The Plotting Shed (Sam Trowel: Special Patrol Youth Book 1)

by Tim Flanagan

  A hunched old lady slowly shuffled across the road, taking advantage of the red light and my patiently waiting pedal bike. She turned and smiled at me from beneath a red knitted hat as if apologizing for the speed she was going. I returned a reassuring smile and watched as the plastic carrier bag she was carrying slipped from her fingers and fell to the road. A couple of apples and a tin of soup rolled out of the bag. I automatically climbed off my bike and reached down to pick them up.

  ‘Oh, thank you,’ she said, poking at an orange with the end of her walking stick. Other people came over to help as well.

  ‘There you go,’ I said, putting them back into the bag and handing it to her.

  She looked up at me. There was something familiar about her. I was sure I’d seen her before. I realised that she looked like the woman from the knitting stall in the market that Arthur had passed some fake notes to the previous day. I looked around me. All the other people who had come to her aid were the elderly people I had seen on the street. But they weren’t helping to pick up the groceries. They each carried a weapon in their hands—sticks, thick books, candlesticks, and curled plastic cords that swung massive bunches of keys round in circles. This was a carefully organised sting. I had been set up by Arthur’s criminal gang.

  I had realised too late that small-town populations often noticed anyone that was new. When everyone goes through their day following the same routine, like Arthur, small alterations—little differences or new faces—quickly get noticed. Arthur had known I’d been watching him.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said reassuringly. ‘I’m not here to cause trouble.’

  ‘Oh, that’s a shame,’ replied one of the elderly mob. ‘We are.’

  I wasn’t sure what to do next, but luckily, I didn’t have long to think before I caught a glimpse of the knitting lady’s arm swinging through the air, followed by a piercing pain at the back of my neck. I fell to the road, hidden amongst the bandy legs of pensioners, with no hope of anyone coming to my aid.

  Then I blacked out.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Escape

  I must have been out for quite some time. When I woke, I found my hands tied behind me, and I was lying on a cold, rough floor, my cheek damp from a sticky pool of saliva that had dribbled from the side of my mouth. I could see several wooden beams rising from the floor to join a delicate network of struts that supported a sloping ceiling. Farther along the ceiling was a window that let in some light, but not daylight. The glow from the moon cast everything in a ghostly grey colour, as if I were looking at an old black-and-white photograph. Unless I was mistaken, I was lying inside the attic of a building, the roof above me, whilst from somewhere farther below, I could hear the muffled murmur of voices.

  I tried to wriggle my hands free of my bonds, but they weren’t going anywhere. I remembered seeing something in a film once where someone had been kidnapped with their hands behind their back. They had managed to escape by feeding their body through the loop between their shoulders and hands until they had rearranged themselves and their hands were in front of them, making it easier to balance and remove their bonds.

  I decided to give it a go.

  The first thing I would need to do would be to get my bound hands underneath me then thread them along the underneath of my thighs. It sounded simple, but I hadn’t got far before my hands became stuck, tangled amongst the folds of my coat. It might not seem possible, but I’d actually made my situation slightly worse. No longer was I being held captive in a loft space, I was now held captive with tied hands trapped beneath me, preventing me from sitting up, and my shoulders were beginning to ache. After much twisting, I managed to wriggle my hands from under my bottom and back to the position they had started in.

  After allowing myself a few minutes to catch my breath, I pushed my face against the chipboard floor and used it as a lever to raise myself up from lying on my back to sitting on my knees. I could get a better idea of my surroundings. The attic was completely boarded by rough chipboard sections, slotted together like a jigsaw puzzle, broken only by the thick vertical beams that propped up the ceiling. The limited light didn’t penetrate all the way into the corners, but I could see numerous cardboard boxes, dusty black sacks, and a fully decorated Christmas tree covered by a large transparent sheet. Farther along the floor of the loft was a break in the floor filled by a square plastic loft hatch, which seemed like the way out. If I was going to escape, I needed to find a way of untying my bonds—otherwise, I might break my neck falling through the hatch.

  By leaning my shoulder against one of the vertical beams, I managed to manoeuvre myself into a position where I could stand up. Thankfully, my feet weren’t tied together. I moved around, trying to be quiet and not alert my captors, although if it was the gang of grannies who’d abducted me, it was probably safe to say their defective hearing wouldn’t notice the odd scuffle or creak. Although, I had underestimated the Longsocks Syndicate already, much to my cost and my current situation, so I couldn’t be too presumptuous.

  Being careful to avoid bumping my head on the exposed wood or disturbing a spider’s carefully created web, I squinted into the darkness. There had to be something in here that I could use to break my bonds. At the first box, I turned myself round so that, although I was facing in the opposite direction and couldn’t see what I was doing, my hands were up against the cardboard box. By scratching with my fingernails at the sticky brown parcel tape that held down the lid, I managed to work it loose. With a loud tearing sound, it came away far enough to allow me to knock back the flaps with one of my feet so that I could see what was inside. I nudged the box along the floor with the toe of my shoe until it was in the moonlight and I could see the contents more clearly.

  I leaned down, trying to avoid casting a shadow into the box, and peered at the contents. In the limited light, I was sure the box contained numerous balls of wool. Slipped in along the side of the box were several loose sheets of paper with old-fashioned images of women looking abnormally happy to be wearing their knitted garments, or men sporting knitted swimming trunks, or even a trendy pair of slippers. A shudder trembled through my body, and it had nothing to do with the lower temperature inside the loft.

  I had an idea.

  Where there were balls of wool, there should also be some dreaded knitting needles, the creators of the incessant clickety-clack, clickety-clack—it might be worse than Chinese water torture, but they could be useful to unpick my bonds with.

  I nudged the box once again, but this time at the top, attempting to knock it over and spill the contents across the floor—not as easy as it might sound when you can’t move your arms to keep your balance. Eventually, the balls of wool bounced across the rough loft floor, and something hard clattered out of the box.

  I was right. Well, almost right.

  There weren’t any knitting needles, but there were some buttons that presumably matched with the colour of wool and the specific patterns inside the box. But I spotted something else, something far more important than colour coordinating your knitted swimming trunks with your slippers. The buttons were threaded onto a huge safety pin.

  I sat down on the floor once again with my back to the buttons so that my hands were hovering above them. With difficulty, I leaned back, picked up the safety pin, and began fumbling blindly with my fingertips, trying to find the clasp that would release the buttons but also expose a sharp point that I could use to aid my escape. Working without seeing what I was doing was difficult, but my hard work was rewarded by the sound of buttons scattering across the wooden boarding, leaving just the cold metal safety pin. Now I had to try and manoeuvre the end of the pin towards the tape that stretched between my wrists. After stabbing myself repeatedly in the hand, I finally managed to rip enough of the tape to be able to tear my wrists apart and bring my arms back in front of my body, where they should have been. Using the safety pin again, I now began removing the parcel tape that was bound round each wrist, but my s
truggling had made it fold and twist in on itself, making it stronger than ever. Encouraged by my progress, I quickly managed to remove the parcel tape from my wrists, and I was free. Well, I was still trapped in the loft by a street gang of pensioners, but at least my hands were free.

  I moved over to the window in the roof to see if I could use it to escape, but it was fixed into the roof and couldn’t be opened. The only way out was down through the loft hatch, and I had no doubt that Arthur Longsocks’s cronies would be waiting beneath. I needed a weapon, something that I could use to defend myself against the pensioners’ sticks. This time, the safety pin was not going to be good enough.

  I scratched at the tape that secured the next box I found, but it contained much the same as the first, balls of garishly coloured wool together with an assortment of patterns for saggy berets, knee-length socks, or tea cosies in amusing building shapes. This was clearly the loft of a slightly unhinged old woman.

  I decided to make the job a little easier for myself by testing the weight of the other boxes. Those that contained wool, patterns, and buttons were all relatively light, so I automatically moved on to the next box until I found one that had more weight to it, indicating that there was more inside than the rejected contents from a bankrupt haberdashery store and its colour-blind owner.

  I uncovered an old wicker picnic hamper. Undoing the leather straps, I opened it up. Inside the lid, held securely in place by more leather straps, was a small stash of plates and white cups, all decorated with dainty pink flowers. Inside the main body of the hamper, I found the cutlery.

  Bingo! I thought to myself. BINGO!? I’d been inside an old person’s house for too long, and it was starting to affect me. If I didn’t manage to get out of there soon, I could see myself talking about the good old days, looking to take out a subscription to Your Dentures Weekly, spending two hours trying to program the DVD player, or starting to think that slippers were a great idea.

  Time was running out. I furiously shuffled through the cutlery but found it was all plastic, without any sharp edges. No doubt this wasn’t a problem if you lived off soft food, but they were no good as weapons. But then I noticed something else inside the picnic hamper—rolling around was the one vital accompaniment that every British person needed to enjoy eating their picnic in the glorious summer weather—an umbrella. Folded neatly in a thin black material cover was a retractable umbrella. If I needed to, I wouldn’t hold back. I might even open it indoors, and you know how unlucky that is!? Aaarrgh! STOP IT! I could almost feel the grey hairs pushing through my scalp. There was no time to lose.

  I stood over the loft hatch, grabbed the edge, and carefully lifted it towards me. A crack of light burst into the darkness. While I waited for my eyes to adjust to the change in light, I listened to the murmur of voices that came from inside the house. There didn’t seem to be any alarm. If I was lucky, their hearing aids might not pick up the sound of me moving around above the noise from the television.

  I raised the loft hatch farther—wide enough so I could stick my head down. Below the hatch, I could see a carpeted corridor with doors on each side and a steep narrow staircase with an electric stair lift waiting patiently at the top. From one of the rooms came the sound of a television as well as the shouts from two occupants who were desperately trying to answer the questions the TV quiz host was asking. I didn’t want to risk sliding a ladder down for fear of it making too much noise. The best way would be to ease myself over the edge of the hatch until I was hanging above the carpet then gently drop the rest of the distance to land gracefully on my feet without making a sound.

  Or at least that was the plan.

  Executing it wasn’t going to be quite as easy for the simple fact that I didn’t particularly like heights. Maybe, if I looked in the boxes once again, I might be able to find some knitted cushions to make my landing softer, or maybe I could fashion a rope out of the wool and use it to climb down. No, there was nothing else to do but lower myself down. I put the umbrella between my teeth, slid the loft hatch farther back, eased my legs through the gap, and took my weight in my arms. It was difficult to tell exactly how far I would have to fall before my feet touched the ground, so I closed my eyes, bent my elbows, and lowered myself even farther. I could feel the tension in my arms. The muscles began to shake, and sweat began to bead on my brow. My heart was beating so loudly, I could hear it in my ears, drowning out the sound of the nearby television. I took the strain in my fingertips, dropping down another few inches. The farther I could stretch myself, the shorter the distance I would have to fall. I kept my eyes closed, knowing that if I were to open them and look down, I would begin to feel queasy.

  ‘What’s ’e doing?’ said a nearby voice.

  ‘Dunno,’ replied another. ‘Exercise, I suppose. You know what these kids are like these days, exercising all the time. Not good for you, if you ask me.’

  I stopped breathing and listened. The voices were clearer than if they had come from the room where the television had been on. I opened my eyes a crack and stared at the face of the knitting lady as well as another whose lipstick had missed her lips completely and formed a ring around her mouth instead.

  I looked down. I couldn’t stop myself. Luckily, I noticed I was only an inch or two away from the carpet. I quickly let go of the loft-hatch edge, dropped down, grabbed the umbrella from my mouth, and released the catch.

  As the umbrella sprang open, globules of saliva from where I had held it in my mouth flew out and showered the two old ladies, hanging from their hairnets like silver drops of morning dew from a cobweb.

  ‘Oh, I am sorry,’ I began to apologise, but then I remembered where I was. ‘Stay where you are,’ I warned, thrusting the umbrella at them.

  ‘Seven years’ bad luck!’ shouted Lipstick Lady.

  ‘I thought that was if you walked under a ladder?’ replied Knitting Lady.

  The expanded fabric of the umbrella created a barrier between the old ladies and me. On my side of the umbrella were the staircase and my route out of there. Retreating backwards, carefully keeping my eyes on the sinister knitting crones, I edged myself towards the top of the stairs. With my free hand, I grasped the seat of the electric stair lift to raise it out of the way so I could walk down the stairs and escape. But it wouldn’t move.

  ‘There’s a knack to it,’ the freaky-lipstick woman said. ‘You have to wiggle it a bit as you lift. It’s a bit temperamental.’

  ‘I told you we should have bought a new one. It’s never going to work properly if it’s second-hand,’ argued the knitting lady.

  ‘Will you ever stop reminding me of that?’

  I reluctantly did what she suggested but kept my eyes firmly on the ladies, cautious that they might be trying to distract me. The stair-lift seat refused to move. I took a quick glance down the staircase. I couldn’t safely leap over the seat—the steps on the other side were too steep. If I fell, I would certainly find myself tied up and buried amongst the knitting patterns.

  Hoping that the seat was clean and non-absorbent, I reluctantly sat on it, fumbled with the switches in the armrest, and pressed a large green down arrow. I kept the umbrella open as the stair lift hummed gently to life and slowly began to move down the staircase. I couldn’t afford to let my guard down and receive another whack on the head from a walking stick. To my relief, the two old ladies remained standing at the top of the staircase and didn’t make any attempt to follow.

  The stair lift continued to descend to the bottom of the staircase in a steady, continuous manner. As getaways went, this was not the speediest of exits, but it was probably the most safety conscious.

  As the motor clicked to a stop at the bottom step, I checked once again that the two old ladies had not pursued me.

  ‘Could you send it back up for us, please?’ Lipstick asked. ‘The wall controller only works from that end.’

  ‘Faulty second-hand goods,’ muttered the knitting lady under her breath.

&nb
sp; Lipstick threw her a glance.

  Neither of them wanted to chance the stairs without the stair lift, and even though I had been ambushed by a gang of pensioners, hit round the head with a walking stick, and held captive in the loft of a house, I couldn’t leave them stranded with no means of getting downstairs.

  I retracted the umbrella and held my finger on the up arrow on the wall controller. Obediently, the stair lift moved slowly back up the staircase.

  As soon as it reached the top, I turned around and ran down a narrow hall towards the front door. Behind me, I heard the hum of the engine as the stair lift began to make its way down once again. The old ladies weren’t giving up easily and were in hot pursuit.

  Luckily, the key to the front door hung by a piece of string from a small hook screwed into the doorframe. I grabbed it, pushed it into the keyhole, and pulled the door open. Behind me, the stair lift had reached the bottom step. Lipstick Lady edged off the seat and reached over to a narrow table that had a telephone on top. She pulled open a drawer beneath the desk, reached in, and pulled out a gun. My eyes stared back in horror.

  ‘Stay where you are, or I’ll shoot,’ warned Lipstick.

  I was already halfway out the door, and I wasn’t going to hang around for a moment longer than I needed to.

  ‘Send the chair back up for me,’ shouted the knitting lady from the top of the stairs. ‘I want to show him the end of my stick.’

  I leapt so fast down the garden path that I thought I would fall over, keeping my head down to avoid any shots that might be aimed in my direction, and ran away from the house. Behind me, nothing seemed to happen—no sounds, no shots, no wounds, and no pursuit.

  I glanced around me, but there was no one else around. The house the old ladies lived in seemed to be part of a small community of elderly housing that was still in the process of being built. I swung past a large advertising sign that promoted independent living and warden-assisted help, but I had no time to stop and read the small print.