The Switch (15 page)

And then he would turn his back on him and never see him again.

Outside the Mirror Maze, Sir Hubert had arrived.

He was walking with the detective, shielding himself under an umbrella as the rain crashed down. The Mirror Maze was partly surrounded by the other police officers, all of them dripping wet. As far as they were concerned, the excitement was over. Finn was dead. There was only some crazy kid to deal with. They just wanted to go home to bed.

Jones paused outside the front entrance to the Mirror Maze. “Are you sure you’re going to be all right, Sir Hubert?” he asked.

Sir Hubert shook rain off his umbrella. “Don’t worry, Detective.” He sniffed. “I’ll talk to this wretched little delinquent and see what he wants—if he even knows himself. I’ll talk him out into the open and then you and your men can deal with him.”

“He did say he had a knife, sir,” Jones reminded him. “And there’s still the matter of the gun.”

“What gun?” Sir Hubert asked.

Jones looked at Sir Hubert curiously, as if he were trying to look through him. “The gun that you said Finn had, sir. Somebody fired a shot, but we still haven’t found the gun . . .”

Sir Hubert smiled. “I’m not afraid,” he said. “If the boy’s got a gun, so much the worse for him.” He stepped forward eagerly. “Now let’s get this over with. I’ve wasted enough time with this young street urchin already.”

As Sir Hubert approached the entrance, another figure flitted out of the shelter of the bumper cars and ran the few paces to the back of the Mirror Maze. Nobody saw him. The man worked quickly, using a screwdriver to pry three wooden planks away from the rear wall. This made a hole large enough to slip through even though this was an unusually large man.

Spurling. Sir Hubert’s chauffeur.

He tore his uniform as he squeezed inside and for a moment his arm hung outside in the rain with his sleeve caught on a nail. Water dripped off his hand and the cold metal barrel of the gun it was holding. Then he unhooked himself. He pulled the gun in. And turned to find the boy he had come to kill.

Sir Hubert let the door swing shut behind him and stood in utter darkness. He listened for any sound of movement, but the rain beating down on the roof and walls would have muffled it anyway.

“Is there anybody there?” he called out. “Bob Snarby? I understand that’s your name. Do you want to speak to me?”

Silence. The darkness unnerved him. But just before the door had closed, he had noticed a bank of electric switches set to one side and now he groped for them. He flicked one of them on, but there was still no light. Sir Hubert thought he heard something—a faint electronic whine—but against the pattering of the rain it was hard to be sure. He left the switch down and found another. This time a single red bulb came on, high above the mirrors.

It was enough. Sir Hubert found himself facing a corridor of glass that broke off immediately in three different directions. There were panels everywhere. Some were transparent, some were mirrors. If you moved forward too quickly you could easily crash into an invisible barrier—or into a reflection of yourself. The light that Sir Hubert had turned on wasn’t strong enough to reach the outer walls of the Mirror Maze. The deep red glow spread out in a wide circle. But the mirrors, the sweeping corridors, seemed to go on forever.

And everywhere he looked, Sir Hubert saw the faces of the three people who had finally come together.

One thousand Tad Spencers.

One thousand Bob Snarbys.

One thousand Sir Huberts.

Reflections of reflections of reflections.

“Bob Snarby,” Sir Hubert said.

“I’m not Bob Snarby. I’m Tad. I’m your son.”

Sir Hubert didn’t understand. It was the rough-looking boy who had spoken, the one with the studs in his ear. His son couldn’t speak. He was gagged.

“You tried to kill me,” Tad said.

Sir Hubert said nothing. He would let the boy talk. A few more seconds and Spurling would be ready.

“When I was in the Center . . . I couldn’t believe it was you. I didn’t want to believe it! My own dad. Doing experiments on kids off the street. It was like I was seeing you for the first time—and what I saw . . . it was horrible!”

“I’m not your father!” Sir Hubert snapped. He took a step forward and cried out loud as he banged into a sheet of glass. He spun around. The reflections watched him.

“I know about the Indians too,” Tad went on. “The Arambayans.” Dragging Bob with him, he made his way to the very center of the maze. He felt safer here, with glass all around. “How could you do that, Dad?” he shouted. “Kill all those people just to make money! Didn’t you have enough?”

“There’s no such thing as enough!” Sir Hubert shouted back. “And why do you call me your father?”

“Because you are!”

“No. You have my son with you. This whole thing is ridiculous. Let him go and we can straighten this all out. Nobody’s going to hurt you.” He took another step forward. All around, his reflections moved as well.

“Stay where you are!” Tad also moved and once again the patterns shifted, endless lines of men and lines of boys crossing and recrossing one another in the Mirror Maze. “Admit it!” he cried. “I admired you so much, but it was all a lie. You’re a criminal. Worse than Finn!”

And then Sir Hubert saw it. A fourth image had appeared in the mirrors, on the very edge of the red circle . . . a huddled shape reflected around and around. Had the boy seen him? Of course he had. But there was nothing he could do. Sir Hubert allowed himself a thin, cruel smile. Spurling was here. It was finally over.

“You want me to tell you the truth?” Sir Hubert called out. “It’s my pleasure!” He slammed his hand against a mirror. A thousand hands thundered at a thousand reflections of Tad. “Yes—boy—you have learned rather too much about me. My little experiments in the Center? How else can I be sure that my products are safe? The stupid public gets all upset when it’s rabbits or mice or monkeys on the operating table, but who cares about delinquent children dragged off the London streets? Homeless, hopeless children like you? So—yes—my charity, ACID, turned you into a laboratory rat as it has done a hundred children before you. It’s all you deserve.”

“And you kill people!” Tad cried, horrified and sickened by what he was hearing. “The Arambayans—”

“Primitives! Savages! Animals!” Sir Hubert laughed. “They wouldn’t sell me what I wanted, so of course I had them wiped out. Do you think anybody cares? When people pay seventeen dollars and fifty cents for a bottle of Moonfruit Massage, they’re not thinking of a tribe of Indians on the other side of the world! Nobody ever thinks of anybody else. That’s what capitalism is all about!”

Once more the pattern changed. A thousand guns took aim.

“Kill him, Spurling!” Sir Hubert snapped. “He knows about me. I want him dead!”

The words echoed all around the fairgrounds just as every word had echoed ever since Sir Hubert had accidentally turned on the loudspeakers in the Mirror Maze. The police had heard everything. Sir Hubert Spencer had confessed to unspeakable crimes. Experimenting on children! Genocide! And now attempted murder.

The detective was the first to react. While everyone else just stood there, as if in shock, he ran forward, heading for the entrance to the maze.

Inside, Spurling’s finger tightened on the trigger. A single bead of sweat drew a careful line down his forehead. His target was only a few yards away from him. But which target? Where should he fire?

“Kill him!” Sir Hubert shouted again.

Tad was utterly surrounded by guns. They were in front of him, behind him, above him and below him. He spun around, trying to find a way out, but now he realized that he too was trapped in the Mirror Maze. His fists struck out at the glass walls. They seemed to have closed in on him, boxing him in.

“Mmmm . . .” Bob Snarby shook his head from side to side and at last he managed to get his shoulder to the gag, dragging it off. The guns seemed to be pointing at him too and his eyes bulged with fear.

The detective kicked open the door of the Mirror Maze and ran in. He shouted two words. “Sir Hubert!”

Spurling fired.

And everywhere mirrors smashed as, one after another, the bullet tunneled through them, each tiny hole becoming a thousand tiny holes in the reflections as spidery cracks—millions of them—splintered out in all directions. At the same time there was one last great burst of thunder that smashed through the clouds and shook the entire building.

Tad cried out as the bullet hit him, throwing him off his feet. The pain was like nothing he had ever experienced. He felt every tiny millimeter of the bullet’s progress as it passed through his skin, his flesh, his muscle and his bone. His shoulders hit the mirror behind him and he slid down, trailing blood behind him. The thunder pounded at his ears and there was a flash of lightning worse than any that had come before, slicing into his eyes, blinding him.

At the same instant Bob Snarby screamed too.

Tad reached the ground, one leg bent under him, the other outstretched. And in the last few seconds before darkness came, he saw what had happened.

A uniformed policeman. Spurling with the gun. Sir Hubert, his eyes staring, photographed a thousand times.

Then a gunshot. Two more. Two thousand sparks of flame. Mirrors shattering. Spurling’s reflection falling back and disappearing.

Suddenly there was no more pain. Tad closed his eyes. Suddenly there wasn’t anything.

The boy with fair hair and two studs in his ear shivered and lay still.

The St. Elizabeth Institute
for Juvenile Care was a plain, modern building in Sourbridge, on the outskirts of Birmingham. It didn’t quite look like a prison—there were no bars on the windows—but it was just about as welcoming. The front was bare brick, the doors solid steel. The institute had been built on the edge of a busy road, but as the traffic thundered past, nobody turned to look at it. It was the sort of place that had been designed not to be seen.

Three months after the shoot-out on Great Yarmouth boardwalk, with the last of the summer hanging in the air, a boy stepped out of a door at the back of the institute and stood in front of the fenced-in square of asphalt that was the soccer field, the exercise yard and the garden for those who lived inside. The boy was fourteen years old with short black hair. Although he was dressed in the pale blue shirt and denim pants that was the uniform of the St. Elizabeth Institute, there was something about him that suggested he was used to more comfortable clothes.

The boy’s name was Thomas Arnold David Spencer. He paused outside the door as if looking for someone. Then he started to walk forward.

There was a second boy sitting on a bench at the far end of the yard, also dressed in a blue shirt and denim pants, his arm in a sling, chewing gum. This boy was much thinner than the other and had long, fair hair.

Hearing the footsteps approach, Bob Snarby turned around. He seemed to take a long time to recognize Tad, and when he did finally speak, his voice was unfriendly. “What are you doing here?”

“I’ve been sent here,” Tad said.

“What? You’re living here too?”

“Yes. I just got here today.”

“So what happened to your mum and dad? Sir Hubert and Lady Moneybags. And what about Snatchmore Hall?”

“Snatchmore Hall’s up for sale,” Tad replied. “My parents are in jail.”

And it was true. Tad Spencer was back in his own body. Bob Snarby was back in his. But everything in the lives of both boys had changed.

Tad still didn’t know how he had switched places again—whether it was the storm or the shock of the bullet that had hit him. He even wondered if Dr. Aftexcludor hadn’t played a part in it. After all, with Sir Hubert’s confession and subsequent arrest, the Arambayans had been avenged and hadn’t that been the whole point?

He hadn’t died in the Mirror Maze. What he had experienced was the jolting, terrible power of the switch as it fell on him a second time, sucking him out of Bob’s body and sending him back to his own. He had thought he was dying. But seconds later he had stood up, his arms tied behind him. He was unhurt.

It was Bob Snarby who had been rushed to a hospital and emergency surgery and for the next week had remained in a critical condition. But Bob had always been tough. Slowly he had begun to recover and four weeks later the doctors were finished with him. He was allowed out of the hospital. Eric and Doll Snarby weren’t there to greet him.

For the Snarbys had both disappeared. Although the police had discovered several cigarette butts and a cold steak-and-kidney pie in the ghost train, Eric and Doll had simply vanished into thin air. There had since been a few sightings of them in Ireland, a huge, fat woman and a balding little man, working as fish-and-chip sellers in a food truck. Apparently there were never any chips, as the woman constantly ate them all. But since then they had moved on again. The police had given up hope of arresting them.

Spurling was dead. He had made the mistake of turning his gun on the police and the detective—who was also armed—had shot him in self-defense. The chauffeur had been buried a few days later in the same cemetery as Finn.

With the arrest of Sir Hubert and Lady Geranium Spencer, Beautiful World had collapsed. NONE OF OUR PRODUCTS ARE TESTED ON ANIMALS. When the truth about the tests had become known, the entire country had recoiled in horror. Several of the stores were actually burned down by furious, shouting crowds. The police had raided the Center, freeing the children who were still there and making over a dozen arrests. Sir Hubert’s knighthood had of course been withdrawn. He was now just plain Hubert Spencer: prisoner 7430909 in Wormwood Scrubs—where he was sentenced to remain for the next ninety years.

It had been one final twist of fate that had thrown the two boys together.