Inky Stevens - The Case of the Caretaker's Keys , livre ebook

Hogs Back Books - Chris Martin

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

84 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

What appears to be a trivial search for a missing set of keys soon turns much more sinister, with our hero, the enigmatic student Inky Stevens, facing mortal danger.Will the sAeuGreat School DetectivesAeu unlock this case and find the key to his survival or will he meet a horrific end?

Sujets

Children

KIDS

Informations

Publié par	Hogs Back Books
Date de parution	14 février 2021
Nombre de lectures	1
EAN13	9781913827236
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0600€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Inky Stevens –
The Case of the Caretaker’s Keys
by Chris Martin

Published by
Hogs Back Books
34 Long Street, Devizes
Wiltshire
SN10 1NT
www.hogsbackbooks.com
Text copyright © Chris Martin, 2020
The moral right of Chris Martin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.
First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Hogs Back Books Ltd.
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This ebook edition 2021
ISBN: 978-1-913827-23-6
Copyright © Hogs Back Books

Contents
Prologue
Chapter One – Welcome to Blinkton
Chapter Two – The Theft
Chapter Three – The Suspects
Chapter Four – Organising the Troops
Chapter Five – Candy Trail
Chapter Six – The Crime Scene
Chapter Seven – The Drama Unfolds
Chapter Eight – The Big Wind-up
Chapter Nine – To the Bat Cave
Chapter Ten – Noted
Chapter Eleven – The Break-in
Chapter Twelve – The Worsening Day
Chapter Thirteen – A Friend Indeed
Chapter Fourteen – Off in a Cloud of Smoke
Chapter Fifteen – Backstage Activity
Chapter Sixteen – The Vault
Chapter Seventeen – Here, There and Everywhere
Chapter Eighteen – The Reading Club
Chapter Nineteen – The Darkening
Chapter Twenty – Thunder Clap
Chapter Twenty-One – Pressure Mounting
Chapter Twenty-Two – Fallout
Chapter Twenty-Three – Home Sweet Home

Prologue

A week after Blinkton’s Great Storm, a tall, dark figure set off to finish what he’d started; his jaw was set, his features a mask of resolve.
It was well past midnight by the time the intruder slipped inside Blinkton High School. As he waited for his eyes to adjust, drops of rainwater slid from his leather coat, spotting the floor beneath, while all around an intense blackness spread out over the Reception area like ink on blotting paper. Everything was still.
Reassured, the intruder set about his business with a confidence rarely seen in someone so young. He stole along the labyrinth of corridors, scarcely troubling the air, his crisp footsteps following him into the darkness.
The figure exited the main building and crossed the rain-swept yard towards a plain-looking office in the old part of the school. He unlocked its door and slipped inside. Immediately, the intruder snapped on his torch, and a funnel of intense, white light sliced through the confined space, causing shadows to pool around his eyes like those of a Halloween mask.
“So far, so good,” he muttered to himself.
The intruder continued his task with the precision of a watchmaker. Squinting, he unlocked the thick, iron door to his left. The cavernous space that revealed itself – the school’s vault – hadn’t changed since his last visit. His expression remained fixed, as he beheld rows of shelves stretching back into the darkness, but he had no time to marvel at the vault’s vastness, nor its orderliness; instead he made his way purposefully down the central aisle. Reaching above his head, he swiftly located the relevant file and removed a sheaf of papers. From these, he quickly identified the item he was after: a single brown envelope.
“How is it that such a plain-looking item can carry so much weight?” he thought.
Instinctively, the intruder tore it open and extracted a piece of A4 paper from within. He angled his torch down onto the document. Just as before, his skin prickled at the horror of what he read. He folded the paper in half and in half again, and placed it in his rucksack. He then switched it for an identical looking sheet with a smile so faint that it scarcely troubled his pale face.
The intruder returned the file to its rightful place and retraced his steps to the smaller office, where he snapped off his torch before stepping back out into the yard.
Outside, with the remnants of the Great Storm drumming on the tarmac, he lifted his head heavenwards and breathed in the icy sharpness of the night before turning swiftly and melting away into the night …

Chapter One – Welcome to Blinkton

Back then, the education delivered to Britain’s youngsters was not necessarily better than it is today, but it was a lot simpler: teachers were expected to teach and pupils were expected to learn; pupils tried to create mayhem in the classroom and teachers tried to stop them.
At that time, Blinkton-on-Sea was a dreary coastal town. (It still is.) Twinned with the French town Mal-de-Mer, it suffered greatly by comparison. While Mal-de-Mer basked in Mediterranean sunshine, Blinkton barely lifted its head off its pillow for a few dismal weeks each summer.
Only one train line ventured into Blinkton (just one road too). Other than that, the small coastal town remained isolated, stubbornly clinging to the shoreline like some unsightly whelk or a piece of jetsam snagged on a rock and left to decompose.
The town’s secondary school was built around the ruins of an old monastery, perched high on the clifftops. Its frontage, hidden behind a set of iron railings, was dominated by brick, concrete and stainless steel. As a result, it looked down on the town it served with all the charm of an air-raid warning station – or a prison.
And as a school, if the relevant terminology had been around back then, Blinkton High would have been labelled ‘requires improvement’. Although the institution contained some well-mannered, diligent pupils, on balance they were rare. The typical Blinkton student preferred to muddle along doing the minimum to get by.
The school’s most talented student was unarguably Inky Stevens. ‘Inky’ was astute, incisive and disciplined, and his talent – that of solving mysteries – was unique and unchallenged. Not that the Great School Detective glamorised his exploits; not at all. He simply went about his business quietly, committed to serving the school community as best he could.
Inky had arrived in Blinkton midway through the third year. Rumour had it that ‘complications’ during his upbringing meant that for him to continue living with his mother had been deemed ‘inadvisable’. As a result, he had been placed in the care of his mother’s sister and her husband as a temporary measure, pending a more permanent review. Perhaps it was this that made him such a private individual. Who knows? Inky gave little away about his past. In fact, he rarely spoke at all.
In appearance, Inky was tall and thin, with a bearing that could be described as ‘imposing’: his skin was vampire-pale, almost translucent; his face thin and drawn; his hair was black, cut short with a choppy sea of curls; his eyes were simultaneously dead, yet very much alive. Inky Stevens, the sleek, self-confident raven of folklore; distinctive, yet anonymous; striking, yet invisible.
Blinkton’s Head Teacher, known to everyone as ‘the Snake’, had decreed that Blinkton High School’s uniform would be black and orange, but Inky was not one to conform; his own version comprised the customary trousers and shirt (without tie), over which he wore a long, black, leather coat, which flared at the bottom like a cape. On his feet, he wore black boots in the winkle-picker style. His black, leather belt was studded, and he carried a buffed leather rucksack, in which he kept all the tools needed for his investigations (and occasionally school books too).
Every morning during break time, Blinkton’s Great School Detective took up residence backstage in the school hall in a makeshift office. This, once a store for theatrical props and costumes, was set back beyond the stage curtains, hidden behind all manner of discarded rubbish: chairs and tables, blackboards, a plastic model of the solar system, and a broken hockey goal. And it was there at eleven o’clock each weekday, seated on one of the school’s plastic chairs, that Inky would be presented with all manner of assignments, and from these he would deliberate at some length on which ones to accept.

Chapter Two – The Theft

That Monday, the third of the new school year, started off no differently to any other day. Inky picked his way backstage after a dreary double English with ‘Chalky’ Whittle, and while packs of kids charged around in the fresh September air, he settled himself down and began the process of waiting.
The teenage detective was not alone for long before the stage curtains separated, and a shaft of light momentarily flashed across the blackness. This was followed shortly after by the sound of falling wood.
“Argh! Who left that there? Me bloomin’ knee!”
These exclamations and the sound of tumbling debris continued as a figure picked his way through the semi-darkness. If the detective was surprised to see Blinkton’s caretaker hobble out of the gloom, he didn’t show it; he simply stared ahead with dark-eyed indifference.
Fred Varley was wearing his usual caretaker’s uniform: ragged jeans, scuffed work boots, cloth cap and a dark blue work jacket, stained with paint and oil. Having reached his destination, he leant against the wall to massage his knee. In doing so, the silhouette of his misshapen ears became visible in the grey light. Inky could also make out a nose which bent slightly to the left and a beard that was matted and unkem