The Case of the Exploding Loo (18 page)

Porter grinds his teeth. “It’s bad enough to lock her up. But to abandon her when the building’s exploding around us? That’s just evil!”

Dad shuffles his feet.

Mr Kumar (maths) looks troubled. “You cannot be saying a child is imprisoned within this building?”

“He’s not saying anything.” Ms Grimm gives Porter a shake and stomps across the room to fling open Dad’s office door.

The corridors are full of Remarkable Students scrabbling for the nearest exit. When they realise the doors and windows are locked and no one intends to open them, they start smashing windows,
ramming doors and trampling each other to the ground in their desperation to get out.

Through the commotion, Mr Kazinsky barrels down the corridor, carrying a large box of matches in his teeth and rubbing his blackened hands in glee. The CCTV room explodes behind him in a ball of
fire.

“Ka-boom!” Mr Kazinsky announces, looking pleased with himself. “I made a Ka-boom!”

“Ka-boom, indeed!” Ms Grimm carefully removes the matches from Mr Kazinsky’s mouth. “A little over the top, perhaps, but since the fire’s already burning, we should
use it. What that fire needs is food. Files, papers, evidence, anything you can lay your hands on. Feed the fire, people. Feed the fire.”

Mr Kazinsky leaps around Dad’s office, grabbing papers to burn. Dad, Fake Insurance Man and Ug join the frenzy – their disagreements forgotten in the race to destroy evidence.

In the background I hear banging and splintering as the police try to force their way in and Remarkable Students try to force their way out. I don’t realise Mr Kumar (maths) has
disappeared until I spot him and Aisha half carrying, half dragging a fuzzy-haired girl along the corridor. Aisha is brandishing a large key chain, and smiling for the first time since I met
her.

“It’s Gemma,” I shout across to Porter. “Aisha and Mr Kumar (maths) have Gemma.”

Porter sticks his thumbs up and hobbles across to Gemma, who reaches for him, wrinkling her nose and breathing through her mouth as she pulls him into a hug.

Mr Kumar (maths) unlocks the front doors and helps the Remarkable Students to safety as the police force their way in. Fake Insurance Man and Ug slither out among the students and Mr Kumar
(Curry in a Hurry) grabs his brother by the collar and drags him along with the crowd, muttering at him ferociously.

Gemma and Porter take over door duty until a teary-eyed blond couple arrive and scoop Gemma up, kissing her again and again, to the point where I can almost feel the saliva. They bundle her into
a nearby estate car and drive away quickly. Gemma presses her face against the window, her eyes fixed on Porter as she disappears into the distance.

Porter’s chin wobbles, but when he sees me watching he sticks out his tongue and hops down the corridor to help Jangly Keys Dave and his kitchen army throw giant saucepans of water onto
the fire. I admire the effort, but if the heat and the flames haven’t already killed the CCTV room laptops, the water will finish them off for sure.

Aisha steps forward to man the doors, helping everyone get out and explaining the situation to the police. She can’t call herself a coward now.

I rest my hands on Dad’s desk, feeling tired.

Pythagoras!

The car keys have disappeared. So have Dad, Ms Grimm and Mr Kazinsky.

One glance at the plasma screen and I can guess where they’ve gone. I grab Porter and Holly and drag them out of the school, flagging down a taxi when we reach the kerb.
“Kazinsky Electronics. Fast!”

Why isn’t the brain ray working? It doesn’t make sense. The Meccano cage isn’t enough to stop the electromagnetic waves, so what’s blocking them?

As we reach the electronics store, the taxi driver swerves to avoid a badly parked turquoise van.

“Those stupid Kazinsky Electronics vans are everywhere,” I grumble.

“Dur!” Holly kicks me. “This is the Kazinsky Electronics store. Where else would they be?”

Good point. But they’re not all here, are they? One van is outside our house, zapping LOSERS’ enemies. Mum!

Mum?

Albert Einstein!
That can’t be possible!

Behind us in the van we almost hit, her flesh overflowing through the window, is a woman who looks just like Mum. But It can’t be, can it? Not Mum who hasn’t left the house for
months? Not Mum who doesn’t even get off the sofa to sleep any more?

I tell the taxi driver to reverse so I can get a better view. It
is
Mum. I’m sure of it! I should have pulled those earphones out weeks ago. Look at her now, out of the house,
driving around town in a mobile brain-ray van.

Hang on.
Why
is Mum driving around town in a mobile brain-ray van? The negative brain ray will have no effect if the positive brain ray is switched on. They’ll cancel each other
out . . .

Eureka!

My skin tingles. “Mum’s done it! Mum’s created a scalar wave!”

“A scaly what?” Holly clicks open her seat belt as the taxi pulls up to the kerb.

“A scalar wave,” I explain. “When two electromagnetic waves of the same frequency meet and are exactly opposite, their amplitudes destroy each other. The energy is transformed
back into a
scalar wave
.”

Holly just stares at me.

“Geek speak!” Porter clambers out of the cab, yelping as he puts weight on his bad ankle. “She does it to me all the time. I tell myself it would be worse if I actually
understood what she was saying.”

“Hey!” I protest. “I am here, you know! I’m saying the combination of the Faraday cage and the negative mobile brain ray that Mum hijacked is cancelling out the super
brain ray inside Kazinsky Electronics.

“Mum?” Holly screws up her face. “You’re saying Lindon’s brains are being saved by Mum?”

I nod. “Before the Curry in a Hurry iPod arrived, I used to sit on the sofa with Mum and talk to her about scalar waves. I had no idea she was actually listening! But she must have picked
up the toilet paper note, put two and two together and hijacked the mobile brain ray.”

It doesn’t sound any more likely when I say it out loud, but maybe that’s because I’ve got too used to thinking of Mum as a zombie.

“I don’t see how she could do it.” Holly shakes her head. “Not by herself.”

“She has size on her side,” I say.

“And she’s not by herself,” Porter adds as the van’s passenger door opens and a man wearing a navy sweater emblazoned with the slogan “Milk is not just for
kids”, clambers out.

“The milkman?” Holly squeaks. “What’s he doing here?”

“No idea,” Porter says. “But he and your mum appear to have the scaly wave thing covered.”

Holly looks at me. “Well, at least one of our parents is on the side of truth and justice,” she says. “Speaking of which, where’s Dad?”

I point across the road to where Dad, Ms Grimm and Mr Kazinsky are sneaking around the back of Kazinsky Electronics. “They must be on a mission to get the brain ray functioning
again.”

“Well that’s not going to happen.” Holly races after them.

Porter and I follow more slowly – Porter because he only has one working leg, me because I’m trying to come up with a plan before I go charging in.

The police have cordoned off the front entrance so we can’t get in that way, but Mr Kazinsky has left the back door open (probably for a speedy exit) so we move a few bits of Meccano aside
and enter that way, quietly making our way past office rooms and store cupboards full of iPods and other strange looking gadgets.

“Shhh,” Holly hisses unnecessarily as we step into the Kazinsky Electronics showroom.

She locks the door behind us and slides the key underneath it, so we couldn’t unlock it even if we wanted to.

“No escape this way.” Holly gives a satisfied nod. “Their only chance of freedom now is through the front door where the police are gathered. All we have to do is cover the
front exit and yell for backup.”

A plan! I like it.

“Where’s Dad now?” I ask.

Holly points to PC & VIDEOGAMES where Dad, Ms Grimm and Mr Kazinsky are huddled around a two-metre tall brain ray, that’s been set up to look like a game accessory.

“I think they’re trying to fix it,” Holly murmurs.

“Nothing to fix,” I tell her. “It’s working. It’s just being suppressed by the Meccano cage and then cancelled out by Mum’s negative brain ray.”

“We need to trap them before
they
realise that.” Holly inches towards the TV & HOME CINEMA section at the front of the store. Gesturing for us to follow, she grabs a few
boxes from KITCHEN & HOME APPLIANCES and tiptoes towards the entrance.

We are only metres away from the front door when Porter blows our cover.

Porter turns to check out a massive plasma TV and yelps in horror as he comes face-to-face with a life-sized cardboard cut-out of Mr Kazinsky. Backing away, he bumps into a
shelving unit, dislodging a pile of speakers, which come tumbling down around us.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he mumbles, hopping around, stumbling on speakers and knocking into more display shelves. “. . . It’s the face . . . ouch . . . sorry, sorry,
sorry!”

He’s right about the face. Above the cheesy thumbs-up, Mr Kazinsky’s cardboard features are locked into a freakish expression of over-excitement. I shudder and give Porter an
understanding half-nod. But Holly is less sympathetic. She whacks him with the boxes she took from KITCHEN & HOME APPLIANCES and then whacks him again as the adults start heading in our
direction.

Ada Lovelace!
This is a nightmare. Instead of being able to sneakily alert the police, Porter, Holly and I are now in the direct flight path of three deranged adults, all desperate to
avoid being caught.

I grab cardboard Mr Kazinsky to use as a weapon. Holly whips two electric kitchen knives out of their boxes and then growls when she realises there’s nowhere to plug them in. Porter just
stares at his mother and hops back and forth, apologising continuously as Dad, the Grimm Reaper and Mr Kazinsky power towards us.

I manage to slow Mr Kazinsky down by bashing him repeatedly with his cardboard doppelganger and Dad veers off towards the back door when he sees Holly brandishing the kitchen knives. But Ms
Grimm continues charging right at us. Despite a heavy barrage by cardboard Mr Kazinsky and several unplugged kitchen knives, Ms Grimm manages to smash her way through both our line and the police
cordons and is quickly swallowed up by the crowd.

Holly kicks the wall and then kicks Mr Kazinsky. I edge round her, keeping a safe distance, so I can lock the front door and trap Dad and Mr Kazinsky inside. Porter just stands there, staring at
the floor. I remember him stumbling backwards as Ms Grimm approached. Did his ankle give way or did he let her escape? Would I blame him if he did? She’s a monster but she is still his
mother.

Should I let Dad go free too? I touch the key in my pocket as Holly smacks her palms against the store window to get the police’s attention.

“Don’t be hasty, Holly.” Dad’s sweating now. “We don’t need to involve the police. You know this was all Mallory’s idea.”

Porter snorts.

“I had no idea about this negative brain ray,” Dad says. “Not until last night.”

“That’s true.” I edge closer to him.

“And what did you do when you found out?” Holly asks.

Good question. I shift back towards Holly.

“I couldn’t do anything. Mallory wouldn’t let me,” Dad says.

“Also true.” I don’t know which way to move and I need to decide quickly. A group of policemen is heading towards us.

“How did she stop you?” Holly asks. “Did she drug you? Attempt to brainwash you?”

I remember the hot chocolate and the talking shoes. I reach in my pocket and hand the key to Holly.

She takes it and moves closer to the front door. “You must have known something was wrong long before last night,” she tells Dad. “You set up the cameras. You could see Mum
needed help.”

“I’d never hurt your mother. I want to help her. I want us all to be together again.” Dad’s voice is low with no squeaks.

I try to tell myself he’s not lying and he wants to be a family, but Holly’s smile makes me nervous.

“Perhaps we can make your wish come true,” she says, pointing through the shop window. “Mum’s just outside, look! There she is with her scaly wave.”

“Her wha—?” Dad’s jaw drops open, making it hard to form consonants. “Sca’ar wa—? Noooooo—!”

“I think the milkman helped,” Holly adds innocently.

Dad squints through the window and punches a Kazinsky plasma TV, smashing the screen. “Noooooo. Tha’ . . . Tha’ . . .” Unable to find words to describe the milkman, Dad
punches another telly.

“Looking lively for a corpse, Mr Hawkins.” Manly Officer from yesterday calls through the glass.

As Holly unlocks the door, Dad stops punching and starts blustering. “He did it,” he says, pointing at Mr Kazinsky, who’s staring open-mouthed at the broken TV screen.
“He’s crazy. He started the fire. This is all a terrible misunderstanding.”

“Indeed it is,” Manly Officer agrees. “You appear to have misunderstood the law and underestimated our intelligence.”

I snort and then worry about whether twelve-year-olds can be arrested for disrespecting a police officer. To my relief, a smiling, grey-haired, clean-shaved-Santa figure arrives with a second
group of police officers.

“PC Eric!”

He holds out his hand for me to shake. “Noelle Hawkins, I presume!”

Some of his fellow officers groan. Maybe they have food poisoning. I’ve heard bad things about police canteens. PC Eric frowns at his colleagues.

“It is an honour to meet you in person, young lady. I believe my colleagues owe you an apology.”

“That’s not necessary.” It’s easy to be forgiving now I’ve been proved right. “The police never believed Sherlock Holmes either. Not at first.”

One of the younger officers rolls his eyes.

PC Eric stares at him until he mumbles, “Sorry.”

PC Eric nods. “Well, they believe you now. You were right about the explosion being faked, right about the shoes being a red herring, right about your father being at LOSERS, right about
the need to save Gemma Gold from her iPod, right about Mr Kazinsky’s Electronics shop, and right about the imaginary brain ray. Anything I’ve left out?”