The Impossible Boy Read online

  ‘If that’s really how he does it,’ said Barney. ‘And it all depends on that one little word if, doesn’t it?’ He looked at Laura. ‘Who is he, anyway?’

  ‘He’s called Chas Hinton,’ said Laura.

  ‘Chas Hinton?’ repeated Barney with a smirk. ‘I know Chas. He’s in my maths class! We were both just in Mr Jones’s lesson. He was sitting about three desks away from me.’

  ‘You know him?’ said Gabby. ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘He’s all right, I suppose,’ said Barney. ‘He’s always making people laugh. Most people like him. Actually, everyone likes him. He’s dead popular. Which is a bit weird because he hasn’t been at Blue Hills High very long.’

  ‘Is that a note of jealousy in your voice, Barney?’ asked Gabby.

  Barney flushed. ‘Of course not. So Chas is brilliant and wonderful and everyone adores him. Good for him. But there’s nothing actually magical about him.’

  ‘Laura seems to think there is,’ said Gabby. ‘It’s got to be worth looking into, though, don’t you think?’

  Barney screwed up his face. ‘Yeah, OK. Why not? I suppose we’ve been a bit short on things to investigate lately anyway. We can’t afford to be all that choosy.’ He turned to Laura. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve noticed anything else strange about Chas, have you? Any other little tricks he gets up to?’

  ‘I have, actually, now you ask,’ said Laura. ‘I was going to mention it but it slipped my mind.’

  ‘What is it?’ asked Barney.

  ‘He can walk on water.’

  They searched the playground but there was no sign of Chas. None of the kids they asked seemed to know where he was. They were about to give up when Barney had an idea.

  ‘Follow me,’ he said. He sounded decisive.

  The two girls exchanged a glance and followed.

  ‘Tell us about the water thing again,’ he said to Laura. ‘In a bit more detail, please.’

  Laura shrugged. ‘It was last week. In PE. The boys’ class had just come out of the swimming pool and I was with the rest of the girls queued up outside waiting to go in. I was first in the queue. I looked through and I could see the lads getting out of the pool, going in their changing room. The last one out was Chas. He was just about to go in the changing room when their teacher, Mr Ross, calls to Chas and tells him to fetch his whistle and his clipboard, which he’s left at the side of the diving board, right?’

  ‘OK . . .?’

  ‘So, Chas looks around, making sure there’s no one there to see him – he doesn’t know I’m watching from the other doorway, of course – and then, instead of walking around the pool to get Mr Ross’s gear, he walks across it! Right across the surface of the water! He grabs the whistle and the clipboard and then he walks back the same way, on the water. Just like he’s walking on the ground. It was well weird!’

  ‘Why didn’t you mention this earlier?’ asked Barney. ‘Isn’t walking on water a few thousand times more impossible than doing some magic trick with a pen?’

  Laura looked slightly shamefaced. ‘Forgot, didn’t I? I was gonna tell my mate Sharleen about it. She was standing right next to me in the queue for the pool, but before I could, she turns to me and tells me this amazing bit of gossip about Fran Milton in Year Nine. It was awesome gossip – I’d tell you what it was, but I’m sworn to secrecy – and the thing with Chas walking on the water just went totally out of my mind.’

  Barney spluttered. ‘You saw someone walk on water and you forgot all about it because your friend told you some gossip?’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ said Laura. ‘This was pretty awesome gossip.’

  ‘It must have been,’ said Barney. He shook his head and looked at Gabby, expecting to find her as incredulous as him, but was astonished to find her giggling instead.

  He led them around a corner to the back of the school canteen where he knew there was a wheelchair ramp leading up to a fire door. The area was hidden from the main part of the playground, making it the perfect venue for dodgy activity. And it was here, standing on the wheelchair ramp, that they found Chas Hinton. A crowd of about ten kids from all years had gathered around him. They were applauding.

  ‘Thank you, kindly! Thank you! Cheers m’dears!’ said Chas in a loud, friendly voice. He was a tall boy with straight blond hair parted to one side. He wore it very long at the front so that one eye was permanently obscured by a curtain of hair.

  Barney and the two girls stood a few feet behind the audience and watched. Gabby prodded Barney with a finger. He raised his eyebrows at her. She leaned in close. For a horrified second he thought she was going to kiss him there and then in the playground. ‘By the way,’ she said in a low voice, ‘can I just say, over the past few weeks I’ve seen you really blossom into quite the investigator. The Barney I met back at the start of term would never have taken command of this case and thrown himself into investigating it with such gusto. Well done, mate.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Barney, face flushing. ‘Thanks, Gabs. Well, what can I say? I learned from the best.’

  ‘Really?’ said Gabby. ‘Aw!’ She beamed at him, her big eyes shining.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Barney, ‘I’ve been reading my dad’s Sherlock Holmes books. That guy’s a genius.’

  Gabby’s face froze. She recovered herself quickly and flashed him a tight-lipped smile. ‘Oh, yeah, yeah. They’re great books.’ She turned away.

  ‘I’m really getting into them,’ continued Barney. ‘Sherlock Holmes is a great investigator. I was thinking of writing to him for some advice – you know, about our cases.’

  Gabby emitted a strange snorting sound.

  ‘You OK?’

  ‘Fine,’ said Gabby. ‘Fine. Touch of hay fever.’

  ‘In November?’

  ‘Yeah, weird huh?’

  The applause ceased. Chas bowed modestly. ‘For his next act of perplexing prestidigitation,’ he boomed in a comical posh voice, ‘the amazing Chas Hinton requires the assistance of a member of the audience. Who’s up for a dangerous dabble with the dark arts? Which of you fancies a fiddle with some forbidden fruit? Who among you has the intellect to interrogate the intricacies of the inexplicable?’ He scanned the crowd, a hand shading his eyes. ‘Ah!’ he exclaimed. ‘There’s a familiar face! I do believe it’s Mr Barney Watkins from my maths class! Would you care to help me out, Barney?’

  ‘Me?’ mouthed Barney, pointing at himself.

  Gabby shoved him forward. ‘Go for it,’ she hissed in his ear. ‘This is your chance to scrutinise his act up close.’

  ‘A big hand for Mr Barney Watkins!’ cried Chas. The crowd of kids clapped, parting to let him through. Gabby stuck two fingers in her mouth and emitted a piercing whistle. Barney joined Chas at the top of the wheelchair ramp.

  ‘Now then,’ said Chas, ‘let’s see if we can’t rustle up a little magic for Barney here, eh? And what better way to go about the business of rustling than with . . . a paper bag?’ With an extravagant gesture he drew a brown paper bag from his trouser pocket and handed it to Barney. ‘Be so good as to check the bag if you would, Barney. Look inside it – check for any hidden trapdoors, rabbits or mirrors. Show it to the audience. You will see that it is a perfectly normal brown paper bag in every conceivable way.’

  Barney examined it. It was an ordinary paper bag of the type used by the school tuck shop. It was completely empty. He held it up for the others to see. As he did so he had the nagging feeling that while he and the audience’s attention was focused on the bag, Chas was probably subtly fiddling with all kinds of secret props and stuff unnoticed – the magician’s true art being in misdirection. He hoped Gabby was keeping an eye on Chas and not the bag.

  ‘Satisfied that it’s completely normal?’

  Barney nodded. ‘Yup.’

  Chas made great show of rolling up the sleeves of his jumper and shirt, revealing his pale, freckle-daubed forearms. He fanned his hands elegantly. His fingers were extraordinarily long and supple. ‘As you can see, the
re is nothing up my sleeves or in my hands. Now, Barney – the bag, if you will?’ He held out a hand and Barney passed him the paper bag. As he did so, Chas slipped a hand into his pocket and handed a very small metal object to Barney. Barney stared at it. ‘A pin!’ said Chas. ‘Its purpose will become clear in a moment.’ He gathered the neck of the paper bag and raised it to his lips, inflating it like a balloon with a single big gust of breath. Carefully prising the neck shut between thumb and forefinger, he handed the inflated paper bag to Barney. ‘Now,’ said Chas, ‘you’re going to do this trick, Barney. I want you to hold the paper bag in one hand and, after the count of three, I want you to pop it like a balloon with the pin. You got that?’

  Barney nodded. ‘Yep.’

  Chas winked theatrically at Barney. ‘Let’s see what happens, eh?’ He turned to the audience. ‘Everyone – one, two . . .’

  The crowd joined in enthusiastically with the count. Barney could make out Gabby’s voice distinctly.

  ‘Three!’

  The watching kids held their breath.

  Barney thrust the pin into the inflated paper bag.

  There was a loud popping sound, followed by the rapid thudding of wings. Two perfect snow-white doves soared out of the paper bag in a shower of brightly coloured confetti. Barney felt an object drop into his hands. The two doves alighted on the roof of the canteen, lingered a moment, and then climbed high into the overcast sky.

  ‘Two beautiful birds!’ exclaimed Chas. ‘And it seems one has left a little present for Mr Watkins!’

  The audience went wild with hoots and cheers. Barney looked dumbly at the object in his hands as the coloured dots of confetti fluttered to the ground all around him. His jaw dropped open. There, stuck to the back of the object was the small, faded Smurf sticker that Barney had attached to it years ago. That confirmed it. It was definitely his. He stared at Chas, wide-eyed. ‘This is my EGG! I thought I’d never see it again! How did you get it?’

  ‘Barney!’ said Chas in quiet tones of mock-horror. ‘What kind of magician would I be if I revealed my secrets?’

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE MESSAGE

  Edgar Lyndhurst rapped a knuckle on the polished oak door. The noise reverberated for a long time before dying away into ominous silence. He held his breath while he waited for a reply. Tiny beads of sweat were forming on his forehead. His hands felt icy cold and faintly damp.

  It wasn’t every day you knocked on the door of the eighth most powerful man in the world.

  Edgar was fiftyish, balding, with big thick-rimmed glasses and the kind of nose that made his colleagues whisper things behind his back – things like ‘anteater’, ‘proboscis monkey’ and, in the case of one exceptionally unimaginative person, ‘Edgar’s got a very big nose, hasn’t he?’ He was wearing a trim and tasteful dark suit and clutched in one of his clammy-palmed hands was a tiny scrap of paper. In his ears, his pulse throbbed.

  He was standing in a sombre windowless corridor, some thirty metres under the pavement of central London. It was in a part of Secret Service headquarters he had never visited before, a grey, unadorned place he had until this afternoon believed to be no more than an unused storeroom. A buzzer sounded and a notice situated directly above the door suddenly illuminated. It said simply, ENTER.

  Taking a deep breath, Edgar turned the handle and swung open the door.

  The room he stepped into was roughly half the size of a football pitch. Its bare concrete floor stretched away before him into the dim distance. The high ceiling was hung with dim bare light bulbs, which cast small circular pools of tepid yellowish light at regular intervals. In the distance, in the centre of this vast room, he could make out a small desk, its surface completely bare, behind which there sat a man.

  As he approached, Edgar became aware that he had made a miscalculation of scale. The desk was much bigger than it had seemed. In fact, as he drew closer, it looked like it might be the size of a smallish tennis court. The man behind it seemed correspondingly bigger too. He was a round-faced bull of a chap, surprisingly young – possibly even still in his twenties – with large pink jowls and an abundance of untidy yellow hair. He was sitting very grandly on what seemed to be a cross between an office swivel chair and a throne. From this he looked down on Edgar like the god of some remote mountaintop and bestowed upon him a generous smile.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he boomed. Such were the acoustics in this massive room that it was scarcely possible to speak any other way. His voice was rich and fruity and its owner obviously enjoyed the sound of it very much.

  ‘I have a . . . that is, I’ve brought – a . . . a message,’ Edgar stammered. His throat was suddenly very dry. He stared at the scrap of paper in his hands. ‘From F Section. They considered it too . . . uh . . . sensitive to trust to email. So they’ve sent me.’

  ‘I see,’ said the man calmly. ‘And what might this message be?’

  ‘Here.’ Edgar held out the scrap of paper.

  The man behind the desk tutted. ‘No, no, no! Even the tiniest piece of paper can end up in the hands of those who are not supposed to see it, can it not? Do it the proper Secret Service way. Memorise the words, eat the paper, and then repeat the words to me. Understood?’

  Edgar eyed the tiny scrap of paper in his hands. It was moist from his own sweat, its edges starting to curl. There was a grubby thumbprint in one corner. ‘The thing is,’ Edgar began, ‘I had rather a big breakfast this morning, so if it’s all the same to you, can I just read you what—’

  ‘It is NOT all the same to me!’ exclaimed the man behind the desk. His voice resounded like an angry kettledrum. ‘I gave you an order, man! Memorise, eat, repeat! Now get on with it!’

  Edgar sighed. He read the words on the paper one more time, even though he already knew them by heart, and folded the paper into a tiny square. He popped it in his mouth, where it lay on his tongue as dry and tasteless as a headache tablet. With a great effort he swallowed it, his whole body shuddering.

  The man behind the desk watched with satisfaction. ‘Good. Now. The message!’

  Edgar opened his mouth to speak, but found his mind was utterly blank. There was a second of sickening blackness during which he imagined what unspeakable punishments the man behind the desk might subject him to for forgetting the message – and then the words suddenly popped back into his mind. He got them out quickly in case they disappeared again. ‘The message says, “Magpie 94 has detected small quantities of Harland radiation in multiple UK sites.” That’s it. That’s all it said. Erm . . . thank you.’ He gave a sharp dry cough. The scrap of paper seemed to be taking a very long time to work its way down his throat.

  ‘Thank you very much indeed. That’s extremely interesting. A moment, please.’

  The man pushed a button on the arm of his chair. With a near-silent electric whir, a small hatch opened on the surface of the gigantic desk and a tiny laptop computer no bigger than a paperback book slid smoothly out. The man now typed slowly and daintily at its miniature keyboard with his surprisingly small, girlish fingers. Light from the laptop’s tiny screen flickered across his face.

  Edgar glanced around the gigantic room. It was more like an aircraft hangar than an office. He didn’t envy whoever had to clean it.

  The eyes of the man behind the desk flicked upwards at Edgar and then returned to the screen. ‘You are wondering about this office, I can tell. You are curious about its size and apparent emptiness, are you not?’

  Edgar shrugged as casually as he could. ‘Your working arrangements are no concern of mine, I’m quite sure.’

  ‘Oh come off it. You’re only human, man! It’s natural to be inquisitive. One expects it of Secret Service personnel.’ The man fixed him with a stare. ‘This office was once a storeroom, you know. It used to be filled to the rafters with blankets, medical supplies, bottled water, canned food, biscuits—’

  ‘I’m a big fan of biscuits,’ chipped in Edgar, happy to have found a subject on which he could speak with authorit
y. ‘I’m a custard-cream man myself. Fantastic biscuit. Charlotte – she’s my wife, we’ve just celebrated our thirtieth anniversary – Charlotte and I visited the factory in Yorkshire where they make them and it was by far the best biscuit factory tour we’ve ever been on. And we’ve been on a few!’

  The man grunted, but whether it was in agreement with Edgar’s comment or merely in annoyance at being interrupted, he couldn’t tell.

  ‘In short,’ the man continued, ‘there were enough supplies in here to keep a few dozen people alive for, well, potentially, years. It was the storeroom for the government’s secret nuclear bunker, you see. In the event of a nuclear attack on London – back in the days when such a thing was deemed likely – Britain’s top brass were all meant to hide down here and wait it out. Lucky them, eh?’ He chuckled macabrely at the thought. ‘That was all in the bad old days, of course, and the world is a considerably safer place nowadays, thanks largely to the efforts of people like you and me. Or more specifically,’ the man smiled, ‘me.’

  Edgar smiled politely. ‘I have no doubt.’

  ‘You see,’ said the man, ‘I have quite recently enjoyed something of a promotion. A few brief months ago I was a mere drone at the Ministry of Defence. Just another bumbling clod working on the usual top secret technology stuff. But after some pretty darn clever manoeuvrings on my part – largely due to my handling of some recent odd business at a school in Blue Hills – I’m now a far more important number here at the Secret Service. Or rather,’ and here he grinned a slow catlike grin, ‘somewhat above the Secret Service. I have tasted power and – by Jove, sir – I like it. By the way, did you know that I am the eighth most powerful person in the entire world?’

  Edgar nodded. ‘I had heard.’

  The man looked disappointed. ‘Oh. Anyway, my job is basically to stop the Prime Minister of Great Britain worrying about the state of the world, about the prospect of wars, of revolutions, of threats of all kinds. Anything that would make him want to scurry for safety underground and fill up this storeroom again. So you see, as long as this room remains empty, I am doing my job. And the PM doesn’t care in the slightest how I go about it.’