Five Seconds to Doomsday

by Simon Cheshire

  He gave me a weary smile. As the police officers led him and his son away, I felt a cold, liquid sensation of misery creep through me. ‘What would you have done, young man?’ The words kept zinging around my brain like a rubber ball in a lift.

  ‘Well done, Saxby’ said Luke, beaming. ‘Danielle was right: you’re a genius.’

  ‘You’ve got our friend Peter Lyndon out of a lot of trouble, there,’ said Mr Pratt. ‘Congratulations, lad.’

  Peter Lyndon, looking thoroughly worn out, shook my hand. ‘Thank you,’ he said softly. He swiped at his eyes, which were going a bit watery and then he walked away.

  I returned to my shed and flopped into my Thinking Chair. It had started raining again. I sat there for a while, pen poised over my notebook, lost in thought.

  Did Len and Stephen deserve any sympathy? Can doing a good thing for lots of people ever be justified, if it means that one person suffers as a result? Is it ever right to do something bad for a good reason?

  I couldn’t make up my mind. What do you think?

  A few days later, I heard that an enormous pile of waiting-to-be-mailed games that Stephen Dale had packaged up were found at Dales in a toilet marked Out of Order. I guess there’s some small measure of honesty in his and Len’s web of deceit, I thought to myself, otherwise they wouldn’t have bothered mailing out anything at all!

  A few days after that, I heard that Buy-Big-Bargains had shut down the auction and that the Dales had been charged with fraud, although they had refunded all the money that had been sent to them online. The workers at Dales Ltd had clubbed together and put their own money into the company, to keep it going until things improved. Which was something I really —

  Plip, plip.

  What was that? I looked up at the ceiling of my shed to see drips of rain squeezing out around the sides of my repair! Argghhhh!

  I phoned Muddy. He hurried over. He took one look at my handiwork. ‘Noooo, dum-dum, you put the patch on the outside of the roof!’

  I slumped back into my Thinking Chair and groaned.

  Case closed.

  CASE FILE EIGHTEEN:

  THE

  SHATTERED

  BOX

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  ONCE I SOLVED A CASE I called The Mystery of the Sleeping Cactus by spending four days watching people go in and out of a shoe shop. And there was a six week period during which I took daily measurements of the shadows cast by the trees on the St Egbert’s School sports field. They were a vital clue in The Adventure of the Martian Cyclist.

  Both these cases were far too routine and easy-to-crack to be worth telling you about here. I only mention them at all because they’re examples of how detective work is all about slowly and carefully sifting through the evidence. Running about and getting into dangerous situations happens a lot less than you might think.

  The case of The Shattered Box is an interesting one, because it’s another example of the slow-and-careful approach. It was quite a small mystery, which was cleared up in the space of a single school day. However, it involved a problem which, at first sight, seemed totally baffling. Slightly crazy, even.

  It all took place on the first day back at school after half-term. Everyone feels a bit miserable on the first day back, especially the teachers, but I was feeling extra glum. I still hadn’t sorted out the leak in the roof of my garden shed – or Crime HQ as I prefer to call it. I’d had to shift my filing cabinet of case notes out of the way of the drips. I was now waiting for my friend George ‘Muddy’ Whitehouse (that scruffy but brilliant Guru of Gadgets) to find time to come over and fix it.

  ‘How about tonight?’ I suggested, as we trudged past the school gates. I had to raise my voice because there was a strong wind whistling around the school’s car park.

  ‘Can’t tonight,’ said Muddy, his tatty school bag slung over his shoulder. ‘Promised my friend from next door I’d put extra-grip wheels on his bike.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘I’m fixing Mrs Penzler’s MP3 player tomorrow.’

  I grumbled under my breath.

  ‘I told you,’ he said, ‘you should have got me to do it. But oooh nooo, Saxby knows better, Saxby wants to tackle it himself. You know you’re totally rubbish at stuff like that. You’re at the back of the queue now, you’ll just have to wait.’

  I grumbled under my breath all the way across the car park. I grumbled some more as we made our way down the corridor that ran past the school office. Then I heard someone else grumbling.

  It was the school secretary Mrs McEwan. She was standing in the doorway of the office, hands on hips. She was tottering back and forth on her chunky high-heel shoes as if she was doing a dance called the I-Can’t-Quite-Make-Up-My-Mind.

  ‘Of all the days for this to happen,’ she grumbled. ‘Typical! Just what I do not need!’

  ‘Got a problem, Mrs McEwan?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, I most certainly have!’ she cried, turning to face me. ‘Good morning, Saxby. Hello, George.’ She tugged a few stray wisps of hair back into place. Her smudgy lipstick and miniature skirt were so brightly coloured that they made the rest of her look pale by comparison.

  I glanced past her, into the office. It was a wreck. Pieces of paper were strewn all over the floor, along with the contents of her desk’s drawers and a jumble of pens and paper clips.

  ‘I don’t want to be rude, Mrs McEwan,’ said Muddy, ‘but this place looks worse than my room.’

  ‘Someone has ransacked the office!’ wailed Mrs McEwan.

  ‘Why? When?’ I said. I took a quick look at the wall clock nearby. A-ha, good, there were at least fifteen minutes to go before registration. Plenty of time. ‘Tell me what happened.’

  Mrs McEwan let out a loud huff of frustration. ‘I am supposed to be sticking to my new system of tidiness and efficiency! I’d been doing so well! And now this!’

  ‘Did you discover it when you arrived?’ I asked. ‘Did it happen some time during the night?’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Mrs McEwan. ‘I’ve been here a while. Someone did this within the last half an hour! I can only suppose they were looking for something to steal.’

  ‘Did anyone see anything?’ I said.

  ‘No,’ replied Mrs McEwan, ‘but the Head heard a thump.’

  ‘A thump?’

  I jotted down some notes. The sequence of events had been as follows:

  7:30 a.m. – Mrs McEwan arrives at school. Today, there’s a PTA meeting in the main hall, plus some visitors are expected and there’s a lot she needs to get ready.

  7:31 a.m. – Mrs M goes down to staff room to make a cup of tea. Returns with tea. Office is as usual.

  7:36 a.m. – Head arrives at school. Head and Mrs M chat about Saturday night’s Dance Insanity on TV. Head makes cup of tea. Goes directly to her private office, tucked away along corridor running parallel to school office.

  7:48 a.m. – Two scheduled visitors arrive: 1) Mr Gray, from the local council and 2) a man from ‘Ben’s Bugs’, who’s got a vanload of exotic insects outside which he’s due to exhibit in various classrooms today. Mrs M directs both of them to the staff room to make themselves cups of tea.

  7:50 a.m. – Mrs M enters main hall, close to office, to get things ready for PTA meeting.

  8:16 a.m. – Head hears thump in office. Calls out ‘Everything all right out there?’ to Mrs M, thinking Mrs M has returned and has maybe dropped something. No reply.

  8:17 a.m. – Head comes out to investigate. Office is total mess! Goes to main hall, fetches Mrs M. Both return. Head tells Mrs M off for having disgustingly scruffy office. Whatever happened to new system of tidiness and efficiency? Mrs M declares that office has been ransacked! Both express horror at the state of society.

  8:18 a.m. – First parents arrive for PTA (Mrs Reynolds and Mr Pollard, then Mrs Brewer a few moments later) and see office. All express horror at the state of society. Head tells Mrs M to get this business sorted out as Mr Gray from the council will take a dim view
of school’s standards if he sees the mess. Head leads parents into main hall.

  8:22 a.m. – S Smart and G Whitehouse arrive.

  ‘I don’t know where to start,’ wailed Mrs McEwan, gazing sadly across the thick scattering of litter on the office floor. ‘Thank goodness this didn’t happen a few weeks ago.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ I said.

  ‘Because there would have been twice the mess then,’ she said. ‘Between you and me, I’ve been letting the place get a bit messy. The Head’s been complaining. That’s why I worked out my new system of tidiness and efficiency. Every last piece of paper and item of stationery logged and listed on the computer, clutter reduced to a minimum, paperwork organised into neat piles. I even chucked out my lucky biro, the broken one.’

  ‘So the Head’s been much happier recently?’ suggested Muddy.

  ‘No, she can’t understand how I organise my new system of tidiness and efficiency. She says it’s illogical. Never mind, I know where everything is, and that’s the important thing. I’ve cut down the amount of paper in here by more than half!’

  That was quite hard to believe, looking at the mess. Mrs McEwan, Muddy and I tiptoed around it all as much as we could, our feet crunching against things now and again.

  The office had changed quite a lot since I’d last been in there. Everything was sorted into neat little trays, or would have been if it wasn’t all over the floor. Even the chunky paper shredder had been replaced with a simple slot poised above the (currently empty) paper-recycling box.

  ‘Looks like they left the computer alone,’ muttered Mrs McEwan. ‘That doesn’t appear to have been touched at all.’

  Something caught my eye, sitting on top of a heap of scattered papers, next to Mrs McEwan’s star-footed swivel chair. I stepped around the paper heap and, crouching down, I nudged the object over on to its side.

  It was a large metal cash box, one of those round-cornered boxes for keeping money or other valuables in. Its lid was slightly bent, and swung loosely open. Its hefty lock had been smashed apart. A small pile of coins had fallen out of it.

  I looked up at Mrs McEwan. ‘Have they taken much cash?’

  ‘None, by the look of it,’ said Mrs McEwan. ‘There was only some loose change in there anyway.’

  ‘That’s odd,’ I muttered. ‘Where was the box sitting?’

  ‘Right there on the desk,’ said Mrs McEwan. ‘It wasn’t hidden away. Why would they smash it open and then steal nothing from it?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Muddy, ‘they expected to find it full of cash? They wouldn’t know those coins were all that was in it until they’d opened it, would they?’

  ‘They weren’t after money,’ I mumbled, picking up the shattered box and turning it over in my hands. ‘Breaking this thing open was just an afterthought.’

  ‘How could you possibly know that?’ asked Mrs McEwan.

  There were a couple of simple observations about the box which indicated that the thieves hadn’t been interested in stealing money. Can you spot them?

  The cash box was sitting in plain sight, right there on the desk,’ I said. ‘If all they’d wanted was money, they’d have broken it open straight away. But they didn’t. They ransacked the rest of the office first.’

  ‘How can you tell?’ said Muddy.

  ‘Because the box is on top of this heap of paper,’ I said. ‘The paper was dropped first, the box opened afterwards.’

  Tapping the box’s ruined lock with one finger, I started looking around for . . .

  ‘Look!’ I said. ‘There’s a mark on the edge of the desk, a little chunk’s been taken out of it. Was this here before?’

  ‘No,’ said Mrs McEwan. ‘I see what you’re getting at. They bashed the box on the desk to force it open.’

  ‘That must have been the thump that the Head heard!’ cried Muddy.

  ‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘When the Head called out, the thieves realised someone was close by and made a run for it. By the time the Head came out of her office, they were long gone.’

  ‘Even if they didn’t want money’ said Muddy, ‘they must have been after something. What’s missing?’

  Mrs McEwan snorted crossly at the mess for a few moments. ‘Well, I had a new box of elastic bands on the desk, I can’t see that anywhere, and the two pencils from my pen pot have gone, but apart from that . . . Well, it’s anyone’s guess. All that’s in here is ordinary school paperwork, nothing valuable or secret, no information you couldn’t get elsewhere or that you couldn’t be told about, if you asked nicely.’

  ‘So,’ I said, ‘someone wrecks the office, smashes the cash box, and runs off with a handful of stationery.’

  ‘As a robbery, it’s slightly crazy’ commented Muddy.

  A Page From My Notebook

  Where on earth do I start? This incident has some very strange features. As Muddy said, the thieves wanted SOMETHING. From the look of the office, they were SEARCHING. But for what?

  Thought No. 1: Could we be making a mistake here? Could the mess be accounted for by a freak gust of wind or a stray cat going a bit loopy? I don’t think so. How do you explain the shattered box, for a start?

  Thought No. 2: That box is a vital clue. It must have taken a LOT of force to smash it. Whatever the thieves were looking for, they wanted it REALLY badly! The deduction that their search was FRANTIC is backed up by two things: 1) The way all those papers were scattered about and 2) The way the thieves risked discovery – they – struck at the start of an ordinary school day, ANYONE might have spotted them!

  Thought No. 3: The thieves aren’t outsiders. A burglar would have nicked the cash box and the computer. The office was searched for something specific, therefore the culprits KNEW it would be there, therefore they’re almost certainly connected with the school.

  Follow-up question: Clearly, they weren’t just after a box of elastic bands and two pencils. So why take them at all?

  Follow-up question, part B: If my Thought No. 3 is correct, could the thieves still be here in school? Or did they take what they wanted and run?

  My plan of action:

  1. Mrs M said that everything in the office is logged on the computer. So I must work out EXACTLY what’s been stolen – I can't discover WHY the incident happened until I know WHAT the thieves were after.

  2. Must question those three parents who arrived for PTA meeting at 8:18 a.m. Did they see anyone leaving the school? Or walking away from the direction of the office?

  3. This is going to take time – must ask Mrs Penzler if I can skip PE this morning. (Note to self: Before asking, practise using lost-puppy-dog-oh-please-please-please expression!)

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  OUR FORM TEACHER, MRS PENZLER, can be a bit on the stern side. Nothing cracks her tough, concrete-like shell. I’ve seen kids turn on the tears and pretend to be suffering from terrible diseases and swear to her – on the lives of their beloved mothers – that their homework was eaten by a donkey. Nothing. Zilch. Nada.

  So I was pleasantly surprised when she let me off PE. I didn’t even need to use my lost-puppy-dog-oh-please-please-please expression. Thinking about it, it was probably because she’d had first-hand experience of what a brilliant schoolboy detective I am. Or possibly because Mrs McEwan is her best buddy.

  ‘You can investigate for an hour, Saxby,’ she barked, ‘then I want you back in class. We’ve got the man from Ben’s Bugs here today to show us his exotic insects.’

  I quickly returned to the office. By now, Mrs McEwan had scooped up all the scattered papers and had dumped them in a big heap on her desk.

  ‘I’ll go through them in a minute,’ I said. ‘Has the PTA meeting started yet?’

  ‘No,’ said Mrs McEwan, glancing up at the clock, ‘you’ve got a few minutes.’

  ‘Don’t those things usually happen out of school hours?’ I muttered, sifting through the top of the paper pile.

  ‘Usually But this is an important one, about the curriculum. It has t
o be held this week and now is the only time everyone could make it. It’s likely to go on for hours.’

  At that moment, the blood froze in my veins. Not at the thought of the PTA meeting (although that does often happen to teachers, apparently), but as I watched two people walking past the office.

  One of them was the Head. It wasn’t her who froze my blood (although that also often happens to teachers, apparently), it was the man walking along beside her.

  He was stooping and round-shouldered, with thinning hair slicked across his flattened skull. His face looked like it had been designed by a mad scientist, and from the sleeves of his dark jacket hung meaty, sallow-skinned hands. As he and the Head passed by, he flicked a look in my direction. It was then that my blood froze.

  ‘That’s Mr Gray from the local council,’ whispered Mrs McEwan. ‘He’s here for the PTA meeting too. Something to do with inspecting standards of something-or-other. Horrible man, always rude, the poor Head can’t stand him. He’s been here a few times.’

  ‘I see,’ I said, trying not to sound scared. ‘I’ll be back soon, I’m going to ask a few questions.’

  Notebook in hand, I went into the assembly hall. About fifteen or twenty adults were milling about in little groups, sipping their tea and waiting for the PTA meeting to begin.

  I soon found the three parents who had arrived at 8.18 a.m. – Mrs Reynolds, Mr Pollard and Mrs Brewer. I asked all three if they’d seen anyone – anyone at all – coming from the direction of the office at around 8:17 a.m., just after the Head heard the thump. They hadn’t. They expressed horror at the state of society, I thanked them politely, and I moved on.