Doz went to lift his right hand up towards Boyd, then stopped; he thought for a moment. ‘You just want me to drop the phone,’ he said. His face twisted with anger and disbelief.
‘No, Jason,’ Boyd shouted. ‘I want to save your bloody life!’
Doz jutted out his chin. He wasn’t going to do it. ‘I’m not a complete idiot, you know!’
‘Course not; just the bits you let everyone see. Doz, I need both hands or you’ll fall.’
Doz shook his head and tried to work out how he had got to the point where Boyd was telling him what to do. He knew he didn’t have a choice. He released the phone and it tumbled down through the air.
‘Heads-up!’ Boyd shouted and saw a set of concerned governors shuffle a group of parents aside. Everyone took in a sharp breath, then there was a momentary silence as they watched the phone descend and smash on the floor. Doz threw his right arm upwards and Boyd caught it, pulling him up.
‘Climb over me,’ Boyd said.
As Doz climbed over Boyd’s head, Boyd grabbed his feet and boosted him out and over his back. Once Doz was out, he shuffled quickly back down the glass roof. Boyd just turned over and lay on his back, no longer scared of being so far from the ground.
‘Don’t think this means you’re off the hook; you’re done here, Boyd,’ Doz said as he turned and jogged back the way they had come.
‘Yeah, you’re welcome,’ Boyd said to himself. He sat up and looked out over the fields and trees of the Bloomfield Downs, still trying to get his breath back. Like always, he took the chance to enjoy the peace of being alone, because this time, he knew it wasn’t going to last for long.
Suspended
‘Suspended!’ Fitz shouted. He and Boyd were alone in front of the school reception building. Fitz’s mum and Boyd’s dad were still inside with the Prov.
‘It’s not a big deal – next week is half-term anyway,’ Boyd said, brushing Fitz off.
‘So what? It still goes on my record! You could have told them I had nothing to do with it. They don’t have the picture – it’s just Doz’s word against mine!’
‘What’s the point?’ Boyd said. His last chance of running in the county championship had smashed to pieces with Doz’s phone. Parents’ Evening was called off, several of the attendees were talking about writing letters to the council about how on earth the school had made it so easy for two students to get up onto the roof, let alone almost fall through it.
Doz, of course, played the part of the victim to perfection. Boyd didn’t care anymore. The championships were lost to him and nothing else mattered.
‘What’s the point?’ Fitz shouted. ‘The point is I’m suspended because of you. Thanks for that!’
‘No one forced you, Fitz.’
Fitz didn’t reply. He started to walk away, then stopped and walked back to Boyd. He’d never seen Fitz like this, literally shaking with anger. He fronted up to Boyd.
‘Screw you,’ Fitz said. Swallowing hard, he jabbed a finger into Boyd’s chest. ‘Y’know, I used to think this whole “iceman” thing was some kind of act, that people had you all wrong when they said you were just an idiot loner who didn’t care. But I’ve watched you do nothing while losers like Doz and Strakes bully everyone; you just stood there, letting it happen. Even then I convinced myself you had a reason; you were still a good person underneath it all. “Maybe it’s because his mum died and his dad is a douchebag,” I thought.’
‘Watch it, Fitz!’ Boyd gave Fitz a small shove, but the smaller boy came back at him, their chests bumping.
‘Oops, sorry, have I touched a nerve, loner boy? Are you like this because daddy never bothers to spend any time with you?’
The reception doors opened, and Fitz’s mum and Boyd’s dad started down the steps towards the boys.
‘Fitz, shut up, I’m warning you,’ Boyd said quietly.
‘Oh yeah and you’ll do what, exactly? Hmm? What can you do to me now mate, eh? Oh yeah, sorry, my mistake.’ Fitz laughed and stepped away. ‘I remember now, we’re not mates, are we?’
The laughter stopped, and Fitz’s eyes started to well up with tears.
‘That’s the one thing you were right about today, you know that. You really don’t have friends do you, Boyd? And now I know why.’ Fitz walked away, towards his mum’s car.
‘Fitzgerald Tork, you come back here!’ Marjorie Tork yelled as she stomped after him.
Boyd’s dad didn’t stop either. He walked straight past him, without a word or a glance.
The two men sat in a black Audi, parked at the side of the long driveway out of Oakmead Secondary School. The man in the passenger seat had tilted and turned the rear-view mirror so he could see the boys talking outside reception. Then two adults came out of the school building and the boys split, heading their separate ways. The man in the driver’s seat was watching events closely in his wing mirror. His seat was pushed back as far as it could go; it was the only way he could fit his long legs in behind the steering wheel. He drummed his huge fingers as he watched the mother and son approach in their car. As they drove by, the big man turned his face towards the passenger because he had the kind of face that, if you saw it, you wouldn’t forget it, so it was best to stay out of sight.
The man in the passenger seat didn’t take his eyes from the other pupil. He watched as the boy and his father walked towards their car without exchanging a word. He could see from the boy’s body language that he was boiling with anger, fists clenched, bursting for an argument; it was also clear that his father wasn’t going to give it to him. They got in the car and drove past slowly. Again, the big man in the driver’s seat looked away. He kept his huge, bulging eyes on the man in the passenger seat. The driver started the engine. His boss returned his gaze and turned his thin, snake-like lips up into a hideous smile that revealed a set of small, pointed teeth.
‘I should follow?’ the driver asked.
‘Yes, please, follow them, Mr Bakker,’ the man replied.
As the car pulled away, the passenger took out his phone and hit one button. ‘Eagle, this is Van Cleef. We’ve found him.’ He hung up the phone without hearing a word of reply. They accelerated after the other car. ‘Don’t be too eager, Bakker. We’ve done the hard part. When we strike, they won’t know we are coming.’
Father and Son
Boyd woke the next morning to the sound of his dad moving around the house. He checked the time on his phone: it was after 9:30am, which meant Martin Boyd hadn’t gone to work today. Martin had barely talked to Boyd last night and he was an expert at the silent treatment. Boyd had sat in the car on the way home and allowed his anger to boil and fizz, stubbornly refusing to start a conversation himself.
‘Go to bed,’ Martin had said as they walked through the front door, so that’s exactly what Boyd had done.
Their home was a simple three-bedroom house in a small close in the town of Bloomfield. It was on an estate of about 100 houses, tucked away in the countryside, surrounded by hills and fields. Bloomfield was too big to know everyone but small enough that you couldn’t help but bump into your teachers in the supermarket. It wasn’t too far from London, just over an hour away by train, and Boyd’s dad often made the trip to the capital, meeting a client in the city or heading to the airport and flying off somewhere for work. From the look of the leather bag at the front door, it seemed that his dad was going away somewhere today.
Boyd heard Martin in the kitchen. The kettle was boiling and the toaster popped. He decided to continue to avoid contact, to force his dad to make the first move. So he went into the lounge and found his tablet before making his way into the kitchen.
Martin Boyd was standing at the kitchen counter, reading something on his phone, drinking a coffee and eating toast. Boyd hated coffee, he couldn’t stand the smell, so Martin always ate at the kitchen counter, never taking his coffee to the table. Martin’s breakfast routine was always the same: the toast sat on the breadboard and he buttered a little bit of it at a time before takin
g a bite. Boyd took a seat at the breakfast bar, picked up the remote control and turned on the wall-mounted TV. He activated screenshare, so his tablet displayed on the television. Opening YouTube, he saw that one of his favourite YouTubers had dropped a new video.
FrakeNews was a site dedicated to exposing the truth behind unexplained events or revealing government cover-ups. Boyd loved it, Martin did not, which made it the perfect choice for this morning, Boyd thought. He had only started watching FrakeNews because his dad had told him that he wanted to discuss politics and world events over the dinner table. Boyd decided that if he had to talk about adult things that he didn’t care about, he was going to get a different opinion to the one Martin got from BBC News.
It turned out he was surprised how much he enjoyed learning about world events. FrakeNews made this kind of stuff edgy and exciting, and most of the theories they came out with frustrated Martin, which was a bonus for Boyd. The reporter sat in shadow so you couldn’t see their face and they spoke with a deliberately distorted voice. Mostly this was because the stories they reported on involved revealing the secrets of important and powerful people who had plenty of money, which made FrakeNews unpopular with politicians and businesses. Boyd clicked on the video and the familiar theme played through his headphones. The intro music was solemn, accompanied by the image of the clock on Big Ben in London, ticking faster and faster until it melted and exploded, leaving the title on the screen: ‘FrakeNews – The Truth They Don’t Want You To Know.’
The reporter came on the screen, just an outline of someone in a baseball cap. Next to the figure was an image of a passenger plane. ‘Welcome to the truth. Last week, a plane took off from Heathrow Airport and by the time it landed in Paris, there was one less passenger on board.’ The reporter’s deep, robotic voice somehow still managed to be filled with intrigue and emotion.
Whoever was behind FrakeNews always started with that same line, ‘Welcome to the truth.’ Boyd had watched reports on the plastic contaminating the ocean, the refugees who had to leave their homes because of war and how governments weren’t doing enough to stop global warming. They delivered their reports with so much passion and Boyd had learnt a lot from watching them. But it was the stories like this, which no one else even knew about, that really had him hooked.
‘Yes, a woman has disappeared and almost no one is asking why. The story was picked up by a local French news outlet as they had a reporter on the flight but it was soon squashed by the British and French secret service – but here’s the thing…’ The reporter leant in, their face came closer to the camera, putting them even deeper into shadow. ‘FrakeNews has spoken to witnesses on the flight and the passenger went missing from the toilet of the plane. She went in, and she never came out. Her seat remained unoccupied for the rest of the flight. The plane was obviously sealed until landing, there were no recorded issues with the flight, with no unscheduled stops in between London and Paris. So, where on earth did this mystery woman go?’
Boyd sat forward, completely engrossed in the report.
‘Well, firstly, thanks to FrakeNews, she’s no longer a mystery. We managed to get a copy of the list of passengers who boarded the flight before the British government changed it and removed her name. And we can exclusively reveal that the disappearing woman is Miranda Capshaw: a British artist who lives in France.’
The image of a woman appeared on the screen and, for some reason, Boyd paused the video. Leaning forward, he studied the passport picture of the woman. She was around 40, with brown hair and a friendly, open face, and there was something familiar about her that he couldn’t place. It continued to amaze him; the things adults did to each other. What had Miranda Capshaw done to have someone make her vanish from the face of the earth? Where she was right now? And how on earth can you make someone just disappear from a plane in mid-air? He hit play again.
‘So where is our mid-air toilet escape artist, you may wonder? And why on earth did the British government feel the need to erase her name from the flight manifest?’
The picture of the woman on the screen was replaced with an image of the Home Secretary, a tall man called Octavius Ogilvy. As the person in charge of keeping the country safe and secure, he was a frequent FrakeNews target, and was especially called out for not providing satisfactory answers to their questions.
‘Mr Ogilvy, what has Miranda Capshaw done to receive such special attention from your secret service? We would love you to come on FrakeNews and shed some light on this. In fact, we won’t stop talking about it until you do! Guys, until next time – demand the truth.’
The FrakeNews theme boomed out of the TV and then the screen went black. Then, the voice filled the room again, with the cryptic message that was played at the end of every video: ‘If you have any information or a story that you think could be FrakeNews, go back to where it all started and find the time.’
Boyd had no idea what that meant but it all added to the drama of the videos – you didn’t get this on the six o’clock news. He hit the screen of his tablet and paused the video. Martin had finished his toast and was washing up the bread board.
‘Crazy, eh,’ Boyd said. ‘How can someone disappear like that, from a plane?’
‘I’ve got to go away, not sure when I’ll be back,’ Martin replied, taking a sip of coffee.
Boyd pouted and said nothing.
‘Okay, Boyd?’
‘Yeah, fine, whatever.’
‘Don’t be dismissive. If you have something to say, be an adult and say it.’
‘I’m not an adult and no, I don’t.’
‘Great.’ Martin finished his coffee and began to rinse his mug. ‘I’m disappointed in you, Boyd.’
‘I got that, thanks.’
‘You can’t keep being that kid, you know that?’
‘And what kid is that?’ Boyd asked, his voice shaking with barely controlled anger.
‘The kid who’s able to convince himself that he has every right to be unreasonable just so he can get what he wants, no matter who gets hurt. I know that other kids have a mother, and I can’t help the fact that you don’t but you can’t let a situation like that define you. You have to define your situation.’
That was one of his favourite sayings and this time, he said it so calmly, with such a heavy heart, Boyd didn’t know how to respond. He felt something inside him crack. It started in his throat; he swallowed, and it slid down into this stomach like a cricket ball. He didn’t like what his dad was saying, he didn’t want to admit that it was true and it didn’t take long before Boyd let that feeling turn into anger, as he usually did.
‘What would you even know? You’re never here. You don’t know anything about me!’ Boyd stood up and shoved the stool back into place with a thump.
‘Calm down, Boyd,’ Martin said, his tone heavy with warning.
‘Why should I? So you can give me another speech and then go and catch a plane somewhere? What’s the point?’ He walked to the kitchen door.
‘Where are you going?’ Martin asked.
‘I take it I’m spending the night at Aunt Aurora’s, again, so I’m going to pack a bag. Don’t worry about driving me, I’ll get a taxi.’ He left the room.
‘Boyd! Hang on,’ Martin walked to the kitchen door and watched Boyd run up the stairs.
‘Boyd, please!’
Boyd’s bedroom door slammed shut.
Aurora
Aunt Aurora lived in a small mobile-home park near the beach. Despite what he’d said to his dad, Boyd actually really enjoyed staying with Aurora. She hated it when he called her ‘Aunt’ – she was pretty cool and let him do whatever he wanted. He asked the taxi driver to drop him off at the end of the driveway to the park and paid the fare. He ducked under the gate and walked up the hill. The park was right over the road from the beach. You could smell the salt in the air and the afternoon sun glinted off the small, glassy fragments of sand in the pathway.
Being here immediately helped Boyd to relax. He knew exactly
how he would spend the afternoon: he’d dump his stuff, grab his book and his headphones, and go over to the sand dunes where he could be alone. Then, on his way home tonight, he would stop and buy some chips from Alfonso, the old guy with a small, blue fish-and-chip van. Alfonso was always in the beach car park on Friday nights and he made the best chips in Bloomfield.
Boyd walked along the short track into the park. There were only seven homes in the whole place, six of which were parked on what was called a ‘lot’. All the lots were similar; they had a mobile home, a space to park a car and not much else. Aurora’s home was different. Firstly, she called it her ‘van’, whereas her neighbours called theirs ‘static homes’; Aurora said this was because they were all snobs. Most of the others had cars outside; Aurora didn’t have a car and didn’t drive, she walked pretty much everywhere. All the other homes were on a flat piece of land, all on the same level, but Aurora’s van looked like it had been added to the park as an afterthought. It was up in the top corner of the park, close to the road, on a raised patch of grass. So if you stood in the right place in the van, you could see over the hedge, across the small road and out to sea.
There was a tiny loft space on top of the van, and this is where Boyd slept. You had to climb a ladder from inside to get into it and there was only just enough room to lie down in there, but it was the best view in the park. Boyd always kept the little curtains open because he hated enclosed spaces and this way he could look out over the water as he fell asleep.
As he walked past the other vans, he could hear the familiar sound of Aurora’s wood chimes. She had them hanging from strings on her washing line, on her awning, on every window and door, and they clacked and clinked constantly in the sea breeze. It had taken Boyd a while to get used to the noise when he first stayed there but now he actually found it soothing. It drove her neighbours mad but none of them ever complained to her face.
Boyd walked up the hill and saw Aurora’s door was open. ‘Aurora, it’s me,’ he called out.
Operation Hurricane: The Evan Boyd Adventures #1 Page 6
