"No. Darren does not need to go to school. I educate him."
"Really? There was no mention in the forms of your being a qualified teacher."
"I am not a-"
"And of course," Blaws went on, "we both know that only a qualified teacher can educate a child at home." He smiled like a shark. "Don't we?"
Mr. Crepsley didn't know what to say. He had no experience of the modern educational system. When he was a boy, parents could do what they liked with their children. I decided to take matters into my own hands.
"Mr. Blaws?"
"Yes, Darren?"
"What would happen if I didn't turn up at Mahler's?"
He sniffed snootily. "If you enrol at a different school and pass on the paperwork to me, everything will be fine."
"And if - for the sake of argument - I didn't enrol at another school?"
Mr. Blaws laughed. "Everyone has to go to school. Once you turn sixteen, your time is your own, but for the next..." He opened the briefcase again and checked his files "...seven months, you must go to school."
"So if I chose not to go...?"
"We'd send a social worker to see what the problem was."
"And if we asked you to tear up my enrolment form and forget about me - if we said we'd sent it to you by mistake - what then?"
Mr. Blaws drummed his fingers on the top of his bowler hat. He wasn't used to such bizarre questions and didn't know what to make of us. "We can't go around tearing up official forms, Darren," he chuckled uneasily.
"But if we'd sent them by accident and wanted to withdraw them?"
He shook his head firmly. "We weren't aware of your existence before you contacted us, but now that we are, we're responsible for you. We'd have to chase you up if we thought you weren't getting a proper education."
"Meaning you'd send social workers after us?"
"Social workers first," he agreed, then looked at us with a glint in his eye. "Of course, if you gave them a hard time, we'd have to call in the police next, and who knows where it would end."
I took that information on board, nodded grimly, then faced Mr. Crepsley. "You know what this means, don't you?" He stared back uncertainly. "You'll have to start making packed lunches for me!"
Chapter THREE
"MEDDLING, SMUG, stupid little..." Mr. Crepsley snarled. He was pacing the hotel room, cursing the name of Mr. Blaws. The school inspector had left and Harkat had rejoined us. He'd heard everything through the thin connecting door, but could make no more sense of it than us. "I will track him down tonight and bleed him dry," Mr. Crepsley vowed. "That will teach him not to come poking his nose in!"
"Talk like that won't fix this," I sighed. "We have to use our heads."
"Who says it is talk?" Mr. Crepsley retorted. "He gave us his telephone number in case we need to contact him. I will find his address and-"
"It's a mobile phone," I sighed. "You can't trace addresses through them. Besides, what good would killing him do? Somebody else would replace him. Our records are on file. He's only the messenger."
"We could move," Harkat suggested. "Find a new hotel."
"No," Mr. Crepsley said. "He has seen our faces and would broadcast our descriptions. It would make matters more complicated than they already are."
"What I want to know is how our records were submitted," I said. "The signatures on the files weren't ours, but they were pretty damn close."
"I know," he grunted. "Not a great forgery, but adequate."
"Is it possible there's been... a mix-up?" Harkat asked. "Perhaps a real Vur Horston and his son... sent in the forms, and you've been confused with them."
"No," I said. "The address of this hotel was included and so were our room numbers. And..." I told them about the abattoir.
Mr. Crepsley stopped pacing. "Murlough!" he hissed. "That was a period of history I thought I would never have to revisit."
"I don't understand," Harkat said. "How could this be connected to Murlough? Are you saying he's alive and has... set you up?"
"No," Mr. Crepsley said. "Murlough is definitely dead. But someone must know we killed him. And that someone is almost certainly responsible for the humans who have been killed recently." He sat down and rubbed the long scar that marked the left side of his face. "This is a trap."
There was a long, tense silence.
"It can't be," I said in the end. "How could the vampaneze have found out about Murlough?"
"Desmond Tiny," Mr. Crepsley said bleakly. "He knew about our run in with Murlough, and must have told the vampaneze. But I cannot understand why they faked the birth certificate and school records. If they knew so much about us, and where we are, they should have killed us cleanly and honourably, as is the vampaneze way."
"That's true," I noted. "You don't punish a murderer by sending him to school. Although," I added, remembering my long-ago schooldays, "death can sometimes seem preferable to double science on a Thursday afternoon..."
Again a lengthy silence descended. Harkat broke it by clearing his throat. "This sounds crazy," the Little Person said, "but what if Mr. Crepsley did ... submit the forms?"
"Come again?" I said.
"He might have done it in... his sleep."
"You think he sleep wrote a birth cert and school records, then submitted them to a local school?" I didn't even bother to laugh.
"Things like this have happened before," Harkat mumbled. "Remember Pasta O'Malley at the... Cirque Du Freak? He read books at night when he was asleep. He could never recall reading them, but if you asked... him about them, he could answer all your questions."
"I'd forgotten about Pasta," I muttered, giving Harkat's proposal some thought.
"I could not have filled in those forms," Mr. Crepsley said stiffly.
"It's unlikely," Harkat agreed, "but we do strange things... when we sleep. Perhaps you-"
"No," Mr. Crepsley interrupted. "You do not understand. I could not have done it because..." He looked away sheepishly. "I cannot read or write."