The Messenger Bird

by Ruth Eastham

  Praise for

  WINNER

  Coventry Inspiration Book Award

  SHORTLISTED

  Waterstone’s Children’s Book Prize

  UK Literary Association Book Award

  Brilliant Book Award

  Heart of Harwick Children’s Book Award

  Sefton Super Reads Award

  Waverton Good Read Children’s Award

  NOMINATED

  CILIP Carnegie Medal

  “Exceptional”

  Lancashire Evening Post

  “Beautifully told … moving”

  tBk Magazine

  Ruth Eastham was born in Lancashire, England, and trained as a teacher in Cambridge. She has since worked in more than a dozen different schools in the UK, New Zealand, Australia and Italy. Her first novel, The Memory Cage, won the Coventry Inspiration Book Award and has been shortlisted for numerous national and regional awards. The Messenger Bird is her second novel.

  www.rutheastham.com

  www.twitter.com/RuthEastham1

  for Max, Anna and Elena

  KSYOE KUZHZ ZAUOG HBF

  “We believe the target areas will be … probably in the vicinity of London, but if further information indicates Coventry, Birmingham or elsewhere, we hope to get instructions out in time.”

  RAF to Winston Churchill & Commands,

  the morning of 14 November, 1940

  National Archives AIR 2/5238

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Dedication

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1. Plot Night

  Chapter 2. The First Clue

  Chapter 3. The Ghost in the Well

  Chapter 4. An Open Book

  Chapter 5. The Breadcrumbs Trail

  Chapter 6. Mr Edwards

  Chapter 7. Intruders

  Chapter 8. Lily Kenley

  Chapter 9. Bletchley Park

  Chapter 10. Lion Eagle

  Chapter 11. The Old Griffins

  Chapter 12. Moonlight Sonata

  Chapter 13. Making a Wish

  Chapter 14. Friends

  Chapter 15. Action This Day

  Chapter 16. Miles to Go Before I Sleep

  Chapter 17. A Gilded Ceiling

  Chapter 18. Star Gazing

  Chapter 19. The Secret Room

  Chapter 20. Cracking the Enigma Code

  Chapter 21. Traitor

  Chapter 22. Nothing But the Truth

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  1

  Plot Night

  I didn’t notice the men at first.

  Dad was late so Mum had got the bonfire going and the flames had already set fire to the guy’s ripped jeans and the wisps of straw sticking out from its charity-shop jumper. It sat on a perch of piled-up wood with its grinning plastic mask, Dad’s old tie dangling round its neck like a noose.

  The smells of smoke and sausages and singed baked potatoes wafted about in the cold air, making my mouth water. Mum and my big sister, Hannah, stood behind a table at the other end of our huge garden, dishing up hot chocolate and cake to practically the whole village. I picked the people out in the bonfire light while I munched toffee from a paper bag – a group who worked at the hospital where Mum’s a nurse; a few of Hannah’s sixth-form college friends off her journalism course; my best mates, Sasha and Josh, grabbing food. I smiled to myself as Josh’s paper plate collapsed, sending him sprawling to catch rolling cakes, and Sasha bending forward with the giggles.

  That’s when I saw the two men. I wondered who they were, standing side by side in long, dark coats, hats pulled low, covering their faces.

  “Welcome, everyone, to our new home!” Mum called over the crackling fire.

  “Bit of a cold night for a housewarming, isn’t it?” someone shouted, and everyone laughed. Everyone except those two blokes, the miserable things.

  I pulled my scarf tighter. Everything was always late in our family. It had taken us months to get around to having a housewarming party for big old Foxglove Cottage, which we’d inherited off Great-Auntie Hilda, together with her dog and all her Second World War junk. Then Dad’d had the idea to combine the housewarming with a Bonfire Night party, which he said was symbolic. Hannah had said yes, it was symbolic of being a cheapskate, but why worry if Remember, remember, the tenth of November didn’t have quite the same ring to it, and while we were at it why not celebrate Nathan’s birthday as well since it was only three days away. But Dad had given me a wink and said there’d be something extra special all of its own for my birthday, because it’s not every day that you turn thirteen.

  Where was Dad? I stared round the garden. Mum had roped Sasha’s dad into doing the fireworks, and he was getting ready to set them off, which didn’t really go with his posh accountant’s coat. I didn’t want them to start yet. Dad and I always watched the fireworks together.

  A cheer went up as flames burst over the guy.

  “Here, Nat.”

  Dad was back at last! He handed me a lit sparkler, his warm hand over mine. Stars splashed from the sparkler’s tip like a magic wand. He had one too and I felt my mouth crack open in a grin and together we wrote our names fast in the air: NATHAN – LEON. LEON – NATHAN. Then round and round we went in a faster and faster, brighter and brighter, fizzing, spinning eye that was still there when I blinked.

  I laughed and looked up into Dad’s face and he smiled at me, but I saw he was out of breath, and there were dark circles under his eyes. He’d been at work a lot recently. Back late from his commute to London. Too many deadlines. I squeezed his arm and chewed more toffee, the chunks bunging up my mouth like sweet cement. A rocket whizzed up. It sprayed coloured light against the nearly full moon with a gunshot thud. Glowing straw floated through the air as the guy’s mask sizzled and melted away.

  I glanced across at the two men. They seemed to be staring in our direction. Dad was looking at them too, the sparkler a spitting stump in his hand, and his face had gone all serious and I felt my heartbeat speed up. I looked at the men more closely, at their coats and their hats and the gloved hands curled in fists at their sides. There was something weird about the way they were standing there, not moving. Just watching. Watching us?

  “Dad,” I managed. “Who are those…”

  “I thought I had more time,” Dad muttered to himself, cutting me off. He stood with his back to the bonfire so he glowed all around the edges. He came close to my ear. “Nat, I’ve got to tell you something. Something important.”

  I smirked. “Taping our conversation, are you, Dad?” I chomped, my mouth still full of the toffee, because that’s what Dad did, on his flash new touch-screen phone. Taped all his conversations, like he was 007 or someone. He might have a desk job at the Ministry of Defence, but if you asked me he took the Special Services stuff a bit too far.

  “This isn’t a game, Nat.” I stopped smiling. Dad’s face had gone an ashy colour, like he was ill. “I’ve run out of time.”

  The men were moving towards us now, through the clumps of people, and Dad was tracking them out of the corner of his eye, but he didn’t turn his head and he was speaking very low and very fast. “You’ve got to follow Lily’s trail, Nat. Without evidence we’ve got nothing.” His eyes glistened in the light from the bonfire. “Follow Lily’s trail. She lived in this house.” He had hold of my arm. “Promise me, Nat. Please. You won’t have long. I’m sorry to put you through this. I should have told you things before…” I felt his fingernails digging into me. “I found something out. It has to be our secret. Promise me.”

  But I couldn’t say anything back because my jaw was stuck together with the toffee, so I just nodded like an idiot.

  “Don’t tell anyone ei
ther, Nat, I need you to promise that as well. Not even your mum or Hannah. The more people who know, the more dangerous it is. You can’t trust anyone else either, you hear me? Don’t trust anyone.”

  I breathed fast in the bitter air. “OK,” I spluttered. “But what’s going on?”

  “I’m innocent, Nat. Remember that.”

  Somewhere nearby a little kid was crying. The frosty grass made shadows like teeth in the moonlight. The men were close now; too close to say more.

  “And you’d better do your history homework, Nathan!” Dad let out a loud bellow of a laugh, but his eyes were boring into me. “Don’t ruddy try and hide it like you did the last time!”

  He shot me a look and I stared at him, forcing down the stupid toffee. Dad never calls me Nathan. And he never swears at me. Never.

  But I didn’t get a chance to say anything back because then the men were between me and Dad, talking to him, but I couldn’t hear over the firework bangs. One had hold of Dad’s arm. I tried to get closer, but they pressed me away. Both of them had hold of Dad now and I pushed forward to get to him but he shook his head at me. He let them lead him off as if he accepted it. I followed, stumbling on half-eaten toffee apples and plastic cups dropped in the mud. Nobody seemed to be noticing anything, only the exploding fireworks, and I wanted to shout for help, shout for Mum, but all I could do was try and keep up with Dad and the two men.

  People gasped and as I glanced back I saw the bonfire rise up and the guy collapse into the flames. I got round to the front of the house, out of sight of the party, and the men pushed Dad into a waiting car as the engine revved.

  For a tiny second our eyes met and I saw the secret message there. Remember, Dad was saying. Remember what I said.

  There were sounds of laughing and clapping from the garden. The door slammed and it had tinted glass so I couldn’t see in, and the car lurched off fast down the lane, sending beams into the sky like searchlights, and my throat was all squeezed tight with panic like I was going to choke.

  And Dad was gone.

  2

  The First Clue

  I watched the moonlight creep over the frosty garden towards our house. 23:50, my alarm clock said, nearly midnight, but there was no way I could sleep and I hadn’t even bothered getting ready for bed when Mum left. When would she be back from the police headquarters? She’d been away hours. Hannah was left in charge, but she’d gone off to her room with hardly a word. I’d just been sitting in the dark, waiting. Sitting, waiting. Why didn’t Mum ring?

  I’d tried phoning her mobile, but it was always engaged. I’d even dialled Dad’s number just to see, but all I got was a continuous, dead tone and I guessed they’d made him switch it off.

  I rested my elbows on the window ledge and looked out at the mess of plastic cups and firework casings over the silvery lawn, and the circle of ash where the bonfire had been. Beyond was the old well with its broken roof, and the tool shed. At the edge of the woods was a dark, humped shape, the crumbling air-raid shelter Auntie Hilda had wanted Dad to fix. Over the trees, stars glinted like bits of broken glass. I could hear Hannah’s muffled voice in her bedroom through the wall, probably on her mobile to her boyfriend, Gavin.

  Fireworks sounded in the distance. My insides shrank. I saw Dad being pushed into that car with tinted windows. The image was like a piece of a film I didn’t want to watch, but it just kept rewinding and replaying, over and over. Why had they taken him? What did they think he’d done?

  Was it something to do with his work at the Ministry of Defence? A team of government officials came to search the house as soon as Mum managed to break the party up. Didn’t waste any time. Special Services people in dark clothes and dark gloves. A couple of them had the “MoD” emblem on their coats – the crown and the anchor and the eagle with its wings spread. They were all over, looking in every room, every drawer, every cupboard, ignoring every single one of Mum’s questions. I’d watched them take Dad’s computer and all the paperwork from his study. They’d reminded me of army ants I’d seen on a telly programme once, swarming over the ground and stripping a carcass. I couldn’t believe how fast they were. In less than an hour, they’d checked everywhere, taken what they wanted, and put everything else back just as it had been.

  Hannah had gone quiet. A stair creaked. Old pipes hissed in the walls. Then the cold, musty house was still again as if it were waiting too.

  Didn’t the government people realize Dad was one of them? It was all some huge blunder, had to be.

  Shivering, I got under the duvet and stared at the cobwebs and the model warplanes dangling from the ceiling. This had been Dad’s room when he was a kid and stayed with his Auntie Hilda. Apparently he’d stayed with her a lot. Dad joked he’d seen more of Hilda than his own parents. He was the kid she’d never had.

  I liked seeing Dad’s old stuff all mixed up with mine. One Hundred Riddles and Puzzles, Bumper Quiz Book, Code-Cracking for Fun, our big Bletchley Park book, and the Mysteries of the Universe he’d given me last Christmas and I’d read until the cover dropped off. Hilda had insisted on Dad having his own room and had kept it like a shrine.

  Not that I’d known Auntie Hilda much. She’d been in a home for as long as I could remember, Bones the dog always on her lap, a frail old lady who kept asking Dad who he was and if it was teatime yet, until Dad got too sad about the whole thing to take us to visit her any more.

  You’ve got to follow Lily’s trail.

  I heard Dad’s words in my head, remembered the way he’d gripped my arm. But who was Lily?

  There was a scratching at my door, and the hinges creaked. I felt a dead weight land on my chest and there was old Bones, snuffling around me with weak little barks. I stroked the ragged patches of fur on his head and he looked at me with his sad, droopy eyes and gave a whining yawn.

  My mind flicked over what else Dad had said. Calling me Nathan when he only ever calls me Nat. Swearing at me like that. Don’t ruddy try and hide it like you did the last time. The way he’d said it, it didn’t sound normal. More like he was trying to tell me something, something he didn’t want those men to understand, only me.

  I remembered Dad’s voice, all urgent. You won’t have long, he’d said, and I had the worrying feeling that I was running out of time, but with no idea what I was supposed to be doing. I guess I felt useless. I guess I wanted to do something, anything, except sit and wait and worry about when Mum would be back and if Dad would be with her, or if the phone would ring any second with news.

  So I thought about what Dad had said about homework, but when had I ever hidden homework? I racked my brain and then my heart thumped as a memory came back to me.

  It had been a few years ago. We were at Auntie Hilda’s house one evening doing one of our monthly visits, to check the house hadn’t been broken into and to collect the junk mail from the doormat, that kind of thing. It hadn’t been history homework, though, I remembered – that was it, it was some poem or other I had to do for English. “Stopping By the Chippie on a Snowy Evening”, inspired by Robert Frost. I was in a mood and thought my poem was rubbish and I’d wanted to get rid of it and so I’d shoved it…

  I scrambled out of bed and snapped on the light. Squinting in the glare, I went over to the writing desk in the corner and started to run my fingers over its wooden front with its carvings of oak trees and flying birds. I was looking for the secret drawer Dad had shown me once. Somewhere there was a fake front and if I could just find the catch… There! A wooden panel swung downwards to reveal a small brass handle and I pulled on it in such a hurry that the drawer came right out in my hand. But the drawer was empty. Just like I’d left it when I’d finally retrieved my dire homework poem. What was I expecting to find, anyway?

  Annoyed with myself, I tried to get the drawer back in, but it wouldn’t go smoothly. I tried to force it closed a few times, then peered inside the narrow space to work out what the problem was, but it was too shadowy to see. I rolled up my sleeves and reached my hand ri
ght in, my fingers getting wedged between the cold wooden surfaces, and as I waggled them free, that’s when I felt something. My fingertips touched a papery corner that crackled through me like electricity. I eased the edge of whatever it was towards me, worried it would rip. When it had come so far, I got a better grip and slowly slid it out.

  I sat on the edge of my bed and looked at the battered brown envelope on my lap. It had something written across the front in looping black ink:

  To the Occupiers of Foxglove Cottage.

  There was no stamp on it or anything. I peeled the flap open and slid out a single piece of paper going yellow with age, with more spidery handwriting scrawled across it.

  I stared at the paper, breathing hard. Lily again. Lily Kenley. Who was she? Her message, it was more than seventy years old. How could it have anything whatsoever to do with Dad? Follow Lily’s trail, he’d said. I still hadn’t got a clue what he was getting at, but was this the start of it, the trail? I sat there, all confused. Excited.

  The date was from during the Second World War. Auntie Hilda liked to collect old stuff from back then – there were piles of nineteen forties things all over the house. Maybe this message had belonged to her. Look up and through the eye… That sounded like a riddle.

  Think literally and laterally. That’s what Dad always said to me when we were doing puzzles together. The envelope was addressed to the people in Foxglove Cottage, this house. Look up? I looked up at the ceiling, but all I could see were Dad’s model warplanes and the dark blue light shade. Up, up, up… The most “up” room – that would be the messy attic library, right at the top of the house. Another dumping place for Auntie Hilda’s things, and always out of bounds to Hannah and me, though we’d sneaked a look in there a few times. Dad had joked you risked your life just by going through the door: death by falling hatboxes. Mum had said to keep out until she’d had a chance to tidy up. Could going up to the attic library have been what Lily meant?

  I refolded the message and put it in my pocket. Not really sure what I was doing, I went out on to the landing, Bones limping after me. I went past the bathroom and Hannah’s shut door. The wooden floor was cold through my socks and a clock’s ticking echoed eerily up the stairs. I glanced out at the dark drive as I passed the window, but there was no sign of our car. Still not back, but I tried not to think about that. I went to the end of the landing, past the bedroom where Mum and Dad should have been sleeping, to the spiral staircase that led higher up the house, and I started to climb the steep, curving steps. Each one made low screeches under my feet and I was worried I’d wake up Hannah and she’d want to know what I was doing and I wouldn’t really know what to tell her. All I knew was that Dad had told me not to say anything to her or Mum… But the house stayed silent and I carried on climbing, Bones’s claws scratching as he lumbered up after me. I got to the top of the stairs and followed the long, narrow corridor to the attic library.