Aladdin didn’t agree.
Billie spoke up again. ‘But Orvar is part of your family. Wouldn’t it be good if the silver was found, so that everyone would know that he wasn’t the thief?’ Sometimes she could be a bit of a coward, but not this time.
Mats moved down a step. ‘Like I said, I’m in a rush,’ he said, reaching into his pocket. He pulled on a woolly hat and turned away. ‘We can discuss this another day.’
But Aladdin had had enough. Yet another adult telling him they could ‘discuss this another day’.
‘Why are you in such a hurry?’ he said. ‘Is it because you know something about the silver that you don’t want to tell us?’
When Mats didn’t reply, Aladdin heard himself say: ‘Or are you in a rush to get home to the children in your cellar?’
As soon as he’d spoken, he regretted it. Why had he said that? It almost sounded as if he thought Mats was keeping the children locked up.
But what was done was done.
Mats had gone bright red. He looked furious. ‘What did you say?’ he bellowed. ‘I haven’t got any children locked away!’
Aladdin and Billie tried to make themselves as small as possible.
‘We saw them through your cellar window,’ Aladdin whispered.
In fact he had seen only one of the children with his own eyes, but Simona had seen two.
Mats slowly shook his head. ‘I knew this was going to cause problems,’ he muttered. ‘I just knew it.’
He sighed and leaned back against the wall. Then he straightened up, as if he had come up with an idea. ‘Right, you’re coming home with me,’ he said firmly. ‘Go and get your coats; my car’s outside.’
Aladdin and Billie looked at one another. There was no way they were going anywhere with Mats, not when he was so angry.
At that moment Aladdin’s mother appeared on the stairs. ‘Goodness, are you still here, Mats?’
‘I’ve just been having a chat with Billie and Aladdin,’ he said. ‘I’d like to take them back to my house for a while. If they want to come, of course, and if you don’t mind. I’ve got some children staying with me, and I’d like Billie and Aladdin to meet them.’
‘I don’t mind at all,’ Aladdin’s mother said, ‘but it’s up to them whether or not they want to go. Who are these children?’
Mats managed a little smile. ‘You could say they’re the children of some good friends of mine.’
That swung it. It took less than two seconds for Billie and Aladdin to make up their minds. If Mats was prepared to speak so openly about the children, then perhaps there was nothing dodgy going on.
They were going to meet the children they had seen in the cellar – and perhaps they would find out more about Orvar and the silver at the same time.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Mats drove slowly through the village, past house after house with glowing windows. It was as dark as if it was the middle of the night. The light from the streetlamps seemed to bounce off the packed snow.
Aladdin and Billie sat in silence in the back seat. If only there had been another adult in the car. Mats was so bad-tempered. What if he was dangerous after all? What if he locked them up in the cellar?
How long will it be before Mum starts to wonder where we are? Aladdin thought to himself.
By the time they turned into the drive his pulse was racing, but he just couldn’t keep quiet any longer.
‘Who are they?’ he said as he undid his seatbelt. ‘The children – who are they?’
‘You’ll see,’ Mats said tersely, getting out of the car.
Aladdin and Billie followed him to the front door; he unlocked it and let them in. He switched on the light in the hallway and kicked off his boots.
‘Hello!’ he shouted. ‘I’m home!’
He walked through the house, switching on more lights as he went. There wasn’t a sound; no one had answered his call. Billie and Aladdin were still standing in the hallway, not quite knowing what to do.
‘Come on in,’ Mats said. ‘It usually takes a while before they come out.’
‘Why?’ Aladdin said. ‘Are they hiding?’
Mats nodded. He looked sad. ‘That’s exactly what they’re doing. They don’t speak much Swedish. Or English. We usually communicate using a kind of sign language.’
The floor creaked as Aladdin and Billie followed Mats into the living room.
He waved a hand in the direction of the sofa. ‘You’re welcome to sit down,’ he said. ‘Can I get you anything? A glass of juice maybe?’
They both shook their heads. The sofa was soft as they sat down; the room smelled dusty, and as if it could do with some fresh air.
Aladdin looked at the huge TV he had seen through the window. ‘Do you watch a lot of films?’ he asked.
Mats brightened up a little. ‘Yes – almost every night. I love films – the way you love your model planes, I guess.’
Aladdin had no idea that Mats knew he made model planes.
Mats sat down in an armchair opposite them. ‘Right, I’d like to know why you’ve been creeping around here looking through my windows,’ he said.
Aladdin shuffled uncomfortably. ‘We wanted to know if you were the one stealing food from the restaurant,’ he said eventually. ‘Mum and Dad are having a few financial problems at the moment, and we wanted to track down the thief.’
‘So it was your friend who was round the back of the house when I got back from the shops last week?’ Mats said.
Billie and Aladdin both went bright red.
‘Er, yes,’ Aladdin stammered, then pulled himself together. ‘But you’d lied to my dad. You said you were going to visit your mother, but that wasn’t true. You were here all the time.’
‘So you assumed I was the thief?’
‘Yes,’ Billie said, and Aladdin nodded in agreement.
Mats looked at them and laughed. ‘Well, that wasn’t such a bad guess,’ he said wearily, ‘because you were absolutely right. I did take all the food, but it wasn’t for me. It was for the children. And for the others who are still on the refugee boat.’
Aladdin and Billie just stared at him.
So it had been Mats all along!
At that moment they heard footsteps on the stairs, and two children peeped in through the door: a girl wearing a skirt, and a boy in short trousers.
‘Come on in,’ Mats said, waving to them. ‘Let’s get this sorted out.’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The children were called Nadia and Benjamin. They had travelled so far and for such a long time that Aladdin couldn’t really keep up as Mats told their story. However, he understood that they had finally arrived in Åhus on the refugee boat. They had come all the way from Syria.
‘I met Nadia and Benjamin’s parents through a good friend. They asked if the children could stay with me while they tried to find a better solution, so that they can stay here in Sweden and live together.’
‘You said they were hiding,’ Aladdin said.
‘That’s what they do,’ Mats explained. ‘Their parents are seeking asylum in Sweden; they have a lot of enemies in their homeland. So many that their father is afraid that some might have followed them all the way to Sweden. Until he knows for sure, the children must be kept hidden. It’s complicated, because they shouldn’t really need to hide at all. Everything will be fine as long as they’re allowed to stay in Åhus. Or somewhere else they can be safe.’
Mats sighed and scratched his head. ‘I really hope they can stay, because otherwise I don’t know what’s going to happen to them.’
The children didn’t seem to understand much of what was being said. They sat down on the floor, gazing up at Mats. Aladdin tried to understand what Mats was telling them: the children’s parents had enemies in Syria, and therefore they must be allowed to stay in Sweden. And they were afraid that some of these enemies might have come here looking for them. Aladdin and his family had never had problems like that. Not as far as he knew, anyway.
It was annoying that Billie and Aladdin couldn’t talk to the children; things would have been so much easier then. Easier and more fun. But if they stayed in Åhus, they might end up in the same school as Aladdin. He realized he was hoping that would happen; that Nadia and Benjamin would be his friends one day.
He couldn’t take his eyes off Benjamin. He was so much like the boy in the short trousers!
‘I see you’re looking at Benjamin,’ Mats said. ‘Do you recognize him?’
‘Maybe,’ Aladdin mumbled.
‘He’s been hanging around the tower from time to time,’ Mats said. ‘He likes to wait for me to finish work. I’ve tried to explain that it’s best if he doesn’t leave the house, but of course he doesn’t want to sit indoors hiding day after day.’
‘Does he have any other clothes apart from the ones he’s wearing now?’ Aladdin asked tentatively.
‘Of course!’ Mats sounded cross again.
‘It’s just that I’ve seen a boy who looks like him,’ Aladdin said hurriedly. ‘I saw him in our cellar once; he was wearing a jacket and short trousers.’
Mats frowned. ‘That might have been him … I’ve tried to explain that it’s too cold to go out in shorts, but he seems to wear thick socks, and his shorts do come down to his knees. But to be perfectly honest, I don’t know what he puts on while I’m at work. Maybe he’s just the kind of person who doesn’t feel the cold.’
Once again Aladdin wished he could talk to the children; it would make everything so much simpler.
‘So why did you take the food?’ he asked instead. ‘If you’d only asked, Mum and Dad would have given it to you.’
Mats pulled a face. ‘I didn’t really want to tell anyone about my house guests,’ he said. ‘That would have led to a whole lot of questions. Besides which, Nadia and Benjamin’s parents said they couldn’t stay with me if I told anyone about them.’
‘But you said you gave some food to the people on the boat as well. Mum and Dad would have been happy to do that – after all, that’s why we’ve been putting out a bag of supplies every night.’
Mats sighed. ‘I know. I do know that. But I was so afraid that people would start gossiping about why I wanted to help the refugees. I made a huge mistake. And … I really didn’t know your parents were having financial problems. I thought they had plenty of money, unlike me. I’ll tell your mum everything. Tomorrow. I’d be grateful if you could keep this quiet until then; I’d rather she heard it from me.’
Aladdin nodded. ‘But she already knows you took one of the bags of food.’
‘She mentioned that today, but we didn’t have time to talk about it,’ Mats said. ‘I promise I’ll explain everything tomorrow.’
He looked at his watch. ‘I need to make a start on dinner, so I’m afraid you’ll have to go home.’
Aladdin was disappointed. They knew who the children were, and why the food had gone missing. But the silver … why was it so difficult to find out what had happened to it?
He couldn’t help asking one more time. ‘The missing silver … You don’t know who took it?’
At first Mats looked so cross that Aladdin wished he hadn’t said anything, but then his face cleared. He sat there for a long time, thinking about what to say.
‘OK,’ he said eventually, speaking so quietly that Billie and Aladdin had to lean forward to hear him. ‘I’ve told you everything else, so you might as well hear this too.’
He scratched his beard and gazed into the distance. Aladdin and Billie waited, as taut as violin strings.
‘I’m sure you know the story,’ Mats went on, ‘otherwise you wouldn’t be here. You know that everyone thought it was Orvar, my great-grandfather, who took the silver in order to punish the silversmith, because he got the girl they were both in love with.’
Billie and Aladdin nodded eagerly.
‘I don’t really have much to add. This has been a source of great shame to my whole family, as you can imagine – the thought that one of our ancestors was a thief. I suppose that’s why we’ve never said anything. But there’s no getting away from it: Orvar really did take the silver.’
Both Billie and Aladdin gasped. For the first time they knew for sure: Orvar was the thief. Not the silversmith.
‘Really?’ Billie whispered.
‘How do you know?’ Aladdin asked. He was so excited that he could hardly sit still.
‘When Orvar died, he left a will,’ Mats explained. ‘That’s a kind of letter in which he wrote down what was to happen to his possessions after his death. In that same letter he admitted that he was the thief, and said he had regretted his actions for over half his life.’
‘So why didn’t he just give back the silver?’ Aladdin wondered.
‘He couldn’t. He was too ashamed. He said in his will that he hoped someone else would help him to return the silver, because he was too much of a coward.’
Aladdin’s heart skipped a beat. ‘Did he say where he’d hidden the silver?’
Mats sighed again. ‘I’m afraid not. Hang on – I’ll show you the will. I’ve got a copy in a file here somewhere.’
He left the room, and soon came back with a piece of paper that was so old it had gone yellow. It was a poor copy, but it was still possible to make out what it said.
As Aladdin and Billie pored over the document, he noticed that Benjamin and Nadia were watching them. He hoped he would be able to explain everything to them one day, when they’d been in Åhus long enough to learn Swedish.
The will was full of old-fashioned words; sometimes the expressions were so strange that it was hard to understand what they meant. But suddenly Aladdin came to a sentence that shocked him.
Orion is watching over the silver, it said.
‘What does this mean?’ he said to Mats, pointing to the words.
‘Orion is a constellation, a group of stars,’ Mats said. ‘Our family assumed it meant he had left the silver lying out in the open, beneath the night sky, so that anyone could take it.’
Aladdin felt thoroughly deflated.
It was over.
Anyone could have taken the silver. Picked it up and kept quiet about it. They might even have moved away from the village. It was time to accept the inevitable: they were never going to find it. He couldn’t remember when he had last felt so disappointed.
‘I’m really sorry,’ Mats said. ‘I wish I had better news, but I haven’t. And now it really is time for you to go home; I’ve got a thousand things to do.’
He took back the will and led the way to the front door.
Billie and Aladdin followed him; Billie gave the children a little wave as she left. They were sitting on the floor, talking quietly to one another. Nadia smiled and waved back. Aladdin looked at Benjamin.
‘By the way, do you know who the Silver Boy is?’ he said.
‘That’s just a ghost story; it’s nonsense,’ Mats said curtly.
‘So you don’t believe he’s Orvar’s son, still searching for the silver?’
‘I don’t believe in ghosts. On the other hand, I do believe in making up for things, in a way. Orvar did the wrong thing when he stole the silver, so the members of the family who are still around try to do some good. For example, that’s why I’m helping Nadia and Benjamin. If everyone just made a bit more of an effort, a lot of things would be better,’ he said.
It had started snowing again when Billie and Aladdin stepped outside.
Orion is watching over the silver.
Aladdin bit his lip. There was something about the name Orion that rang a bell, but he couldn’t remember where he’d heard it before.
‘I don’t think we’re going to find the silver,’ Billie said.
‘No, I don’t think we are,’ Aladdin agreed.
They walked through the falling snow in silence. Billie went home, and Aladdin carried on towards the tower. He couldn’t stop thinking about Orion.
Where had he heard that name before?
Chapter Twenty-Nine
It was late when Aladdin’s mother came in to say goodnight; she had been working hard.
‘Don’t read for too long, sweetheart,’ she said.
But Aladdin wasn’t reading; he was just lying there thinking, the thoughts whirling around in his head like birds. He thought about the children he had met but couldn’t talk to. And he thought about Mats, trying to do some good because his great-grandfather had once done something very bad.
Aladdin didn’t know why, but he had been kind of hoping that Orvar wasn’t the thief, that it would turn out to be someone completely different. Most of all he had been hoping that they would find the silver. Quickly and easily. But it looked as if that wasn’t going to happen. The silver was gone.
Orion is watching over the silver.
Aladdin tossed and turned. He knew he had heard or seen the name Orion before – but where?
Was it the priest who had mentioned Orion?
Or Ella, perhaps?
It was no good – however hard he tried, he just couldn’t remember.
His thoughts turned to what his father had said on the phone: that they would talk when he came home. It sounded as if he had already made his decision, but he couldn’t do that, could he? They were a family. That’s what Mum and Dad always said: that everyone in the family counted.
Aladdin clenched his fists, seething with anger. If Mum and Dad moved to Turkey, they could go on their own. Aladdin had no intention of going with them.
The sound of the telephone woke him the next morning. He sat up in bed, still half asleep. Who was calling at this hour? It wasn’t even seven o’clock!
He got out of bed and almost fell over a model plane on the floor. With clumsy fingers he picked up his phone from the desk.
‘Hello?’
He heard Simona laughing.
‘Hello yourself – have you just woken up?’
‘No … yes … maybe.’
It was typical of Simona to ring this early, assuming that everyone else was up and about.
‘I just spoke to Billie,’ she said. ‘She told me what happened yesterday.’
The Silver Boy Page 10