The Super Freak

by Brian Falkner

  Police surrounded me, and a crowd of onlookers surrounded them, a multi-coloured sea of umbrellas and raincoats completely blocking the road.

  I gabbled out what had happened. Well, as much of it as I could and still appear to be a hero and not a villain.

  ‘I saw him in the admin block,’ I said, ‘and followed him out here. It was the Hunchback Robber! I couldn’t let him get away.’

  A policewoman in plain clothes poured me a cup of coffee out of a thermos and, as she did so, I looked up at the crowd of onlookers. I saw Ben, and his parents. Blocker was there, and Miss Pepperman. There was Jenny Kreisler, looking wet, cold and alarmed, clutching the arm of Phil Domane. And Erica. Standing next to … oh my God!

  There he was. The cheeky son-of-a-bum. Right in the middle of the crowd. The invisible man. The man who could disappear into thin air. The Hunchback Robber. And he didn’t look happy.

  ‘That’s him!’ I yelled, dropping the hot coffee all over my shoes and pointing. ‘That’s him!’

  The crowd’s eyes turned towards the man, who, after an initial startled glance, broke suddenly and ran. The police were all around me, there were none close enough to stop him. He headed for the school grounds, where he could lose himself amongst all the buildings.

  The crowd parted like the Red Sea, recoiling from the wild eyes and frantic windmilling limbs. And then there was only one kid in front of him. One kid between the running man and freedom.

  What a shame, for the Hunchback Robber I mean, that it was Tupai White.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  FINGERPRINTS

  The policewoman was nice. Her name was Minet Brits, Detective Constable Minet Brits. She had kind eyes, although you could see the toughness that was there as well. You had to be pretty tough to be a police officer, I guess. She had poured me another cup of coffee and this one stayed in the cup and it felt good.

  I was a hero.

  Mandible had seen the whole thing. Apparently she had entered the corridor just in time to see me cowering against the wall.

  Very brave, I was, according to her, the way I set out after the robber without a thought for my own safety. Mandible had seen the shotgun and, wisely, kept her mouth shut. She had quietly gone for the phone instead, which explained why the cops were there so quickly.

  If I had looked behind me, I would have seen her, but I was too busy making sure that the robber didn’t look behind him, to think of looking behind me!

  In all the excitement and confusion no-one thought to ask why I was in the corridor in the first place, which was lucky.

  I was sitting, holding my coffee, with a warm towel around my soaked and muddy shoulders, on the leather sofa in Mr Curtis’s office. The same leather sofa my parents had been sitting on the day before.

  Curtis didn’t know what to make of the whole affair.

  He sat silently behind his desk while we waited for my parents, and stared out through the open door at the fingerprint guys dusting fine, white powder over the door frames.

  Eventually he said, ‘I’m sorry Jacob, but this doesn’t change a thing.’

  I hadn’t really thought it would.

  DC Brits sat next to me on the sofa.

  ‘Can I get you anything else?’ she asked. ‘Are you hungry?’

  I wasn’t really, but I knew never to turn down free food, so I nodded.

  A constable was sent up the road, and, while we were waiting, DC Brits said, ‘What you did was foolish, and stupid, you know that don’t you?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘He had a shotgun. You might have been killed.’

  ‘I know,’ I smiled. ‘I promise not to do it again.’

  She smiled back. ‘But we’re not going to make a big deal about that side of things to your parents, OK. You are a hero, and that’s all they need to know. Your mum would have a fit if she knew what the dangers really were.’

  ‘That’s fine by me,’ I said.

  She put her arm around me and gave my shoulders a squeeze.

  ‘And you were a hero today. You really were. Your name will be put forward for a bravery medal. And if there is ever anything we can do for you, you just need to ask.’

  ‘Really?’ I said slowly, an idea starting to dawn.

  ‘Well, almost anything.’

  I looked outside at the fingerprint guys in their clean, white overalls and then at the chisel, still sitting on Curtis’s desk where Saltham had put it the previous day.

  ‘There is one thing,’ I said.

  Mum, Dad and a cheeseburger all arrived simultaneously and, although I had thought I wasn’t hungry, the food disappeared in seconds. Mum and Dad turned up in Mrs McLatcheon’s Morris Minor with Gumbo sitting in the back seat. It took another twenty minutes of explanations and a lot of fussing and ‘crikeys’ from Mum before my parents were anywhere near satisfied they understood what had happened.

  The first camera crew turned up five minutes after that. They were from TV3 and they beat the TV1 news crew by almost sixty seconds. The Crime Time team were much slower. The other reporters had already got their shots and done their interviews by the time Crime Time got there.

  I’d turned into something of a celebrity. The boy who’d caught the Hunchback Robber. Well, I suppose technically that was Tupai, but it was me they wanted to talk to.

  I gave the same interview, almost word for word, to both TV crews and when I finally got to meet the Crime Time producer I was exhausted.

  His name was Nicholas Priddey.

  ‘How are you feeling, Jacob?’ he asked.

  ‘A little tired,’ I said honestly. ‘Where’s PC Plod?’

  He looked startled at first and then laughed. ‘Is that what you call him?’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean …’

  ‘No, no,’ he laughed again. ‘That’s the nickname we use as well, when he’s not around. But don’t tell anybody I told you.’

  I laughed with him. ‘Promise.’

  Priddey said, ‘He doesn’t come out on shoots. He just records linking pieces in the studio afterwards.’

  Dad came over, holding Gumbo on a short leash, and stood next to me while the Crime Time team fitted me up with a lapel microphone attached to a small black box on my waist.

  ‘We’re almost ready to go,’ Priddey said. ‘Our interview will be a little longer than the news crews do. They just want short sound bites, but we want the whole story.’

  He turned to Dad. ‘We’ll interview you next, Detective, just get you to say what a hero Jacob is, that sort of thing.’

  Dad shook his head. ‘I’m not a detective.’

  ‘He’s my dad,’ I clarified.

  Priddey looked confused. ‘I’m sorry. We’ve met before haven’t we? I was sure you were with the police.’

  Dad said, ‘I’m an actor. I had a role on your show a few weeks ago.’

  But I burst out laughing because I knew why Priddey was so confused.

  I said, ‘He’s the policeman from the dog food commercial!’

  The interview took about five minutes, and, by the time we had finished, one of the fingerprint guys had lifted three sets of prints off the chisel.

  Not surprisingly, one set proved to be Dad’s. Curtis had asked Old Sea Salt to come in. He stood rubbing the ink off his fingertips with a tissue while they confirmed another set were his.

  The third set of prints weren’t mine.

  ‘Well, whose are they then?’ asked Curtis.

  Jeez he could be thick sometimes. How did he ever get put in charge of a school?

  ‘Get Blocker, I mean Markus, in here,’ I suggested.

  Saltham said, ‘I saw him a few moments ago. I’ll go and find him.’

  I watched Curtis’s face carefully while we waited. He seemed afraid to look at me. He had been wrong about me. Not only was I now a hero of the school, but it turned out that I might have been telling the truth yesterday as well!

  Saltham arrived back with not only Blocker in tow, but his mother as well.

&n
bsp; Gumbo saw them coming in the door and started doing his growly thing. Dad had to haul back on the leash to restrain him.

  ‘What is going on?’ Frau Blüchner demanded.

  Mr Curtis said simply, ‘The police have fingerprinted the chisel. Jacob’s prints are not on it. We’d like to get a sample of Markus’s prints so we can exclude him as well.’

  Frau Blüchner looked at Blocker, who looked horrified.

  ‘Well?’ Mr Curtis asked Blocker.

  ‘No!’ he blurted out at last. ‘You can’t make me!’

  ‘Can we?’ Curtis asked DC Brits curtly.

  She shook her head. ‘He’s a minor and he hasn’t been arrested for anything. He has to volunteer to give his prints.’

  I couldn’t help myself, I said, ‘So, volunteer, Blocker.’

  ‘No!’ he blurted. ‘I’m not going to.’

  Dad tried to calm things down. ‘Listen, son, if they’re not your prints then …’

  But the older Blüchner thundered in as lightning flashed outside.

  ‘If Markus said he didn’t do it, then he didn’t do it! You do not have to treat him like a criminal.’

  The problem was, by now it was pretty obvious to everyone in the room that Markus was a criminal. The guilty expression on his face left little room for doubt.

  Frau Blüchner started to say something else, but Saltham cut her off. ‘Jacob, I’d like you and your parents to wait outside for a few moments while we discuss this. You too, Markus.’

  Curtis looked panic stricken and I wasn’t surprised. The thought of being shut in a room with those two going head to head would have been terrifying.

  Detective Constable Brits came with us and pulled the door shut.

  To my surprise, Ben was there.

  ‘Ben!’ I exclaimed. ‘Where are your mum and dad?’ I looked around nervously for them.

  He shrugged with a who cares? attitude. ‘Probably out looking for me.’

  ‘Hi, Jacob,’ came a voice from behind me. I whirled around to see Erica sitting on the other side of the corridor.

  ‘Erica.’ I dropped my eyes to the floor. I couldn’t believe how I had treated her outside the library.

  She stood and hugged me tightly, never mind who was watching.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I mumbled, but she shushed me.

  ‘No need to be,’ she said.

  We heard most of what went on in Curtis’s office through the thin wooden door but I won’t repeat it here.

  All I will tell you is that in the space of ten minutes in that confined space, a panzer tank took on a navy destroyer, and lost. I sat on the seat between Ben and Erica, and thought that, just maybe, things were going to be OK.

  Mum said nothing, but there was a smile on her face every time she looked at me. Or was it Erica and me she was looking at? Mums can be a bit funny about girlfriends.

  Dad spent the time trying to get Gumbo to stop growling at Blocker.

  Frau Blüchner burst out of the office a few moments later, white of face and wide of eye. She grabbed Blocker by the arm. He was in for it when they got home, anyone could see that.

  Mr Curtis came to the door of his office. He looked a bit ashen, but he was coping well.

  He motioned to Mum and Dad. ‘Can I see you for a moment?’

  Dad passed Gumbo’s lead to me and went into Curtis’s office with Mum.

  Through the doors I could see Frau Blüchner dragging Blocker off though the car park, unmindful of the weather. Her piercing voice cut through the rain back to us, inside.

  Without warning Blocker wrenched his arm out of his mother’s grip and ran off into the thundering storm.

  That was too much for Gumbo, who had been sitting there restraining himself for too long. He jumped up, jerking the lead from my hand and went haring outside after Blocker.

  ‘Gumbo!’ I yelled, but it did no good. I cursed to myself and ran out after him.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THE PYLON

  Gumbo ran, and I ran, and Ben ran with me, and, somewhere in front of us all, was Blocker.

  Rain pelted us and lightning lit the rapidly approaching night. Without raincoats we were soaked in seconds. It was freezing and miserable. Rain ran down the back of our necks and lashed at our eyes.

  I don’t know where Blocker was going, but it wasn’t home. He took off up the side street, towards Manuka Ridge. I glanced behind and Ben was right there, and Erica too.

  Gumbo was surprisingly quick for an old dog but his legs could not hold out and, eventually, he stopped and looked back waiting for us to catch up.

  I peered through the rain up the hill where I could see a brief flash of Blocker’s jumper.

  ‘Where’s he going?’ I shouted, holding on to Gumbo’s collar, but I already knew.

  Thanks to Ben’s prize-winning photo, there wasn’t a kid in school who didn’t know about the power pylon on Manuka Ridge and the way it attracted lightning.

  ‘The pylon!’ Ben confirmed my thoughts. Lightning cracked its way across the sky nearby, followed soon after by rolling thunder.

  ‘Go after him,’ Erica yelled, her hair in her eyes.

  I hesitated.

  ‘Go after him,’ she repeated. ‘You can’t just leave him!’

  She grabbed Gumbo’s collar out of my hand and said, ‘I’ll bring your dog.’

  We ran. The wind was freezing my legs and my lungs were beginning to gasp for air. Beside me, Ben ran effortlessly, mechanically, tirelessly, robotically.

  By the time we got to the top of Manuka Ridge my chest was burning and my guts were retching. Blocker had turned into Ridge Road, towards the pylon.

  Something about that scared me in a way I hadn’t been scared before and my legs found new strength.

  Lightning cracked again, and thunder drummed all around us only a few seconds later.

  ‘Three seconds!’ Ben shouted into my ear. ‘Just three kilometres away!’

  The pylon stood, sentry like, in its empty grassy field. Up this close, I could see that the legs were set into huge concrete blocks. It soared into the sky above us, impossibly tall when viewed from its base.

  About six metres up the pylon, completely encircling it, was a horizontal fence of barbed wire, jutting sideways out from the structure to prevent anyone climbing it.

  Blocker was clinging to the tower, a dark figure, just below the barbs of the barrier.

  Lighting flared again. ‘Two seconds!’ Ben shouted.

  We ran up close to the base of the pylon and I had to gasp some air back into my lungs.

  ‘Come down!’ I shouted into the driving rain. ‘You’ll be killed!’

  Blocker said nothing. He was gripping the strut of the pylon with grim determination against the gusting wind.

  Beside me, Ben said, ‘I think that’s the idea.’

  ‘Blocker!’ I screamed.

  He turned away from us and put his elbow around a strut for better support.

  Without stopping to think, I ran forward and started to climb. The struts were icy cold and slippery. My foot slipped twice, crashing my knee into a sharp metal edge, and I clung on desperately before regaining my footing.

  I was a couple of metres high when there was a different voice. A female voice, terrified.

  ‘Jacob, get down!’ It was Erica.

  I ignored her and kept climbing. Lightning flashed and, almost immediately, the thunder followed. For a second, I froze with fear, then realised we hadn’t been struck. It would have already been all over if we had.

  ‘One second!’ Ben yelled. ‘It’s right on top of us!’

  I hauled myself up to Blocker’s level and shouted at him. He turned to face me. He was bawling his eyes out.

  ‘It’s not worth it!’ I screamed. ‘Not this!’

  He shook his head, and shouted back over the noise of the wind and rain. ‘You have no idea. You don’t know what it’s like. Since Dad died …’ and that was all he could say.

  Amidst it all I reflected, once again, how yo
u never really know what is going on inside people.

  ‘It’s not worth it,’ I repeated, but it had no effect. I tried to focus my power on him but I already knew it wouldn’t work; it never did against fierce determination. ‘Blocker,’ I said, moving closer so that I wouldn’t have to shout. ‘I don’t know what your life is like. How could I? I’m not you. But the way I see it, life is like a book. There are good chapters and bad chapters. But when you get to a bad chapter, you don’t stop reading the book!’

  He looked up at me and it seemed something was getting through.

  I continued, ‘If you do, then you never get to find out what happens next!’

  He looked hesitant now. I couldn’t remember how long it had been since the last lightning flash.

  I bellowed. ‘You’ve only just started the book.’

  He unhooked his elbow from the strut but still gripped the grey metal tightly.

  ‘You’ve gotta want to find out what happens next!’ I repeated, and his grip loosened.

  ‘Get outa there!’ Ben’s voice screamed from below.

  ‘Let go, Blocker!’ I cried and hit him with the full force of my power at the same time.

  Let go! Let go! Let go! Let go! Let go! Let go!

  His hands straightened and his grip failed. He dropped the few metres to the ground below.

  I glanced down to see Erica helping him away from the base of the pylon. To safety. I looked up at the rumbling black clouds above and breathed a long slow sigh of relief.

  ‘Jacob!’ Ben yelled and my brain started working properly again. Blocker was safe, but I was still clinging to the tower.

  I leaped away from the pylon just as a blinding flash enveloped me. My nostrils were filled with the smell of ozone and my eardrums burst with the explosions of ten nuclear bombs all going off simultaneously.

  But I was in the air and falling and, somehow, I sensed Ben running forwards below me.

  I landed in his arms, but it was too much weight and all he really did was break my fall. I thought I heard a sharp crack, but it was difficult to be sure with my ears ringing with the thunder.