teddy bear in the kitchen that morning, six years ago. The morning his parents had been killed. His mother had burnt the toast. Somehow, the memories acted as a trigger. They were a signal that everything was about to change.
But why was it happening now? Everything was under control. He wasn’t in any danger. There were no chains he needed to smash, no door to be blown open. He forced himself to ignore it and was relieved when the smell faded away.
He looked up and saw that Gavin was staring at him. There were half a dozen other boys grouped around too. How long had he stood there, frozen like some sort of idiot? One or two of them were smirking. Matt struggled to finish his sentence. But he had nothing more to say.
“Loser,” Gavin muttered, and walked away.
The other boys went with him, leaving Matt standing on his own outside the chapel door. It was half past nine. First lessons began.
Thirty miles away, the police had closed an entire street, sealing each end with blue-and-white tape and the usual signs: POLICE – DO NOT CROSS.
The unconscious man had been discovered by a milkman. He had been lying on the pavement about a hundred metres away from a Shell garage. The paramedics had arrived and they had quickly established that he had been hit once with a blunt instrument… possibly a hammer or a crowbar. His skull was fractured but the good news was that he was going to live. He’d sustained other injuries too and the police suspected that he might have been a passenger in some sort of truck. Perhaps he had been pushed out while the vehicle was moving at speed.
It had been easy to identify him. There was a wallet in his back pocket complete with cash and credit cards. The fact that it hadn’t been taken automatically ruled out theft as a motive. His wife in Felixstowe had already been contacted and taken at high speed to the emergency ward of the hospital where he was being treated. From her, the police had learned that Harry Shepherd hadn’t been a passenger. He had been a driver. He worked for the Shell Petroleum Company and should have been delivering ten thousand litres of fuel to the garage close to the spot where he had been found injured.
Almost unbelievably, the police wasted a whole hour before they realized that something was missing. The petrol tanker itself. Perhaps if it had been less obvious, less huge, they might have noticed sooner. But at last they put two and two together and acted with urgency. They had already contacted Shell’s office at Felixstowe and the registration number of the vehicle (there was no need for a description) was being circulated to all units.
The petrol in the tanker was worth many thousands of pounds. Was this why the driver had been knocked out? The police hoped so, because simple theft was something they could handle. It was certainly a lot less worrying than the alternatives.
But the thought was still there. This might, after all, be a quite different sort of crime. Suppose the tanker had been taken by terrorists. The local police put a call through to London and a news blackout was ordered. There was no reason yet to start a panic. As they searched the roads up and down Yorkshire, the police remained tight- lipped. But they all knew. Ten thousand litres of petrol could create a very large bonfire indeed. They didn’t want to admit they were afraid.
The morning only got worse.
Matt arrived five minutes late for his first lesson, stumbling into the classroom while the teacher – Miss Ford – was in full flow.
“I’m sorry I’m late, miss…”
“Why are you late, Matthew?”
How could he explain? How could he tell her that he’d had some sort of premonition outside the school chapel that had left him paralysed, uncertain what to do?
“I forgot my bag,” he said. It was a lie. But it was simpler than the truth.
“Well, I’m afraid I’m going to have to put you in the detention book.” Miss Ford sighed. “Now, will you please take your seat.”
Matt’s desk was right at the back of the classroom and, although he kept his eyes fixed on the floor, he felt everyone watching him as he took his place. Miss Ford was one of the better teachers at Forrest Hill. She was plain and old-fashioned, which somehow suited her as she taught history, but she had been kind to Matt and had tried to help him fill in the gaps in his knowledge. For his part, Matt had done his best to catch up, reading extra books after school. They were studying the Second World War and he found it more interesting than medieval kings or endless lists of dates. It might be history, but it still mattered now.
Even so, he was unable to concentrate today. Miss Ford was telling them about Dunkirk, May 1940. Matt tried to follow what she was saying but he couldn’t make the words link up. She seemed a long way away, and was it his imagination or had it become very warm in the classroom?
“…the army was cut off and it seemed to many people in England that the war was already lost…”
Matt looked out of the window. Once again he became aware of the sharp, acrid smell of burning toast.
And that was when he saw it, floating through the air, making no sound. It was some sort of lorry. There was a figure hunched behind the wheel but the sunlight was reflecting off the windscreen and he couldn’t make it out. Like a great beast, it soared towards the school, plummeting out of the sky. Its headlamps were its eyes. The radiator grille was a gaping mouth. The tanker seemed to stretch into the distance, a huge, gleaming silver cylinder on twelve thick tyres. Closer and closer it came. Now it filled up the whole window and was about to smash through…
“Matthew? What is it?”
Everyone was staring at him. Again. Miss Ford had stopped whatever she was saying and was looking at him with a mixture of impatience and concern.
“Nothing, Miss Ford.”
“Well, stop staring out of the window and try to concentrate. As I was saying, many people thought that Dunkirk was a miracle…”
Matt waited a few moments, then glanced out of the window again. The classroom looked across to the sports centre, a solid, brick building on the other side of a field, separated from the main part of the school by a single road which rose steeply and then continued back towards York. There was no traffic. It was a beautiful day. Matt pressed a hand against his forehead. When he drew it away, there was sweat on his palm. What was wrong with him? What was going on?
Somehow he managed to stumble through history and then physics and PE. But the last lesson of the morning just had to be English with Mr King. They were reading Macbeth and Matt found Shakespeare difficult enough at the best of times. Today it meant nothing to him – and Mr King seemed to have built-in radar that allowed him to home in on anyone who wasn’t paying attention. It only took him a few minutes before he pounced on Matt.
“Am I boring you, Freeman?” he asked with an unpleasant sneer.
“No, sir.”
“Then perhaps you can tell me what I was just saying about the three weird sisters?”
Matt shook his head. He might as well admit it. “I’m sorry, sir. I wasn’t listening.”
“Then come and see me at the end of the lesson.” Mr King brushed a strand of hair out of his eyes. “The weird sisters tell Macbeth his future,” he went on. “And of course he believes them. In Shakespeare’s time, many people still believed in witchcraft and black magic…”
The end of the lesson took for ever to arrive and when it finally came, Matt didn’t hang around to receive whatever punishment Mr King had in mind. It seemed to be getting hotter and hotter in the school. The glass in the windows was magnifying the sun, dazzling him. The walls seemed to be bending and shimmering in the heat. But he knew that he was only imagining it. This was early summer. Looking around him, he could see that none of the other boys were feeling anything.
There was a fifteen-minute break before the entire school would cross over the road and go into the temporary dining room in the sports centre for lunch. Once again he thought about phoning Richard and asking him to help. Mobiles weren’t allowed at Forrest Hill, but there were three public phones on the other side of the quad.
