‘Better safe than sorry,’ said Kai defensively.
‘If you’d only checked then you’d have realized that all that was needed to contain the situation was to take her equipment. Bringing her here has given us complications.’
‘We didn’t have time to check! There was someone anxious to use the toilet!’
‘Even if Kai had stolen my laptop and run off you would have had complications anyway.’ Bird Girl’s voice was thin but determined. ‘I wouldn’t have let this slide. I’d have reported it to the police and they’d have investigated further.’
Spartacus shook his head. ‘No they wouldn’t. They’d write it up as an ordinary street mugging. You were set upon by two junkies who saw your camera as an easy street flog for their daily fix. Happens a dozen times a day in the city. And you rabbiting on about what you saw…well, with no actual proof they’re not going to deploy many officers for that. You said yourself they’d already had the wall examined. They’d probably have thought you were making the whole thing up to get attention.’
‘I’d have gone to the newspapers,’ Bird Girl insisted.
‘Once they knew that transport workers had looked at the wall I doubt they’d have investigated further. If they decided it was worth a column or two, then, by the time they’d written it up, our cage fights would have been over, so no danger to us.’ He turned to Kai. ‘As I said, you should have taken her equipment and left her in the toilet. That would have been the best thing to do.’
‘Maybe not.’ Raven spoke up. ‘She’s completely obsessed about her sister. We offered to let her go in exchange for saying nothing but she refused. Even though I—’
‘If we’d let her go,’ Kai cut in before Raven could mention her knife in front of the rest of the group, ‘she’d have bought herself a sledgehammer and smashed that brick wall apart.’
‘And then there’s this.’ Raven took Bird Girl’s phone from her pocket. ‘She’d have called 999 and we might have been picked up by the police.’
Spartacus gave a curt nod. ‘Still annoying though, with only two days to the end of the project. Let’s see what she managed to record.’ He took Bird Girl’s phone and pressed ‘play’.
A whispering voice began to speak:
‘Please contact the police if you find this phone. I’m Maxine Carmey of 26, Mandor Close, London, looking for my sister Darcey. Am being held in an old skip near the—’
At this point Bird Girl had shoved her phone inside her shirt. Kai heard the muffled sound of him sliding down the chute into the skip and then silence. In the seconds after she’d gone over the top of the skip and before he followed her in, Bird Girl had set her phone to record.
‘Is it true,’ Leo asked in an overly innocent tone, ‘that Raven had gone for help and Brainbox Boy was guarding the prisoner at the point when she was using her phone?’
Kai sucked in his breath and dug his nails into his palms to prevent himself from responding.
Spartacus affected not to hear the exchange, ran the audio track again and then pressed ‘Delete’.
‘So, why is this person here?’ Boudicca raised her voice. She rounded on Kai and Raven. ‘Why on earth did you guys decide to bring her in?’
Raven glowered at Boudicca. They were opposites in temperament – Raven quiet and secretive, Boudicca loud and brash.
‘It was the safest thing to do,’ said Raven.
‘I’m not getting that.’ Boudicca wouldn’t back off. ‘Neither am I getting why she agreed to come.’ She addressed Raven. ‘Did you threaten her?’
‘I’ll threaten you in a minute if you don’t shut up,’ Raven muttered.
Spartacus hadn’t mentioned the part about the knife but Raven was known to defend her privacy aggressively. And it was obvious that something unusual had taken place.
‘I wanted to come.’ It was Bird Girl who stopped the argument escalating. ‘I pleaded with Raven and Kai to take me with them. My sister thought a bird was caught behind the wall and I believe she found a way through there because she wanted to rescue it. And now I’m sure she herself is trapped and can’t get out. I’m begging all of you for help.’
‘But where’s your proof?’ Magog spoke in a reasonable manner. ‘If there isn’t anything on your laptop then you’ve only got your gut feeling.’
‘We still haven’t looked at my camera,’ Bird Girl replied. ‘As soon as I saw what I thought was a face I fired off a few shots before I ran to cross the road.’
‘Ah…’ said Spartacus, ‘your camera…’ He appeared downcast. ‘The SD card must have got lost in the scuffle and so there’s nothing to see, I’m afraid. Absolutely nothing.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
‘Nothing?’ The word was a strangled sound in Bird Girl’s throat.
‘Nothing,’ Spartacus repeated firmly.
The colour left Bird Girl’s face as if a grey cloth had wiped out her whole complexion.
Spartacus glanced at Leo.
‘I’m OK with Bird Girl being here until Saturday evening,’ said Leo, ‘and then she can go out when we do. But it’s almost lights-out time so I vote we end the Meet now.’
‘My camera has a backup facility.’ Bird Girl’s voice was shaking. ‘There can’t be nothing on it.’
Spartacus shrugged. ‘Must have been a malfunction. Not much anyone can do when that happens.’
‘But…but I took photographs. Dozens of photographs.’
Spartacus shook his head.
Bird Girl turned to Tech. ‘Surely there’s a way of retrieving the images. You seem to be really skilled with things like this. If you could have a look at it—?’
‘No!’ Spartacus spoke before Tech could reply. ‘There’s no point in Tech doing that.’ He made a small movement with his feet and Kai saw that he had tucked Bird Girl’s rucksack further under his chair.
There was an awkward silence before anyone spoke.
‘Shame,’ said Magog. ‘Sorry that happened.’
A couple chimed in with him. But generally there was a sense of relief that there was no extra problem to deal with before the closing fights.
‘Yes indeed,’ said Spartacus. ‘We’re all sorry for you, Bird Girl.’
‘Well, that’s that then,’ Leo declared. ‘We can’t do anything more at the moment.’
Spartacus responded with an almost imperceptible nod. Kai switched his glance from one to the other. There was a self-satisfied smirk on Leo’s lips. What had gone down there? Had Leo and Spartacus had a conversation before the meeting?
‘You can remain here until the day after tomorrow,’ Spartacus said to Bird Girl. ‘Then you’ll go topside with the rest of us and we wish you well in the search for your sister.’
There were murmurs of agreement, although Kai noticed that Raven hadn’t joined in.
‘But I took dozens of pictures,’ Bird Girl repeated feebly. ‘I don’t understand…’
Kai stirred in his chair. His instinct was to go to her but something told him that would be the wrong thing to do.
‘I want to leave now.’ Bird Girl’s voice was hardly above a whisper.
‘I’m afraid that’s not possible,’ Spartacus said firmly. He looked around the room.
‘No way,’ said Boudicca. ‘You might betray us. I didn’t stay in this stink-hole for weeks so that you could waltz in here and wreck it all at the last minute. And anyway, you said that you wanted to come here.’
‘You agreed to help me,’ Bird Girl said to Spartacus.
‘I said we would help you as far as we could,’ he replied smoothly.
‘You lied!’
‘No, you lied,’ he retorted. ‘You told Raven and Kai that you’d uploaded a file to the Cloud and you hadn’t. That lie is what caused them to bring you here. How many other lies are you telling?’
‘How can we trust anything you say?’ Leo asked Bird Girl. ‘There’s no proof that your sister is missing. No proof that you even have a sister. You could be an undercover cop.’
‘I’m not a police spy,’ said Bird Girl. She too looked around the room. Her eyes met Kai’s but her gaze moved on to Raven. ‘I do have a sister who has gone missing. Please believe me.’
‘Well, if not a police spy,’ said Boudicca, ‘maybe you’re from a different official organization.’
‘Or a newspaper reporter?’ suggested Leo.
‘I am not a newspaper reporter,’ Bird Girl responded.
‘Well, whatever you are, the Cage Fighters get to decide what to do,’ said Spartacus. ‘It’s up to them what happens to you. That’s how it works here.’
Kai looked at the others. There was something off-key but he couldn’t think what, exactly.
Medusa glanced at Raven and gestured a query with her hands. Raven frowned as if she was thinking hard.
‘We need to keep her here,’ said Boudicca.
‘Yeah,’ said Beowulf, agreeing with Boudicca like he always did.
‘But safely,’ said Magog. ‘Nobody is to get hurt.’
‘Of course not,’ said Leo. ‘But what can we do with her?’
‘I don’t know…’ Spartacus hesitated. ‘I suppose the only secure place is the storeroom.’ He said this as if he’d only just thought of it.
‘Are we saying she has to be kept locked up?’ Magog asked. ‘That’s bit brutal.’
‘It would only be for forty-eight hours,’ Leo said quickly.
‘There’s plenty of food and drinks in there,’ Boudicca backed him up.
‘And magazines, and spare chemical toilet buckets,’ added Medusa, trying to be kind.
‘Let’s have a show of hands then,’ said Spartacus. ‘Who thinks it safest to lock Bird Girl in the storeroom for the next forty-eight hours?’
Sarema moaned, ‘No,’ and Gita drew her shawl round her shoulders and shrank into herself. They were against anyone being kept against their will, but the twins didn’t have voting rights.
‘Wait a minute!’ Bird Girl was struggling to compose herself. ‘Before you vote, could Tech please take a look at my camera?’
‘I don’t mind doing that,’ said Tech.
‘There is nothing on the camera,’ said Spartacus.
‘But there should be, and Tech could search for the file, and—’
‘I’ve done that,’ said Spartacus tetchily. ‘And we’re wasting precious time on this. Believe me when I say that I know for definite that there are no photos in your camera.’
Bird Girl looked at Spartacus in horror. ‘You deleted my photographs!’
‘I may have made a mistake when trying to recover the file,’ Spartacus said apologetically. ‘I’m not good with technical equipment.’
‘My precious photographs…’ Bird Girl clutched her stomach as if in pain. ‘You made me a promise that you’d try to help me and then you deleted the file.’ She turned in anguish to Kai. ‘You saw what I saw, didn’t you?’
Kai hesitated. He was still trying to process what was happening in the room.
‘Kai?’ Bird Girl prompted him. ‘You saw a face? Please tell them you saw a face.’
‘Yes, Kai, tell us. Did you see a ghost?’ Leo’s voice was taunting. ‘Is that what gave you such a fright and made you panic?’
‘I thought I saw a face,’ said Kai. He blew his breath out slowly from his mouth. ‘But truthfully, now I’m not so sure.’ He made a helpless gesture at Bird Girl. ‘Maybe it was a nesting pigeon?’
‘More likely a white plastic carrier bag,’ said Leo. ‘For whatever reason, Bird Girl’s been faking this whole scenario.’
There was a horrible silence in the room.
And then Raven, who’d remained quiet throughout the whole debate, opened her mouth and spoke. In a carefully controlled voice she said, ‘I picked this up from the toilet floor before we left the Internet café.’ And reaching her fingers into the plait of her hair, she brought out a camera SD card.
Spartacus held out his hand. Raven looked to Tech who deftly took the SD card from Raven. Their fingers brushed together and a fleeting smile curved Raven’s lips.
‘Before you do anything with that—’ Spartacus began. But he was too late. Tech had inserted the card into one of his machines, opened up the file and was clicking each icon.
There were a dozen or so pictures of pigeons. A few of the park, including the vagrant on the bench.
Only three images left.
From a distance, the bricked-up wall of the old Langsdaine Underground Station.
The second last photo zoomed in on a white mark in the wall.
‘There!’ breathed Bird Girl.
‘It’s a blob of nothing,’ said Leo.
Then the last photograph was on the screen.
A full close-up of the space between two bricks.
And everyone could see what it was.
The blaze of white in the wall wasn’t a bird or a white plastic carrier bag.
It was a human face.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
A wave of relief washed over Kai. Bird Girl wasn’t lying! And, although he knew that the sight of this face on the screen brought a bunch of difficulties, he couldn’t suppress a sense of happiness. Bird Girl had been telling the truth and it looked as if she had found her sister.
Bird Girl let out a long quivering breath. She stretched out her hand, fingertips reaching towards the blurred white outline of the face. And then she began to cry. A disturbing wild yowling, the like of which Kai had never heard before.
Sarema detached one of her scarves and handed it to Bird Girl, who buried her face in its folds as her sobs quietened down.
‘She’s not faking that,’ said Kai.
The Cage Fighters hung about, not knowing what to do. Certain types of emotion weren’t done in their group. People joked and laughed and squabbled and bickered – with Spartacus quick to quash anything that looked like it might develop into a real argument. But most of them didn’t show their deeper feelings. Life on the street did that to you. Open emotions suggested weakness. Weakness attracted predators. Survival depended on building a hard shell around your heart and letting no one in.
Occasionally there’d be an echo in the tunnels at night and you’d know someone was having nightmares. But sadder, intimate thoughts were submerged. Spartacus emphasized there should be no whining, no sharing of woes. His advice was to recall the bad experiences of the past only as motivation to work towards a better future.
Now the Cage Fighters looked to Spartacus. Kai was aware that he was doing it too at this very moment – mentally and physically. The thought ran through his mind: we’re so dependent on Spartacus. Too much. We depend on him for food, for water – without Spartacus we couldn’t exist in the tunnels.
But it’d crept up to become more than the basics. The Cage Fighters depended on Spartacus for the purpose in their life, and with that went a whole raft of extra stuff. Spartacus didn’t just direct what they physically did every day. Recently it was as if he was directing their thoughts too. And, with small unimportant variations, everyone went along with what Spartacus said.
Except.
The arrival of Bird Girl put that in jeopardy. Raven giving the SD card to Tech was more than Raven’s usual defiance. Kai began to understand the danger Bird Girl represented – why Spartacus wanted her contained until it was over. If he lost control of the Cage Fighters then the bonanza of the final money pay-off might never happen.
‘That face is very indistinct. Do you recognize it as your sister?’ Spartacus asked Bird Girl.
Bird Girl shook her head. ‘But who else could it be?’
Spartacus stood up to hush the babble in the room. ‘Does anyone know anything about this?’
‘Not me!’ Boudicca was the first to answer.
‘Me neither,’ said Magog.
Beowulf shook his head, as did Medusa.
‘We all know it’d be foolish to go up that way,’ said Leo.
‘If anyone has done so, you must tell me.’
Spartacus made each one answer individuall
y, including Tech. When he got to the twins Sarema said: ‘It was only Kai, Raven and yourself who departed from the station via the monitored tunnels this day.’ She pointed to Gita. ‘My sister and I watch the small screens in Tech’s den very diligently. Nobody else went along any of the tunnels until Raven returned to report to Spartacus.’
‘The twins are good on the monitors,’ said Tech. ‘They notice everything. Report every movement to me, including when rats are on the move. Saw a badger once too.’
‘OK.’ Spartacus grunted at Tech. He was irritated with him and Raven for their handling of the SD card but was attempting to keep a lid on it. ‘Could that picture be some kind of animal?’
‘No way.’ Tech had enhanced the last image from the SD card and it sat on the big wall screen. Without doubt it was a human face.
‘Could it be Mole?’ asked Leo. ‘He sneaks about without anyone seeing or hearing him.’
‘Mole only comes up from the deeper tunnels when he needs supplies,’ said Spartacus.
‘And he knows every inch of the place so he’d never let himself be caught anywhere,’ said Kai.
‘What’s on the log for that tunnel?’ Spartacus asked Tech. ‘When was it last used?’
‘A week ago.’
‘Is there a webcam there?’
‘I’ve got one placed on the outside of Langsdaine Station – the same as I have on all disused stations in our area. It’s a precaution so we’ll get warning of possible intrusions like maintenance workers or Urban Explorers. That’s how we picked up on someone’ – he indicated Bird Girl – ‘hanging about outside there.’
‘And inside?’ asked Spartacus. ‘In the tunnel leading to the bricked-up wall?’
‘There’s no webcam,’ said Tech. ‘We lost the one that was there and didn’t replace it. We haven’t used that tunnel since—’ He stopped and raised his eyebrows at Spartacus.
‘Why not?’ asked Bird Girl.
‘It’s too dangerous.’ The words were out before Kai had calculated the effect they would have on her.
‘Dangerous?’ Bird Girl looked around the Group. ‘Why? What makes it dangerous?’
No one answered her.
Bird Girl grabbed at Spartacus’s arm. ‘Why is it dangerous? Why did you stop using that tunnel?’
Caged Page 8
