The Secret Prophecy (2 page)

Chapter 4

T
he idea was, once he’d helped Mum clear up, he could go to his room, maybe go online, try to chill. But when he reached the Swamp and switched on his computer, somehow the old MMOs had lost their appeal, along with everything else. All he wanted to do was kick off his shoes, stretch out on the bed, stare at the cobweb hanging from the crack in the ceiling. That was when he discovered how tired he was, closed his eyes just for a second. . . .

It was dark when Em woke, sometime in the middle of the night, not sure exactly. The confusion felt good somehow; but then it cleared and he remembered again that Dad was dead, even though, for a minute, he couldn’t believe it. His stomach knotted, a familiar feeling.

There were voices coming from outside his window. He couldn’t hear what they were saying, but there definitely seemed to be more than one. He pushed himself off the bed and went to look. This part of the lodgings faced across a campus courtyard, poorly lit at the best of times but now with no lights at all. But there was enough moonlight to show a solitary figure staring upward out of the shadows. For a split second it seemed as if the man was gazing directly at Em or at least at his window. Then he looked away and walked off in the direction of the students’ quarters.

The voices were still there, but now Em knew they were coming from inside the lodgings, not outside. It happened sometimes if there was a window left open down below. His attic room was directly above the little sitting room where Mum and Dad had sometimes chatted in the evenings. If the window was open, the sound of voices drifted upward. Usually this didn’t disturb him, certainly didn’t wake him; but the voices were louder tonight.

And his mother certainly wasn’t talking to Dad.

Without bothering to switch on a light, Em padded across the room and opened the door. He was facing a flight of steps down to a tiny landing, then three more stairs to his mum’s room and the room where he’d found Dad dead, then the long flight down to the living room. Who was Mum talking to in the little sitting room after midnight?

He hesitated for a moment and then walked down the stairs without switching on lights. There was a single standard lamp lit in the living room at the bottom, leaving it mostly in gloom. But there was light streaming under the door to the sitting room. Em took a cautious few steps forward. He could hear the voices clearly now, hear the conversation. One was his mum. The other was her brother, Uncle Harold.

So Mum had probably asked Harold to stay the night for some additional support.

Em turned to go back upstairs, then heard his mother say, “Harold, I’m afraid.”

Uncle Harold’s voice sounded loud but steady. “None of this makes any sense, you know? Eddie was a professor of medieval history, for Christ’s sake! He couldn’t have been any more harmless if he’d worked as an accountant.”

“I know,” his mother said. It came out as something close to a wail.

Uncle Harold’s voice again: “So why would anybody want to harm him?”

Em’s ears pricked. Who said anybody wanted to harm Dad? He was one of the most popular professors on campus. Everybody said that. Em couldn’t think of a single thing his father might have got up to that could possibly have caused someone to want to harm him.

Except . . .

Em frowned. He was thinking of his mother’s comment about the stretched salary. Could Dad have got involved with a loan shark? Those guys turned very nasty if you didn’t pay them back. Everybody knew that. The really bad ones sent someone around to break your legs. Only Dad never had his legs broken. The worst that happened to him was he caught pneumonia.

“I don’t know,” his mother said in answer to her brother’s question. “But then wives don’t, do they? They don’t know what their husbands get up to on their own. Gambling . . . other women . . .”

Dad mixed up with another woman? Get real, Mum!

Uncle Harold must have had the same thought, for he gave a short little laugh. “Come on, Caroline. If Ed ever so much as
sneezed
at another woman, I’ll streak naked down the M25. And you know what he thought about gambling. . . .”

Mum’s voice suddenly stiffened. “What I know, Harold,” she said firmly, “is that my Eddie was murdered.”

Chapter 5

E
m usually slept late during school holidays. Most mornings you couldn’t wake him until eleven, maybe eleven thirty. Either way, he seldom climbed out of bed before noon, at which time he’d go down and listen carefully to his mother’s complaints about his laziness, then have breakfast, or lunch, or whatever you’d call it. But this morning he was wide-awake at six thirty, downstairs a few minutes after seven, and headed straight for the kitchen.

For some reason he was starving. Yesterday’s sorrow, last night’s worries were still with him; but they no longer rested in his stomach like a leaden ball. That lump had somehow moved aside, leaving a hollow only food could fill. He started with corn flakes, found that the milk was curdled, and doused them in orange juice instead. When that failed miserably to do the trick, he got out the frying pan.

The pork-and-apple sausages reminded him of his father’s last meal, the one he’d never eaten. So did the bacon and eggs. But there was nothing he could do about that. However miserable life was, you still had to eat. He considered opening a tin of baked beans, abandoned the idea because he couldn’t see one with a ring-pull, but found two cold boiled potatoes in the fridge. He sliced them thinly so they’d crisp and dropped them into the pan.

Something made him think of Uncle Harold, and he realized he hadn’t seen him sleeping on the living-room couch, so Mum must have tucked him into Dad’s deathbed after all. Dad murdered—where had that come from? There had been no dagger in the heart, no gunshot to the head. Just some unexpected complication with an antibiotic-resistant bug. Em decided there and then he’d never start to drink alcohol. It was doing his mother no favors, however much it dulled her pain.

He finished his breakfast feeling better and stronger than he had for days. Then he finished the orange juice as well and wandered back into the living room. He was thinking of taking an early-morning walk, maybe down to the river before there were too many people about.

But there was something wrong. For a moment Em couldn’t think what it was. Then he realized that the door to Dad’s study was ajar.

Em stared at it. He’d closed it tight when he left the study yesterday afternoon and he hadn’t noticed it open when he’d come down in the middle of the night. So Mum or Harold must have gone in there after Em had crept back up to bed. But why? He pushed the door.

Dad’s study looked as if a bomb had hit it. Books had been torn down from the shelves and strewn across the floor. The drawers of the desk were all open: one had been pulled out completely and now stood propped against a chair, its contents scattered. The standard lamp Dad used to read by had been overturned. Several ornaments were broken. One portion of the carpet had been torn up and folded back, revealing the floorboards beneath. There were pictures missing from the walls.
So much for making it a shrine, Mum.
But Mum had nothing to do with this. Or Uncle Harold.

They’d been robbed!

Em knew that must have been what happened, but somehow he couldn’t get his head around it. Stupidly he kept thinking that it couldn’t have happened, that it was somehow
impossible.
The study wasn’t just trashed; it was no longer the study at all. And Dad wasn’t there anymore.

He fought back a wave of self-pity and forced himself to concentrate. A burglary made no sense. There was a flat-screen television in the living room that hadn’t been taken. And his father had a nearly new sound system right here in the study. That hadn’t been taken either, although the speakers had been ripped from their brackets and thrown on the floor, so the burglars had certainly noticed them. In fact, looking around, nothing of any obvious value had been taken and nothing at all had been disturbed in the living room or kitchen.

It was as if the thieves had been looking for some-thing.

The way they did it on TV police shows was that they sent out an overeducated detective inspector trailing a dim sergeant and one or two technicians: fingerprint man, forensic expert, that sort of thing. But maybe that was just for murders. Certainly it hadn’t happened here.

Em opened the door because his mum had started crying and couldn’t stop. With Mum not functioning, Em would have preferred Uncle Harold deal with the police; but Uncle Harold, it turned out, hadn’t spent the night in Dad’s deathbed after all: he’d left sometime around three a.m. Drove home in his car.

There were two men on the doorstep, both burly, both wearing crumpled suits, one a head shorter than the other. Neither produced a warrant card, just mumbled “Police” before pushing past Em with bored expressions. Not knowing what else to do, he led them into the living room, where the tall one said casually, “Sergeant Jackson. This is Detective Constable Tiblet. Break-in, was it?”

“Yes,” Em said a little sourly.

The one called Jackson looked around the living room. “Not much sign of damage. The report slip said there was damage.”

“It was mostly in the study,” Em said. He heard the stupid, apologetic tone in his voice but couldn’t seem to stop it. “Actually,” he amended, “it was
all
in the study.”

“Your parents around?”

“Mum’s still upstairs,” Em told him. “Dad’s—” The word caught in his throat. “Dad’s dead.”

“You’re the son?”

Nice detective work, Sergeant Jackson,
Em thought. Aloud he said, “Yes.”

“Any other family living here?”

“Apart from Mum? No.”

Jackson lapsed into silence but continued to look around the living room. Tiblet said, “Better show us where it happened, then.”

Em took them to the study. “We haven’t touched anything,” he said anxiously. Then when Jackson looked at him blankly, he added, “In case you want to take fingerprints or something.” He wished Mum would hurry up. It wasn’t like she didn’t know the police were here—she’d heard the doorbell.

“Oh,” Jackson said. You’d have thought he’d never heard of fingerprints.

Tiblet peered past them into the study. “Made a right mess, didn’t they?”

Jackson grunted, then turned to Em. “Mind if we ask you a few questions? After that we’ll have to get your mum down. Bit upset, is she?”

“You could say that,” Em said.

Sergeant Jackson nodded sagely.

“Would you like some tea?” Em asked. “We could talk in the kitchen.”

The atmosphere changed at once. Jackson even smiled. “That would be very nice, ah— What did you say your name was?”

“Edward Michael Goverton,” Em told him formally. “Mostly I’m just called Em.”

“That would be very nice, Em,” Jackson said as if they’d suddenly become best friends. He turned to Tiblet. “Wouldn’t it, Stanley?”

“Oh, yes,” Stanley said.

They got down to business properly while Em was waiting for the kettle to boil.

“Where did they break in?” Jackson asked.

Em realized he didn’t know. “Not sure.”

“We’ll take a look around with your mother when she comes down. Wasn’t anywhere obvious anyway? Didn’t smash in the front door?”

“No.” Em knew Sergeant Jackson was joking but couldn’t crack a smile.

Now that they’d mentioned it, Em noticed that the study window seemed to be intact, and there were no obvious signs of forced entry anywhere else. Not that he’d looked for them particularly. Mostly he’d been focused on trying to comfort his mother. Who really should have been dealing with this anyway. If she didn’t turn up soon, he’d have to go and bring her
down
, or at least find out if she’d stopped crying.

He realized Sergeant Jackson had asked him a question. “Sorry?”

“You didn’t hear anything?” Jackson repeated.

“Me? No, I sleep in the attic.”

“Wouldn’t then, would you? Your mother didn’t mention hearing anything, did she?”

Em started to shake his head as Tiblet put in, “Thing is, they really trashed that room. Even broke bits off the furniture. Couldn’t do that without making noise. Your mother’s room is one floor up, right?”

How did he know that?
Em wondered. “Yes, that’s right; but she’s a heavy sleeper.”

“Maybe you’d better go and fetch her,” Jackson said. “We won’t keep her long, but best for her to get it over and done with.” He turned away from Em dismissively and said to Tiblet, “Strange business this, Stanley. Strange business.”

Chapter 6

“I
don’t want you to worry about anything,” Em’s mother told him. They were seated facing each other across the kitchen table with the police now long gone. He noticed that she’d put on makeup; not a lot, but it made a big difference. The crying had stopped, and her eyes didn’t even look red. Once she’d finally come down, the way she’d dealt with Sergeant Jackson and Detective Constable Tiblet, you’d have thought she’d invited them around for tea. Hardly believe she’d been up half the night, suffered a bereavement, faced a break-in.
Thought her husband had been murdered,
a memory whispered in Em’s head.

“I’m not worrying about anything,” he said, even though it wasn’t true.

“Well, that’s good,” his mother said. “Because there’s nothing to worry about. We’ll miss your father, we’ll
grieve
for your father; but life must go on. Eventually the pain will go away. We’ll never forget him—I don’t mean that—but the pain will, you know, become manageable.”

“Yes, of course, Mum.”

“I was talking to your uncle Harold last night, and we don’t see why things can’t go on exactly as before. Your education . . . going on to university . . .” She made a small gesture with both hands. “No need for any of us to change any plans.” She smiled bravely. “So nothing you need concern yourself about.”

This is your pilot speaking,
Em thought.
We are now entering Cloud Cuckoo airspace.
Aloud he said gently, “We’ll have to leave this place, won’t we? Now that Dad’s—”

“No we won’t!” Mum said, suddenly animated. “We won’t; not unless you want to. I had a word with Dr. Gauld, and he says it could take them up to a year to replace your father; and they won’t even start looking for another six weeks because of the summer holidays. And the thing is, because of the economic slump, they may not want to replace him at all to save money; and even if they
do
replace him, the new person might not find this place suitable.” She leaned forward. “Meanwhile, Dr. Gauld says we’re welcome to stay. There’ll be rent, of course, since the lodgings aren’t part of your father’s job package anymore; but it will be low because it’s subsidized.”

Dr. Gauld was chancellor of the university—nothing like going straight to the top. Em looked at his mother admiringly but then felt he needed to ask, “You’ll have to get a job, won’t you, Mum?”

A confused look flashed across her face. Then she said quickly, “Yes, I will. I mean, I don’t have to; but I’d like to. I’d like to go back to teaching. That was always the plan, really, between Eddie and myself.”

“You’ve been away from teaching for a long time, Mum.”

She looked at him blankly. “Yes.”

“It might not be all that easy to get back in. It could take you months. . . .” He shook his head. He didn’t want to say
years,
but he was thinking it.

“Yes, well, I’d certainly expect that.” From the expression on her face, she didn’t know what he was getting at.

Em couldn’t put it off any longer. “What are we going to live on in the meantime?” he asked bluntly. It occurred to him that if he left school he might get a job at McDonald’s or somewhere. They were always advertising jobs.

To his surprise, his mother’s face lit up. “Oh, you mustn’t worry about
money
! That’s about the only thing that won’t be a problem. I always thought your dad’s salary wasn’t much. I mean, academic salaries never are; but when I was going through his things, I came across nearly two thousand pounds in cash and a bank draft for another twenty thousand. I don’t know how he managed to save it; but he was a very frugal man, of course, apart from all his little trips abroad. And then, on top of that, your uncle Harold sold him an enormous insurance policy just after we got married. I was cross at the time—I thought Harold was taking advantage; but he was absolutely right. All that comes to us now, as well. I know I said I wanted to go back to teaching, but it’s not for the money.”

Em stared at her. It was a lot to take in. Whatever brave face he put on it, he
had
been worried. To give himself time to gather his thoughts, he said the first thing that came into his mind, which was “Did the police find out how they got in?” He’d left Mum with the police when she eventually came down. She’d looked then as she looked now, brisk and competent, so he’d left them to it and gone to his room.

“Oh,” she said vaguely, “they thought it might have been one of the upstairs windows, probably the one in the bathroom.”

Em knew at once with absolutely certainty that she was lying. “Probably?” he said. “Aren’t they sure?”

His mother shrugged. “Well, the latches are quite old in this building. It’s difficult to be sure which one they slipped. But the bathroom is the most likely.”

And how would the thieves have known that?
Em wondered. But before he could wonder aloud, Mum said brightly, “Actually, your uncle Harold and I had a really cool idea last night.” She smiled at him. “About you.”

Mum never used a word like
cool
, not in her ordinary conversation. She only ever trotted it out when she wanted to persuade him about something. She had this idea—a lot of adults did—that using teen slang made them more acceptable to their kids, although all it really did was make them sound dorky. “About me?” Em echoed suspiciously.

“Yes, we thought it would be neat”—wow, she must be
really
anxious to get him to do something—“if you went away for a while. You know, like a little holiday. A holiday break. Somewhere nice. So you could, you know, recover.”

“From Dad’s death?”

“Yes, that and . . . everything else. With the cash I found, I could afford to let you have a decent bit of spending money, so you could . . .” She let the sentence trail.

“You mean . . . by the seaside?”

“Or even out of the country.” She pasted on a phony expression of revelation, as if she’d just thought of something. “Actually, I think Tom Peterson’s going off somewhere. You could go with him. You like Tom. And his daughter’s home from the States—remember little Charlotte? She’s grown up now, so you’d have somebody to talk to. I’m sure they’d be delighted for you to come along.” She looked at him, eyes suddenly wide with anticipation.

As surely as he’d known she was lying before, Em knew now there was something she was covering up. “Where’s Tom going to?” he asked.

“France,” his mother said brightly. “It’s lovely at this time of year. Beautiful scenery . . . lovely food . . . You’d see a bit of Paris and then I think Tom’s planning some time in the South of France. Millionaire’s playground, eh? You might even see a movie star. Or a pop star, better yet. What do you think?”

Em thought there was something going on. But he knew better than to ask Mum about it directly. She was an expert at denying stuff—and making you feel guilty that you’d even asked. “Tom mightn’t want me tagging along,” he said.

“Oh, I’m sure he’d be
delighted
!” Mum exclaimed. “The two of you get on so well—he’s like another uncle to you.”

She’s asked him already,
Em thought. She must have asked him at the funeral; there just wasn’t any other time. How creepy was that? And Tom had said yes. What else
could
he say? Mum dripping all over him, grieving widow, Ed’s best friend. Mum had set it all up and was now pretending it was an idea that had just occurred to her so he wouldn’t feel pushed around.

All the same, she was right. He
did
get on well with Tom. Any time Tom called to see Dad, he treated Em like a grown-up, which was more than a lot of people did. And they talked about stuff together—interesting stuff, not the usual adult
How are things at school, then?
They both had an interest in Gothic cathedrals, for example, and the mystery of how they got built. Tom liked mysteries generally—rains of frogs, sea monsters, the Egyptian pyramids, lost civilizations—and so did Em. A bit of time together with Tom would be no hardship.

Especially with his daughter there.

Em pushed the thought aside. The other thing was that he’d never been to France before. Actually, that wasn’t strictly true. His geography class had once gone on a day trip to Calais, but that wasn’t seeing France. Paris would be very different. The South of France would be very, very different. Besides, Mum might need some time to herself.

Em licked his lips. “Well, if you think Tom wouldn’t mind . . .”

The look on his mum’s face was relief. She just couldn’t hide it, although she tried very hard. But after a second it faded. “There’s one other thing . . . ,” she said hesitantly. Em waited. “Your father”—she swallowed—“just before he got sick, he bought you something. For your birthday.”

“My birthday isn’t until October,” Em said blankly.

“Yes, I know. I don’t know why he got it so early. Maybe it was on special offer or something. And then he wanted to get it engraved, and he may have thought that would take longer than it did. But anyway, when he was at the worst of his fever, when it was looking touch and go before he started to”—she swallowed again, and he saw to his horror that her eyes were brimming with tears—“before we thought he was getting better, he gave it to me to give to you on your birthday. But I think maybe since you’re going away, I should give it to you now. I don’t know much about these things, but seems to me you’d have more use for it on holiday. And it would be a little memento of your father. . . .”

Like he needed one. Em wondered what it was. If his father had it engraved, it was probably a watch. As a hint. Dad had always been fussy about punctuality. He never seemed to figure out it didn’t mean much to a teenager.

But it wasn’t a watch. It was a brand-new iPod touch. The engraving on the back said:

G
OOD LISTENING
. H
APPY BIRTHDAY
, E
DWARD,
FROM YOUR LOVING FATHER

Em felt the tightness in his chest and turned away quickly so his mother would not see his reaction. He slipped the iPod into his jacket pocket, scarcely able to hold back the tears. He’d dropped hints about an iPod; but it would be a long, long time before he could bring himself to use this one.