The Edge

by Nick Hale

‘What’s going on?’ the truck driver asked the maids. ‘They asked to see my ID at the gate. I said, “Carl, it’s me, Roberto!” but he said there’s been another accident. The police are here . . .’

  One maid explained the situation as Roberto lowered the platform at the back of the van and loaded in the trolleys. Another maid gave her version of events, and the trio headed into the service building still chattering away.

  ‘Come on,’ said Jake, leading the way. He and his dad hopped up into the back of the van and crept to the far end. They positioned themselves behind the trolleys, and pressed up against the front of the van. It was a tight squeeze. Jake had a rucksack containing three bottles of Olympic Advantage.

  Roberto loaded on several more trolleys, and seconds later the engine rumbled to life. Jake gripped the edge of a trolley to stop himself being thrown around the van as it lurched round corners. As they pulled to a halt, Jake guessed they’d reached the front gates of the complex.

  A voice rose above the hum of the truck: ‘Boss says we need to check the back.’

  Jake’s gut tightened as he held his breath.

  ‘You’re kidding me,’ said the driver.

  ‘’Fraid not, Robbie.’

  ‘Well, if you want to check my dirty laundry, you’re welcome,’ said Roberto, laughing. Jake expected light to flood in at any moment.

  ‘He’s right,’ said another voice. ‘This is BS. Let him through.’

  ‘Thanks, guys,’ said Roberto. ‘See you in a couple of days. Hopefully Alcatraz will have chilled out by then.’

  The guards’ laughs were drowned as the engine revved and they were on their way again. Jake breathed out. Too close.

  They drove for about five minutes. The smell of stale sweat and body odour was overwhelming. Jake tried to hold his breath. When Roberto killed the engine, they heard his door open, and footsteps round the side of the van.

  ‘Now!’ His dad pointed to the hatch leading through from the rear into the driver’s area. Jake went first, squeezing through into the passenger seat and gasping for fresh air. The back doors of the truck opened as his dad slid through after him. Roberto had left the driver’s door open, and Jake peered out into a yard. They were at the rear of a building, and steam was spiralling out of several vents. Empty laundry carts were stacked near a wide set of double doors.

  Jake couldn’t see anyone around. Beyond was a side street lined with cars. He signalled for his dad to follow, and they climbed out of the truck and darted across the yard. In less than thirty seconds they were on the street, just a father and son out for a stroll.

  ‘Where are we going exactly?’ Jake asked.

  ‘Curiosity killed the cat,’ his dad said as he hailed a cab. They climbed in. ‘Hannigan’s, corner of Southwest Seventh Avenue and Fourth,’ he said.

  ‘You sure?’ said the driver, eying them in the mirror. ‘Wouldn’t think it’s your kind of place. You look, well, too sober.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ his dad insisted.

  They drove across the city and into an area of rundown condos and cracked pavements with weeds sprouting up between. Even the sun looked a little less bright on this side of town. Many of the shops were closed with faded graffiti sprayed on metal shutters. The streets were mostly empty except for clusters of dodgy men hanging around the street corners.

  The cab driver pulled up outside a shuttered bar with a giant green shamrock hanging over the door. ‘I’d like to say “enjoy yourself",’ said the driver, ‘but I think that’d be a long shot.’

  Once Jake’s dad had paid and they’d both climbed out, the cab beat a speedy retreat. ‘What is this place?’ Jake asked.

  ‘It’s a state-of-the-art covert surveillance facility, jointly operated by the CIA and MI6,’ his dad deadpanned as he walked inside.

  It took Jake’s eyes a moment to adjust to the gloom of the interior. There were a couple of customers hunched over their drinks at separate tables. They’d probably been there long enough to gather dust.

  The girl behind the bar was Japanese, but she must have been wearing contacts because her eyes were an unsettling blue shimmer in the bar lowlights.

  ‘Hey, Steve,’ she said. The accent was pure London.

  ‘Francesca,’ his dad said, kissing her on both cheeks. ‘Beautiful, as always.’

  ‘Why, thank you,’ she said, beaming. ‘Doesn’t hurt to make an effort, even if the surroundings leave something to be desired.’ She waved a perfectly manicured hand round the bar. ‘Rick’s waiting for you.’

  Jake stared at the rest of the clientele. That would have to be some serious undercover if any of these guys were spooks.

  Jake’s dad led the way past the end of the bar and through a curtain. There was an old-fashioned service lift at the end of a corridor littered with crates of empty beer bottles. A mop and bucket were propped up in one corner, and the whole place smelled of stale booze and cigarette smoke.

  Jake’s dad pulled aside the bars on the lift, and climbed inside. It creaked ominously. ‘You coming?’ he asked.

  Jake took a tentative step to stand beside his father. ‘You sure this is safe?’

  ‘Nope.’ His dad slammed the bars shut with a little too much gusto.

  There was a switch-box dangling from a cable, and his dad thumbed a large red button. The lift juddered into life and Jake’s stomach lurched.

  ‘State of the art,’ he joked.

  They must have gone down at least two floors. Jake watched exposed pipe-work and wiring pass, and the air chilled. This was no ordinary pub.

  With a clank, the lift stopped. His dad pulled aside the doors, and Jake stared into darkness. Then with a series of low woomphs bright white strobes flicked on along the ceiling, illuminating a spotless corridor. At the end stood a man wearing a lab coat. He looked like something from a seventies science programme. A shaggy brown beard, long lank hair and moustache. His glasses must have been two centimetres thick, and his eyes swam behind them like fish in a tank.

  ‘Steve Bastin,’ he grumbled in an American accent. ‘What took you so damn long?’

  15

  ‘Good to see you too, Rick,’ Jake’s dad said. ‘This is my son, Jake. Don’t worry, he has clearance’

  ‘Looks like you, poor kid.’ The scientist gave Jake’s dad a friendly clap on the back. ‘Come into my office.’

  They followed Rick through into his ‘office’, which resembled something out of CSI: Miami. Everything was pristine stainless steel. Three huge computer screens hung side by side, one switched off, the other reeling data in some kind of code and the other displaying a complex line graph. Jake recognised all the normal equipment from the science labs at school – a centrifuge, microscopes, test tubes and pipettes. Jars of chemicals were arranged on shelves.

  ‘To what misfortune do I owe this visit?’ Rick asked. Up close, Jake saw dark smudges under his eyes. The guy was like a zombie. Jake assumed it was from the lack of natural light, and sleep probably.

  ‘We need a chemical profile on this liquid,’ Jake’s dad said. Jake fished out three bottles of different Olympic Edge flavours and held them out to the scientist.

  Rick inspected the bottles over the top of his glasses. ‘Kids’ll drink anything these days, won’t they? I’ll get you the results by tomorrow.’

  ‘We need it now,’ Jake said, without thinking. ‘People are dying . . .’

  ‘People die all the time.’ Rick glowered at Jake.

  ‘Please,’ Jake’s dad said. ‘I’ll owe you, Rick.’

  The scientist smiled for the first time since Jake had met him. ‘Well, if you put it that way. I’ve been trying to fix up a date with Fran. She seems to like you. Maybe you could help . . .’

  Jake tried to keep a straight face, but had to pretend he was searching for something else in his bag.

  ‘I’ll put in a good word,’ his dad said.

  Over the next hour Rick went from one side of the lab to the other, fetching test tubes, dripping Olympic Edge from the thre
e bottles on to slides and examining them through microscopes then running samples through something he called a mass spectrometer. A lot of the time he seemed to move in slow motion, as if he was walking through water. Jake was getting frustrated and shot the occasional glance at his father that said: What’s taking him so long!

  The effect wasn’t helped by Rick’s constant drawling. He was the kind of man who spoke as if he didn’t care if you were listening or not. Having whinged for a good fifteen minutes about Francesca, he was now talking about a conspiracy-theory convention he’d recently visited in Atlanta. Apparently some loons thought that Lady Gaga’s latest album had brainwave-altering, mind-control properties.

  Jake tried to tune him out, but his dad nodded or made a sound every so often. Clearly patience was a key skill for a spy.

  Finally, a machine in the corner let out a series of beeps, followed by three sheets of paper. ‘Let’s see what we got,’ Rick said.

  He laid the papers out side by side on a bench, and Jake and his dad leant over.

  The sheets were filled with numbers and code, measurements in units Jake didn’t recognise.

  ‘Do you mind?’ the scientist said. ‘You’re in my light.’ Jake and his dad backed off a little. ‘Very curious,’ continued Rick. He removed his glasses. ‘Very curious indeed. You say this stuff’s supposed to be organic?’

  ‘That’s what they told us,’ Jake answered.

  ‘Well, they told you wrong,’ Rick said. ‘The flavourings are natural, but the strange thing is that all three bottles have different levels of several ingredients that I can’t identify. If they were from the same batch, you’d expect the ingredient levels to be the same. There are a lot of additives. Some steroid compounds, definitely.’

  ‘Steroids?’ Jake asked. ‘So they’d improve performance?’

  ‘Hard to tell,’ Rick said. ‘But nothing illegal.’

  ‘Harmful, though?’ Jake’s dad asked.

  ‘Again, nothing conclusive,’ Rick said. ‘I’d have to get complete data, and that means getting HQ involved. It’s certainly not deadly in these sorts of doses. I can get some more details to you later, but it’ll take at least forty-eight hours.’

  Jake’s heart sank. ‘But people are dying. It must be poisonous.’

  Rick stared at him. ‘Look, kid, I don’t teach you how to play soccer, do I? Leave the science to me.’

  Jake’s dad got a cab to drop them back on Main Street near to the complex.

  ‘So what do we do for forty-eight hours?’ Jake asked. ‘People are still drinking that stuff and we don’t really know what’s in it.’

  ‘We do nothing,’ his dad said. ‘You heard what Rick said – there’s nothing illegal in it.’

  ‘But Rick only tested three of the flavours. Maybe it’s one of the others that causes people to get ill.’

  ‘I think you’re grasping at straws,’ said his dad. ‘First we need to get back into the stadium without being spotted.’

  ‘Too late,’ Jake said. Veronika was crossing the street towards them, with a frown on her face.

  When she was close enough, she asked, ‘How’d you get out?’

  ‘I could ask you the same question,’ Jake said.

  ‘They lifted the lockdown,’ Veronika said. ‘The detectives said they’ll continue their enquiries, but they couldn’t keep us locked up forever. The camp can carry on.’

  ‘Hey, I’ll give you guys some privacy,’ said Jake’s dad, backing away.

  ‘Wait, Dad,’ said Jake. ‘We haven’t finished discussing –’

  ‘I’ll catch you later,’ his father said. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll take it from here.’

  ‘Dad!’ But he was already walking away. Thanks a lot, Jake thought.

  ‘You’ve been investigating without me, haven’t you?’ said Veronika, her eyes narrowing.

  Jake decided to tell her the truth. So what if Rick hadn’t found anything deadly. Olympic Edge wasn’t what it seemed. It wasn’t all natural, and it was laced with steroids and who knows what else.

  ‘I think the deaths might have something to do with Olympic Edge,’ he said.

  ‘We know that already,’ Veronika said. ‘People stand to make a lot of money.’

  ‘No, I mean the drink itself,’ Jake explained. ‘I don’t think you should drink any more of it. Remember how Otto was knocking it back right before he was killed? And the bottles in Garcia’s car?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Veronika, ‘but I’ve been drinking it for days, and I’m fine. Playing better than ever, actually.’

  ‘What if it makes some people better, but is harmful to others? Or maybe only some of the flavours are bad. Or there might be a tipping point. Y’know, too much and it’s bye-bye.’

  Veronika shrugged. ‘Could be, I suppose, but that seems pretty unlikely.’

  ‘We need to get some answers,’ Jake said, ‘and I think I know just the place.’ He pulled out Edgar Phillips’s card. It listed the address of LGE’s Florida office, at a business park just outside the city. ‘You up for it?’

  ‘I don’t think they’ll let us just walk in and rifle through the files,’ said Veronika.

  ‘Good job we’ve had plenty of practice sneaking around, then,’ said Jake.

  ‘We can take my car.’ Veronika gestured to the ice-blue Porsche parked a half block away.

  The Liquid Gold Energy offices were hard to miss. A skyscraper glittering in the afternoon sunlight, with the letters LGE four storeys tall near the roof. It towered above the surrounding buildings. Stepping out of the air-conditioned Porsche, Jake felt the heat baking off the tarmac of the car park. He could hear sirens in the distance.

  ‘If there is something dodgy about the drink, they’re not going to want to admit it,’ Veronika said.

  ‘Agreed,’ said Jake. ‘We need to be clever.’

  They crossed the car park and a set of corporate gardens. A sprinkler was firing spray over the glistening grass. Jake was dazzled by how pristine the place was – this was the clean side of money, away from the dirty underbelly. As they walked, two people in business suits hurried past them at almost a run. Jake noticed people at a lot of the windows too, all staring at something just ahead.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Jake broke into a jog.

  They rounded the wall at the end of the gardens, and saw an ambulance parked up alongside two police cars near the entrance to the LGE block. A crowd of at least fifty people had gathered, and were being pushed back as the police drew a cordon tape across the front. Some people looked upwards, pointing and muttering.

  Jake pushed through the crowd, and came face to face with a uniformed cop. He got a firm shove in the chest.

  ‘Get back!’ said the cop. ‘Let us do our job.’

  Jake peered behind the police officer. A sheet had been pulled over a motionless body on the ground. It wasn’t big enough to cover the blood spatter as well.

  Not another one! thought Jake.

  ‘Who is it?’ Veronika asked.

  ‘It’s Ed,’ said a woman with a handkerchief clutched over her face.

  ‘He was the marketing director,’ said a suited man. ‘Jumped off the roof.’

  Ed? ‘Edgar Phillips?’ Jake said.

  16

  A gust of wind blew across the entrance to the LGE offices, catching the edge of the sheet covering the body. The sole of one of the dead man’s shoes appeared, and Jake made out the word Mancino embossed in the leather: No doubt. It was Phillips.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ said Veronika, shaking her head. ‘I saw him leave the complex earlier. He seemed fine.’

  Dr Chow stepped out from behind the ambulance, talking with a paramedic. Her eyes were red and when she saw the body she burst into fresh tears and buried her face in the paramedic’s chest. Jake remembered the kiss he’d seen behind the medical centre and felt a rush of sympathy. He hadn’t liked Phillips, but he and Dr Chow had obviously been close.

  When Dr Chow saw Jake, she seemed startled, and took a deep
breath to regain her composure, then walked over.

  ‘Jake, Veronika,’ she said, suddenly businesslike, ‘you shouldn’t be here. You –’ Her face crumpled, and she covered her mouth.

  ‘I’m really sorry for your loss, Dr Chow,’ Jake said, not knowing where to look.

  ‘Oh, it’s terrible,’ she sobbed. ‘I was supposed to meet Ed . . . Mr Phillips, for lunch. I was late. If only I’d arrived . . . if only.’ She buried her face in both hands as the tears flowed.

  ‘Come on,’ Jake said to Veronika. ‘We should leave.’

  He turned to go, but Veronika didn’t. ‘Why would he kill himself?’ she asked, a little too briskly for Jake’s liking.

  ‘Vron,’ he whispered. ‘Now’s not the time . . .’

  ‘Dr Chow,’ Veronika pressed, reaching for the doctor’s elbow.

  Dr Chow glanced up once more. She sniffed deeply.

  ‘The police are saying he had a note pinned to his chest,’ she said, ‘but I can’t believe it.’

  ‘A suicide note?’ Veronika asked.

  Jeez, Jake thought, the woman’s just lost her boyfriend. Go easy on her.

  Jake thought he saw a flash of fire in Dr Chow’s eyes that quickly died. She nodded. ‘Apparently he claimed responsibility for all the deaths at the camp – something to do with financial irregularities. He thought the police were on to him. But I can’t . . . I won’t believe it.’ She took a few sniffs. ‘Anyway, you shouldn’t really be here.’ She squinted at Jake and Veronika as if she was seeing them for the first time. ‘What are you doing here?’

  Jake spotted a brown sedan cruising slowly towards the building. Damn! Merski.

  ‘We should be getting back.’ Jake grabbed Veronika by the arm and pulled her through the crowd, keeping bodies between them and the detective’s car.

  ‘Hey! What are you doing?’ Veronika said, pulling free.

  Jake pointed through the crowd, as Merski was heaving his bulk out of the driver’s door. The sweat patches under his arms stretched almost down to his waist.

  ‘We really don’t want to be found at another crime scene,’ he said.