Six Days (10 page)

But then Gramps shoves his bed to one side, and there, set into the ground, is a trapdoor.

G
ramps flicks on a flashlight and leads the way down some steps into a dripping tunnel caked in lime scale. For a moment I think about his dinghy stashed at the Jubilee tunnel, the notepad and the maps. Still, I keep shtoom, cos Gramps is bound to go spare if he knew we used his dinghy to go on a nighttime trip north of the river.

We follow him through the tunnel into a cellar room piled floor to ceiling with crates and toolboxes and bin liners. Glinting in the flashlight beam are all these heaps of old computer bits and bobs – screens and wires and ’lectric boards, printing machines and towers of silver discs, ripped-out number pads and keyboards, and a thousand more gizmos that I ain’t even got a name for – a hoard of poke that beggars belief. So all these years, he must have been beavering away down here in secret while me and Wilbur played on the grass outside.

“How did you get it all here?” I go.

“I combed the unscavved city at night and hauled it
back here piece by piece. I mended the computers, wired them to old batteries, and trawled through their memories for Bartlett’s clues.”

I can’t see his face, but I can hear it in his voice – proud of what he’s done but sad, too. Like he’s given his life to this hoard of clues, but somehow it ain’t exactly worked out.

He moves to the far end of the cellar, and there on the wall is a massive map of London. It’s plastered with notes and scribbles and photos and arrows, and peppered with hundreds of little colored pins. Some of the pins make patterns like S-shapes or spirals. It looks like the life’s work of a lunatic.

“What’s that?” goes Wilbur, all quiet, like he’s scared of what the answer might be.

“My incident map. The pins mark the locations of computers where I think the voice guarding the artifact left a trace of its passing. Morgan Bartlett himself probably tracked them down, too. I’ve checked most of them – they in turn have led to other clues. Anything important is marked on the map – places where the artifact could be hidden.”

We all gaze at it. I can’t read the scribbles, but there’s loads of tiny photos skewered together in little stacks. I reach up and start thumbing through them – there’s statues and billboards and plaques on walls and pub signs. Alleyways and stairwells and rooftop terraces and
balconies. Graffiti and fly posters, sundials and weather vanes. All the forgotten corners of London.

“Well?” goes Gramps at last.

He’s got this fixed grin on his face like he’s waiting for me to say something.

“Well what?”

“Well, do you see anything in the clues? There must be something – something I’ve missed.”

And I’m thinking,
How do you know there’s anything here to see, you batty old fruitcake?

But to humor him, I go, “There’s a lot here, Gramps.” I turn to the others. “We need some time to check it all out, don’t we?”

They all go mudfish on me, but then Peyto pipes up. “Which ones are your clues and which ones are Bartlett’s?”

It’s a funny question, I think, but there’s an edge to Peyto’s voice. Like his real question is
Where’s the original trail? Cos your crazy incident map’s gone and messed it all up.

Gramps gets a twist in his gob then that ain’t pretty to watch. “What does it matter? Bartlett’s dead now – I’ve picked up his work. Everything you see is a possible lead.”

“Is the trail getting any stronger?” goes Erin. “I mean, is there a place on here that we can search right now?”

I’m thinking,
Nice one, Erin. Let’s boil it down a bit.
‘
Specially as the clock’s running down and we ain’t got another hundred years to keep looking …

Gramps squints at the map, flicking through all the little photo stacks, and I can tell he’s just winging it. He ain’t got the faintest idea.

Then his flashlight dies and I can’t see a sausage.

“I’ve got spare batteries up top,” mutters Gramps. “I’ll just be a minute.”

After he’s traipsed back up the steps, I flick out my lighter and gather everyone round the flame.

“What do you think, then?”

Peyto shrugs.

“It’s guff, innit?” I go. “He’s lost his marbles. You get more sense out of Mabel reading your fortune.”

“Let’s not be so quick to judge,” says Erin. “I mean, he’s spent years gathering all this information.”

“Yeah, but look at it. Every one of them pins is a stab in the dark. And what’s he found? He said it himself, he’s followed most of them, and all they lead to is another bloomin’ goose chase. He’s stirred up the biggest nest of claptrap in history. This geezer Bartlett might’ve been onto something, but Gramps muddied up the water years ago.”

“So if this is a waste of time, what do we do now?” Erin sounds panicky.

We ain’t heard a peep out of Wilbur, and when I look over at him, he’s only sat down leafing through one of his flippin’ comics.

“Come on,” I go. “This is a dead end …”

But then Wilbur leaps up and stands on tiptoe to point at the board. “Look, Cass, Churchill’s bunker!”

“So what? There’s millions of things pinned up there, Wilbur!”

“And Big Ben, see? Maybe me and Gramps were on the same trail – at least some of the places overlap.”

“Oh, yeah? Congratulations! You’ve both been barking up the same wrong tree …”

“No, there’s a connection here, I
know
it!”

He goes back to riffling through his comic.

“Come on, Wilbur – we ain’t got time to chase down every one of these places. I mean, Gramps has got the whole of London pegged up here!”

“Wait a minute, Cass,” goes Peyto. “Give him a chance.”

Then Wilbur stops leafing through the comic, and he goes very still.

He looks up at me. “Cass, I know where it is.”

“You what?”

“The artifact – I know where it is.”

“Wilbur, I ain’t in the mood for another Churchill’s bunker fiasco …”

“No, I really know this time.” He taps the page of his comic. “It’s right here, in issue thirteen.”

We huddle round and I hold up the flame so we can all see.

It’s a Captain Jameson adventure. There ain’t much in the way of speech bubbles – just pictures. Our hero’s
standing in a big circular room, looking a tad ridiculous in his seagoing clobber – I figure it’s a library, by the number of books lining the walls. He’s studying a chart on the wall. Next frame is a close-up of the chart. That’s when I get the goose bumps.

Cos it’s only the same chart as Gramps’s crazy incident map. The streets of London, the colored pins, the photos and scribbles – the whole caboodle.

I snatch the comic up and flick to the next page.

“What’s he looking for? I mean, does he say where the artifact is?”

Wilbur grabs the comic back. “It’s not as simple as that! The captain’s just trying to find buried treasure – it’s not our artifact or anything. It’s like the clue for Big Ben. It doesn’t tell you the whole story – you have to figure it out.”

“So how come you’re so sure?”

Peyto puts a hand on my shoulder. “Let him explain, Cass.”

Wilbur takes a deep breath. “He’s looking for treasure, like we’re looking for the artifact. That’s the first link. But this is a fake map made by his old enemy, the Black Cardinal.”

Erin points at the incident map on the cellar wall. “So this is a false map – we can’t trust it.”

Wilbur beams at her like he’s just fallen in love.

“Terrific, Wilbur. We get that – the map is codswallop …”

He turns to the next page in the comic. “So Captain Jameson figures out the map’s a fake meant to throw him off the scent of the treasure.”

He lets us follow the scene then – Jameson rips the map down in fury. And behind it, there’s a gap in the wall. Stuffed to the gills with pieces of eight.

I look up again at Gramps’s map. “So the treasure’s right here, behind the cellar wall?” It seems a tad unlikely.

Wilbur sighs. “No. Don’t you get it?”

“It’s not here where we’re standing,” goes Peyto. He points at the comic. “It’s in this room – wherever Captain Jameson is.”

“Great. And where’s that? Wonderland House, Made-up Avenue, Rubbishville?”

Wilbur holds his comic up and points at the map. “Look at this page, and Gramps’s photo clue here,” Wilbur goes. “They’re both the same.”

He’s right. Both the comic and the photo show a large circular room with rows and rows of bookshelves, and above them, huge arched windows and a dome ceiling.

Wilbur reads out the caption on the map photo. “It’s the library of the British Museum. It’s a real place, Cass – north of the river.”

You have to hand it to my kid brother. He don’t say much, but what he does say is priceless.

But then again, I’ve heard this kind of “rock solid” lead before. “Come on, Wilbur. We ain’t saying you’re wrong,
but it’s a bit flimsy, innit? I mean, how do you really know about them connections that lead to this British Museum gaff?”

Erin points at the comic. “Are you saying someone wrote the story that way on purpose, so you could see all the links?”

“What’s so special about the Captain Jameson adventures, Wilbur?” goes Peyto.

Wilbur juts out his chin like we’re all ganging up on him. “I don’t know. I just like them. To start with, I just collected them cos I wanted to see what happened next.”

I roll my eyes. “Yeah, but how come you got all those flippin’ hunches in the first place?”

Wilbur clams up.

“Where did you find this issue?” tries Peyto.

“In the back of a clock. They’re always hidden away like that – up chimneys, in mattresses.”

“So what made you look there?”

“I found the first one, issue four, by accident. Sort of. I had this funny feeling when I went through the door, so I searched round really carefully. I liked the story, so then I kept an eye out in the next building we scavved, case there were any more tucked away.”

“No wonder you’re so slow at scavving if you’re turning everything upside down like that!”

“They’re always in the same kind of places – you know,
where the bed’s in the same room as the kitchen, all untidy, usually above a little shop …”

“As if it’s been the same person living in those places?” goes Erin.

“Yeah. And I always get that feeling when I walk through the door, like a tingling in my head, like I just
know
there’d be another Captain Jameson adventure if only I search hard enough for it.”

We all give each other a look. Cos this is us just going deeper into the barmy reaches of Wilbur’s Special World …

“Perhaps it’s got something to do with the building where you found this issue,” says Peyto. “Can you point it out on the map?”

“I remember
every
building we’ve scavved,” he goes, like it’d be stupid not to. He studies the map for a bit, then points south of the river. “Here, Redriff Road near the park.”

Peyto sticks a pin into the map next to Wilbur’s finger. Erin takes the comic and starts leafing through it.

“Then there was issue eighteen. I found that in John Roll Way near the Tube station …”

I hold the lighter up to the map as Peyto sticks in another pin.

“Then Crucifix Lane – just where it bends round …”

“This is strange,” mutters Erin. She edges closer to the flame, with her nose buried in Wilbur’s comic.

But I ain’t listening cos I’m glued to the map. And it’s starting to look like Wilbur and Gramps ain’t so bonkers after all …

“Whitefriars Street, just next to Tudor Street. There were three issues right there, but that’s all I’ve got so far.”

“Jeepers creepers,” I whisper. Cos all the pins make a straight line, as the crow flies, northwest across the river. I’m trying to get my head round that, cos we’ve been sent every which way on scav shifts – there ain’t never been rhyme nor reason to it. It’s just where the gangmaster lands up. But maybe there’s dozens of issues on that line and Wilbur’s only chanced on a few of them.

Meanwhile, Peyto’s taken off his belt and he holds it up against the pin markers to see where the line’s headed. He turns to me with a grin.

“Look, Cass.” His finger rests on a spot of unscavved territory. “It’s on the same line. Whoever was hiding the comics would eventually have ended up right here – the British Museum. Wilbur’s right.”

“Whoever was hiding them was
making
them, too,” goes Erin.

“Eh?”

“They’re not printed, look.”

And she’s right. She shows me a fancy bit of writing on the back page where the ink’s smudged. It ain’t just a throwaway ten-a-penny comic, it’s a proper drawing.

“What’s it say?” I go.

“It’s the artist’s signature. Not the full name, just the initials.” She beams at me. “MB – for Morgan Bartlett maybe?”

That clinches it. I gather Wilbur up and plant a smacker on his forehead. Cos it really does sound like we’re on our way this time. But then I suddenly remember Gramps. And he’s proper taking his time about getting that spare battery for his flashlight …

I charge out of the cellar and up the steps. The trapdoor’s still open, but the hut’s empty. Peyto and the others ain’t far behind.

“Maybe he only pretended the flashlight didn’t work,” goes Erin. “Then he hid by the steps to eavesdrop on us.”

“But why’s he just disappeared?” Peyto runs to the edge of the clearing. “Where’s he gone?”

“He wants to find it first,” says Erin flatly. “He’s gone without us.”

For a moment I’m floundering for another reason why he ain’t here no more. Cos I don’t want to believe he’s gone and pulled a fast one. He might be a nutty old duffer, but still, you don’t expect your own flesh and blood to carry on like that.

Peyto’s voice is panicky. “But we were helping! We were all figuring it out together.”

“He doesn’t know us, don’t you see?” goes Erin. “How
does he know what we’d do with it if we found it first? He can’t
afford
to trust us. Not after all these years of searching for it by himself. He means to beat us to the British Museum.”

My heart turns cold then. “Yeah, but what’s
he
gonna do with it? Keep it or give it to the Vlads?”

And I’m still trying to figure it out, how he thinks he can outrun us – he’s quick for an old geezer, but he’d never last the pace – when suddenly Peyto leaps up and charges off into the trees.