by R. A. Spratt
‘Hey!’ protested Ian. ‘I didn’t give anyone permission to use my likeness.’
‘It makes sense,’ said Melanie. ‘You’re the best-looking boy in school. And we don’t want to spend generations to come looking at an ugly statue.’
‘Now, Mr Novokavic, as the most senior former headmaster here,’ said the Headmaster, handing a large plumbing key to Mr Novokavic, ‘if you would do the honours and turn the fountain on.’
There was some fumbling about at this stage as Mr Novokavic struggled to insert the key into the plumbing fixture. Mrs Thompson had to help him because he didn’t have enough upper body strength to turn it. Finally, she gave it a good hard twist and everyone turned to look at the statue.
Nothing happened.
‘Darn thing doesn’t work!’ snapped Colonel Hallett. ‘Can’t you get anything right, man?’
The Headmaster looked like he wanted to punch Colonel Hallett, but he didn’t get a chance. There was a rumbling noise, deep underground.
‘Earthquake!’ yelled Mirabella.
The ground was certainly vibrating. Then suddenly a huge geyser of water erupted from Ian’s head. Ian the statue, not Ian the boy. No-one had told Binky to move, so he was entirely drenched by the downpour. He hastily powered up the boat and tried to get away from the fountain.
‘Wow, that’s impressive!’ said Melanie.
‘It looks like my head is exploding!’ marvelled Ian.
‘It is meant to symbolise a fountain of knowledge,’ said Friday. ‘It’s a very literal type of symbolism.’
‘It looks more like it’s symbolising me getting a severe head injury,’ said Ian.
‘You did, yesterday,’ Melanie reminded him.
‘They certainly didn’t have anything like this at the Collège Du Léman,’ said Friday.
Just then, the wind changed direction and spray from the fountain was blown back towards land. All the headmasters on the jetty and the students lined up on the bank caught a good shower.
Students started screaming. Some in horror to find themselves wearing white shirts that were now drench ed and revealing, others with delight to be caught up in a downpour you’d usually only find at a water park.
Over the shrieking and the babble of noise, Friday was the only person who could see clearly. The advantage of wearing a pork-pie hat is that it keeps rain out of your eyes. So she was the only one to notice that Binky was returning to the jetty much too fast.
‘Binky! Slow down!’ yelled Friday, although there was no way she could be heard over the yelling crowd, the rumbling fountain and the roar of the motorboat engine. Friday glanced across to see where Binky was heading. He was aimed straight for the jetty where all five headmasters, past and present, were still standing. Friday started running towards them, ‘Get off the jetty, quickly! You’ve got to move!’
But the headmasters didn’t hear her, they were too busy berating the current headmaster about how things were so much better in their day.
Binky looked about desperately. Friday caught his eye.
‘I can’t control it!’ he yelled, as he desperately tried to turn off the engine and turn the boat.
‘Jump clear!’ yelled Friday. ‘Now!’
Binky was not a great intellectual but he was very good at doing as he was told. He pounded the off switch twice more and when it didn’t respond, he leapt over the side of the boat, just before it slammed into the jetty.
The motorboat crumpled around one of the jetty’s struts, like a soda can that had been hit by a baseball bat.
The decking of the jetty broke away from the support and one side dropped down into the water, tipping all the headmasters into the swamp.
Now everyone was screaming.
Friday dived in and started swimming towards the headmasters. Ian had followed her and, being a better swimmer, he soon powered past her and grabbed Dr Wallace by the scruff of her neck.
‘Unhand me, young man,’ spluttered Dr Wallace.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Ian as he pulled Dr Wallace over to the next strut of the jetty where she would be able to climb out on the fixed metal ladder.
Binky had been in the water when the jetty collapsed so he already had Mr Novokavic and the Headmaster tucked under an arm each and was sculling on his back towards the bank.
‘I do not approve of this,’ protested Mr Novokavic. ‘I have not been swimming since 1971. I do not like having water in my ears.’
Friday reached out to help Colonel Hallett. He stopped her by whacking her on the hand with his crutch. ‘I don’t need assistance from a girl,’ said the Colonel. ‘I’ll have you know that I once swam the English Channel.’ Colonel Hallett turned and glared at Ian. ‘You, boy, bring my crutches.’ He threw his crutches at Ian and started doing very slow breaststroke towards the bank. Ian followed close behind.
Friday looked about. There was still a lot of noise on the bank from hysterical students and angry staff members. But out on the water it was quieter. Friday could hear the lap of the small waves against the wreck of the jetty, the shower of the fountain and the creaking of the timbers as they strained to hold together in their shattered arrangement.
‘Where is Mrs Thompson?’ yelled Friday.
Nobody was listening.
Friday tried to yell louder to the people on the bank. ‘Has anyone seen Mrs Thompson?’
Still no-one heard her. Friday looked about. There was no sign of anyone else on the surface of the water. She had a horrible thought – what if Mrs Thompson was trapped underneath? Friday duck dived underneath the murky surface, but the swamp water was too cloudy to see more than a few centimetres in front of her face.
Friday tried to remember where Mrs Thompson had been standing. She had been at the back of the group, furthest away from where the boat hit. She must have fallen over the back. Friday swam over and ducked under the water. It was no good. Friday couldn’t see anything, just dark looming shapes through the muddy water. They could be anything – sunken logs, mangrove roots or submerged rocks. Friday turned back to the bank. Panic starting to rise in her. Ian had returned to the bank in case she needed help. He waded into the water until he was waist deep.
‘What’s wrong?’ he yelled.
‘It’s Mrs Thompson!’ cried Friday. ‘She’s missing!’
Pattie Bracks was a journalist from the local paper and she could not be more delighted. The unveiling of a statue would be lucky to get three inches of column space on page sixteen, but the disappearance and probable drowning of a headmistress at the country’s most exclusive boarding school was going to make national news. And she was right there live when it happened so she had lots of great photos. The boat smashing into the jetty, the headmasters falling in, children rescuing their teachers and Colonel Hallett hitting Ian over the head with a crutch for trying to help him. It was all going to look fabulous in the paper the next day.
Friday had gone back to her dorm room to change into dry clothes, but she was not there long before there was a knock at the door. The Headmaster had sent a messenger to fetch her back to the swamp bank.
Friday trudged down the hill. She would have liked to have had a shower. It’s hard to feel dignified with a kilo of swamp mud stuck to your scalp. When she saw the Headmaster it was clear he was in even worse shape. He hadn’t even changed his clothes. He was standing on the bank, still in his water-logged suit, with a blanket draped around his shoulders as he watched the scuba divers search the water.
Sergeant Crowley looked dejected too. He was overseeing his officers as they collected evidence, making sure they did it properly and not using their own sandwich bags from their lunch as they had done in the past. He had a senior officer overseeing him which was making him nervous.
So far, the scuba divers had found nothing except decades of contraband that students had thrown into the swamp over the years. Some of it was quite valuable. One diver pulled up a very first model Apple Macintosh computer. Apart from being entirely waterlogged and having a few barnacles growing on
it, it was in surprisingly good condition so it would soon be snapped up by a museum.
There wasn’t much to see, just bubbles emerging and occasionally an item of clothing or personal effect handed up to an officer with evidence bags waiting on the deck.
‘Barnes,’ snapped the Headmaster.
‘It wasn’t me,’ protested Friday. She could see that the Headmaster was angry and ready to take it out on anybody.
‘You’re supposed to be the girl genius,’ said the Headmaster, ‘so figure this out. Where can Mrs Thompson possibly have disappeared to?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Friday. ‘There are too many variables. The changing tide moves everything about under the water. And there is so much debris under there.’ Friday indicated the deck of the jetty where a large pile of rubbish was stacking up. A scuba diver was just handing up what looked like a tandem bicycle.
‘Isn’t that the bicycle you lent me and Melanie to ride into town last year?’ asked Friday.
‘She probably threw it in,’ said the Headmaster. ‘I’ve never met such a lazy girl.’
Friday shook her head. ‘You’re right, but she is also too lazy to throw a bicycle anywhere.’
‘Do you think she could have survived?’ asked the Headmaster.
‘She was fine when I left her five minutes ago,’ said Friday. ‘Just lying down for a nap in fact.’
‘Not Pelly,’ snapped the Headmaster, ‘Mrs Thompson.’
They both looked out across the swamp.
‘I suppose it’s possible,’ said Friday. ‘In the 1970s, North Korean frogmen kidnapped several Japanese beach goers and smuggled them away in submarines.’
‘You think Mrs Thompson has been kidnapped by North Koreans?!’ exclaimed the Headmaster.
‘Did she know anything about nuclear technology?’ asked Friday.
‘I doubt it,’ said the Headmaster. ‘She was a PE teacher before she became a headmistress. I think hockey was her only area of expertise.’
‘Then I doubt the North Koreans would want her,’ said Friday. ‘They like sport, but they’re more into table tennis and taekwondo than hockey.’
‘Where could she be?’ said the Headmaster.
‘The swamp is a labyrinth of trees and shrubs,’ said Friday. ‘She could have become disorientated in the melee after the accident and floated downstream. Maybe she’s resting somewhere in the swamp.’
Sergeant Crowley walked over to Friday and the Headmaster. ‘The inspector wants there to be a search of the swamp,’ said Sergeant Crowley. ‘We’re going to send for the recruits from the police academy to come and help, but if Mrs Thompson has been injured it is imperative that we find her as quickly as possible. We can make a start by getting all your year 12 students to come down and help.’
The Headmaster groaned. ‘And if that goes wrong, we’ll have one headmistress and fifty students missing come night fall.’
‘I know it isn’t ideal, sir,’ said Sergeant Crowley, ‘but for a wet, injured, elderly lady, the drop in temperature at nightfall could be fatal.’
The Headmaster nodded. He turned to Parker, who was on standby to act as messenger. ‘Parker, fetch all the year 11 and year 12 students, and any teaching staff not taking classes. Get them down here at once. Barnes, I suppose you can stay too.’
The Headmaster turned around but Friday was already sprinting back up the hill towards the school.
‘Where is she going?’ asked the Headmaster.
‘Banoffee pudding, sir,’ said Parker.
‘What?’ asked the Headmaster.
‘Mrs Marigold is making banoffee pudding for dessert tonight,’ said Parker. ‘She says we need comfort food to help us deal with the trauma.’
The year 11 and 12 students were just starting to emerge from their classrooms and amble down towards the swamp when Friday sprinted past them carrying a great big bottle.
‘What on earth is that?’ asked the Headmaster. It looked like a giant ketchup bottle. ‘There isn’t a sausage sizzle, you know?’
‘It’s not sauce,’ panted Friday. ‘It’s colouring.’
‘What?’ demanded the Headmaster.
‘So we can figure out where she floated,’ said Friday.
‘How will that help?’ asked the Headmaster. ‘Are you going to whip up some fondant icing?’
‘No, look,’ said Friday, still gasping for breath. She jogged over to the jetty and along the decking.
‘Careful there,’ called Sergeant Crowley. ‘It’s not stable.’
The loose palings creaked under Friday’s feet, emphasising his point. Friday stopped at the end where the broken pales were still dangling into the water.
‘She fell in here, right?’ Friday called across to the Headmaster.
‘That’s correct,’ said the Headmaster. ‘She was standing next to me. I tumbled forward, but she overbalanced backwards and fell behind the deck.’
‘Right,’ said Friday, turning around to face the spot where Mrs Thompson fell in, ‘so about here.’ Friday proceeded to empty the entire one litre bottle of red food colouring into the swamp.
‘Hey,’ protested Sergeant Crowley, ‘you can’t do that, you’ll be breaking some environmental law.’
‘It’s food colouring,’ said the Headmaster. ‘It won’t harm the frogs.’
‘Are you sure? You know what effect red food colouring has on children,’ said Sergeant Crowley.
‘Good point,’ conceded the Headmaster.
The red stain in the water grew then started to move, weaving a gradual path parallel to the bank. The stain did not travel in a straight line; it eddied and swayed around obstacles above and below the water line.
‘Genius,’ muttered the Headmaster, realising what Friday was doing. ‘The girl is totally infuriating, but also a genius.’
‘It’s so we can see where she would have floated to,’ Friday yelled across the water.
‘I can see that,’ snapped the Headmaster, before turning back to Sergeant Crowley. ‘Just because I think she is a genius, doesn’t mean I would ever dream of letting her know that.’
‘Don’t worry, sir,’ said Sergeant Crowley. ‘I think she’s fully aware of how intelligent she is.’
The red dye floated down along the bank, around mangroves and under fallen logs. Friday and the police rescue unit followed it from a distance (they didn’t want the boat’s motor to interfere with the natural movement of the water). Eventually, the dye was caught up in the greater tidal flow of the sea and was drawn out from the shore, past a channel marker.
‘Stop,’ said Friday.
‘Why?’ asked Sergeant Crowley. ‘The dye keeps going out to sea.’
‘We can’t fingerprint or search for trace evidence on the surface of the water,’ said Friday. ‘If she did float with the tide, this channel marker is the last physical object she would have touched.’
Friday took out her magnifying glass and closely examined the timber of the marker. It just looked like regular timber to the police sergeant.
‘Do you see anything?’ asked the Headmaster.
‘There are marks,’ said Friday, she pointed to faint horizontal lines on the surface of the wood.
‘Scratch marks, where she tried to hang on?’ asked the Headmaster, horrified to see such morbid evidence.
‘Perhaps,’ said Friday.
‘What else could it be?’ asked Sergeant Crowley.
‘I don’t like to speculate,’ said Friday.
‘Don’t tell me, you think the North Korean frogmen tied up their submarine here?’ said the Headmaster.
‘There is insufficient evidence to make a determination at this time,’ said Friday.
‘That’s just fancy for she doesn’t know, isn’t it?’ asked the police sergeant.
‘Yes,’ said the Headmaster.
‘Wait a second,’ said Friday. She peered into the water. It was less murky this far out. ‘There’s something down there, moving with the surge of the water.’
‘It’s n
ot Mrs Thompson, is it?’ asked the Headmaster.
‘No, it’s smaller than that,’ said Friday. Her nose was practically touching the water she was staring so hard at a point beneath the surface. ‘Here, hold my hat,’ she said, suddenly standing up straight.
‘Why?’ asked the Headmaster, taking the green pork-pie.
‘I’m going in,’ said Friday. She pin dived headfirst into the water.
‘Hey, we’ve got police divers for that!’ exclaimed Sergeant Crowley. ‘They don’t like it when other people do their job for them,’ he explained to the Headmaster.
Friday was only beneath the surface for a couple of seconds before she popped back up again, gasping for breath.
‘Get back in the boat, girl!’ snapped the Headmaster.
Friday clambered over the side and two burly constables pulled her aboard.
‘I got it,’ she said, breathlessly.
‘Got what?’ asked the police sergeant.
‘The evidence,’ said Friday, holding up a wet wad of white padding and what looked like a large dead rat.
The Headmaster gasped.
‘What is that?’ asked Sergeant Crowley.
‘It’s Mrs Thompson’s wig,’ said Friday.
‘So she was definitely here,’ said Sergeant Crowley.
‘Well, it was attached to her head when we saw her last,’ said Friday.
‘We should keep following the dye,’ said Sergeant Crowley. ‘She might be out there. Quick, get moving. It’s been three hours. That’s a long time to tread water.’
The boat sped out to the open ocean, following the dye, then going on beyond the trail in the same trajectory hoping to catch up with her. But after another four hours of searching, they were forced to give up. There was no sign of Mrs Thompson. And their boat had run out of petrol, so they had to call back to base to get rescued themselves.
‘I’m going to have to notify her family,’ said the Headmaster sadly, as he and Friday trudged up the bank to the school in the growing darkness.
‘Did she have one?’ asked Friday.
‘She’s a widow, but she has a son,’ said the Headmaster. ‘I met him once. Dreadful fellow.’