Gideon the Cutpurse Read online

  ‘Help me! Somebody help me! Ow, ow, owwww …’

  Kate was at his side in a moment. ‘Now what am I supposed to do?’ she cried. She stood looking down at his squirming body, jaw clenched and lips pursed together. Despite Peter’s continued moans, she began to look more cheerful.

  ‘I know what’s wrong with you,’ she said. ‘I woke up lying over your ankles. You’ve just got pins and needles.’ And Kate began to rub his legs vigorously like she did when she helped her mother to dry Milly and Sean after a paddle at the seaside. ‘Stamp your feet,’ she suggested. ‘By the way, do you know that you’re lying in a cowpat?’

  It was several minutes before Peter could bear to put any weight on his feet. Kate was now squatting in the long grass, staring into space. It was clear that she was thinking hard. Peter stood up and wiped his anorak on some long grass, taking a long, sideways look at the unfamiliar girl as he did so. She noticed him and her face went into a lop-sided sort of frown with one eyebrow higher than the other. Peter instantly knew who she was. It was as though someone had thrown a bucket of cold water over his head – he recognised the girl and could remember her father and all her brothers and sisters and the Van der Graaf generator and Kate and himself chasing Molly down a long white corridor. What he couldn’t remember, or begin to understand, was how he and the girl found themselves here in this beautiful, deserted valley.

  ‘You’re Kate,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I know that,’ said Kate. ‘Why don’t you tell me something I don’t know, like how we got here?’

  ‘But I don’t know,’ replied Peter. ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘Well, try,’ said Kate. ‘Think back. Try and picture everything that happened between this morning and the last thing you do remember and look for clues. That’s what I’m trying to do. Something very weird has happened to us today. One of us has got to work out what.’

  Molly could not be persuaded to leave Tim’s laboratory. When Dr Dyer tried to pull her away she bared her teeth and snarled at him as if he were a stranger. Alarmed and fearful, he left her there and ran out into the icy sunshine.

  ‘Kate! Peter!’ he cried over and over again until he grew hoarse. But the only sound was the wind in the pine trees. He rushed back to Tim’s laboratory where Molly was now howling in a way that Dr Dyer had never heard before – the animal’s unearthly cries chilled him more than the wind. What could possibly have happened to provoke Molly’s heart-rending howls of despair?

  After half an hour Dr Dyer decided that he had better call his wife. He did his best to disguise the growing panic which he felt but Mrs Dyer picked up on it immediately. When she arrived at the laboratory barely ten minutes later and saw the look on her husband’s face, her blood turned to ice.

  ‘Oh no,’ she said in a small, thin voice. ‘Oh no.’

  After another, fruitless search the security guards contacted the police. Kate’s parents sat side by side in the guards’ room with more sickening fear in the pit of their stomachs than they would have believed possible to bear. And what could they say to Peter’s father? The boy was in their care … They did not speak and they could not cry. Every time a pager bleeped or a telephone rang they both leaped to their feet only to sink back down again when it was a false alarm.

  It took the police two hours to track down Peter’s father. It took another few minutes for what they were telling him to sink in and then he got straight into his car and drove from central London to Derbyshire without stopping. He told himself that Peter would be there, safe and sound, when he reached the Dyers’ farm. But what if he wasn’t? How he wished he had taken Peter on his birthday treat instead of going to that useless meeting. How he wished Peter’s last words to him that morning hadn’t been ‘I hate you!’

  The police arrived in force at the NCRDM laboratories at a quarter to three. Flashing orange lights illuminated fat flakes of snow before they settled on the roofs of a line of police cars. Six uniformed police officers made a thorough search of the laboratories and grounds and questioned all the staff but they found no trace of Peter or Kate and no clue as to where they might be.

  When Mr Schock arrived at half past five and was informed that Peter had not yet been found, he telephoned his wife in California where she was still sleeping and broke the awful news to her. She wanted to catch the first plane back but her husband stopped her – after all it was quite likely that as soon as he put the receiver down Peter would turn up, right as rain … She agreed to delay returning for three hours but no longer.

  Meanwhile a policewoman had driven Mrs Dyer back to the farm and Dr Dyer was taken to the police station at Bakewell where he remained for the next three hours. The national and local media were alerted and by six o’clock a senior police officer had been assigned to the case.

  Detective Inspector Wheeler was a Scotsman by birth and was now close to retirement. He had been in charge of numerous highprofile investigations in his time, including several cases of missing persons all of which he had seen through to their happy or tragic conclusions. He was well respected. He was also notorious for his bad temper, his dogged obstinacy and his dedication to the job.

  When Dr Tim Williamson confirmed that the prototype for an anti-gravity machine which he was designing as part of a NASAfunded project had gone missing, it was suggested that the children might have been abducted when they came across thieves attempting to steal the equipment. Dr Williamson argued that his machine was worthless – why would anyone want to steal a device which was barely at the testing stage? Detective Inspector Wheeler secretly formed the opinion that there was more to this machine than Dr Williamson was prepared to admit. All his instincts told him that this was not going to be a straightforward case – but then, if there was one thing Inspector Wheeler relished, it was a challenge.

  ‘Did you see what happened to my hair?’ asked Kate.

  ‘So I didn’t dream it!’ exclaimed Peter, whose muzzy head was finally beginning to clear. He told Kate as much as he could remember about the Tar Man and their conversation.

  ‘He was going to sell my hair?’ she repeated incredulously. ‘And what did this machine, contraption thingy look like, then?’

  ‘I didn’t get a good look at it. I only saw it on the back of the cart when the horse was galloping away. Could have been anything. Sort of cube-shaped. Well, a cube that’s taller than it is wide.’

  ‘A cuboid, you mean,’ said Kate.

  Peter shrugged his shoulders. ‘If you say so.’

  ‘Could it have been Tim’s anti-gravity machine?’

  ‘Maybe …’

  ‘What’s the last thing you can remember before waking up here?’ Kate asked.

  ‘Chasing your dog down the corridor. You were in front of me. I guess someone must have hit me on the head. What do you remember?’

  ‘Chasing after Molly, like you. She was headed for Tim’s lab. And I’ve got a picture of spirals, floating spirals of light. Perhaps I was hit on the head, too.’ She felt her head, searching for lumps.

  Peter and Kate fell silent and stood in the ever darkening valley, lost in their own thoughts, trying to understand their puzzling predicament. Both were tired and shaky and in need of food, especially Peter, whose face was grey with exhaustion. Yet they could not bring themselves to sit down because both of them were waiting. Waiting to jump up and down and wave their arms about when the rescue helicopter or the police car arrived. After all, it was just a matter of time, wasn’t it?

  Kate stooped to pick a silky, red poppy and a blue cornflower. Just how can it have been nearly Christmas at lunchtime and midsummer by late afternoon? And what godforsaken place was this? She was used to living in the countryside but had never been anywhere this isolated: no distant rumble of traffic, no electricity pylons, no roads, not even a hint of a vapour trail left in the sky by an aeroplane. And why, infuriatingly, could she not remember what happened whilst chasing Molly down the corridor? Why, when she tried to recall what happened next, did these shapes keep
forming in her mind – long, loose, luminous spirals that seemed to pass right through her? And who precisely was this Tar Man person?

  She looked over at Peter who was kicking clods of earth high into the air. He had plunged his hands deep into his trouser pockets and his head was drooping miserably. I wonder how much help beansprout over there is going to be? Kate wondered.

  ‘You know what I think?’ said Kate.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think we must have both been hit over the head by thieves. The machine – I think they must have stolen it from the laboratory and had to take us with them because we were witnesses. I think we’ve been taken to Australia.’

  ‘Australia! You’re not serious!’

  ‘Or maybe New Zealand … Well, you explain why it’s suddenly summer, then. Do you think it’s more likely that we’ve been unconscious for six months?’

  Peter scratched his head. ‘Mmm … but if they stole the machine why did they dump it here for the Tar Man to find?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ replied Kate. ‘Perhaps they couldn’t carry everything. Or they were disturbed.’

  ‘And why bring us all the way here just to dump us? If they knocked us over the head, why didn’t they just leave us at your dad’s lab?’ asked Peter.

  ‘All right. I don’t know. But I do think we’re in Australia. And I definitely think we should stay here until they come to rescue us. They’ll be searching everywhere for us.’

  Peter nodded. ‘They’d better be … You don’t have anything to drink, do you?’

  ‘Don’t you think I would have offered you some if I had … what sort of person do you think I am?’

  Peter did not reply.

  They both fell silent again.

  ‘Maybe we should shout for help,’ suggested Kate after a while. ‘After all, the Tar Man must be long gone by now. There might be someone close by …’

  Peter shrugged. ‘Okay … it’s worth a try.’

  ‘Help!!!!’ shrieked Kate.

  ‘You really do have a loud voice,’ said Peter, wincing.

  ‘Good,’ Kate replied. ‘Aren’t you going to join in?’

  ‘Hee-eelp!!!!’ they both shouted. ‘Help!!!!’

  Whenever they stopped the silence seemed even deeper. Discouraged, Peter started to yodel instead.

  ‘YO-DEL-AY-EE-O! YO-DEL-AY-EE-O! Yo-del-ay-ee yo-del-ay-ee yo-del-ay-ee-o!’ Kate grinned for the first time since waking up in this strange land. She added her voice to the din. They yodelled faster and faster until their throats hurt too much to continue. Then Peter just shouted out whatever came into his head: ‘Tottenham Hotspur! Lightning Conductor! Diplodocus!’ Each phrase came diving back to him like a boomerang.

  Kate answered: ‘Manchester United! Supercallifragilisticexpialidocious!’

  Hidden in a tangle of hawthorn bushes and young birches, the young stranger woke up from a deep sleep at the sound of the children’s yodelling. He peered through the foliage. A crescent moon had appeared in the evening sky. Two blue eyes focussed on the children and the stranger’s face broke into a smile.

  By now the children had moved on to doing animal impressions: Kate was imitating a cow in need of milking and Peter was roaring like a lion. Then he howled like a wolf: ‘Aa-ooooh!’

  The sound of another wolf rang out and echoed around the valley. ‘Aa-ooooh!’ Its cry was strong and wild.

  ‘Was that you?’ asked Peter.

  ‘No,’ said Kate. ‘Are you trying to scare me?’

  ‘No, really, I’m not kidding. Stop playing about. It was you, wasn’t it?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t!’ insisted Kate.

  ‘Aa-ooooh!’ Another howl from the stranger’s lips reverberated across the peaceful landscape.

  A moment later, Peter and Kate were charging blindly down the grassy slope, arms outstretched for balance. They bounded, panting and spluttering, down the steep incline, scattering groups of grazing rabbits, and eventually came to a shuddering halt at the edge of a small wood at the bottom of the valley. They flung themselves on the ground, incapable of doing anything save take in huge gulps of air.

  Inside the wood it was pitch black. The pale bark of the birch trees which grew at its edge seemed to glow in the twilight. If there were wolves up above, thought Kate, what creatures would they find down here? There were sure to be deadly spiders and poisonous snakes. She would not go into the wood unless she absolutely had to. But then she looked back up at the dark slope behind her. The muscles across her chest tightened as she pictured having to leap onto a wolf’s back to get away from its strong white teeth, imagined pulling at its shaggy, rank coat and kicking at it with all her might – anything to stop those fangs sinking into her, tearing at soft flesh … At the bottom of the valley, in the dark, everything pressed down on her. She covered her eyes with her hands in an attempt to shut it all out and silent tears flowed through her fingers. Where are you, Daddy, where are you?

  Meanwhile, Peter, too, was straining to hear anything that could suggest a wolf was hunting them down. He listened so hard it almost hurt. At first Kate’s panting was all he could hear. Gradually, though, he tuned into the sound of the leaves rustling in the gentle breeze and began to distinguish a different noise … he was sure he could make out the trickling sound of a small stream.

  ‘Water!’ he shouted and, grabbing hold of Kate’s sleeve, pulled her into the darkness.

  Water had never tasted so refreshing. They lay on their bellies and dipped their faces into the freezing water. Peter gulped down so much water he could hear it slooshing around inside his stomach.

  ‘Come on,’ said Kate. ‘It doesn’t look like we can count on anyone finding us tonight. We’re going to have to find help fast if we don’t want to spend the night out here.’

  They tried to press on through the black wood, stumbling over logs and walking into invisible branches that lashed at their faces. Whenever Kate felt the tickle of a leaf or blade of grass against her skin, she became convinced it was a spider and came to halt, rubbing herself down frantically and slapping the legs of her jeans just in case.

  ‘Oh, this is hopeless!’ exclaimed Peter after a while. ‘I can’t see a thing – we could be walking around in circles for all we know!’

  ‘Okay,’ sighed Kate. ‘Let’s stay here until morning. But I’m not going to sleep, though.’

  ‘Well, I am.’

  Peter flopped down. His head was pounding and he felt weak with hunger. He looked up through the branches at the night sky. A carpet of milky stars hung over the valley. Could they really be in Australia? He began to convince himself that the night sky looked upside down.

  Kate hesitated before speaking. ‘Earlier on, when I said that I knew you were trouble as soon as I looked at you …’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘Well, that was a bit unfair – probably.’

  ‘Oh. Okay.’

  Kate lay on the bare ground next to him. ‘Roll over,’ she said. ‘I think we should lie back to back for safety and to keep warm.’

  ‘No way!’ said Peter. ‘I’m not sleeping next to a girl.’

  Kate was too tired to argue and lay with her back against a young beech tree. She could just make out Peter in the dappled moonlight.

  ‘My dad will find us, you know. He’s really smart and he’d never let anything happen to me. He’ll do whatever it takes to get us back, I know he will.’

  Kate, too, was in worse shape than she cared to admit to herself. She felt that she couldn’t get up again now even if she wanted to.

  Peter wondered if anyone had yet dared disturb an important business meeting to tell his father that his son had got mislaid.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you’re right.’

  Kate did not reply. She was already asleep.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A Breakfast of Grilled Trout

  In which Peter goes fishing and

  Kate gives her companion a fright

  When morning came the sun started
its slow descent down the valley’s grassy slopes. Far below, a ghostly, white mist hung above the stream, revealing its path as it passed through the middle of the wood where, under its green canopy, Peter and Kate slept on.

  Kate was dead to the world, wrapped around the trunk of the beech tree, her white face streaked with mud and tears. Peter, though, was beginning to stir. He looked about him. Everything was covered in beads of dew that glistened in the half-light. How stiff and damp he felt after a night sleeping on bare ground. His T-shirt was sticking to his back and a vague whiff of cowpat lingered around his anorak reminding him of the events of the previous day. He looked over at Kate, whose back rose and fell in a slow, regular rhythm.

  He decided not to wake her but to explore for a while on his own. It suddenly occurred to him that he had never woken up without a grown-up telling him what to do. What freedom! He followed the path of the little stream. Kicking his way through the bracken, Peter felt almost in a holiday mood. Somehow, this morning, he could not feel scared or miserable. He bet that the wolf which they had heard the previous night was just a big dog locked out for the night. And even though it was still a puzzle how they got here, all they had to do was find a telephone, call home and someone would pick them up straight away.

  He crouched down to scoop up some water with his hands – if there was nothing to eat, at least he could drink. Plop! Out of the corner of his eye Peter saw a fish break through the surface of the water to catch a fly. Slowly and quietly, Peter stood up to see if he could catch sight of any more. His heart leaped as he counted five, six, seven beautiful brown trout swimming upstream among the bright green weed that splayed itself out like hair in the gentle current. Their backs were an undistinguished greeny-brown but there was no mistaking their shimmering sides, speckled with dots of red, green and grey. For a boy who had caught his first trout with his bare hands on the River Frome even before he had learned to read, breakfast suddenly seemed a distinct possibility.