The Ultimate Truth

by Kevin Brooks

  Grandad shook his head. ‘That’s one of the things my contact wouldn’t tell me. It could be a simple matter of not wanting to let the CIA get their way. Or maybe someone at MI5 realised that letting Bashir go was a big mistake. Or maybe they just needed him again for another undercover operation.’ He shrugged. ‘I really don’t know, Trav. But if MI5 agents are still in Barton, which they obviously are, and they’re still interested in anyone or anything to do with Bashir, it’s a pretty good bet they don’t know where he is.’

  ‘What about the CIA? Do you think they’re still here too?’

  Grandad looked at me for a moment, then he got up and went over to the window. He casually gazed out, and then without turning round he said to me, ‘Come over here.’

  I went over and stood beside him.

  ‘Don’t make it obvious,’ he told me, ‘but if you take a look down the street you’ll see a white van parked behind a red Mondeo.’

  Without turning my head, I glanced down the street. ‘The van with the writing on the side?’ I said. ‘The one that says J. Block & Son Plumbing Solutions?’

  Grandad nodded. ‘It’s been there for a couple of days now. I haven’t had a chance to take a really good look at it, but I’m fairly sure it’s not a plumber’s van.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘Well, firstly, as I said, it’s been there for two days – all day and all night – and I know it doesn’t belong to anyone who lives round here. And even in emergencies, plumbers don’t work round the clock. Secondly, if you watch the van for long enough, you’ll see that it moves very slightly every now and then. Parked vans don’t move unless someone’s inside them. And thirdly . . .’ Grandad smiled at me. ‘I asked my contact to check the registration number. He didn’t actually say it was a CIA vehicle, but he didn’t say it wasn’t either.’

  I flicked another quick look at the van. ‘You really think there are CIA agents in there?’

  Grandad put his arm round my shoulder and guided me away from the window. ‘It’ll just be a surveillance team. There’s nothing to worry about. They’ll just be keeping an eye on us. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve had us under surveillance ever since your mum and dad started looking for Bashir.’

  ‘Do you think Mum and Dad knew about any of this?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know, Travis. They didn’t usually discuss their cases with me – we had an agreement about that – but I would have thought they’d have said something to me if they’d known that the CIA and MI5 were involved. So I’m guessing that they didn’t know.’

  I sat down on the bed. ‘You don’t think . . . ?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, you know, the accident . . .’ I looked at him. ‘I mean, it was an accident, wasn’t it?’

  Grandad put his hand on my shoulder. ‘There’s nothing to say it wasn’t, Travis,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ve seen the official police report, I’ve spoken to the accident investigators. There’s absolutely no evidence to suggest that anyone else was involved in the crash.’ He crouched down in front of me and looked into my eyes. ‘Even if the CIA or MI5 were following your mum and dad, they had no reason to harm them. Your parents were quite possibly their only leads to Bashir Kamal. So, if anything, they’d want to keep them as safe as possible.’

  ‘But the CIA and MI5 aren’t the only ones mixed up in all this, are they?’ I said. ‘There’s Omega too. You said yourself that they’ll do whatever it takes to get the job done, no matter what.’

  ‘Well, yes, but—’

  ‘“No rules, no restrictions, no accountability.” That’s what you said, Grandad.’

  ‘I know,’ he sighed. ‘But at the moment we don’t know where Omega fits in to all this. We don’t even know for sure that the men in the photographs are Omega. So there’s no point in jumping to conclusions about anything. We just need to calm down and—’

  ‘Did you ask your contact about Omega?’

  He nodded. ‘No one knows anything about them. Or if they do, they’re not talking.’

  ‘What about the company in Dundee that owns the BMW? Can’t Omega be traced through them?’

  ‘The address in Dundee is just a mailing address. There’s no actual office or anything there. Smith & Co Digital Holdings Ltd is a legitimate company, but it’s a subsidiary of a company based in Dublin, and that company is owned by a South African corporation, which in turn is a subsidiary of yet another company . . . it’s an endless trail, Travis. It doesn’t lead anywhere. We don’t even know that the BMW has got anything to do with Omega anyway.’

  ‘But we know that the men in the pictures have got something to do with what’s going on, don’t we? I mean, one of them was at the funeral, one of them came into the office, another one set up the riot—’

  ‘All right, Trav,’ Grandad said softly, trying to calm me down.

  ‘Dad wouldn’t have taken a picture of them if they didn’t have anything to do with Bashir—’

  ‘I know, Travis, OK?’ He put his hand on my shoulder again. ‘I know. And I’m going to do everything I can to get to the bottom of this, all right?’

  I breathed out, suddenly realising that for the last minute or so I’d been jabbering away like a lunatic.

  ‘You’re tired,’ Grandad said gently. ‘It’s gone midnight, and you’ve had a long day. You need to get some sleep.’

  ‘But what about—?’

  ‘Listen, Travis,’ he said, looking into my eyes again.

  ‘There’s nothing we can do right now, OK? We’re perfectly safe where we are. The people in the van outside aren’t going to do anything. They’re just going to sit there all night getting bored out of their minds. In fact, if you think about it, we’re actually safer now than we usually are.’ He grinned. ‘I mean, we’ve got a van full of CIA agents watching our house. That’s not a bad security system, is it? So just forget about them, all right? Forget about everything for now. Tomorrow morning I’ll make some more phone calls and see what else I can find out, and when I’ve done that I’ll go and have a look round the office just in case you missed something when you were there.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ I said. ‘I told Courtney I’d meet her there at nine o’clock.’

  He shook his head. ‘You need to stay here tomorrow.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I don’t know if any of us are at risk at the moment, and until I find out, I’m not taking any chances.’

  ‘That’s not fair—’

  ‘Fair’s got nothing to do with it,’ he said firmly. ‘You need to understand that, OK? I know it’s difficult, but just for now you have to leave everything to me. Do you think you can do that?’

  Part of me wanted to argue with him, to remind him that if it wasn’t for me he wouldn’t even know that anything was wrong. I mean, I’d done all right so far, hadn’t I? Why should I have to stay home and leave everything to him? It wasn’t fair.

  But as I looked into Grandad’s eyes I could see the depth of his concern. And although he was trying to hide it, I could also see his terrible sense of loss. I knew in my heart that it wasn’t right to do anything that would make him feel even worse. So, like it or not, I swallowed my selfish feelings and told him what he wanted to hear.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said quietly, ‘I can do that.’

  ‘Good,’ he said, smiling sadly. ‘I promise I won’t let you down, OK?’

  I nodded, still looking at him. I knew he’d had enough of talking now – I could tell by the weariness in his eyes – but there was something else I wanted to ask him, and no matter how tired he was, I just had to do it now.

  ‘What’s going to happen to Delaney & Co now, Grandad?’ I said tentatively.

  He frowned, momentarily taken aback. ‘Well . . . I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it, to be honest. Why do you ask?’

  I shrugged. ‘No reason . . . it’s just . . . well, I was talking to Courtney about it earlier on, and she said she’d be happy to help you out
if you wanted to keep the agency going.’

  ‘Keep it going?’ he said, surprised.

  ‘I could help you as well. I mean, I know I’d be at school during the week, but I’d still have plenty of time—’

  ‘I’ve been retired for ten years, Travis,’ he said. ‘You know that.’

  ‘Yeah, but—’

  ‘I’m too old for it now,’ he went on. ‘Too old and too useless. I mean, sometimes the shrapnel in my legs hurts so much that I can barely get down the stairs. And you know what I’m like when I get depressed about things . . .’ He lowered his eyes. ‘I couldn’t even talk to you when you needed me the most, could I? What good would I be as a private detective these days?’

  ‘You’ve done pretty well tonight,’ I reminded him.

  He shrugged. ‘All I did was make a phone call.’

  ‘Yeah, but you knew who to call, didn’t you? You knew what to do with the information he gave you. And you spotted the CIA van—’

  ‘Anyone could have done that.’

  ‘No, they couldn’t.’ I looked at him. ‘You’ve still got what it takes, Grandad. You could keep Delaney & Co going, I know you could.’

  He shook his head. ‘It’s a nice idea, Trav, but I really don’t think I’m up to it.’

  ‘You don’t have to decide right now. Why don’t you just think about it for a while?’

  He sighed.

  ‘Please?’ I said.

  He looked at me. ‘Well, all right . . . I’ll think about it.’

  ‘Thanks, Grandad.’

  ‘But I’m not going to change my mind.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ I said, smiling at him.

  He smiled back, but it was a tired smile, and as he said goodnight and made his way out of the room, I got the feeling that he was struggling with all kinds of conflicts.

  28

  I didn’t get much sleep that night. There was so much stuff in my head, so many facts and theories and puzzles and possibilities, that no matter how much I wanted to forget about everything, I just couldn’t. All I could do was lie there in the darkness, trying to make sense of the chaos in my mind. Where was Bashir? Did the CIA have him? Did MI5 know where he was? Why would they be interested in me and Courtney if they knew where he was? And what about Omega? Did they really exist? If they did, whose side were they on? Were they the good guys or the bad guys? Were Omega looking for Bashir too? Was that why they’d come to the office and staged the riot in North Walk? What did they think my parents knew about Bashir? What did my parents know about Bashir? What did ‘dem’ and ‘last day 4th?’ mean? And why were Omega after Bashir anyway? What did they want with him?

  I kept asking myself the same basic questions over and over again – why? who? what? where? CIA? MI5? Omega? – and I kept coming up with the same empty answers I don’t know It doesn’t make sense. I have no idea what any of this means.

  Eventually though, in the early hours of the morning, when my brain had just about had it, it suddenly struck me that I’d been wasting my time all along. The simple truth was that I didn’t need to answer all the questions. I just needed to answer one. Where was Bashir? If I could work that out, if I could actually find him, I’d have all the answers I needed. It was so obvious that I felt like an idiot for not thinking of it before.

  The trouble was, I didn’t have a clue where to start looking for him.

  Or so I thought.

  I’m not sure what time it was when I finally drifted off into a fitful sleep. I remember noticing that the faint light of dawn was beginning to show through the curtained window, so I suppose it must have been around 4.30 a.m. And I’m as sure as I can be that the last thing I was thinking about before I fell asleep was the photograph of the Omega men outside the warehouse. I could see the picture quite clearly in my mind. The men in suits, the BMW and the black Mercedes van parked behind them, the wire-mesh fence, the warehouse. It was the warehouse I was concentrating on. The grey brick walls, the blinds in the windows, the solid-looking doors. Where could it be? I was wondering. Was it in Barton? How many buildings were there like that in Barton? If I could find out where it was, and what the Omega men were doing there . . .

  I was almost asleep now. The picture in my mind was fading. The men in suits were no longer there, the warehouse was just a memory, and all that was left of the photograph was the time and date printed in the bottom right-hand corner:

  16:08 15/07/13

  Eight minutes past four, 15 July.

  The day before Mum and Dad died.

  I’ve never really believed that dreams actually mean anything. I think they’re just the by-product of a tidying-up process in your brain. You go to sleep, your brain goes into standby mode, and then the tidying-up mechanism goes to work and starts sorting things out in your mind – clearing out all the unnecessary rubbish, sorting stuff out, putting things back where they belong. It’s an automatic process, so most of the time you’re not consciously aware of it, but sometimes your sleeping mind catches brief glimpses of what’s going on. You might see some of the rubbish that’s being thrown out, for example, and you might even recognise a few bits and pieces. But your sleeping senses are usually so jumbled up that most of it doesn’t make sense.

  Sometimes, though, the tidying-up process actually helps you to see things more clearly. By clearing away all the clutter in your brain, it allows you to see things that have been hidden away beneath all the rubbish. It’s a bit like clearing up your bedroom and finally finding that book or DVD you’ve been looking for all day. You knew it was in there somewhere, but your bedroom was in such a mess – piles of stuff all over the place – you just couldn’t find it.

  I could be completely wrong about all this, of course. I mean, what do I know about the human brain? But that night, as my dreams tumbled around in my head, I know for a fact that I found something.

  The dream began on the footpath. I was running. Dream-running . . . running as fast as I can . . . someone’s chasing me . . . I don’t know who it is . . . I’m scared, desperate to get away . . . my legs are pounding, my arms pumping, but I’m not getting anywhere . . . the dream footpath is moving beneath my feet, like an escalator going the wrong way . . . the faster I run, the faster moves . . . I can’t get anywhere . . . I look over my shoulder to find out who’s chasing me and I see Evie Johnson . . . she’s wearing boxing gloves and a black suit . . . I smile at her . . . she smiles back . . . and then suddenly she changes into the man at the funeral, the man with the hidden camera, the man with the steely grey eyes . . . Omega man . . . and I’m not on the footpath any more, I’m at the funeral . . . the service is over, the prayers finished, the graveyard tranquil and quiet . . . a light summer rain has begun to fall and people are starting to leave, shuffling awkwardly away from the graves and making their way back to their cars . . . Grandad puts his hand on my shoulder . . . I look at him . . . he’s staring straight ahead, his head held high, his craggy old face weighed down with sadness . . . and then he changes . . . his face gets younger . . . he smiles at me . . .

  ‘Hey, Dad,’ I say to him.

  . . . I can’t think . . . my mind is blank . . . I look over at the man with the hidden camera but he’s not the man with the hidden camera any more . . . he’s Dad . . .

  ‘Is there anything you want to say, Travis?’ he asks softly.

  . . . I glance around, trying to work out what’s going on . . . I look down at the graves, the two coffins resting in the ground . . . Mum’s sitting on one of them . . . she’s smiling at me . . . there are so many things I want to say to her, but the words won’t come to me . . . I stare at her . . . she looks over at Dad . . .

  ‘I’m not having that thing in my car,’ she says, frowning at him.

  . . . I turn back to Dad and see him getting out of his car and heading over to Mum with his sat nav in his hands . . .

  ‘We’re driving into the middle of London,’ he says to Mum. ‘You know what the roads are like—’

  ‘I don’t care,’ Mum
says. ‘I’d rather get lost than use one of those.’

  ‘But I’ve already keyed in the address. All we have to do when we get to London is turn it on—’

  ‘No.’

  . . . Dad looks at her, about to say something else, but when he sees the expression on her face, he changes his mind . . . he sighs, turns round, takes his sat nav back to the garage and drops it into a cardboard box full of odds and ends that’s sitting on a shelf inside the door . . . and now we’re driving off down our street . . . Mum smiling and joking about something . . . Dad fiddling with the car radio, singing along to some pathetic old pop song . . . and I’m sitting in the back seat talking to myself . . .

  ‘Dad’s got no sense of direction at all,’ I say.

  ‘I know,’ I reply.

  ‘He always uses a sat nav when he’s driving,’ I say.

  ‘I know,’ I reply.

  ‘Even for local journeys.’

  . . . I look at myself . . .

  ‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’

  ‘Yes,’ I tell myself. ‘I understand.’

  29

  I don’t know if I woke up immediately after the dream or if I carried on sleeping for a while and then woke up. All I know for sure is that as soon as I opened my eyes, I knew exactly what I had to do. And I knew I had to do it right now.

  It was just gone six o’clock. The sun was already streaming in through the curtains, and as I got out of bed and began to get dressed, I could hear birds singing outside. The house was silent, and I was pretty sure that everyone else was still asleep, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I dressed as quietly as I could – easing open drawers, tiptoeing around in bare feet, trying not to make a sound. I was also trying to ignore the voice in my head that kept telling me to think about what I was doing. But no matter how hard I tried to dismiss it, it just wouldn’t stop nagging away at me. You know Grandad told you to stay at home today, don’t you? You know he’ll go ballistic if he finds out what you’re doing. Why do you have to do this on your own anyway? Why don’t you just wait for Grandad to wake up, and then tell him all about it? Or if you can’t wait, just go and wake him up right now. Wake him up and explain everything to him. He’ll know what to do.