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"Bloody hell, Dervish!" I yell "Loch is dead and you’re playing games? What sort of heartless-"

"You’re not listening!" Dervish roars, losing his teain- this is crucial This cave has been hidden for hundreds of years for a very good reason It ain"

"Hidden?" I whisper and Dervish nods "You mean you knew about it?"

"I didn’t know the exact location but I knew it existed" Dervish is white-lipped "The entrance was deliberately blocked off ain" He stands and offers his left hand to ht to Bill-E I don’t want to take it but his eyes tell me I must Bill-E is even slower to accept the hand but eventually he takes it too

"You’ve got to promise," Dervish says "Promise you’ll back me up, lie for me, say this happened in the quarry, tell nobody about the cave On all that’s holy to you in the name of your dead mothers promise"

"And if we don’t?" I ask stiffly

Dervish smiles bitterly "I could force you but I won’t" He squeezes our hands tightly "You both know that we live in a world that’s not the exclusive domain of humans There are other forces Demonic forces This cave could be valuable to theht, demons will benefit and Loch won’t be the only one who dies Will you pro

Dervish sighs wearily "I’ll tell you more about it later You can retract your proood reason to ask for it But there isn’t tiet Loch to the quarry and phone for the police straightaway If we delay, it will show on an autopsy It’ll be risky, no matter hoe play it, but if we don’t act nohile we have the advantage of time, it will be a lot harder For all of us"

Bill-E and I share a look Neither of us knohat this is about but we trust Dervish He’s saved both our lives in the past

"You swear you’ll explain?" I ask, voice shaking hoarsely

"I swear"

"Then I proratefully and looks to Bill-E

"OK," Bill-E says weakly

"In the na tone in Bill-E’s promise

Bill-E hesitates, then nods "In the nao of our hands "Thank you This is more important than either of you can possibly realise It’s" He looks down at Loch and gulps, then mutters under his breath, "At least there wasn’t any blood"

That reminds me about the mysterious disappearance of Loch’s blood I start to tell Dervish about it then stop It isn’t ih cracks in the ground I’ll only confuse the situation if I speak up now

Dervish bends beside the body, gently touches Loch’s pale forehead, then sighs and tugs at his beard Awhich I see how hard he’s having to work to cover up his true feelings Then his expression fir the torches I’ll take the shoulders Grubbs, grab his legs And for hell’s sake, don’t drop hi we need"

The next few hours are nightmarish We carry the body home, load it on to the back of Dervish’s motorbike, strap the arms around Dervish and put a helmet on so if anybody sees Loch it’ll look like he’s a living passenger I watch theo indoors and try to drink a ulp it down

Dervish comes back for us Usually he’d only allow one of us to ride behind him, but there’s no time to follow the rules of the road At the quarry, Dervish throws Loch over the uppere of the cliff The dull thus tears from Bill-E and me I don’t knohy Dervish didn’t chuck Loch dohen he brought hiht Or maybe he wanted our tears, to make the rest of the charade see Dervish’s instructions, I dial the eive my details and wait I wonder why Bill-E and I didn’t do that before We both have mobiles Why didn’t one of us cli for an ambulance? Did we si in the cave control our actions?

The police arrive before the ambulance Dervish debated whether or not he should stay with us or go hoot here In the end he chose to stay, instructing us to tell the for help Everybody here knows Dervish They kno fast he goes on his bike The police are always trying to catch him but he’s too crafty They’ll assume he tore over here at top speed They won’t like it, but given the tragic circu to make a fuss

Para hiishly, without hope, knowing it’s too late They don’t cover his face before loading him into the back of the ambulance because they don’t want to upset Bill-E and ht, I’m certain the sheet will be pulled up and over

The officer in charge asks to take our state Loch’s parents first The officer blushes-he’s young, probably hasn’t seen a corpse before, te Dervish offers to rateful smile

Dervish keeps it quick and to the point There’s been an accident Loch’s been taken to hospital Says it’s serious Doesn’t say Loch’s dead Leaves that for the doctors Not the sort of news you should break over the phone

Home The police drive Bill-E and me Dervish follows on his bike More hot chocolate I still can’t drink it Biscuits which I can’t eat Dervish turns on the heating While the police are talking with us, Dervish rings Ma and Pa Spleen They arrive before we’re finished, splashing out on a taxi for maybe the first tier to whip him away fro them aside and explain that it will be easier if they let the police finish-if we don’t do it here, we’ll have to go to the police station later He takes theine the in the quarry after dark, saying I’erous clioes softly The police don’t suspect foul play They just want to get the facts straight We tell the Loch fell Bill-E tried to catch him Couldn’t The end

Kids fool around at the quarry all the time Every few years some local official vows to block it off Nobody’s ever followed up on the proh I think they will after this The police take the attitude that a fatality was bound to happen sooner or later Just bad luck that it happened to us

They leave not long after ht return to take follow-up statements, but that shouldn’t be necessary They tell us to take a few days off school, o away for a while They warn of a possible backlash-parents sometimes overreact in situations like this Loch’s relatives ht blame Bill-E and me, hurl insults and accusations at us The police say we shouldn’t be too upset if that happens, to try and understand their position

Bill-E wants to stay the night, hear Dervish out, learn e had to lie But Ma and Pa Spleen are having none of it They want out and fast They’ve never liked Dervish and aren’t a lot fonder of uments are shot down before they’re out of his mouth Then it’s into the back of the taxi which they’ve kept waiting and home, where they can pour poison in his ear and rerisly Gradys, hoe’d lead him astray

Then it’s just me and my uncle, alone in our old mansion A foul smell in the air-the stench of lies and deception

Without discussing it, we retire upstairs to Dervish’s study, where we sit on opposite sides of his huge desk, facing each other,away tears, Dervish asha the hairs of his beard

Time for explanations