the headmaster's study window. Under Asilah's supervision, the poles were now lashed together into quadrilaterals. Captain Routon took a ten-minute geometry class, making various observations about angles, and there was a short delay because one of the smallest orphans had trouble understanding the concept of congruence. After that, the scaffolding rose quickly.

“Sanchez, we need to talk,” said Millie.

“I know,” said Sanchez. “But I don't know what to say. I'm thinking and thinking, and the plain fact is I don't know what to do. We didn't get any evidence.”

“I know.”

“We need to go down again, don't we? We need to photograph the place, or film them in action.”

“We need to look for Tomaz!”

“I know, and we need a meeting. We need to tell everyone what we've seen. If we get everyone together, tonight—”

There was an enormous cheer as she spoke and a howl of
engine noise. Both children swung round and saw the crane juddering into life, its wheels spinning. The air seemed to go hot in waves, and then the gearbox burst in a series of gunshots. Professor Worthington was at the controls, reversing into position.

“Sanchez, I've just had an idea!” shouted Millie. The great hook swayed over them all and Israel directed it down. “Why don't we find out who rents that place? Surely we can find out who's in charge.”

“How?” yelled Sanchez.

“Lady Vyner!” cried Millie. She put her mouth close to Sanchez's ear. “I should have thought of it before. She must know her own tenants, so she must know who Jarman is! We'll find out the
background
!”

“Okay,” shouted Sanchez. It was his turn to yell into Millie's ear. “But she's not going to tell us anything. She might be in on the whole thing.”

“Send Sam,” cried Millie.