“Hey, weirdo!” Gavin Taylor had been sitting just a few places away from Matt and stopped him on the other side of the door. His blond hair was cleaner than usual. Matt wondered if they had insisted on washing it when he was at the hospital.
“What do you want?” Matt demanded.
“I just want you to know that you might as well get out of this school. Why don’t you go back to your friends in prison? Nobody wants you here.”
“I wasn’t in prison,” Matt said. “And it’s none of your business anyway.”
“I saw your file.” It wasn’t true but Gavin taunted him nevertheless. “You’re weird and you’re a crook and you shouldn’t be here.”
A few other boys had hung back, sensing a fight. There were five minutes until the first lesson but it would be worth being late to see the two of them slugging it out.
Matt wasn’t sure how to react. Part of him wanted to lash out at the other boy but he knew that was exactly what Gavin wanted. One punch and he would go running off to a teacher with his bandaged hand and Matt would be in even more trouble.
“Why don’t you just get lost, Gavin?” he said. And then, before he could stop himself, “Or would you like me to rip open your other hand too?”
It was a stupid thing to say. Matt remembered what he’d been thinking as he walked home only the day before. The idea that he could actually use his powers to hurt someone his own age horrified him. So what was he doing making threats like this? Gavin was right. He was weird. A freak. He didn’t deserve to have any friends.
He tried to backtrack. “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said. “And what I said just now, I didn’t mean that either. I know you don’t want me here, but I didn’t ask to come to this school. Why can’t you give me a break?”
“Why don’t you get lost?” Gavin replied.
“I just don’t understand you!” Matt exclaimed. Despite himself, he was beginning to get angry again. “What have I ever…?”
He stopped.
He could smell burning.
He didn’t need to look around. He knew there was nothing on fire. What he could smell was burnt toast…
…and if he closed his eyes he could see a sudden flare of yellow, a teapot shaped like a teddy bear, his mother’s dress on the morning she was killed…
And he knew that it meant something was about to happen. That was what he had learnt at Raven’s Gate. The smell of burning was important. So were the brief flashes of memory. There had been a teapot shaped like a teddy bear in the kitchen that morning, six years ago. The morning his parents had been killed. His mother had burnt the toast. Somehow, the memories acted as a trigger. They were a signal that everything was about to change.
But why was it happening now? Everything was under control. He wasn’t in any danger. There were no chains he needed to smash, no door to be blown open. He forced himself to ignore it and was relieved when the smell faded away.
He looked up and saw that Gavin was staring at him. There were half a dozen other boys grouped around too. How long had he stood there, frozen like some sort of idiot? One or two of them were smirking. Matt struggled to finish his sentence. But he had nothing more to say.
“Loser,” Gavin muttered, and walked away.
The other boys went with him, leaving Matt standing on his own outside the chapel door. It was half past nine. First lessons began.
Thirty miles away, the police had closed an entire street, sealing each end with blue-and-white tape and the usual signs: POLICE – DO NOT CROSS.
The unconscious man had been discovered by a milkman. He had been lying on the pavement about a hundred metres away from a Shell garage. The paramedics had arrived and they had quickly established that he had been hit once with a blunt instrument… possibly a hammer or a crowbar. His skull was fractured but the good news was that he was going to live. He’d sustained other injuries too and the police suspected that he might have been a passenger in some sort of truck. Perhaps he had been pushed out while the vehicle was moving at speed.
It had been easy to identify him. There was a wallet in his back pocket complete with cash and credit cards. The fact that it hadn’t been taken automatically ruled out theft as a motive. His wife in Felixstowe had already been contacted and taken at high speed to the emergency ward of the hospital where he was being treated. From her, the police had learned that Harry Shepherd hadn’t been a passenger. He had been a driver. He worked for the Shell Petroleum Company and should have been delivering ten thousand litres of fuel to the garage close to the spot where he had been found injured.
Almost unbelievably, the police wasted a whole hour before they realized that something was missing. The petrol tanker itself. Perhaps if it had been less obvious, less huge, they might have noticed sooner. But at last they put two and two together and acted with urgency. They had already contacted Shell’s office at Felixstowe and the registration number of the vehicle (there was no need for a description) was being circulated to all units.
The petrol in the tanker was worth many thousands of pounds. Was this why the driver had been knocked out? The police hoped so, because simple theft was something they could handle. It was certainly a lot less worrying than the alternatives.
But the thought was still there. This might, after all, be a quite different sort of crime. Suppose the tanker had been taken by terrorists. The local police put a call through to London and a news blackout was ordered. There was no reason yet to start a panic. As they searched the roads up and down Yorkshire, the police remained tight-lipped. But they all knew. Ten thousand litres of petrol could create a very large bonfire indeed. They didn’t want to admit they were afraid.
The morning only got worse.
Matt arrived five minutes late for his first lesson, stumbling into the classroom while the teacher – Miss Ford – was in full flow.
“I’m sorry I’m late, miss…”
“Why are you late, Matthew?”
How could he explain? How could he tell her that he’d had some sort of premonition outside the school chapel that had left him paralysed, uncertain what to do?
“I forgot my bag,” he said. It was a lie. But it was simpler than the truth.
“Well, I’m afraid I’m going to have to put you in the detention book.” Miss Ford sighed. “Now, will you please take your seat.”
Matt’s desk was right at the back of the classroom and, although he kept his eyes fixed on the floor, he felt everyone watching him as he took his place. Miss Ford was one of the better teachers at Forrest Hill. She was plain and old-fashioned, which somehow suited her as she taught history, but she had been kind to Matt and had tried to help him fill in the gaps in his knowledge. For his part, Matt had done his best to catch up, reading extra books after school. They were studying the Second World War and he found it more interesting than medieval kings or endless lists of dates. It might be history, but it still mattered now.
Even so, he was unable to concentrate today. Miss Ford was telling them about Dunkirk, May 1940. Matt tried to follow what she was saying but he couldn’t make the words link up. She seemed a long way away, and was it his imagination or had it become very warm in the classroom?
“…the army was cut off and it seemed to many people in England that the war was already lost…”
Matt looked out of the window. Once again he became aware of the sharp, acrid smell of burning toast.
And that was when he saw it, floating through the air, making no sound. It was some sort of lorry. There was a figure hunched behind the wheel but the sunlight was reflecting off the windscreen and he couldn’t make it out. Like a great beast, it soared towards the school, plummeting out of the sky. Its headlamps were its eyes. The radiator grille was a gaping mouth. The tanker seemed to stretch into the distance, a huge, gleaming silver cylinder on twelve thick tyres. Closer and closer it came. Now it filled up the whole window and was about to smash through…