‘Hi,’ he said heavily.
He wasn’t worried about the chisel story, I realised, he had something else on his mind. He asked, ‘Jacob, did you try to do that mind thing on me when you wanted me to run for the student council?’
‘No,’ I said honestly. ‘I wouldn’t do that to a mate.’
At that his mother looked around, then nudged his father.
‘I didn’t think so,’ Ben said with a look of relief. Then his father stepped in front of him.
‘You leave Ben alone from now on,’ he said, stony-faced. ‘Stay right away from him.’
I didn’t have to be a genius to know why. News spreads quickly at Glenfield, and bad news spreads twice as fast as good. I was now Jacob the psychopathic chisel murderer, and good kids like Ben needed to be protected from evil fiends like me.
Ben’s mother grabbed him by the arm and led him off through the throng. Ben looked back at me and mouthed, ‘Sorry,’ just before he disappeared. Ben’s father followed them.
My breath was suddenly short. I wanted to hit somebody. I wanted to scream. Whatever I had done to Blocker, it didn’t deserve this!
I realised I was crying and, without even thinking about where I was going, found myself on the covered walkway that led to the library.
The library. My refuge. My castle, ever since I was little.
There were footsteps across my path before I got there, though, and I looked up to see Erica standing with Stacey and Chelsie.
‘Jacob!’ she said with real concern in her voice. ‘Are you all right?’ She reached out to touch me but I blinked back the tears and pushed past her.
‘Leave me alone,’ I said with an overwhelming emptiness, and headed for the library. Safety.
The library was not part of the school fair and was deserted, which suited me fine. I was happiest alone. I didn’t need Ben and I didn’t need Erica.
Friends hurt you and it wasn’t even their fault.
The library, on the other hand, was a place full of knowledge and excitement. You could learn about schoolboy spies in World War II or text messages that travel through time.
I found something to read and sobbed quietly to myself while I waited for the end of the day.
For my crime time.
THIRTY-ONE
CRIME TIME
I left it until after four o’clock; after the fair had officially closed, and the procession of kids with their buckets or cash tins of money had stopped flowing into the admin block. That was an important part of my ingenious plan. I wanted to be the last kid to arrive with a bucket of money and I wanted to arrive when they had already finished their counting.
My luck was in with the security guard at the entrance to the admin block. If it had been a teacher or Mr Curtis, then I would have been sunk because there was no way that a suspended kid was going to be bringing in a bucket of money.
But it wasn’t, it was old Mrs Mandible, the parent helper who ran the tuckshop. But I had worked my magic on her once before so I was confident I could do it again.
It was time for phase one. Getting inside.
I pulled out my money bucket, full of loose change, and tucked my backpack out of sight in the garden by the entrance to the hall. I casually entered the foyer. The entrance to the admin block was to the left, just past the school office.
Mandible sat on a wooden chair, reading. She looked up at me as I approached. ‘Where’s your pass?’
All the kids who would be carrying the fair proceeds needed a special pass to enter the admin block. Ben had shown me his.
‘I dropped it somewhere,’ I said with an apologetic shrug. ‘But I showed it to you the last two times.’
I was counting on the fact that there would have been kids coming and going all day long bringing in the profits from the fair. She couldn’t possibly remember them all. Plus she had seen my face before. And of course there was one more card to play.
That’s right. I transmitted to her. He was already in here a couple of times.
She nodded, and waved me through. It was the end of the day, and one dropped pass was not going to cause any great problem.
I pushed open the heavy swing doors into the administration corridor. The last time I had been in here, it was to get kicked out of school by old Curtis. The door to his office was closed and no doubt locked, but I stuck my tongue out at it anyway. It didn’t really make me feel any better though.
The next office was the Executive Officer’s, then the small records room where they had set up the counting table.
The corridor was empty, which was as it should be. I glanced at the door at the far end of the corridor. After the crime, I would leave the money outside that door, then return the way I had come so as not to make Mandible suspicious. Then I would skirt around the outside of the hall and retrieve the money from where I had left it. Easy.
Except something was wrong.
The door at the end of the corridor was swinging open. It should have been locked. That didn’t make any sense. Anybody could just walk in.
I wandered along the corridor and raised my hand to knock. I suppose I felt uneasy because it was only one day since I had left this corridor with my tail between my legs. Or, maybe, I was just uneasy about embarking on such an audacious crime. Whatever it was, it made me hesitate. And that saved my life.
As I paused, my glance fell back on the wide open door at the end of the corridor. And this time I noticed the really strange thing. The door was all splintered and broken around the lock. So was the door jamb.
The door hadn’t been left unlocked, it had been forced open!
That stayed my hand a moment or two longer and, in that short space of time, the door to the room opened and a hideous creature began to back out into the corridor.
I froze for just a second, then, silently, began to creep backwards until my back touched the opposite wall.
The creature was the size of a man, dressed in a black raincoat. Its back was bent over and hideously misshapen. A hunchback. It was carrying a large black rubbish bag and I knew at once what was in it. Money. The proceeds of the fair.
I knew also, without seeing, what the face would be. The horrible, distorted features of Quasimodo, the hunchback of Notre Dame.
I had come here to commit a robbery and I had walked in on one.
It was like a scene from a movie. There was an air of unreality about it. From outside, I could hear the shouts and laughter of excited children on their way home. From inside the hall behind me came the chatter of parent helpers cleaning up after the big auction.
The Hunchback Robber eased himself out of the room, his attention on the two parent helpers inside whose hands were bound with metallic tape. More tape covered their mouths. I’m not sure if they saw me or not. Their eyes were on the stubby shape of the sawn-off shotgun aimed directly at them.
It is hard to describe the emotions coursing through me at that moment. Fear? Of course. Terror even. Perhaps even a little excitement. The adrenalin was certainly flowing. Disbelief also. The Hunchback Robber had chosen the exact same day, and the exact same time, to rob exactly the same place I had planned to rob.
Of course, a part of my brain reasoned, while the rest screamed silently in terror, it was a tempting target, and if you were going to rob the takings of the fair, this was the logical time to do it: at the end of the day when the full proceeds were already in.
But the main emotion that flooded over me was one of indignation. This was my robbery. I had been planning this for weeks! What right did this thug have to walk in here with his shotgun and take over my crime?
But then I had another thought, and it was a doozy.
I could turn this around. Use it to my advantage. I would rob the robber!
It was the perfect crime. The Hunchback Robber would get all the blame, and I’d get all the money!
I thought quickly about how to pull it off. The main thing was not to get noticed.
Don’t look around. Don’t look arou
nd. I thought urgently at him.
The grotesque mask turned to the left, towards Curtis’s office, then to the right, towards the open door. I was lucky, I guess, the mask gave him a narrow field of vision and he could not see me, cowering against the wall right behind him.
It’s all clear. It’s all clear.
Satisfied, the hunchback pulled the door shut with a final menacing wave of his shotgun at the terrified occupants inside.
He immediately straightened and began walking towards the exit.
Just keep walking. Look straight ahead. I sent the message constantly. If he turned around, I was dead.
When he reached the door he checked carefully outside and, happy with what he saw, he dropped his rubbish bag to the floor.
With the ease of lots of practice, he stripped off the raincoat, revealing, not a hump in his back, but just a very ordinary looking backpack strapped on to one shoulder.
The raincoat, the shotgun, and the bag of loot went quickly into the backpack and the Quasimodo mask followed. He stripped off thin rubber gloves and tossed them in as well. He was just an ordinary looking guy. He was facing away from me, but I could estimate his age. Late twenties or early thirties. Short hair. Nothing unusual, he looked like any nondescript guy carrying a backpack.
Just look straight ahead. Act natural. Don’t seem guilty.
It was working. He picked up the bag without a backwards glance and stepped casually through the broken door. Strolling away from the building.
I followed a few paces behind. Look straight ahead. Don’t look back, that makes you look guilty.
So that was how he vanished into thin air. He became a normal guy, and was immediately camouflaged in the people around him.
A moment or two later, we were walking out of the school grounds.
Don’t look back.
THIRTY-TWO
ILL-GOTTEN GAINS
The old metal gates of the school swung out in a sudden gust of the approaching storm, moving as if to stop the thief. He turned left out of the gate and started to head up the hill towards the shopping mall. There were people everywhere. He was a part of the crowd.
We had gone less than a hundred metres, though, when the sound of sirens came from the top of the hill and two police cars came hurtling around the corner, lights flashing, sirens screaming, the whole deal. They stopped, parked on odd angles in the middle of the road, blockading the street.
Wow, that was fast.
The Hunchback Robber stopped in mid-stride, staring at the police cars. Two more appeared behind them and one of the roadblocks pulled back a little to let them through. They raced down the hill towards us.
Hunchie made his mind up and turned around, heading straight for me. I wasn’t worried, though. I, too, was just a part of the crowd.
I flicked a casual glance at his face as he passed by.
He had a thin goatee, but in all other respects was a very ordinary-looking guy.
He headed down the hill now. I knew exactly what to do and poured thought after thought at him.
It’s too risky now. Stash the backpack and come back for it later when the coast is clear.
He crossed the road, moving towards the bush reserve in the gully at the bottom of the hill.
I stayed on the other side of the road. In the crowd.
He disappeared into the bush and I waited. I knew he would emerge sooner or later, you couldn’t go anywhere that way, it just led to a wide deep creek. A second or two later he reappeared, minus the backpack, in time to see two more police cars screech to a halt around the corner at the bottom of the road and set up a roadblock there.
There was enormous confusion in the crowd. What was going on? I could almost hear them wondering.
Hunchie crossed back over and blended right in. Just another face in the crowd.
He headed back into the school grounds, and why shouldn’t he? Without any witnesses to identify him, without any incriminating loot, he was just one of the fair-goers.
I waited until he was safely out of sight and strolled across the road, as natural as anything. Without being obvious about it, I stepped slowly into the bush.
There was only one way in, a kind of a track beaten by kids from the college. The bush surrounded me and smothered the noise too, except for the wailing sirens. Then they too switched off, and the silence was enveloping.
Where would he hide it?
The rain began. I pulled up my collar and moved deeper into the bush. In the distance I heard thunder. The gloom intensified as the rain increased.
Where would he hide it?
I searched behind tree trunks and in the centre of dense bushes. Nothing.
I beat my way through the thicker bushes to the left, then to the right of the small path. Nothing. Yet it had to be here.
Lightning flashed in the distance, filtered though the leaves, and I looked up involuntarily. That was how I found it. A glimpse of yellow and red, high above the ground in the fork of an old kowhai.
It was out of my reach, but that was not going to stop me now. I threw myself at the tree, scrabbling madly at the trunk and, somehow, got the tips of my fingers to the edge of a strap. I tugged, and the bag came loose, tumbling on to my head with a thump that I barely noticed.
With trembling hands I unzipped it and pulled open the black plastic bag inside.
It was exactly the way I had imagined. Piles and piles of notes of every description. Edmund Hillary and Kate Sheppard and even a few Lord Rutherfords. Untold wealth.
And it was all mine.
I closed the bag and put it on my back. I couldn’t leave it here. It was a bit risky taking it out, with all the cops everywhere, but, I reasoned, they were looking for an adult hunchback, not a kid with a backpack.
Lightning flashed again and thunder roared, closer this time. I was starting to get drenched.
I emerged from the relative peace of the bush to the whirlwind confusion of the road. The rain was washing the steep street; people were scurrying up and down the hill. The red and blue lights of the police cars swept wetly around the scene from both ends of the road.
I started to walk and, abruptly, stopped. There she was. Directly opposite me. Erica. The most wonderful creature in all creation.
What would she think? my mind kept asking over and over. What would she think of me if she knew I really was a bad egg? A troublemaker. A criminal. A thief.
I froze, with one foot in the air, overwhelmed by it all. This was it. I could walk off with the loot and be rich. There was a line that I was about to cross, like the line in the canteen, but this one would decide what kind of person I would grow up to be.
My foot came down. All I had to do was to walk up the hill, away from the school. Away from the police. Away from Erica.
I looked at Erica and she turned around and looked me square in the eyes. To this day, I don’t know if I did that with my power, made her look at me, I mean. Maybe it was just coincidence.
But she looked at me and I looked at her, and that moment was worth all the loot in the world. That instant in time was the end of my criminal career.
I took a step in the other direction, towards the police. There was a crowd of them, milling around, looking harassed and urgent.
I walked up to the nearest policeman and thrust the bag towards him.
‘Not now, son,’ he said.
‘No, no,’ I began. ‘I followed him, and …’
‘Please move away and let us do out work.’ He turned away abruptly at a call from another officer.
I walked up to him and tapped him on the arm but, before I could get a word in, he thrust an angry finger at my face. ‘Go, move away, get out of here! Now!’
‘But I …’
‘Go!’
He turned away again.
‘But I followed the robber and found his bag!’ I screamed, tearing open the zipper on the bag to show him.
He half turned. They all did, watching in slow motion as the mask and coat fell out,
followed by the shotgun, which hit the ground muzzle first and fired.
I don’t know much about guns, and especially not shotguns, I thought they had safety catches, but either this one didn’t or it was off.
The explosion was like a bomb bursting in the middle of them and, if the gun had been facing upwards, it might have been a disaster. The flash of the shot illuminated all the blue uniforms and the crash of the shot was like a shockwave through the crowd.
They gasped and cowered in an instant as the shotgun took off like a rocket, kicking into the air with the force of the blast. It shot up about ten metres, seemed to hover there for a few seconds, then slowly started to fall, right into the astonished arms of a police constable.
There was a shocked silence for a few seconds, our ears all ringing with the noise of the shot. Then the police reacted. I looked up at a sea of blue uniforms, and some of them had guns. And those guns were pointing at me.
THIRTY-THREE
THE GETAWAY
‘Drop the bag and put your hands behind your head,’ a voice barked.
‘I found it!’ I shouted again, trying not to show the stark cold terror that I felt. There were guns pointed at me.
‘That’s Jacob Smith,’ I heard someone call out. ‘He goes to our school.’
That wasn’t quite true, after the session with Mr Curtis, but it was close enough for me.
The cops seemed to relax a bit at that, but the guns did not waver. ‘Drop the bag and put your hands behind your head.’
I dropped the bag. I put my hands behind my head and clasped them together to stop them shaking.
‘Now lie down!’
The grass was soaking wet! Still, I wasn’t about to argue with an armed bunch of cops. I lay down beside the bag and called out desperately, ‘I followed the robber! He stashed the bag in the bush, but I found it! I saved the school!’
As I did so I aimed a single thought at all the police officers I could see. Lightning flashed again and lit up their faces and I lit up their minds with two small words.
It’s true.
They believed me. Suddenly, I was just a small frightened boy lying on a muddy bank. More than that. A hero. Guns vanished. Police officers were all around me, strong hands helping me to my feet, brushing mud from my clothes. A police tunic was draped around my shoulders, some relief from the pouring rain.
The Super Freak Page 12