Spark, page 5
Jack and Ava exchanged a grin as Terry came tumbling over the fence, landing in a heap on the grass.
“Look, more blood.” Ava pointed and they ran, stooping, following the dark trail to another fence. Jack helped Terry over and they scurried through three more gardens in this way.
“It stops here,” Jack whispered, hunting around an apple tree. “The blood spots come up to this tree and stop.” He peered into the branches, where the last of the season’s ripe apples hung, and saw blood. “I think Splatty was up this tree when she was shot.”
“Let’s see.” Ava wrapped her hands around the lowest branch of the apple tree and lifted her legs, hooking them over and spinning herself into a sitting position.
Climbing up behind her, Jack used the joints of branches as footholds.
“Um, I might look around here some more,” Terry said. “You know, be the man on the ground.” He suppressed a squeal as he trod on a mouldering apple.
“You can see my house from here; well, my roof.” Jack pointed.
“There are six houses that have a clear view of this tree. The people whose garden this is, both their neighbours,” Ava said, taking a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree survey of the view, “and whoever lives over the fence at the bottom of the garden, and either side of them.”
“Unless someone was trespassing,” Terry hissed, “like we are now.”
“It must’ve been a spontaneous crime,” Jack said, ignoring Terry. “You can never know where a cat’s going to be.”
“An opportunistic shooting,” Ava agreed.
“If we find out who lives in these six houses then we’ll have our list of suspects,” Jack said.
“It could have been someone visiting,” Ava said.
“With a gun?”
“We need to find out where they all were at the time Splatty was shot,” Terry said, peering up at Jack and Ava. “But we don’t know when that was.”
“I’ll bet it was dark,” Ava said. “A big white cat up a tree would make a visible target in the dark.”
Jack heard a shocking CRACK! and twisted to see the fir tree in the next-door garden rustling as if shaken by a sudden gust of wind. A family of wood pigeons rocketed up out of its branches, calling in alarm.
“Quick!” Jack cried, moving swiftly, hanging, then dropping to the ground. “Get out of the tree! Someone’s shooting at us!”
“The shot came from over there,” Jack whispered, pointing beyond the fence at the bottom of the garden. The three of them were huddled together at the base of the apple tree.
“I don’t think they were aiming at us,” Ava said. “They were shooting at the wood pigeons in that fir tree next door.”
“I don’t like this,” Terry wailed quietly. “Let’s go back to Pamela’s.”
“I’ve got a better idea,” Ava whispered with a shake of her head. “Follow me.” She dropped onto her stomach and commando-crawled towards the next garden.
Jack followed her and, a moment later, Terry crawled after them.
“This might be our only opportunity to catch a glimpse of the shooter,” Ava said, looking back over her shoulder.
“Our opportunity to get shot, you mean,” grumbled Terry. “We’re not really doing this, are we?”
“I couldn’t see any open windows from the apple tree,” Ava went on, ignoring Terry. “If we go two gardens along and look over the bottom fence … there” – she pointed at an overgrown garden where bindweed was strangling a wild rose – “we might be able to see where the shot came from.”
“Move fast and stay low,” Jack said to Terry.
“Wait! Let’s talk about this.” Terry looked horrified.
Ava got up and took off, running fast, then, as if gravity didn’t exist, she sprang up and disappeared over the fence. Jack was impressed.
“I can’t do it,” Terry said.
“We’ll do it together. I’ll give you a bunk over. Come on.” Jack grabbed Terry’s arm and pulled him up. They hurried to the fence. Jack clasped his hands together and Terry stepped into them, grabbing the top of the wooden panel as Jack pushed him up and over. A minute later, Jack landed beside Terry.
“Run!” Terry hissed as he sprinted away across the lawn, past the fir tree.
Jack saw a woman standing on her patio, dressed in a towelling dressing gown and pink slippers, holding a watering can. She looked stunned, but before she could shout at the boys, they were at the next fence. Fear seemed to be all the bunk-up Terry needed. He jumped over on his own and a second later so did Jack.
Jack and Terry landed in a tangled heap on top of stinging nettles.
Ava covered her mouth, trying not to laugh as they jumped about cursing. The garden they were in was wild and overgrown. The grass was up to their thighs.
“Where did you learn to jump fences?” Jack asked Ava as they waded through the jungle of wild plants to the bottom of the garden.
“I do parkour. It’s like gymnastics and running mixed together.”
“You’re really good.”
Terry found a large empty paint tin in a tumbledown shed and stood on it to peep over the fence. “It could be any of them,” he moaned, stepping off so Jack could take a look.
Standing on the paint tin, Jack scanned the dark windows. He had a horrible suspicion that the house to the right was Richard Peak’s house.
“Up there,” Ava hissed, standing on tiptoe at Jack’s elbow. “Look, there’s a man at that top window.”
Expecting to see Peaky, Jack pulled his binoculars from his trouser pocket and trained them on the glass, but he was surprised to spy the weathered face of a middle-aged man wearing a peaked flat cap. He was barrel-chested with burly shoulders. The man looked angry and raised a fist as he spoke aggressively to someone. “That’s not Mr Peak,” Jack whispered. “He’s a thin, sneery, pasty-faced man.” The stranger lifted his other arm and Jack gasped. “He’s got a shotgun!” He wobbled on the paint pot and stumbled down. “The man in that window has a gun!”
“Who is he?” Ava whispered.
“Who cares!” Terry squeaked. “Let’s get out of here.”
“I’ve never seen him before,” Jack replied. “I thought that was the Peaks’ house, but I know what they all look like.”
“Maybe he’s a visitor,” Ava said.
“If he arrived by car, it’ll be in their drive. We could use his number plate to identify him.”
“Yes!” Ava looked through the overgrown jungle towards the house. “Look, there’s an alley down the side of the house out to the road. Let’s go look.” And without waiting for a reply, she sprinted away.
“I wish she wouldn’t keep doing that,” Terry muttered to Jack as they scrambled after her.
The three of them pelted into the street, haring around the corner, and running up Redshank Road.
“That red hatchback is Peaky’s mum’s car,” Jack wheezed, bending over, propping his hand on his knee while he caught his breath. “But I’ve never seen that jeep before.” He pulled his notebook from his pocket and started to note down the number plate. “It wasn’t here when we went to see Reggie.”
“Duck!” Terry yelped, grabbing Jack’s and Ava’s arms, and dragging them down behind a hedge.
The Peaks’ front door was opening. The man with the flat cap strode out of the house, swinging his shotgun idly by his side, as if it were a shopping bag.
“Tuesday,” the man grunted. “Six o’clock. Don’t be late.” He reached the jeep, tossed the gun into the back, and climbed into the driver’s seat.
“Follow me,” Jack hissed, standing up and walking confidently across the road. “Hey, guys, want to go for a bike ride?”
“Yeah, that’d be fun,” Ava replied, understanding what Jack was doing. She followed him up the drive to his house as the jeep’s engine growled.
Jack pushed up his garage door. “I’ve got three bikes. Mine, Dad’s and Mum’s.”
“I’ll take this one.” Ava grabbed Jack’s lime-green mountain bike and threw her leg over the saddle, freewheeling backwards down the driveway.
Jack grabbed his dad’s blue bike and gave Terry an apologetic shrug.
“Guys!” Terry wailed as he grabbed the handlebars of the bright pink bike. It had a basket decorated with plastic flowers, but he didn’t have time to complain because Ava and Jack were already cycling furiously down the road after the man in the jeep. “Wait for me!”
Ava stopped behind the jeep at a set of traffic lights. “This bike’s a dream to ride,” she called to Jack. He was struggling with the height of his dad’s saddle and decided to ride standing up. “Oh, your bike is lovely, Terry. It really suits you,” she teased.
“Pink’s my colour,” Terry declared, tossing back his curls and grinning.
Jack laughed. “Not sure about the flowery basket.”
“Baskets are useful,” Terry stated, lifting his chin, “and I like the flowers.”
They all laughed and whooped as the traffic lights went green. Jack couldn’t keep the smile off his face as they pedalled madly, following the jeep through Briddvale. Tailing a suspect with a gun was thrilling and exactly the sort of thing he’d imagined the Twitchers doing.
The main road through the town was bumper to bumper with Sunday traffic. Jack was surprised by the number of people he saw milling about. The town was more crowded than usual, but he didn’t have time to think about why as, once they’d reached the end of the high street, the road forked and the suspect’s jeep accelerated.
“We’re never going to be able to keep up,” Ava gasped as they pedalled furiously, trying to keep the car in sight.
“He could live in another town or be driving for miles,” Terry wheezed.
Jack was reluctant to give up, but the distance between them and the jeep was growing. “We’ve got the number plate, but we can’t do anything with it unless we witness Flatcap committing a crime.”
“He’s got a gun,” Ava said. “That’s suspicious.”
“He could be a farmer, with a licence,” Terry said.
The three of them stopped cycling, and stared at the jeep as it got smaller and smaller in the distance.
“I know,” Jack said, suddenly, “let’s hide our bikes behind the hedgerow and run to the top of the hill. We’ll be able to see which road the jeep takes. That’ll tell us which town Flatcap lives in.” Without waiting for a response, he wheeled his bike through the ditch beside the road and lifted it over the hedge, squeezing himself through a gap. He jogged up the incline of the fallow field and soon Ava had caught up with him. “Try and keep the car in sight.”
“Won’t it be too far away to tell it from other cars?”
Jack pulled his binoculars out of his pocket.
“Genius.” Ava grinned, grabbing them out of Jack’s hand and racing off up the field.
When Jack reached the top of the hill, Ava was sitting on the ground, waiting for him. He collapsed on the grass beside her. They both looked down the hill at Terry, who’d given up trying to run and was hobbling up the hill holding his side.
“What’s that big posh house over there?” Ava asked.
“I don’t know,” Jack replied. “Why?”
“That’s where our suspect went,” Ava said. “His jeep turned off the road and drove up the long drive to the big house. Then it went round the back, and I couldn’t see it.”
“That’s Mord Hall,” Terry wheezed, collapsing beside them. “Belongs to Lord and Lady Goremore. They own everything around here.”
“Is Flatcap Lord Goremore?” Jack asked.
Terry shook his head. “Lord Goremore is old, with grey hair, and one of those funny moustaches that curls up at the ends.”
“Flatcap must work for him,” Ava said.
“They live in London most of the time. They come here in the autumn for the hunting season. They throw a fancy party every Halloween. Celebrities and rich people get invited, and they raise money for charity by selling tickets to well-to-do locals. My mum says it’s to try and persuade people that they’re caring. There’s always paparazzi at the party so it gets big write-ups in the newspapers. People go crazy around here, trying to outdo each other with their costumes.”
“My mum and dad are going to that party!” Jack exclaimed, realizing it must be the one his mother had been going on about getting a costume for.
“Well, aren’t you fancy!” Terry teased.
“You know a lot about these Goremores,” Ava said, putting the binoculars to her eyes.
“They’re good to gossip about,” said Terry. “My parents talk about them all the time. They don’t like them. Although my big sister worked at one of their parties once and she made good money.”
“So, do we think Flatcap works for them?” Jack asked.
“We can find out easily enough,” Terry said. “We can ask Vernon Boon.”
“Who is also a suspect.” Jack bobbed his head excitedly. “When we interview him, we’ll pretend it’s all about Flatcap, and find out what he thinks about the cat shootings.”
“And whether he’s got a gun,” Ava agreed, turning the binoculars back on Mord Hall.
“Shouldn’t we be getting back soon?” Terry looked at his watch. “We’ve been gone ages. They’ll be wondering where we’ve got to, and we haven’t prepared the hide for the storm yet.”
Jack felt a stab of guilt. He’d forgotten about the rest of the gang aboard the Kingfisher. “How bad can the rain be?” He looked up. “There are barely any clouds in the sky. It if happens, the storm will probably be a flash of lightning and a light shower. You know how grown-ups worry about weather. They say there are high winds when an empty bin gets blown over.”
“We can be back at the boat in twenty minutes on the bikes,” Terry said.
Ava whistled and handed the binoculars to Jack. “That is a nice car.”
Jack saw a champagne-coloured Bentley roll down the drive to Mord Hall. A man in a chauffeur’s uniform opened the rear door and Lady Goremore stepped out. Her hair was pinned up in a swirl of black and silver and crowned with a miniature top hat sprouting a short black net veil that covered her face. She had changed into a tweed suit with leather elbow patches but was still carrying her riding crop under her arm. “It’s her,” Jack whispered. “It’s Lady Goremore.”
“Where? Let me see!” Ava grabbed the binoculars. “Whoa! She looks stuck-up.” Her head turned as she followed Lady Goremore. “Oh!” Ava recoiled, glancing back at Terry and Jack. “She just kicked one of her dogs!”
Jack took the binoculars, tracking Lady Goremore as she stalked up the stone steps of the intimidating mansion bristling with anger. Every gesture transmitted intolerance, cruelty and coldness. He didn’t need to go into Mord Hall to know it would be dark and sinister inside, and he wondered what it was that Flatcap did in there…
“Where’ve you been?” Tippi demanded, crossly, when Jack, Ava and Terry boarded the Kingfisher. “You went away for hours!”
“Keep your hair on, we’re back now,” Ava replied.
“We’ve been practising our sign language, haven’t we, Tippi?” Tara said, defusing the tension. “Twitch thinks, if we get close to the vulture, we should sign so as not to make noise and frighten it away.”
“Thanks for looking after her,” Ava said over Tippi’s head.
“I don’t need looking after,” Tippi protested. “I’m nearly nine.”
Jack signed an apology to Tippi, and she accepted it with a signed reply. Then she pointed at her big sister, made a fist, and circled it in front of her nose. Jack laughed.
“What did she just say?” Ava asked. “I didn’t see.”
“Tippi said you were a pig.”
Ava pretended to be cross and chased her little sister into the back of the boat. Tippi shrieked with laughter as she ran away, oinking and snorting loudly.
“Everything OK here?” Jack asked, sitting beside Twitch at the table.
“Better than OK.” Twitch nodded, happily. “Nan showed me this website that twitchers use to log rare bird sightings. You can track the lammergeier’s journey from the Pyrenees, over the Channel to England. Unless it veers off course, they are predicting that it will pass through Briddvale in the next couple of days. It’s getting closer and it’s flying with a flock of ravens.” He smiled. “I’m taking that as a good sign.”
“Why are ravens a good sign?” Terry asked.
“Twitch’s real name is Corvus,” Jack said. “Corvus means raven.”
“Oh yeah.”
“Do you think that’s why the high street is so crowded?” Jack said. “Are birdwatchers coming to Briddvale to see the vulture?”
“Any bird lover who can travel will, for a sighting of such a special bird.” Twitch frowned. “I thought you went back to the hide to prepare it for the storm? What were you doing on the high street?”
“Oh, er, I did.” Jack’s stomach lurched at having to come up with a lie. “But after that, my mum phoned and asked me to do an errand in town.” As the words came out of his mouth, Jack could feel himself getting hot. They all knew mobile phones didn’t work in Aves Wood. “That’s why we were gone so long, isn’t it, Terry?”
Terry’s mouth opened and closed, alarmed at being dragged in, but he nodded his head.
“Oh, right.” Twitch accepted Jack’s answer without question. Jack felt horrible. “I don’t suppose you noticed whether people in town were carrying binoculars or going into the Outdoors Store? I’m worried that, if hundreds of birdwatchers come, they’ll all realize that Passerine Pike is the best place to watch for the vulture.” He pointed at the map spread over the table, which now had lots of marks, dotted lines and circles in red pen. “I think the lammergeier will come this way, from the east or northeast. It won’t pass over Aves Wood.” He tapped the map. “Because it’s a mountain bird, and Briddvale is in a valley” – he ran his finger north – “it makes sense that the vulture would head for Passerine Pike. It’s the tallest hill for miles.”
“We’ll be able to see it coming from the skywatch hide,” Ozuru said, sounding pleased.
“Where exactly is the skywatch hide?” Jack asked.
