Top-Secret Grandad and Me Page 7

  “Tell me something,” said Graves. She unscrewed the tip off a Big A Printers pen like she was slowly wringing a chicken’s neck. “What were you doing hanging about the janitor’s office at lunchtime yesterday?”

  Again, I could have kicked myself. Someone had spotted me. Not for the first time, I would just have to bluff my way out.

  “I was looking for the sick bucket,” I replied.

  She leaned forward. “Someone tampered with the CCTV. The hard drive is missing. We think whoever did it might be involved in the murders.”

  Suddenly, I did not like the way this interview was headed. If they thought I tampered with the CCTV then there was a good chance they also saw me as a suspect.

  “Murders?” I asked.

  “Yes, I shouldn’t have to tell you that the death of your school janitor is now being treated as suspicious as well.”

  No, she didn’t have to tell me. I could have told her. There was something more than suspicious about Big Davie’s death. What was really worrying me at the moment was that I was being linked with it. With both murders in fact. And Mum too.

  Grandad now had his back against the wall, and was pushing up on his tiptoes, as if looking over a crowd. He was fanning them with his hands. “Gentlemen, calm down, please!” He shot me a pleading look. “Jayesh, are you seeing this? Oh, sorry, I forgot, hold on.”

  Grandad clenched his eyes and gritted his teeth. Was he doing what I thought he was about to do?

  “NO!” I shouted.

  Graves stared at me like I was dressed in a chicken costume, wearing a sign that said: Please wring my neck for me now.

  “No?” said Graves.

  Suddenly, I liked this interview even less – in the blink of an eye the room was full. A dozen men wearing tribal robes and carrying spears were all shouting angrily, yelling themselves hoarse in an African language, and pointing in our faces, including Graves and McBurnie’s – not that they noticed.

  “They call themselves the Mumbari,” said Grandad. “These guys are the ancestors of the tribe.”

  Whoever he was, the guy who was currently looming in my face must have suffered one humdinger of a death, as his right eyeball was dangling out of its socket.

  Chapter 21

  The Key Suspect

  “See?” said Grandad. “Now you know why I hate other ghosts?”

  “Eh, hullo?” DI Graves was gazing at me like I had ripped off the chicken costume to reveal a sparkly green leotard with purple leggings underneath, and another sign that read: Are you sure you wouldn’t like to wring my neck for me now?

  I buried my head in my hands. “Will you PLEASE stop!” I was talking to Grandad, but I could just as easily have been talking to any of them.

  “What?” Graves asked threateningly.

  McBurnie whipped out his truncheon. “Can I hit him for that?”

  She dismissed him with a wave of her hand. “Oh, come on,” he moaned. “He’s asking for it.”

  “Sorry!” Grandad called out from within the tangle of ghostly bodies. “Just wanted you to see what I have to put up with.”

  When I looked up, the shouting men were all gone. It was just the living again, and Grandad. I would’ve breathed a sigh of relief, except I wasn’t that relieved. I’m not sure the living, in this case, were that much friendlier than the dead.

  Graves tapped the pen against the lip of the Big A mug sitting on the desk in front of her. “The tip-off was an anonymous one. It came from a public phonebox not far from here. We checked it out, of course. We got one eyewitness.”

  An eyewitness, I thought, biting my lip. How unlucky was that? This was getting worse by the moment.

  Graves picked up her notebook and flicked through it. “A darkly-clothed figure, about four foot ten…” She looked me up and down purposefully. “The witness thought the figure seemed to be having an argument with himself.”

  Grandad chortled from over in the corner. “Oh, you have no idea, lady!”

  “So,” said Graves, screwing the lid back on the pen, then plucking it off with a POP – like it was the chicken’s head, or my head. “Do you have anything to tell me?”

  She clasped her hands and gazed at me expectantly. This was the moment she’d been building up to. She laid all the evidence out in front of me and then challenged me to come clean.

  “NO!” Grandad appeared at my shoulder, struggling as if fighting the ghostly men off. “Jayesh! Do not tell them about Maw Cleggan. Unless they get hold of that van then you have got nothing on her. She will be free by five o’clock and by half past you will be floating to the bottom of the Clyde wearing concrete ankle boots.”

  But, if I didn’t tell her everything, then what evidence she had linked the murders to me and my mum. I was seen in the jannie’s office when the CCTV was swiped, and someone who looked like me was spotted phoning in the anonymous tip-off.

  And yet, the longer I sat there, twiddling my thumbs under the detective’s gaze, the more it became clear that Grandad was right. I stood up.

  “Sorry, I can’t help you.”

  McBurnie lurched forward. “Can I batter him, Boss? Ah, go on, just a wee tap on the nut?”

  “No,” said Graves. She stood up briskly and pressed a business card into my hand. “For when you change your mind.”

  Graves nodded at the door, signalling the interview was over, but then she called me back. “Oh, and you should know, your mother is at the police station. She’s helping us with our enquiries.”

  “Is she under arrest?” I asked.

  “She’s the only one who saw the body. So, until we find more evidence, she’s a key witness. And… a key suspect.” She shrugged, and tilted her head, knowingly. Another challenge. But I didn’t rise to it.

  “What!” cried Grandad. “You have arrested my daughter-in-law?”

  “Think about it. She’s the one who reported the body,” I said. “Why would she commit a murder and then report it herself?”

  “You’d be surprised what people do,” said Graves, “to dodge suspicion.” She slammed the door in my face.

  I raced up the corridor, leaving Grandad banging his fists at the office door, or at least trying to; his hands were just going through it, and making no noise whatsoever. “How dare you accuse poor Katie! I’ll haunt you if you do not watch out.”

  Was DI Graves holding Mum deliberately to make me talk? Or was she really about to try and pin Morrison’s murder, and Big Davie’s too, on us? Well, that wouldn’t happen, because I had other plans.

  Grandad floated up behind me as I passed through the main school gate. “Phew! Maybe I am getting used to this floating business, uh?” he said. “Where are we going?”

  I looked around to make sure we weren’t being followed. The only thing that stood out was the man in the fedora hat and overcoat, the one I’d seen the other day taking photos. He was perched on the wall across from the entrance writing in a notebook, but he wasn’t interested in me. He was watching the school. What was he up to? Whatever it was, I didn’t have time to hang around and find out. I had enough on my plate.

  “The police don’t know the identity of the body. It won’t be long before they do. That gives us a chance.” I flagged down an approaching bus.

  “A chance for what?” said Grandad.

  “To find out who James Morrison was, and why he was killed.”

  Chapter 22

  The Bamboozled Turnstile

  On the bus, I turned James Morrison’s business card over in my fingers. I still had no idea what linked him to our school. Or what linked him to Maw Cleggan. Or, for that matter, how Maw Cleggan was linked at all. Come to think of it, I didn’t know very much. But I still knew more than the police.

  Murder, money-laundering, whatever it was, it was a dark business.

  Morrison was a shipping agent, or, at least, he used to be, when he was alive. As far as I knew that was something to do with importing and exporting goods by sea, handling shipments of cargo, that kind of thi
ng. Maybe he was crooked? Maybe that’s how he was linked with organised crime. Maybe he was smuggling something into the country: drugs, gold, even people.

  Or, maybe he wasn’t crooked at all. Maybe he was straight, and he’d found something out. Either way, what made him come to the school and why had he been killed there?

  So many questions, and if I was going to put Mum and me in the clear for the two murders then I was going to have to get some answers – and fast!

  Marlin Shipping was on the fourth floor of a drab concrete office building. From the looks of it, I wouldn’t get past the reception desk. They had a security guard and turnstiles, which were operated by the employees’ ID cards. But it wouldn’t be a problem for Grandad.

  “Go up there and have a snoop. See if you can find Morrison’s desk,” I said to him.

  “Rely on me, boy,” he said. He raised his hands to his eyes, as if to fix an imaginary pair of glasses, then tutted. “Wish I had my shades.” Then he floated through the glass entrance doors.

  As the minutes ticked by, I decided to scout the building. A set of steps led down to an underground car park. There was another entrance around the back, with a security card reader and a turnstile, but no security guard. I hung around there, watching the folk who worked there coming and going, scanning their cards as they went. I wondered how hard it would be to nick one.

  I went into the SPAR, bought a can of cola, some chocolate and a bunch of flowers, then I returned to the front of the office building where Grandad had left me, and waited.

  It was another ten minutes before he re-appeared, floating out of the lift, then through the glass doors.

  “Uuuuugh!”

  “I found his desk,” he said. “It is one of these fancy open-plan offices, but there is no one sitting nearby. There was a little bronze plaque with his name on it.”

  “And?”

  “And what?” he replied. “It’s a desk. There is nothing on it. The drawers do not look like they are locked. You could probably open them, but not me.”

  Not being able to touch anything was a serious drawback to being a ghost. I would have to get in there myself. But it was alright, I’d already thought of a plan.

  “Come on, Grandad.” I led him round to the rear entrance.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “You’ll see.” We waited there until I saw someone leaving with a Marlin ID card in her hand, a rotund woman wearing a black coat.

  Just as she was about to pass I shoved the flowers under Grandad’s ghostly nose. “Smell these.”

  “What!” he cried, before launching into a colossal sneeze.

  AHHHHH-CHHOOO!

  I braced myself, ready to pounce.

  A huge gust of wind caught the woman off balance. She staggered and fell over, landing on her bottom. The contents of her handbag scattered across the pavement.

  I rushed over to help her to her feet. “Are you OK, Missus?”

  She looked up gratefully, which she wouldn’t have done if she’d known I was the one to blame. “Oh, dear, what was that, son?” She got to her feet and brushed herself down. “The wind just blew up from nowhere.”

  “Oh well, that’s Glasgow weather for you,” I said, picking her stuff off the pavement and cramming it back into her handbag. “Here, have these, you deserve them.” I thrust the flowers at her.

  “Oh, thank you, son,” She looked dazed as she turned to totter down the road.

  Grandad was staring at me with a strange, quizzical look.

  I dangled the lanyard in front of him, with her ID card on the end. “Ta-da!” I put it round my neck.

  “So now, if anyone asks…” he said, leaning forward to read the card. “You are Susan Maguire, Input Analyst.”

  “That’s me! Input analysis is my bag.” I grinned. So did he.

  “Clever boy.”

  “After you,” I said. “You can show me the way.”

  The ID badge got me through the security door and the turnstile, and up to the fourth floor in the lift. On the way, I tore off my school sweatshirt and tie. Hopefully I wouldn’t look too out of place, apart from the fact I was only eleven.

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you,” said Grandad, as we stepped out of the lift into a wide foyer. “There’s a second turnstile, and you need a pin number for it.”

  “But I don’t have a pin,” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me this before we came up here?”

  I was annoyed, because here I was standing on the landing outside the Marlin Shipping office, in front of a turnstile which I couldn’t get through. Sooner or later someone was going to notice me here, and send me away. I needed to keep moving.

  “Oho! Let me try something.” He pinched his nose with his fingers and closed his eyes, as if he was about to jump into a swimming pool feet first. And then, he did actually jump. His ghostly form swirled about, then disappeared like water down a plughole, shooting into the turnstile’s keypad.

  The turnstile bleeped. A green light came on, and I pushed my way through.

  Grandad shot out of the other side and wobbled about on the floor. “Haaayyy! I am not doing that again.” He had completely bamboozled the computer system – another useful skill.

  “Well done, Grandad.”

  We were soon faced with another problem. There was another reception desk at the entrance to Marlin Shipping, manned by a blonde woman. “How will I get past her?”

  The answer came quite quickly, as a cleaner passed by, pushing a trolley. “Grandad, do your blowy thing at the reception desk.”

  He nodded, puffed out his cheeks and blew, while I fell in behind the trolley.

  A breeze blew papers up in the receptionist’s face. She scrambled to pick them up. That was all the diversion I needed.

  The cleaner stopped too, watching the papers fluttering about. I just kept walking. Next thing I knew I was strolling through the banks of desks in Marlin’s open plan office.

  “This is it,” said Grandad. “Over here.” He led me towards the big floor-to-ceiling window at the end. On the way, I stopped to pick up a clipboard and pen. It made me look official, like I was carrying out some sort of inspection.

  “There,” he said, pointing out a desk in a quiet section next to the window.

  I knelt down and pretended to tie my shoelaces. Then, after a quick look about, I crept closer.

  No one had seen me, and I was within touching distance of Morrison’s desk. I felt a huge flush of satisfaction, as I leant over to pull open the top drawer.

  That’s when my head crashed into someone else’s. A girl’s. She was about my age, with straight brown hair and hazel eyes. And she was reaching for the same drawer.

  Chapter 23

  The Grapefruit Flamenco

  “OW!” we both cried.

  I clutched my head. So did she.

  “Who are you?” she said in an annoyed voice.

  “Well, who are you?” I deliberately made myself sound equally annoyed.

  She flashed her eyes fiercely. “This is my story, so clear off!”

  “Your story? What?”

  She shouldered me out of the way and slid open the top drawer. The tip of her tongue poked out of the side of her mouth as she rummaged through it. I tried to rummage too, but she slapped my hand away. “Ow!”

  “Clear off, I told you!” she said.

  “Sshhh!” said Grandad. “Someone’s coming.”

  I nudged her, and we both scurried under the desk and hid. Just in time too, as a pair of men’s feet came strutting by.

  I shut my eyes and tried to stay completely still. I dared not even breathe.

  “It’s OK,” said Grandad after a moment. “He’s gone.”

  I nudged the girl again, and we crawled out from under the desk.

  For the first time, she looked at me. It was like she was trying to weigh me up. “Thanks,” she said.

  “Oh, don’t thank me.”

  She delved into the drawer again, and dug out a clutch of memory sti
cks, the kind of things you plug into the side of your computer. She thumbed through them, flicking most of them back into the drawer, before settling on one in particular.

  “Ah-ha!” she declared.

  “What’s that?”

  “Evidence, I bet,” said Grandad. “What is she up to?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know,” the girl said, winking.

  I could see from the way she was dressed, with a plain, open-necked shirt and her school blazer and tie tucked over her schoolbag, that she was trying the same simple disguise as me. But why?

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “Never you mind,” she said, getting up and straightening her dress.

  “If you’re looking for Morrison, then I can help… maybe,” I said.

  She surveyed me through narrowed eyes, but didn’t reply.

  I went on: “My name’s Jay Patel. I’m not doing a story, I promise.”

  “Then what are you doing?” she asked.

  “There’s a café down the street,” I said. “Let me explain.”

  “Are you buying?”

  I nodded, wondering if what pocket money I had left would be enough to afford anything.

  She smiled, a broad, toothy grin. “Great! I’m Sian Hanlon, from the St Knocker Sentinel.” And she shook my hand.

  ***

  El Fruit-io was a Spanish-themed smoothie bar. All the servers were dressed up as pieces of citrus fruit. They danced to salsa music, carried maracas round with them, and wore sombreros.

  Grandad stared round at the place, shaking his head in disbelief. “Do the staff get paid extra to look this daft?”

  I sipped on my Orange Fiesta, mourning the loss of five whole pounds and sixty pence. This had better be worth it, I thought.

  Meanwhile Sian slurped loudly on her Grapefruit Flamenco, her bicycle helmet resting on the tabletop beside her.

  “What’s the St Knocker Sentinel?” I asked. It wasn’t a newspaper I’d ever heard of.

  “Oh,” she said. “It’s my school, St Knocker’s Academy. The Sentinel is our news blog. I’ve been investigating a story on illegal diamond mining around the world.” She put her drink down and stared at me earnestly. “Did you know that they force kids our age to work down these mines? It’s practically slave labour. They smuggle the diamonds out. No one knows exactly how. But what I do know is that one of Marlin Shipping’s executives was arrested on suspicion of diamond smuggling. He got off with it of course; someone bribed the judge.”