The Grasshopper's Child (13 page)

‘It's okay.'

‘Is “Angel Care” looking after you? That's a private care provider?'

‘That the Loan Company uses, yes.'

‘I wonder how you came to be placed in Mehilhoc Garden House. Any idea?'

‘Not really.'

‘You had no connection with the village? No family links? Family friends?'

‘No. Look, my dad was a lovely man, a great dad, but he wasn't good at making decisions. He trusted people too quickly. He could've let
anyone
into the house, and he could have sold the rings. He sold the rings, and then when he thought he was going to get paid, he got stabbed up instead. He was in debt, and he shouldn't have been. He was scared, he didn't want to tell me or Mum, so instead he did something stupid—

‘Do you know what
confabulation
means, Heidi?'

‘No.'

‘It means making things up, without realising you're doing it. It's a big problem for us in police work. We do it all the time, and have to try to stop ourselves—'

Heidi's cheeks burned. ‘So my mum is still your only suspect?'

‘I can't discuss that. I'm sorry, Heidi. I can only tell you the investigation is ongoing.'

‘Well, I'd better go.'

‘Enjoy your session, and thank you for the new information. Oh, by the way, we've traced your effects. They'll be delivered to your placement shortly.'

‘My
effects
?'

‘Your luggage, yes.'

‘You mean the Purple Suitcase? Thanks. That's great. Er, goodbye, Inspector.'

Heidi hadn't told the Inspector her suitcase was missing. She'd texted Virtual Verruca about it a couple of times, and been ignored. She'd been trying to force herself to phone the Angel Care inquiries number, but it was hard when she knew she'd get absolutely nowhere. She went along to the Exempt Teens session, dazed with triumph. The Inspector had listened to her, the rings
were
missing; and he was doing her another favour that she hadn't even asked for. It had to mean something. Mum was still a suspect, but everything had changed—

Gorgeous George's wicked smile greeted her as she walked in.

‘Hello, Heidi,' said Tanya. ‘We're talking about Sharing the Care; I hope you'll join in. I've asked people to share something they've learned from looking after the elders.'

‘Hope I die before I get old,' said George, grinning at Heidi.

Andy Mao, the undersized Traveller kid, stuck up his hand as if he was in Primary School. ‘It's
brilliant
. Old Corporal Harris escapes, and his family gets me to hunt him down. He's nearly a hundred and he
climbs trees
.' Andy's eyes shone. ‘It's the best school project ever!'

‘I feel I'm benefiting,' said Cyril, judiciously. ‘I don't know my Elder's views.'

Dishwater blonde Elaine blushed. ‘It's
very
hard work,' she whispered.

The group, which had been buzzing with the normal undercurrent of chat, went suddenly silent. Even Heidi knew the rumour that Elaine, who had mild learning difficulties, was brazenly getting treated like a maid of all work by her old dear's family.

Tanya changed the subject.

‘Good, well. We've heard that George
hopes he dies before he gets old
. We can all agree with that!
It's important to be young
, as Dylan said. To be young at heart, to stay young in outlook: that's essential. But you aren't going to be “Exempt Teens” all your lives, important though that role is! What about career plans? Would anyone like to share? Clancy?'

‘I can't answer that,' muttered the Hooded Boy.

‘I'd settle for staying alive,' said Brooklyn dryly.

‘I wanna be an airline pilot,' growled Sorrel.

‘I don't have any career plans,' said Heidi. ‘I don't mind what I do for a living. But I know what I want to
be
. I'm going to be a poet.'

The whole group stared at her. ‘Wow,' gasped Andy. ‘That's
brilliant!
'

‘Go on then,' said George. ‘Prove it. Let's have a poem.'

‘I'm not a poet
now
. It's what I'm going to be. But all right, here's one.'

She didn't tell them she'd only just thought of this poem, and she didn't stand up, because this wasn't Primary School. But she spoke the words fiercely, the way they sounded in her heart. The Exempt Teens were scarily dumb when she finished.

‘Impressive,' said George. ‘Not the poem, I haven't a clue about poems, I'm impressed that you just
came out with it
like that. You know no fear, Heidi.'

Changing The World Flamenco

You can scream,

Or you can dance.

It feels bad

to crouch in a corner

It hurts my throat to scream

And nothing changes.

I choose to dance

My cries become my colours

Red and Black

My bruised and battered life

Is the ruffled skirt I trail and sway

The hammer blows upon me, are the snap

Of my flashing heels.

11: The Baroque Fountain

Heidi had noticed a toolbox and a jumble of DIY oddments in the Utility room, when she borrowed her carpet tacks. She sorted out a small brass bolt for her door, and a screwdriver; after breakfast on a ferociously rainy day. Maybe she had no rights, but she'd feel better if there was
something
between her and the face. If anyone asks, she thought, I'll say my door wouldn't shut properly. Not accusing anybody of anything—

There were fresh slug trails on the dirty concrete floor: they vanished under the rusted old tumbler dryer. Fired with positive energy, she hauled the heavy metal hulk out into the middle of the room. And there they were: a disgusting fat and happy crew of slime-puppies, on the damp grey wall. She'd found the slugs' lair!

She knocked them down onto a sheet of newspaper, massacred the entire colony; ran out in the rain to dump their corpses in the Dirty Organics bin —and then decided she might as well make a job of it. It was hard work, but before it was time to get lunch the operation was complete. The Utility room was scrubbed and neat for the first time, Heidi would bet, in about ten years. She'd found no more slugs, but she
had
found a tub of wildlife-friendly slug bait, wrapped in old newspaper. She guessed Brook's mum was responsible, and decided that what Tallis didn't know, couldn't hurt Heidi. The songbirds would be fine. Any slug that found its way in here again, wasn't going to be getting out to enter the food chain afterwards. This room would be its tomb.

She hauled everything into the middle of the room, laid the poison all around the base of the walls (with an extra dose behind the dead dryer), and pushed everything back into place.

The old tumbler dryer refused to fit. When Heidi shoved it brutally, there was an ominous crunching noise. She hauled it out again. Thankfully she hadn't crushed a can of decaying old paint: only a rusty biscuit tin. It had been full of torn-up old photographs. Black and white prints, cut to bits, scorched, and even stabbed, as if someone had attacked them with the points of the scissors. Intrigued, Heidi crouched on the floor, trying to put jigsaw pieces together. Why would you destroy stuff in a mad rage, and then keep the remains? One of the fragments showed the back view of a little girl in a transparent white slip: headless, and raggedly cut off at the knees. The photo seemed to have been taken in the dark, but the child was perfectly visible, outlined in an eerie, silver glow—

The hairs stood on the back of Heidi's neck.

So that's what it's about
, she muttered. The friggy-froggy
creep
. Feeling guilty just for looking she stuffed all the scraps back, replaced the crushed lid as best she could, and hid the tin in the darkest corner of a top shelf. She listened. Was that the sound of bare, padding feet?

She went out into the dank stairwell.

‘Is anybody there?'

The Steel Door stared at her, poker-faced. Silence looked through the open door of the kitchen. She could hear the rain, rustling and pattering in the yard. Nobody. But she still felt watched.

After her lunch chores she hurried to the small greenhouse, kitted herself out for wet work and went to meet Clancy. They had an ambitious plan to get one of the surviving fountains going again. The first step was clearing debris from the broken one: where the seahorse and merman statues had fallen into the great bowl and smashed it. So far they'd only succeeded in getting the Black Swamp geyser to spout a lot higher. But one of the display boards, in the herd in the small greenhouse, was all about the Baroque Fountains, and Heidi had studied it. She knew there was an access point to the plumbing somewhere near this broken bowl. If they could find that; maybe there was hope.

It was fun trying, anyway.

Heidi wore a pair of ancient men's wellies, stuffed with rags, a waterproof jacket with a cavernous hood that reached her knees, and a cracked pair of gauntlets that came up to her elbows. No jeans, she'd left them in the greenhouse, she couldn't afford to ruin them, but she felt warmer and cosier inside this get up than she'd been for weeks. It was like wearing a house. The Hooded Boy, hardened by outdoor living, just wore his cagoule over a teeshirt, shorts, and a pair of trainers he'd given up for dead anyway. They hadn't a hope of lifting big chunks like the massive seahorse heads, but there was plenty you could do with leverage —as long as you didn't mind getting splashed, or landing on your bum in the mud now and then.

‘They diverted a stream,' said Heidi, as they worked. ‘It still has to be filling the tank, up on the downs. And the outflow from that tank still has to be connected to here, or there'd be no Black Geyser. They could shut off the fountains one at a time, for cleaning, and for the famous
sequential displays
—'

A vision of glittering crystal fireworks dazzled her.

‘How
great
if we could get the jets going again!'

‘I don't think there's enough water in our geyser for even one fountain.'

‘Okay, there's problems, but we can try. If we can start by closing off this outlet—'

‘Then if the pipes are watertight, the Geyser water should spout in the next fountain.'

‘Exactly. It
used
to work.'

Rain burst on them again. They ran for shelter to a covered stone seat, dumping a seahorse foreleg on the way. They couldn't get colder or wetter, but it was time for a break.

‘I have a horrible feeling the man I saw was family, or a family friend,' said Clancy. ‘Crace knew he was coming, that's why she let me take Mrs Scott-Amberley out.'

‘So why didn't he wait?'

‘I don't
know
. I don't know anything, that's the point. I just have this feeling my old dear is being abused. Viciously. The way she sits there, not daring to move, and the look in her eyes. The way Crace smirked when we came back too late— It's giving me the horrors, thinking how it must feel for a helpless old lady to live like that.'

‘Have you thought of talking to Tanya?'

‘Yeah, right. Has anyone tried talking to her about Elaine?'

‘You've got a point,' said Heidi. ‘Tanya doesn't want any trouble.'

Heidi and Clancy were strangers, but it was all over the WiMax posts, though never in so many words. Elaine's assigned Elder was the mother of one of the managers on the Carron-Knowells estate, so Tanya wasn't going to say a word about how Elaine was being worked to death. Nobody dared offend the lord and lady of the manor.

‘Nor me,' said Clancy. ‘I'm just passing through. It's none of my business, really.'

‘So call an anonymous helpline.'

‘Don't have a phone.'

‘There's the Public Access Booth.'

Clancy withdrew deeper into his cagoule hood, like a menaced snail. ‘Why d'you think I don't have a phone?' he muttered. ‘I don't trust, I won't touch,
anything
like that.'

Since she'd got to know the Hooded Boy, Heidi no longer thought the Mental Health Issues thing was a stupid skive. Probably Mrs Scott-Amberley was a normal dementia case, and Irene Crace was just a bit snooty. The demons eating him were Clancy's own.

She changed the subject. ‘It's weird about my two. Their cupboards are
stuffed
with off-ration food, but I never see anything coming in except the veg box. Tallis gets through her hooch like a trooper. I find the bottles, but I never see the deliveries. Did I tell you she's got a proper Chinese i-face? She just uses it for listening to ancient pop-music, but it's real, I've had a look. How did she get hold of that? Who's supplying them? And
why?
And there has to be a hotspot, but I still can't find it—'

‘D'you you really think you saw a ghost?'

Heidi had told him about the midnight apparition. She hadn't told him about the face at her door, and she wasn't going to tell him about the torn photographs either. She didn't think she had a right. She shook her head. ‘Nah; not really. I woke up in the night. I'd left my phone in the kitchen and I went to get it. I was half-asleep. I saw
something
, but I was probably imagining it. If I'd seen a genuine ghost, I'd have been more terrified.'