Burning Secrets (12 page)

Chapter 24

D
ANIEL ARRIVED AT
the old chapel at three o'clock, as arranged. The bicycle stood propped against the remains of the wall which enclosed the tiny stone ruin, so he knew she was already inside. He wondered if she'd watched his approach. His heart was drumming hard from the uphill climb that he had taken at a run, and from a mixture of excitement and nervousness at the idea of meeting her again.

The heavy wooden door shuddered and scraped against the flagstones as he pushed it open, releasing a dry, churchy smell of wood and stone and the breath of dead candles. The windows were broken and boarded up, but what was left of the daylight leaked through a hole in the roof, and in the semi-gloom, he could see Ramsay sitting in one of the pews, facing the bare altar, her back to him. She started slightly at the sound.

“Is that you?” she said.

“It's me,” Daniel replied. “Are you all right?”

“I am now you're here. I thought you might not come.”

He walked up the aisle and sat in the pew directly behind her, so that he could see the back of her neck and the blonde wisps above her coat collar which had failed to make it into her two neat plaits. “If I say I'm going to do something I do it. I'd never just not turn up.”

His message, faithfully delivered by Fay, had said:
Meet me at the old chapel at 3 o'clock on Sunday if you can. No need to reply. If you don't turn up I'll understand. But I'll be there hoping.

And now Ramsay was here, sitting just centimetres away from him. She'd cycled halfway across the island to meet him, and was doing everything she could to stop his shameful secret becoming local gossip. She was so lovely it made him nervous just to be in the same room with her.

Above their heads, cobwebs thick with dust hung like grey rags. “Keep talking,” she urged. “This place kind of freaks me out.”

“I'm not going anywhere,” said Daniel, and he leant forward and slid his arms around her shoulders. She didn't shrug him off or move away, but reached up and caught hold of his hands in hers and held them.

They sat like that for some time without speaking. At last, Ramsay said, “What have you been doing since I last saw you?”

“Since you slammed the door in my face, you mean? Oh, nothing much. Just plotting and scheming how I could see you again.”

Ramsay laughed. “I don't believe you,” she said.

“It's true. OK, I took some time off for meal breaks. What about you?”

Ramsay told him about Trampus's accident, and how useless she'd been at comforting Joanne. “I couldn't seem to
feel
anything,” she said. “Joanne was blubbing as if her heart was breaking, and I just stood there as if I wasn't the least bit sad. And the thing is, I
wasn't
. Does that make me sound terrible?”

“You were probably in shock,” said Daniel, but all the same her words sent a little chill through him. They echoed so exactly what Helen had been saying only the day before.

“That's what I thought. It'll hit me later. But it didn't. I went home and I was fine. And this morning I woke up feeling cheerful, like I always do, and then I remembered about Trampus. And I still felt cheerful. I must be a monster.”

Daniel didn't know what to say, so he just wrapped his arms more tightly around her and rested his chin gently on her shoulder.

“And it was the same with you. When my dad said I couldn't see you any more. My mind was telling me: this is awful – I should be crying my eyes out. But I couldn't.”

“Oh, you don't want to go crying over me,” said Daniel lightly.

“But I never cry about anything. Even when bad things happen. I felt sorry when my nan died of cancer. But I didn't cry at the funeral or anything. My mum and dad did. But I didn't.”

“What about sad films?” said Daniel, remembering Louie blubbering over the end of
Titanic
. Of course he hadn't shed a tear over Leonardo DiCaprio himself; the boat couldn't go down soon enough for him. “Or what about
Romeo and Juliet
– or
Brokeback Mountain
? Louie says that's the saddest film ever. Mind you, she cries at
Wallace and Gromit
.”

Ramsay laughed. “They're just stories. You can't feel sad about a made-up story. Can you?” she added.

“Sometimes. But don't get all worried about it,” said Daniel, although he felt slightly worried himself.

“I just wonder if I'm missing out on something,” said Ramsay.

There was a beating of wings above them as a pigeon flew through the hole in the roof and perched on one of the rafters, showering them with bits of nest.

Daniel brushed the strands of straw from Ramsay's hair. “Can't have you going home looking like you've been rolling in a haystack,” he said.

“What are you going to do when you leave here?”

For a moment Daniel thought she meant later that evening, but then he realised she was talking about when he left the island for good.

“I don't know. Sixth form, I guess. If anywhere'll take me with my record.” He stopped, regretting this reference to his past and hoping Ramsay wouldn't follow it up. There were certain things he could never tell, and if she began to question him he would almost certainly have to lie. He couldn't bear the thought of lying to her. “Maybe university after that,” he added quickly. “What about you? Do you think you'd ever move away?”

“But where to?”

“I don't know – London. America. Anywhere?”

Ramsay shook her head, as though he had suggested travelling to some remote planet. “I used to think it would be nice to get away from the island, but I don't suppose I ever will. Nobody does, really. When I was little I dreamed of going to Austria to see the mountains. But not so much lately. Maybe I've grown out of it.”

“Don't you ever get that feeling of wanting to escape?”

“Why should I? I'm happy here.”

“Because . . . oh, I don't know,” said Daniel, abandoning this line of argument. At the back of his mind he was thinking of something else Helen had said as evidence for her theory.
They're too docile. They've got no ambition. You ask even the really clever ones what they want to do when they leave school and they say: I'll stay here and work at the farm, or the supermarket or the freezing works. Nobody wants to venture out into the big wide world. It's not natural.
All right, Helen, he thought. I believe you. And if Ramsay is being drugged then I'll find the proof, even if I have to take the school apart a brick at a time.

“What we really need,” Ramsay went on eagerly, “is a few more people like you coming over here to live, so we've got some new faces around the place.”

Daniel shifted on his seat. The pews had not been designed for this sort of contact and he had to lean forward at an awkward angle, but he didn't want to let go of her.

“This is the weirdest date ever,” said Ramsay, and began to laugh. “If anyone walked in right now . . . ”

“It would be kind of hard to explain,” Daniel agreed. He looked around, at the thick coating of dust on the pews, and the cobwebs and the bird droppings spattered on the altar. “But it doesn't look as though anyone has set foot in here for about ten years, so I think we'll probably be OK.”

He leant in to kiss her neck, but when he was just millimetres away his watch beeped the hour, very close to Ramsay's ear, and she leapt. He sprang back, glad that she hadn't seen him fumble this basic manoeuvre.

“Is that four o'clock already?” she wailed. “I've got to go. I said I'd be back at five. And that bike is so useless. It'd be quicker to walk.” She stood up “You go first,” she said. “Make sure no one's around. I'll wait for a minute to give you time to get out of sight and then I'll go.”

“OK.” He stopped by the door. “Ramsay. Can we meet again tomorrow?”

“I've got basketball after school . . . but I could come out later – like seven-thirty?”

“It'll be dark. You won't be scared of this place in the dark?”

“Not if you're here.”

“I'll be here,” he promised.

Chapter 25

A
S
R
AMSAY NEARED
home, a stiff breeze was blowing from the direction of Stape, carrying with it the faint smell of bonfires. This wasn't unusual for the time of year and besides, her head was full of Daniel, so she didn't give it any thought. But the next day the whole village was buzzing with news of a serious fire at the school.

It had started in the groundsman's hut – a wooden shed on the back of the sports pavilion, which contained ladders, paint, petrol-mowers, tools and other maintenance equipment. After the retirement of the previous groundsman, his duties had been taken over by Kenny, who was at home tending his chickens. So the only witness was the caretaker, whose cottage was some distance away, near the main school block. At three o'clock he had heard the crash as the windows blew in, and come out of his front door to see the pavilion engulfed in flames. He'd also noticed a figure – no more than a blurred shape – running away through the woods on the margin of the playing field.

On Monday the students and staff had all been kept behind after assembly and a police officer from Port Julian asked anyone with information to speak to him afterwards in the strictest confidence. But nobody apart from the caretaker had anything to report. There was a general sense of outrage about the loss of the pavilion, which was a relatively new facility – built at the same time as the swimming pool and paid for by the same anonymous benefactor. Mrs Ivory was credited with securing this funding, and she expressed her great disappointment to the assembled school, but reassured them that the pavilion would be restored to its former glory. Outside forces, she said, echoing her speech at the 4th of October fireworks, would not be allowed to undermine their wonderful school.

Ramsay relayed all these details to her parents that evening as the family sat around the kitchen table eating a rather stringy lamb casserole.

“Very peculiar,” said Mrs Arkin, chewing grimly. “You hear of these pupils who get expelled and then come back and try to burn down the school. Not here, of course. I mean in America.” She gave a little grimace of distaste, which may have been aimed at a particularly tough piece of lamb or at the general idea of America itself.

“No one could have a grudge against our school,” Ramsay was saying. “No one's ever been expelled.”

“No one's even been in detention since I've been there,” Fay added.

“I was looking through the court archives today,” Mr Arkin said. “There hasn't been a case of arson on Wragge since 1857.”

Ramsay's heart gave a gallop. She knew where this was going.

“I'm wondering,” he added, “if I ought to tip off the police about our friend at The Brow.” His tone of voice was anything but friendly.

“It does seem to be a bit of a coincidence,” his wife agreed.

Ramsay and Fay looked at each other in alarm. “Daniel wouldn't do a thing like that!” Ramsay protested.

“But the fact is, he already has done,” Mr Arkin pointed out.

“Well, that still doesn't mean he did it this time,” Ramsay insisted, swallowing hard. A lump of gristly lamb sat like a stone, halfway down her gullet. She knew beyond any doubt that Daniel wasn't involved. At the exact time the fire had broken out he had been on the other side of the island in the ruined chapel with her. But this was the one alibi he couldn't use.

“You said you wouldn't tell,” she said quietly.

“These are exceptional circumstances,” her father replied. “Anyway it would just be a quiet word in the inspector's ear.”

“There's no such thing as a quiet word around here,” Ramsay said. She knew how it would be. At the first breath of gossip against them, Mrs Milman would pack up and move the whole family back to London. Daniel had more or less said as much. And then she would never see him again.

She laid down her knife and fork across her plate of almost untouched lamb. “Thank you for the lovely dinner,” she said. “Please may I leave the table?”

“Of course,” said her mum, oblivious to any change in atmosphere.

Concealing her extreme urgency to get away, Ramsay scraped her unwanted food into the bin, stacked her plate and cutlery in the dishwasher, and strolled out of the kitchen. It was only when she was safely out of the house and on the rickety bicycle that she allowed herself to hurry along the dark and empty lanes towards the ruined chapel.

Chapter 26

T
HE
IT
SUITE
was more crowded than it had been on Daniel's previous visit, and he had to angle his monitor slightly to ensure that his nearest neighbour couldn't see the screen. This precaution was hardly necessary, as his neighbour – a serious-looking boy of about twelve – was fully occupied in designing a complicated piece of circuitry. But Daniel was taking no chances.

At the end of their telephone call on Saturday, Helen had promised to email him some of her research about Narveng and it was this that he was now reading, with a racing heart and one eye on his watch. He had two hours until his meeting with Ramsay, and he wanted to make sure he was early so that she wouldn't have to spend any time alone in the chapel. Even he had to admit it would be creepy after dark.

Hi Friend
(Helen was obsessive about not using his real name).

Here's a summary. If you still don't want to get involved, I can't force you, but please regard everything that follows as STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL and delete it when you've read it. If you want to do any more research don't use the school computers – go to the library in Port Julian.

Narveng is a pharmaceutical company which makes prescription and over-the-counter drugs. Their biggest sellers are medication for asthma and hay fever, but they make literally hundreds of other products. For the last five years they've been working on a drug called Compound K for treating depression. You may or may not know, but existing anti-depressants have a whole range of unpleasant side effects – including anxiety, paranoia and depression! Useful, eh? The potential market for an anti-depressant without side effects is vast – we're talking billions – given that about one in five people are, or think they are, depressed.

Compound K is at an early stage of development – it's been tested on primates and a small sample of human volunteers – but needs a long-term and large-scale trial before it can be licensed for sale to the public. Within a couple of days, those first volunteers reported complete relief from symptoms of depression. Even those with a history of violent mood swings became placid and contented—

There was a rustling noise close beside Daniel and he looked up sharply. His neighbour had produced a paper bag from his pocket and was slowly transferring the contents, one leaf at a time, to his mouth. With a sense of slowly dawning realisation that made his scalp prickle, Daniel looked around at the rest of the students working silently at their computers. Without exception, they were chewing the same frothing cuds of green pulp, their faces wearing matching expressions of dreamy contentment.

All was quiet apart from the distant hum of a floor polisher, and the gloop and gurgle of the water coolers, as Daniel roamed the empty corridors of the school. He had no clear idea of what he was searching for or where he should look for it. His mind was still buzzing from the revelations in Helen's email, and the shock of finally accepting that she'd been right all along. He was convinced that Leaf was the key to the whole conspiracy, but he still couldn't understand why the students would willingly eat something so revolting. Even if it was one of those sophisticated flavours that grow on you over time, the first taste would put anyone off for life.

Helen's last line had been:
If you do want to help, you need to find material evidence that links Compound K and Narveng to the school.

It was hard enough to find something you had lost in a space no bigger than a house when you knew exactly what it looked like. How could he begin to search the whole school when he didn't even know what he was looking for?

He'd left the classrooms behind and was now in a part of the school he had no excuse to be in – the admin block, consisting mainly of teachers' offices and storerooms. At the far end of the corridor, someone had left their keys hanging from a lock. The key ring caught Daniel's eye because he had an identical one in his pocket – an orange rubber fish which doubled as a torch. When you squeezed its gills a light shone out of its mouth.

He hesitated in front of the nearest unmarked door, wondering how he would explain his presence if he was discovered. He pushed it open, ready to retreat if necessary, but it contained nothing more exciting than a photocopier and reams of different coloured paper, ink cartridges and bottles of toner.

On a sudden whim he lifted the lid of the photocopier and found that the last item to be copied had been left face down on the glass. His hopes were immediately dashed as he turned it over and found it was nothing more than a letter to parents about the cancellation of the Christmas concert, owing to the sudden departure of the music teacher.

Daniel almost laughed at himself for feeling so unreasonably disappointed. As if anyone would have conveniently left some incriminating document just lying around! What had he expected – a letter from the chief executive of Narveng marked ‘Top Secret'? Asking how the ‘experiment' was going?

He decided to abandon this hopeless searching and set off for the chapel to wait for Ramsay. But as he walked back towards the main foyer something was niggling at him. At the very edge of his consciousness was the merest blur of an idea which refused to come into focus. If he turned the full beam of his attention on it, it would vanish altogether, so instead he tried to distract himself by counting down from a thousand in blocks of thirteen like he used to in Lissmore.

He had reached 857, and was just passing through the unmanned reception area to the exit, when it came to him. He stopped abruptly, leaving the automatic sliding doors twitching uncertainly back and forth.

Keys in a keyhole. In a place where nobody ever locks anything
. Daniel spun on his heel and headed back the way he had come, into the admin block and past the offices to the last door on the left, from which the key ring still dangled. Now what? He knocked gently, ready to leg it if anyone replied, and then again more forcefully. There was no answer. He let himself in to what turned out to be another storeroom, and pulled the door to, just as he'd found it. Along one wall was a row of large cardboard boxes, stacked two high and three deep. There were no markings visible to give any indication of the contents; only a row of arrows showing which way up they should be stored. None of the boxes was sealed so Daniel opened the flaps and checked the contents. Again, disappointment: each one contained a twenty-litre refill for the water coolers – nothing else. Beyond the boxes in the corner were stacks of paper drinking cones wrapped in polythene, and on the opposite wall were shelves bending under the weight of giant loo rolls and liquid soap dispensers, paper towels, cleaning fluid, disposable gloves, light-bulbs of every shape and size, catering packs of instant coffee, teabags and plastic spoons, but nothing remotely relevant to Daniel's search. He was just about to leave when he heard the sound of footsteps approaching along the corridor. Instinctively he drew back into the narrow gap between the boxes and the wall, crushing himself up against the paper drinking cones, waiting for the steps to pass. His chest tightened with alarm as the footsteps grew louder and louder and then halted. Then he stopped breathing altogether as the door briefly swung open before it was pulled shut again and the key turned in the lock.