The Distant Home (11 page)

A few minutes later, a very subdued and respectful Dr Chambers was pointing to the bed in room 312. On it lay the grille from the air-conditioning duct. ‘That’s how she got out,’ he said to Jim, Maria and Kate. Agents Forbes and Soulos stood back against the wall, watching and listening. ‘Now we don’t want trouble with the courts,’ he started to say.

‘You’ve already got trouble with the courts,’ Kate snapped.

‘We want our children found,’ Maria said. ‘And then we want to know that Sally’s all right after her accident.’

‘She’s made a full physical recovery,’ said Chambers. ‘But there are certain, well,
strange
aspects to the case which would be as well to investigate.’

‘Such as?’ said Jim.

‘Need-to-know basis,’ said Soulos.

‘We’re her parents,’ Jim roared. ‘That’s our need to know!’

‘They’ll be heading home,’ said Chambers in a quiet, persuasive voice. ‘Now when they get there, we want Sally brought right back here to the hospital.’ He looked at Jim and Maria very seriously, and very sincerely. ‘There are tests I have to complete.’

‘On your specimen?’ said Kate.

‘For her own good.’ He paused. ‘Trust me.’

‘You’re a doctor?’ said Maria, her voice heavy with sarcasm.

Two streets away, a bus pulled in at a bus stop, and Sally and Bobby got on it. Sally was feeling better by the minute. The pain in her leg was gone now. Apart from her memories of the blue car looming at her, it was as if the accident had never happened.

Finding a seat, they sat down and started making plans as the bus took them toward home.

‘I’m not sure we should go home,’ Sally said. ‘They’ll only come and try and get me there.’

‘Mrs Webster said her place,’ Bobby said. ‘We can cut through the park and get in the back way.’

‘Good thinking,’ Sally said, and Bobby glowed with pleasure. Not many people had ever congratulated him on his thinking before.

As the bus took the twins toward Mrs Webster’s house, Maria, Kate and Jim were hurrying out of the hospital. Kate was trying to reassure the Harrisons. ‘That nerd Dr Chambers is probably right. Now the twins are free they’ll head home.’ She looked at Maria, still puzzled about something. ‘Sally doesn’t sound very injured, does she?’

‘In the ambulance, I thought she was dying. Now I don’t know what to believe.’ What Maria wanted to believe was what Chambers had told her: that there had been a miraculous recovery. But she had seen the accident and sat with her daughter in the racing ambulance. It all seemed too good to be true.

As Jim and Maria got in their car, and Kate got in her hatchback, a dark, sinister-looking car was already speeding out of the parking area. In it were Agents Forbes and Soulos.

Not very long afterwards, Mrs Webster was in her kitchen and heard a pinging noise from the dishwasher. This for some reason caused her to move to the microwave oven and press some of the control pads. The door of the microwave oven suddenly changed in appearance, becoming a video screen. Mrs Webster then punched in another combination of commands, and the view on the screen panned across Middle Street.

From the high angle, an observer would guess that the camera providing the picture was situated on the roof of Mrs Webster’s house. Indeed someone standing outside and looking at the roof would have seen the dragon on Mrs Webster’s weather vane moving slowly against the prevailing wind in a way that suggested it was taking a long, slow look along Middle Street.

Now the dragon on the weather vane paused in its movement, and seemed to look down at a dark, sinister-looking car which had arrived in Middle Street only moments before.

In her kitchen, Mrs Webster tapped another command into her microwave oven and the image on its video screen door zoomed in on the two figures sitting in the front seat of the dark car. One of them — the man—was holding a camera with a long lens. Mrs Webster was more interested in something she could half-see under the man’s jacket. She tapped in another command, and suddenly the picture changed and it looked like two skeletons sitting in the front seat of the car. The skeletons both had the dark outlines of handguns obscuring part of the lefthand side of their rib cages. ‘Spooks,’ murmured Mrs Webster.

Just then, another car drove up, and parked outside the Harrison house. Swiftly Mrs Webster hit the controls and the picture returned to normal. When she saw who was getting out of the newly arrived car, she moaned. It was Mrs Flannery, the wife of Jim Harrison’s boss, the odious Mr Flannery, and Cyril Flannery their appalling son.

Mrs Flannery was as svelte and as tanned as money, salons, surgeons, and private tennis coaching could make her. Today she was even dressed for tennis. Cyril was dressed for a party, and carried two gift-wrapped parcels. As they walked up the path to the Harrison’s front door, Agent Soulos was feverishly photographing them from his position in the dark car.

Mrs Webster decided something had to be done about this. She did not want Mrs Flannery and Cyril further complicating an already uncontrolled situation. Picking up her weeding stick, Mrs Webster ran to her front door, opened it, and then, adopting her little old lady walk, she tottered out into her front garden and started zapping dandelions.

Mrs Flannery was getting no answer at the Harrison front door for the very good reason that there was no one at home. ‘This is the date, the time, the place,’ she was saying, looking very vexed.

‘Those twins’ve probably done this just to spoil my day,’ Cyril whined, and then pushed the gift-wrapped parcels at his mother. ‘Hold the presents, they’re heavy.’

Mrs Flannery backed off. ‘Cyril, I don’t want those things near me. And if you touch my tennis dress, I’ll poison your goldfish!’ It was then that she noticed the old lady next door. She had a vague recollection of meeting this old lady. The recollection involved the old lady’s being extremely rude to her about Cyril’s behaviour, justified no doubt, but it had not been the old lady’s place to say it. It seemed to reflect somehow on Mrs Flannery’s parenting. But since the old lady was now going to be of some use to Mrs Flannery, she decided to forgive and forget the incident. ‘Yoo hoo!’ she called, ‘We’re here for the twins’ birthdays and no one seems to be at home!’

Mrs Webster turned to her and moved to the fence dividing her property from the Harrisons’. When she spoke it was with an elderly quaver. ‘I’m sorry, haven’t you heard? There’s been the most terrible accident, the little girl’s been knocked down by a car and taken to hospital.’

Cyril turned grumpy. ‘So I suppose that means the party’s off?’

‘Mr and Mrs Harrison are still at the hospital, I think,’ Mrs Webster said vaguely.

Mrs Flannery was reacting as if she had just been told that a comet was about to collide with the planet Earth exterminating all life forms. Whatever was troubling her was major. ‘But I was on my way to a tennis class and Henri gets very temperamental if anyone,’ and she nodded at Cyril to indicate ‘anyone’s’ identity, ‘comes with me.’

‘Henri’s a real
preeck
,’ Cyril confided to Mrs Webster, giving his last word what he thought was a French intonation.

Mrs Flannery suddenly lost her social airs and graces. ‘That’s enough of that Cyril!’ she snarled, and then recovered quickly and flashed Mrs Webster a brilliant smile. ‘We’ve met, haven’t we. Mrs Watkins is it? I’m Mrs Flannery, Jim Harrison works for my husband. If the party’s off, could I possibly leave Cyril with you?’

‘Not if you want him back alive,’ said Mrs Webster in a voice jam-packed with menace.

Mrs Flannery’s face turned arctic. ‘Okay, Cyril, leave the presents with the nice old lady and we’ll go.’

Cyril could not see the sense in this. ‘There’s no party, why hand over the presents?’ he moaned.

Mrs Flannery lost her social voice again. ‘Hand over the presents this instant you little turd!’

‘I thought we weren’t going to use the T word any more, mother,’ Cyril smirked, and handed Mrs Webster the presents. ‘Tell the twins, good going. They got their presents for nothing this year.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Wilson,’ said Mrs Flannery, dragging Cyril toward the car.

‘No sweat, Mrs Flummery,’ said Mrs Webster, and turned and went back into the house with the presents.

Across the road, Agent Soulos was photographing Mrs Flannery and Cyril’s departure.

Sally and Bobby stepped off the bus, and headed into the park, using a route which would take them through to the rear approach to Mrs Webster’s house.

‘We don’t want Mum and Dad worrying,’ Sally was saying.

Bobby had already been thinking about that. ‘When we get to Mrs Webster’s, you can phone home.’

Sally looked at him quickly. ‘Is that supposed to be a joke?’

‘Huh?’ Bobby did not know what she was talking about.

‘“E.T. phone home”?’

‘I didn’t think of that when I said it,’ he answered, and then looked at her hard. She was frowning, and he could see that she was concerned. ‘Are you really worried about all that garbage they were spouting at the hospital?’

‘It was those secret service people. They don’t call people like that in for no reason.’ She paused. ‘Bobby, what if I am?’

‘What if you am what?’

‘A thing from outer space,’ Sally said. ‘I’ve always had this weird feeling that I’m different from everyone else.’

She had stopped walking and now Bobby stopped too and faced her. ‘What do you mean?’

‘That maybe I was adopted or something.’

‘That old one? Every kid thinks that sometimes!’ Bobby waved his arms to indicate the whole world of kids who thought they were adopted. ‘Remember Cheryl Schmidt? She thought she was the child of millionaires and there’d been a mix-up at the hospital.’

‘Maybe there really was a mix-up at the hospital, but it was me,’ Sally said. ‘I have dreams that I came from some other place—’

Bobby interrupted. If she kept talking like this, he’d start believing it himself. ‘I had a dream once where I was a pig. Does that make me a slice of bacon?’ He snorted like a pig, trying to make her laugh, but failed. ‘Sally, you’re very smart, much smarter than I am, but this is crazy!’

She looked at him unhappily. ‘There’s the freaky thing about two hearts, there’s the blood colour.’

‘You’re my sister,’ Bobby said, getting upset himself. ‘I’ve only got one sister. You’re different from everyone else in the whole world.’ Then, embarrassed that he was showing his feelings, he started joking again. ‘I don’t care that you’re covered with purple scales, and drool sulphuric acid and stuff.’ This time he got a smile from her and he smiled right back. ‘You’re still my sister!’ He paused, and then said, very seriously, ‘And you always will be.’

‘But the evidence,’ said Sally. ‘None of it makes sense.’

‘Sally. It was you who said about the baby photos. You know who your mother is, you know who your father is. And you know who your twin brother is. Me.’ Then, pointing to himself, he made a hideous face and used a voice that was like a croaking shriek, and added, ‘Kranlak the Destroyer, Warlord Of Mars!’

‘I always suspected that,’ said Sally and pushed at him with one fist. He pushed back. Suddenly she was smiling warmly. They turned and moved on through the park toward Mrs Webster’s.

At the time that Sally and Bobby entered the park, Jim and Maria arrived in Middle Street in their car, followed by Kate in hers. As they got out, they spotted the dark car parked opposite the Harrison house.

On a further look they spotted Agents Forbes and Soulos, sliding down in order to make themselves look inconspicuous.

Jim’s eyes narrowed. He was getting mightily sick of this. ‘Of all the nerve!’

Kate smiled grimly, reached back into her car and brought out a small camera of the auto-focus, auto-flash variety. She then strode across the street to the dark car, lifted the camera, and started taking photos of Forbes and Soulos.

The effect was instantaneous. Forbes started the car, put it in gear, and they sped away, leaving Kate pointing her camera at thin air.

Jim and Maria applauded as Kate came back across the street to join them.

In her kitchen, Mrs Webster was also applauding. Then there was a beeping sound from the dishwasher and she turned to find that the video screen on her microwave oven was showing Sally and Bobby climbing over her back fence. Swiftly she pressed some buttons, restoring the microwave oven to normal, then moved to the back door, and was holding it open for them to come in as they crossed the back lawn.

As they came in, Sally said, ‘Weird things’ve been happening, Mrs Webster.’

‘Is that so, dear?’ Mrs Webster answered, and bustled them into the kitchen. ‘Milk?’ she asked. ‘Cookies?’

Sally was not fooled for a moment. ‘And you know more than you’re saying. You knew I had to get out of there right from the start.’

‘Woman’s intuition, dear,’ Mrs Webster said, getting down her old cookie tin.

Sally looked at her, then moved for the phone. Quickly, Mrs Webster stepped in and unplugged it from the rear of the microwave oven and plugged it into the wall. Sally looked at her, questioning the weirdness of the action, but Mrs Webster ignored the look and simply went to the refrigerator to get a container of milk.

‘I’ll need some real answers later,’ Sally said, ‘but right now I’ve got to tell Mum and Dad I’m okay.’ She picked up the telephone receiver.

‘Your parents’ phone is bugged,’ Mrs Webster said.

‘Woman’s intuition again?’ asked Sally.

‘Keep it short, don’t say where you are,’ said Mrs Webster. ‘Once you’ve done that, start on the milk and cookies while I cook you some real food. You two must be starved.’

‘Now that’s what I call intuition!’ said Bobby, cramming two cookies into his mouth at once.

Next door, Jim, Maria and Kate had searched the house and found no sign of Sally or Bobby. ‘So where would they have gone?’ said Jim. Maria looked in the direction of Mrs Webster’s house. Jim nodded, and was about to go next door and check when the phone rang.

Maria dived for it. ‘Yes!’ she said, forgetting for the moment everything she had ever drummed into Sally and Bobby about the polite way in which to answer phones.

Sally spoke firmly and swiftly. ‘Mum? We’re all right. Can’t stay on the line, the phone’s probably bugged, also the house. Love you, bye.’ And with a click, the line went dead.

Fifty yards up from the Harrison house, sitting by a telephone junction box, a phone technician with headphones on was tapping the local circuits. He looked up at Agents Forbes and Soulos and shook his head. ‘Too fast to get a trace,’ he said. Forbes and Soulos gritted their teeth and stamped their feet in frustration.

Back in the Harrison house, Maria put down the phone. ‘She says she’s all right. She wouldn’t talk, she was afraid the phone was tapped. Also that this house was bugged.’

‘That’s crazy,’ said Jim. ‘That doesn’t happen.’

‘Does any of this happen?’ Maria asked him.

‘Not to us,’ he said. ‘What do you think, Kate?’

Kate shrugged. She had come across phone taps and house buggings in her legal practice. She knew they sometimes belonged in the real world. ‘Given what you’ve told me—given that those two agents or whatever they are were hanging around the house when we arrived—Sally could be a hundred per cent correct.’

Jim saw that Maria was looking more worried by the minute. He turned to Kate. ‘Kate, thanks for the help,’ he began to say, but did not get any further.

She talked right over the top of him. ‘You’re trying to get rid of me? No way, Jim. My sister’s kid is in trouble, I want to be here.’

Maria sank into a chair. It had been an exhausting day and she was feeling dizzy with fatigue. ‘I just want everything to be like it was yesterday. I want all this to stop!’

Kate moved to her. ‘Sis, Sally’s smart. Smarter than all of us, you know that.’

‘She’s just a little girl,’ said Maria.

‘With a big brain,’ Kate answered. ‘Trust her. She’s never done an irresponsible thing in her entire life. It’s up to us to be here for her when she decides to come in.’

They all knew that it was the only thing they could do.