Anthony Horowitz - Raven_s Gate

Then, one evening – Matt thought it was a Saturday, although all days had become very much the same – Mrs Deverill’s sister Claire came to dinner. He hadn’t seen the teacher since his encounter with her in Lesser Malling. Sitting next to her at the kitchen table, he found it hard to keep his eyes off her birthmark, the discolouration that covered most of her face. He was both drawn to it and repulsed at the same time.

“Jayne tells me that you have been missing school,” she remarked in her strange, high-pitched voice.

“I haven’t been to school because she won’t let me go,” Matt replied. “I have to work here.”

“And yet when you were at school, you regularly missed class. You played truant. You preferred shoplifting and loitering on motorway bridges, smoking. That’s what I heard.”

“I never smoked,” Matt growled.

“Modern children have no real education,” Jayne Deverill remarked. She was serving some sort of stew out of a pot. The meat was thick and fatty, and came in a rich, blood-coloured gravy. Road kill in a primeval swamp. “You see them in the street in their shapeless clothes, listening to what they call music but what you or I would call a horrible noise. They have no respect, no intelligence, no taste. And they think the world belongs to them!”

“They’ll soon find out…” Claire Deverill muttered.

There was a knock at the door and Noah appeared, dressed in what might have passed for a suit except that it was about fifty years old, faded and shapeless. He wore a shirt buttoned to the neck, but no tie. He looked to Matt like an out-of-work funeral director.

“The car’s ready,” he announced.

“We’re still eating, Noah.” Jayne Deverill scowled. “Wait for us outside.”

“It’s raining.” Noah sniffed the food hopefully.

“Then wait in the car. We’ll be out soon.”

Matt waited until Noah had gone. “Are you going out?” he asked.

“We might be.”

“Where?”

“When I was young, a child never asked questions of his elders,” Claire Deverill said.

“Was that before or after the First World War?” Matt asked.

“Pardon?”

“Forget it…”

Matt fell silent and finished his meal. Jayne Deverill stood up and went over to the kettle. “I’m making you a cup of herbal tea,” she explained. “I want you to drink it all, Matthew. It has a restorative quality and it seems to me that you’ve been rather on edge since the death of that poor detective.”

“Are you going to arrange for him to phone me tomorrow?”

“Oh no. Mr Mallory won’t be coming back.” She poured steaming water into a squat black teapot, stirred it and then poured out a cup for Matthew. “Now you get that down you. It’ll help you relax.”

“It’ll help you relax.”

Maybe it was the way she spoke the words. Or maybe it was the fact that Mrs Deverill had never made tea like this before, but suddenly Matt was determined not to touch the liquid he was being offered. He cupped it in his hands and sniffed. It was green and smelled bitter.

“What’s in it?” he asked.

“Leaves.”

“What sort of leaves?”

“Dandelion. Full of Vitamin A.”

“Not for me, thanks,” Matt said. He tried to sound casual. “I’ve never been that crazy about dandelions.”

“Nonetheless, you will try it. You’re not leaving the table until you do.”

Claire Deverill was watching him too carefully. Matt was certain now: if he drank the tea, the next thing he knew it would be the morning of the next day.

“All right.” Matt lifted the cup. “If you insist.”

“I do.”

The question was – how to get rid of it?

Finally, it was Asmodeus who helped him out. The cat must have crept into the kitchen while they were eating. It jumped up on to the sideboard and caught a jug of milk with its tail, causing it to topple and break. Both sisters turned round, their attention momentarily diverted. Instantly Matt reached down and up-ended his cup under the table. When the two women turned back again, he was cradling the cup in his hand as if nothing had happened. He just hoped they wouldn’t notice the steam rising out of the damp carpet.

He pretended to drink until the cup was empty, then set it down on the table. Something stirred in Jayne Deverill’s eyes and he knew she was pleased. Now to see if his theory was right. He yawned and stretched his arms.

“Tired, Matthew?” She spoke the words too quickly.

“Yes.”

“No need to help with the dishes tonight then. Why don’t you go up to bed?”

“Yes. I’ll do that.”

He stood up and went to the stairs, making his movements deliberately slow and heavy. He didn’t turn on the light in his room. Instead he lay down on the bed and closed his eyes, wondering what would happen next.

He didn’t have long to wait. The door opened and light spilled into the room.

“Is he asleep?” It was Claire Deverill’s voice.

“Of course. He’ll sleep twelve hours and wake up with a chainsaw of a headache. Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s go.”

Matt heard the women leave. He listened to their footsteps on the stairs. The front door opened and closed. The engine of the Land Rover started and the headlights swung round as it turned in the yard and then set off up the drive. Only when he was sure they weren’t coming back did he sit up on the bed. Everything had happened just as he had anticipated. He was alone at Hive Hall.

Half an hour later the lights came back on at Omega One. Matt had been expecting that too.

Dressed in black jeans and a dark shirt, he grabbed the bike and pedalled away from the farm.

It was time to go back into the wood.

It didn’t take Matt long to find the entrance. The little flag he had made from his T-shirt was still there, tied round a branch. Grateful for the pine needles underfoot, he made his way along the corridor of trees, making sure he didn’t stray off the tarmac strip that Tom Burgess had shown him the last time he was here. The moon was behind the clouds but he used the glow from the power station to guide him. When he looked back, the wood was pitch-black. An owl cried out. There was a scurry of leaves as some night creature batted its way up towards the sky.

Matt heard the villagers before he saw them. There was the sound of crackling and a murmur of voices. They were very close. He pulled aside a pair of low branches and realized that he was back at the fence that surrounded the power station. He knelt down and looked through the wire. An incredible sight met his eyes.

The flat circle of land surrounding the power station was bustling with activity. A huge fire blazed outside the sphere, throwing out vivid snakes’ tongues of flames. Thick black smoke curled into the air. Four or five people were throwing armfuls of twigs and shrubbery on to the fire, the damp wood hissing and snapping as it was consumed. Overhead, a line of arc lamps cast a brilliant glare over the field. It was a strange mixture: the building, with its electric lights, was modern, industrial; the bonfire, with the shadowy figures of people grouped around, reminded him of a scene from primitive times.

There was a car parked between the fire and the fence – Matt thought it might be a Saab or a Jaguar. A man got out but he was silhouetted against the light and Matt couldn’t make out who he was. The man raised a hand and the gold signet ring he was wearing momentarily flashed red, reflecting the light of the fire.

He had given a signal. A lorry that was parked on the other side of the clearing immediately began to reverse right up to the corridor that joined the giant sphere of Omega One to the rest of the building. As Matt watched, the doors of the lorry were thrown open and several men emerged, dressed in strange, cumbersome clothes. They congregated together, then lifted something: a large silver box about five metres long. It was obviously heavy. They took a lot of time lowering it to the ground.