Fraud at Snowfields Page 15

  ‘Yes, please?’ it said to Will.

  ‘Er, I’m Will Burns. I’ve got Fieldworks training in here. I’d like to go in, please,’ said Will.

  The face eyed him up and down. ‘Yes, I’ve been advised about your lesson. And obviously you are a boy—therefore you may enter. Welcome, Mr Burns.’

  The face disappeared, and the door swung open. Will went inside. There was nobody else in there. On his left and on his right were rows of lockers along the walls. In front of him were two doors, the left marked ‘Shower Room’, the other ‘Training Area’. He changed into his new black-and-grey training outfit and put his other clothes into the locker he had selected. He closed and sealed it by swiping his wand across the locking interface, just as Mr Stunt had taught them. There was a large mirror hanging on the wall. He could not help but admire himself in this smart outfit. Then he left the room through the door leading to the training area.

  He stood in another corridor. There was no other door, so he walked down, round a corner, and past what looked like the other side of the huge service entrance, until he reached an intersection. To his right was a similar corridor that presumably led towards the girls’ room; to his left was a wider corridor extending from the service entrance that ended in a large door with a sign: ‘Training Area’. He was still looking up and down when a door at the end of the corridor to his right opened and Annabel came through, looking around tentatively. Will stared: she looked amazing in the training outfit. She saw Will and started to walk towards him. When she reached him, she noticed that he was staring at her.

  ‘What is it?’ She demanded of him. ‘What are you staring at?’

  ‘What? Oh…sorry. You look great in this outfit.’ He looked away quickly.

  ‘In this?’ she asked incredulously and looked down at herself.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Will, feeling his face getting warmer.

  Annabel looked at him critically. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Let’s go over to the briefing room,’ said Will quickly, trying to change the subject.

  They went down the corridor towards the entrance to the training area, and then through the door directly in front and to the left of it, with the sign ‘Briefing Room’. They were not the first—Wendy and Sabrina were already sitting there talking quietly to each other. Will could not help noticing that the two girls also looked fantastic in their black-and-grey training outfits.

  ‘Hello,’ he greeted them as he walked towards the seat next to Sabrina.

  They had stopped talking and were both looking at him rather directly. Sabrina giggled slightly and replied, ‘Hi there, Will.’

  He felt that he was turning red again and quickly turned away, pretending he was looking around the room. Annabel sat down next to him. Soon the whole class was there. Then Stunt walked into the room and stood in front of them.

  ‘Hello, class,’ he said, and looked around. ‘Good, you’ve all found your way in here. As you know, I’m here to train you for the tasks you’ll have to cope with in the field. First, I’ll give you a brief introduction to the training area. Then we’ll have a tour around it and I’ll show you the main areas.’ He pointed his wand towards the wall next to the blackboard and performed a spell, and the map of the training area appeared again.

  ‘If you’ll look at this map again, please.’ He quickly showed them the locations of the different areas once more. Finally Stunt finished his explanations. ‘I’m going to show you the training area now. When you are here for training as a class, you can be sure no one else is in here unless I tell you otherwise. If for any reason you should come here at any other time, you have to be very careful when you enter the training area. Make sure you know who else is in here and what they are doing. Otherwise you might get hit by an ill-aimed spell. But you can come in only with the authorization of a teacher anyway, otherwise you’d be stopped by the door guardians. Follow me inside then.’

  And he led them from the room. In front of the door to the training area, he stopped and tapped impatiently several times on the smooth rectangle until a face appeared. It looked rather annoyed.

  ‘What the—’ it started to say, but then it saw Stunt. ‘Oh...you.’

  ‘Yes, me. Hurry up, open the door!’ Stunt said shortly, looking disdainfully down at the face. The door swung open immediately, and Stunt walked briskly through it. Then he stopped inside the training area, and Will and the others gathered around him.

  Stunt smiled grimly. ‘As you have seen, the guardian is not the brightest or fastest, but he won’t let anyone inside without clearance. Anyhow’—he pointed to his left—‘over there is the basic training stand. We’ll go there first,’ he said, leading the way.

  Will saw that they were walking towards some wooden walls that were staggered so they formed a shielded entrance. The students went inside and passed between the wooden walls. Will could see a large, open area with several piles of sand. A few worn targets and mock presents were lying around in between. The walls far at the back were heavily padded.

  ‘As you can see,’ Stunt said, ‘we are now in the basic training stand. Here we can safely practise spells without doing any damage because they can be aimed at the sand—it dampens their effects. The targets and mock presents are for training your aiming skills. The walls are specially shielded so the effects of the spells won’t leave this area. Any questions? No? Then we’ll move on.’

  They went out through the opening between the staggered walls again. Stunt took them over to an area where a living room had been erected. But it had only one wall; the other sides were open. Otherwise it looked like a real-life living room. There was a fireplace built into the wall. Will saw that there were even stockings pinned to the mantelpiece. In one corner stood a decorated Christmas tree. There were a sofa and some armchairs, a dining area with a table and chairs, cupboards and sideboards, vases and typical decorative items standing around. There even were dummies of parents sitting on the sofa and of two kids standing near the Christmas tree and the fireplace.

  Stunt waited until they had all gathered around him, then he pointed towards the living room that was not really a room. ‘This is the place you are going to spend most of your time. As you can see it’s completely decorated as your normal living room, with dummies for people. But—I’m sure you did notice—there are no walls! Now why is that?’ He did not wait for an answer, but answered the question himself: ‘This way everybody can watch what happens inside, so we can all comment on your actions and discuss the methods. Here you will train the delivery and placing of the presents in a lifelike setting. Questions?’

  Nobody asked anything. They were all still looking around the room. Then Stunt led them onwards. Now they were standing in a street in front of a row of buildings. But—although the fronts looked very realistic and were as high as they would have been on ordinary houses—Will saw that they were in fact just the façades with a bit of roof, chimneys, and gutters. There were no real houses. Behind the façades was just the wall of the training area.

  ‘Now here we are in Training Lane,’ Stunt told them, and pointed towards the fronts of the buildings. ‘As you can see these are real fronts, and they have fully functional windows, doors, and chimneys. But there is nothing behind them. This is because here you will concentrate on practising how to get into a house.’

  They went down the street, and Will could see all sorts of structures—or at least the fronts: small ones, large ones, houses with very steep or very flat roofs, wide and small chimneys…. There were even a bungalow and a full-sized mansion. Finally they reached the last of the house fronts, and Stunt stopped once more.

  ‘Now you have seen the main parts of the training area. There are several smaller parts, but they are for training for special tasks, and you won’t need those at the moment. For now your training will be in the parts you’ve seen, so you will be able to help in the delivery of the presents next Christmas. I advise you to take this training very seriously, because all you can learn in this prote
cted area will help you outside in the real world. And here you can make mistakes. Out there—you can’t!’

  And with this rather bleak statement, he led them back to the briefing room where he had picked them up. There he spent the next half an hour explaining more about the basics and the rules of the training area until he ended the lesson and sent them off.

  Will stood next to Freddy in the changing room.

  ‘This is amazing,’ Freddy exclaimed. ‘We’ll have great fun training in there. And it all looks so real!’

  Will grinned. He could always rely on Freddy’s excitement about new things at Snowfields. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘What they have built in there is rather impressive. But I’m afraid it’ll mean a lot of work for us.’

  Freddy’s face fell a bit. ‘Oh, yes, you’re probably right.’ Then he looked up again, beaming. ‘But it’ll be much better than the lessons we had in the muggy old gym of the school I went to. And better than Miss Horseshoe anyway, always blowing her stupid whistle and jumping around in her pink shell suit.’ He shuddered in disgust, and Will had to laugh as he imagined his former games teacher jumping up and down in a pink suit.

  Chapter 10

  Will had sneaked out of the common room and was on his way to his first meeting with the secret investigation group. He was quite excited. He felt a bit like James Bond on a secret mission as he hurried down the corridors, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. Beltorec had said Will should join him in his office in the evening, long after Mrs Script would have left, and they would go to the meeting together.

  Will reached the vice chancellor’s office without encountering anybody; he had glimpsed merely one or two students in the distance, and hoped they had not seen him. The door to Beltorec’s office was closed. Will turned the handle, but the door would not open! What should he do? He could knock, but he would have to make a real noise for Beltorec to hear it in his inner office and then others might hear it, too.

  Just as he was thinking about this, a face was forming on the door’s surface, on the rectangle where the wood was smooth. It was quite a solemn face that looked at Will, reminding him of an old headmaster.

  ‘And what do you believe you are doing here?’ it asked sternly.

  ‘Er, I... I’ve got an appointment with the vice chancellor, sir. He... He’s waiting for me!’ Will stammered.

  ‘Is that so?’ the face drawled. ‘And you would know the password then, a green student like you?’ It raised its eyebrows. ‘I would think not.’

  ‘Dick Deadeye,’ Will said promptly.

  The expression on the face turned to extreme surprise. ‘Oh!’ It settled into a friendlier if still reserved expression. ‘I must apologise, sir. Nice to meet you. My name is Crown. Please come in. The vice chancellor is still here.’ And the door swung open silently.

  ‘Thank you.’ Will resisted the urge to bow at Crown’s regal voice and manner. ‘Ah, my name is Will... Will Burns.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Mr Burns,’ Crown replied.

  Will entered the empty secretariat. He was nearing the opposite door when he heard a voice from inside calling, ‘Please come in, Will!’

  He turned the handle and entered the office of the vice chancellor.

  ‘Hello, Will, good to see you.’ Beltorec smiled at him. ‘And right on time.’

  ‘Good evening, sir.’

  ‘Well, you know what this is going to be about, and I don’t have anything new to tell you, so we can leave right away and go to the meeting. We’ll see the others there.’ He closed a file, put it in a small briefcase, and got up. ‘Let’s go, then.’

  Will went out, followed by Beltorec. He noticed that all the lights in the office went out when the vice chancellor walked through the door.

  They left the outer office.

  ‘Good evening, Crown,’ said Beltorec.

  ‘Good evening, sir! I will be awaiting your arrival tomorrow. I wish you a pleasant evening.’

  ‘Thanks, Crown, same to you.’

  Beltorec led Will down the corridor, but not in the direction of the entrance hall. Instead he turned the other way. Will had not been there before. When they had turned round several corners, Will noticed that the corridors became less and less decorated and did not look as if they were often used by anyone. He and the vice chancellor went on, and the intervals between the lamps grew longer and longer, so the corridor turned rather gloomy. All the time Beltorec did not say a word to Will, but led him quietly down passages Will had not even known existed.

  Finally they went through a door, mostly hidden in a shadowy corner so Will would have walked right past it with no idea it was there. After they had passed through, they went down a flight of stairs, also barely lit. They went down other gloomy corridors and ill-lit stairs. The walls there were made out of cold and bare grey stone blocks. Will noticed that the air had become rather clammy and that the walls had a faint, green sheen.

  ‘Any idea where we are?’ Beltorec finally asked.

  ‘Well, sir, I’d say we are underground,’ replied Will.

  ‘Yes, that’s right. We are indeed walking under the streets and buildings of the village now.’

  Will dared to ask, ‘Where are we headed?’

  ‘To an abandoned building where we can meet without being obvious about it. And it is rather conveniently connected to the school building by these tunnels. It isn’t much farther.’

  They went on and finally reached another well-hidden door. Beltorec took out a silvery, old-looking key and unlocked the four locks on the door.

  ‘Well-guarded,’ he said laconically.

  ‘Indeed,’ Will replied politely, not knowing what else to say.

  They went through, and Beltorec scrupulously fastened all four locks again.

  ‘Won’t the others have to go through here too?’ Will asked.

  ‘No. They come from elsewhere. The building has several unobtrusive entrances.’

  They went up several stairs and passed through dusty, bare corridors. Will wondered what their destination would look like and who he would meet there. Finally they reached a part of the building that was not quite so bare, and that was better lit. Beltorec finally stopped in front of a nondescript-looking door and knocked on it in a complicated pattern. The door opened.

  ‘Follow me,’ Beltorec said to Will.

  Will followed Beltorec inside. The door closed behind him on its own. Will looked back quickly, but there was no one there.

  ‘Good evening,’ Beltorec said. ‘I see we are the last ones to arrive, but I had to bring Will with me.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  Will looked up and saw a goblin in a dark coat eyeing him suspiciously across the table.

  ‘He’s one of my students. He only started this term, but he’ll prove rather useful, as you will see.’

  ‘I’m sure we will,’ the goblin replied slowly.

  ‘Be polite, Caretrus. Best let me do the introductions first,’ Beltorec said. ‘This is Will Burns, new at my school. And he discovered something rather important. That’s why I called for this meeting tonight.’ He put a hand on Will’s shoulder. ‘Will, these are the other directors here in Snowfields. Over there on the right is Mr Factorius. As the name implies, the director of production.’

  A small man in a pinstripe suit nodded politely at Will.

  ‘On his right is Lektrarissima, chief goblin of our local branch of Cloudy’s Transportation Service.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Will.’ The she-goblin beamed at him. ‘Your obedient valet.’

  Will grinned nervously, but felt like groaning when he heard that phrase again.

  ‘Next to her is Mr Blues, responsible for obtaining, generating, and distributing the Bluerin used in Snowfields.’

  Mr Blues was of normal height and average figure, clad in a blue, well-fitting boiler suit.

  ‘Hello, Will.’

  ‘Next is Mr Securitas, chief of the security service at Snowfields, inasmuch as it exists.’

  ‘Gr
eetings.’ A rather plump and casually-dressed man nodded to Will.

  ‘And that is Caretrus, who has already greeted you in his most direct way. He’s chief of the caretaker goblins in Snowfields. He joined us because he and his goblins get around everywhere here, and if anything is afoot they are the ones who’ll most likely know it. You see, nobody takes note of caretakers.’

  ‘That’s a fact!’ Caretrus gave Will a brisk nod. ‘And thank you very much, sir, for phrasing it so sensitively.’

  Beltorec pointedly ignored this. ‘So, let’s get started. Will, you sit here.’ He pointed to a stool on his right. Then he sat down next to Will and cleared his throat. ‘As you all know, we have gathered here this evening because of the rather disturbing indications that Bluerin is being misused at Snowfields.’

  The others around the table nodded gravely.

  ‘I’m introducing Will to our group tonight for two reasons. Firstly because he can be useful as an informant among the students at the school. As I told you before, there are rather strong indications that students are involved in this affair. And secondly Will came to me the other day and gave me... this!’

  He took out the Bluerin note and laid it in the middle of the table for all to see. There were several astonished exclamations. Blues picked up the note, felt it between his fingers, held it up against the light, and rubbed on it with his fingernail.

  ‘Well, now this really is rather disturbing,’ he said. ‘This is by far the best-made note I’ve seen.’

  Caretrus nodded curtly. ‘Indeed!’ He looked at Will. ‘The question is, how did he come by it?’

  Will cringed.

  Beltorec came to his rescue. ‘He told me he found it in the school. Isn’t that right, Will?’

  ‘Er, yes sir. I wanted to take a shortcut after a lesson, and I went down this corridor I had only discovered a few days earlier. It’s hardly used, and so it isn’t in good repair. I stumbled on the edge of a loose tile and fell. Then I saw the note there, more than half of it stuck under the skirting board.’