by K. M. Peyton
‘A black Citroen will be driving down shortly and you’ve got to stop them! They tried to kill us. They pushed us over a gorge!’
‘Are you the lot from the Youth Orchestra, that went joy-riding?’
‘Yes, but we didn’t go joy-riding. We were abducted. And the people that did it . . .’
She dropped her voice as Mr Turkin and Ferretface came out of the restaurant and stood waiting for their female accomplice. They were about three metres away. Ferretface was lighting a cigarette.
‘This black Citroen – what’s its number?’
Nutty could read it from where she stood, but daren’t speak. She whispered, ‘Hold on.’
‘Speak up. I can’t hear you.’
He’d hear her scream, when Ferretface shot her, she thought. She made a great play of listening, back-view. If they looked, her black skirt and stupid shoes were bound to give her away. She turned her head away from them, just as Mrs Turkin came out of the Ladies. Their eyes met. Perhaps, Nutty thought, fear had transformed her features, for Mrs Turkin looked right through her. She joined the men and they moved towards the car park.
‘Are you still there?’ Nutty hissed.
There was a clicking noise and a long silence. He had gone for his coffee, no doubt. Nutty screamed into the mouthpiece, ‘Come back! I want to tell you—’
She saw the three Russians reach the car. The man got out the car key and Nutty saw Mrs Turkin’s face suddenly go berserk: she shouted something and turned round, pointing in Nutty’s direction. Tired as she was, the penny had obviously dropped.
Russian expletives! Ferretface turned, and Nutty saw his murderer’s eyes meet hers. He started to run. Nutty screamed into the telephone, dropped it and ran.
She leapt through the swing doors and flung them back violently behind her, right into Ferretface as he came. She ran through the café, past the amazed queue at the counter and out through an open window at the end, taking it like a hurdler.
‘Oh, Christian, Christian, save me!’
But now she was on the far side of the camp away from the car park, in among the tents fixed to the sides of cars, some with whole kitchens attached, and chairs and tables. People cooking their lunches stared in amazement. She dodged in and out, found an empty tent and plunged in. She could hear screams coming from the restaurant, and a crash of chairs. Could the Russians hurdle through the window as nippily as she? She doubted it. She yanked at the bottom of her tent on the far side, pulling out the peg, and wriggled out on the far side, leaving the soggy anorak behind. In and out of the tents, she kept her head down and ran, making round for the front of the restaurant again. There were screams all round now – the Russians must be disturbing a few of the lunch-cookers, crouched over their barbecues.
‘Christian, where are you?’
She had kept to her circle and was now running down the side of the restaurant towards the car park. Christian was sitting there on his horse, holding hers, like a true cowboy to the rescue.
‘Here!’
She leapt forward and grabbed her horse’s mane. Christian leaned over its back from the far side and held out his hand. She would never have got on without his desperate heave, but she was up and her heels drumming into the horse’s sides. Up the road they galloped, faster than they had ever come down, the horses sensing the urgency, until they were over the brow at the top.
They pulled back to a slow canter.
‘They’ll go now. We’ve blown it! The police’ll never get up here in time.’
‘You got a message through?’
‘Yes. Half a message at least. Where we are, and what they did. He said, was I one of the joy-riders—’
‘You are now,’ Christian said. He laughed. ‘Nutty – nutter – you’ve got the right name.’
‘They’ll get away now! They know I was talking to the police—’
‘They won’t,’ Christian said.
‘Why not?’
‘There was a bloke coming up the track, a backpacker, and I asked him if he had a knife and he produced one and I stuck it through their tyres. He was a bit surprised but I told him it was in a good cause. I told him it was a murderer’s getaway car. He didn’t believe me, of course.’
‘No-one’ll believe us! I wouldn’t believe it myself, if anyone told me.’
‘Tony saw. We’ve got witnesses.’
‘They never give up. I hope the police are on their way.’
They rode slowly back along the track, until they would meet the rest of the party. At last, it seemed peaceful and beautiful and all as it should be, with the sun shining and the strong wind dropping to a lovely fresh zephyr and the bees buzzing in the heather buds. Christian and Nutty relaxed, enjoying the feel of the horses’ warm movement beneath them and the feel of the sun in their faces.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ARNOLD, JOHN PIKE and Christian were taken to hospital; Jodie, Nutty and Hoomey to the police station. Tony went with them. Mrs Knox and Mr Harlech arrived in a great fluster, with Boris in the back of their car, and Mr and Mrs Turkin and Ferretface were rounded up and taken to the same police station.
Hoomey dozed off during the questioning and fell off his chair, but the two girls told their tale with admirable clarity. Mrs Knox sat listening, opening and shutting her mouth with consternation.
‘I knew it, I knew it! That boy! I know I saw a boy who shouldn’t be there—’
‘Arnold has been incredibly brave,’ Jodie said doggedly. ‘If it wasn’t for him, nobody would know—’
‘It all has to be proved, young lady,’ the police officer warned. ‘We can’t prefer charges until—’
‘You can about their trying to kill us!’
‘All in good time. We have to get the facts.’
‘It’s true that Boris had a different manager when we met him in Russia and, I understand, when he was met off the plane at Heathrow,’ Mrs Knox said. ‘If only he could speak some English! Is there nobody – a Russian speaker—?’
‘We are looking for one now. There’s a teacher at a school in Inverness – we are trying to contact him.’
‘And there’s a body in the lake at home. You must find that,’ Jodie put in.
If it hadn’t been for Tony’s evidence, in clipped army style, the two girls doubted if their story would have been believed. Even then, there was a suggestion that they had been joy-riding and gone out of control. Hoomey, kicked hard on the ankle by Nutty, gave his tale of going to the Gents with Arnold and seeing Ferretface abduct him, forcing him into the Citroen.
‘We took Miss Manners’ car to chase him – it’s still up there by the bothy, by Antrim Falls. That’s evidence!’
‘Just keep to your statement,’ the policeman said doggedly. ‘We’ve got as far as your getting a lift with Miss Manners to the concert. Now . . .’
It took hours. Even Nutty was getting confused by the end of the afternoon when they were allowed to go home. The Turkins and Ferretface were being held overnight, and the Russian teacher was to arrive to talk to Boris the following day. Tony had gone back to his trail-riders, to get back on course. Boris was to come home in the car with Mrs Knox and the three of them and return to the police station the following morning. The others were to stay in hospital overnight and be let out in the morning if declared fit.
‘Thank goodness we’ve no concert tonight!’ Mrs Knox exclaimed as she set off on the drive back. ‘No solo clarinet, no timpanist, the string leader—’ she glanced in her driving mirror and saw Jodie dozing in the back seat ‘—suffering from exhaustion . . . the soloist from nerves . . .’ Boris clearly had no idea what was going on. He hadn’t been allowed to speak to his minders, but had realized that they were being held by the police.
‘The KGB,’ Nutty tried to tell him.
She kept falling asleep in mid-sentence.
The following morning Mrs Knox drove Boris back again to meet the Russian teacher. She collected the three boys, discharged from hospital, and took them to the police st
ation to make their statements. Arnold was the star witness. Having such a good story for once, he told no lies, and late in the afternoon news came through from East Anglia that a body had been found in the lake, weighted down with a sledge-hammer and a five-gallon drum of diesel fuel. Arnold was vindicated.
Boris was deeply shocked. Even without the Russian teacher to tell them, they could all see his distressed state. Distressed about his dead minder, they gathered, not his current bunch. The Russian teacher told them that he wanted to stay in England. He said he hated the Turkins. He wanted to stay with his new friends and play piano with the schools orchestra. For ever.
‘We’re none of us for ever,’ Christian said regretfully.
But Boris came back to their tranquil dormitory and in the evening they all lazed on their beds, washed up after their adventures. Arnold felt miraculously freed of his burdens, with Mrs Knox’s blessings upon him, bed and food guaranteed for the rest of the holiday. He was on a high, and kept thinking of clashing cymbals. How come he could get a job like Nutty’s? A newspaper reporter wanted to speak to him. He went downstairs in a daze.
‘What’s going to happen to Arnie?’ Nutty said sadly. ‘When we get back? Surely he hasn’t got to go back to that school—’
They locked the doors, Arnold said. Even the Gasworks, workaday, paint-peeling school that it was, was cheerful and perfectly bearable.
‘He can come and live with me,’ Jodie said, ‘and Boris. We’ve got six bedrooms and a housekeeper and a cook and my dad’s hardly ever at home. He’ll be pleased. He likes me to have friends in.’
The others were impressed, Nutty and Hoomey openly.
‘How come he doesn’t mind?’ Nutty tried to think of her father having Boris and Arnold to live with them, just like that, and couldn’t really see it. She and her sister Gloria had to share a bedroom as it was.
‘My dad’s got a guilt conscience,’ Jodie said. ‘Being away all the time, playing tennis, and my ma sort of – well, gone off.’ She blushed. Jodie seemed transparently none the worse for her deprivations. ‘I’d like a pianist around – it’d be great, playing together.’
‘You could teach him English.’
‘Make a trio, with Arnie on cymbals,’ Nutty said.
‘Arnie’s great,’ John Pike said. ‘You should’ve heard him, Nutty, right on the bong every time, and never done it before. He got quite carried away.’
‘Tons better than you, Nutty,’ Hoomey said endearingly.
‘Well, I only stood in for my friend, then she got chickenpox with complications and never came back and there I was, lumbered. I only did it to oblige, not because I wanted to. If Arnie wants my job he’s welcome. After this holiday, mind. I’m not going home while he stays!’
‘You’d have to clear it with Mr Harlech,’ John Pike said. ‘But he won’t mind tuppence if Arnie’s good. Which he is.’
‘He could have a go in the rehearsal tomorrow. See how he does.’
The next day Arnold had his picture in the newspaper and the story was on the front page. He hoped Aunt Margaret would read it and know he was safe (safe?). She was bound to have heard about the body in the lake and would no doubt be thinking, ‘If only I had believed him!’ . . . If he had had any money he might have rung her up . . . but as it was he was far more excited by the news that Mr Harlech had agreed that he could take Nutty’s place on the cymbals. Nutty took him in hand, to teach him.
‘There’s more to it than just crashing them together,’ she said tartly. ‘Any fool can do that. If you’re going to do it properly . . .’
She took him off to one of the practice rooms and Hoomey trailed along to ting accompaniment on his triangle. Christian wanted to practise but was worried about Boris, lying on the bed looking sadly at the ceiling.
Jodie said, ‘It’s dreadful for him: he can’t even talk about it.’
‘What can we do?’
Jodie went to her room and fetched her violin and some sheets of music and showed them to Boris. She pointed sternly.
‘You – and me—’
He sat up and smiled. Jodie led him out to the practice room with the best piano in it where the boy using it graciously gave way to his superiors. Boris sat down and Jodie put the music in front of him. She knew it was a colossal cheek to think she could play violin well enough to invite Boris to accompany her but she also knew perfectly well that a good music work-out could soothe – or at least distract – the troubled mind. It was difficult to think music again, after all the excitements of the preceding two days. It seemed like two years!
She picked up her violin. Boris straightened the music on the rack and sat with his hands at the ready, poised over the keyboard like a pair of gigantic white spiders. He turned towards her and gave her an eager, enchanting smile. I could get on with this guy, Jodie thought, with a sudden swing of excitement. She felt her adrenalin flowing, her hands trembling with a desire to produce notes as fluently as Boris, to lift her talent on to another plane . . . she had a chance, and a future, if Boris wanted a friend. She laughed, and gave Boris the nod to start.
But Arnold, although grateful for the invitation, couldn’t see himself as a living-in cymbalist in the boringest place in the world, East Anglia.
‘What ’m I going to do?’ he asked Nutty, now that the adventure was over.
‘Mrs Knox said you could stay, right till the end.’
‘But then?’
Nutty was old enough and experienced enough to know that life ground on, good and bad and inbetween, and there was no getting away from it.
‘You’ve got friends now,’ she said. ‘You didn’t seem to have any before.’
‘No.’
‘Bonus one. You’ve discovered you’ve got a talent.’
‘Have I?’
‘Yes. A natural sense of rhythm, timing – that’s a large chunk towards being a musician. When I explained the music to you – those blobs between the bar-lines – you picked it up no trouble. Two four time, three four, six eight – some people find that hard. Bonus two.’
‘Hmm.’
‘If you play your cards right, influential adults feel grateful towards you – for uncovering the crime about Boris. Bonus three. They might want to help you.’
‘How can they?’
‘They can tell the police how useful you’ve been. The police will be nice to you – you’ve done all that work for them. Think about it. That body in the lake was bound to have been discovered sooner or later, and they’d have had no idea who it was or why. Just think – you’ve handed it to them on a plate. The police are bound to like you now. Bonus four.’
‘They might let me off the other things? Like a grass gets let off?’
‘Yes. You can count on it.’
‘Hmm.’
Arnold did not dispute that the four bonuses were pretty good, but in the end it made no difference to the fact that he had to go back to London and get on with his unsatisfactory life.
Nutty said, quite vehemently, ‘But it’s no different for you than anyone else, is it? It’s what you make of it. Hoomey’s got everything, and has made nothing. You’ve got nothing, but you’re not doing too pretty damned badly at the moment. Mrs Knox lives in London – she’ll get you into a youth orchestra if you want it badly enough. You’ve just got to decide to go for it, keep your nose clean. You’re clever, you’re sharp – you can make it if you want to.’
She was the first one who’d ever told him so. His spirits lifted considerably. Nutty had a sort of strength that transmitted. What did she have after all, for a girl, with her strong, square shape and her corkscrew hair sticking out as if she’d had an electric shock? No boy in his right mind would want to take her out to show off to his mates. But Arnold’s instincts told him that Nutty got by, and very well too, on far more enduring qualities than mere prettiness, and if he had her for a friend he wouldn’t go far wrong.
‘I’ve got you too,’ he said.
‘Bonus five,’ said Nutty.
&n
bsp; THE END
About the Author
Kathleen Peyton’s first book was published while she was still at school and since then she has written over thirty novels. She is probably best known for Flambards which, with its sequels The Edge of the Cloud and Flambards in Summer, was made into a 13-part serial by Yorkshire Television in 1979. The Edge of the Cloud won the Library Association’s Carnegie Medal in 1969 and the Flambards trilogy won the Guardian Award in 1970. More recently, BBC TV televised her best-selling title Who Sir? Me Sir?
In addition to The Boy Who Wasn’t There, Kathleen Peyton is the author of several other titles published by Transworld: Darkling (for young adult readers), Poor Badger (for younger readers) and, more recently, The Wild Boy and Queen Moon. She lives in Essex.
Also available by K. M. Peyton:
THE WILD BOY AND QUEEN MOON
(published by Doubleday)
For older readers:
DARKLING
For younger readers:
POOR BADGER
THE BOY WHO WASN’T THERE
AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 9781448157150
Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,
an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK
A Random House Group Company
This ebook edition published 2012
Copyright © K. M. Peyton, 1992
First Published in Great Britain
Corgi Childrens 1992
The right of K. M. Peyton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.