Chapter Forty Nine
It was the last week of the summer term at Upperdale, and Hedge was about to have his final encounter with the lovely Amanda.
Her boyfriend, Mr Simms, had already left the college as he had finished all his classes for the year. His students had all sat their exams and were waiting for results. There was nothing more for him to do. So he had headed off for a long holiday at his father’s home in Dorset.
It was early evening and Hedge had just finished a game of tennis with a friend. The tennis courts were close to the staff apartments, and as he walked past, Amanda Grey leaned out of a first floor window and shouted to him.
‘Master Hedge, did you win your game? Come and see me, I want to hear all about it. I’ll meet you by the front door to the apartment block.’
Hedge apologised to his friend for leaving him to walk back alone, and then he ran off to the main entrance to the building.
Amanda came out of the front door just as he arrived. She looked gorgeous as usual, and he noticed that her hair was slightly wet, and that she was wearing her dressing gown. She looked like she had just come out of the shower.
‘Did I hear that you had a birthday recently, young Hedge,’ she enquired.
‘Yes indeed, I was seventeen just a few days ago.’
‘I thought so,’ she said. ‘I had got you a present, but forgot to give it to you. It’s only a little something. Come up and get it.’
Hedge looked a bit worried. He didn’t want to be seen following Amanda up to her room, especially as she was only wearing a dressing gown.
‘Don’t worry, no one will see us. Most of the college staff will be away anyhow. Quick, follow me.’
They ran upstairs, Amanda in front with Hedge following. She opened the door to her apartment, and they ducked inside without being seen. She took hold of his hand and pulled him across the room to the door of her bedroom.
‘Now Hedge, where did I put that gift for you,’ she said playfully.......
Then suddenly, the spell was broken. Cole’s face was there in front of him, with a wide grin on it. Hedge awoke with a jump, and his eyes flew open. He looked around his hospital room, but there was no sign of his friend. He lay back on the pillow and tried to resurrect the dream he’d been having about Amanda, but it was no good. The image of her had gone.
He stared at the ceiling for a short while, thinking about how the lovely Amanda had finally made a man of him. But that was so long ago, and he couldn’t remember the details. In the end he drifted slowly off to sleep again.
Hedge had several other strange dreams while he was under the influence of the pain relief, some relating to things he could remember, but others just seemed to make no sense at all. Eventually though, he awoke once more, and found himself in the same white hospital room. He felt amazingly refreshed, almost like a spell had been lifted. The pain from the venomous stings had subsided, and his head seemed a lot clearer.
He looked for the glass of water that always seemed to be on the cabinet next to his bed, and guzzled it greedily. There was a bowl of fruit next to the water, and he ate a banana and some green grapes. He realised he was starving hungry. As far as he could remember he had eaten nothing but soup in the last few days.
He shouted out to see if anyone could hear him, and a few moments later the nurse came into the room. She took the drip out of his arm and checked over the red marks on his body.
‘They are fading a little. You should find the pain will disappear completely, but you need to take it easy for a while. I’ll call your friend and get him to come and pick you up. You need to eat to replenish your energy and make sure you drink plenty of fluids in the next few days.’
She walked off to phone Cole. Hedge sat back against the pillow and took a few deep breaths. He felt pleased to feel relatively normal again, but slightly frustrated that he had been unable to relive that final memory of his favourite school teacher.
Author’s Note!
The original version of this book had a very different Chapter Forty Nine.
This was the part where Hedge, under the influence of painkillers, was having his final dream about the lovely Amanda. I decided to remove my first draft of this chapter, as it was quite sexually explicit.
The good news is that I still have that original version, the one where Hedge becomes a man.
If you want me to forward to you my first draft Chapter Forty Nine, then simply email me and I will send it directly back to you.
[email protected]
I look forward to hearing from you.
Regards
Kevin Bradley
Chapter Fifty
Two days later, Hedge and Cole were checking in to a small, family run hotel in San Juan, the capital town of Puerto Rico. It was only a short flight from Tortola to their new destination, but it had been a noisy and uncomfortable trip on an ageing turboprop passenger aircraft.
Puerto Rico is made up of several islands, with a total population of nearly four million people. The main language is Spanish, as up until 1898 the country had been a colony of Spain. More recently the country has developed into a US territory and its people are effectively treated as American citizens. It is not officially one of the states of the US, although a majority of the population would probably like that to be the case.
On his arrival in San Juan, Cole had used a contact at the British consulate to get in touch with a colleague of his at MI5 in London. This old friend had pulled a few strings in order to convince the director at the UK government listening centre – GCHQ at Cheltenham, to see if they could intercept any traffic from cell phones emanating from the Puerto Rico area of the Caribbean. GCHQ had agreed to help, probably due to a nudge from Downing Street, Cole thought to himself. They did point out though that there would be thousands of voice messages across the airwaves and they needed to narrow down the search.
Cole had come up with an idea. He called the office of the Island Trust Company in the British Virgin Islands. A friendly receptionist had answered. She had been very helpful, advising Cole that Mr. Robinson was not in the office and had not been seen for over a week. She had agreed to his request to be put through to his voicemail. When Robinson’s voice came on the line explaining that he was ‘not in the office at the moment, so please leave a message’, Cole recorded it using his phone handset.
It was this recording that he passed on to the operator at GCHQ.
‘This is the voice we are looking for,’ he said.
‘We’ll give it a go,’ came back the reply, ‘although it may take some time.’
The equipment used at Cheltenham by the British government is state of the art. The centre utilises highly powered computers and sophisticated satellite electronics. All of the operatives who are employed at the centre are both well trained and meticulous in their approach. However, the numbers involved in this investigation were staggering. The amount of cell network calls made in the Puerto Rico area in the previous week exceeded one hundred million. The equipment at GCHQ identified over two million different male voices. It further broke down this data to come up with a number of over two hundred thousand separate English male voices.
When the operator called Cole back less than two hours later, he apologised and quoted these numbers as an excuse as to why the search had taken so long.
‘We normally find specific voices quite quickly, but our systems are running a little slow at the moment. Apparently something to do with atmospherics, so the boffins told me. Anyway, we have traced the position of the last call made by that particular voice and I am now sending the GPS coordinates to your cell phone.’
‘Thanks, you have been very helpful, it’s much appreciated,’ said Cole.
Just over an hour later, Cole parked their rental car at the end of a narrow road, about three hundred yards short of the coordinates he had been given. He raised a pair of binoculars to his eyes and scanned the horizon. There was a single storey, timber built house at the end of the road.
There were no other dwellings in sight. They had driven around twenty miles out from the capital city, and the area was rural and quiet.
It was mid-afternoon, and the heat was building up. They sat in the car, with the air conditioning on full, while they decided what to do. There was a tropical storm due sometime very soon - they were common in this area of the Caribbean. The air felt heavy and they could see dark clouds brewing up on the distant horizon.
Cole was scanning the house again with the binoculars. ‘We have movement. Bingo - that seems to be our man. Mr. Jameson looks remarkably like our old friend Mr. Robinson, and he appears to be carrying the goods. He has a metallic looking case in his right hand.’
It wasn’t clear where Robinson was going, but he headed for the garage next to the house and opened the swing door. A few seconds later, a dark blue car pulled out of the garage and turned onto the narrow lane. It was coming towards where Cole had parked.
Cole fired up the engine of their vehicle, and moved forward slowly. The distance between the two cars narrowed quickly, and suddenly Robinson spotted the car ahead of him. He must have recognised one or both of them, as he stopped his vehicle instantly, threw open his door, and started to run off across the field next to the road.
Cole and Hedge jumped out of their own vehicle and gave chase. Robinson had reacted quickly and was already some two hundred metres ahead of them. He knew the area well as he had been holed up here for several days now. Each morning he had taken a circular walk in the area, mainly for exercise, but also to see what his surroundings looked like. He realised he wouldn’t be able to outrun his two chasers as they were both younger and much fitter than he was. So he needed to lose them.
At the edge of the field, Robinson skipped over a short fence and immediately turned left. He knew he was protected from being seen as the path he was on was surrounded by overgrown bushes. At the end of this path was a narrow, dry river bed. He jumped down into this and turned in a northerly direction. He looked back over his left shoulder, but could see no sign of his pursuers. He ran a further twenty five metres until he came to a circular metal cover on the surface of the river bed. He had walked past this cover two days ago and had been intrigued as to what it was. So he had investigated it. When he had lifted the cover, he found a ladder leading down about three metres to a narrow platform. Below this platform was a pipe about two feet in diameter. He had worked out that this was some kind of storm drain. When the river bed filled with water, these drains would carry away excess water via an underground pipe network.
He lifted the metal cover again, as he had two days ago, and climbed onto the ladder, pulling the cover closed above him. He then moved carefully down the remainder of the ladder and stood silently on the narrow ledge.
He waited a few moments and then he heard voices above him. He stood quietly for a while, but still he was aware of the presence of the two men somewhere close above him. They were talking, and he heard his name mentioned several times.
They had obviously figured out by now what he had done with the money, but they may not have realised that he now had the bonds in his possession, he thought to himself. He needed to find somewhere to stash his valuable goods, just in case they did find him. He could still hear them talking, so they must be very close. Perhaps they had realised where he had hidden. He needed to secrete the case somewhere right now.
He looked down at the narrow pipe to see if he could see the bottom. There wasn’t much light in the storm drain, but he could make out that the pipe was empty of water. In fact, it only went three or four feet down and then it turned a corner so as to run horizontal.
He knew the case was waterproof anyway, so if he had to leave it here and come back for it later, it would be fine. He leaned forward and held the case over the narrow pipe. He let go and dropped the case down. It fell to the bottom and landed with a thud.
The noise of the case hitting the pipe seemed loud inside the shaft, but had they picked up the sound from outside? The voices above him had suddenly stopped, and he could hear footsteps close to the metal cover.
‘Damn, they must have heard it,’ he murmured to himself.
Chapter Fifty One
The footsteps above moved towards the metal cover, but then they carried on past and seemed to be walking away. They clearly hadn’t heard the case landing at the bottom of the shaft. Robinson listened carefully for a few more minutes, but he heard nothing.
He climbed back up the ladder, put his head close to the metal cover, and listened, but there was still no sound of any voices or footsteps. He waited a while longer before he lifted the cover a fraction, and then looked back the way he had come, but could see nothing. He turned around and scanned his eyes down the dry river bed. There in the distance, were two figures, walking away from him. He had given them the slip. They had moved on to look for him elsewhere. He carried on watching the two shapes until they disappeared from sight.
He had panicked when he decided to drop the case down the shaft, but on reflection he decided that the risk of discovery was now very low. His plan was therefore to carefully retrieve the case and then make his way slowly back to his car. He was reluctant to leave several million dollars worth of bearer bonds in this hole in the ground.
He climbed back down the ladder to the ledge and then kneeled down and leaned into the narrow pipe in an attempt to extract the metal case. He couldn’t quite reach it, even with his other hand holding firmly onto the bottom rung of the ladder. His fingers were just a few inches away from the handle on the case, so he edged forward a little more. Now he could just about touch the cold metal and he grasped at the handle. As he did so, the hand gripping the ladder slipped and he lost his balance. He fell headfirst into the narrow pipe. His right arm could now reach the case quite easily, but his body had become wedged solid in the pipe. His left arm was stuck between his body and the side of the pipe, so he couldn’t move it at all.
He tried to pull himself out, but he realised he was wedged tight. He was unable to move any part of his body except for his right arm and hand. Everything else was stuck fast. He tried to wriggle his body but that just caused him to fall a couple of inches further into the pipe.
Panic now began to set in. He screamed, but his shouts just echoed down the horizontal part of the pipe. Certainly no one above ground was going to hear him. He realised it was quite dark as his body was preventing any light coming down the pipe from above. He was also feeling slightly flushed, partly caused by the onset of panic, but also because a larger than normal amount of blood was rushing to his head, obviously due to his body being upside down.
He found that he could just about wiggle his legs and feet, but that was of no benefit. He let go of the case and placed his right hand on the wall of the pipe. He then tried to push upwards, but he didn’t move. He was jammed tightly in this narrow pipe, and without help, he was not going to be able to get himself out.
He shouted several times, again and again, in case anyone could hear him. Eventually his throat was sore and he gave up. He listened carefully to see if he could hear anything. He realised the only people he had seen in this area in the last few days were his two pursuers. It was ironic that he hadn’t wanted them to find him, but now, given his dire predicament, he desperately wanted to be discovered by the two men.
He couldn’t hear anything. He held his breath a moment to improve his hearing, but still there was no sound from outside.
Then, yes, there was something, a gentle tap, tap, tap from the surface. It was slowly getting louder. Yes he could hear it clearer now. He shouted again, and then held his breath once more while he listened for that noise. He could hear the gentle tapping again, now even louder than before.
It wasn’t a noise he wanted to hear.
With a feeling of horror, he suddenly realised what it was.
It had started to rain.
It wasn’t just normal rain though, the tropical storm had arrived. The volume of water starting to fall from the sky wa
s increasing rapidly.
The drainage system he was now stuck in was a relatively simple feat of engineering. The idea was that surplus surface water is carried away quickly towards the coast, where it washes into the sea. That’s fine if the drains are kept well maintained, but many of them had become blocked by debris over time. This particular drain was no exception, so instead of water flowing away from where Robinson was trapped, water collecting from the local area had started to flow back towards him. So it was that twenty minutes after falling in the pipe, there was several inches of water at the bottom of the drain, and this was rising fast.
It was rising up towards him.
Chapter Fifty Two
Robinson was now very scared. He was stuck and couldn’t move, apart from his right arm. He tried in desperation to push some of the water back down the horizontal part of the pipe, but this was a complete waste of time. The water kept coming towards him.
The top of his head was now only six inches from the rising water level. He started to scream again, louder and more desperate than before.
He didn’t want to drown, stuck in a concrete pipe, in this remote area of the Caribbean. As he thought about it, his situation seemed both terrifying and ridiculous. How had he been so stupid as to fall into a pipe, several metres underground? What an idiot he was.
He didn’t want to die. Not here. Not like this.
The heavy rain continued to fall, and the water was rising still. He could now feel it touching the top of his head. He struggled again trying to free himself from the pipe, but it was hopeless. He couldn’t move at all. Now the water was close to his eye level. As it covered his eyes, he shut them firmly. The water was cold and muddy, and he could feel small pieces of grit trapped inside his eyelids. He desperately wanted to rub his eyes to clear them, but he couldn’t due to his restricted arm movements.
The Palindrome Cult: A gripping, page-turning, crime suspense thriller, its fast pace takes you from London to New York, via Dubai and the Virgin Islands. (Hedge & Cole Book 1) Page 19
