‘But the professor wasn’t buried in a hole,’ said the headmaster.
‘He might have been,’ said Grusom, ‘and then got dug up again.’
This was such a ridiculous statement that no one could think of a response to it.
‘Or,’ Grusom continued, ‘they were digging a tunnel to escape from the valley.’
Once again, everyone was speechless.
‘Or they were planting some magic bulbs to grow a new professor to replace the one they had killed.’
This time, in addition to being speechless, everyone began wondering where Matron kept the straightjackets and if the padded cell was available.
At that moment Avid opened the door and interrupted their meeting. ‘Phone call for you, boss.’
‘This does not add up,’ Grusom said to the headmaster. ‘I want you to give us photos of all the Flood children. We must get wanted posters made immediately. ’
He stormed out of the headmaster’s office and followed Avid back to the attic lab. She handed him the phone.
‘Hello,’ said the voice on the other end.
‘Hello,’ Grusom replied.
‘Exactly.’
‘What?’
‘Tuesday,’ said the Belgian Police.
It was a very bad phone line, made worse by the fact that it was being tapped not just with a hot tap, but a cold tap and shower mixer too, which made it almost impossible to hear what anyone was saying.
‘Will you stop that tapping? I can hardly hear a thing,’ said Grusom.
‘Sorry,’ said Avid. ‘Old habit.’
‘We have contacted Professor Randolf Open-Graves’s place of employment,’ said the Belgian Police, ‘and they say they have never heard of him.’
‘Maybe he works somewhere else?’ said Grusom.
‘We tried there too. They said they have never heard of him either, but they did tell us something that might be of use.’
‘Yes?’
‘The professor who they have never heard of and who has no living relatives is currently sitting in the Café Max in the town square of Bruges, drinking coffee and eating after-dinner mints.’25
‘At this time of day?’ said Grusom. ‘You’re telling me the professor who everyone says they’ve never heard of is having dinner less than an hour after lunch? I find that very hard to believe.’
‘It’s eight o’clock in the evening over here,’ said the Belgian Police.
‘Well, really, I find that hard to believe too.’
This strange conversation went round and round and sideways for another forty-seven minutes and ended when the Belgian Police asked Grusom if he could send them an autographed photo of himself holding his blue torch.
‘Colour or black and white? Front or side view?’ said Grusom.
‘Umm, err,’ said the Belgian Police.
‘I know. It’s a difficult decision. I tell you what, I’ll send you ten of each.’
Grusom never went anywhere without his ‘Special Suitcase’. People assumed it was full of top-secret scientific FSI equipment. It wasn’t. It was packed solid with hundreds of photos of Grusom in various exciting poses. It had taken him so long to sign them all that he had ended up with his arm in a sling from excessive wrist strain.
‘But the professor does have at least one living relative,’ said Avid after Grusom had hung up. ‘That crazy cook lady.’
‘Not to mention the photo in his wallet of that group of eighty-seven Belgian people with “My loving family” written on the back,’ said Grusom. ‘And we know it was the professor’s handwriting because of the other piece of paper in his wallet that had “This is a sample of my handwriting, signed Professor Randolf Open-Graves” written on it.’
‘They could both be forgeries,’ Avid suggested.
‘You know,’ said Grusom in one of his brilliant flashes of Being Very Clever, ‘I’m beginning to wonder if the whole professor is a forgery.’
While he picked out three dozen more little tiny bits of mysterious stuff from beneath the professor’s fingernails – thirty-five of which turned out to be bits of fingernail – Avid continued her search of the dead man’s clothing.
‘Look, boss,’ she said. ‘I think I might have a fresh lead.’
‘What?’
‘It was in the professor’s left pocket,’ she said, holding it up.
‘Yes, very funny. FSI joke number 83,’ said Grusom. ‘A dog lead. I suppose you’ve checked it for prints?’
‘Yes. It’s covered in them, and also dog dribble – that’s chock full of DNA!’ said Avid. Forensic investigators were always excited by DNA, though it had delayed Grusom’s promotion for many years, until someone told him it was not an abbreviation for Do Not Answer. ‘And there’s a dog tag with the initials SF on it.’
‘So the professor had a dog,’ said Grusom. ‘I didn’t see a dog hanging round the dead body. Did you see a dog? No. So I think we can assume the professor left his dog behind in Belgium.’
‘If it is the professor’s lead,’ said Avid. ‘It could be a plant.’
‘You’re not doing FSI joke number 127, are you?’ said Grusom. ‘The one where I say, “What grows when you plant a lead?” Then you say, “I don’t know. What grows when you plant a lead?” And then I say, “Dogwood”.’
‘No, no, I’m not,’ said Avid. ‘It’s a good joke, though, isn’t it?’
‘Only the first eighty-five times,’ said Grusom.
‘Well, I’ve never heard it before and I think it’s really funny, especially the way you told it,’ said Avid. ‘But no, I wasn’t doing an FSI joke. The lead really could be a plant.’
Grusom bit his lip and gritted his teeth, but he couldn’t stop himself. In all his years in forensic medicine he had never once had the chance to tell FSI joke number 232. It was legendary, its creation lost in the mists of time. It was the Nobel Prize of jokes, the Oscar. All forensic investigators knew it, and all dreamed of the unimaginable day they would have the opportunity to say it.
Grusom pointed to the pot of geraniums sitting on the windowsill and said it.
‘Or the plant could be a lead!’
The two sensible, mature, highly trained forensic scientists collapsed on the floor in stitches.26 They laughed until every muscle in their bodies ached. They wept until they were dehydrated and still they couldn’t stop laughing.
Through it all Avid realised that Grusom was the true love of her life. No other man would ever be able to make her laugh like that again, not even if he managed to use FSI joke number 13 which, of course, was impossible as the chances of getting an elephant, a bowl of custard and seventeen Welsh-speaking Princes called Charles in the same place at the same time were 987 billion trillion to one. Grusom, too, knew that Avid was the true love of his life for, no matter what happened between that moment and the day he died, nothing could ever bring him as close to anyone as FSI joke number 232 had brought him to her.
As they lay exhausted and helpless on the floor, trying and failing to stop laughing, an almost invisible creature appeared just above them on the examination table. It lifted up the corpse of Professor Randolf Open-Graves and the two of them vanished.
By the time Grusom and Avid had regained control of themselves and changed their underwear, it was dark outside. The laboratory was even darker as whoever or whatever had taken the dead body had also taken the light bulb. Strangely, they seemed to have stolen the geranium too. Grusom grabbed his Big Blue FSI Torch and switched it on. Maybe the thief had left a secret stain on the floor. Criminals were famous for leaving incriminating stains. It was one of the things that kept getting them caught.
‘Oh my G–’
He fainted.
Whoever had stolen the dead professor and the light bulb and the plant had committed an unspeakable, unforgivable sin, an act of pure evil that attacked the basic laws of science and was worse than any murder.
The light coming out of Grusom’s Big Blue FSI Torch was black.
When the Flood
children’s parents, Nerlin and Mordonna, had met and fallen in love, they had been forced to flee their homeland of Transylvania Waters to escape the uncontrollable anger of Mordonna’s father. Mordonna was the elder of King Quatorze’s two daughters and therefore the top princess in the whole country. She was also the only one of his two daughters who did not have very hairy nostrils, green skin with red bits and have her feet shod at the blacksmiths.
Nerlin was not a prince.27 He was a humble lavatory cleaner, one of the dirt people who lived in the drains beneath the city.28
When the two lovers had fled, the king had sent his most trusted and evil spy, the Hearse Whisperer, after them with instructions to kill everyone except Mordonna, who was to be brought back to Transylvania Waters. Incredibly, the escapees managed to give the Hearse Whisperer the slip and live quietly with their seven children in a quiet suburban street called Acacia Avenue. The Hearse Whisperer searched everywhere, but because witches and wizards are very superstitious and one of the things they fear more than anything else are acacias – though no one knows why – the Hearse Whisperer kept well away from any roads, streets, lanes and avenues called Acacia.
But she had not given up her search and she had finally discovered that five of Mordonna’s children went to Quicklime’s. Considering all the Floods were witches and wizards and there was only one witch and wizard school in the whole world, she should have worked it out years ago. The trouble was, the Hearse Whisperer thought everyone was as evil and devious as she was. So she assumed that Mordonna and Nerlin wouldn’t send their children to Quicklime’s in case the King tracked them down. The trick, of course, is to be double devious and do the most obvious thing, because that’s the last thing your enemies think you’ll do.
The Hearse Whisperer had sat in a dark cave in a deep forest in the frozen depths of Outer Mongolia, where she always went when she needed to concentrate. Using her brand new laptop, she had tried to make a plan, but it was too dark to see the letters on the keyboard. She went and sat outside in the daylight, which she hated, and then it was too bright to see the screen. So she turned the laptop into a toad and sucked its insides out through its nostrils. This made her feel a lot better, but meant she had to go back to using a crayon and some paper.
Simply killing the Flood children would not do. She would certainly enjoy it, but it wouldn’t get her any closer to Mordonna. Also, she wasn’t sure how the King would feel about having his own grandchildren killed. That sort of thing had never bothered the King’s ancestors, but having seen the almost gentle way this King pulled the wings off dragonflies, she suspected he might have a softer side than he was letting on. Of course, the King didn’t actually know he had any grandchildren apart from the seven green scaly creatures Mordonna’s sister, Howler, had presented him with.
No, the best course of action would be to follow the children home from school and find out where Mordonna and her family were living. She knew that the children lived on the other side of the world and travelled to and from school on a magic dragon bus each day. The obvious thing would be to hide in the back of the bus. But there was a problem, a problem she could find no way round.
She didn’t have a bus pass.
After a near-fatal incident, Quicklime’s had become really, really strict about bus passes. Not even a cockroach could get on board without one – which was good because it had been a cockroach crawling up the driver’s nose that had caused the accident.
The Hearse Whisperer needed a much more complicated plan, something so complicated that no one would ever suspect it was a plan.
She would put a dead body in the school and then throw suspicion on the Floods. They would all be arrested and then, and then, umm … Maybe she’d disguise herself as a pair of handcuffs or, er … Well, she’d sort that bit out later.
She would call her plan – this brilliant plan that would go down in the history of plans as the cleverest and most devious plan ever – she would call it the Dead Belgian Professor Plan.
This was the plan:
Get a dead Belgian Professor.
Move his body to Quicklime College.
Throw suspicion on one of the Flood children.
Repeat step 3 until all five children are under suspicion.
Change into a geranium and wait.
Get a new crayon to write steps 7 to 15.
It was brilliant and it was so complicated and devious that even the Hearse Whisperer herself did not know what would happen next.
Never mind, she thought. First things first. Where will I get a dead Belgian professor?
The second thing she thought was, Maybe I should have done that bit before I turned myself into a geranium.
Starting again, the Hearse Whisperer quickly discovered that dead Belgian professors do not grow on trees.29 Undaunted, she decided she would make a fake one out of a living person and, just to add a bit of excitement and risk, she would use a person who was neither Belgian nor a professor. The person she chose was Klaus von Klaus, an international bus ticket forger who was hiding out from Interpol on a tiny island in Tristan da Cunha. She chose him for several reasons:
No one would miss him.
He looked Belgian.
He had a really annoying name.
He had once sold the Hearse Whisperer a fake 1897 Chinese bus ticket and she wanted revenge.
He had a moustache in the shape of Tasmania.
He actually thought Australian Idol was a good TV programme.
So she had started to go through steps one to five of the plan. She hadn’t counted on the school calling in the FSI people after she’d arranged the body in the graveyard, but when she discovered what an idiot their chief investigator was, an evil smile lit up her face.
The plan was going according to plan. It hadn’t taken much to throw suspicion on the Flood children – a dog lead with Satanella Flood’s initials on it, stealing the twins’ fingerprints, and since Winchflat had offered to help with the investigation, that made the stupid FSI man suspect the Floods even more. All she had to do was wait until they were arrested and then … and then, umm …
Well, she’d sort that bit out later.
She also had to get rid of the body. Grusom was an idiot but his beautiful assistant wasn’t, and it was only a matter of time before she realised there was something strange about it.
‘My blue torch!’ Grusom was still shaking his head over the heinous crime that had been committed. ‘That’s it. It’s time for the magic beans.’ He got out his tin opener. ‘This calls for the beans with the extra thick tomato sauce.’
He threw a handful of magic beans in the air and nothing happened. This was because the extra thick tomato sauce was so thick that all the beans stayed stuck to his hands. He took a deep breath, flexed his muscles and threw as hard as he could. All the beans stuck on the ceiling.
‘Interesting,’ he said. ‘That’s never happened before … but then I’ve never had a corpse stolen from my examination table before, either.’
Several magic beans fell down the front of Avid’s top and even when Grusom called them to heel, they refused to come back. Mysteriously, the rest of the beans fell on the floor and spelled out the words:
My first is in nothing
My next is in ice
My third is in …
Ahh, need more beans …
‘So what do we do now, boss?’ Avid asked. ‘I mean, without a body, we have no proof there’s even been a murder.’
‘We have witnesses who saw the body,’ said Grusom. ‘Dozens of them.’
‘I don’t think we can count on any of them,’ said Avid. ‘I mean, they’re all witches and wizards. We’re outsiders here.’
‘True, but we’ll still put out the wanted posters for all the Flood kids,’ said Grusom. ‘I’m sure they know more than they’re telling us.’
Grusom tried to examine the room with his very big Forensic Special Investigator’s Magnifying Glass, but the Hearse Whisperer had turned it inside out30 so it now
made everything look very small and an extremely long way away.
‘The potted plant’s gone too,’ said Avid, not realising the geranium had been the Hearse Whisperer in disguise.
They spent ten minutes looking through all the cupboards and drawers in case the body had somehow got into one of them, which of course it hadn’t, but when something as totally unexpected as a body vanishing into thin air happens, it’s the sort of thing you do. They even looked in the corridor outside the room, in the waste-paper basket and the ice compartment of the fridge.
The body was not there.
That evening as they hid in the graveyard deciding what to do next, Winchflat told the others what he had discovered. His nose hairs had tingled for a reason, and now he knew what it was. The Hearse Whisperer had found them.
They all knew about the Hearse Whisperer. Mordonna had told them how evil the Hearse Whisperer was and how Mordonna’s father, King Quatorze, had sent the evil spy after them when she had eloped with their father. It had been an exciting, scary bed-time story, made even more exciting and scary because it was true.
Mordonna had told them all they must be always on their guard so as not to give away their hiding place at Acacia Avenue, for the Hearse Whisperer was the kind of creature who would never give up until she had found them.
To protect them all, Winchflat had built a Hearse-Whisperer-Early-Warning-Device. Using no more than a single speck of the Hearse Whisperer’s dandruff that Mordonna had picked out of the ear of Ooze, one of her father’s spies,31 an old mobile phone, three tonnes of broccoli and several small insects, Winchflat set to work. The first version was so big it had to be towed around in a trailer, but in the same way that the first computers were bigger than a house and are now so small they can fit in a watch, each version of the detector got smaller and smaller until it fitted into a button.
‘Brilliant,’ said Nerlin. ‘We can each have one sewn on our clothes so we’ll always know when we’re in danger.’
Floods 5 Page 5