The Boy Who Cried Fish (10 page)

A long minute went by.

Mrs Darling looked up.

She immediately noticed the out-of-place roof tile, because she was specially trained to be observant of things that were out of place.

‘At last,’ she said to herself under her breath, ‘I’ve got you.’

She slid open the desk drawer as quietly as she could and pulled out a torch that was attached to a length of elastic. She put it on her head, like you would a hat, and switched the torch on. She looked around the room and everywhere she looked she saw the circle of torchlight ahead of her.

Then, moving as carefully as she could, she climbed onto her desk herself, taking care not to tread on her sandwich, because the imprint of the culprit’s shoe might be important evidence later on.

She pushed the panel out of the way and stood up.

She wasn’t sure what it was she was seeing at first.

Her first impression was that there were two boys up on the walkway, but then she thought there was a man and a boy. Then it struck her that if it was a man it was a short one, so maybe a boy and a dwarf. And then she thought,
if one of them’s a dwarf, maybe they’re both dwarfs
. And then she thought,
I’d best just get them because whoever they are or whatever they are, they’ve been nicking the Admiral’s fish
.

She reached out and grabbed hold of one of their ankles.

She hoped that would be enough to stop them, but it wasn’t. Whoever’s ankle she’d grabbed kicked her loose and the two trespassers began running.

She hauled herself up and gave chase.

Chapter Nine

In which a chase is made and in which a boy gets wet

Fizzlebert ran like his life depended on it, as if there were a tiger behind him (or a shark (with legs)). He didn’t know where he was running, but he ran there anyway. Behind him he could hear Wystan doing the same.

The metal walkway was narrow and they ran in single file. It wobbled and clanged with every step, the sound echoing strangely off the water below them. Fizz had been furthest from the security guard when she’d made a grab for them and so he was the one leading the way.

They were running across the tops of the fish tanks. Off to his left he could see a sea of ceiling tiles and bundles of wires and pipes running this way and that, but beneath the walkway the tops of the fish tanks were all open to the air. Water lapped and light from the corridor beyond the tanks’ glass rippled up through the water, casting an eerie light across the concrete ceiling above his head.

If he’d had time to pause, lean on the railing and look down for a minute he would have seen the little faces of fish poke out of the water wondering what all the commotion in the sky was. But he didn’t have time to stop and look.

Up ahead both the rattling walkway and the row of tanks seemed to stop: there was a brick wall and, just before that, the top rungs of a ladder leading down to who knew where. He slowed down. He didn’t want to run full pelt and jump off the end into the unknown. Wystan probably would’ve, he thought, but Wystan was an acrobat, he did that sort of thing. Fizz stuck his head in a lion’s mouth. That was a useful skill, he was sure, but it didn’t prepare you for a chase like this and a jump like that.

The thumping footsteps behind him grew faster, the rattling louder. His heart was pounding in his chest and his lungs were straining with all the pumping in and out he was asking them to do.

As he slowed down he felt Wystan close behind him, and heard him shout, ‘Faster!’

Fizz realised that Wystan couldn’t see the end coming and didn’t know why he needed to slow down. So he half-turned, meaning to shout an explanation over his shoulder, and Wystan banged into him and they both tripped over one another’s feet and went tumbling.

Fizz hit the wet floor beyond the end of the fish tanks with a hard
crump
. There was a great deep splash behind him and a spray of water, like a heavy but incredibly short indoor rainstorm, landed on him and on the floor around him.

A second went by before Fizz tried moving. He hadn’t hurt himself: his thick Ringmaster’s coat had absorbed the fall and he’d covered his head with his arms. Nothing was broken, all his limbs were working and though he’d have some bruises to show come the morning, he was able to stand up and move about.

Above him he heard shouting and splashing.

Wystan must have rolled to the side when he tripped, slipped under the railings and fallen off the walkway into the last of the fish tanks. Fizz didn’t know if Wystan could swim or not, but the tanks weren’t that deep or big, and with a beard like that, surely he’d float face upwards?

Fizz had to make a choice. He could go back up the ladder and get caught with his friend. Or he could run through the door in the wall in front of him, while the guard was busy dealing with Wystan’s brilliant, self-sacrificing distraction.

Fizz looked up at the ladder, up at the ceiling where the weird watery light played in rippling ribbons, and hoped that his friend would understand.

When he got the chance, he’d come back for Wystan. He’d see if he could rescue Fish and Wystan both, although he didn’t know how he could do it.

He grabbed the handle of the door, turned it and stepped out into the cool air of the evening.

Up in the sky stars twinkled and the sea was crashing somewhere nearby.

He was in a little concrete courtyard that smelt of fish. In the middle of the wall on his right hung a curtain, rustling softly in the light breeze that moved the smell of fish around the small square.

He knew where he was. He was backstage. That curtain led out to the pool he’d been aiming for. At last he felt his luck was turning.

The best thing about backstage (he knew this from the circus where the Ringmaster was always complaining) was that it was full of
stuff
. And
stuff
was exactly what he needed right now. Moving quickly he dragged some empty crates in front of the door, and then piled some rope, two buckets and a long pole with a net on the end on top of them. It wouldn’t keep the door shut for long, not if someone
really
wanted to get through, but it was better than nothing, and the noise of all that lot crashing to the ground would at least give him some warning.

Breathing a little easier, he finally felt able to continue his search.

If he could find Fish before that security guard found
him
, then he’d be able to prove that he and Wystan had done the right thing breaking into the Aquarium. When everyone saw that Spratt-Haddock had kidnapped the circus’s sea lion, well, he wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.

So first, Fizz asked himself, where would a sea lion be at this time of the evening?

He was sure he wouldn’t be anywhere indoors, in one of those tanks. Fish preferred to sleep outside. He had his paddling pool and he’d lie on the grass with his tail in it, gently splashing about, while he snored loud fishy snores into the night.

He wasn’t here in the courtyard, so he must be beside the pool.

Fizz carefully parted the curtain and poked his head through. Across the water, which rippled brightly under the white floodlights, he could see the seats where they’d been sitting earlier that day watching the show. There was no one there now. And it wasn’t just that there were no people there, Fizz couldn’t see Fish anywhere either.

More worrying was what he
could
see. Waving into his view, inches in front of his face, was a long curved silver hook, which was attached to the arm and body (and head and legs) of Admiral Spratt-Haddock himself.

And if that’s not the cue for a chapter break, then I’m writing the wrong book.

Chapter Ten

In which Wystan gets wet and in which Fizz makes an escape

Wystan Barboozul, the bearded boy, fell.

It seemed to take an age, but it could only have been a split second before he hit the water and the world abruptly changed. From one of dry warm airiness, it flipped in an instant to one of wet cold wateriness. He thrashed around, kicking with his legs, trying to find out which way was up. His beard spread out around him curling like black inky tentacles.

Wystan had never learnt to swim. He had a paddle sometimes, when Fish wanted company in his paddling pool, but he couldn’t lie down in it and even if he could have, swimming lengths would have been far too easy, since the pool was probably only three inches longer than he was.

That wasn’t to say Wystan had
never
tried to learn to swim, but he had been banned from the one public swimming pool he’d been to because of his beard. (He had refused to wear a chin cap and there had been mean-spirited complaints from other children’s parents. Apparently he’d looked so scary with the bedraggled beard floating out from his face across the water like black wriggling furry fingers that a girl called Sandra Loosley had wet herself, right there in the water. The whole place had to be emptied and refilled with clean water, which took hours.)

So, for years and years Wystan hadn’t been swimming, hadn’t had a chance to try it, and now, all of a sudden and rather unexpectedly, he was having a splash course.

And guess what? It turned out to be easy. There was enough air trapped in his beard that he floated, head above the water. As he kicked his legs about, he found that he moved forwards. He tried moving his hands too. He moved even quicker. This was a piece of cake, he said to himself, even going so far as to imagine what sort of cake (Battenberg).

The only problems he found were that the water was rather cold and the tank he was in wasn’t quite big enough. As far as fish tanks went, it was a big one, much bigger than some that they’d seen that evening, but as far as swimming pools went, it was tiny. He was already up against the glass. He’d have to turn around and swim the other way now.

And then he remembered how he’d got where he was: the break in, the hiding, the chase, Fizz, Fish! Funny how a plunge in cold water had flushed it all out of his head for a moment. Well, he thought, he’d better find his way out of the tank and get on with the search for their sea lion.

Paddling his hands and treading water with his feet, he slowly revolved.

It was only as he did this that it occurred to him to wonder what lived in the fish tank. Whose home was he floating in? Who might be watching his feet waving around in their back garden?

And then he saw something that would have upset Sandra Loosley greatly. There was a fin in the water.

No, that’s wrong. There was a fin poking
out of
the water.

There was no need to worry about a fin, of course. A fin never hurt anyone. It was what was
attached to
the fin,
in
the water that was worrying Wystan.
I’m pretty sure it’s not a tiger
, his brain said,
they don’t have fins. But if it isn’t a tiger, then it must be . . .

It was coming towards him. It was gliding through the water in his direction. And although it had a pinkish shade to it, it also had a decidedly sharkish shape.

He pedalled his feet and flailed his hands about desperately, somehow hoping that would boost him out of the water and into the air. It didn’t. Instead it just sprayed water up and hid the approaching fin from view.