by Paul Gamble
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To my parents
PROLOGUE
THE SHOE’S THE CLUE
In the middle of the street lay a single shoe, an unmistakable warning that there was an escaped pirate somewhere nearby.
And yet people walked past, ignoring it. Even those who looked at the shoe didn’t realize that it signaled danger and the possibility that they could have been run through by a cutlass at a moment’s notice.
In fact, most of the people in the street thought it was just a lost shoe.
But think! Who loses a single shoe? Possibly someone might lose both shoes—but why would anyone ever leave a single shoe behind? You’d notice the minute you realized that you were slightly taller on your left leg than you were on your right.
To the educated, those who know how to look at the world properly, the answer is clear: Only a pirate would leave a single shoe behind. Because pirates, who all have a wooden leg, have only one shoe to lose.1
But where do these pirates come from? Well, obviously they escape from a Piratorium—a specially built prison for pirates. Then while they are running away from the guards, their shoe falls off; and, being in a hurry to evade recapture, they generally don’t turn around to pick it up.
The uneducated mind would ask: Why are pirates particularly prone to having their shoes fall off? Well … anyone with an ounce of sense could explain to them that pirate’s shoes are always falling off because pirates are notoriously bad at tying their laces. After all, it’s incredibly difficult to tie a neat bowknot when one of your hands has been replaced with a metal hook.
It is this state of affairs that caused Captain Buck Steerhawk to say the second-wisest thing that a pirate has ever uttered.
“Lad, if you want to be a pirate, remember this: Get yourself a pair of slip-on loafers.”
Coincidentally, Captain Buck Steerhawk is also responsible for the first-wisest thing ever uttered by a pirate: “It’s vitally important that you always think very carefully about which hand you’re using the toilet paper with.”
Uneducated people believe that pirates no longer exist in the world. But how could pirates have just disappeared overnight? Pirates haven’t really disappeared any more than the dinosaurs just vanished one day. These days all pirates are locked away in Piratoriums, where they are well looked after, given a daily supply of grog, and allowed to sing sea shanties and screech “A’hr Jim Lad” at each other to their heart’s content.
Occasionally a pirate may escape during transportation to or from a Piratorium, and hence you may see a single shoe lying in the road. But this happens rarely, as pirates are securely transported around the road network in sealed tankers. What is truly strange about this world is that no one ever notices this, despite the fact that the tankers are clearly marked with a skull and crossbones. What would a tanker marked with a skull and crossbones be carrying other than pirates?
The question is, are you one of the people who sees how unusual the world really is? Or do you think that the single shoe lying in the road is just a lost shoe? If you look closely at the world, you will quickly realize that there are signs of strangeness everywhere. And if you can see the signs, maybe you’re ready to join the Ministry.
All you have to do is open your eyes.
Unfortunately, as our story begins, Jack Pearse’s eyes are firmly closed.
* * *
MINISTRY OF S.U.I.T.S HANDBOOK
PIRATES
FAMOUS ESCAPES OF
The most famous pirate escape to occur in recent years was the notorious French pirate Jacques le Magiste. Jacques was a pinup amongst pirates. He inspired everyone he met. He never took any prisoners, never spent his treasure—always choosing to bury it instead—and further boasted that whatever any other pirate did once he would do twice. Of course this made Jacques rather easy to capture as he had no hands, just two hooks; no legs, just two wooden pegs; and no eyes, just two patches.
* * *
1
A LONELY SHOE
MONDAY
It was morning and Jack’s head was still hidden under his duvet. It wasn’t that Jack didn’t like mornings. It was just that he would have preferred them if they happened slightly later in the day. Maybe half past eleven. Possibly even later on the weekends.
“Jack! Time to get up,” Jack’s mother yelled from downstairs. “You don’t want to be late for school.”
It was a strange thing for his mother to yell. After all, being late for school was something that didn’t worry Jack in the slightest.
Rubbing his eyes with both hands, he crawled from under the duvet and peeped out of his curtains. The sun was beaming down through a cloudless sky. Jack found this annoying, as it meant that P.E. would be outside today. Getting sweaty and tired was bad, but getting sweaty and tired and muddy was even worse.
As Jack looked out the window he noticed a single shoe lying in the middle of the road.
“How did that get there?” he wondered. To Jack, a shoe lying in the middle of the road was annoying. There was no sensible or reasonable explanation for it, and Jack hated unexplained mysteries. When reading detective books he almost always found himself flipping to the last few pages to find out who the murderer was. An unexplained mystery felt almost physically uncomfortable, like an unscratched itch or a crumpled sock inside a shoe.
By the time Jack got downstairs his cereal was getting soggy. Jack’s father’s mustache appeared over the top of his newspaper. As always, Jack’s father’s face quickly followed the mustache. Jack’s father’s face and Jack’s father’s mustache had a sort of double act going in that way. You rarely saw one without the other.
“Morning, Jack,” said the mustache.
“Morning, Dad.”
“Eat your cereal,” said Jack’s mother.
Jack poked his cereal with a spoon and frowned. Why did parents always make you do things that you didn’t want to do? In Jack’s books heroes were almost always orphans, or their parents had been kidnapped, or they just didn’t seem to feel the need for parents at all. After all, Peter Pan probably would never have defeated Captain Hook if his parents had been around. They would never have let him use a pointed sword, for a start. And it’s almost impossible to kill a maniacal pirate with a pair of safety scissors.
Jack thought that maybe people only ever became heroes because they didn’t have parents.
The mustache looked at its watch. “You’ll have to get a move on if you want to catch your bus.”
“Here’s your P.E. kit.” Jack’s mother handed him a bag. “I washed it.”
Jack looked halfheartedly at the bag. It made him wonder about heroes again. If heroes didn’t have parents, then who did their laundry? As far as he could remember, Peter Pan never found himself wrestling with an enchanted washing machine and a pair of magically dirty pants.2
“Mum,” Jack said in his nicest voice, “I don’t suppose you could give me a note to get out
of P.E.?”
His mother sighed. She had heard this before. “What is it about P.E. that you hate so much?”
“Partly getting muddy, but mainly P.E. teachers.”
“Not a good enough reason. So, no note.”
It was Jack’s turn to sigh as he picked up his schoolbag and P.E. kit. As he was walking out the door he stopped and turned around to his parents. “Mum, how hard is it to do your own laundry? Would it take me a long time to wash my own clothes?”
She arched an eyebrow as she looked at him. “Well, the ironing might take you a while. You wouldn’t have much free time if you had to do it.”
“I’m glad I’m not a hero, then,” Jack said as he left to catch his bus.
The mustache looked at Jack’s mother. “That boy gets stranger all the time.”
* * *
MINISTRY OF S.U.I.T.S HANDBOOK
PIRATES
KILLING WITH SAFETY SCISSORS
Many people will tell you it is impossible to kill pirates with safety scissors. However, it is only almost impossible. You can kill pirates with a pair of safety scissors but you have to persuade them to lie still for an awfully long time before you can achieve it. And even if you do persuade them to lie down in the first place they tend to get bored halfway through and wander off to dig up some treasure or pillage a Caribbean island.
* * *
2
AN UNEXPECTED BEAR
Jack ran out the front door with his shirttail flapping inelegantly behind him, making it to the corner just in time to catch the bus. As he walked down the aisle he caught sight of David Sacher, his best friend.
David and Jack had been friends since they met as five-year-olds on the first day of school. So, when it came to going to middle school they had both decided to go to the same one.3
They made a strange pair. Jack was about average height for his age with jet-black hair. The odd thing about Jack was that he was always thinking. Whether it was wondering about heroes or wanting to know how a single shoe could get abandoned in the middle of a road, Jack just wanted the world to make sense. Which was, in many ways, a bad thing to want. Because although the world made many things, sense was rarely one of them.
David was generally a lot more relaxed about such things. He didn’t particularly care if the world made sense. If David woke up one morning and found a bacon sandwich tree in his back garden, he would not wonder what could have caused such a botanical anomaly. Largely because he would have been looking for a glass-of-milk bush in order to wash his bacon sandwich down.
David was thin and all angles and points. In many ways he resembled a human erector set. It was never a good idea to wander too close to David when he was walking because you never knew when a stray elbow or knee might come popping out of his body and clatter into a soft and fleshy part of you. It wasn’t so much that David was excessively clumsy, it was just that he seemed to have been born with a few extra joints in his arms and legs. Whereas the girls in their junior school had exchanged friendship bracelets to show their devotion to each other, Jack’s friendship with David was marked with a series of accidental bruises and numbed limbs.
The top of David’s head was home to a scraggly shock of dirty-blond hair that unfortunately made him resemble a rather badly constructed scarecrow.4
“Hey,” said Jack as he sat down beside his friend.
“P.E. today,” said David.
“You remembered your kit?”
“I will never forget my kit.”
Both David and Jack shuddered at the thought of forgetting their kit. Something truly horrible happened to the children who forgot their kit. Something neither Jack nor David wanted to think about.
* * *
There was a loud screech of brakes and the bus jerked to a stop. Everyone on board rocked forward in their seats. On a normal bus this would have thrown the passengers into chaos with people shouting, screaming, and hurling abuse at each other. This, however, was a school bus, and it was already quite chaotic with a fair amount of general abuse being hurled back and forth. Therefore the sudden stop had actually stunned the bus into silence.
Of course, the silence lasted only for a second before chattering broke out again.
“So, did you watch any TV last night?” asked David.
“The bus has just suddenly ground to a halt and you want to ask me what I saw on TV last night?”
David nodded. “Yes.”
“Aren’t you the least bit curious as to what’s going on?”
David thought about this. “Not really. I mean, if it’s important, someone will let us know. Right?”
Jack sighed and looked around the bus. Paper planes were being thrown, mobile phones were pinging, and geeks were being tormented by popular kids. Jack wished he could have gone back to his conversation with David, but his natural curiosity forced him to stand up.
Jack’s mother had always said that curiosity killed the cat. Jack would then normally point out that a feeling couldn’t possibly kill a cat. Jack’s mother then normally said Jack thought too much about things, that he had to know everything and that he might very well be obsessive-compulsive. Jack thought about this, decided he needed to know what obsessive-compulsive meant, and looked it up in the dictionary. As far as he understood, an obsessive-compulsive was someone who worried about things all the time. From that moment on, Jack spent a good part of every day worrying that he might be an obsessive-compulsive.
“I can’t just sit here and not know,” said Jack. “I’m going to see why the bus stopped.”
“It might be dangerous,” said David.
“I’d rather be in danger than not know.” Jack stood up. “Are you coming with me?”
“Might as well. Danger is always the most fun.”5
At the front of the bus the driver had already opened the door and got out. A line of halted traffic blocked their progress.
“You kids had better get back on the bus,” said the driver.
“We will get back on the bus … just not yet.” Jack always obeyed adults … eventually.
Jack walked along the line of cars. He was on his tiptoes, straining his neck trying to see what was happening. He’d been expecting an accident, but when he got to the front of the queue it was something rather different. David was shocked by what he saw and started hyperventilating. He briefly fumbled in his pocket for his inhaler before he remembered that he wasn’t actually asthmatic.
There was a large bear on all fours in the center of the road. It was enormous, almost the size of a horse, and had a shaggy black coat. It roared and its open mouth looked like a cave with ivory-white stalactites for teeth. Drool fell from its maw in a most unbecoming way.6
Looking at the bear’s razor-sharp teeth, Jack suddenly became aware of how tasty his arms and legs might look. For a brief moment he had a stunning psychological insight into what it must feel like to be a Gummy Bear.7
“What is a bear doing in the middle of the city?” Jack whispered.
“That isn’t the right question to be asking,” said David. “The question you should be asking is: Can we get away without being eaten?”
“All right, don’t panic. We’ll just move toward one of the cars and they’ll let us inside. We’ll be safe.”
The bear reared up onto its hind legs and let out a roar that made the hair on the back of Jack’s neck stand up. After the roar, David and Jack heard a chorus of clicks as the doors of the surrounding cars locked.
“All right,” said Jack nervously, “now that all the cowards in the cars have locked their doors we’re going to need another plan.”
He looked around. The people in the cars had stopped looking at the bear and had started looking at the two boys. At first Jack was confused. He thought that they should have been watching a bear. Frightening as the bear was, it was an interesting and unique thing to look at.
Then he realized.
A grizzly bear was a frightening and unique thing to look at. However, an even more f
rightening and unique thing to look at was two twelve-year-olds who were just about to be eaten alive by a grizzly bear.
“I say we try and make a run for it,” said David.
“Remember that documentary we saw about bears on BBC 2?” asked Jack. “They can run at about thirty miles an hour. Do you think you can outrun him?”
David shook his head very slightly. “I wasn’t planning on outrunning him. I was just planning on outrunning you.”
“Oh,” said Jack. Then he realized what his friend meant. “Oh great, and then I get eaten.”
“If you’re lucky, he won’t eat all of you. He looks quite well fed. He might just chew on one of your arms for a while.”
“Hopefully the right one,” said Jack. “I just got this watch for my birthday and Mum would kill me if I lost it.”
“How about we both run in different directions and hope that confuses him,” David suggested. “On three.”
“Okay,” Jack agreed. He didn’t have a better plan.
David started counting. “One, two…”
Suddenly Jack noticed movement behind the bear. “Wait a minute.”
There was a man lying on the ground behind the bear. He was dressed in a black pin-striped suit and had an umbrella lying beside him. His chest was rising and falling, although only very slightly. That meant he wasn’t dead yet, but if they left him, Jack had no doubt he would be. The man had already been attacked by the bear and his clothes were torn and covered in bloodstains.
“There’s a person lying behind the bear.”
“Good,” said David. “Hopefully he’ll eat him instead of us.”
“We have to help him.”
David let out a little groan. “Jack, do you have to be a hero? You do this all the time. Remember the time you tried to defend that little kid from the gang of bullies?”
“We saved him, didn’t we?”
“Well, yes, but we ended up being thrown into the trash bins. Jack, you’re my best friend. But you aren’t a hero!”