The London Eye Mystery (17 page)

eleven-and-a-half strides instead of twelve-and-ahalf, so either my legs had grown in the last few minutes, or the universe had shrunk, instead of expanded. ‘Wreuurrrrr,’ I went, like the Earl’s Court motorbikes. I looked up at the sky. Evening. High strata cloud, fresh southwesterly, but air pressure falling. One of Dad’s shirts on the line flapped against my head. The wind was picking up. I walked over to the garden shed and kicked it a few times. I’m not a philosopher. I’m a meteorologist. But I believe in meditation. Buddhists believe that if you empty out your head, that’s when you find enlightenment. Kicking the shed is a good way of emptying out your head. It’s like jumping on a trampoline. You kick or jump, you jump or kick, and eventually all the thoughts march out of your ears, like a line of toy soldiers heading for the edge of the table. You’re left with nothing – the empty nothing I told Salim about, which is frightening and lonely, but simple and clear.

I shut my eyes and imagined a vast, silent void. I kept up the kicking. By the eighty-seventh kick I was empty inside and a kind of solar wind arrived in my brain. A storm of charged particles rushed through my head like lightning, giving off strange flashes of coloured lights. A picture formed. It was like the Aurora Borealis burning in my brain. It sparkled so hard it hurt. The pattern I’d half glimpsed earlier that day flooded back. But this time it didn’t vanish. I caught it. I hung onto it. I made it freeze, like ice.

Then I knew. Not where Salim was. But how he’d vanished like he had.

The Sound of the Storm

When you try to talk to people in the middle of a storm, they can’t hear. They can’t catch your words for the sound of the storm.

Thunder, rain and wind.

And the things the storm moves – leaves, roof tiles, rubbish.

I came in from the garden, eighty-seven kicks of the garden shed wiser, but I couldn’t make myself heard. Dad was just coming in from work. Mum was still sitting on the stairs. She ran to him before he took off his coat. Her arms went around him and she put her head on his shoulder.

‘Oh, Ben, I’m so glad you’re home.’

‘Faith, love – what’s wrong? Has there been bad news?’

‘Not since we spoke earlier. The press has been here. Twice. Glo’s been terrible all day. This afternoon she had a panic attack. She couldn’t breathe. I called the doctor. He gave her a sleeping pill. She’s upstairs, flat out, the first proper sleep she’s had since Salim went missing. Then the kids just took off somewhere without asking. And Ted left a note about going swimming. Imagine! He
lied
, Ben. I didn’t know what to do. I thought we’d lost them too. Then Rashid went out to walk the streets. He said he was going mad sitting around, waiting. And just now the kids came back. Oh Ben, the relief. They came in the door, and Kat and I – Kat and I—’

‘Shush . . .’

‘We had a row.’

‘So what’s new?’

‘A terrible row, Ben. I nearly hit her, I came this close . . .’ She held out her finger and thumb, a centimetre apart. Then she started wailing again. Dad said ‘Shush’ but she didn’t stop. I stood a couple of metres away.

‘Dad,’ I said. He didn’t answer.

‘Mum,’ I said. She didn’t answer.

I waited and tried again. ‘Dad. Mum.’

Mum looked round and swallowed. She said, ‘Oh, Ted. There you are. Can’t you go upstairs and read a book or something?’

‘But Mum, I’ve worked out—’

‘Shush, Ted,’ Dad said. ‘Now isn’t the time.’

The words were hard and short, not like Dad’s voice at all, and Mum started crying again, so I went upstairs.

In my room Kat lay face down on the lilo, her fist clenched up and pressed between her eyebrows. I noticed that my alarm clock was on the floor, broken into bits. That was the smashing sound I’d heard earlier at Tornado Touchdown Time.

‘Kat,’ I said.

She shook her head. Her eyes scrunched up. A tear slipped out and trailed down her nose. She didn’t wipe it away.

‘Kat. I think I’ve got it.’

She moaned.

‘The theories. The nine theories. I think I know the right one.’

‘Oh, Ted! You and your theories.’ She grabbed a pillow and buried her head under it.

I went up to her and tapped her shoulder. ‘The theories, Kat,’ I said.

She looked up from the pillow. ‘Go away,’ she said.

‘Kat,’ I said. Then I added, ‘Sis,’ because she likes me calling her this as she says it makes me sound normal. But this time it didn’t work.

‘Ted – I don’t want to know. Go to hell.’

‘Kat . . .’

She took the pillow and banged me on the shoulder with it. ‘That’s to stop you looking like a bloody duck that’s forgotten how to quack,’ she said. Then she threw herself down and sobbed.

Next I crept into Kat’s room, where Aunt Gloria was. ‘Aunt Gloria?’ I whispered.

But Aunt Gloria was fast asleep. This was not surprising as Mum had said she’d had a sleeping pill. Sleeping pills make your brain waves calm down into a sleep pattern. (I would like to try one, not so much because I have trouble sleeping, but more to see if my brain with its different operating system would respond.) Aunt Gloria lay on her back diagonally across the bed, her foot hanging over the edge and the duvet crooked. Her mouth was half open, her breathing loud and low. Her eyelids were a bruised colour, a purple smudge. I couldn’t have woken her even if I’d tried.

I was about to creep out again when I saw Kat’s copy of
The Tempest
, face down on the duvet. Kat, like Salim, had been studying it at school. Had Aunt Gloria been reading it too? Salim had said he’d acted in it and that it was right up my street. I realized now that he’d meant that I would like it, because it was named after a dramatic weather condition and weather is what interests me most. I picked it up, sat down at Kat’s desk and began to read.

First there was a long list of people. This is how plays always start. The author tells you who is who and how they are related to each other and it is called a cast of characters. This one had a lot of men and some strange-sounding spirits and a female called Miranda, who I remembered Kat saying was a dishrag. Then I read the first scene. I didn’t understand it because the language was almost as hard to understand as French, which is my worst subject at school. I read it again, and a third time, before I worked out that it was about a ship sinking in a storm. That was as far as I got when a groan behind me made me look up.

‘Salim?’ It sounded as if Aunt Gloria was speaking in her sleep. ‘Salim?’

I crept over to the side of the bed,
The Tempest
open in my hand. ‘No, Aunt Gloria,’ I said. ‘It’s Ted.’

She looked at me. The whites of her eyes were bloodshot, which is what happens when you have been crying or staring too hard for too long at something.

‘Ted?’ she said. She saw the copy of
The Tempest
and smiled. ‘I was reading that just now, to help me sleep. Salim was in it last term.’

‘I know, Aunt Gloria. He told me.’

She smiled. ‘The dashing young prince.

Ferdinand. My Salim.’

She turned onto her side and curled up, crying. I stood there in silence, not sure if I should put my hand on her shoulder or do nothing. After a while I realized she had gone back to sleep. I put the play back down by her side and left the room. Out on the landing I stood and listened to the house. It was quiet. I wondered why nobody could hear me when it was so quiet. Then I started to hear the sounds houses always make when the people in them are silent. Boards creaking as they settle onto the foundations. Pipes gurgling inside the walls. Central heating humming. I clung to the banister at the top of the stairs. I heard something else: my heart thumping, blood pumping in my ears, the distant tick of the clock in the hallway downstairs. It was time. Time had a sound too. I’d never heard it before. I put my hands over my ears. It was deafening.

Mum appeared at the bottom of the stairs. She came up silently and gave me a hug. I squirmed.

‘Ted,’ she said, ‘I apologize. To you. But especially to Kat.’

‘Mum . . .’ I said. ‘I’ve worked it out.’

She patted my head as if I’d said nothing, went past me and knocked on my bedroom door. There was no reply, but she turned the handle and went in. She shut the door behind her. I heard her voice, soft and sad, coming from the other side. Then I heard Kat’s. I couldn’t hear their words.

I went on downstairs just as Rashid let himself in through the front door with the spare key. He stood in the hallway, looking ahead with no expression on his face that I could decipher.

‘Uncle Rashid . . .’ I said.

‘Sorry?’ he said. ‘Oh. Hello, Ted.’

Dad came out of the living room and greeted him by saying, ‘Do you want a can of beer?’ and they went into the kitchen.

Just as if I didn’t exist.

Then I went into the front room. I went over to the mantelpiece and picked up Detective Inspector Pearce’s card. I stared at it. I’m no good at telephone conversations. But I remembered how she’d smiled at me when I told her about Salim getting a call on his mobile and said how she wished her officers had half my brains. She’d listened then.

I normally only use the telephone about once a week. This is because I have nobody I need to telephone but sometimes Mum makes me call the Directory Enquiries number as she says I need the practice. Today, I was about to use the telephone twice, which was far more practice than I wanted. I sat on the side of the sofa, on top of my flapping hand. I picked up the phone with my other hand. Then I dialled Detective Inspector Pearce’s number. 

Smoke

Time passed.

Kat and Mum came downstairs arm in arm. I hadn’t seen them like that in a while. I was able to deduce from their body language that they had made up and this made me pleased because it showed how much better I was getting at reading body language. Then Aunt Gloria came down in her dressing gown. Her lips were flat and her eyes empty-looking, so I didn’t know what her body language was saying and I was less pleased.

Dad and Rashid went out to fetch an Indian takeaway for everyone. They returned with a dozen foil containers of steaming food. I had two samosas, a chicken biryani and most of Kat’s chicken korma, which she couldn’t finish. Dad got most of the way through a prawn bhuna. As for the others, mounds of food got left on their plates. Aunt Gloria nibbled on one side of an onion bhajee for about half an hour. Mum’s fork went round her plate, pushing the same chickpea. Rashid sipped a beer and stared at his food without even starting.

‘How was work?’ Mum said to Dad.

He shrugged. ‘Quiet. I was out Peckham way today. On another job.’

Then nobody spoke.

I wanted to tell them what I knew and all about my conversation with Detective Inspector Pearce but she had told me to say nothing for now in case people started to hope. She explained that normally hope is a good thing, but if you hope a lot for something and it doesn’t happen, then you are disappointed and it’s called being let down. I asked her if ‘being let down’ was like coming back to earth with a bump if you let air out of a hot-air balloon too fast, and she said yes, it was like that. Then that started another train of thought – that hot-air ballooning was something I’d try one day, but only when the weather was set fair, and I’d bring instruments for measuring air pressure and temperature and make recordings and—

‘Houston calling Planet Pluto,’ Dad said. 

I looked over at Dad. This is what he says to get my attention when my thoughts are far away from where my body is.

‘Pass the rice, Ted,’ he said, smiling.

I passed the rice. There was silence again. It was as if everybody had decided that Salim was not to be mentioned. Kat kept winding a brown curl of hair around her finger. Aunt Gloria lit a cigarette but forgot to smoke it. I watched it burn away, and followed the trail of smoke through the air as it burned. It was deflected to the left over her shoulder, although there was no window open and no air in the room. This made me think of the Coriolis effect again and how it is invisible but can make things change direction.

‘Aunt Gloria—’ I said.

‘Shush, Ted,’ Mum said.

‘No – let him say what he wanted to say,’ said Aunt Gloria.

‘Why are you lighting cigarettes and not smoking them?’ I asked.

‘Ted!’ said Mum. ‘Give your Auntie Glo a break.’

Aunt Gloria gave a tiny smile. ‘I didn’t even notice I’d lit one, Ted. I tell you what. When this is over – if Salim – if he comes back safe, I’ll give the damn things up. That’s a promise.’

She sat back, tears going down her face, and took a long drag. I wasn’t sure if she was crying at the thought of having to give up cigarettes or because Salim might not come back safely. The room went quiet again. ‘If he comes back safe,’ she repeated. Which was how I knew she was crying because of Salim, not the cigarettes.

I carried on eating. When I put my knife and fork down, I listened to the silence. I heard the clock ticking again. Then I felt blood pounding in my ears. It was like railway wheels going round in my head, trains of thought running out of control, couplers snapping.
The boy on the slab, the boy on the train.
Mum made a pot of tea. I heard a spoon rapping against china as Dad stirred in his sugar.
Salim or not
Salim.

‘I can’t stand it any more,’ Aunt Gloria said. She leaped up. ‘The waiting. I can’t stand it.’

Mum reached out and put a hand on Aunt

Gloria’s wrist. ‘I know, Glo. Sit down.’

‘You don’t know. You can’t know. Kat and Ted, they’ve never disappeared. Not like this. Not for more than two days. And nothing. No news. Nothing.’

‘Calm down, Gloria,’ said Rashid.

‘How can I? You’re all sitting there. You’re all looking at me. And I know what you’re thinking.’

‘Glo—’ Mum said.

‘Don’t you start – I overheard you today on the phone to Ben. You think Salim’s run away, don’t you? You think he’s hiding – hiding from me, don’t you? Why don’t you just say it?’

‘Glo—’ Mum said.

‘Go on – say it.’

‘Maybe – if the choice is between Salim being kidnapped by some evil person – or his hiding somewhere, unaware of how much distress he’s causing you – then, yes, I do think – that is, I—’