by Greg James
‘Dirk and I found it when we needed somewhere private to train,’ replied Deborah. ‘It’s right at the back, in the bit that’s fenced off. The part you’re not supposed to go in.’ She pointed towards the playing field at the back of The School. ‘Oh, that’s probably not a very teacherly thing for me to admit, is it?’
‘No, no, it’s very interesting,’ said Murph in his most laid-back tone of voice. ‘We must ask permission from the proper authorities to have a look one day. No hurry. Well, good to see you. We’ll be off now. Oh, hang on, I seem to have left my bag in the classroom.’ He gestured urgently to the others. ‘Let’s all just pop back for it, shall we?’
‘You’re holding your bag,’ Deborah pointed out.
‘Oh, I meant my other bag,’ said Murph, backing away. ‘My … knitting bag. Another hobby of mine. I love it. Bye!’
‘Knitting bag?’ demanded Mary, when they were out of earshot.
‘I panicked!’ said Murph. ‘I couldn’t think of another kind of bag.’
‘Sports bag?’ suggested Mary. ‘Lunch bag? Sleeping bag?’
‘Well, yes, with hindsight, those would all have been better things to say,’ huffed Murph. ‘But can we not get sidetracked here? This could be a massive clue! There’s a monument in the school grounds with Scarsdale written on it. It must be a memorial to the fallen Heroes! Come on!’
The patch of woodland at the back of the school was red and golden with autumn colours. Fallen leaves and conker shells crunched under their feet as they picked their way down the slope. Soon Murph caught a flash of silver away to the left – a reflection from the tranquil pond that stood outside the back of Carl’s huts. Murph could just make out a wisp of smoke through the leaves. Carl’s pipe, he guessed, imagining the old caretaker sitting in his favourite deckchair and gazing contentedly out across the water as he often did at this time of day.
But they weren’t heading for Carl’s huts. The Super Zeroes knew that part of the woodland well and they had never seen a monument of any kind there.
Instead, Mary led them diagonally down the slope into the thickest and most inaccessible part of the wood. After working their way through the trees for a while, they came to a wooden fence with signs placed at intervals reading KEEP OUT.
‘Nobody ever got to be a Hero by taking notice of signs,’ said Murph quietly as he climbed over. Even though there was no one about, it felt appropriate to whisper. It was quiet and eerie amongst the tall trees.
His friends followed him over the fence, and they carried on through the undergrowth. Presently they came upon a narrow, well-kept path, and followed it until it came out into a small clearing. It was lined with bushes that were coated with dark purple flowers. Several butterflies were fluttering around them.
And in the very centre of the glade was a tall monument made of pale grey stone. Standing on top were four statues of Heroes adopting combat postures. The grass around it was neatly tended. Even from a distance it was easy to read the large engraved letters at the very top: SCARSDALE.
As they edged closer, Murph could see that every face of the stone had a list of names carved into it, and around the base was a large inscription. He walked around the stone column, reading as he went:
In memory of friends
Who fought without fear
Their names live forever
Heroes to the end
‘We were right! It’s a memorial!’ he told the others. ‘A list of the Heroes who … who didn’t come home from the battle with Magpie.’
Solemnly, Mary began to read the names in turn, starting at the top. ‘Adams, John, a.k.a. Spitewinter; Anderson, Victoria, a.k.a. Badger Girl …’
But before she could read further, the sound of a voice made them jump.
‘What on earth are you lot doing here?’
They spun round in shock. Carl had walked into the clearing behind them. He was carrying a bunch of flowers, and the expression on his face made Murph’s insides curl uncomfortably. He had never seen the caretaker look so miserable.
‘You shouldn’t have been there. Plain and simple. It’s not a place to go messing around in,' said Carl a few minutes later, leading them into his workshop and shutting the door. His misery had turned into anger. ‘It needs to be treated with respect. It’s out of bounds for a reason.’
Murph looked up at him sheepishly. ‘Sorry, Carl, we were just –’
Carl cut him off. ‘What happened at Scarsdale was devastating. You won’t find many Heroes who will talk about it. The battle cost us a lot.’
‘But why is the memorial out of bounds?’ asked Mary tentatively.
Carl looked at her with a ‘don’t push it’ expression. ‘Because it just is. All right?’ he said sharply. ‘Quite frankly it’s not any of your business. The past needs to be left in the past.’ He paused. Then he sighed. ‘What has got into you lately, eh? You’ve been acting very strangely. First you’re asking about losing Capes and Magpie; now you’re sneaking around the Scarsdale Memorial.'
‘Scarsdale?’ came Flora’s horrified voice from the Banshee’s garage next door. ‘Why on earth are you talking about that?’ She came through into the main workshop carrying a spanner.
‘This lot were at the Heroes’ Memorial. Heaven knows why, dear,’ answered Carl. ‘Been asking me a load of questions on the way back about … about him.’
‘Magpie?’ said Flora quietly. ‘What do you want to know about him for? He’s safely locked up – has been for years. He’s nobody you need to worry about.’
‘Well – I kind of can’t help worrying about him,’ said Murph, embarrassed.
‘What on earth for?’ replied Flora. ‘He’s gone, a memory. History.’
A million thoughts were sprinting around Murph’s head. He had wanted so much for the Super Zeroes to solve this mystery for themselves and prove their worth. Miss Flint had sworn him to secrecy. And the more he found out about the damage Magpie had wrought, the more he felt that it wasn’t right to worry any of the older generation of Heroes by telling the truth about what was going on. But this was Carl and Flora, their friends, and lying to them now would be too painful.
He took a deep breath and let it out, making that flappy-lipped noise more commonly associated with horses. He looked at Mary for confirmation and she nodded.
‘I went to see him,’ said Murph softly.
‘What?’ roared Carl.
‘I went to see Magpie. At Shivering Sands.’
Flora came towards them with a serious, sad expression. ‘OK. We need the whole story, Murph,’ she said, glancing Carl’s way. ‘Tell us everything.’
Murph looked to his closest advisor for another nod. Mary obliged.
So he did. He told his friends about his visit to Shivering Sands, his time in Magpie’s underwater cell and the Super Zeroes’ investigation into his history.
Flora looked at Murph intently as he finished his tale. She took a breath, as if to consider her response, and then broke into a slightly forced smile.
‘Well, you certainly are a lot of worriers, aren’t you?’ she told them. ‘Beetling about, trying to save the world from Magpie. Listen.’ She swallowed. ‘The world doesn’t need saving from him. We did that years ago.’
Murph was surprised at her reaction. He couldn’t help but think that her mouth was saying one thing and her increasingly pale face was saying another.
‘OK. Well, I’m glad I told you, Flora,’ he said quietly. ‘Sorry for keeping things secret from you both.’
‘At least I’ve been able to set your minds at rest. That’s how teams work, isn’t it? Now,’ she went on, with another glance at Carl, ‘where’s this silly poem you mentioned?’
Murph fished in his pocket for the piece of paper. ‘Miss Flint thought it was just some weird nursery rhyme,’ he told her, handing it over. ‘Maybe she was right.’
Flora squinted down at the poem, mouthing the words to herself. ‘It certainly seems like gibberish,’ she told him. ‘And we know one thing
for sure: nothing that Magpie has got to say is going to be good news, for you or anyone else. Just you forget all about him. That’s the best place for him: out of sight – out of mind – out of memory.’ And, crumpling the paper in her hand, she marched abruptly back into the garage.
‘Bye, then,’ Murph told Carl awkwardly as the Super Zeroes turned to leave. But the old caretaker seemed lost in thought, and only vaguely waved a hand in their direction as they filed out.
15
Breaking the Code
That night, Murph couldn’t sleep. He stayed awake into the early hours, stewing like a slow cooker, and by morning his brain had prepared a rich casserole of self-loathing dotted with fluffy dumplings of guilt. He felt terrible that he had upset Carl and Flora so much with his investigations, and forced them to think about a time that obviously held such painful memories. He felt stupid too – he’d got so carried away with trying to prove that he could live up to the Alliance name that he didn’t think about who he was hurting.
It seemed that most of the Zeroes had been feeling the same way. Mary, Billy and Hilda were waiting for Murph at the front gates of The School the next day, and they all had identical bags under their eyes. Together they headed straight for the caretaker’s huts before classes started. They wanted to apologise properly, smooth things over and promise to stop asking any more difficult questions.
‘That’s weird. There’s no smoke,’ noticed Mary as they got close, peering up at the tin chimney.
‘Carl!’ shouted Murph, banging on the front door. There was no sound from inside. ‘I’ll go and check round the back,’ he told the others, setting off along the path that ran down the hi ll and into the woods. It circled around the back of the huts to the wooden veranda.
But there was no Carl sitting there in his usual spot, only his wooden deckchair neatly folded away and propped against the wall. Murph climbed the steps and listened at the back door.
As he pressed his ear to it, the door slammed open, catapulting him forward to land on his face with a mouth full of dirty sneaker. The shoe in question belonged to Hilda, who had opened the door from the inside. Billy and Mary were behind her.
‘How did you get in?’ asked Murph, spitting out the end of a shoelace and scrambling to his feet.
‘The door was just … open.’
‘So there’s no one here, then?’ said Murph, puzzled.
‘Not unless they’re playing hide-and-seek,’ suggested Billy brightly. ‘But they’re probably a bit old for that, and in any case they’d be doing it wrong. They shouldn’t both be hiding.’
‘Not really helping, Billy,’ Mary informed him.
‘Have you checked the garage?’ Murph asked. ‘Perhaps they’re working on the Banshee again.’ He dashed over to the large doors in the centre of the workshop.
But when he flung them open, they revealed bare oil-stained floorboards.
The Banshee had gone – and in its place was Nellie, sitting in the middle of the floor with her hair covering her face. She held a small scrap of paper in her hand.
As Murph entered, she slowly stood up and silently handed him the note.
Murph read aloud:
One for a stranger,
Two, an old thief.
Three for anger,
And four for grief.
Five for a follower,
Four for a friend.
One to seek,
Three for a sad end.
Four, she falls,
And three, she flies.
Six, she can live again.
Three, she dies.
‘It’s Magpie’s message!’ Murph said. ‘Flora didn’t throw it away.’
‘And now,’ continued Mary, ‘she’s vanished!’
‘I don’t understand,’ Hilda said. ‘Flora told us it was nothing.’
‘Well, maybe she was telling the truth,’ said Billy, ‘and she and Carl have just taken the Banshee for a spin. You know, to test the repairs?’
Murph breathed a sigh of relief. ‘That’s possible,’ he said. ‘Maybe we’re worrying for nothing.’
‘No,’ said a small voice from behind him. It belonged to Nellie.
Murph stared at her in astonishment.
‘NO!’ she said again, and there was real worry in her voice. Murph was shocked to see tears pooling in her eyes. ‘No, it’s not that. Carl promised me that the first time he took the Banshee out after the repairs, I’d be with him. I was going to be his co-pilot. He wouldn’t break a promise.’ Nellie was becoming more and more upset, her speech faster and more frantic. ‘Well, I hope he wouldn’t? Maybe he would. No! He wouldn’t! I think Magpie’s message was meant for Flora and Carl, and now they’ve gone off, goodness knows where, without telling anyone or wanting anybody to know and I hope they’re OK and, and ...’
Murph could see how upset Nellie was – and not just because of the tears she was busily trying to wipe away. She had just uttered more words in that single sitting than in the previous year of their friendship.
The realisation hit him like a tonne of bricks in a giant lead bucket. Nellie was right. Wherever Flora and Carl had gone, they’d left in a hurry, and in secret. It must be important.
‘So … what was the message Magpie left for them?’ asked Hilda. ‘What does it mean?’
Mary looked at her seriously. ‘That’s exactly what we’re going to have to work out,’ she replied, looking round at their worried faces. ‘As soon as we can. Who knows where Carl and Flora could be by now?’
Back in Carl’s deserted main workshop, the Super Zeroes pulled up chairs and pored over the crumpled scrap of paper.
‘Anger … grief …’ muttered Hilda to herself. ‘We know that Magpie has caused a lot of those. But who’s he talking about in the last bit? Four she falls and three she flies? Does he mean Flora?’
‘But Flora doesn’t fly,’ Billy cut in. ‘She goes invisible.’
‘I hope he doesn’t mean Flora,’ said Murph fearfully. ‘Look at the end – six she can live, three she dies.’
They all glanced at one another silently, feeling as if Magpie had reached out from his undersea prison to snatch their friends away.
‘What about the numbers? Is it the numbers?’ Billy asked suddenly. ‘Look, it goes: one, two, three, four in the first verse. Then five, four, one, three. Then four, three, six, three. Maybe it’s a combination or something?’
‘Or the words at the end?’ mused Hilda. ‘Stranger, thief, anger, grief. Follower, friend, seek, end. Falls, flies, live …’
‘Dies,’ Murph finished for her grimly. ‘We’ve got to find out what’s going on here.’
‘But what if it’s something really dangerous? What if he’s trying to lead them into a trap?’ asked Billy.
‘That’s exactly why we’ve got to find out where they’ve gone,’ replied Kid Normal. ‘And then follow them.’
* * *
The Super Zeroes were so desperate for answers they even tried asking Mr Flash during CT that morning. They cheerily joined in with his physical training session, jogging round and round the ACDC until they were pouring with sweat.
‘Sir,’ puffed Hilda after their fifth lap. ‘Was there ever a Hero called Follower, or one called Friend?’
‘Or Stranger or Thief?’ added Murph.
Mr Flash looked at them suspiciously. ‘What do you lot of recycled prawns want to know that for?’ he barked.
‘Oh, we just found this weird poem … around the school,’ said Murph vaguely. ‘We’re trying to work out who it belongs to – in case they … lost it and want it back.’ He handed Mr Flash his own crumpled copy.
The teacher’s crimson brow furrowed like an expensive velvet curtain as he read through the verse.
‘LOOKS LIKE COMPLETE EGG-PLATED NONSENSE,’ he growled. ‘There was someone called the Stranger, I think. But not a Hero. One of the other lot.’
‘A … a Rogue?’ said Murph excitedly.
‘Yur,’ confirmed Mr Flash. ‘Long time ago, though
. Don’t see what it’s got to do with this clap-trap. Now come on, press-ups! MOVE!’
The Super Zeroes discussed this excitedly as they headed back up the stairs into the main part of The School for geography, still moist and steaming like five treacle puddings.
‘So the Stranger was a Rogue,’ said Murph thoughtfully. ‘Do you think it’s a list of Hero aliases, then? A list of people that Flora and Carl have got to try and find, perhaps?’
‘But why? Why would they go off to track them down and not tell anyone?’ said Mary, biting her lip. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’
For the rest of the day they showed the poem to every teacher they could corner, concocting more and more elaborate stories about what they were asking for as they went, but nobody could shed any light on Magpie’s mysterious verse.
Murph headed home that afternoon feeling downhearted. His head was busy. In fact, it was thoroughly congested. Piccadilly Circus at rush hour, on a Friday, before the bank holiday weekend. He couldn’t kick the feeling that it was all his fault Flora and Carl had headed off in the Banshee to goodness knows where. He wished he’d just left it alone, not let Magpie get into his head.
But it was too late for moping. Magpie had got into his head, and he’d used Murph to get to his friends.
After dinner, he headed up to his room and lay on his front on the bed, staring at the piece of paper intently as if he could work out the message just by sheer force of will.
But, of course, that’s not how brains work. They are odd things, always clanking and beavering away in the background when you’re doing other stuff. That’s why you of ten come up with solutions to problems when you’re thinking about something completely different. Or while you’re asleep.
And that’s exactly what happened to Mary, who sat bolt upright at five o’clock the following morning – suddenly bright-eyed and alert – and realised that she had worked it out.
Murph loved waking up early in the morning and realising he didn’t have to get up for another couple of hours.