by R. A. Spratt
‘I don’t know,’ said Marcus. ‘I’ve never done anything interesting in my life.’
‘It’s true,’ said the Headmaster. ‘He’s a remarkably unremarkable student.’
‘Could someone have tried to kidnap you to get at your parents?’ asked Friday. ‘Or at a rich relative who might pay a large ransom?’
‘My family is rich,’ said Marcus, ‘but they’re not that rich. If you were going to kidnap a student to get a ransom, there would be a couple of hundred kids here who would be better to choose. My mum makes her money from gravel mining. It’s not a liquid asset. She wouldn’t be able to get a lot of cash together quickly.’
‘Environmentalists are getting increasingly militant,’ said the Headmaster. ‘Perhaps that had something to do with it.’
‘Those two men did not look like environmentalists to me,’ said Friday. ‘They looked like hired thugs, which was why they were so convincing as police officers. There is something serious going on here. And perhaps a case of mistaken identity.’
Chapter 16
Breaking and Exiting
Two weeks had passed, and there had been no more attempts to kidnap Marcus Welby, or any other student for that matter. No more paintings had been vandalised and, surprisingly, Friday was actually getting better at doing burpees.
Friday had learned that it was a really bad idea to stop for a rest when you’re lying on the ground, because it’s very hard to summon the will to get up again from that position. She’d learned that it was better to not take rest breaks at all, because even after a rest the burpees still felt horrible, so it was better to get them over with. And she had learned that burpees weren’t too bad for the first three, then they suddenly plunged into horribleness and stayed there for the remaining ninety-seven.
Mr Fontana had taken to placing a fitness tracker on the grass in front of Friday’s nose as she lay down, to try and tempt her into taking the easy way out. He didn’t really care if Friday wore the tracker or not, but he was fed up with having to spend twenty-five minutes of every morning watching her flail around on the ground and getting back up again.
Epstein was having to do burpees too. On the second day of the trial, his tracker had broken. He claimed it was an accident, but the dorm super visor had seen him smash it with a brick. Epstein was much quicker than Friday at burpees. He actually jumped down and up again. And even though he was tall and lanky, the whole movement only took him a few seconds so the burpees were all done in just minutes. Friday took way longer.
She had been working for nearly twelve minutes and had only finished her forty-eighth burpee for the morning when a year 8 boy jogged down to the oval.
‘Sir,’ he said to Mr Fontana, ‘the Headmaster wants to see Barnes.’
The crowd groaned. An increasingly large group had taken to gathering to watch Friday perform her daily exercise punishment. There were a lot of people who Friday had irritated and outright enraged during her time at Highcrest Academy. Not everyone enjoyed her crime-solving abilities, notably the people who had committed the crimes. And Ian Wainscott was positively delighted by the situation. Every morning, he would run a sweepstake and take bets on how many burpees Friday would perform before she collapsed gasping, and how long it would take her to complete the whole number.
‘She’s only got fifty-two burpees to go,’ said Mr Fontana.
‘Fifty-one,’ corrected Melanie. ‘She did another one while you were talking.’
‘He said now, sir,’ said the boy.
‘All right,’ said Mr Fontana.
The crowd booed.
Friday smiled a very sweaty smile, and stopped mid-burpee.
‘But you’ll have to make them up by doing 151 tomorrow,’ said Mr Fontana.
The crowd cheered.
Friday sighed and began following the boy back to the Headmaster’s office, with Melanie in tow.
‘What are you up to now?’ asked the Headmaster as soon as Friday and Melanie stepped into his office. ‘Or do I not want to know?’
Friday shook her head. ‘Sorry, sir, I’m confused. I’ve just been forced to perform exercise, which is never good for my cognitive processes. What are you talking about?’
‘If you’re up to something illicit but that is somehow for the greater good, could you please do a better job of hiding it from me?!’ said the Headmaster.
Friday turned to Melanie. ‘Do you know what he’s talking about?’
‘No, but I never do,’ said Melanie.
‘May I sit down?’ asked Friday. ‘I’m a little light-headed.’
‘No, you may not,’ said the Headmaster. ‘You’re covered in sweat. Those are antique leather-upholstered chairs.’
‘All right,’ said Friday. ‘Just explain: What is it you think I’ve done?’
‘Breaking out of the school,’ said the Headmaster.
‘Why would I do that?’ asked Friday.
‘I don’t know,’ said the Headmaster. ‘But you’ve done it before to go off mystery-solving. So what is it this time? Are you going to solve the Kennedy assassination? Or are you nipping off to Scotland to find the Loch Ness monster?’
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ said Friday.
‘To the best of your knowledge,’ qualified Melanie. ‘You might be sleepwalking. And you have had multiple head injuries this term, so you could be doing things when you’re concussed.’
‘If I’d been sleepwalking, there would’ve been clues,’ said Friday. ‘Mud on the soles of my feet, dew-damp pyjamas and tiredness in my legs.’
‘Do you have tired legs?’ asked Melanie.
‘Yes, but that’s from all the burpees,’ said Friday.
‘Or is it?’ asked Melanie, waggling her eyebrows.
‘I’m sure I haven’t been sleepwalking,’ said Friday, turning to the Headmaster, who was the marginally more sensible person in the room.
‘Then who has been breaking out? And why?’ asked the Headmaster.
‘I don’t know,’ said Friday. ‘Are you sure it’s not someone breaking in? Perhaps another kidnapping attempt?’
‘Good grief, I hadn’t even thought of that,’ said the Headmaster, mopping his brow. ‘But no students have gone missing, so I doubt it. I don’t really want to know what is going on, but the culprit isn’t doing a very good job of being covert. They keep cutting a hole in the perimeter fence. If someone is sneaking out and I don’t know about it, then it’s easy for me to say I don’t know about it because I actually don’t. But if someone is sneaking out and cutting holes in the fence, I can’t say I don’t know about it, because I know about the holes, and Mr Pilcher knows about them too because he’s been complaining about having to keep fixing them. Which means I have to fill in paperwork and inform the school council and they’ll expect me to put a stop to it.’
‘Poor sir,’ said Melanie.
‘I want you to get to the bottom of this,’ said the Headmaster. ‘Find out who’s cutting the holes.’
‘And why?’ asked Friday.
‘Yes, I suppose I’ll have to know that too,’ said the Headmaster. ‘Although I’d rather not. The things students do are bad enough. The reasons why they do them are positively horrifying.’
‘And how will I be paid for this service?’ asked Friday.
‘What?!’ exclaimed the Headmaster. ‘Your tuition and board are already fully paid up for the next eighteen months. What more do you want? You can’t squeeze blood from a stone.’
‘I want the burpees to stop,’ said Friday.
‘Deal,’ said the Headmaster. ‘You get to the bottom of this, and I’ll give you a full pardon from your punishment with Mr Fontana.’
Friday and Melanie walked out to the school’s perimeter fence. The Headmaster had given them directions to find the area where the holes had repeatedly been cut. It was a long walk, across the rugby field, the polo pitch and through the woods, before they came to the section of fencing.
The fence around the school was nine feet high and was m
ade of vertical steel bars with minimal cross-beams, like a pool fence, so that it was impossible to climb. It was very new and of the highest quality construction, having been built for the arrival of Princess Ingrid of Norway just a term and a half ago.
‘There’s the spot,’ said Friday, pointing to a section where several of the bars had been bent back. She went over and crouched down to inspect it closely. ‘It looks like they’ve been cut, but not with a saw, with some sort of crushing tool.’
‘Like a pair of pliers?’ asked Melanie.
‘It would take a lot more than a pair of pliers to cut through one-inch-thick toughened steel bars,’ said Friday. ‘It must have been some sort of large pneumatic tool.’
‘Is that a tool with pneumonia?’ asked Melanie.
‘No, pneumatic,’ said Friday. ‘It means air-powered, or more likely compressed-air-powered.’
Friday grabbed hold of one of the severed bars, and pulled it as hard as she could. It didn’t budge. She leaned back, using all her weight to yank at the bar, but unfortunately the grass was damp, so she lost her footing and ended up landing flat on her back. ‘It must have been bent back by a very strong tool as well.’
‘To be fair,’ said Melanie, ‘a tool wouldn’t have to be particularly strong to be stronger than you.’
‘Let’s see where they were going,’ said Friday, as she crawled over to the hole, lay down on the grass and started to squeeze through.
‘What are you doing?’ said Melanie. ‘You don’t have permission to leave school grounds.’
‘When has that ever stopped us before?’ asked Friday, twisting round to look at Melanie as she snaked herself through the gap.
‘It’s just that when the Headmaster asked us to investigate the hole,’ said Melanie, ‘I don’t think he expected us to use it ourselves.’
‘We have to figure out where they were going,’ said Friday, ‘and we can’t do that from inside of the fence.’ She was now on her feet beyond the fence, in what was officially a national park. ‘You’re not scared of getting in trouble, are you?’
‘No,’ said Melanie. ‘I just don’t like it when things involve more exercise than I’d expected.’ She begrudgingly got down on the ground and squeezed through the gap herself.
Friday was scanning the surrounding area. ‘What do you see?’ she asked.
‘Is that a trick question?’ asked Melanie, getting to her feet. ‘All I can see is forest. But is it one of those mind-twisters, like not being able to see the forest for the trees?’
‘No, all I can see is forest too,’ said Friday. ‘I’d expected there to be some sort of vehicle access. Otherwise, why cut through the fence here? I assumed that the person getting out was being met by a car.’
‘Or a helicopter,’ said Melanie.
‘I think someone at the school would notice if a helicopter landed,’ said Friday.
‘Not if they did it when we were all in the school hall for assembly singing the national anthem,’ said Melanie.
‘There’s nowhere for a helicopter to land amongst all these trees,’ said Friday.
‘It could be alien abduction,’ said Melanie. ‘They don’t need to land their UFOs. They just use tractor beams to pull people up.’
‘Are you speaking from personal experience?’ asked Friday.
Melanie shook her head. ‘If I have been abducted by aliens, they must have wiped my memory because I don’t know anything about it. But then I don’t know anything about algebra either, and I’ve been sitting in maths class every day for a year.’
‘Two years,’ said Friday. ‘You’re repeating year 7, remember?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Melanie, ‘I’d forgotten. The first time I did year 7 wasn’t very interesting.’
‘Anyway,’ said Friday, ‘even if I was to suspend all logic and pursue the hypothesis that this was alien abduction, that still wouldn’t make any sense, because they could abduct the person from the inside of the fence and save the effort of having to cut a hole.’
‘Brilliant, I hadn’t thought of that,’ said Melanie. ‘And I guess if aliens do have the technology to travel through outer space and suck people up with tractor beams, then we have to assume that they are at least as intelligent as you.’
‘You would hope so,’ agreed Friday. ‘Aliens would be bad enough, but silly aliens would be problematic. Let’s see if we can find any non-alien footprints.’
‘What do you want me to do?’ asked Melanie.
‘Stand still and don’t make any footprints yourself,’ said Friday.
‘Oh, good,’ said Melanie. ‘I like standing still.’
Friday bent over and started systematically searching the ground near the hole in the fence.
‘Do you see anything?’ asked Melanie.
‘Yes, the ground is perfect,’ said Friday. ‘There are lots of small animal tracks, rabbits and the like, and over here there are human footprints.’ She started following a trail that was invisible to Melanie.
‘What sort of shoes are they wearing?’ asked Melanie.
‘It’s hard to tell,’ said Friday. ‘The grass doesn’t leave a clear outline … Oh! Here we go, there’s a footprint. That’s odd …’ Friday got down on her hands and knees and closely inspected the muddy mark on the ground.
‘What is it?’ called Melanie, who was dutifully standing still near the fence.
‘Come and see,’ called Friday. ‘It looks like it was made by a lady’s shoe.’
Melanie came over. The footprint was like the forefoot of a high-heel print, but it didn’t look right. ‘It’s too big to fit a woman,’ said Melanie.
‘Unless it was a very large woman,’ said Friday.
‘Do we know any unusually large women?’ asked Melanie.
‘Not with large feet,’ said Friday.
‘Could the mud have expanded?’ said Melanie. ‘When it dried?’
‘No, if anything, the reverse would happen,’ said Friday. ‘When mud dries it contracts.’ She stood up and looked around. ‘And where do they go? There are one, two, three clear footprints here in the mud, but then they disappear.’
‘Look, there are some more,’ said Melanie. ‘On the other side of the tree.’
Friday went round to check. There were exactly the same footprints but this time going back the other way, towards the school.
‘How very odd,’ said Friday. ‘It’s as if someone has disappeared, then reappeared on this exact spot.’
‘Wearing overly large women’s shoes,’ said Melanie. ‘My money is still on the alien abduction.’
Friday turned slowly in a full circle, making note of everything she could observe. Then she stopped and gazed up. It was hard to observe anything because of the thick foliage of the tree’s canopy. But just above her head height there was a branch. ‘Look at this,’ said Friday. ‘The bark has been rubbed off right here.’
Melanie peered at the branch. ‘What does that mean? That a beaver did it?’
Friday looked up at the canopy. ‘No, I think someone has been climbing this tree. Give me a leg up.’
‘I don’t do leg-ups,’ said Melanie firmly. ‘We’ve discussed this before.’
Friday nodded. She respected her friend’s principles. ‘That’s all right, I think I can do it.’
Friday grabbed hold of the branch and swung her legs up to the trunk then walked up the tree until her feet were level with the branch, where she hooked them over. She was now hanging on the underside of the branch like a sloth.
‘Well done,’ said Melanie. ‘I never imagined you’d get that far. All those burpees must be paying off.’
Friday wiggled and scrambled until eventually she was scraped and sweaty but on the top side of the branch. She cautiously stood up, balancing herself against the trunk. Her head was lost inside the canopy now. ‘I’m going to go a bit higher. It’s easier now that the branches are closer together.’ Friday disappeared into the canopy altogether.
Melanie could see nothing. She could just
hear Friday awkwardly scrambling about through the foliage. ‘If you do get abducted by aliens,’ Melanie called, ‘you will say something, won’t you? I’d feel silly if I was standing here waiting for you, when you were halfway to Alpha Centauri.’
‘Don’t worry, I’m still earthbound,’ Friday called down. ‘But I’ve found something!’
‘What?’ asked Melanie.
‘It’s a flying fox!’ said Friday.
‘Don’t touch it!’ said Melanie. ‘It might bite you.’
‘Not the bat-type of flying fox,’ said Friday, ‘the rope-slide-type of flying fox.’
‘They’re almost as bad,’ said Melanie. ‘Tremendously dangerous, and so much hanging on.’
‘I’m going to see where it goes,’ said Friday.
‘Are you sure that’s wise?’ asked Melanie.
The next moment, Friday came smashing out through the canopy. ‘Whooopeee!’ she cried as she was shooting down the guide rope at top speed into a gully.
‘Friday!’ cried Melanie.
‘This is so much f–Oww!’ cried Friday as she crashed loudly into a bush at the bottom of the rock face.
‘Are you all right?’ called Melanie.
‘Not really,’ said Friday. ‘I would have been all right if I’d just hit the bush, but I appear to have landed on some sort of bicycle.’
‘Really?’ said Melanie. ‘Is it a penny-farthing? Perhaps it’s been there since the nineteenth century.’
Friday scrambled to her feet. ‘No, it’s modern and fancy-looking. I’m pretty sure it’s what you’d call a mountain bike.’
‘I’ll take your word for it,’ said Melanie. ‘Any other clues?’
‘I can see track marks,’ said Friday. ‘Someone has ridden the bike off into the forest, directly due north.’
‘What’s directly due north?’ asked Melanie.
‘Stratham,’ said Friday. ‘That’s the nearest big town. They must have been heading there. If you go straight through the forest, it would be half the distance of going by road. On a bicycle, it would probably only take half an hour to get there.’
‘You’re not going to ride it there to see, are you?’ asked Melanie.