Itch

by Simon Mayo

  She coughed and wiped her forehead with her sleeve. ‘I don’t know what to say, Itch,’ she murmured. ‘I know I’m sick. I do need help, but you can’t do that on your own! Maybe I can come some of the way—’

  Itch cut in. ‘No. Really, no. You can’t, Jack. I started this whole thing and I have to finish it without anyone else.’ Realizing he might be sounding ungrateful, hurtful even, he carried on swiftly, ‘It’s just that’ – he closed his eyes to make sure he got this next bit right – ‘it’s just that they won’t stop, Jack. These people with guns will still want the rocks and will still have guns when I’m done. If you don’t know where I’ve gone, you’ll be in less danger. I think. That’s how it seems to me anyway.’

  Guns, Itch thought with a shiver. How could his hobby have come to this? Men with guns were chasing them, and he had no doubt they would use them. Everything depended on him getting the next few hours right; he knew his plan was a logical one, but he doubted if he had the guts or the skill to make it work. Had he ever done anything brave in his entire life? He didn’t think so.

  After a pause, Jack nodded her understanding. ‘OK. I won’t argue any more. What happens when we get to Victoria?’

  ‘I disappear. You can’t see me buy a ticket or anything.’

  ‘What do I do?’

  Itch thought. ‘You go to a newsagent’s and wait twenty minutes – if you can – and then find a phone and call 999. Hopefully, if the timetable I’ve checked is correct, I’ll be gone.’

  They both looked out of the window as they passed Buckingham Palace. The royal flag was flying – the Queen was in. ‘Maybe we should just leave them with her,’ said Jack. ‘She’ll have somewhere to put them.’ They both laughed.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jack, for all this. I never knew … If I’d known …’

  Jack put her hand on his knee to silence him. ‘Of course you didn’t. Of course you didn’t. I just hope we’ll all be OK. Hope that Chloe’s OK. You’ve decided what you have to do, and maybe you’re right.’ She wiped more tears away. ‘You’re the bravest person I know, Itch. I’m proud to be a Lofte.’

  Itch put his hand briefly on hers and stared at the teeming London traffic, his own eyes swimming with tears.

  The congestion around Victoria delayed them another fifteen minutes, and Itch started to wonder how much radiation was leaking out of the container. He hoped he wasn’t infecting the cab driver, but he had done what he could, and now had no choice but to see this through.

  Itch and Jack sat in silence. It was the silence of two friends who, though they had already been through a lot, were more scared of what the next few hours might bring than either of them wanted to admit. Itch was worried for his cousin and his sister, and whether he could dispose of the rocks on his own. Jack was worried that she was going to die.

  They finally pulled in beside the station and, having paid the fare with a twenty-pound note – receiving another suspicious look from the cabbie in the process – Itch and Jack stood on the kerb looking at each other.

  ‘Do we say goodbye now, then?’ asked Jack.

  ‘No, let’s go inside,’ said Itch. ‘We need to rearrange the bags a bit.’

  Jack hoisted the rucksack onto her shoulders one more time, while Itch picked up the canvas bag. He had to switch hands constantly as he now had blisters on most of his fingers from the bag’s stretched fabric handles. Flowerdew’s case was lightweight in comparison and swung from Itch’s other hand.

  They walked swiftly through the corridor of shops and coffee outlets to the high glassed ceiling of the main concourse. Tourists milled around looking lost, jostled by Londoners hurrying to their trains. The smell of pastries and coffee mixed with the unmissable scent of steamy, sweaty travellers. Itch and Jack stopped again, causing a stream of people to swerve around them, tutting and shaking their heads in annoyance. Oblivious to everything else, the two cousins stood there, awkwardly aware that the time for farewells was now.

  ‘You said you wanted to rearrange the bags.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Itch, looking for the nearest toilets. ‘Give me the rucksack, and I’ll come and find you in W H Smith’s. By the magazines.’

  Jack slipped the rucksack off her shoulder and passed it to him. He headed for the toilets, balancing the three bags. Jack watched him all the way to the stairs with the MEN sign above them, then wandered over to the news-stand. It felt strange to have nothing to carry, her shoulders light and relaxed. Nevertheless she walked with her hands pushed deep into her pockets and her head down, convinced that everyone would be looking at the whiteness of her scalp where her hair had fallen out. In truth this had still only happened in the two small areas around her ears but it felt to her as though she were almost bald.

  She walked past the jumbo-sized chocolate bars and sweet multi-packs and found the magazines just past the paperback books. She stood staring at her favourite reads: X-FACTOR FASHION TIPS!, FREE LIP GLOSS INSIDE!, SECRETS BOYS KEEP! ran the gaudy headlines – and realized she couldn’t find an ounce of interest in any of them. She was weary beyond belief and had started to shake again, but she was determined to stay the course until Itch had made his escape.

  She had decided to pick up a Just 17, merely to blend in with all the other customers, when she caught a familiar smell. It took her a few seconds to place it, but then, as it came to her, her insides lurched.

  It was burned hair.

  It was only faint, but the memory of the phosphorus explosion in the lab was fresh in her mind and her nostrils. Someone with burned hair was standing close by.

  Frozen to the spot, she forced herself to turn round slowly. Immediately behind her was a long queue of customers that snaked towards the tills. This shielded her from the newspaper browsers: amongst them she spotted a tall, broad man wearing sunglasses, his head turning first one way, then the other. It was, she was sure, the man from the mining school who had kicked Jacob Alexander in the stomach. The man who had then walked into the burning phosphorus.

  Jack drew a sharp breath and held it. The line of customers was getting shorter, and she had to leave before her cover was gone completely. As the man began another sweep, she walked as casually as she could along her side of the queue, past the tills and out onto the station concourse. As she left, she broke into a sprint. She hadn’t meant to – it felt like a spontaneous, final, desperate race for survival. She ran straight through a snaking line of foreign students and hesitated only a fraction of a second before bursting into the men’s toilets.

  It was busy, but no one paid her any attention – her height and short hair meant that she passed a casual inspection – and she headed for the cubicles. This was no time for embarrassment, and she started knocking on the locked doors. There were four rows of six, and as she knocked and called, ‘Itch! It’s me!’ she received a number of cross and angry replies. The end cubicle opened slightly and Itch’s head, still wearing Flowerdew’s cap, looked out.

  ‘Jack! What’s up?’ he said, standing with the cubicle door partly open. She could see that he was in the middle of repacking the rucksack: many of his elements were spread out on the floor.

  ‘One of the men from the mining school! The one with the burning hair! He’s here!’

  ‘Did he see you?’ Itch looked alarmed.

  ‘Don’t think so, but he could come in here any minute!’

  Heads were now starting to turn and Jack went into the cubicle next to Itch’s, bolting it shut. She sat down on the toilet seat as she heard Itch re-bolt his door.

  ‘I’ve got the rocks into the rucksack,’ he said through the graffiti-covered partition. ‘It’s tight, but they’re in. Had to put almost all of my collection into the canvas bag. Guess you’ll have to take it, if that’s OK. I’ll keep Flowerdew’s briefcase for now, but here’s some of his cash in case you need it.’ He slid some twenty-pound notes under the partition. ‘And for many, many reasons,’ he added, ‘let’s hope no one is watching this!’

  The humour was lost on Jac
k. ‘Can’t think I’ll need money, but OK.’ She wasn’t arguing with anything now – she just wanted it all to be over. She’d help Itch escape, then crawl into a corner and wait as long as she could before calling for help.

  The canvas bag was pushed under the partition; it now contained an assortment of powders, pieces of rock and corked tubes where the radiation box had been. Jack wanted to say she’d look after his element collection but didn’t think she was in a position to promise anything. She said nothing, picked up the bag and sat with it on her lap.

  ‘You all right?’ said Itch.

  ‘Never better,’ she said. ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘Er, we say goodbye, I suppose.’

  Itch had the re-packed and straining rucksack on his back and the briefcase in his hand. He leaned against the partition, with Jack on the other side.

  ‘I’ll go and get a ticket – that means I’ll be turning right. You go left and hide out somewhere as long as you can. But call the ambulance as soon as you need to. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘You wear the cap.’

  ‘OK.’

  Flowerdew’s cap came through from Itch’s side and Jack put it on. There was a silence and they both realized there was nothing else to say.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Itch, and they both emerged slowly from their cubicles, peering round the doors, checking for the man with burned hair. The toilets were busy, but there was no sign of him. They headed for the exit, Itch in the lead. They both pulled up as it opened and three men came hurrying in, but the burned-hair man wasn’t one of them. They looked at each other and Itch nodded slightly. Jack leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the cheek. Then she opened the door, turned left and disappeared.

  Itch waited ten seconds and followed her out, turning right. The large ticket office was a hundred metres away, with the self-service machines just in front. He headed for the nearest shop and worked his way towards the machines by pretending to be a customer at each stall or sandwich bar on the way. From behind a counter selling Cornish pasties, he searched the faces of the hundreds of passengers walking in every direction. There were more police-men than usual, he was sure, including four standing by the entrance to the tube. However, seeing no sign of Jack or burned-hair man, Itch walked the final twenty metres to the first ticket machine, where he paid cash for a ticket to Brighton.

  26

  ITCH STOOD BEHIND a steel pillar near Platform 10, his eyes everywhere. He could hear police sirens, but nothing was happening near him. He had five minutes till his train left. It had pulled in a few moments ago, but he had not wanted to sit on it any longer than necessary. He was waiting for a group to board the train together so that he could mingle unnoticed. None had come. He thought he had checked every single passenger who had got on the train: burned-hair man wasn’t among them.

  ‘Can’t be seen. Can’t be noticed. Can’t be seen. Can’t be noticed,’ he repeated to himself over and over. If his plan had any chance of succeeding, he had to ensure that no one saw him board this train – that no one even knew in which direction he was heading. Or at least that no one remembered him. He had to make the rocks disappear without anyone seeing him. He had never minded being tall – over the years it had put a few bullies off – but he was suddenly aware that he wasn’t just a teenager with a rucksack, but a very tall teenager with a rucksack. Instinctively he hunched over a little and shrank back further behind the pillar.

  As the time for the Brighton train’s departure came closer, more passengers got on. A small party of middle-aged women had gathered at the turnstile, apparently waiting for another friend to join them before they boarded. Itch had started to walk towards them when he realized that the radiation sickness was back. He froze halfway between the pillar and the platform, knowing that, whatever happened, he mustn’t be sick in full view of all these people. It would guarantee that his plan failed.

  ‘Can’t be seen, can’t be noticed.’

  He looked around, eyes wide, as he tried to control what was happening to his body. He knew he had only a few moments to make himself discreet but all the toilets were too far away now. The photo booth was no good – the curtain was too short; the flower stalls and coffee vendors wouldn’t do – they were busy and full of customers. But he was out of time. Walking swiftly towards the other platforms, he noticed a stairwell behind a pasty stall. The narrow steps led to some bars and cafés, but the stairwell was quiet; most customers used the main, grander stairs. With no time left and all the bodily control he could muster, he ran into the small space and crouched down, pretending to tie his lace. With his rucksack still on his back and the case in his hand, he braced himself against the wall.

  Afterwards, he was wet with perspiration, shaking and dizzy, but the sickness was not quite as bad as it had been at the empty cottage. He reversed out of the stairwell and straightened up, nearly fainting. Steadying himself against the wall until his head and vision had cleared, he then set off again, a little shakily, for Platform 10.

  ‘Can’t be seen, can’t be noticed.’

  In the end there were no last-minute passengers, so he boarded on his own and stood for a moment by the recently slammed doors. Would he be more or less conspicuous if he sat on his own? Should he sit in the busiest compartment or the quietest? Itch didn’t know, couldn’t work it out, so he sat in the first seats he came to. He was in the rear carriage, in a double seat with a table in front of him. Only three other passengers could be seen: two men and a younger woman. They paid Itch no notice, seemingly intent on consuming as many cans of beer as they could in the one hour that the journey made available to them.

  Itch placed the briefcase on the table and the rucksack on the seat next to him. He hooked one arm through a strap as a precaution, but soon realized that, as he was at the end of the train, there would be no one walking past him at all. If he was lucky, he might just be left on his own.

  He unhooked his arm and opened Flowerdew’s briefcase to remove the laptop. He hadn’t had time to look at all the loose papers in there before, but it was soon clear it was a chemical analysis of the rocks. Itch found the last page. Flowerdew had come up with the same conclusion as Dr Alexander, though he expressed it differently. Itch read the last few sentences:

  It is my opinion that element 126 places previously unheard-of power in the hands of those who control it. It is beyond price. Whoever has it will dominate the energy market for the foreseeable future.

  Although Itch had heard all this before, it still took his breath away to see it written down, spelled out in black and white. He looked at his old rucksack. It was blue and black nylon with white plastic edging, and stained by biro leaks in the front pocket. It had LOFTE written in black marker in his mother’s handwriting on the flap. He couldn’t remember how long he’d had it – it might even have belonged to his brother first – and all things considered, Itch thought, it was unlikely to be handed on to his sister. It seemed utterly preposterous that its contents would ‘place unheard-of power’ in the hands of whoever owned it. Before last week his rucksack had usually contained only school books, pens and cheese sandwiches.

  Thinking of his sister and brother, and seeing his mother’s handwriting made Itch feel suddenly, desperately, unbearably lonely. Sad too – but mainly he had an unshakeable sense that although he had to do this on his own, he would have given anything to have had company. He wondered what Chloe would have said; what Gabriel would have done. He thought of Jack and hoped she had found help by now. He imagined his father might have offered up a prayer for their safety, so Itch tried one himself.

  He wondered if he could use Flowerdew’s laptop to send an email. The signal was OK – the laptop screen indicated an erratic but regular connection – but were they traceable like a phone call? He wanted to email as much of the contents of Flowerdew’s laptop to someone … Mr Watkins, maybe? He could then add a personal message to his family. He set about copying and pasting everything he could find from docume
nts, emails and contacts. Not all of it was in English, but he was sure it would all be of interest to the police, the Cornwall Academy, and anyone else who needed to know about the past of Dr Nathaniel Flowerdew.

  There were hundreds of photos. He skimmed images of luxurious rooms, London streets and views of the London Eye; buildings and landmarks presumably in Nigeria; oil installations and rigs from all angles; some photos of Flowerdew’s house in Cornwall, and many of his lab.

  He came across a file marked VT DEVIL LOL and clicked on it. It opened with twenty-five pages of reports and analysis of a disaster off the coast of Nigeria. It was a Greencorps document that detailed the extent of the pollution caused by a rig blow-out two years ago. Following the report were email exchanges, in which Flowerdew was clearly furious at being named in the report as the main culprit. The ‘chief science executive’ had concluded that it was Flowerdew’s advice to push the oil well deeper that was the main factor in causing the catastrophe. Photos of oil-covered beaches, dead wildlife and grief-stricken families came next. A brief TV news clip showed harrowing scenes of dead and injured oil workers being brought ashore.

  The Brighton express train rattled on through the stations of Surrey as Itch was lost in a world of sadness from Africa. The final exchanges referred to the ‘fall guy who’ll take the rap’ – presumably, thought Itch, the woman called Shivvi he and Jack had looked up back at his house. Then there was Flowerdew’s last comment, which he had added for his own amusement: And so, the devil finally falls! Farewell!

  Itch closed the laptop and looked, unseeing, out of the window. They entered and then left a tunnel, but he barely noticed. He wanted to make sure that Flowerdew went to prison for a long, long time. He wanted everyone to see the documents he had seen, but as he looked at the faltering 3G signal, he became increasingly worried that an email might be traced. If anyone worked out which train he had caught, his plan was in serious peril, and so was he. He wanted to send a note to his family saying he was OK – but not if it meant that those eight rocks of 126 ended up powering some madman’s nuclear ambitions.