The London Eye Mystery

In his room, still wearing his jacket, Ted does something he hasn’t done in years: Rhythmically, he jumps on his bed, sits, bangs his fist on the wall, then repeats over and over. Feeling relieved after this ritual, he grabs an encyclopedia and reads from it randomly.

Kat visits him. She says all the adults are mad at her for accepting the stranger’s ticket. Ted says the encyclopedia describes the dodo as a bird that went extinct. It also mentions the British aristocrat and murder suspect Lord Lucan, who disappeared and was never found. Another article describes the Mary Celeste, a sailing ship that left New York and arrived at Gibraltar with no one aboard.

Kat hunches up. Ted, who doesn’t like touching others, puts a hand on her shoulder. Wanting to comfort her about their missing cousin, he says most things that disappear later reappear. She puts a hand on his, and a tear falls from her eye onto his hand. It confuses him, “as if neither of us knew where Kat started and I ended” (73). Kat says the dodo, Lord Lucan, and the passengers never reappeared.

Kat says she wants Ted to help her find Salim: “Nobody’s better at thinking than you are” (74). It’s the first compliment she’s ever paid him. Discomfited, Ted puts his hands in his pockets. He notices something there and pulls it out. It’s Salim’s camera.

Kat takes the camera. Ted tries to retrieve it, but she holds it away, saying, “It’s my find” (75). For Ted, she’s back to being mean again. Ted thinks that Kat’s much harder to predict than the weather. He remembers her playing hospital with a set of Barbie dolls that she stabbed, put ketchup on, and bandaged with toilet paper. Ted didn’t know how to play, so he made a siren sound and became the ambulance.

Kat wonders what Salim must have thought when he realized he didn’t have his camera. She notes that he took 18 shots, and Ted reminds her that he took one snap himself, just before the strange man arrived. The camera uses old-fashioned film that needs to be developed. Kat puzzles over how to remove the film, but the doorbell rings. It’s the police.

Detective Inspector Pearce and her assistant, a sergeant, sit in the living room surrounded by Ted’s family. Detective Pearce asks about Gloria’s visit and her New York move. As Pearce looks through Salim’s backpack, Ted notes its contents as carefully as she does: several articles of clothing, a murder-mystery novel, a Swiss Army knife, and an empty key ring attached to an Eiffel Tower charm. Gloria says Salim got the key ring on a trip to Paris, but, due to the move, he currently has no keys to anything.

Pearce asks Ted and Kat what happened. Kat explains the free ticket and how they watched Salim’s capsule carefully. Ted says it’s impossible to be 100% sure of anything, but he’s 98% sure they tracked the capsule completely. He begins to explain probability and uncertainty, but Gloria interrupts and demands to know what the police are doing about her son.

Pearce assures her that most young people who go missing turn up within two days, and that the police are checking video-cam footage of the ride and interviewing tourists who paid by credit card. Ted imagines Salim lost on the Underground, trying to find the right station.

Pearce asks to interview Gloria privately. The others leave, but Ted hesitates, and Faith tells him to “[s]coot.” He notices that this is the second time that day that she’s chased him off. He follows the others into the kitchen, his hand flapping. Kat leans against the fridge, hitting her head with her fist.

Ted’s father, quoting Laurel and Hardy, tells his kids that it’s “[a]nother fine mess” (89). Kat is crying, so he puts his hand on her shoulder, which makes her cry harder. Ted resents being left out of the investigation, and he listens at the door to the living room but can only make out a word here and there. Suddenly, Gloria shouts, “SALIM WOULD NEVER RUN AWAY FROM ME!” (89-90).

Ben opens the back door and gestures, but only Ted follows him. As They walk in the tiny garden, Ted asks about the probability that Salim ran away. His father says it’s mostly likely that Salim is lost. Ted wonders why Salim isn’t answering his calls; his father thinks the phone’s battery may be dead.

One of Ted’s teachers, Mr. Shephard, has tried to teach him social cues by giving him a five-point system for interpreting people’s facial expressions: It involves smiles, pursed lips, and eyes. Salim’s body language, especially with his mother and while waiting in line at the Eye—looking up or down, shifting uncomfortably—is more complex, and it’s too much for Ted to calculate.

Ben says that while Salim and Gloria are close, sometimes closeness can be “[c]ombustible.”

Everyone returns to the living room, where Detective Pearce asks Gloria if Salim might have gone to the house of his father, Rashid. At first, Gloria says Salim wouldn’t do that: “Salim goes over there every other weekend, and that’s it” (95). Rashid seemed okay with the move and with seeing Salim only during winter holidays and summer. Gloria hasn’t yet contacted her ex-husband about Salim’s disappearance—she and Rashid aren’t on speaking terms—but she agrees he might somehow be involved.

Pearce leaves a card with her phone number in case they learn anything new, and she and the sergeant leave. Ted and Kat prepare sandwiches; everyone eats except Gloria, who doesn’t touch her meal but quietly smokes a cigarette. Faith asks Ben about his day, and he replies that the Barracks is all locked up and ready for demolition. Everyone’s quiet. Ted tries to talk about some theories he has, but his mother hushes him.

The tense quiet reminds Ted of “a calm in the centre of a storm: the eye of the hurricane” (98-99). The London Eye is at the center. Faith says it’s time for bed; Kat complains, then points out that she’s sleeping right there in the living room. Her mother says she can sleep in Ted’s room on the lilo that Salim used. Ted guesses that everyone is wondering where Salim will sleep that night.

Kat tosses and turns in the dark of Ted’s bedroom. Ted can’t sleep, but he also can’t turn on the light and study weather books or listen to weather reports on the radio. Kat finally sits up and says, “It’s no good. We’ve got to talk about it” (101-02).

She and Ted agree that the oddest thing about Salim disappearing is that he did so from a sealed capsule while they watched. The problem is that the adults don’t believe them: They seem to think the siblings weren’t watching very carefully. Ted assures Kat that it’s highly improbable that they somehow missed Salim when his capsule emptied.

Ted has eight theories about Salim’s disappearance. Kat writes them down. First, Salim somehow hid in his capsule for several trips, then left after the family gave up the search. Second, Ted’s watch was wrong (even though he checked it five times against Big Ben that day). Third, they completely missed Salim when he exited the capsule. This is the police’s theory. Fourth, Salim hid from them or had memory loss. This seems unlikely, as Ted and Kat would have seen him leaving the capsule. Fifth, Salim went up in a puff of smoke. Ted says it’s rare but not impossible, as it’s a documented phenomenon that “works like local thunderstorms” (105). Kat decides it’s “[n]ot likely.” Sixth, Salim assumed a disguise. This would be hard to do on a crowded Ferris wheel, and no one who exited the capsule remotely resembled Salim. Seventh, Salim entered a time warp: “Probability factor zero” (105). Eighth, Salim hid under someone’s clothes. Kat is skeptical, but Ted points out that some of the African visitors had long robes, and there was a large man wearing a long raincoat.

Ted suddenly thinks of a ninth theory. His hand flaps nervously. Kat worries that it’ll involve aliens or dimensional drift, but Ted says this one’s the best theory of all.

The phone rings.

The phone is answered in their parents’ room. Kat and Ted fall over each other as they hurry out to the hall to listen. Gloria appears and opens their parents’ door. She says, “Salim?” but Ben says it was the police. They found an Asian boy dead near the river.

Gloria throws up on the carpet, and Faith runs to her and holds her. Gloria is too sick, so Ben leaves for the police station to identify the body. Gloria sits on the living room sofa, mumbling, teeth chattering. Kat nervously makes tea. Ted remembers that his sister can be bad about little things “but good about the big problems” (111), like when their mother had an operation and Kat took charge and did the kitchen duties.

Ted goes upstairs and wonders about death, and how his best thinking can’t stop it from taking everyone and everything. An hour later, his father returns—and when Ted goes back downstairs, he feels he is “a different Ted from the Ted that had gone up. I had stared death in the face” (114). Ben announces that the body isn’t Salim’s. The others shriek and cry and laugh with relief.

The next morning, Kat devises a plan. She and Ted will develop the film from Salim’s camera, “test theory number eight” (117-18), and ride again on the Eye. Ted says their mother will forbid it, and they don’t have money for tickets. However, Kat says she still has much of the money their mother gave her to buy Eye tickets—the rest she spent on the capsule photo that showed no Salim—and they can consider the cash a loan. Ted is skeptical.

Using Salim’s camera, Kat takes several snaps out the window until the film cartridge is used up. She pushes a button, the film rewinds, and she removes the cartridge. Next, they decide to test Ted’s eighth theory—that Salim was able to leave the capsule unnoticed by hiding under someone else’s clothes. Kat puts on a long dressing gown over her night clothes and takes Ted downstairs. She instructs Ted to hide under her gown and grasp her from behind. Together, they walk into the kitchen, where their mother promptly notices Ted hiding under the gown.

Kat says, “Told you” (120), but Faith takes Ted to the living room and scolds him for not taking Salim’s disappearance seriously. He protests and starts to talk about his eight theories, but she tells him to stop it. His hand flapping violently, Ted walks into the kitchen, picks up a crystal glass, and smashes it on the floor. Kat tries to take the blame, but Faith saw Ted do it. Kat cleans up the mess, then sits, her head in her hands.

Their father walks in and starts downing cups of water. Kat nudges Ted and points to the empty wine and liquor bottles from the previous night, and Ted realizes their father is dehydrated from too much alcohol. Kat asks if she and Ted can go out; Faith says no and that they’re both grounded. Ben takes Faith into the living room, where they argue quietly. Kat says their father is on their side. She’s right.

In less than an hour, Kat, Ted, and Ben leave the house. Faith, her face blotchy from crying, gives Ted a quick hug. They stop at the chemist’s so Kat can buy nail polish remover. Kat nudges Ted, who asks if they can ride the London Eye again. Their father realizes they’re trying to gather evidence, but he allows it. He adds that it’s cloudy, which is bad for the view but good because the ticket line won’t be crowded.

The line is short, and the three enter a capsule with 12 others. Kat whispers to Ted that she managed to drop off Salim’s film at the chemist’s, and the pictures will be developed that day.

Everyone gathers for the London Eye’s souvenir photo. Not long after, they exit, but Kat hangs back until an attendant shoos her out. She thus proves that Salim couldn’t have stayed in the capsule for an extra trip. In the souvenir photo, only Ted’s ear and shoulder can be seen. Kat looks elegant, but she doesn’t like her top-knotted hair.

They walk along the waterfront as cormorants dive underwater and reappear several meters away. Ted hopes Salim is like the cormorants and will suddenly show up far from the Eye. Ben hopes so, too.

It begins to rain. Ted explains thunderstorms until Kat tells him to “shut up.” They hurry to the Tube station, ride the train, and exit at their stop. The storm has cleared out, and, as they walk the final blocks, Kat asks to stop at the shopping center so she can buy Gloria some soothing bath oils—when she returns with the bath oil, Ted notices an envelope of photographs sticking out of her jacket pocket.

Gloria loves her bath oil, but it also reminds her of when Salim was a child, and she begins to cry. The kids go upstairs, where Kat pulls out the photos. Kat sees nothing of interest and feels disappointed. Ted’s one shot misses most of the Eye wheel and instead captures bodies and feet standing near the line for the ride.

They decide to keep the photos and camera to themselves. Kat crumples up her list of Ted’s theories and tosses it in the trash, saying that “it’s beyond us, Ted” (143). Ted pulls the list back out and suggests they remove each theory by a process of elimination, and that whatever remains—as Sherlock Holmes would say—must be the answer.

They’ve disproven the theories about staying aboard the capsule and hiding under someone’s clothes, and Kat argues they should also remove the theories that require time travel and spontaneous combustion; four theories are left. Ted reminds her that he has a ninth theory: “Salim never got on the Eye in the first place” (145). When Kat objects that they saw Salim enter the capsule, Ted says they thought they did, but Salim was in shadow, and it might have been another rider who waved. Kat asks how Salim would have disappeared on his way toward the capsule. Ted posits that he could have bent down to tie his shoelaces, decided not to go on the ride, and gotten confused, lost, or kidnapped.

After closing her eyes and thinking, Kat concludes that Ted’s idea is clever but wrong. She’s sure she saw Salim: His gestures, while waving, are unique. She asserts that such aspects of body language are something Ted wouldn’t perceive because of his “kind of syndrome” (146). Disappointed and frustrated, Ted vigorously scratches out the ninth theory.

Detective Pearce visits again. Kat gives her the souvenir photo of Salim’s capsule group. Pearce thanks her but says the police already have a copy, and she adds that no image shows Salim on the ride, though the souvenir photo includes a large, white-haired man in a raincoat who blocks a portion of the camera’s view (151). Gloria decides Salim never got on the ride at all. Ted begins to explain his own thoughts on that possibility, but his mother hushes him.

Pearce announces a lead: The day before, a boy who looked like Salim was seen jumping a turnstile and boarding a train to Manchester. The boy could have exited at any of the stops along the way; no one close to Salim, including his father, has had any contact with him.

The detective shows Gloria a recent picture of Salim given to them by his father, Rashid. Pearce asks if it’s a good likeness. At that moment, the doorbell rings. It’s Rashid. He asks where his son is. Gloria immediately argues with him, and the room suddenly is in an uproar, everyone shouting. Only Ted and Ben remain silent.

Pearce turns to leave. Ted tells her that Salim received a phone call shortly before he disappeared, saying it was from Manchester. Pearce thanks him and says she wishes her officers had as many brains as Ted.

Ben and Faith take the kids to dinner while Gloria and Rashid fight it out; when they return, Gloria and Rashid are sitting arm in arm. Ted remembers his father talking about “love-hate” relationships.

Kat again sleeps on the lilo. Ted can’t sleep; carefully, he turns on the light, but Kat doesn’t wake. He pulls out the photo of himself and Kat taken by Salim, with a bit of the London Eye behind Ted’s shoulder. He realizes that the Eye moves counterclockwise before the tourists but clockwise if seen from the other side. He wonders if he and Kat have been looking at Salim’s disappearance from the wrong perspective.

He studies the souvenir photo of Salim’s capsule and realizes that several of the tourists can’t fully be seen. Perhaps Salim is hidden in the murky background.

He goes downstairs for a snack, hears Gloria and Rashid talking, and listens. Gloria wants to notify the press, but Rashid worries that their private history will become public. When Gloria says all Rashid cares about is his reputation, he relents, and they settle on calling the media late the next day. However, they then begin to argue about Gloria’s new job in New York. Rashid says he already sends her plenty of money, but she counters that she needs the career—and he responds that all she thinks about is herself. She says she’s been focused on Salim all his life, and the boy belongs to her. Rashid says, “He doesn’t belong to either of us” (165).

They then argue about who’s to blame. Gloria says she’d never forgive herself if Salim were hurt. Rashid says Salim asked to stay with him. Gloria doesn’t believe it, but Rashid insists it’s true. He told Salim that he’s too busy and that the boy is better off with his mother.

Ted hears them kissing, an activity he finds disgusting. He hurries upstairs.

Eating a snack quietly, Ted again looks through the photos. He sees something in them and shakes Kat awake. He’s found the man who gave them the ticket, in both the photo Ted took and one that Salim shot. They use a magnifier and notice that the man’s T-shirt has printing on it.

Kat decides to return to the chemist’s and have them print blowups of both photos. She warns Ted not to say anything to their parents—their father would “only ignore us if we tried to explain” (171)—and says she’ll follow this lead on her own. However, when Ted insists he’s also on the case, Kat concedes, adding that while she hates to admit it, Ted’s “a genius” (171). Then she eats the rest of his snack.

Early in the morning, Kat sneaks off to the chemist’s with the photo negatives. Ted lies awake, thinking about how something can be different “depending on how you look at it” (174). Their father catches Kat sneaking back in and demands to know where she’s been, but Ted saves her by saying she was searching for his lost compass outside. Kat takes him aside, gives him a celebratory punch in the arm, and says, “Go, Ted” because he finally told a lie.

They study the enlarged prints from the chemist’s. One shows the torso of the stranger who gave them the ticket. His T-shirt has words printed on it; they’re partly hidden by his jacket. The top line says “ONTLI” and the bottom line says “ECUR” (176). With pen and paper, Ted and Kat try to guess the other letters. It’s frustrating, and Kat soon wants to give up.

She wonders if the bottom word might be “recurring,” but the word would wind around the T-shirt and under an arm. She tells Ted she’s having a recurring nightmare about a dead boy on a slab, and herself falling out of a capsule on a foggy day, down through the spokes of the Eye wheel. Suddenly she yells “Security!” That must be the second word. Ted agrees, but he’s jealous that she thought of it first.

He asks why photos don’t make everything come out backward, like in a mirror. She tries to explain, but she’s interrupted by a piercing scream from downstairs.

They run downstairs. Everyone’s staring at a cellphone on the kitchen table. Gloria explains that she put the phone down to make a landline call to the airline, postponing the flight to New York, and when she returned to the kitchen, her cellphone was ringing. She picked it up to answer, but the caller disconnected. The phone says the call was from Salim. She calls back but no one answers. Gloria is beside herself: The one time she’s away from her phone, he calls.

The adults walk outside to the garden. Kat goes to the living room, glances through a phone book, and tears out a page. She tells Ted he must lie once more and tell their father that Kat’s gone to visit her best friend, Tiffany, around the corner. She grabs some things from her room and heads for the front door. Grabbing her sleeve, Ted says he wants to come along. She pushes him away, saying, “You’re really good at thinking. But you’re no good at doing. If you come with me, you won’t be any use” (188). She goes out and slams the door.

Ted sits on the carpet, kicks at the door, and hates his sister.

Ted goes to the phone book that Kat raided and flips through it, looking for the place where she tore out a page. It’s painstaking work until he realizes the letters on the stranger’s T-shirt might be some variation of “front”; he flips to the Fs and finds that a page is missing between “Frocks” and “Futon.” He reasons that the stranger works for Frontline Security. As when his father finishes the Sunday crossword, Ted says, “Bingo.”

Detective Pearce returns with another officer. They explain that someone other than Salim might have called Gloria, or sometimes a phone gets dialed by accident. Ted goes to the house phone and dials Directory Enquiries, asking for Frontline Security in London. He gets the number, dials it, and gets a recorded message promoting Frontline’s suite of services: “We supply stewards, ticket collectors, body-searchers and guards […]” (194). When a person answers, Ted doesn’t know what to do, so he hangs up.

Outside, a van pulls up and a TV news crew spills out. The living room is soon filled with people, cameras, cables, and microphones. Gloria and Rashid sit on the couch, and, as cameras roll, she asks the public to send any news they may have of Salim. Satisfied, the crew packs up and leaves, as do the police.

Gloria asks Ted if he thinks Salim is alright; Ted says he doesn’t know. Noticing that she seems upset, he adds that he’s working on discovering where Salim might be. Gloria says Ted has more brains than the rest of the family put together.

Later pacing in the garden, Ted notices the cloud patterns changing to the northwest, over downtown London. He thinks of Kat alone there, searching for the stranger. He goes inside, redials Frontline Security, and gets the switchboard operator. After stammering a bit, Ted asks for the man with stubble. The operator laughs and says that’s Christy, and it’s the second time that day that someone has asked for him. The first caller was a girl who said he’d forgotten his inhaler. Christy is working a motorcycle show at the Earl’s Court exhibition hall.

Shortly after telling the first lie of his life, Ted tells a second lie in a note to his parents: “Dear Mum, We have gone swimming to get some exercise. Ted” (204). He takes £15 from his piggy bank, sneaks out the front door, and heads off down the street. His sister, “Kat-astrophe,” isn’t going to leave him behind.