x
Unbeknown to any one of us in the blissfully sleeping camp a bucket full of water and soap rattled across the corridor. It could have been some two hours past midnight or so, a storm was raging outside and Ms Gisborne, a cleaning lady, was walking down the stairs on 57-59 Parking Lane, expecting yet another mundane night shift.
It might have been a little late for anyone else to be working at this hour, but she liked to get all her chores done before she left for home. It helped her sleep.
A rumble of thunder boomed outside and a sudden flash of light cast her silhouette against the wall as she dragged her supplies down the stairs. In her younger years she might have had everything finished hours ago, but lately her joints were aching like hell and the immense house full of rooms was proving to be more than she could handle. Nevertheless, having a stable job was a rare opportunity these days and she was glad to have it.
The ceaseless rain pounded on the windows and the roof, and not a single sound could be heard in this cavalcade of terrible weather. Until there came a noise, like a voice or a moan, and Ms Gisborne froze in place. She was supposed to be alone in there after all.
“Is there anyone there?” she called out irrationally, the way people sometimes do in similar situations.
The only answer she got was yet another thunderous boom from outside.
She blamed the incident on her wild imagination and shambled on down the stairs.
Maybe it was just the wind... But no. She heard it again. Just now! The disembodied voice was muttering to itself or arguing about something. But with whom?
If she was correct, the noises had to be coming down from the study.
She shambled forward, as if in the shoes of one of the main heroines of her favourite novels, and crept towards the nearby door, illuminated by the dim light coming in from the street. An old broom served her as a makeshift lance, a heavy duster as a dangerous flail. She was ready for what was coming.
Maybe it would have been a better idea to call the police… but by the time the thought crossed her mind, it was already too late. Taking a heavy breath to calm herself down and get ready to give the unwelcome intruder a proper rousting, she pulled at the handle and the door flew open.
That's when the thunder roared for the third time and the room disappeared in a flash of blinding light.
£¢\£Â¢
62Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡU4h9DtzuY3
“And up next: Captain Bokbok, a fearsome pirate with just a tiny fowlt.”
The commercial cut to colourful opening and a playful, catchy tune and a moment later a scene situated on the deck of a pirate ship appeared in front of us. A chicken with a patch pulled over one lazy eye waddled out onto the deck, clearly completely oblivious as to any form of a script.
“Captain Bokbok!” pleaded one of the crewmen. “The ship be sinking! What are we going to do with all these prisoners?”
“Bok, bok,” the chicken clucked for itself before it got irreversibly distracted and started pecking at the fake deck beneath its feet.
“What? You can't be serious! We can't sacrifice every single one of them!”
“Bok, bok?”
“And your grandma too? Oh no, Captain Bokbok!”
“Bok, bok...”
The hen looked straight into the camera and in a fancy transition the scene switched to the short ending credits.
“Tune in the next week for even more adventures of Captain Bokbok!” the disembodied voice said as the program changed.
It had been a good few days since our visit to the sewers and the whole group was sitting in the kitchen watching our brand new shiny TV. Our new friends, the Rebels, were kind enough to provide us with all sorts of luxuries, including a whole television. We had three working channels to choose from, which was already more than we could have ever hoped to get out here.
The girl, Ashley, came on Tuesday with our first batch of supplies and brought us a huge bag full of canned food, spare clothes and some components Elskan ordered to improve our living. When Manny complained he had nothing to do out here, she turned up right the next morning with a whole small LED.
Unfortunately, the package didn't include any remote, which Elskan solved by attaching a tiny twelve-volt battery to a long stick, glueing it in place with a tape to be used as a kind of an elongated finger, so that we could reach the touch screen straight from the table without any discomfort.
“Why are we watching this?” Mark squinted at the screen over a half-full bottle in front of him. His supplies of stolen alcohol were running thinner and thinner, and the less time he spent drinking, the more sociable he seemed to be getting with us. Whatever his sad, unspoken backstory might have been, a full swimming pool of alcohol didn't seem to be enough to wash it away. A few times James tried to nick the last couple of his bottles and failed.
“You can try switching it up if you want to.” Manny pushed the 'controller' closer to him. “Your other two options are either news or teleshopping. So what's it going to be?”
James snatched it off the table first. “No one is changing anything. Just be glad we can watch what we can and don't mess with the settings again before we lose these three too!”
“Don't be so grumpy. I'm sure we could ask these Rebels for a satellite if we wanted to.” Will grinned, eating his sandwich, and Manny raised a hand as if he were back in school.
“By the way, can we talk about this? The Rebels? Not the most imaginative name, if you ask me.”
James frowned. “You've all got pretty buddy-buddy with them, considering none of you have actually been to the town to see these people.”
“And who cares? They got me this fresh shirt. What more can I ask for?”
James didn't seem thrilled by our newly formed relations, though perhaps it was simply because we were all expecting to pay a price soon. The counter service Tommy had mentioned, whatever it was supposed to be, was on our minds ever since that day…
Also! I had a wicked new update!
A day before, Elskan approached me with some exciting news. I finally got a message from my sister. It read:
62Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNk8xwDAOAe
Unknown: ⟨21:16⟩ cool
62Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFXai83wJE2
Cool?
Cool!!!
After the whole thesis I so masterfully crafted, an answer like that might have seemed a little underwhelming. And I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed. On the other hand, I was glad she kept things relatively simple and didn't draw the attention of my new friends to herself. I've found the leader of the outlaws to be especially suspicious of the police and other similar government organisations, and betraying my sister's job and jeopardising my place in the forest in the process was the last thing I needed.
And speaking of Elskan...
I found him outside when I was on my way to take a leak, hunched over something in the bushes. I watched him tinkering with it, walking from one tree to another, mumbling to himself, and getting ready some kind of strange mechanism.
When my curiosity got the better of me, I finally approached him.
“I wasn't joking when I said I was gonna put up traps.” He stood up when he heard me trudging through the leaves. “We got pretty social in the last two weeks and it was by nothing but pure luck none of our visitors wanted to rob us or report us over to Foxglove or something even worse. We can't just sit around and wait for that to happen.”
“Traps?” I looked around, suddenly afraid to move even a single step in the wrong direction. “Like Rambo-style traps?” I instantly recalled the old movie with the thick forest and soldiers impaled on sharp wooden sticks and blood and guts flying everywhere.
“Not Rambo-style traps. Come on, are we some savages? Come here and have a look.” He had to assure me the path was clear before I took a step forward and hunched down next to him. “Can you see this line?”
There was a thin, almost invisible wire suspended a few centimetres above the ground, running from one nearby tree to another. It got me thinking what exactly was in that package El had ordered.
“So what does it do? Are there explosives hidden at the end? Am I gonna fall down into a deep hole full of spikes if I touch it?”
“We can implement crazy stuff like that later if you're really so eager to hurt someone. All it does now is to send a message to my laptop any time someone triggers one of those things.”
“Is that gonna be effective at all, considering your computer is buried under heaps and heaps of dirty clothes?”
“Is it?” he ignored me. “I woke up early today and I put these wires all over the place in a big circle around the camp. Anyone tries to go through without our permission and we'll instantly know about them. That should give us about a few hundred square meters of privacy.”
“Sounds good.” I watched him bend over and continue his work. “But what if one of us accidentally trips over them?”
“You don't have to worry about that. Go and fetch the boys, will you? I want to show you how it works.”
When I got back, with all the outlaws in tow, the whole contraption seemed to be ready. “Careful where you step now!” El warned them. “You're looking at our new security system!”
“Twine… I feel so much safer already…” Mark stated with a completely blank face.
“And I am going to ignore your obvious disinterest in my upgrade, because I know this is a great idea and none of you will prove me otherwise. One day, these tripwires will save our lives. Mark my words!”
That didn't seem to be enough for William, who happened to raise the same question I'd asked only moments before. “That's all brilliant and all. And how exactly are we supposed to avoid them when we go outside?”
“Heads up!”
“Is that- is that a piece of my shirt?”
Up above, among all the greenery, someone had hung a piece of black cloth on one of the branches. It appeared to be torn down the middle, as if the original creator parted a bigger piece of fabric to get the shape he needed.
“I marked all the areas to show where our territory starts and ends. I think it's subtle enough so that people won't notice when they go by, while still pretty clear when you're gonna be looking for it.”
“A black flag,” Mark commented on the new decorations.
“So we're pirates now?” asked Will. “Like captain Bokbok? We'll have to ask the Rebels to get us some rum for a celebration.”
“Nu-uh. Being a pirate is not just about drinking.” El shook his head and gave Mark a long look.
“Then what? Parrots? Peg's legs? I always imagined those wooden feet must be pretty uncomfortable.”
“Being a pirate means doing whatever the hell you want, whenever you feel like it! Being free for real. And that's what we do here, isn't it? But just to be clear, they are not all black. I put up these 'flags' all over the place and they are all the colours I could find.”
“Wait,” James interrupted him. “You don't mean to tell me that all the new clothes we just got-”
“We can always order more…”
“What? No, we can't!”
“And I put them to a good use!”
“A good use was supposed to be wearing it and... I- you know what? Forget it. As long as this thing keeps us safe, do whatever you want.”
“Thank you.”
“But one of these days I swear something's gonna snap and I'll finally murder you.”
“I know. I know…”
Once again, as if by some strange comedic timing, the bushes next to us parted and the Rebel girl came into the view to greet us, blatantly stepping over one of the wires as if it wasn't even there, and Elskan's face froze into a grimace of utter disappointment.
“Why am I even trying?”
“Hey, what's up?” she ignored him. “You're a proper band of sneaky outlaws, you know that? I could hear you shouting from a mile away.”
James looked at her frowning. “Hey. What are you doing here? I thought we were getting our supplies once a week and you've already been here like three times.”
“Can't a girl visit you just like that? I have a different kind of package for you.” Ashley grinned and pulled a crumpled envelope from one of her pockets. “One set of McGuffin papers for mister Anthony J. Scott. As we promised.”
“You've got to be kidding me.” I stepped forward to take the envelope from her hands. Everything was there! Well...
“There was supposed to be a phone in there too.”
“Yeah, sorry about that. We had to throw it away. It might have been rigged or something, so- you know the drill.”
“We understand,” El jumped in, trying to end the conversation as quickly as possible. “We were actually just in the middle of something-”
“It's not just that. I'm here with your first assignment.”
“And here we go. Time to pay for all that luxury.” William wailed.
“Lay it on us then.”
“You don't have to act like such a bunch of babies.” She rolled her eyes. “It should be a pretty standard job. Nothing too complicated for greenies like you.” She stood face to face with the main outlaw, her hands akimbo.
“How many people are we gonna need?”
“I don't know. Two or three? It's up to you, honestly.”
“Anyone up for some fun?”
“I've got nothing to do,” I volunteered immediately, hoping a few hours in the town could present new opportunities to contact Sam without the knowledge of the others. And besides, the prospect of earning a few affection points with the Rebel girl didn't sound all that bad either.
Manny stepped into my view. “I want to come too! You guys are always the ones having all the fun.”
“Alright, so here are your three volunteers,” Elskan waved his hand towards the two of us.” Do you mind if I go change? I'm gonna rework all of this later… or something.”
With stooped shoulders and a gait of a defeated man, El retreated back into our cabin and Ashley got to examining his work.
“What's this about?”
“A new security system,” Manny said. “And he mentioned something about keeping you out.”
“Did he now?” she frowned as I stepped closer.
“So what are we supposed to do?”
“I don't know, honestly. I have an address for you…” Producing yet another small piece of paper, she held it in front of my eyes. “And you're supposed to look around. They'll tell you what to do.”
“And that's it?”
“I guess. Sometimes it's important to be sneaky, even in harmless assignments like this one. Just get to the address and you'll find out.”
“Oh, it's always such a delight to have an employer who gives you exact directions.”
“Yeah. We're pretty awesome, aren't we?”
The subsequent ride into town was a short one, and despite the initial failure of his newest invention, the older outlaw seemed to be in good spirits.
“It's a weird feeling, isn't it?” he watched me from the passenger seat. “I never thought I would have anything resembling a normal job ever again and yet here we are, doing some shady work for some weird underground organisation.”
“It's not gonna be any shady work!” our passenger fumed. “Don't be ridiculous. They'll probably get you to you... deliver mail or some food or something. Or help someone who's too old to care for themselves. That's what we do.”
“You make it sound so exciting.”
“You were the ones who signed up for this in the first place!” the girl poked her head in between our seats.
“Hey! Buckle up your seatbelt and calm down!”
There used to be a kind of a more wealthy part of the town; a place of a few streets mostly clear of any vagabonds and layabouts, where the handful of lucky ones lived in their enormous homes with large, green gardens, seemingly unconcerned and unbothered by Foxglove and the whole situation of the rest of the world. And to my surprise, to this part of town the tiny slip of paper directed our steps.
The three of us parted ways with Ashley at a nearby grocery shop and as such we've got no explanation for this strange location either.
“I thought we were supposed to be helping people in need or something,” I remember pointing out.
“Yup.”
“These blokes don't seem like they are exactly lacking.”
“Nope…”
“57-59 Parking Lane.” Manny handed the slip of paper to the other outlaw, who read it aloud. “These big mansions usually tend to have numbers up on a fence, don't they?”
A quick search around the tiny neighbourhood soon revealed the correct location. The place didn't have any broad, manicured garden the way the rest of them did, and its white-lined wooden veranda extended right into the street. It was more reminiscent of a country house than a simple residence, with its many spacious windows opening beneath the red-tiled roof and a small round conservatory adjacent to the leftmost side.
“I hope this is not just some kind of a daft joke,” Manny whined as we rang the bell and only a few moments later a man in a black and white suit, who by his bearing must have been an actual real-life butler, opened the heavy door.
“Yes?”
If he was in any way shocked by the sudden appearance of three unwashed outlaws at his doorstep, he didn't let anything show. If a little reluctantly, El took the initiative.
“Erm… we're here to solve your problem.”
“Are you from the police?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
“We're from... the sewers.” He dared to gamble.
The man eyed him for a moment and then looked both ways to make sure no one was watching. “Good. Please come with me.”
We followed him inside into the house and found ourselves in a spacious hall with an ornate carpet and huge winding staircases on either side of us. A strange, overpowering smell immediately hit my nose, as if someone had burnt something in a stove and let the smoke escape from the kitchen. The servant, or whoever he was supposed to be, didn't seem to mind it at all and led us through a door on our left without a wink.
We passed a through long hallway covered in shiny wallpaper, then another one, adorned with seemingly priceless paintings, and finally found ourselves at the foot of another set of mahogany stairs, where the sight of a horrible tragedy and the obvious source of the stench revealed itself.
Down there, crudely covered by a white blanket of some sorts, lay a charred body of an old woman, black as teak and propped up against the wall as if she just needed to sit down and rest in her last moments.
Before I could do anything to help it, a prolonged exclamation escaped my lips. “Shiiit.”
I had never seen a dead body before. The smell alone almost drove me out of the hallway, but somehow the state of the corpse made it a little easier to bear. It almost didn't look human.
“Yes, indeed,” the butler agreed with me. “Ms Gisborne has worked for us for over fifteen years and we've never had an accident such as this one.”
He didn't seem at all affected by the terrible situation. Whether it was due to his profound professionalism or some innate cold-bloodedness, our guide remained perfectly composed.
“Let's get Manny out of here,” was El's first reaction.
“No, I'm fine!” the young outlaw protested. “I wanted to be here!”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure I'm sure.”
“Alright then… but not a word about any of this to your brother!”
“We found her in the morning when I came in for my shift.” The mysterious butler clapped his hands to get our attention. “There was no one to be found around the house and nothing to suggest a break-in or any other malicious intentions. Mr Clarkson spent the night in the town. I've informed him of the situation and he will be arriving shortly to assess the matters for himself. Until he arrives, you are free to examine anything you wish to, understood?”
“I see...” El exclaimed, glancing at the two of us. He must have been thinking the same thing as me. Was this really what the Rebels wanted us to do? The first assignment ever was to investigate a site of some freak accident? To be perfectly honest, I'd expected to make some deliveries for them or... wash the dishes or something? Whatever it was Ashley said before.
This was quickly turning into one of the worst jobs I have ever had and that's saying a lot considering I used to work at IT.
“There's more if you would like to see the study room,” the butler announced as El bent down to get a better look at the details. The door behind us revealed a strange scene; the room seemed perfectly bog standard. Spacious windows, vintage paintings and stacked bookshelves framed the walls and in the centre stood a solid wooden table on a fluffy red carpet.
Everything seemed fine.
Everything except for a thin black line burned right into the carpet. It branched out into many directions like the roots of some old tree and led straight from the middle of the room to us and to the unfortunate body of the cleaning lady.
“Wow. This would all be pretty spooky if we didn't have a rational explanation, right?” Manny grinned confidently at Elskan. His friend paid him no mind, though, his eyes transfixed on the uncanny sight around us, with a look of concern on his face.
“Umm... right, El?” he repeated.
El stood up, shaking his head from side to side. “I have no idea what the hell happened in here. It's almost like there's no rational explanation at all.” He looked at Manny, who suddenly seemed to regret his decision to join us.
“You know what? I'm gonna go look over there and see if I can find something in the nicer part of the house.”
I was glad for any opportunity to make this horrible situation a little more light-hearted, and when Manny hurried on through the door, I had to chuckle to myself. “That was pretty funny.”
“Not really.” El's face remained still. “I seriously don't know what happened.”
“What?”
“I mean, look at this guy-”
“It was a woman,” the butler whispered.
“Yeah, look at this woman. By all means, she was killed by electricity.” He turned his haze to the black marks burned deep into the carpet. “As if she'd been killed by some random discharge or... or lightning, almost. But there's nothing that could have caused this. And do you know how much energy would you need to deal this kind of damage to someone? Even people caught in an actual, natural thunderstorm usually manage to survive, but not this woman.”
In my curiosity, I raised the carpet in my hand, hoping to find something Elskan might have missed. And there was nothing. Just a wooden floor.
“I can see the investigation is in the right hands,” our guide observed from the door. “If you don't mind I will go have a look at your young friend.”
We stood in silence for a few seconds until El looked at me with a grievous expression. His tone changed immediately as he lowered his voice.
“What the frick are we doing in here?”
“I know, right?” I was pleased to see that I wasn't the only one confused by the situation. “Why has this suddenly become an investigative thriller?”
“Yeah, I was expecting to-”
“To be delivering mail or something. I know.”
“And the guy gives me the creeps.”
I only nodded at that.
“It does seem sketchy, but for now I would just go with the flow and we'll see what's going on.” He scratched at his beard. “It could be like one of those situations to test whether we're really up for the job. The way you see it in the movies.”
“You're the one who's always saying the world is different from what they show you in the movies.”
“I know. I'm just trying to make some sense of it all.”
A few seconds of silence passed as we observed our surroundings.
“And are we absolutely sure we've come to the right address?” I made a last feeble attempt to get my bearings.
“You heard the girl, just as I did, when she told us where to go. We have the paper and the man was clearly expecting us too…”
The bloke sure seemed to know about our coming. There was no doubt about that, but what kind of strange work did the Rebels expect us to do here? In my head, this was an equivalent of turning up for your first day at a fast-food restaurant only to find out you had to do rocket science. Have we made such an incredible impression on their leader to have our measly skills compared to those of a trained squad of investigators?
And that's when yet another thought struck me.
The cops, of course…
If we really wanted to go through with this, and Elskan seemed like he wasn't being funny about it, we had to be quick before they turned up.
Bloody Sam… always on my tail wherever we decided to go in this damn town. And she surely would have laughed at me if she'd seen me. To a trained professional, we must have looked incredibly comical, trying our best to imitate their efforts, crawling over every inch of the floor to get some hunch of a non-existent clue. In the end, our investigation revealed nothing other than a half-opened window and the ruined carpet we'd already seen. It was hopeless and with an unmistakable air of disappointment we joined Manny in the hallway through which we'd come. The butler was just showing him some paintings, one of which was a portrait of a small man in a Napoleonic era uniform sitting on a horse. His size in combination with his squashed, prune-like face made the scene especially bizarre. It was… a strange piece of art. Definitely not something I would display in my own house.
“Did you find out anything?”
“No, Manny. Unfortunately not.”
“Do you think it was like the wrath of the god or something? Or aliens? What's the theory here?”
“There is no god or anything supernatural, Manny. The whole world is just a chain of logical consequences influenced by your decisions. That's the theory. Whatever happened to that woman was a natural thing and we're going to find out what it was.”
“But as of right now we don't know what it was?” Manny kept on his track.
“No.” El frowned and I could see how it visibly pained him to admit defeat.
“I'm gonna stick to my theory about the aliens in that case.”
Obviously amused by our efforts, the butler directed us to the main door with a thin smile on his lips. “You might as well take a look at the garden before you depart.”
“A house like this has to have some security cameras, right?” El asked him as we walked. “Can we see the footage on them or something? Whatever happened couldn't have just appeared out of thin air.”
“I'm afraid our security cameras have been deactivated.”
“Deactivated? You can't just disable them like some kind of a fictional hacker. That's not how it works.”
“What I mean is...” the man looked around him as if checking for any unwanted attention. “All the security cameras we have are fake. While Mr Clarkson might appear to be considerably wealthy, he tends to be rather... stingy with his money.”
Something in his voice told me that Mr Clarkson's stinginess didn't affect only the security system.
And as if that was his clue, the lock in the door rattled and the wings flew open to reveal a short, well-dressed man huffing and puffing as if he ran all the way from the car. To my immense surprise, I recognised in him the very man from the portrait. The posture, the squashed face… it was all there.
“Mr Clarkson, sir.”
“Arthur!” he scanned the place, no doubt afraid to catch a glimpse of the body. “You're not the usual men, are you?” Clarkson remarked upon noticing our presence and immediately waved a hand to dismiss it as a simple trifle. “She's always getting new people, isn't she? Have you seen the place then?” he asked and upon our nodding hurried to get us out of the door. “Good, good. Cheers to you for coming and you can trust me to take everything from here.”
With that, the man beckoned to his creepy butler who, as politely as he could, shoved us out of the door and closed it shut. It all happened so fast, only now we have the time to re-evaluate what we'd just seen and try and make some sense of things.
“That was… odd.” Manny stared. “Should we just go now? Is that it?”
“I'm not sure. I don't think we should.” Whatever doubts Elskan might have had, he still refused to give up on our investigation. “As strange as it all is, they sent us to this place on a mission, and we should get it done. If we return to the underground empty-handed, they could very well refuse to give us our rations. Or worse… take away our TV.”
Hearing the last sentence, Manny gasped in shock.
“I know. It's scary.” El stood on the pavement, thinking over our next steps. “The dude said we can have a look around the house if we want to, so let's do just that. We can look at the exits, the windows and the garden. And that's all I've got,” he shrugged. “If we find something, we find something and if we don't, it's not like we didn't try. It's their fault for not sending in professionals.”
Careful not to be seen from the conservatory, we circled the left side of the house and into the back where we could see another set of windows, smaller than the big, flashy ones in the front, and a small wooden door, likely used by the staff to get in and out during their shifts.
We only just started looking around and talking about what we just saw when I heard a familiar voice calling our names.
“So, how did it go?”
I almost jumped out of my skin when Ashley peeked out from around the corner, nearly startling all three of us to death.
“I wasn't sure if you were gonna be able to do this on your own, so-”
“What are you doing here?” Manny pointed at her as if he'd seen a ghost. “We dropped you off half an hour ago!”
“Yes. And then you walked a while, stopped by a store to look at something and continued around the park to get here. Do you really think I would let you do it all by yourself, you degenerates? Of course I followed you!”
“What?”
While I was happy to realise we were about to spend some more time with the Rebel girl, looking at Elskan I could see nothing but anger in his eyes and the outlaw stepped forward to grab her by the arm.
“Then you can explain what's going on. You're just gonna deliver mail or food or help someone who's too old... ” he tried to imitate her voice. “Bullshit. There's a dead woman in that house and they want us to explain what happened.”
To my surprise, this seemed to take the girl aback. She seemed to be in as much shock as we were.
“I- I seriously had no idea about that,” she stammered. “I thought- Maybe-”
“Why would Tommy send us to tackle something like this?” El went on.
“Well... I don't know.” Ashley looked away.
“You know what? That doesn't matter. Let's just get this over with already.” He bent down and started examining the ground. “We'll look around, find out there's nothing to be done and go home and you can run back to your leader and tell her we did everything we could have and the next time we go out into the filed we'd love to get something appropriate to our skill level.”
I couldn't miss Ashley watched him rant and bark at her with a pained expression on her face. “Okay. Honest talk now, guys. If I'd known Tommy was sending you to do something like this, I would have told you beforehand.”
“Mhm… it was raining yesterday, wasn't it?”
“You don't believe me, do you?” she crossed her arms over her chest.
“I find it kinda hard to do so-”
“And have I done nothing for you? I've helped you-”
“Quiet!”
“What now?”
“There are steps in the mud over here,” the outlaw pointed a finger. “And over here and over here too, leading up to the door.”
The mood immediately shifted as we all realised we might have just stumbled upon a genuine, real-life clue. And while it was still possible the steps belonged to no one but the unfortunate cleaning lady, that theory soon fell apart as we followed the trail to the wall of the house, where they seemed to run back and forth from the wooden door to a slightly open window we hadn't noticed before. There were traces of muck all over the place and on the wall too where someone presumably tried to force their way in through the only visible entrance.
“Well, this is mental…” Manny gasped. “We're detectives now.”
Seeing their sudden rising hopes and collective excitement, I felt obliged to ruin their fun before anyone got too ambitious and share what little criminological knowledge I had from Sam.
“Okay. Listen, I know this might all seem incredibly wicked and I don't mean to burst your bubble, but detective work usually takes months just to resolve the simplest details. Sometimes even years. I don't know what kind of lead do you intend on following in this one, but we would probably need specialised machines and offices full of people, and we don't even have anything like that in this town. The closest place like that is in Ipswich.”
This whole time Elskan seemed to be listening intently, politely waiting for me to finish, only then to turn around and keep on examining the scene with the stubbornness of a little child.
“And what's this?” he exclaimed before I had any time to argue.
“Whatever it is you found, we should just-”
But it was quite clear he was no longer listening to me. El spent the last couple of seconds staring and unmoving, his gaze transfixed around the door and its doorknob. Out of the blue, he bobbed his head upwards and started chuckling and wheezing in laughter. The situation was so bizarre we all exchanged a short, nervous glance.
“Is everything alright?”
It took him a while to calm down.
“Do you want to see the work of the stupidest criminal anyone has ever seen? Because... you won't believe this, guys.”
Curious as to what he'd found, I inched closer and watched the door, the little window above it, the doorstep, until I finally noticed it. Shoved in between the door frame and the handle, in a place where the lock must have been-
“A credit card. Or half of it, to be clear.” El couldn't stop grinning. “Certain locks can be opened with these, if you know how. This definitely isn't that kind of lock, though. Our Greased Lightning must have realised that when the card got stuck, and that's when he decided to go and open the window instead.”
“Greased Lightning?” Ashley frowned.
“How are we going to talk about him if we don't know what to call him? Considering the circumstances, Greased Lightning seems pretty fitting for the most terrible criminal ever, don't you think?”
“You can open up a lock with a credit card?” I took more of an interest in the second part of the conversation. “I've never heard about that.”
“It's not all that reliable. The gap between the door frame and the door has to be perfectly straight and the bolt has to be cut in a certain way for it to work, but it can be done. I'm gonna teach you how if you want to.”
Manny tried to make some sense of everything unfolding in front of our eyes. “Why would he just leave it here like that?”
“I don't got a clue.”
“And how do you know it was a bloke?” A complaint from Ashley stopped him in his tracks. “It might as well have been a woman.”
“Not if you pay close attention.”
“Gregory Lowe.” She read the name punched into the card, perfectly visible in big, bold letters on its shiny surface.
“As I said… the stupidest criminal ever.”
“Alright,” I chimed in. “I've gotta admit that we might actually be able to catch this one, because this is getting ridiculous.”
“And I know exactly how to do it.” El pocketed the card. “All we need is a bit of help from our good friend, the internet.”
I used the long while it took us to walk all the way to the Barrel, our usual wi-fi cornucopia, to explain to Ashley what we'd learned in her absence. Everything about the mysterious demise of the old lady, the strange electrical traces burnt into the carpet and the wealthy bigwig and his unnerving servant. Her bewildered reactions to everything I said only solidified my belief she was telling the truth and she was as much in the dark about the situation as we were ourselves.
“Are we going to write to the police?” Was her first question when we sat down in our favourite spot.
“Write to the police?” Elskan lowered his voice. One of the men at the table next to us gave us a careful glance. “You are so lucky we've taken you under our wings. Do you know that?”
“What's the battle plan, then?” Ashley asked him. “How do you find someone by their name and half a broken credit card?”
“You are not entirely wrong,” El allowed, “in that, the police would normally be the best option in a situation like this. We don't have the luxury of being able to give them this piece of evidence without some annoying complications though, which is why we have to come up with some more... unconventional methods.”
“Such as?”
Elskan flicked open his phone and began his monologue.
“I mean... the internet is such an underutilised tool, right? Like it's this endless pool of all the knowledge known to men and in our entire history we have never had anything half as powerful. You can learn anything from anywhere. You could be sitting somewhere in the wastelands of Alaska reading an article about rocket science someone posted in France mere seconds ago. You can read every single book humanity has ever produced and stuff every fact we've found out into that fleshy grey matter of yours. You can donate to charity with a simple click of your mouse... and people use it to watch videos and post their selfies on social media. To entertain themselves and to show off.”
“I never thought about it that way,” I replied, mainly because I'd never really thought about it at all.
“Yeah. I'm pretty sure we should have invented something like this a lot later than we did. Or maybe we just need to grow to learn to use it properly. Anyway...”
“Wait, why are we getting into some philosophical rants?” Ashley wondered. “I thought we had something better to do here.”
“I'm getting to it! And the internet is the very answer to our problem. Specifically, a site that offers one of the most powerful spying tools in history.”
For a dramatic effect, he let us wait and stare at him for a while.
“Anybody here has a social media account? Because I'm about to show you we live in a pretty terrifying age.”
Typing out his password, he opened up his browser of choice, and Ashley folded her hands over her chest and narrowed her eyes, frowning. “So you're just gonna stalk him, is that it?”
“I don't think there's any harm in it. For us. Our legal systems are severely lagging behind the high-tech reality we live in. No one will ever know. But if you have any better ideas...”
“Oh, I'm not criticising you. Just asking. People tend to reveal stupid amounts of information on their profiles.” She leaned closer. “So, what do we got?”
It took only a single search, not even five minutes, and we had him. True to the outlaw's words, a frighteningly short amount of time.
All we had to do was to type in the name we had from the card and the location of our town. There could only have been so many Gregory Lowes in the area and we managed to pinpoint the man who fitted both parameters. Five of them, to be clear... our method, as effective as it might have appeared, seemed to be far from perfect.
“Is that him?” the Rebel girl pointed at the upmost picture. “He doesn't look like... doesn't look the way I would have imagined.”
That one was no more than a boy. Pimples covered his cheeks under a shock of red hair sprouting in all directions, while a tiny wisp of a baby's first moustache above his upper lip screamed for a razor. He wore sunglasses for his profile picture, hoping against hope it would make him more attractive.
I wasn't this wasn't the one.
“What do you expect from a guy who forgets his own credit card on the crime scene?” Elskan shrugged. “It could be any of the other four, honestly. I could... write all of them?” he looked to us for any other ideas. “Write them a message that we found a credit card on a street a little further from the house. That might make him think some pedestrian found it as it got loose and... I don't know... why am I the only one pitching myself ideas around here, anyway?”
At the moment, unfortunately, none of us had anything better than him and so, using a fake account, we wrote to each of them in turn, politely asking for some information or an arranged meeting to return the lost card.
“Let's hope they reply fast. The algorithm will notice any moment there's something wrong with the email we used and they'll block the account,” the outlaw warned us. “Now then… you guys stay here and wait and I'm gonna go take a piss.”
It didn't take too long for the replies to come flooding in. So far, two of them seemed to be from confused or otherwise surprised individuals, apologising for the obvious misunderstanding.
As we waited for the right person, drinking and chatting our time away, something strange happened that I think might be worth mentioning here. Manny was sitting to my left, talking and laughing and as he raised the glass, one of his sleeves rolled up and my eyes fell on something I hadn't seen yet.
I couldn't believe I hadn't noticed it before. Manny's arm was just covered in old scars. And both of them, for that matter. As if a hundred cats had scratched and scraped at his skin until every centimetre was marked by their tiny claws.
With everything else going on, it didn't seem all that important at the time, but I made a mental note to ask about his weird injury later.
By the time El came back from his prolonged absence, we had the man.
It was the one from the first photo.
62Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡx80c0jT8WN
Gregg69 ⟨10:33⟩ Hello that belongs to me
Gregg69 ⟨10:33⟩ i lost it when I went shopping
Gregg69 ⟨10:35⟩ dont call the police please
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Arranging a quick meeting was even easier than we expected. By a lucky chance, our culprit turned out to be living just nearby and being the lazy band of outlaws that we were, we decided to wait for him right at the pub.
“This is taking so long… Have you got some cash? I'm gonna go buy us some crisps or something.”
“Sorry. We get nothing but items from your boss. Never any money.”
“She's not my boss. More like a friend I met through a friend. The last time I had a real boss was… a while ago.”
We tactically switched places and now sat all huddled together at a table closest to one of the windows while Elskan waited outside to try and talk to the potentially dangerous culprit. We weren't entirely sure what to expect, so the three of us waited as a backup in case anything went wrong. I don't think we would have been able to do anything if it really came to it though.
“What did you used to do before all this?” Manny asked the obvious next question.
“Art school…” she made a face.
“That's ambitious.”
“Is it?”
“Wait!” I tried to grab their attention. “I think that's him.”
From across the street, I could see the boy from the internet looking carefully both ways before crossing the road to meet us. He seemed really meek and genuinely oblivious to the whole situation. Strangely, his hunched posture and nervous glances reminded me of none other but our Manny. Only my view of him was strangely twisted, considering the things we knew about him. Like a weird evil twin.
It took him a moment to find the right person to talk to and he only drew closer after the outlaw beckoned to him. The following conversation was quite short and to the point and after they'd exchanged the lost item and shaken hands with pleasant smiles, we could see his bushy mop of bright red hair disappear back into the crowd from which he'd come from and hurried outside to learn what happened.
I was the first one to reach El, standing and frowning with his hands folded on his chest.
“So was that him? Are you sure about it?”
“The credit card is registered to his name and he clearly recognised it,” El shrugged. “I think that's all the evidence we need. We'll see what happens next.”
“What now?”
“Now? I'll give him a bit of a head start to make him believe he's nice and safe and follow him across the town, see where he goes.”
“A real-life pursuit?” Ashley sounded excited just thinking about the prospect, no doubt imagining some cheesy spy movie. “This day just keeps getting better and better, doesn't it?”
“It is. Not for you though.” He wiped the satisfied grin off her face. “This is getting way too weird and way too dangerous for our usual adventures, and I won't have any of you getting hurt over it.”
“And if he turns into some shady alleyway or tries to use a shortcut you've never heard of?”
“I guess I'll improvise.”
“See? You don't know this town. But I do. I know every street and everyone who lives here. I could help you!”
“Do you?” El grinned and all of the sudden his expression changed as he focused on something over her shoulder. “Then who's that guy?”
In unison, all three of us turned around as conspicuously as a group of amateurs could do, trying to find the mysterious figure he was talking about. People were walking up and down the street. Someone was sitting by one of the corners, shielded from the sun by the statue in his back, begging for pennies. Other than that, there was no one else to be seen. I turned back to-
Elskan was gone.
“That old bastard!” the Rebel cursed. “How can you two live with this bloke?”
“I- I didn't choose-” I tried to defend myself while Manny stared at the empty space in front of us. “How... how did he just vanish like that?”
“He didn't! I can see him walking down the street!”
No matter the clumsy escape our friend chose to execute, he was already too far away for us to catch up to him in any way, and no matter how tamping and betrayed it might have made us, there was nothing to be done but to turn around and retreat back into the safety of the building behind us.
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£¢\£Â¢
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We took the car on our way back. If Elskan wanted to go without us, he shouldn't expect us to wait for him.
When told about our curious experiences and El's lonely quest to finish the job by himself, the three outlaws got, in turn, weirded out, excited and finally worried. William was only concerned for his younger brother safety, the doctor didn't seem to care at all, and I'm pretty sure James straight up didn't believe us. Nonetheless, we didn't talk much of what had passed and all carried on with our usual daily chores to keep the place afloat and waiting for the eventual, surely coming resolution.
It was well into the night when the outlaw leader finally came home from his investigations. I was just getting ready to go to bed myself, reading a book I'd borrowed from him, when El finally burst into the room, dirty and visibly knackered. He immediately crashed onto the sofa, which served as my bed for the time being, and started talking.
“Well, that was way more complicated than I expected it to be. Do you know how hard it is to follow someone around all day?”
When I asked about the results of the chase, he simply waved the question away.
“I think I have a pretty good lead, but I don't want to talk about it now. If everything goes right, we'll go to the place tomorrow, get the guy, find out what he did and reap all the amazing rewards the Rebels are going to give us. Hopefully…”
There was no point in arguing with him and so, determined to get at least some new information, I decided to ask about a different topic that had been on my mind ever since the afternoon.
“Does he now?” El said when questioned about the strange scars that I've noticed covered most of the skin on Manny's arms. He didn't look happy about it. “I've seen them too. We generally just don't talk about it…” It was fairly obvious the topic was difficult at best to be talked about and he suddenly slowed down, turning every word in his mouth to be sure to explain everything to the best of his abilities. “All I know is those two simply turned up one day, knocking at our door and asking for shelter and despite the danger that posed for us, they looked so pitiful we couldn't leave them out in the dark. I don't know much of their history other than what we managed to overhear from a few of their whispered conversations and the deductions were able to piece together with James. We never asked them.”
Elskan stretched out his legs and yawned.
“To her them tell it, though… They had it rough out in the town, even before the foxes came and took their home. Manny was the quiet kid of the school, and Will did his best to keep all the bullies away. Not always with success. When they got stranded on the streets all alone, it was almost the end for them.”
“What about their parents?”
That only earned me a shrug. “They could be alive. They could be dead. From what I've gathered, it's a little too complicated to share with a bunch of guys you barely know. Maybe one day… one thing is clear though, a normal, calm, functioning family would stick together. Especially in times like these. ”
“So…”
“So try not to think about it too much and don't mention what I've told you unless you absolutely have to, alright?”
“Alright.”
“Now if we can talk about the Rebel girl-” I immediately perked up when he mentioned Ashley. “Didn't she seem to be acting a little weird to you today?”
“I don't know. This was a weird day,” I had to allow. “We all had a lot of new… experiences to process.”
“Maybe. It might have been just that.” He said and got up off my couch. “Well… whatever the results of all of this are going to be and whatever the Rebels will say when we march in there with a captured criminal, I promise we'll look into it the first thing in the morning. Right now, all I want to do is to sleep and get some rest. Good night Tony and try not to think about any of this too hard.”
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