Dark Ride (5 page)

C
HAPTER
10

 

Checking Me Out

 

Next morning, once Mum had gone, I wrapped up warmly and set off for the fairground. I told myself I was going to try and find out a bit more about Luka’s missing mum. It helped to keep my mind off my own problems. But deep down I knew I just wanted to see him again.

The building work was in full swing now at the marina. There were big fences up all around, just as I’d seen on telly, but I could hear the rumble of heavy machines digging from inside. There were
Keep Out
signs and warnings about wearing hard hats all over the place. One of them said,
No Hat, No Boots, No Work!
The main gate was opening to let in a digger and I stopped for a moment to let it go past. I could see a giant hole inside and loads of men like ants moving around it. Something struck me about the scene, but it was only when the gates closed again I realised what it was. Most of the workers inside looked Chinese. Odd, when I’d never seen any Chinese people around town before. And none of them seemed to have those yellow hats on, despite all the signs.

I shrugged and carried on to the fairground, slipping one of the blue tickets Luka had given me into the slot on the turnstile.
Clunk.

I stood at the entrance for a minute. It was such a spooky place. There was a mean wind bothering rubbish that lay around the place and whistling through some of the stalls that had gaps in the hoardings. It was hard to believe there was ever music and laughter and kids charging about, lips sticky with candyfloss. I hugged myself, trying to control the shivers that were more about the atmosphere than the weather. Taking a deep breath, I set off further into the fairground.

I found him on the carousel, sitting on the lowest step, staring into space. The sight of him stopped me in my tracks – I’d never seen anyone look so alone. I could see a dirty brown sleeping bag lying next to him like a slithery skin shed by some animal. He glanced up suddenly, and a smile instantly lit up his face and made my heart do a strange backflip.

‘Wotcha,’ he said, springing to his feet.

‘All right,’ I said, suddenly feeling shy. ‘What you up to?’

‘Oh, you know,’ he said, ‘I’m just thinking things through.’

We stared at each other for a moment.

I walked over to where he was standing and sat on the edge of the carousel. He sat down too and we were silent again. He wasn’t smiling any more and seemed lost in his thoughts, but it was okay all the same. I didn’t feel awkward or anything with him. It felt... right.

After a few moments, Luka turned to look at me. ‘So, you’re new around here, yeah?’

I looked at him. ‘How did you know that?’

He laughed. ‘No one comes here any more. Well, unless they’re holding a clipboard and thinking about ways to knock it all down.’

I thought about the story I’d seen on the local news. ‘Luka ...’ I hesitated and he turned to look at me. Our faces were about a foot apart and I could see his eyes moving over my face and down to my lips. He was totally checking me out! I cleared my throat, hoping to stop the blush I could feel creeping up my cheeks.

‘Where will you go when they pull down the fairground?’ I said, or rather, squeaked.

He shrugged, trying to look unbothered. It broke the spell anyway.

‘It’ll be all right. I’ll be sorted by then, don’t you worry.’

There was an awkward silence and I thought about our weird conversation in the café.

‘Had any more ideas about where your mum might have gone?’ I said.

He shook his head. ‘Not a clue.’

I was starting to feel a bit annoyed with him until I noticed his hands were shaking a little, which tweaked something tender inside my chest.

I did it before even thinking. I reached out and took hold of his hand. ‘You’re freezing, Luka.’ I chafed his hand in mine the way Mum did to me sometimes. He didn’t speak and for a second I thought I might actually die from the embarrassment of what I’d just done. After a few moments I dropped it, cheeks burning.

‘Look,’ I said. ‘Have you tried having a look for any clues in the ticket booth where she worked?’ I figured if I never looked him directly in the eye again, I might survive this excruciating moment.

‘Well, it wasn’t exactly an office,’ he said in a husky sort of voice.

‘No,’ I said, ‘but she probably spent tons of time in there.’

‘Hmm,’ said Luka, all normal again. ‘You might have said something sensible. I bet that doesn’t happen very often.’

‘Don’t push your luck!’ I said, relief flooding through me that I hadn’t frightened him away with the whole hand-rubbing thing.

We set off towards the ticket booth, both of us grinning.

C
HAPTER
11

 

Picture Perfect

 

A door was cut into the back of the booth. Luka gave it a shove. It didn’t move. He took the bunch of keys from his pocket and found the right one. I followed him inside.

It was just big enough for us both to squeeze inside. There was a shelf running right the way round and a swivel chair. A thin layer of dust blurred every surface and bandy-legged spiders covered the flaking paint.

The window of the booth had a hole in the middle, cracks fanning out from it in delicate patterns. There was a nasty smell in the background and my nose led my eyes towards an old yoghurt pot on the side, the spoon now sticking up out of furry green mould.

I turned round and then gasped.

Luka grinned. ‘What do you think? Good, aren’t they?’ he said with obvious pride.

I moved closer to the back of the door. It was completely covered with photographs. Many of them were of the fairground. There were close-ups of the wooden horses on the carousel, pictures of rows of candyfloss and several showing the rides in motion. The blurry colours and lights almost made me dizzy. Others were of people’s faces – looks of fear or excitement as people queued up for rides, one of an old lady with broken teeth beaming into the camera and clutching a teddy. Some of them, near the bottom, were taken at strange angles on the rides. One was inside a hall of mirrors so you could see someone standing with a camera, presumably Luka’s mum. Her feet were neatly together and she looked small and delicate. There were a whole bunch of black weird ones from inside the ghost train that didn’t seem to be of anything much. Around the edges were some pictures of the sea that were moody and dark, like paintings.

‘They’re amazing.’

‘Eva was really into photography. She’d sometimes go off for a whole day taking pictures. Used to dream of having an exhibition some day.’

There was a silence and I had the weirdest sensation that Luka wasn’t in the room with me any more.

‘Is this her?’

In the top corner was a strip of pictures from a photo booth. The woman had a purple woolly hat pulled over long dark hair and brown eyes which were just like Luka’s, except hers were full of mischief. She was pressing her cheek next to a mini Luka, who was grinning into the lens and showing off a gap in his front teeth.

‘She’s really pretty,’ I said quietly.

‘Yeah,’ said Luka with a sigh, ‘everyone says that. She’s loads of fun too. Bit mad though. Usually in a good way. Like, she’ll wake up one morning and say, “Come on, give school a miss today”, because she fancies a day out together. And she never nags me about stuff, like most mums. But sometimes she gets sad and drinks too much wine and goes to bed for a day or so. I sort of thought she was headed that way before all this happened.’

‘You called her Eva just then,’ I began and Luka shrugged, understanding my question.

‘She says it makes her feel old to be called “Mum” so I sometimes call her by her name. She was only twenty when I was born. She’s more like a big sister to me than a mother, really. We moved about a fair bit before coming here when I was twelve and we had to look after each other. She always used to say it was me and her against the world.’

I let this sink in. So Luka wasn’t really from Slumpton either. Maybe that was partly why I liked him so much.

‘Were you born in Croatia?’

‘Yeah,’ said Luka, ‘but we came to the UK when I was one so I don’t remember anything about it. And Eva never keeps up any traditions or anything. Says she was glad to see the back of her old life. She left my dad because he knocked her about. She loved ... um ... loves it here.’

I noticed he’d used past tense and a look of pain flickered across his face before he spoke again. Maybe something really bad had happened to Eva. For a minute I felt as though he was alone in his thoughts. Then he gave himself a little shake. ‘C’mon, I’m freezing my balls off in here. Let’s start searching. You start that side and I’ll do over here.’

We both ran our hands along the shelf underneath the counter. I found nothing but dust and crusty flies, which I quickly brushed onto the floor with a shudder. I looked around the small space and met Luka’s eye. He’d found nothing either. Then I noticed that there was a gap in the bottom part of the old-fashioned till. It was too narrow to put my fingers into, but when I crouched down and peered inside, I could see some paper in there. I looked around and found an old knife sitting on the window sill with some tacks and a few pennies. Gently pushing it inside the gap, I jiggled it about. At first, it just pushed everything further inside and I cursed quietly. Then I managed to get it to bring the papers to the front. Luka pulled them out and started looking at them.

‘Bill, bill, library fine, bill... Oh, hang on, what’s this?’ He held up a sheet of notepaper.

On it was some swirly handwriting in blue biro. It said,
Manley Road flats awaiting demolition. Could hold up to 50.
Underneath were lists of numbers, which looked like times from a twenty-four hour clock. Lots were circled and some were marked
Dover,
some
Folkestone
and some
Harwich.

We looked at each other. Then another piece of paper caught my eye – a plain black and white flyer
TMS Knitwear,
it said.
Quality Fashions at Wholesale Prices.
There was an address. On the bottom of the piece of paper were two words, handwritten and underlined:
Contact Bluebird?

Luka traced the words with his finger. ‘That’s her writing, that bit there.’

I opened my mouth to speak but he grabbed my arm and put his finger to my lips, eyes wide.

Seconds later I heard it too. Male voices coming nearer.

Luka pushed the top of my head down and we both folded onto our knees. I was squashed right up against him in the small space. For a second I was distracted by how nice it felt to be close to him, before being scared took over.

The men got closer. One was speaking in a harsh-sounding foreign accent, but one word – ‘Lex’ – kept standing out. I very slowly raised myself up so I could peek out and could just make out a couple of thickset blokes, both with woolly hats pulled low over their brows. One of them looked up and I realised it was the no-neck one again, who I’d seen at the Town Hall and at the marina. I realised something was on the ground and gasped. It was a man with black hair, curled into a foetal position.

Luka pulled me down and put his arm gently around my shoulder. I was glad he did because the next unmistakable sounds were grunts of pain. I somehow knew the man was being kicked. Tears swelled in my throat. I was shaking all over and I could feel Luka flinching at the sound of every blow. It was horrible, horrible. Finally, I heard the man speaking again, sounding out of breath and I shrugged off Luka’s protecting hand to peek again.

The injured man was being held up by the armpits and had blood running down his face. He looked Indian or Pakistani from what I could make out. His eyes were open and unfocused but at least he was alive.

Luka pulled me down again, harder this time, and his eyes were angry, but also scared.

The voices started to recede and we heard the metal clang of the gates closing.

Luka lifted himself up to peek over the top of the ledge. ‘Coast’s clear,’ he said, in a wobbly way. The small space was suddenly unbearable and we elbowed each other in our haste to get out.

I couldn’t seem to get air properly into my lungs and bent over. I felt a tentative hand on my back.

‘Are you okay?’ said Luka gently, and I nodded, swallowing back the urge to throw up. I stood up straight on my shaking legs and we stared at each other.

I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard. I’d lived in the capital city all my life and the only crime I’d known was when someone pranged Mum’s car and drove off. But the minute I move to a sleepy seaside town, it was all disappearing mothers and people being beaten in abandoned fairgrounds.

‘Who do you think those men were?’ I said, when I trusted myself to speak.

‘I don’t know,’ said Luka. He was looking queasy too, his face pale. ‘I’ve never seen them before.’

‘Do you think your mum —?’ I started to say but Luka cut me off.

‘Eva didn’t mix with people like that! Everyone round here blames immigrants for everything, but it’s families who’ve lived here all their lives that are the worst.’

I tried to speak but he hadn’t finished.

‘She’d never be that stupid. You’re as bad as the police. Just because she works in a fairground and looks a bit Romany. You think she’s not a decent person.’

‘I don’t think that!’ I felt tears stinging my eyes again and swiped my hand across them.

‘Well, plenty do in this town.’

We stood there miserably, in silence.

‘We should tell the police about what we saw,’ I said.

‘What are you going to say, Bel? We don’t know who they are. We shouldn’t even be in here.’

I didn’t really need much persuading. Suddenly I noticed something.

‘Luka! Your hand!’

He looked down. A big shard of glass was sticking into the fleshy part of his palm. He must have leaned on it inside the booth. I reached towards him to help and he spun away from me.

‘Luka, let me help!’

‘Leave it, I’ll sort it out,’ he said in a panicky voice. ‘It’s all right. I’ll deal with it. You’d better go. Your mum will be worried.’ He kept his hand turned away from me and pulled out the glass.

‘You might need stitches!’ I yelped.

‘I’m FINE!’ he said. ‘Just leave it!’

I turned away. Suddenly I just wanted to be home and away from all this bad stuff and Luka’s stupid pride.

‘Hey!’ he called.

‘What?’ I said a bit shortly.

‘Will you come back?’

The desperation in his eyes made me hesitate, but I was angry and shaken up and wanted to be away. ‘I don’t know, Luka,’ I said. ‘Maybe.’

He turned away and I was already starting to feel bad. His voice was crisp. ‘Okay, well... see you.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘See you.’