“It can sing pop songs,” she told everybody, “and it swears.”
“I don’t think they’d want that on TV,” Tracey Bell said, in her loud, penetrating voice, sidling up to Oliver.
He was feeling rather depressed as he listened to all the talk about gerbils and Siamese cats, and about a large spider called Boris that had lived for two years in William Briggs’ bathroom cupboard. His mother would never let him have a pet, not even for something educational; she made enough fuss about Binkie. There was no way he’d get on TV. Then Tracey sprang a surprise. “My Uncle Len’s got a pet shop,” she whispered, cornering him in the playground by the bike racks. “He could get us something interesting.”
“Us?” Oliver repeated suspiciously.
“Well, we could do our project together, couldn’t we? It’d give us a lot more chance.”
It was Tracey Bell’s dream to go on television, and she’d got it all worked out. Oliver was the cleverest boy in the school so he could do all the writing and reading up, and her Uncle Len would get them the animal, something a bit different, if she wheedled him. They just couldn’t lose. “What sort of thing do you fancy, Oliver?” she said brightly. It was hard to crush Tracey Bell.
Oliver didn’t fancy anything, and he didn’t fancy appearing on the TV screen next to her. They’d look ridiculous, like Little and Large. “A rat,” he said stonily. That might shut her up.
“A rat? Ugh … Oliver. What do you want one of them for?”
He didn’t know, he’d just said the first thing that had come into his head, though he must have been thinking about rats anyway, because of all Dr Verney’s questions about rats and mice.
“Well, at least it’d be something different,” he told Tracey, feeling a bit mean. Surely her Uncle Len didn’t sell rats in his shop? He’d never actually heard of anyone keeping a rat as a pet. Though now he actually thought about it, studying rat behaviour might be quite interesting. Weren’t they supposed to be highly intelligent? He dimly remembered reading a book once, a science fiction story in which rats had taken over the world.
“If Uncle Len can get us anything it’ll have to come to your house,” Tracey told him. “We live in a flat and we’ve only got a balcony. My mum won’t let us keep anything out there.”
Oliver didn’t reply. Tracey’s uncle would probably say no, for a start, and if he did come up with anything he couldn’t see his mother letting him have it at Nine, Thames Terrace. As for keeping a rat … he could just see her face if he came home with one. It was such an awful thought it was almost funny.
He found Ted in a stuffy room, sprawled in a chair, staring listlessly at a TV set. It was on low and the news commentary was hardly a mumble, he couldn’t be listening. And he wasn’t looking at the screen either, his eyes were going straight past it.
“I’ve brought you a present,” Oliver said, holding a paper bag out. Ted took it and looked inside. It was a chocolate bar, fruit and nut, the kind he sometimes brought in his lunch box. Oliver knew he liked it.
“Thanks, pal.” But the man didn’t eat it, he just carried on staring at the television. The voice didn’t sound like Ted’s, and the face wasn’t Ted’s either. It looked too white and shocked, and the eyes were still fish-like and glassy. “What’s up?” said Oliver, sitting down next to him, on a red leather pouffe.
There was a long silence. “Are you coming back to work soon?” Oliver tried again. He was looking at the man’s large, square hands, lying idly in his lap, at the kindly, weather-beaten face and the scanty fringe of greying hair round the speckled, bald head. He was fond of Ted Hoskins, and he’d decided that if he ever had a serious problem he’d go to Ted with it. In fact, he sometimes pretended that Ted was his real dad. It was awful, with his own father in hospital.
“No, I’m not, son. I’m not going back there. They can give me my cards if they want. I’m not bothered.” His voice was colourless and flat, as if all the stuffing had been knocked out of him, and Oliver felt little prickles going up and down his back. The neat sitting room, with its hard, bright colours, seemed to fade into a dull blur. Something else was taking its place, a harsh cold breath, like the first nip of winter. It was in his brain and it was inside him, squeezing out all the warmth and the light, all the ordinary, reassuring things.
“What exactly happened, Ted?” he could hear himself saying. “Did you find anything? I mean, at the site?” But Ted’s wife had suddenly materialized from the kitchenette. She’d gripped Oliver firmly by the arm and was now steering him out of the room. He tried hard to resist. He’d not even started his investigations yet.
“But I want—” he began.
“He didn’t find anything, duckie, nothing at all. He just came over a bit queer, that’s all. He’s got high blood pressure, you know.”
“But it was worse than that, Mrs Hoskins,” Oliver said doggedly, a helpless feeling coming over him as he saw the living room door shut on Ted. “Something really awful must have happened. I mean they must have dug something up, something nasty. I saw the look on his face.”
The plump little woman in the blue overall looked at him thoughtfully. She’d never met a child like this before. He seemed so old, so knowing and he had such staring eyes. Well he wasn’t going to upset her Ted with his questions. “They didn’t find anything,” she told him. “Ask one of the others if you don’t believe me. It’s true.”
“Well, what did happen then? Why did he run away? He did run away, I saw him.”
She hesitated. He wasn’t going to leave unless she told him a bit more; he was obviously that sort of kid. “He said … he said it went all black like,” she began slowly, “all dark. Very dark and … thick, you know, foggy … oh, I don’t know, duckie. Life’s a funny thing.”
She felt very embarrassed. She’d told Oliver exactly what Ted had told her, and she still couldn’t make head nor tail of it. She opened the front door pointedly, and waited for him to go through.
But Oliver didn’t budge. “What went all black?” he repeated, in his high, penetrating voice. “Did he see something? That’s what I want to know. What frightened him?”
“I’ve told you, he just came over a bit muzzy. He’d probably forgotten to take his pills.”
“Well, if that’s all it was why won’t he go back?” demanded Oliver, “and why did they get an ambulance?”
“Look, love, it was nice of you to come and that, but I don’t want him upset. Off you go now, he might be back at work next week.” And she shut the door on him.
Oliver stood outside on the landing, staring at Number Sixteen. He felt like kicking the door in. It was quite obvious that Mrs Hoskins knew things she wouldn’t tell; it was probably in the hands of the police by now. All she’d wanted was to get him out of the flat. He turned away angrily, and started to go down the chilly staircase. Why did grown-ups treat children like idiots?
But he was wrong about Mrs Hoskins. She’d been unnerved when they’d brought her Ted home in that ambulance. He hadn’t been able to tell her what he’d seen, but it must have been bad because he’d threatened to give his notice in.
Oliver thought about Ted all the way home. He simply didn’t believe what Mrs Hoskins had said about the pills; Ted’s face had told him the truth. Perhaps they’d not actually dug anything up at the site, but they must have disturbed something.
It was as if a great black bird was on the wing, flinging a cold dark shadow across London, changing the way everything felt, changing him. “Blackness and darkness”, that’s what Mrs Hoskins had talked about, in her tight, embarrassed