The Chaos Code

by Justin Richards

  There was no dishwasher, so Matt dried the plates and cutlery as Aunt Jane washed them.

  ‘I think I’ll have a mug of cocoa,’ she said as she emptied the sink and dried her hands. ‘Do you want one?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Then I’ll get an early night, if you don’t mind. My cold …’

  ‘That’s fine,’ Matt assured her. ‘I could do with some sleep too. It’s been a long day.’

  ‘I’m sure. You must be worn out, you poor thing. If you want to ring your mother, help yourself to the phone.’ She busied herself with the cocoa.

  ‘What’d be the point,’ Matt muttered. He wished he knew where Dad was. He could leave a message for him on his answerphone, but after the strange warnings and the palaver with the website and password, he wasn’t sure that was a good idea. And it wasn’t like Dad would be there to get the message.

  Matt helped himself to an Agatha Christie from the bookcase and took it up to bed. Tomorrow he’d see if Julius Venture’s library had any decent novels. It seemed to have everything else. He put on his pyjamas and climbed under the duvet. The book was better than he’d expected and he was soon absorbed. When he reached for his cocoa, what seemed like only a minute later, it was cold and a thick skin of congealed milk caught on his upper lip and trailed out of the mug.

  Matt went to the bathroom to wash the milk off his hand and face. He was still thirsty and there was no beaker in the bathroom, so he went downstairs. Aunt Jane’s door was pushed almost shut and the light was out. He could hear the rhythmic sound of her breathing. Nevertheless he went as quietly as he could for fear of disturbing her.

  After his slurp of cold cocoa, Matt fancied something different to drink. He couldn’t be bothered with boiling water or milk, so he decided on a cold drink. There was a bottle of squash in a cupboard, and half a carton of fruit juice in the fridge. He decided on the juice and poured himself a small glass. Rather than take it up to bed he sat by the remains of the fire in the living room. The embers were glowing faintly, wreathed in a powder of grey ash that seemed to stir in time to the sound of the wind from outside.

  The other side of the fireplace was a wooden cabinet. The top half was made up of shelves with glass doors. There were ornaments and glassware arranged neatly on the shelves. Beneath this was a cupboard, and Matt could see that one of the doors was not quite closed. He finished his drink, and stood up. As he passed the cabinet, he pushed the door gently shut with his foot.

  It sprang open again. Something inside needed moving to allow the door to close. So Matt put down the empty glass and knelt beside the cupboard. He opened the door, and saw what the obstruction was.

  A scrapbook. It had been replaced hurriedly in the cupboard on top of a pile of photo albums and cardboard boxes. It was angled so the corner was catching the inside of the door. Matt turned the scrapbook, and pushed the door gently shut. It clicked as the latch caught and Matt stood up.

  He put his glass in the sink. Then he picked it up again and rinsed it out, before putting it upside down on the drainer. He turned to go back to bed, then changed his mind and picked up a tea towel from the rack over the radiator. He dried the glass and put it away, his mind now made up.

  The pages of the scrapbook were dry with age, seeming to draw the moisture from his fingers as he turned them. There were yellowed news clippings about Aunt Jane’s family – Dad’s family. A short birth notice for Dad from a local paper. An account of a village fete opened by some television actor that Matt had never heard of. A school photo – Billy the Squirrel’s Class of the Week – from a county paper, with names under the picture. Matt found Aunt Jane and looked at the smiling little girl she had been when she was ten.

  There were photos too. Some were in black and white, some faded colour pictures. They all had thin white borders round them which made them look old-fashioned as well as old. He saw the same girl as in the class photo, and realised that the younger boy playing with her must be his own father, aged about eight. He would never have guessed.

  But he did recognise the setting for an increasing number of the pictures – the grounds of the manor house. In several he could see the house behind the children as they played. They were older now, teens. Posing carefully for shots, rather than relaxed and unaware. There were three of them – Dad, Aunt Jane, and another girl. Matt stared at the pictures of the three children. There was no mistaking the third child. Aunt Jane looked about sixteen now, and Dad was maybe fourteen – the same age as the other girl – the one who looked so like Robin. It had to be Robin’s mother, and the daughter had obviously inherited the mother’s looks and appearance. The two sets of parents must have been friends, he thought. All those years ago …

  There were older people too in some of the later pictures. Matt knew his grandparents from other pictures he had seen in the past. He could dimly remember his grandmother – Dad’s mum – as a frail elderly lady. But here she was in her forties, fifty at the most. She looked so happy with her husband. His hair was grey and thinning and in most of the pictures in which he appeared he had a pipe clamped in his mouth.

  In one final picture, the last in the book, was another figure that Matt knew. Or rather, that he thought he did. Julius Venture, standing with Robin’s mother and Matt’s Dad and Aunt Jane. Of course, the man in the picture couldn’t be Venture himself, but must be his dad – Robin’s grandfather. Again the family resemblance was obvious, and Matt recalled the pictures he had seen in the house. Matt wondered who had taken the picture – one of his grandparents, probably.

  He closed the book and returned it to the cupboard. I wonder what happened to Robin’s mother, he thought as he made his way quietly back to bed. It seemed strange that there were no pictures of the young Julius Venture either, since he was the one who lived at the manor house. He must have been friendly with the girl – after all, he’d ended up marrying her. They must have all played together in those days – Matt’s Dad, Aunt Jane, Robin’s mother, and her future husband – the young Julius Venture. So why were there no pictures of Venture? A mystery, he thought as he picked up the Agatha Christie novel again.

  And almost at once he realised there was no mystery at all. Of course the young Julius Venture was there, in most if not all of the pictures. He must be the photographer. It was his camera, that was why he never appeared.

  Pleased with himself for working it out, but also disappointed at the simplicity of the solution, Matt turned out the light. The wind rattled the window and whispered round the casement. But Matt didn’t listen to what it said.

  The bedroom was bathed with warm summer sunlight when Matt woke. He saw from his watch that he’d slept in till mid-morning. He must have been more tired than he thought. Aunt Jane had left him a note on the kitchen table, saying she’d gone up to the manor house and hoped Matt could look after himself. She had obviously thought he needed his sleep. She was probably right, he decided while yawning at cereal packets.

  There must be buses from the village to somewhere worth spending the day, Matt thought. Gloucester or even Cheltenham weren’t that far away. In the other direction there was a castle at Berkeley, wasn’t there? What he needed was a bus timetable. He couldn’t see one lying around in the cottage, but he could probably print one out from the Internet. Or he could walk into the village and look for a bus stop – there’d be a timetable there.

  But all thoughts of buses were put out of Matt’s mind by the arrival of the helicopter.

  He had barely left the house when he heard the thwock-thwock-thwock of the rotors. Far off in the steel-grey sky, above the trees to the side of the manor house Matt could see the tiny shape of the helicopter as it approached. He ran out on to the main drive for a better view as it grew closer and larger.

  The rotor blades were a blur in the air above the machine itself, which was dark and angular like a brutal insect. It tilted back slightly as it paused over the lawn beside the drive in front of the house, then started slowly to descend.

&nbs
p; There were leaves on the drive and at the edge of the woods, blown down by the strong winds of the last few days. The leaves were whipped up by the downdraft. They spiralled upwards in a kaleidoscopic flurry – all the shades of the trees mixed into a maelstrom. Just for a moment, as the helicopter settled on the lawn, it looked as if the mass of leaves were taking on a shape – picked out in variations of green. Like seeing animals made out of clouds, Matt thought. A face – eyes, nose, mouth. Just for a second. Then the engine noise died down, the rotors spun slower and slower, the wind dropped, and the leaves fell formless to the ground.

  Beyond the now motionless helicopter, Matt could see Julius Venture and Robin standing outside the porch, watching. Robin waved. Matt waved back. Then immediately he felt stupid – she was probably waving at the people in the helicopter, not at him. Embarrassed, he almost turned away.

  He stopped at the sight of the man who jumped down from the helicopter and started walking purposefully towards the house. There was something familiar about him, Matt thought. He watched the man all the way up to the house. He was a big man – tall and broad, wearing a long, expensive-looking coat. His hair was as dark grey as the cloud-heavy sky. He shook hands with Venture, and together they went into the manor house.

  Robin stayed where she was, outside on the drive. She waved again, and this time Matt was sure she was waving to him. He started quickly up the drive towards her.

  She waited outside the porch, watching him with that slightly mocking half-smile of hers. Matt smiled back. It was just her manner. He was pretty sure that she wasn’t really mocking him. Almost pretty sure.

  ‘Who was that?’ he asked. ‘I recognised him from somewhere.’

  ‘Atticus Harper,’ Robin told him.

  ‘Really? Dad’s mentioned him. The millionaire.’

  ‘Billionaire, more like. He called my father late last night, asked if he could come and see him.’

  ‘What about?’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘Like it’s any of your business?’

  ‘Sorry. Just asking.’

  ‘That’s OK.’ She opened the door and he followed her inside. ‘I don’t know anyway. He just said he wanted to discuss something.’

  ‘You know much about him?’ Matt asked.

  ‘Do you?’

  He shrugged. ‘A bit. He’s rich. He’s an archaeologist – a “hobby archaeologist” Dad called him. Owns about a dozen businesses from oil to computer systems to an ice hockey team …’

  ‘It’s a start.’ Robin was leading him through the hall and down the corridor towards the library. ‘Let’s look him up on the Internet.’ She paused, turning to face Matt. ‘Unless you have other plans?’

  ‘No,’ he said, all thoughts of bus timetables dismissed. ‘No other plans.’

  There was an abundance of information about Atticus Harper on the web. The problem wasn’t finding a site, it was deciding which of them from the search engine’s list would be of most use.

  They started with one of his companies. It made computer components and silicon chips, and the site included a page about its founder and owner. It didn’t tell them much they didn’t already know between them. In fact, the more sites they looked at, the more detail they got but the less Matt felt he knew about the man.

  Atticus Harper was in his fifties. He had been a young computer genius when Bill Gates rose to fame, founding a similar software company. But being in Britain his rise to fame and fortune was less spectacular or obtrusive. He seemed to be a private man. There was lots about what he owned or where he had been, very little about what he thought or did in his spare time.

  ‘Probably doesn’t have any,’ Robin said. ‘These people work all the hours God sends. And then some. Obsessive. That’s why they’re so successful of course. That and intelligence and good business sense.’

  ‘And luck,’ Matt said.

  ‘And arrogance,’ Robin added. ‘We’ve got a helicopter pad behind the house, but he still landed on the lawn. He obviously likes to make an impression.’

  ‘Like, in the grass you mean?’ Matt joked. Robin smiled.

  Harper’s interest in archaeology seemed always to have been there, beneath the surface of his corporate work. They found a brief biography from a respected history journal that mentioned that Harper had insisted his companies donate funds to several research projects in the 1980s. Since then he had taken a more active – and financial – personal interest. He had funded archaeological digs and projects all over the world as well as donating to libraries and institutes.

  ‘Look at this,’ Matt exclaimed in surprise at one web page, though he knew Robin was reading it with him.

  She laughed. ‘If it’s true.’

  Matt was still impressed. ‘He tried to buy Stonehenge. Wow.’

  ‘He owns loads of ancient sites,’ Robin pointed out. ‘Most of them not so high profile though. There’s that Inca village, and the prehistoric caves in the south of France.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. And he’s saved loads of others by personal intervention in out-of-the-way countries where they could have been destroyed. It’s more than a hobby – it’s an obsession. He collects old stuff from coins and trinkets to castles and estates … Hey!’ An idea had occurred to Matt.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I bet that’s why he’s here. He wants to buy you out.’

  ‘No way.’ Robin closed the browser and shut down the computer. ‘Dad would never sell. We’ve been here for …’ She stood up. ‘The family’s lived here for centuries. We’d never sell.’

  He was teasing really. He didn’t think that was why Harper had come, but he was amused to see how it unsettled Robin. ‘He might offer your dad millions.’

  ‘Dad’s got millions,’ she said. She said it quietly, matter-of-fact. So probably, Matt thought, it was true.

  ‘Maybe some particular relic then,’ he suggested. ‘Plenty of those round the place, after all.’

  She was still serious. ‘They’re not for sale.’

  ‘Not even the pictures?’

  The half-smile was back. ‘Don’t tease me.’

  ‘Sorry. But I bet he wants something.’

  ‘Everyone wants something,’ she told him. ‘I’m going for a walk. Coming?’

  Matt paused in the corridor, beside the table with the photograph on it. ‘I saw some old pictures yesterday,’ he said.

  ‘How interesting,’ Robin said sarcastically.

  ‘It was, actually. Aunt Jane’s got a scrapbook. There’s pictures of her and my Dad, when they were kids. About our age, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes?’ She sounded bored. Or wary.

  ‘There are pictures of them playing in the grounds.’

  ‘They grew up here. In the village.’

  ‘I know that.’

  They had reached the hall. The sound of Julius Venture’s voice was a low murmur from the other side of a door that wasn’t quite shut.

  ‘They were playing with another girl,’ Matt said. He felt the blood go to his cheeks as he said it, though he wasn’t sure why he should be embarrassed. ‘I think it must have been your mother.’

  ‘Why do you think that?’ There was no emotion at all in her voice.

  ‘Because she looked just like you.’

  Robin nodded. ‘Yes. Yes, she would have done.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Matt turned away. ‘I guess maybe you don’t like to talk about her.’

  ‘I can hardly remember my mother,’ she said. ‘It’s not a problem.’

  ‘She seemed very happy,’ Matt said, turning back to face her. ‘They all did. In the pictures. They were having fun.’

  Robin nodded. Her reply was so quiet it was almost a whisper: ‘The girl that broke your father’s heart.’

  As she said it, another voice cut across the low murmur of Venture’s. The voice was louder, deep and resonant. It carried, the words reaching Matt clearly:

  ‘Which still leaves us the problem of what to do about Arnold Stribling.’

  Robin and
Matt stared at each other.

  ‘Dad?’ Matt mouthed, feeling suddenly cold and empty inside. Why were they discussing his father? He again wished he had spoken to Venture about Dad when they met the day before. The man knew something – perhaps Dad had tried to tell Matt that.

  ‘No, Matt,’ Robin said. ‘Wait.’

  But he was already turning, walking quickly to the half-open door without pausing to think about it. Pushing it open wide and stepping into Julius Venture’s study. Finding Venture and Atticus Harper turning in surprise to look at him as he stood in the doorway.

  ‘This is Doctor Stribling’s son, Matthew,’ Venture said, standing up and gesturing to Matt to take a seat. ‘Do join us, Matt. I think you’ll find this … interesting.’

  He was aware of Robin coming into the room behind him. ‘What about my father? Do you know where he is?’

  Venture and Harper exchanged a look. ‘Not exactly,’ Harper admitted. ‘But in a sense it’s because of your father that I’m here. Tell me, have you ever heard him mention the lost treasure of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem?’

  Matt shook his head as he sat down. ‘I don’t think so. What’s it got to do with my dad?’

  ‘I employed your father to find it for me,’ Harper said.

  Venture sent Robin to find Aunt Jane. ‘She should hear this too,’ he explained to Harper. ‘She is Doctor Stribling’s sister.’

  Harper raised a grey eyebrow. ‘Quite a family gathering.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Venture offered no further explanation. Instead he turned to Matt. ‘Please forgive me, I knew nothing at all of this when we spoke yesterday or I would have told you. I didn’t realise you came here to your aunt because he is missing. You must be very worried about him – I’m sorry. Arnold has been a dear friend of mine for many years.’

  Matt nodded, unsure what to say to this. While they waited, he looked round Venture’s study. Avoiding the man’s deep, blue gaze. Venture himself was seated behind a large desk made of dark, polished wood. The top of the desk was clear apart from a computer screen and a large leather-bound notebook. Behind the desk, the wall was shelved from floor to ceiling and the shelves were packed with books. Two of the other walls were panelled with wood up to about chest height, then shelved. Matt could see DVDs, video tapes, CDs, computer discs … The fourth wall was dominated by a large window that gave out to the front of the house. Matt could see the black shape of Harper’s helicopter standing silhouetted on the lawn. Making an impression.