The Messenger Bird Read online

  I heard Dad’s voice in my head: You can’t trust anyone, you hear me? Don’t trust anyone. Was Josh right? Was that why Dad wanted me to follow Lily’s trail; why he didn’t just give the Special Services the evidence straight? Because he couldn’t know for sure who was corrupt and who wasn’t? If Dad didn’t know who to trust, how the heck would I?

  “First of all, Nathan’s dad has to check he has all the evidence, watertight,” said Josh. “And then he has to make sure the evidence gets to the right person, because if it gets to the wrong person then that person will destroy it, or frame him with it.”

  “I get it!” Sasha clapped excitedly at him. “Josh, you’re a genius!”

  He went red. “Who says television is bad for young minds?” he mumbled. “But it’s just an idea,” he added, and he hunched his shoulders and opened another bag of crisps. According to him, crunching was calming.

  Sasha held on to me. “We really, really need to work out this lion eagle clue, Nathan,” she said.

  “I know that,” I said, stomping the snow flat. “We need to get to Bletchley Park as soon as it opens tomorrow and…” I stopped. My heart rattled against my ribs. There had been a noise in the bushes, a rustling. I strained my ears to hear. I felt Sasha and Josh tense up beside me. Suddenly a shape shot out and across the lawn. A fox. Just a fox.

  I breathed out in relief and we all laughed nervously.

  “If the evidence really is at the end of the trail,” said Sasha, “then your dad had to hide it somewhere he was sure it wouldn’t be found. He’d have known the house would get searched.” She clicked her fingers. “Then why not use clues from an old trail he’d already cracked? Clever!”

  It was just what I’d thought. Lily’s seventy-year-old trail. Nobody would easily think to follow that.

  “Here’s the government people thinking they were being all precise and thorough and searching everywhere, but they’d just not see the clues,” laughed Sasha. “They wouldn’t be interested in a load of old stuff from the nineteen forties. Oh, we so have to get to Bletchley Park and solve the lion eagle clue!”

  Bones started barking from the house. I saw him at the back room window and we heard his muffled yowls from where we were standing, so he must have been loud. Paws up on the glass. Claws scratching. Bones never barked much. It took him all his energy just to move about. There was another fox, maybe? I glanced about the garden, but I couldn’t see anything. Even so, it made me twitchy.

  I saw Hannah appear at the dark window and pull him away by the collar. She peered at us through the glass and gave me a suspicious look. I guess we must have looked weird, the three of us, standing there like that in the freezing garden in the moonlight. She scowled and closed the curtain.

  Josh fiddled with the end of his scarf. “You do realize that if the corrupt staff get to know about the trail and that you know about it, they might get heavy, like…” He glanced at the back room window. “…like try and warn you off by killing your dog! Or try and stop you by breaking both your legs. Or force you to tell them everything using torture methods,” he said in a scared whisper. “Or they would let you lead them to the end of the trail and find the evidence and then pounce!” he hissed, hugging himself.

  Sasha rolled her eyes at him. I glanced into the shadowy spaces between the trees where someone could be watching. A bird cawed in a tree and all three of us jumped.

  Sasha clutched my hand. “Listen, Nathan, you’ve told us and we’re in this together now, OK? We’ll help you with the trail and we won’t say a single word to anyone. Right, Josh?”

  “I agree we don’t tell anyone,” said Josh anxiously.

  He laid his fingers on top of ours and I felt the warmth of both their hands over mine. “Thanks,” I managed.

  But I couldn’t help feeling worried – had it been a mistake to tell Sasha and Josh? What Josh had said about the corrupt staff getting to know we were on the trail – had I put them in danger? Dad’s words kept nagging at me: The more people who know, the more dangerous it is.

  “Tell me everything about the clues you found, Nathan, please!” Josh had gone all hyper again and was pacing the garden, leaving footprints with an excellent tread in the snow. “I’m really not good with patience.”

  So I told them, before Josh did himself an injury. About the eye scratched in the attic library and the clue on the bottom of the bucket, and Sasha and me had to grab hold of Josh’s arms to stop him running to the well to wind up the bucket right there and then as I was telling him that part.

  “So once we’re at Bletchley Park,” I said, “we get to Hut 6 and…”

  I paused. I’d heard another noise. From the shadowy bushes close by. Something like twigs shifting; leaves crackling as if someone had ever so gently stepped on them. Josh had gone horribly pale. I lowered myself down and picked up a little rock; it was all I could find.

  “Who’s there?” I called.

  Silence.

  I took a step in the direction the sound had come from.

  “Who’s there?” I said again.

  8

  Lily Kenley

  I took another step forward. All the hairs at the back of my neck shivered. Someone was there, I could feel it.

  I felt my fists go tight on the rock I was holding. I could hear Sasha and Josh behind me, shuffling through the snow.

  I peered hard into the gloom between spindly bushes and tree trunks.

  And then, for a single, tiny second, there was a dark shape lurching out from the shadows in front of me, a figure, a flurry of movement, a flapping coat, someone running away, and I held up the rock and charged after them with a cry, and Sasha and Josh were screaming and running too.

  But the figure was gone.

  We scoured the garden three times before we were sure. We found footprints in the snow, but when we tried to follow the tracks, they kept bringing us right back in a loop. Whoever it was had completely disappeared.

  We huddled together on the lawn, panting and trembling. Could it have been a corrupt member of staff? How much had they overheard? I desperately tried to remember everything we’d said since Bones started barking. He must have known they were there, I realized; seen them moving. I pulled off a glove and gnawed my nails. We’d not said anything about Lily, I didn’t think, but we’d talked about the trail. I felt my jaw go tight. We’d definitely talked about the trail, and Bletchley Park.

  “Let’s get back in,” I said shakily.

  We hurried into the house and bolted the door and went to the front room and made the fire really big and sat close together on the settee in front of it with the pad of paper. I could hear Mum, still in the kitchen, and music thudded through the ceiling from Hannah’s room.

  What had happened had happened, I told myself with a grimace. We just had to get on; be way more careful.

  LION EAGLE I scribbled at last, when my hand had stopped shaking enough. ?????

  ?????? wrote Josh.

  Sasha wrote: If we knew more about Lily, it might help us with the clue. Was she your relative?

  Don’t think so. Wait. I rushed up to the attic library and came down with Lily’s notebook and the photo of her from the wall. I wriggled back into my place on the settee as Sasha fingered the caption. Lily Kenley. 1940. BP, Hut 6.

  Josh wrote: I don’t remember seeing Hut 6 on our school trip, do you?

  Sasha and I shook our heads. If only Bletchley Park wasn’t closed, I thought; if only we could have gone there right there and then. I even felt like breaking in; this waiting about was a nightmare! But Sasha was right; we may as well use the time to find out more about Lily; try and get a breakthrough with the lion eagle clue before we checked out Hut 6 tomorrow.

  I remembered something Dad had said to me that night. What was it again? She lived in this house. I put the photo of Lily on the mantelpiece and gestured for Sasha and Josh to wait again. I went to the hall cabinet and pulled open the drawer. It was still there, the book I’d seen when I was looking for my hea
d torch last night, the guest book with its broken black leather cover. I brought it into the front room and we squashed back up to look inside. The first name in there was someone called Josie Johnson with the date August 1929.

  Wow! Goes way back. This house must have been a B&B or something. Look at all the people who stayed here.

  Nice tidy room… Josh tapped at the entry and licked his lips. Apricot cheesecake to die for.

  I turned the pages and we scrolled down the lists of names, until, at last, there it was, the name I’d been hoping to find.

  Lily Kenley. February 1939. The comments space was blank.

  “She signed in but never signed out,” Josh whispered, and he glanced around the room as if he expected to see her standing right there.

  Lily looked at me from the mantelpiece. What happened to you? I thought about her message; the date on it, November 1940.

  She stayed here nearly 2 years! I wrote on the pad. Probably while she was working at BP.

  I heard the phone ring and Mum answered it in the kitchen. Sasha pointed at Lily’s notebook with a questioning look. I showed her – I have to save my dad. If only I can break the code – and the weird lists of capital letters in threes, crossed neatly through: BBC BBD BBE… What exactly did Lily have to save her dad from?

  Josh jumped up, scribbling and looking super excited, and we had to grab the pad off him to see what he’d written.

  Hut 6 = Enigma code BUT – he tapped the strings of letters – this isn’t Enigma code. Enigma code needs FIVE capital letters, not just THREE.

  We’d learnt about Enigma code on a school trip – we’d seen the special machines at Bletchley Park, the Enigma Machines that were used by the Nazis to write secret messages. Josh was crazy about that kind of stuff! He would have stolen an Enigma Machine to take home if he’d had the chance.

  He tugged my arm and wrote: Lion eagle could be an anagram. He scribbled down the letters over his page – L I O N E A G L E – and started to play around with them. ANGLE he wrote, then ANGEL, then ALIEN LEGO, which I’m not sure was really helping.

  The kitchen door swung open and I just had time to screw up the page we’d been writing on and toss it on the fire before Mum clattered in with a tray of three steaming mugs and plates of sandwiches and chocolate biscuits. “Hi, kids,” she said brightly, but she looked all pale and I saw her mascara had run on one eye. “You’re all being very quiet and secretive in here.”

  I sat back and tried to smile, but I saw the carrier pigeon staring at me from its eyeless socket and I couldn’t get comfy on the settee any more. “Who was it on the phone?” I asked. I felt the edge of Lily’s notebook jabbing me from under a knitted cushion. “Anything about Dad?”

  “No … yes, but he’s fine,” Mum said, a bit too fast. “Mr Edwards was just saying how he’s doing. He’s fine. No change.”

  She was lying. I could tell.

  Josh smiled nervously. “Want one, Mrs Vane?” He held a newly opened bag of crisps out to her. “They’re salt and vinegar.”

  “No thanks, Josh.”

  “I’m … I’m sorry about Mr Vane,” said Sasha.

  Mum put the tray in front of the fire. She forced a smile. “Thought you might be hungry.”

  “I always am,” said Josh. “Thanks.”

  But we couldn’t carry on the conversation any more because Mum stayed in the room chatting about everything except Dad and then we heard a car on the drive and Sasha’s dad beeping to pick up her and Josh.

  “We’ll try and have the clues cracked by Sunday,” Sasha whispered in my ear at the door. “Then we can celebrate by having a big party for your birthday!”

  She gave me a hug and Josh shook my hand. I felt that surge of hope again, Dad’s trust in me. Then the dread, like cement setting hard on my chest.

  “You should get to bed, Nathan,” said Mum when they’d gone and I’d bolted the door again and put on the chain.

  “But it’s only half seven.” I prodded the fire with the poker and made it flare.

  “You need to get some sleep!” she snapped, all stressed. “Catch up on last night.”

  The phone rang again and Mum went to answer it. I got Lily’s notebook from under the settee cushion and climbed upstairs with it hidden under my jumper. I stopped on the landing and looked out through an edge of curtain, checking the lane for dodgy cars with tinted windows, or shapes lurking in the shadows. Nothing, but I couldn’t help feeling nervous after what had happened in the garden. Had it been the people trying to frame Dad? I thought again of the figure outside Mr Edwards’s office with a shudder. Who knew if they were still around. They could be back any time.

  I got ready for bed and climbed in while Bones scrambled up, his stumpy tail thumping the duvet as he got comfy. Good old Bones.

  I stroked his head and started flicking through Lily’s notebook again. I was about to call it a day when I came across something I’d missed the first time, something that made me sit right up in bed: something written sideways in the margin in really tiny letters.

  10th Nov 1940

  Is Coventry the target? It must be close now. I have to break the Enigma and cannot rest until then.

  So Josh was right! It was Enigma codes Lily had been working on. That didn’t explain the sets of three letters instead of five, but still. Coventry, though? That was never mentioned in our school trip to Bletchley Park. What was all that about?

  My mind went into overdrive. I listened to work out whether Mum was still downstairs and likely to come up to check I was in bed anytime soon. I heard her on the phone, her voice raised but muffled, and I pulled out my laptop and opened up Google. I typed enigma into the search box. There was an Oxford Dictionary definition:

  enigma i-nig-muh •n. a mysterious or puzzling person or thing.

  – ORIGIN Greek ainigma “riddle”

  Well, the whole thing was puzzling all right. I typed enigma and bletchley park and found some stuff I already knew:

  First invented by a German engineer, Enigma Machines were used in the Second World War to send secret messages…

  I clicked to another site.

  Lots of houses in the local area were commissioned to take people who worked at Bletchley. Many came from the universities of Cambridge or Oxford. Mathematicians, linguists, physicists, scholars, even musicians. Some of the most brilliant minds in cryptography came together to find ways to break the enemy’s secret codes.

  “Crypt-o-graphy,” I muttered. It sounded like something to do with dead people rather than code cracking. I typed fast into the search box:

  coventry, enigma, bletchley park

  103,001 results!

  I quickly scanned down the list.

  The Coventry Blitz: The real story of the bombing

  Did Churchill allow the Coventry bombing? The myth put to rest

  Bletchley Park workers to be honoured by government

  I clicked on the first one and started to read.

  In full moonlight on the night of 14th November 1940…

  Weird. November the fourteenth. This coming Monday. I shivered at the coincidence and carried on reading.

  …509 Luftwaffe bombers attacked Coventry… These started a firestorm which devastated most of the city centre… Many buildings were destroyed and 568 people killed…

  …Bletchley Park decoded an Enigma message on 11th November that warned a huge raid was coming, code name Moonlight Sonata. It was suspected there were three possible targets: Birmingham, Coventry or London, and Bletchley were working round the clock to try and find out which city it was.

  My mind whirred. Firestorm … 568 people killed … Moonlight Sonata… I thought about Lily’s words again. Is Coventry the target?

  “Nathan!” Mum shouted up. “Your light’s not still on, is it?”

  The 10th of November, 1940, Lily’s question had been dated. It was a bit of a leap, but could Lily’s dad have been living in Coventry at the time? Was that why she was so mad about breaking the Enigma co
de, to know which city was going to be bombed?

  “Nathan!” I heard Mum’s feet on the stairs. I snapped my laptop closed and flicked the light off, wriggling under my covers.

  But couldn’t Lily have told her dad to leave, just in case?

  My door opened a crack and then closed again, making the model planes move about. They circled slowly in the moonlight, spreading long shadows over the ceiling. I yawned a huge yawn and struggled to think and stay awake. Had Lily saved her dad? What did all this have to do with my dad? What did it have to do with the trail? I had no idea.

  My mobile buzzed and I sleepily brought up the text from Sasha. We’ll b round asap 2moro & go to bp on bus s x

  I settled back into bed. Lion eagle… Lion eagle… I felt my eyelids getting heavier and heavier. I had to think. I had to get to Bletchley Park. I had to work it out… But I couldn’t keep my eyes open, and then there was Lily in my head, and I vaguely remembered I’d left her photo on the mantelpiece where anyone could find it… But my mind was closing inwards like a box lid snapping shut, and there was Lily, looking at me and nodding as she rode her bike away.

  9

  Bletchley Park

  I bolted awake. Bletchley Park!

  There was a strange yellow light coming through the curtains like the colour of old paper, and when I drew them back I saw that the snow had got thicker in the night. It covered the pointy roof of the well and the air-raid shelter was a bump of white. I thought about the figure who’d been hiding in the garden, knowing about the trail, knowing where we were heading to next.

  The house was deathly quiet. I got dressed under the covers to try and keep warm, and then I tiptoed downstairs. I went into the kitchen and grabbed a few biscuits from the tin and swigged some freezing milk straight from the fridge. MMXII spelt the fridge magnets. MCMXL, like some random strings of Enigma code rather than the Roman numeral dates Dad and me had made up.