Inside the Worm by Robert Swindells Page B

rest. Yes. That’s what I’ll do. I sort of hope he is alone. She took a deep breath and strode up the path.
    They weren’t there. The garage door was up, but the place was empty. There was no car. And when she crept inside and looked around, there was no worm either. The costume had gone.
    She tried the house. There were lights on inside, but nobody answered her knock. Withthe car gone, it was likely the Trotters were out for the evening. And with the worm gone, it was likely the foursome were out for the evening too.
    Where? As she turned and hurried down the path, Fliss felt a tingling in the nape of her neck. She half ran along the road, glancing back from time to time to make sure nothing was following her. She was so scared she almost forgot to get her pizza, and when she got it home she couldn’t eat it. She shot it into the pedal-bin and ran upstairs to her room. Her parents exchanged glances again.
    â€˜Hormones,’ said Mrs Morgan.
    â€˜Aaah,’ said Mr Morgan.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
    IF THERE WAS one thing Jimmy Lee enjoyed more than sniffing out a good story, it was his pigeons. They were racing pigeons and Jimmy had twenty of them, not counting squabs. He kept them in a loft he’d built himself, on an allotment opposite his house. This allotment was on the same block as Hughie Ackroyd’s, and the two men were on nodding terms. Hughie didn’t care for pigeons and Jimmy wasn’t interested in growing vegetables, but they did have one thing in common – they were both worried about the kids who hung around the abandoned greenhouse. Bored kids often got up to mischief, and a neat garden or a well-ordered pigeon loft might well act as magnets to acts of casual vandalism.
    So when Jimmy looked out of his window that Wednesday morning and saw that the door of the loft was swinging in the breeze, his first thought was that his birds had had a visit from those flipping kids. Fearful for the welfare of the squabs, he pulled on some clothes and hurried across the road, to find that the situation was very much worse than he had feared.
    The first thing he noticed was the smell. It was a pungent smell and Jimmy recognized it. It was the smell of burnt feathers, and he could smell it before he reached the loft. He hurried forward, cursing under his breath, and cried out in horror and disbelief at the sight which met his eyes.
    They’d had the place on fire. The structure itself hadn’t burned, but the inside walls were scorched as though somebody had stood in the doorway and discharged a flame-thrower. Dead birds littered the floor, their plumage blasted off. Charred feed-bags spilled their contents among the corpses, and inside the nest-boxes his precious squabs lay roasted on beds of blackened straw. So intense had been the heat from whatever it was the vandals had used, that the loft’s window had cracked across two of its four panes. A quick count told Jimmy that not all of his birds had died, but of the survivors there was no trace.
    He was trudging back, intent on calling the police, when he saw the footprint. There was only one, ina patch of soft earth near the gate. Jimmy squatted, tracing its outline with a finger. It was big – maybe thirty centimetres across, and it had been made by something heavy because the depression was at least four centimetres deep. In fact, it was exactly like the prints the police had shown him in the park yesterday.
    â€˜Some hoax,’ he muttered, straightening up, wiping soil from his finger on his jeans. ‘Some rotten hoax.’ Tears of grief and rage pricked his eyes. He kicked a stone viciously with the toe of his trainer and strode towards the house.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
    â€˜MR BAZZARD?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜We’re police officers. You have a son, I believe – Gary, isn’t it?’
    â€˜That’s right. Why – what’s he done?’
    â€˜I haven’t said he’s done