Doctor Who_ Warchild - Andrew Cartmel [117]
‘But why Retour?’
‘Why not?’
‘Because it’s kind of clumsy and obvious. “Retour” is French for “return”.’
‘Is it?’ said Vincent. ‘How appropriate. You take a left here and it’s Concroft Avenue.’
‘I know where I’m going.’
‘Yeah, I guess you do.’
They pulled up in the shade of the trees outside the McIlveens’ big white house. A bright red sports car from an earlier epoch was parked in the driveway and a woman was just walking away from it, up the front steps of the house.
‘That’s the neighbour, Mrs McCracken. Widow. Look at that body. You can get a fair idea what killed the husband.’
Amy sighed disgustedly and didn’t reply. Up on the porch Mrs McCracken reached for the doorbell then hesitated.
‘She’s not ringing it. She’s coming back down off the porch.’
‘Do you think she saw us?’
‘No. She’s just going around to the back of the house for some reason.’
‘Why?’
‘Who cares why. Ricky just stepped out of the front door.’
‘OK. Drive slowly and let him get out of sight of the house before we pick him up.’
Ricky’s faithful old sneakers, almost worn out and held together mostly by their laces now, scuffed along the sidewalk as he walked towards the bus stop. Ricky caught the bus to school every day. Unlike his sister he didn’t have any snobbery about using public transport. His sister was a princess who had to be picked up in a vintage sports car and chauffeured to school. Not that you’d call Mrs McCracken a chauffeur.
Ricky liked Mrs McCracken and she’d offered to give him a lift every day, too. But as much as he might like Mrs McCracken, the thought of being cooped up with his sister and her best friend was too much to bear.
And then there was the thought of arriving at the school in that distinctive shiny car. No way you could escape attention arriving in that. All the kids would be staring.
Everybody’s eyes would be on you.
Ricky didn’t like the idea of all those eyes on him.
So each day he would walk to the end of Concroft Avenue, turn right and walk another two blocks to the bus stop. There he caught the bus to school with a crowd of other kids including a couple of his cronies, Tommy Barretta and Phil Mendick. Ricky caught the bus every day.
Not today, though.
Today Ricky hadn’t reached the end of Concroft Avenue when a car rolled up behind him and a window hummed down.
As he saw Amy Cowan leaning out and smiling at him Ricky had a sudden flash of déjà vu. A beautiful blonde leaning out of a car window.
‘Hello Ricky,’ she said and Ricky was momentarily lost in the pleasure of looking into her lovely face, enjoying the strange ebbing sensation of déjà vu in his head. He hardly noticed the man in the car with her. It was his sister’s history teacher, some guy called Retour.
Amy’s smile faded and her face suddenly turned serious.
‘Ricky, could you get in the car with us. I’m afraid we have some bad news for you.’
‘Isn’t there some sort of Buddhist injunction against being a Peeping Tom?’
The Buddhist monk was so startled by the sudden sound of Mrs McCracken’s voice that he would have jumped in the air.
But he was already in the air, hanging on to one of the windowsills at the back of the McIlveen house. The shaven-headed young monk had lifted himself up on to the sill as if he was doing a chin-up and now he was hanging there in athletic fashion, with no apparent sign of strain.
His body twitched with surprise at Mrs McCracken’s voice and then the young monk turned to look at her.
‘You look very silly hanging there in your orange robe.’
‘Well, I feel pretty stupid.’
‘So let go,’ said Lesley McCracken.
The monk let go of his hold and dropped. Immediately below the window was a patch of roses but he managed to land clear of them, alighting sure-footedly on the springy green turf of the lawn. Mrs McCracken was wearing her mirrored sunglasses which, at the best of times, gave her the look of a predatory insect. Now as she glowered at the monk in front of her she looked formidably menacing.
‘What are you doing skulking around