Robin Jarvis-Jax 01 Dancing Jax (27 page)

Barry flinched. Her stinging words had hit home. “Is that all?” he asked.

The officers departed. Alone in his office, Barry began removing his photographs from the wall and emptying his desk.

The rest of the day passed uneventfully. Barry patrolled the corridors, like the captain of a ship inspecting the decks and gangways one final time before saying a final farewell to it. An eerie hush lay over the school. Even though the classrooms were full, the children were deathly quiet and absorbed in their work. The teachers who, like Martin, were still unaffected could not understand how any drug could produce this effect and they found the silence sinister and the pupils creepy.

During the final break, Barry sought out Martin and explained what the police had said.

“I’ve had the secretary type out a letter to the parents,” he added, “warning them about the situation and suggesting they search their kids’ rooms and take any of that muck off them. Every pupil will take the letter home tonight. But, just to make sure the parents get them, they’ll be posted as well.”

“Sensible precaution,” Martin agreed. “I’ll be turning Paul’s room upside down this evening if Carol hasn’t already.”

He looked at Barry closely. The once robust, no-nonsense man seemed a shadow of his former self.

“None of this is your fault, you know,” Martin told him.

“Isn’t it?” the Head replied. “That police bird was right. These kids were under my protection. I should have spotted what was going on a lot sooner and sorted it right at the beginning. I failed them, Martin, failed them big time.”

“Hey, we aren’t responsible for them once they’re outside those gates. You can’t beat yourself up over what they get up to out there.”

“Can’t I? Why not? No one else gives a monkey’s any more. The parents haven’t got a clue what they’re doing for the most part. We taught most of them when they were kids themselves, Martin, we know how useless they were back then. If my students can’t feel or be safe from the outside world in here then, yes, that’s totally my fault.”

“You’re being too hard on yourself.”

The Head shrugged. “Look,” he said after a moment’s contemplation, “it’s my last day here. Nobody knows on the staff except you. What say you and me down a few bevvies later?”

Martin had to decline. “I can’t tonight,” he told him. “I have to get straight home to Carol and Paul. I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry about!” Barry said, hiding his disappointment behind a hasty smile. “Course you have to get back. We’ll do it another time.”

“Absolutely! And I’ll be buying!”

“Hope Paul gets better soon,” Barry said. “See you soon, mate.” He turned and walked briskly down the corridor, back to his office.

Martin felt wretched and guilty. But Paul had to come first.

At the end of the school day he watched the children leave through the gates in orderly streams. He went to find Barry one last time and wish him well, but the Head was not in his office. Martin left the building knowing he had let his old friend down. He hoped the rugby team would win tomorrow. That would lift Barry’s spirits.

Half an hour later Martin opened his front door and steeled himself for the tough evening ahead. What state would Paul be in by now? The house was quiet, but there was a strong smell of fresh paint. What had Carol been doing? He removed his jacket and hung it in the hall.

“Hello?” he called. There was a movement in the living room.

“What?” Carol’s voice blurted.

He looked inside and found her on the sofa, rubbing her eyes. “You been asleep?” he asked. “Must have nodded off for a minute,” she said. “I hardly got any kip last night when I finished work. So glad you came back early.”

“I didn’t. It’s gone four!”

The woman glanced at the clock on the fireplace and swore under her breath. “I must have been out for hours!” she exclaimed, jumping to her feet. “My God – Paul!”

She dashed past Martin and ran to the stairs. They hurried up to the boy’s bedroom, but it was empty.

“Damn!” Carol yelled. “Why couldn’t I stay awake? Of all the times… Where’s he gone? He could be anywhere by now!”

Martin didn’t answer. His gaze was drawn to a dribbled trail of blue paint on the landing carpet, leading from his precious sanctum.

“No, no, no…” he whispered.

With a sinking heart, he hurried into his special room, but nothing could prepare him for the horrible spectacle he found there.

His precious inner sanctum had been completely trashed. His expensive collection of fantasy merchandise – the models, the figurines, the replicas – were smashed. The wondrous items he had spent his entire adult life assembling were totally destroyed. Every spaceship had been torn down from the ceiling and stamped on. The life-size dalek had been kicked to pieces and the Star Fleet uniforms had been cut to shreds. The display cabinets were empty and the Lord of the Rings busts had been thrown against the wall and were in countless fragments. Hundreds of DVDs had been bent or scratched or snapped in two and, over everything, splattering the wreckage and dripping from every shelf and poster, was a thick and ruinous layer of blue gloss paint.

“Oh, Martin!” Carol cried in horror as she stumbled in behind him. “Your things. Your collection!”

The man was too stunned to say anything. He felt as if a huge part of him had just died.

“I’m so sorry,” Carol said, squeezing his arm. “I’m so sorry. I know how much this meant to you.”

“No, you didn’t,” Martin murmured. “Only Paul did.”

“I can’t believe he would do something like this. I really can’t.”

“There was no one else here,” he told her. “Paul did this.” He turned away from the horrendous destruction and looked at her in shock and confusion.

“How did you sleep through it?” he asked. “How?”

Carol shook her head. “I don’t know!” she replied. “I just don’t. I don’t understand any of it. What’s happening to us? None of it makes sense.”

She gazed at the fractured chaos and held her head in her hands. “Where did he even get the paint from?” she asked.

“It’s Venetian Crystal Blue,” Martin whispered. “We were going to paint our police box with it… when we got round to building one.” He cast around the devastated room and saw the splintered remains of the fresnel lens Paul had found on eBay. Martin bit the inside of his lip to keep from shouting – or crying. He wasn’t sure which.

Carol wanted to hold him, but she was afraid he might push her off. She took a few careful steps into the room to see if she could salvage something – anything. But it was no good. Then she noticed the blank area behind the open door. A message had been scrawled with the paint.

“The Jack of Diamonds,” Martin interpreted.

“I can’t believe it,” Carol muttered. “I told you, that wasn’t my son today.”

“Don’t fool yourself!” Martin snapped. “He’s just another kid off his face. Well, he’s gone too far this time.”

He stormed from the room and thudded downstairs.

“What are you doing?” she called after him.

“Calling the police. What do you think?”

“I think I agree with you,” she said. “And while you do that…”

She ran to find her mobile and called Paul’s number. To her surprise, the boy answered.

“Paul?” she cried. “Where are you? What have you done?”

“Hahahahahahaha!” she heard him shouting. “I stole the jools – I stole the jools!” And then the phone went dead.

“Paul?” she yelled. “Paul!” She tried his number again, but it was unobtainable. He must have switched the phone off.

After Martin finished speaking to the police, he sat on the stairs in stricken silence, waiting for them to turn up. Carol was alone on her son’s bed. She didn’t know how to comfort Martin and she was beside herself with worry. Her entire world was in chaos.

After a while Martin appeared in the doorway.

“The stuff in there,” he said, nodding back at the sanctum. “That’s all it is, just stuff.”

“Your lovely things,” she began.

“That’s just it. They were things. But Paul isn’t a thing. He’s missing and in trouble. He needs us – more than he ever has.”

Carol began to cry and she threw her arms about him. “God! I love you, Martin!” she wept.

At that moment the doorbell rang. The police had arrived.

A short while later they left with a full statement, Paul Thornbury’s description and a couple of recent photographs. As only a few hours had passed since the boy had left the house, they were sceptical about the seriousness of the situation, even when shown the wreckage upstairs. Carol almost lost her temper with them, but they promised her they would do everything they could to find him and bring him back safely.

“They always say that though,” she said as the police car drove away. “What if they never find him? What if he’s gone for good?”

“Don’t think like that,” Martin told her. “You’ll drive yourself mad.”

Carol’s mobile rang. She rushed to it, but it wasn’t her son. It was Ian Meadows.

“Just thought I’d tell you the test results,” the doctor said brightly. “Hello… Carol?”

The woman had almost forgotten about that morning. “Sorry, yes, I’m here.”

“You all right? You sound terrible.”

“Paul’s gone missing, Ian.”

“What? Oh, Carol, I’m sorry. Have you called…?”

“Yes, they’ve just left.”

“If there’s anything I can do…”

“Err… thanks. No, I don’t think there’s anything.”

“Well, if it helps in any way, those results… it’s good news. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with him. We screened for all sorts.”

“Drugs?”

“Not a trace of them. Totally clean.”

“You sure?”

“Nothing gets past these analysers, I promise you. If there was something nasty in his system, the HPLC would find it.”

Carol rang off and looked at Martin. “You were wrong,” she said blankly. “It’s got nothing to do with that stuff in those jars. Martin – it really is the book. That’s what the kids are addicted to. Remember, Paul told us it was evil. He was right. It’s… devilish.”

“Do you realise how neurotic you sound? Carol, I’m the one who does fantasy here – not you.”

“They’ve done a High Pressure Liquid Chromatography spectroscopy on his samples,” she said. “There’s nothing there, no hallucinogens – nothing. What Paul told us about the book, what he tried to tell us… it’s the only thing that makes any kind of sense.”

Martin refused to discuss it. He opened his briefcase. There was a single jar of minchet left in there. “Take this to your friends at the hospital,” he told her. “Get them to analyse that. The police are already doing it, but we might get the results a bit quicker this way.”

“No, Martin,” she said. “It’s the book that’s dangerous, not this.”

“Just go,” he urged.

“But they don’t analyse this sort of thing in the hospital. They’ll need to send it to a university lab.”

“You’d better get a move on then. The sooner it goes off the better.”

“What if Paul comes back here?”

“Then I’ll call you. I’ll call you as soon as I hear anything. Just hurry.”

And so Carol drove to the hospital and Martin waited.

At exactly the same time, Emma Taylor was applying some mascara in her bedroom and scrutinising herself in the mirror. It would do for a Friday night outside a bar. A message beeped into her mobile.

The girl cursed. The fort was the last place she wanted to be that night – or indeed any time ever. She sent a filthy refusal back to him and painted her lips her favourite poppy shade with a steady hand. She didn’t know what had come over those retarded saps at school, but she wasn’t going to have anything to do with them, especially at the weekend. As she pulled on her leopard-print jacket, his reply came in.

“Damn!” she snarled.

She knew precisely what that threat was. He was going to tell the police she had been in that Fiesta. How long was he going to hold that over her? This needed to be sorted once and for all and she would go to any lengths to stop it. Emma changed out of her best trainers and pulled on a more practical pair of boots. So much the better for kicking him where it really hurt if that’s what was needed. No one was going to have that sort of power over her. Her eyes fell on a pair of nail scissors on the dressing table and, with a cruel curl of her red mouth, she pocketed them. This business was going to end, tonight.

Chapter 25

M
idnight trysts — ’neath scented bowers or in high towers, in moon-shone fields, o’er candlelit meals, on roseate balcony or down on one knee — how heady is the wine of romance, how giddy doth it make us dance.

V
IEW
P
OINT
R
OAD
was deserted, a complete contrast to the previous Friday night.

It was dark and quiet. The lights of the container port on the right were fewer than last week. So many had blown during that electrical storm that the maintenance teams hadn’t got round to replacing all of them. The security cameras were still out of action too, but that was a secret the port authority hadn’t told anyone.

A cold breeze blew in over the high ridge of sandhills to the left. Torn ribbons of police tape fluttered in the branches of ugly trees and gorse bushes. Forensic teams had scoured the length and breadth of this road for a full five days without discovering anything new and the one who could tell them everything was striding down it right now.

Emma’s young face was locked in a scowl. With folded arms, she marched the long, lonely route to the Landguard Fort, her boots stomping over the tarmac. Memories of that horrendous night crowded in from every side. The frozen, terrified faces of Ashleigh and Keeley shining in the full glare of the Fiesta’s headlights as it spun into them flashed into her mind. She dug her nails into her palms and concentrated on what she would say and do to Conor Westlake.

The final stretch of the road kinked to the left and the great low bulk of the fort appeared ahead. There were no vehicles in the car park in front of it. The burned-out wrecks had been removed and only the scorched grass of the verges showed that anything had happened there. There weren’t even any bouquets. The forensic investigation had kept everyone out. That was why so many tributes had been left outside the school.

The place looked abandoned and creepier than she ever remembered it to be. Night shadows filled every corner and hollow. A week ago, almost to the very hour, forty-one young people had died here, or of the injuries they had sustained here. Emma was too sceptical and cynical about everything in life to believe in ghosts or anything like that, but she was unnerved all the same.

“Blessed be,” said a voice nearby.

Emma jumped back and yelled a string of obscenities. A figure had been sitting on one of the verges and was now rising, silhouetted against the star-filled sky.

“You flaming idiot!” she ranted. “What you trying to do – give me a heart attack?”

Conor Westlake jumped off the raised verge and pulled the hood from his head.

“Why are you startled?” he asked curiously. “I said I would be here.”

“What do you want?” she demanded. “I don’t have time for this. I could be getting legless on Breezers and pear cider right now.”

“You must forgive me for drawing you hither this night, my Lady,” he began. “But…”

“Stop all that crap!” Emma snapped. “You and the rest of the zombies might have found God…”

The boy laughed. “Is that what you think?” he asked. “You are so far from the truth.”

“Scientologists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Salvation Army, trainspotters – whatever. I don’t actually care. I’m just here to tell you to stop jerking me around. I won’t be blackmailed. Don’t you think I know people? Some of my old man’s mates have been inside and if I have a word with them, they’ll come looking for you. Do you like playing football, Goldilocks? You’d find it hard with both legs busted in five places and your knees chiselled off. So keep out of my face, yeah?”

Emma turned to leave. That should do it, a short, sharp warning – although she really wanted to hit him, it was better to let him fret about worse future violence.

She stopped abruptly. The way back along the road was blocked. At least thirty people were now standing there, having stepped silently from the darkness in front of the sandhills. Emma spun around and glared at Conor.

“I know people too,” he said, smiling.

“What is this?” she shouted.

“The Court is incomplete,” the boy told her. “We need our Jill of Spades to join us. You should have been at school this day. We missed you.”

“You can go and do one!” she bawled. “I wasn’t joking. My dad’s mates will have you. You won’t be so pretty when they’ve finished. The doctors won’t know which slit in your face is your mouth! Tell those freaks to back off and let me pass.”

To her consternation, Conor began to sing.

The Queen of Spades’ dark daughter, is it blood in her veins or water?

What schemes, what vices, what not very nices has her royal mother taught her?

The crowd that blockaded the road joined in, humming the tune – forming a barricade of sound as well as with their bodies. Emma looked at their faces. She recognised a few of them as kids from school, but the rest were adults and all were completely devoid of expression except that their eyes were wide and staring. With a shock, she saw that two teachers were there, Mrs Early and Miss Smyth. How demented was this getting?

The people joined hands to seal any gaps between them and began to move towards her. The defiant girl stood her ground.

“Out of my way!” she shouted at them. “Go on – shift!”

Conor continued to sing.

A plot, a lie, her spit in your eye!

You can bet your life she’ll twist the knife, as she artfully gets her own way.

There is no other, not even her mother, who so clouds the sunniest day!

The crowd advanced further.

“You’re mental!” Emma cried. “Let me by!”

She charged forward and lunged at the weird mob, trying to break through them. They pushed her back and continued walking forward.

Emma rounded on Conor. This wasn’t funny. She wanted to escape this loony lot.

So have a care and don’t trust a hair – on the Jill of Spade’s treacherous head.

Don’t turn your back on this Dancing Jack, she’ll make you wish you was dead.

“Tell your goony gits to let me out,” Emma warned. “Or someone will get very hurt and it won’t be me.”

The boy stopped singing, but instead of doing what she wanted, he laughed. “How very like the Jill of Spades!” he said, holding out a playing card to pin on her jacket. “Come join us at Mooncaster. How can there be revels without your perfidious presence?”

Emma glanced around quickly. The crowd were still humming and still moving into the car park, blocking her retreat. She looked past Conor, to where the path that ran beside the fort dipped down to the beach.

“Here’s a present for you!” she called out. A well-aimed kick sent the boy crumpling to the ground, howling and clutching his groin. Hooting with glee, she ran to the shore. Served the nutcase right.

The crowd continued to follow her. Emma dashed over the shingle. She would run round the Landguard, then back up the peninsula along the sandhills till she reached the town again. Then she skidded to a halt. Across that wide, unlit beach, just up ahead, an even greater crowd was waiting silently.

“You got to be kidding!” she exclaimed. There had to be over a hundred of them there. “What is this, a special night out from the loony bin?”

A woman dressed in a black ballgown that glittered with glass beads, wearing a sparkling tiara on her head, stepped from the assembly. She came towards Emma, swishing the ample skirt of her gown around her as she walked, and leisurely wafted a feathered fan in front of her face.

“You dolled up like that for a bet or what?” the girl barked aggressively as she came closer. “Isn’t it a bit early for panto? Where’s the other ugly sister or are you minging enough for two?”

“Come, daughter!” the Queen of Spades chided. “We knew you would be a tricky one to call to Court, but our patience is not immeasurable.”

“You ain’t my mother! You scrag-end. You look more like Dracula’s auntie.”

“Don’t keep the Ismus waiting any longer,” the woman who had once been known as Queenie scolded. “He sent us to fetch you.”

“You can forget that right now!” Emma said forcefully. “I’m not going anywhere with you lot! I don’t like rooms with rubber walls.”

She looked over her shoulder and saw that the first crowd of people had come on to the shore and were approaching. Conor Westlake was limping along behind them. She was trapped.

“Get out of my face,” she growled at the woman. “Or I’ll rip your head off and gob down your neck.”

The Queen of Spades closed the fan and tapped her palm with it irritably. “Enough now, daughter,” she said. “A struggle would be so undignified and just the sort of spectacle the Queen of Diamonds would enjoy. Don’t give her that pleasure.”

“Raving mad, every single one of you,” Emma declared. “Right, I’ve had enough…” She pulled out her mobile and started to dial. “You’re in so much lumber now.”

The Queen of Spades laughed dismissively. “If you think to summon the police of this dreary dreaming place then look yonder. She pointed behind her with the fan. A chubby police officer moved to the front of the crowd.

Emma was neither impressed nor intimidated. “So you’ve got a tame pig,” she jeered. “I wasn’t calling the law, you rancid dog’s dinner. I’m phoning my old man… hello, Dad? I’m down the fort – come get me double quick! Bring your battle gear, there’s a load of freaks and nutters here trying to…”

The Queen of Spades smacked the phone out of her hands. It went flying into the dark surf and disappeared with a plop. Emma screamed in anger. She punched the woman in the face, then the stomach and kneed her in the chin as she doubled over.

“You mad old munter!” the girl shrieked. “You are so dead!”

The two groups of people came rushing towards them. Emma tore at the woman’s hair, ripping the tiara from it. Then she shoved her on to the shingle and swung her leg back to kick her. Suddenly strong hands seized her arms. The two crowds had converged and surrounded them. They dragged the screeching teenage girl clear and held her firmly.

“Get off me – you mentalists!” she screamed. “Get off! My dad is going to kill you!”

The Queen of Spades was helped to her feet.

“The sacred text,” she instructed quickly, gasping and clutching her stomach. “Read it!”

The police officer moved in front of the struggling girl. He switched on a torch and lifted his copy of Dancing Jacks into the beam.

“Beyond the Silvering Sea,” he began.

But Emma refused to listen. She let out a deafening shriek that drowned out the policeman’s voice. Then she flung her head back and smashed the nose of the man grasping her arms. He yowled and let go. At once she swung her hands round, dashed the book from the policeman’s grasp, then pushed him fiercely in the chest. The overweight officer lost his balance and fell backwards. The girl lunged at the next person, hitting them out of the way. Then she elbowed another aside and headbutted a third. Someone came running up with a glob of minchet on their fingers, ready to smear it across her mouth.

Emma snatched the nail scissors from her pocket and stabbed the air in front of her. The person retreated and spread the sickly-coloured ointment over their own lips.

“I’ll stick anyone who gets in my way!” Emma yelled, and she wasn’t bluffing.

“Let her go!” the Queen of Spades commanded. “Let the fool go!”

The people parted and Emma moved through them warily. “Who wants some of this?” she asked. “Go on – keep back.”

They obeyed and at last she was clear. The dark desolation of the nature reserve stretched in front. Without a backward glance, the girl ran.

The Queen of Spades watched her racing away into the gloom.

“I knew it would not be easy,” the Jack of Clubs said as he hobbled up to her. “Your resourceful daughter is a force to be reckoned with.”

“She is magnificent,” the woman declared with maternal pride. But such sentiment would have to wait.

“The Ismus has ordered she be gathered amongst us tonight,” Jack reminded her.

The Queen of Spades flashed her eyes at him. “Jill shan’t get far,” she assured him. “Mauger will bring her down.”

Emma pelted over the scrubby, rabbit-cropped grass that grew on the barren flats of the nature reserve. Sporadic clumps of gorse were the only features on that empty stretch and in the darkness they appeared as dense and solid as boulders. Beyond them the black, silent sea reached to the horizon where container ships twinkled as they passed one another.

A small shape darted in front of her and Emma gave a startled yell. It was only one of the countless rabbits that infested this place. She reproached herself, but was it any wonder she was so jumpy?

Then she realised she was out in the middle of nowhere. She had run too far – like a panicky rabbit herself. The high mounds of the sandhills were way off to the left. They stood between her and the road, cutting her off from it. When her father came speeding to the rescue, she wouldn’t be able to see him. She wished he’d get a move on; she couldn’t run much further. Her lungs were busting and her legs ached like anything.

Catching her rasping breath, she realised just how unfit she was. She had never been sporty and always ducked out of games, citing women’s troubles even before she had any, so hardly ever got any proper exercise. The cigarettes didn’t help either.

Gulping the cool air down, she wondered if those maniacs were still chasing her? What were they even up to? It was too mental to begin to understand. Were they trying to kidnap her or preach at her? Mad stuff like that didn’t happen here in crappy Felixstowe.

Veering aside, she ran on to the wide concrete access path that snaked across the reserve, towards the sandhills. Her boots thudded over the hard grey surface. As the hummocky mounds reared closer, the shadows deepened about her. The gorse here grew thick and tall, spilling through the railings that ran alongside the ridge.

When she came to the point where the path ran between two hills, she paused for a moment. Her heart was hammering in her chest and she coughed and felt giddy.

A section of View Point Road was before her, running parallel to the grassy dunes. There was no sign of her dad’s car yet and the dark, lonely road looked threatening. More of those nutters could be lurking anywhere in the shrubs that lined it.