by Paul Adam
Richardson took the lift down to the foyer and went out through the main entrance. He walked across Broadway into St James’s Park Underground station and caught the tube home – the Circle Line to Notting Hill Gate, then the Central Line west. The carriage wasn’t crowded at this time of night. That was one of the advantages of working such long hours – you missed the rush hour at both ends of the day.
Richardson slumped down in a seat and picked up a copy of the Evening Standard that someone had left behind. He flicked idly through the pages, too weary to concentrate much on the articles. Then he tossed the paper aside and closed his eyes. He didn’t notice the young man in grey windcheater and trainers who had got on the train just behind him and was now sitting at the far end of the carriage, listening to his iPod.
The journey home took forty-five minutes. The chief superintendent dozed for most of the time, never quite dropping off to sleep completely in case he missed his stop. When he got off, the young man in the windcheater and trainers also left the train and followed him out of the station.
The road outside was always busy. Even now, there was a steady stream of vehicles speeding by. The chief superintendent waited on the kerb for a break in the traffic that would allow him to cross. A line of cars went past, then a couple of vans and more cars. A lorry loomed up in the distance, its headlights blazing through the night. Richardson watched it draw nearer. It was a high, articulated lorry, moving very fast. Richardson stepped back a little from the edge of the road. The lorry was twenty metres away when he felt a sudden, violent impact in the middle of his back. He toppled forward, his arms flailing, trying to recover his balance, but it was too late. He turned his head as he fell and saw the lorry bearing down on him, its engine roaring, its headlights dazzling, blinding him. Then the lights cut out abruptly and there was only darkness.
TEN
Max was having his breakfast when he heard the news. The radio was on in the kitchen, as it was every morning. He and Consuela were alone. Chris had slipped out through the garden before dawn to see about getting himself a fake passport. Consuela was drinking coffee, eating a piece of toast. Max was working his way through a bowl of cereal. He heard the headlines vaguely, registering that there had been a hurricane somewhere in the Caribbean and a plane crash in the Far East, but he wasn’t really listening. It was only as the bulletin progressed that a few specific keywords made him sit up and pay more attention. ‘Senior Scotland Yard detective … road traffic accident … sad loss to the force …’ Max reached out and turned up the volume on the radio.
‘… Chief Superintendent John Richardson was on his way home from work yesterday evening when he was hit by a lorry as he tried to cross the road. He was taken to hospital, but died later from his injuries.
‘Chief Superintendent Richardson, the fifty-five-year-old head of Scotland Yard’s Criminal Investigation Department, had been a police officer for thirty-five years. A Metropolitan Police spokesperson said that he was a well-liked, highly respected officer. “John Richardson’s tragic death is a shock to everyone in the police force. He will be sadly missed and we offer our sincere condolences to his wife and family.”
‘And now, the sports news. Manchester United are to—’
Max clicked off the radio. He looked at Consuela. She’d put down her toast and had been listening intently to the news report.
‘Richardson—’ she began, then broke off abruptly, remembering the bug in the wall.
Max nodded. He’d gone cold. He felt sick. He switched the radio back on as background noise and went down the stairs into the basement. Consuela followed him automatically. Her face was pale and tense.
‘A road traffic accident, they said,’ she whispered.
‘It wasn’t an accident,’ Max replied.
‘You don’t know that.’
‘It’s common sense. Richardson starts asking questions about Rupert Penhall and is warned to stop. Then, just a few days later, he’s hit by a lorry and killed. That’s too much of a coincidence.’
Consuela licked her lips. ‘Max, I’m frightened.’
‘So am I.’
‘What do we do? I wish Chris was here. I’d feel safer.’
‘We stick to our plan. We need to go to Sweden as soon as possible. Tomorrow, maybe, or the day after.’
‘But you have school.’
‘School doesn’t matter – it’s irrelevant right now,’ Max said quietly but forcefully. ‘Someone rammed our car off the road, nearly killed us. Now the policeman who was helping us has been killed. We have to find out what’s going on, Consuela.’
She gave a nod. ‘OK. What do we do first?’
‘Can you buy us some air tickets?’
‘Do I buy one for Chris too?’
‘He’ll be travelling under a false name. We don’t know what it is yet, so let him make his own arrangements when he gets back.’
‘I’ll book us a hotel too. Your father and I went to Stockholm a few years ago to do one of his shows. We stayed in a quiet little hotel in Södermalm – that’s the island on the south side of the city. The Hotel Katarina, I think it was called.’
Consuela chewed on her thumbnail, looking uncertainly at Max. ‘You’re sure this is the right thing to do? You don’t think we should go to the police, to one of Chief Superintendent Richardson’s colleagues, and tell them what we know?’
‘Richardson is dead because I got him involved,’ Max said firmly. ‘It’s up to me to put it right now. I owe him that.’
Max walked to school in a daze. He couldn’t stop thinking about Chief Superintendent Richardson. The detective’s death had stunned him. Max had hardly known him, but he still felt a sense of sorrow at the loss. And he felt guilty. If Max hadn’t asked him for help, he would still be alive. Indirectly, Max was responsible for his death. That was a terrible load to bear. He’d also lost an ally. Max felt more exposed, more vulnerable than ever before. He was sad and scared, but he was even more determined now to continue his investigations.
He was so preoccupied with his thoughts that he didn’t notice the car pulling alongside him as he turned a corner half a mile from the school. It was only when the rear door opened that Max glanced sideways to see what was happening. But by then it was too late. Two men seized hold of him, one on either side, and bundled him roughly into the back of the car. Max had no time to react, no time to cry out before the door slammed shut and the car accelerated away.
He was sandwiched between the two men on the back seat. He tried to twist round, to look out of the rear window, to maybe signal to someone or shout for help, but the men pushed his head down onto his knees and threw a blanket over him, hiding him from sight as the car sped through the busy streets.
‘What the …? Who the …?’ Max struggled to speak with his face pressed tight against his legs.
‘Shut your mouth, or we’ll gag you. Understand?’ one of the men snapped.
Max turned his head and attempted to sit up. The men pushed him back down and held him there. Max tried to resist, but they were too strong for him. He gave up the fight and lay still, his mind racing, thinking back over the previous few minutes. The car must have been shadowing him all the way from home, following him along the road, the men waiting for the right moment to strike.
Max was frightened. His spine was tingling, his stomach knotted. Who were these men? Where were they taking him? It was hot underneath the blanket, and difficult to breathe with his body doubled up. Max relaxed his muscles and tried not to panic. Think of it like one of your stage tricks, he told himself. You’re in control of your mind and body. You’re caught, trapped in a moving car and these men have the upper hand, but stay calm and think clearly and you’ll find a way to escape.
The car turned left and came to a stop, the engine still running. Traffic lights, Max guessed. There’d be other cars next to them, people on the pavement. If he could sit up and throw off the blanket, yell out at the top of his voice, he could attract attention, raise the alarm, may
be get someone to alert the police. But the two men clearly knew this was a dangerous moment, for they increased the pressure on Max’s back, holding him down even harder than before.
The car pulled away again. Max felt the weight come off his back a little, but the men still kept hold of him. They were on their guard, vigilant. Max knew he had no chance of doing anything while he was in the car. He had to wait until they stopped, then make his move.
They turned right and went straight ahead for a few seconds before turning left. Max counted the time between each change of direction. He’d already lost his bearings and had no hope of working out exactly where they were going, but the mental exercise helped take his mind off his predicament, stopped him getting overwhelmed by fear.
After twenty minutes of erratic, stop-start motion, the car made a turn and increased its speed to what felt like sixty or seventy miles an hour. Max guessed that they’d left the traffic-choked metropolitan streets and were on a dual carriageway, or even a motorway. The car veered out into the next lane, presumably to overtake, then pulled out even further. Three lanes – that made it a motorway. But which one? The M1? It had to be the M1. They hadn’t gone far enough to reach any of the others. So they were heading north. But where north?
None of the men spoke; there was no idle conversation. Max was aware of the noise of the engine, the tyres on the road, the throb of his pulse inside his head. How far were they going? Were they taking him to some remote spot out of London where they could kill him and dispose of his body without any risk of it being found? Max blotted the thought out of his mind. Thinking the worst was a bad idea. He had to stay positive, believe that he had a chance of surviving this kidnapping.
The car slowed and forked to the left. They were leaving the motorway. Ten minutes later, they made a sharp right turn and came to a halt. The engine was turned off. Max heard the driver getting out and coming to open the rear door, the two other men shifting in their seats. One got out and pulled Max out behind him. Max braced himself, preparing to throw off the blanket and make a run for it. But the guards were ready for that. They pinned his arms to his sides, then forced his hands behind his back and handcuffed them together. Max felt the cold steel on his wrists. He was used to the sensation from his stage shows, but not in circumstances like this. On stage, he always knew he could release himself. Here – wherever they were – it would not be so simple.
The blanket was pulled down and held in tight at the waist to prevent Max from seeing the ground, then his arms were seized and he was led away. It was tarmac underfoot – Max could tell from the feel, the sound his trainers made: a road, or a car park. They paused. One of the men spoke into an intercom and a metal gate clicked open. They walked five or six metres, then another lock snapped back and they passed through a second gate. The locks, the obvious security – they had to be entering some kind of prison. Max felt a flutter of relief. A prison was better than some of the other possible alternatives.
The guard spoke into another intercom and Max heard a barrier open – not a metal gate this time, but what sounded like a wooden door. They were inside a building now, walking in a straight line. Max couldn’t see through the blanket, but he picked up every other clue he could and processed it through his brain. The noise of their footsteps – that had to be lino on the floor. The slight echo that reminded him of school – they were in a corridor. The smell of something Max couldn’t identify. Disinfectant? Floor polish? That reminded him of school too. He was in some kind of institution. More than ever now, he was sure this was a prison or a juvenile detention centre.
They stopped. Max felt hands frisking him, patting his clothes, feeling in his pockets. His loose change was taken away, and his wristwatch and belt. He heard a key being inserted into a lock, a door opening. His handcuffs were removed and he was given a hard shove in the back. As he stumbled forward, the blanket was whipped off his head. Max turned in time to catch a fleeting glimpse of one of the men and the blank wall of the corridor before the door was slammed shut and locked.
He was in the strangest room he’d ever seen. It was about three metres square, the same size as his bedroom at home, but there the resemblance ended. This room had no windows, no furniture, not even a handle on the inside of the door. The floor was made of some kind of squashy rubber that gave under the feet and the walls were covered in panels of what looked liked quilting. Max touched one of them. It was soft, like the cushions of a sofa. He could have punched his fist into the wall without hurting his hand.
He knew what the room was – a padded cell. He’d heard about them, but never seen one. They’d been installed in lunatic asylums in the Victorian era, for confining prisoners who might deliberately try to injure themselves, but he didn’t realize they were still in use. There were no hard surfaces, no chairs or tables or sharp objects. A person could throw himself violently around the room and end up with little more than a few slight bruises.
Max looked up. The ceiling was too high to reach. In the centre, protected by a wire-mesh cage, was a single glowing light bulb. There was no switch on the wall so the light had to be controlled from somewhere else. He saw something else on the ceiling: in the corner opposite the door was a tiny CCTV camera spying on him. Max went to the door, which was also heavily padded on the inside. He didn’t care whether the camera was watching him. Crouching down, he peered through the keyhole. He could see the wall of the corridor outside, but that was all. It was a solid lock, but Max knew he could pick it if he had the right tool. Unfortunately, he didn’t. He had no tools at all.
He straightened up and paced around the floor. Down one side of the room was a mattress-sized piece of foam rubber that was presumably intended to be used as a bed. Max kept pacing next to the mattress, trying to work out where he was. Somewhere north of London, he was sure of that, but how far? It was six or seven miles from where he’d been picked up to the beginning of the M1. How long had they been on the motorway? Ten, possibly fifteen minutes. How many miles would they have covered in that time? Fifteen minutes at seventy miles an hour. Max did the arithmetic in his head – that was about seventeen miles. Plus the ten minutes after they’d left the motorway. They’d been going slower then, probably thirty or forty miles an hour so he could add on, say, another six miles in distance. That made about thirty miles in total. That wasn’t far. He was thirty miles from home, but it might have been three hundred for all the good it did him. He was still locked in a padded cell in a secure prison.
He wondered who had brought him here. Julius Clark’s men? Clark was a rich man, but even he wouldn’t have had his own prison in the United Kingdom, which meant this was something to do with the British government. Rupert Penhall? It had to be Penhall who had organized Max’s abduction. No other conclusion made sense.
But why? What was Penhall going to do with him now? Max thought about it over and over again until he decided that such speculation was pointless. All it did was sap his mental energy. Just wait and see what happens, he told himself. That’s all you can do. He lay down on the foam-rubber mattress and closed his eyes.
He had no watch, so he could only guess at the time, but it seemed about three hours later that he heard a key turning in the lock. The door opened and a man in a navy blue uniform entered. He was tall and heavily built, with a big bunch of keys dangling from a chain on his belt. A typical prison warder, Max thought. He’d seen plenty of them at Levington, where his mother was being held. The Levington warders were all female, of course, but their gender made little difference. They all had the same arrogant air of the jailer about them.
Behind the warder came a second man – in the white outfit of a kitchen orderly. He was carrying a paper plate of food and a styrofoam cup of water. He placed the items on the floor just inside the door and retreated.
‘Where am I?’ Max asked the warder. ‘Why’ve I been brought here?’
The officer didn’t answer. He just walked out of the cell and locked the door behind him. Max slid off the mattr
ess and crawled across the floor to the plate of food. It was some kind of stew and rice, all mixed together. He screwed up his nose. It wasn’t quite the healthy Mediterranean food he was used to getting from Consuela, but it was better than nothing. He dipped the plastic spoon into the mush: the spoon was the only cutlery provided – no knife or fork, no metal utensils, no china plate or tray that could be used as a weapon. Just a plastic spoon – even Max couldn’t use that to pick a lock.
The food didn’t taste too bad. Max cleared his plate in just a few minutes and drank the cup of water. Twenty minutes later, the lock clicked back and the door swung open. The warder came in first again, then the orderly, who picked up the plate, spoon and cup and withdrew.
The jailer looked at Max with blank, indifferent eyes. ‘Stand up, turn round and put your hands behind your back,’ he said, then handcuffed him and led him out of the cell.
The handcuffs seemed entirely unnecessary to Max. The man was twice his size. Did he seriously think that Max was going to overpower him? Or had the prison staff been told to be extra vigilant with this teenage inmate, warned that he was a slippery customer, a cunning, practised escaper.
They walked along the corridor, the warder gripping Max’s left arm. Max glanced around, trying to appear casual, but taking note of everything he saw. It was a long, open corridor, heavy metal doors at both ends; brown lino on the floor, dirty cream walls, doors at intervals along both sides that Max guessed must be more cells; a CCTV camera high up near the ceiling towards the far end, monitoring the area.
Max saw an open doorway ahead on the left. Another prison officer came through it and gave a start as he saw Max and his escort. A start of surprise, and also, Max thought, of guilt. The two men nodded at each other, then the first warder took Max through the doorway. Inside was a washroom, an ancient, primitive washroom that looked as if it had barely been touched in a hundred years. There was a line of chipped enamel sinks along one wall, with a row of four toilet cubicles opposite. A small head-height window at the far end of the room was open, thick steel bars preventing anyone from climbing out of it. A cool breeze was blowing in through the gap, freshening the room, but Max’s sensitive nose still detected a faint odour of cigarette smoke. So that explained the second officer’s guilty start. As in every other public building, smoking would be forbidden here. The tight security must make it difficult – maybe impossible – for staff to go outside to smoke, so the warder had sneaked into the washroom, where there was no CCTV camera, for a crafty cigarette.
