The Case of the Exploding Loo

by Rachel Hamilton

  They’ll be coming for me next.

  25

  Interrogation

  Ms Grimm doesn’t look at me as she leaves the room. Is that a good sign? Or is she lulling me into a false sense of security before slicing me into tiny pieces? Where is Porter? Does he know about the raid on my house? Can I trust him?

  My fingers hover over the laptop keyboard and before I can stop myself I hit alt + tab. Porter’s Hotmail page pops up, email address entered, just waiting for the password.

  Hacking is a criminal offence and Porter is a (sort of ) friend, but he did admit he planted the taxi at the Valentine’s market and he still hasn’t explained why.

  I glance around guiltily and type: P-o-r-t-e-r-1.

  Ping. That password is incorrect. Try again.

  That’s probably a sign I should respect Porter’s privacy, but I can’t stop my brain flicking through the password-relevant things I know about him. Dad says guessing other people’s passwords is all about getting inside their heads.

  I’ve been inside Porter’s brain: I’ve watched his portaloo movie.

  Slowly, carefully, I type: s-p-l-e-n-d-a-m-i-n-i-3-0-0-0

  And I’m in. It’s that easy.

  I skim Porter’s inbox. There are a lot of communications with portaloo companies. Between these are a few messages from your_great_leader@yahoo.com. I feel better about hacking into Porter’s account when I spot one titled, USE PORTALOO EXPLOSION FOOTAGE TO GET NOELLE HAWKINS TO LINDON.

  Ada Lovelace! The Great Leader and Porter are plotting against me. I hadn’t realised how much I wanted to trust Porter until now, when I find out I can’t.

  I skim the email but it just gives my address and the cab driver’s number. Nothing about why the Great Leader wants me here or what happened to Dad.

  The other messages from your_great_leader@yahoo.com are group emails to All Remarkable Students. I read the most recent:

  You are the brightest and the best.

  You can shine brighter than the rest.

  That is our quest.

  Await our call.

  The poem is so bad it’s almost funny, but I can’t laugh at the idea of a legion of ex-LOSERS awaiting their call to action:

  CLUE 32

  The Great Leader of LOSERS is creating an army-in-waiting.

  A physically feeble army, perhaps, but an army with brains.

  They have to be stopped. But who’s going to stop them? I can’t trust Porter, I can no longer contact Holly and Ms Grimm could be coming for me at any minute.

  There’s only one solution – escape! If Porter can leave LOSERS so can I. I’ve already worked out how. Our ground-floor dorm backs on to the alleyway where the bins are stored. All the windows have child-proof locks “for student safety”, but someone has fiddled with the lock on my cubicle window so it opens. I like to think this is a sign Gemma Gold arranged her own disappearance – although every time I look at the tatty comfort blanket I get a bad feeling.

  I still have the cameras to worry about, but if I leave when the Grimm Reaper is busy, I’m confident it’ll be hours before Jangly Keys Dave builds up enough courage to tell her I’ve gone. I stroke the calculator money in my pocket. I should be far away by then.

  Home!

  I ask the cabbie to stop at the end of our street so I can avoid the CCTV cameras. I clamber through the neighbours’ back gardens like a trainee burglar and realise my stealth tactics need work when Mrs Burnett at number 31 gives me a cheery wave.

  Finally I’m in my own backyard. I gaze up at Holly’s window. Descartes! How did Porter get up there?

  Drainpipe vs oak tree? I choose oak. Ow! Spiky branch. Twig in my eye. Twig. In. My. Eye.

  I’m ready to give up altogether until I hear Porter’s voice coming from the window above me. Gritting my teeth and closing my twig-eye, I scramble faster, ripping my shirt and scraping the flesh of my arms.

  But by the time I reach the window, Holly has Porter in a stranglehold and is forcing him down onto her pink swivel chair. Before I can say, “I was worrying about the wrong person,” Porter is strapped to the seat with Holly’s bedside lamp shining in his eyes.

  Holly beams when she spots me. “Know-All? Brilliant! Wasn’t expecting you!”

  Porter struggles against the dressing-gown belt that’s holding his hands in place. “Noelle! Thank God! Tell your sister to untie me!”

  Wary of the gleam in Holly’s eyes, I speak softly. “Um, Holly, don’t you think this might be a little extreme?”

  Holly shakes her head. “He needs convincing to tell us the truth.”

  “There’s ‘convincing’ and then there’s human rights abuse.”

  But I do nothing to release Porter. There are several reasons for this:

  i. I don’t want Holly to attack me instead

  ii. I’m curious to see what she does next

  iii. Holly’s right – Porter does need convincing to tell us the truth

  Holly waggles the lamp at him. “You WILL tell us what’s going on.”

  “I’m telling you nothing until you release me.”

  “We’ll see about that.” Holly stalks from the room.

  “Untie me. Quick,” Porter begs. “Before she comes back.”

  “She’s bigger than I am,” I protest weakly.

  “Not by much.”

  “Yeah, but she’s way scarier.”

  “True,” Porter agrees. “What if I tell you whatever it is she wants to know? Do you think she’ll let me go?

  “Worth a try. You can start by telling me why you contacted us in the first place.”

  Porter looks at the floor. “Someone told me to.”

  “The Great Leader?”

  Before Porter has a chance to respond, Holly returns with a pint of water and pours it over his head.

  “Water torture,” she declares. “Ha! What do you say now?”

  Porter shakes his head in disbelief. “I say you don’t know much about water torture.”

  Holly glares at him.

  “He has a point,” I add. “He was talking before you came back. Now he’s just dripping all over the carpet.”

  Holly’s not convinced. “I’m going to get something that’ll really make him talk,” she says, stomping from the room.

  “Hurry up. Tell me everything,” I urge Porter. “Who knows what she’ll come back with?”

  Porter talks fast. “The Great Leader told me to show you the exploding toilet footage to lure you to Lindon. After that, the driver’s orders were to drive you to LOSERS and make you think you’d figured it out yourself.”

  “But why?”

  “He didn’t explain.”

  “I know, I saw the email. What I meant was why did you agree? Why trick us like that?”

  “He said he’d help me find—” Porter stops and frowns. “What do you mean you saw the email?”

  “I, uh, accessed your email account. Sorry.”

  “You read my emails?”

  “No need to yell.”

  “NO NEED TO YELL?” Porter yells. “I’LL YELL IF I—”

  G R R R R R R R R R R R R R – G – G – G – G – GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

  I put my head in my hands. “I thought Thug and Ug took the chainsaw away with them. Professor Brian Cox! Why would they take the computer but leave the chainsaw?”

  “Chainsaw?” The blood vanishes from Porter’s face. “Your sister has a chainsaw?”

  I don’t need to reply, because Holly picks that minute to stride into the room, revving her power tool.

  Porter struggles to his feet and bounces across the room to the open window, still tied to the pink chair. He closes his eyes.

  “Wait!” I dive for him, but I’m too slow.

  Porter’s gone. Out of the window. Chair and all.

  Albert Einstein! He could have broken his legs – or worse. I can’t even check he’s okay because I’m scared of being sliced in half by a low-flying chainsaw. Holly is like a Rottweiler that’s lost its fav
ourite chew toy. A Rottweiler with a lethal weapon, which she brandishes out of the window, accidentally sawing her curtains in half.

  “Enough!” I screech. “Turn that stupid thing off before you kill one of us.”

  Holly does as I say, for once. Her arms are shaking with the effort of holding the huge saw.

  “Did you see him jump?” she asks. “Mental! There’s no sign of him in the garden, so he must have made it. Wow!” She bends to pick up the curtain material from the floor. “Oops.”

  “‘Oops’? That’s all you have to say? You turn into a chainsaw-wielding crazy person and all you can say is ‘Oops’? I suppose I should be glad there’s no sign of Porter. It means he can still walk.”

  “Or roll,” Holly giggles.

  I scowl.

  “Okay, okay, the chainsaw may have been a bit much,” Holly admits as she ties the two halves of her curtains together.

  “You think?”

  “Anyway,” Holly says, the near-chainsaw-massacre forgotten, “We need to get you back to that school, fast.”

  “But—”

  “No buts. That’s where Porter’s headed. That’s where the answers are. Do you want to find Dad or not?”

  Holly doesn’t play fair.

  26

  Bad Guys

  “Pssst.” I crouch in the alley, among fish bones and rotting vegetables, desperately trying to get Remarkable Student Aisha’s attention so she can help me open my cubicle window.

  I know she’s in there but I daren’t raise my head above the windowsill. It’s almost eight-thirty (lights out) and Ms Grimm could be anywhere.

  I pick up a broken beer bottle and tap the glass with it.

  Finally Aisha appears at the window. “Stop it. You’ll get us all in trouble. What are you doing out there?”

  “No idle chit-chat,” I remind her. “Open the window. Please?”

  “I can’t. I’ll be punished.”

  “No one will notice if you just slide the window open a crack. But if you stand here arguing when you’re supposed to be getting ready for bed, someone’s sure to notice and then you really will be in trouble.”

  Sighing miserably, Aisha pushes up the window and retreats rapidly to the other side of the dorm.

  I launch myself through the window, hitting my head on the chest of drawers with a crunch. A small square of paper flutters out from behind the drawers.

  Porter and Gemma? Porter told me he was “digging for gold”. Was that Gold with a capital G? Is this the secret behind Porter’s behaviour? I ignore my dorm mates’ disapproving stares and head up the stairs to the boys’ dorm to ask. But Porter’s not back.

  He’s still not back two hours later.

  He stuffed his bed before he left, so no one raised the alarm at lights out. He asked me to cover for him, but that was before he leapt out of the window. What if he’s hurt and no one knows until it’s too late?

  I lie in bed, staring at the ceiling, imagining myself telling Ms Grimm he’s gone. The thought sends a shiver down my spine. The shiver becomes a deep freeze when I hear a knock at the window. I don’t know whose idea it was to put the girls’ dorm on the ground floor, because despite the railings, the CCTV cameras and the patrolling teachers, we sometimes get unwanted visitors.

  I peer over my bed covers, twisting so I can see into the cubicle, and cheer with relief when I see Porter’s face at the window.

  “Porter!” Thank Fermat!

  He stands in the alley, making shushing signs from behind the glass.

  I shush. The last thing I want to do is wake a sleeping mob of Remarkable Students. I open the window so Porter can slither through it. He lands headfirst in the bin.

  “What are you doing?” I hiss.

  “Making a grand entrance!” He flicks a banana skin off his shoulder. “Quick. Bathroom. No cameras there.”

  He hops through the dorm and into the bathroom. As he lowers himself onto the edge of the bath tub, I notice his ankle is turning a nasty shade of purple.

  “Hurts,” he says miserably, when he sees me looking.

  I wince in sympathy. “Sorry about Holly.”

  “Can’t blame her for being angry.” Porter grimaces as he stretches the leg out. “I shouldn’t have tricked you.”

  “Did you decide that before or after Holly waved a chainsaw in your face?”

  “If you’re just going to be snarky . . .” Porter gets up to leave, purple ankle and all.

  “Sorry.” I wave for him to sit back down. “My lips are sealed. Tell me more about this Great Leader.”

  Porter stiffens as something squeaks behind him and then laughs nervously when he realises he’s sitting on Remarkable Student Aisha’s rubber duck. “I don’t have much to tell. All I know is that while my mother may seem to run LOSERS, the Great Leader is the brains behind it. He’s the one that organises the monthly gatherings at Kazinsky Electronics.”

  “What monthly meetings?”

  “When we all gather outside the Kazinsky Electronics store with our iPods. I’m not sure exactly what happens there, but afterwards it’s easier to remember the unit numbers of all the portaloos I’ve seen.”

  CLUE 33

  The Kazinsky Electronics Store is a LOSERS stronghold.

  “They must be storing a stronger brain ray in the store. Maybe the one here is just a tester.”

  “Brain ray?”

  “The machine I told you about. The one behind the spy-room mirror,” I explain. “The one that makes some people cleverer and some ‘not so much’. I think the iPods strengthen its effect.”

  Porter crushes the rubber duck in his fist until it gives a dying squeak.

  “The iPods are evil,” he says.

  “I don’t know about evil, but I do think they’re relay transmitters for the brain ray.”

  “No idea what you’re talking about,” Porter says, “So I’ll stick with evil. You say they’ve got one of these brain rays at Kazinsky Electronics?”

  “I think so.”

  Porter releases the rubber duck, which gives a wheeeeeeeee of protest. “And the iPods only work near this brain ray thing?”

  “That’s the part I don’t understand,” I admit, snatching the rubber duck. “Why bother giving Mum an iPod if there’s no chance of her visiting the Mental Conditioning Room or Kazinsky Electronics? They’d need some kind of mobile unit.”

  Hypatia! I’ve been blind.

  “The Kazinsky Electronics van!” I squeal. “It’s a mobile brain ray transporter. That’s why it’s always parked outside my house. It’s zapping Mum.”

  “Making her smarter?”

  “No.” That’s the hole in my theory. “Exactly the opposite. Since that van appeared outside our house, she’s lost interest in everything and just lies there listening to her earphones. My aunt says it’s depression, but I’m convinced it’s something more.”

  Porter’s hands shake as he rams his memory stick into the laptop. “Sounds like someone I know.”

  “Gemma Gold?” I ask, handing him the sketch that fluttered from behind my chest of drawers earlier.

  Porter rubs at his eyes. Archimedes! Don’t tell me he’s going to cry!

  I thrust the rubber duck at him is a desperate attempt to cheer him up. “Here. Have this back.”

  “Thanks.” He grins weakly. “You’d like Gemma. She’s great. Smart, like all you geeky types, but sweet too. She even likes talking about portaloos.”

  I doubt that’s true. But I don’t want to upset Porter, so I keep my thoughts to myself.

  Porter slams the duck against the side of the bath. “After twenty minutes in Mother’s Mental Conditioning Room she was like a zombie.”

  CLUE 34

  In at least two cases, the brain ray has had a negative impact on intelligence levels.

  I picture the +/- dial.

  “They had to send her home,” Porter continues. “And I can’t get hold of her. Especially not now Mother’s got my phone.”

  “That’s why y
ou’re keeping secrets from Ms Grimm?”

  Porter nods. “She wouldn’t help me, so I emailed the Great Leader. He said he’d find Gemma if I did one thing . . .”

  “Bring me here!” I finally understand why Porter lied. “But why? What does he want from me? Is he planning to torture me to make Dad do what he wants?” My hands go clammy. “I don’t think I’d be good under torture.”

  Porter’s yawn suggests he’s less concerned about this than I am. “Can we sort this out tomorrow?” he asks. “I’m exhausted, my foot’s killing me and I need to throw myself down the stairs to explain how I got this injury.”

  “Huh?”

  He hops off without explaining. Two minutes lately I hear a loud crash and Porter yelling, “Argh! My ankle! My ankle!”

  As I climb back into bed, to dream of kidnap, torture and daft boys who go to ridiculous extremes to explain a sore ankle, I hear Porter groaning in the background.

  27

  Police

  “Mother wants to speak to you after breakfast,” Porter says through a mouthful of herrings. “She knows something’s up, but she’s not sure what.”

  “Great.”

  “You might want to . . . er . . . brush your hair or something.”

  “Hey!” I protest, but the upside-down reflection in my spoon tells me Porter has a point. I look a state after my sleepless night.

  I run back to the dormitory. The hairs stiffen on my arms when I enter my cubicle. Someone installed new locks at the window while I was at breakfast. That must be why I’ve been summoned.

  I shuffle towards Ms Grimm’s office, feeling itchy and uncomfortable.

  She attacks the minute I enter. “Hawkins. Why were you snooping in my CCTV room?”

  Whoa! What? I was expecting to be yelled at about the window.

  “CCTV room?” I echo stupidly, wondering whether to deny it or not.

  “Don’t bother denying it.”

  That helps.