Rift (7 page)

‘Inspector, I really don’t see . . . ’

Ella cast a glance at Joe. He kept his eyes down, refused to look at the woman even when she spoke to him. Except, Ella saw, for a fleeting astonishment when Miss Strutton suddenly stopped arguing and moved away.

‘Now the smiling Miss Strutton is not in good humour,’ she heard the inspector’s murmur to the sergeant. ‘It is this way always?’

‘Oi, I have seen this!’ came the reply. ‘If you contradict her too much, she will give you a detention!’ The sergeant waggled his head, grinning at his own joke.

Murothi grunted, and Ella noticed how deliberately he turned his back towards Miss Strutton’s position at another
table. He ushered Ella and Joe to seats, and went off with the sergeant to fetch bowls of food ladled from a large metal pot.

Joe, sitting opposite Ella, was lost at once in some private web of thought. His face was so forlorn, Ella itched to smooth it away.

‘Joe?’

He looked up at her.

‘You OK?’

As if seeing things for the first time, he looked round, then back at her.

‘Bit weird. Sorry – dunno . . . ’ he spoke hesitantly. But perhaps he looked a little less haunted. Smiled at her even, just slightly.

She concentrated on the bowl of thick, sweet maize porridge the inspector placed in front of her. But hunger warred with a new churning of her stomach at Sergeant Kaonga’s morning report to the inspector, delivered rapidly between gulps of tea.

‘The climbers have begun again, just now. Yesterday they are going up the gully where Joe was found. They are looking into all the little ravines on the sides. They must go carefully, carefully. Now it is dry, but when the rains come, it runs down this way, angry, angry, everything slips, down, down, sometimes,
the rock is just clinging, ready to fall. These people are looking everywhere. Nothing. Today they will go again, straight to the top. This ridge has not been surveyed from close up, on foot. We will hear if they see anything. This is certain. Constable Lesakon and Constable Lakuya will call me on the radio, Sir.’

Ella put her spoon down. The inspector, ever alert, turned to look at her, questioningly.

‘There’s Charly’s place. Like she says in her letter, where she likes to go –’

‘Of course, of course,’ the sergeant interposed. ‘That is not far. Inspector Murothi has already asked of this, and others have told us of your sister’s liking for this place. It has been searched. All – from there to there,’ he flung his arms to denote the length of the rock. ‘It is certain, the whole of the flat area on this side was investigated, on foot and from the helicopters, the first day. Many people came to help! Now it is the turn of the other side.’

‘Yes,’ Ella said. She picked up the spoon again. She couldn’t face even a mouthful. She dropped the spoon into the bowl.

‘Eat, Ella,’ said the inspector. ‘We need you to help us think. The brain needs food. This is our task, to
think
, to ask, to make others think. No despair. The answer is here. The answer
is
here. We will find it.’

Sergeant Kaonga nodded energetically. ‘Eat!’ he echoed, aiming his words at Joe who was hunched over and staring into space again.

Suddenly two girls at another table stood up, looked round at Joe, and then peered further along where Miss Strutton and the other teachers sat. Joe, with his back to the girls, did not see them.

Rapidly and decisively they crossed the grassy gap between the tables and stopped beside Joe.

‘Hey, Joe,’ one said. ‘How’re you doing . . . ?’ She trailed off at the inadequacy of the question.

As if stung from a daydream, Joe straightened up.

‘Where’ve you been, Joe? I mean, where’d you go? Where’s Anna –’ stopped by the nudging elbow of the other girl. She reddened, ‘Oh, yeah, sorry, only . . . just . . . no one’s telling us –’

Joe shook his head, ‘It’s OK, Tamara – well, it’s – sort of . . . ’

At which point Tamara seemed to notice something behind Joe. She moved round him sharply and turned her back towards whatever it was. It was such a defiant, blocking gesture, that Ella leaned to see past her at what was there.

Just another group at the next table. Boys and girls. No one looking their way. Nothing in particular Ella could see.

Tamara turned her attention to Ella. ‘They say you’re Charly’s sister? Are you going out on the searches? We’re not allowed to. They’re afraid we’ll get lost. So we’re just all hanging about. I’m Tamara, this is Janey. Are we allowed to talk to you? Miss says –’

‘Miss doesn’t get to say any more,’ Joe broke in, abruptly shedding the vagueness. ‘
He
does,’ indicating Inspector Murothi. From his determined concentration on the empty plate in front of him, Ella could tell the policeman was listening to every word.

‘Oh, right.’ Tamara glanced at Janey as if for guidance. There was none. She went on, ‘I s’pose, we’ve got to go, really. We’re on kitchen duty in a minute. We’re not doing trips out of the camp, till everyone’s found, so Miss’s got this B-I-G Idea to get us working on the
Competition
, and she’s doing a
Briefing
, at 8.30.’ She rolled her eyes elaborately, threw a nervous smile at Joe and Ella, then moved away. Janey followed her a few paces, stopped, turned round again, and said in a rush, aimed at Ella.

‘Look, if you – you know – want to hang out, that’s our tent over there.’ She pointed along the first row. ‘Fourth along, the greeny-browny one. Any time, we’re just round there all today.’

Surprised, grateful, Ella looked where she pointed, ‘Oh! Thanks, if it’s OK –’

‘Can I say this,’ interrupted the inspector, ‘you may talk to anybody you wish to, Ella.’

‘That’s what I said. I’m saying,’ Joe muttered with extraordinary ferocity, ‘if it’s how Miss wants, no one gets to talk to
anyone
about
anything
!’

Janey flashed an embarrassed look at Ella and then Joe. ‘Look, Joe, you come over to our tent if you want. There’s me and Tamara and Antony and Zak . . . and, you know . . . like, sorry, really . . . ’ and she marched away rapidly without risk of possible answer, throwing a last, fraught look at Joe.

Light-headed from a night of ragged sleep, Joe watched her go, tensed against the next weird feeling to hit him – flares of colour, tilting ground, like he was on some invisible roller-coaster; or the echo, some bird, twanging his nerves –

Got to work it out. Got to. About Charly, about us being in Charly’s tent.

Ask Inspector Murothi.
Can’t be the same reason
, Charly being gone. But not in front of Ella. She thinks Charly’s with Anna and Matt and Silowa. Don’t want her to hear, don’t want to make her more scared. Tell her to go with Janey and Tamara, like they said.

Matt. Tent. Matt
. . . the struggle to recall, to understand, was a pounding in his head, like trying to batter a door open.
Shadows twisted across the edge of his sight, gone when he tried to look at them.
No
, not shadows, fired with red . . .

Why were we waiting? Why Charly’s tent? Why did we GO there, when she wasn’t there?

He felt someone stand beside him. Close. He looked up. There, leaning against the table, was Sean.

Sean.

Rewind two weeks. Four days into the trip – Joe’s stuttering memory dumps him there all over again.

Breakfast. Matt’s on the far side of the table. He’s yammering at Anna, peppered with sounds on his harmonica to demonstrate. Joe, sitting opposite, can’t really hear, just notes the attentive tilt of Anna’s head and likes her for it: Matt rants on a bit about music.

Anna’s nodding, offering suggestions. Matt’s telling her his new idea – mimicking birdsongs, animal grunts, roars, snuffles. There’s been a few in the night, bringing everyone out of bed to the netting at the front of their tents, straining eyes through darkness to spot anything move. Matt stayed up for hours, his shape outlined against the sky as Joe drifted back to sleep.

In the morning he’s all charged up about it. ‘You can hear a lion’s roar five miles away! Tomis told me.’ The ranger has been giving them talks: ‘Animals of Chomlaya’; Matt fires endless questions, experiments on the harmonica for Tomis’s approval. The ranger laughs a lot, entering into the spirit of the
enterprise, hooting and snorting and squealing to show Matt.

‘Look, look, Joe! Imagine a lion being right up at the tent! Tomis says they come to drink just along the ridge there. And that laughing thing, ending like a groan? That’s a hyena, he says they’ll sneak right into the camp at night. The snuffly, snorty stuff – that’s an anteater. We might get elephants too! Imagine falling into these big holes outside the tent and they’re elephant footprints that weren’t there when you went to bed. Just
think
what it’d feel like! It’s happened to Tomis. He’s sleeping near this river, right? The elephants just come round him and drink and then they go away again. He doesn’t wake up, just finds it all in the morning!’

‘You could do water and wind sounds too,’ is Anna’s suggestion. ‘Let’s go along to the stream. There’s that place where it gurgles in the rock, and then the swampy, reedy bit with all the rustling. Hey, let’s do that later. Joe, what do you think? Matt could call it “Wildsong”, or something?’

Joe doesn’t know it then, but it’s setting her off on some obsession of her own, too. Some time that day she begins the sketching in her logbook. They’re all meant to keep a logbook of Chomlaya Camp. But none of them are.

Miss Strutton’s spotted that. She’s announced a Logbook Inspection. Rewards and Punishments To Follow.

Joe’s really thinking about that, half-listening to Matt and Anna. He’s deciding: sort something out, quick. Preventative action. Collect stuff – feathers, leaves, seeds – even flakes of bone and flint from the archaeology place. Stick them on the pages, quick. Label them later.
Evasive tactics.
Stop Miss registering his existence.

Third ‘inspection’ she’s called. She’s got a thing about inspections. Infusing discipline and team spirit, she calls it. Points given for this, points cancelled for that.
Weird.
Like they’re a bunch of primary school kids.

Joe’s never been taught by Miss Strutton at school. So, so far he’s out of sight, out of mind. Keep it that way, he’s thinking. Duck and weave and dodge: bad enough she’s got Anna in the line of fire already.

Now Matt’s playing rising and falling notes, ending with a fast pulsating sequence: not a bad imitation of one of the birdcalls that echo across the treetops at dusk.

Joe hasn’t noticed Sean. No one has. Just, suddenly, that long arm swoops out of nowhere, plucks the harmonica right out of Matt’s mouth, and that voice, ‘Here, let’s
see
that.’

Sean. Joe knows him by sight. He’s in the year above at school. Goes round with people Joe knows from swimming club, but he’s never spoken to Sean. Nothing to make him
stand out, nothing to make him stick in Joe’s memory particularly, before.

There is today.

He’s turning the harmonica over, looking at it, then he’s shoving it in his mouth and blowing. It gives off a kind of strangled screech. A couple of girls nearby laugh, maybe at that, maybe not. But Sean looks at them. Nothing in particular in the look either.

Is there? Maybe there is, in that blankness of his. Like there’s no focus in his eyes.

He turns his gaze back to Matt. And then, slowly, to Anna. He looks at her for a moment. A long moment. And she flushes, looks angry. But doesn’t say anything, like you’d expect.

And then Sean starts to toss the harmonica. Just a little – throw, catch, throw, catch, throw . . .

‘Hey, watch out!’ yells Matt, ‘you’ll drop it, you’ll dent it, that’s . . . ’

Each throw’s just a little higher, just a little harder, and Matt, frantic, lunges for it. Sean catches the harmonica above Matt’s head, lobs it way out of range, and Matt’s leaping to the bench, missing his footing, crashing down, trestles thud over, people topple – squeals, shrieks – Anna trying to pull Matt up, Sean tripping and falling, and the harmonica hits the ground,
bounces high on the grass, Matt flinging himself after it, yelling, the uproar sliced by the screech of Miss Strutton’s voice.

Not anyone else.
Has
to be Miss Strutton. Like she hovers, somewhere invisible, poised to pounce.

‘Anna!
Again!
‘

And Matt’s shout, ‘No, Miss! It’s him, he’s nicked my harmonica!’

‘No,
I
have it, and it’s
mine
now.
Permanently.
If your minuscule brain can absorb such a word.’ She rakes them with her practised look of distaste. ‘If you two think you can run amok whenever you like, you can think again. No trips – for either of you – today. Clear up round camp. On second thoughts, you can also do the meals today.
All
of them. Report to me this evening.’ She ignores Matt’s, ‘But Miss, he just swiped it . . . ’ and Anna’s open stare of contempt.

‘Now, Sean, go and help Katra get the solar shower up into the tree.
That
genius girl has just designed one. Worth a few team points between you, I’d say, to make up for the ones
other
people work so
hard
at losing.
Won’t it
?’

Miss Strutton.

Miss Strutton and her team points. Miss Strutton and Sean.

Miss Strutton and her aren’t-they-always-right, aren’t-they-always-brilliant
little helpers.

Sean was still there, Ella still opposite on the far side of the table, the inspector still beside her. As if the moment was frozen in time.

Without looking towards him, Joe could sense the policeman’s watchful gaze.

Sean, though, was doing nothing, just lolling against the table, hands stuffed deep in his pockets. He was surveying Joe. Then he turned his attention to Ella. It was the way Joe remembered him looking at Anna that day. Up and down. This time Sean gave Ella a wide, white-toothed smile. Ella looked away, startled and embarrassed by the scrutiny.

Joe wanted to hit Sean, knock him back, felt his own face blanch with the rush and rage of it.

No.
He steadied himself.
Just let Sean hear you tell the inspector
. . .

Wrong. Opens the field to when the inspector isn’t here. Invites Sean back some other time.

He caught the inspector’s eye; could tell he was reading this.

He skimmed his gaze past Sean.
Don’t see you, don’t know you’re there, don’t see you at all.

And walked away. No looking at Ella, no drawing fire towards her. No glancing back. With every ounce of self-control he wanted to hide from Sean that he’d even noticed he was there.

Murothi observed the encounter in all its detail. He noted the clench-jawed willpower of Joe’s exit, and then the flutter of disturbance in the other’s face. Surprise?

He took in other things too, storing them like an inventory. The boy’s looks: unusually tall, well-built, black-haired, wild, messed-up hair, the tips dyed fair. Time had been spent on this hairstyle. Most of the other students, particularly the boys, had the ragged look you would expect in youngsters unused to anything but city lives with ample running water and clean clothes provided. A few were enjoying a lengthy holiday from serious washing.

Not this boy. Everything designed, scrupulously planned: the round-shouldered nonchalance, the mannered slouch as he turned his back on the departing Joe and gave Ella another deliberate, appraising look, rudely obvious to the policemen.

The boy strolled away. He passed close behind Sergeant Kaonga but without so much as a glance at either policeman.

Murothi leaned towards the sergeant. ‘You know this one?’

‘Miss Strutton speaks of him often, Sir. Sean
this
, Sean
that
! We hear this name many times. But I have not heard of a
connection
with our missing ones.’

‘He was trying to frighten Joe,’ said Ella. ‘But Joe was just angry.’

Murothi regarded her thoughtfully. ‘Ah, you have seen it, Ella. Yes . . . ’

The sergeant turned his mug of tea in his hands, staring into it as if for inspiration, then up at Murothi again. ‘I
have
seen that his friends are those.’ He tipped his head towards a group visible to Ella and Murothi over the sergeant’s shoulder.

Rapidly, Murothi scanned the seated students and made a mental note of two girls, two boys, who, it struck him, were very much aware of his glance and of Ella beside him. They were now paying particular attention to Sean’s departure.

‘Let me say this,’ Sergeant Kaonga mused, ‘I have heard of this from my friend Samuel Lekitumu. This is the man I have told you about, Sir, the cook for this camp. This is very lucky for us! He has been here since these people made this camp at Chomlaya. Samuel is my old, old friend – from school we have known each other. I have spoken to him much. Samuel tells me that this Miss Strutton has friends, like this Sean and
his
friends. And then there are all the other people who do not
matter to her. Teachers, students, she divides them all up like this. In little boxes, she locks them in!
That one
agrees with me, so that one is my friend.
That one
does not agree with me so that one is not my friend. In fact, that one is going to be my enemy.’ He wrinkled his nose, as if the whole thought produced a stench. ‘I have thought that when this teacher is discontented, somebody will suffer. Here, it will be a child who will suffer, I think so. I will ask Samuel Lekitumu more of this Sean person, but,’ he shook his head, ‘these matters have nothing to do with our missing ones. I think nothing . . . ’

‘Yes, and no. No and yes, perhaps. Has Samuel told you that Miss Strutton
has
been discontented here?’

‘There’s what Charly says,’ Ella interrupted, listening curiously to all of this. ‘Inspector, you saw what she wrote about Miss Strutton.’

‘She does, you are right. Sergeant?’

Sergeant Kaonga considered the question. ‘The teacher Ian Boyd and Miss Strutton do not agree on many things,’ he commented slowly. ‘I have heard him argue with her. It is the one sitting there.’ Again he made a movement of his head, a jutting of the chin, this time towards where the teachers had been breakfasting. The table was empty now of all but one man. At once he seemed conscious of the policemen’s gaze, standing
up as if to come over to them.

‘Hoi!’ the sergeant warned Murothi. ‘She advances!’

Ian Boyd looked towards Miss Strutton, Ella saw, appeared to change his mind, and walked away.

Miss Strutton was nearing fast, chatting to students, to another teacher – who nodded and went hurrying away – to more students.

‘She wishes us to see her review her troops, I think,’ the sergeant muttered to the inspector. ‘She is a Big-Chief General, I think, in her head.’

‘Well, everyone,’ Miss Strutton said, very brightly, arriving, but ignoring the sergeant and Ella, her attention only on the inspector: ‘so what does the rest of today bring?’

She’s nervous! Ella thought. She marches off before, all angry, and now she’s back already, because she can’t stand not knowing what the inspector’s going to do!

‘The search continues, Miss Strutton, obviously,’ the inspector replied. ‘Climbers and helicopters are out now. Meanwhile I will speak to everyone –’

‘Who? We’ve all been interviewed already!’ Miss Strutton stopped, lightened her tone, enlarged her smile, and went on, ‘The thing is, you may not have been told, of course, but you should
understand
that these missing students were consistently
disobedient, always in trouble . . . the truth is, they have simply ignored the rules, and stupidly got themselves lost.’

‘Let us hope and pray fervently, then, Miss Strutton, that they will
return
and get the opportunity to be disobedient again, and you will have the task of disciplining them. For whatever misbehaviour you are so certain they have committed. It is an outcome to be hoped for, I think?’

The smile slid right off Miss Strutton’s face.

The sergeant exchanged a look with Ella, imperceptibly raising one eyebrow before recomposing his face in an expression of polite attention. Ella had difficulty suppressing a giggle.

The inspector pressed, ‘Perhaps you will explain to me the rules about leaving the camp? The ones you feel these students have disobeyed?’