The Turnarounders and the Arbuckle Rescue Page 3
The issue with his own mother tongue was not, however, Ralf’s only problem. There was also the constant feeling of having done stuff before. He’d open a book or look at a picture and an odd feeling of familiarity would fling itself up at him. In January, he went to central London on a school trip, a place he’d never been before in his life, but there were big sections of the city he recognised. Not the kind of recognition you get from pictures or having seen places on TV but the full blown knowledge of having walked down a road before. He knew where there were alleyways and side streets and was even able to direct his teacher out of The Tower of London when she got lost.
Then there were the people – the people on the street that he recognised, smiled at, then embarrassingly realised he didn’t know. There was one excruciating moment on the High Street when he caught sight of a barrel-bellied man with a black moustache looking in an antique shop window.
Filled with an unexpected feeling of intense joy, Ralf dashed over.
‘It’s me, sir!’
The man turned to face him, eyes twinkling.
‘Yes?’ The man’s face lacked recognition of any kind. He didn’t know Ralf. But what was worse, Ralf suddenly realised, he didn’t know the man either. He mumbled an apology and then pink with embarrassment, stumbled away. No one saw. He was thankful for that, at least. But he was doing such things more and more often and it was scaring him.
The nightmares scared him too. They came every night and every night they were the same. He told no one about them for the same reason he didn’t discuss the ‘Knowing’, the problems he had speaking or the voice he heard talking to Gloria. Who would he tell?
Because he was permanently exhausted and couldn’t trust his own mouth to do what he wanted it to, Ralf spent as much time as possible away from other people. He bought a cheap calendar and, every morning, crossed the day off in thick pen. He drew a big red box around his birthday at the start of July and on the calendar and in his head, began a sort of count down. He was waiting for something. He did not know what he was waiting for and he was not one hundred per cent sure it would happen the day he turned twelve, but he had a classic case of impending doom.
All of this was ominous and unnerving but it was nothing compared to what happened next. February half-term brought snow, ice and an episode of ‘Knowing’ that chilled Ralf to the bone.
He was reading at home one night when he got a familiar prickle on the back of his neck. The image of a local restaurant, ‘Pizza Piazza’, popped into his head, along with the smell of burning and he knew he’d never get there on time. He sprinted to a phone box and called in an anonymous warning. He was still wondering whether they’d believed him or not as he ran towards the High Street. Then he heard the explosion. There were thirty-two people in the restaurant that night but Ralf knew that five of them would have died if he’d done nothing.
The thought squirmed in his stomach as he watched them milling about in the road, the lights from the police cars making their faces a ghostly blue. Who would it have been, the man with the jolly face and little steam trains on his tie? Or the family talking to the policewoman, their faces grim with shock? Or the little girl still clutching her free pencils and colouring sheet?
Bile rose into Ralf’s throat and he turned away, catching a glimpse of a dark, man-shaped shadow beneath an old oak on the corner. He stared. No one else appeared to have seen but there was definitely someone there. Someone tall. Someone cloaked. Their face concealed under a voluminous hood. Electricity crawled across Ralf’s neck. Who was that? What were they doing there? He stepped out to take a closer look but by the time he’d crossed the street, The Hooded Man was gone.
That night Ralf’s nightmares were worse. He woke sweating. His heart seemed to pound in his ears and his breath was unnaturally loud in the silent room. He lay on his back, crippled with fear; his eyes wide open, straining to see something in the thick, suffocating darkness.
He thought of the time when, as a small boy, he had wakened his mother with screams, convinced there was an ogre in the room, only to discover when the light went on that it was his own dressing gown, hanging on the back of the bedroom door.
His mother could not help him now, though. With supreme effort he forced himself to move, to break out of the spell that held him but, for reasons he would not have been able to explain, he made this move seem relaxed and natural, as if done in sleep. He turned on his side with an exaggerated sigh for the benefit of the audience he knew was not there. His arm protruded over the side of the bed slightly, suspended over nothingness. He drew it in to stop the shadows grabbing it.
It took him a long time to go back to sleep.
As the months passed, his premonitions grew. There was the storm in March that he knew about the week before it hit; the embarrassing day in April when he’d thrown a woman’s dessert on a café floor because he was certain eating it would have killed her. How had he known she had a nut allergy? He didn’t know the answer to this question. And, in May, he didn’t know what made him so sure the boy at The Ponds would have drowned if he’d gone swimming. Pinning the poor kid to the floor had been extreme, but Ralf knew it had saved his life.
By June, Ralf was beginning to jump at shadows. Everything around him held the possibility of accident or disaster and his eyes constantly scanned crowds looking for signs of danger. Ralf’s frame of mind, gloomy at the best of times, wasn’t improved by the constant bombardment he was suffering at school from the snooty boy he’d met on the first day
The boy’s name was Julian Kingston-Hawke and as well as being clever, sporty and popular, he headed a particularly nasty gang, which included a gargantuan, mindless hulk of a boy called George Tatchell. Along with their friends, they took great delight in tormenting anyone they perceived as vulnerable and it rapidly became clear that Ralf was top of their target list. For weeks, Ralf bore their taunts in silence but on the day before his birthday at the start of July, things got physical.
It was half past three and there was the usual crush on the main school stairs as everyone tried to get out as quickly as possible. Ralf was about half way down when he heard a snide voice behind him.
‘Saw your Aunt this morning, Osborne,’ said Julian. ‘She was on the heath – talking to a tree!’ There was laughter and a smattering of applause. ‘Honestly Osborne, it’s tragic. You should put her out of her misery.’ Julian sniggered. ‘If she was in my family, I’d put poison in her tea.’
Ralf knew he should ignore it, but he couldn’t help himself. He didn’t turn but raised his voice just loud enough to carry.
‘Julian, if she was in your family, she’d drink it!’
There were cheers and catcalls but Ralf didn’t have an opportunity to savour them. A sharp thump on his rucksack made him lurch forward, grabbing at nothingness. His head cracked sharply on the banisters and he tumbled down the stairs.
By the time he got home from school, the side of his face was swollen and he had a raging headache but from the look of horror on Gloria’s face you would have thought Ralf had, at the very least, cut off his own ear.
‘What have you done?’ she cried, wrenching at her hair and making it stand out in surprised orange tufts. Gnarled fingers clawed each side of his face and she stared into his eyes. Abruptly, her mood changed.
‘I thought, for a moment…your eye.’ She sighed dramatically but then seemed to get hold of herself, pushing Ralf aside so she could spoon jam into a mixing bowl. Head throbbing, Ralf watched as she dropped the spoon with a clatter and marched back into the pantry.
‘And that’s the last we’ll say on the matter!’ she called from the darkness, before emerging with a tin of sardines, opening them and tipping them into the bowl. ‘Hungry?’
Ralf glanced at the bowl, which she was mixing ferociously. ‘I’m fine, thanks,’ he said softly, then left her to it.
On the morning of his twelfth birthday, Ralf woke with a start. Grumbling to himself, he dressed and made a quick check of his at
tic. All was as he’d left it – a bit tatty and lopsided, but no major damage. The roof hadn’t blown off in the night and a falling meteor had not flattened him. But, he thought gloomily, there was still plenty of time for either of these things to happen.
He stomped over to the calendar with the day’s date marked off so heavily in red and stared at it critically. What was special about today? Nothing. Twelve years old? Who cared? With his thickest, blackest pen Ralf scribbled off the previous day then shook his head. He really must get a grip. Just then, Gloria launched into her morning ‘voice exercise’ routine. Her screeching echoed through the walls. Ralf winced. Everything was normal.
He didn’t know it then, but the rest of the day would be far from normal. The ‘Something’ that he had been waiting for had, in fact, already happened.
A minute later Ralf scrambled through the trapdoor, down the ladder and on to the upstairs landing. Gloria was in the bathroom – the room had a lovely echo – and he could see her clearly through the open door. Arms outstretched and shouting, she was transfixed by her own reflection in the mirror. The fact that she sounded like a distressed cat trapped in a large saucepan did not seem to bother her.
‘Morning,’ said Ralf, half-heartedly.
‘Still here then?’ Gloria patted him on the arm. ‘Never mind, boy.’ Then she forgot him. ‘Me, me, me, meeee! Ai, ai, ai ai!’
He went down stairs and then out of the front door to collect the milk. A plane droned overhead. He squinted skywards and his heart bubbled in his chest as a lone Spitfire cut across the sky and sliced into a bank of clouds in the distance. He’d read about old fighter planes, of course, but had only ever seen them in displays and flies by on the Queen’s birthday. Strange that one should be heading across London alone at this time in the morning.
In fact, it was more than strange. There were no aircraft cleared to fly over the Heath that day and this particular Spitfire had not been seen in British skies for over sixty years.
Ralf stooped to pick up the milk, but a flare of electricity across his neck stopped him short. At the far end of the drive, standing in the shadow of the gate was The Hooded Man. The man he’d seen outside Pizza Piazza! A pole of some sort towered over him. Was it some kind of placard? At the top of the pole, something metal flashed in the morning sun and then the man was gone.
For a second Ralf panicked, thinking that some form of disaster was bound to follow but then his brain took over from his instincts. There was no reason to think that seeing The Hooded Man meant something bad would happen. It might not even be the same man! And even if it was, it was certainly none of his business.
It was not until much, much later that Ralf realised how spectacularly wrong he was about that.
There was no birthday breakfast waiting but Ralf expected none. There was milk, bread and some not too rancid butter and he ate quickly. He had just started to clear away his plate and the remains of Gloria’s breakfast (some spaghetti hoops, two pickled onions and a gin sling) when the front door bell rang.
‘Ranulf A. Osborne?’ The Police Officer in the shadow of the old porch was not in uniform and his ash-grey suit looked like it had seen better days. The photograph on his ID card had either been taken a long time ago or this man was having a very bad week.
‘WHAT?’ the officer barked. ‘What did you say?’
Ralf winced. He’d done it again. He’d tried speaking but something other than English had popped out of his mouth. He must concentrate.
‘Ralf,’ he said finally. ‘People usually call me Ralf.’
‘Detective Inspector Burrowes. I’d like to ask you a few questions.’ The Inspector, who knew nothing of Gloria and her RULES, actually started to step into the hall.
‘I can’t have questions in here!’ Gloria swooped down the stairs and flapped at Ralf’s shoulder like a giant pterodactyl. ‘They would definitely affect The Flow!’
‘The flow -?’ Burrowes looked confused.
‘Exactly,’ Gloria confirmed, as if that explained everything.
The police officer sighed. ‘If you are unwilling to cooperate here, then I will have to ask you to accompany me to the station.’
‘Yes, yes. Off you go!’ Gloria thrust Ralf’s jacket into his arms and shoved him towards the door.
‘Will you be accompanying him, Madam?’ Burrowes asked.
‘Heavens no!’ breezed Gloria. ‘Far too busy – Affairs of State – you know how it is.’
Ralf and Burrowes were both standing on the driveway before they knew what was happening. The door closed.
A cloud covered the sun and the detective squinted at Ralf’s face. ‘Have we met?’
‘I don’t think so.’
Burrowes frowned then shook himself like an old dog. ‘Right,’ he said, wearily. ‘If you’ll come with me.’
The door twitched open again and Gloria’s face appeared in the gap.
‘What’s it about?’ she asked.
‘It’s very serious,’ said Burrowes dramatically.
‘Gosh!’ Gloria’s amber eyes twinkled. Then she winked at Ralf. ‘How exciting!’
An hour later, Ralf was sitting in a police interview room at New Scotland Yard, clutching a murky looking cup of tea and staring at the first paragraph of a dog eared paperback. Every so often he looked up from the page to stare out of the window at the River Thames below. An ornate barge, filled with people in bright Elizabethan costume, floated downstream. Towards the rear of the boat a woman sat on a fur covered throne. She wore a high winged collar and her red hair was decked with jewels. It was obvious to Ralf that this was some theatre group, touting for publicity.
He didn’t notice that no one on the riverbank stopped to stare. Passers-by did not even glance at the barge – they carried on with their business as if they couldn’t even see it. It was almost as if it wasn’t there.
Ralf watched the boat drift downriver enviously. That was how he’d like to be spending his birthday, he thought, bobbing peacefully on the waves, maybe doing a spot of fishing. He chuckled inwardly. What an odd thought! He’d never been fishing before in his life. Suddenly his smile died. His breath caught in his throat as he spotted something in the shadow of a building on the other side of the street. There he was again! It was the same hooded man who’d been standing at the end of his drive only a couple of hours ago. Ralf frowned down at him but was snapped back to more urgent matters by the door opening. D.I. Burrowes slouched into the room and dropped a heavy file on to the table.
‘Suppose you start by telling me where you were on the evening of Wednesday the twenty-sixth!’ He dragged out a chair and settled himself noisily on the other side of the table.
‘At home.’
‘Are you sure? Don’t want to think about it? It’s over a week ago now.’
Ralf couldn’t figure out where this was going at all. He put his cup down and looked Burrowes straight in the eye. ‘I was definitely at home.’
‘That’s pretty impressive.’ Burrowes stretched, leaned back on his chair and put his hands behind his head. ‘I’m trained to remember things, but even I would probably have to take a minute or two to think about where I was eleven days ago.’ He smiled at Ralf and let the silence build.
Burrowes’ shirt was gaping open at the waist to reveal a triangle of white flesh, gingery hair and belly button fluff. The cheesy butter sat uneasily in Ralf’s stomach and he quickly looked away.
‘I know I was at home because I’m always at home in the evenings.’
‘And if I was to ask your little gang out there, they’d say the same thing, would they?’
Now Ralf was really confused. ‘Gang?’
Burrowes nodded towards the window. Ralf looked out into the busy police station. Lined up against the back wall on plastic chairs were four kids.
This was the moment. This was the exact second Ralf should have understood. His eyes flickered. There was a shadow of a frown. But then it passed.
He did not remember their faces.
He didn’t remember anything.
‘Gang?’
He almost laughed. This was great, it really was. The police thought he was in a gang and these losers were supposed to be it. Typical.
The tallest boy in the row was shuffling a pack of cards, his face a mask of concentration as they flew through his nimble fingers. Ralf ought to have been impressed but he was too distracted by the boy’s appearance. He had cornrow plaits and his dark skin was contrasted by the oddest assortment of clothing Ralf had ever seen – patchwork dungarees and a clashing, tie-dyed shirt. Next to him was a very small pasty-faced boy, wearing expensive trainers and baggy jeans. Despite the hot weather, he was sporting a woolly hat complete with earflaps and a fluffy pom-pom. These two must have been arrested for crimes against fashion, Ralf thought, something the other two kids in the row might also be accused of. The last boy, who Ralf took to be about his own age, was wearing a suit and tie – oh, dear. He was thin and pale, with a mop of curly brown hair, glasses and dark shadows under his eyes. The girl on the end had caramel skin and short, spiky, black hair and would have been quite nice looking except that she was wearing one of those white pyjama-type Karate suits, a pair of old trainers and a face like thunder. The face, combined with the black belt round her waist, made Ralf want to laugh.
How could Burrowes possibly think he had anything to do with these four?
‘I don’t know those people.’ He turned to face Burrowes again. ‘Look, I don’t know what you think I’ve done, but honestly, there’s been a mistake. I’ve never seen any of them before.’
‘Now, listen here!’ Burrowes growled suddenly. ‘We can do this two ways. Either you can tell me what you lot were up to last Wednesday or I can start making your life pretty miserable.’
Here we go, the Hard-Man-Harry policeman chat. Ralf had heard it before, from beat Bobbies who regularly escorted him back to school and twice from the Education Welfare Officer. It didn’t get any better.