The Great Escape (6 page)

Yesterday, he had
not
felt the buzz of a job well done. He had felt the queasy panic of a job mucked up. The technician who had been in charge of the cats was already in
a great deal of trouble, and if Arthur could have fired him he would have, immediately, as an example to the others. But the problem with that was that the project was top secret, obviously, and
the man was a great deal more dangerous to Arthur
outside
of the laboratory, where he might say something to somebody, than
inside
, where he would be sterilising Petri dishes for the
next five years. The cat had escaped, which was infuriating and risky. But, more worryingly, it had escaped when there were outsiders on the property – those stupid window cleaners. If only
Vakkson hadn’t hired them to keep the building clean. Any one of them could have seen something, and one of them probably had. Arthur felt no compunction as he rang them. He felt no guilt as
he lied to the man to get them back there the next day. He simply took the opportunity to try and sort things out so that his cover wasn’t blown, his contract wasn’t terminated, he and
several of his colleagues weren’t arrested, and he continued, as he expected, to be on the verge of making tens of millions of pounds.

Millie could hardly believe her luck. Her dad had come home from work, explaining that there was an extra shift at the Haverham lab and that they had arranged to do it the very
next day. However, she was also puzzled: they had surely cleaned every window the day before. But, it transpired, the lab had cleaning staff who looked after the doors and windows inside the
building, while Millie, her dad and Bill cleaned the outside. There had been some sort of staff shortage, and so they were being called back to do some additional work. Millie had said she would
probably come and help, trying not to make her dad suspicious by being too eager. She wandered off upstairs to find Max.

‘I might get some answers sooner than we thought – we’ve been asked to go back to the lab tomorrow,’ she said, closing the door behind her.

‘What? Why?’

‘Windows need cleaning
indoors
, apparently.’

‘Has this ever happened before?’ Max asked.

Millie shook her head. ‘No . . . I don’t think so. Why?’

‘It could be a trap, don’t you think? They might think you have seen something.’ Max paced worriedly up and down her bedroom floor.

‘Hmmm. Maybe. They didn’t ask for me to go, though. Just Dad and Bill.’ Millie tried to weigh up the possibilities.

‘But they cannot ask for you, of course. It would be too suspicious.’

‘I suppose so,’ Millie agreed. It wasn’t very likely that they would book some window cleaners and ask them to bring a twelve-year-old girl with them. It would sound, at best,
dodgy. ‘Do you think I shouldn’t go? Dad will be there. And Bill. And we’ll be inside the building – I might be able to find something out that would help us.’

‘That’s true.’ Max continued to pace. ‘I think, though, that it will be a risk for you to go tomorrow. Are you sure you want to?’

‘How else will we find out who’s doing this?’ Millie couldn’t see any alternative.

‘I know. But you must be prepared for people to ask you questions,’ Max warned her.

‘That man asked me questions as soon as you’d escaped, and I was OK,’ she pointed out.

‘Millie, I know. I am not doubting your abilities. I just want you to remember that these men do not have the same ideas as you about what is right and what is wrong. If they’re
willing to kidnap crate-loads of cats, they may not think twice about kidnapping, or even hurting, a little girl.’

‘I’m not little. And I won’t be on my own.’

‘Maybe I should come with you,’ he suggested.

Millie’s eyes popped. ‘Are you insane? You just escaped. I can’t deny having seen you if your tail is poking out of my bag, can I?’

‘No. I suppose not. I don’t want to go back, of course, but I don’t want you to have to go on your own either.’ He looked decidedly unhappy.

‘I’ll be fine. I’ll be with Dad. They can’t kidnap me – he’d notice. Probably before he and Bill got back here, even.’ He gave her a small smile.
‘This is a chance to get a proper look inside.’

Max gave in.

‘Then we will make a plan, yes? I will show you where you need to be looking.’

‘Done.’ Millie was relieved they’d managed to avoid having a fight. ‘What am I looking for?’

‘Do you have a pen?’

‘Yes, why?’

‘To draw a map, from what I tell you.’ Millie pulled a quizzical face. He went on, ‘You will have noticed, of course, that although I have a fine speaking voice, I am not yet
at the point where I have opposable thumbs.’

She nodded. ‘Sorry.’

Between them, they sketched out a good working plan of the building. It was a large oblong block, three storeys high, and Max knew he had come down three flights of stairs to
the lobby, so they assumed that he had been on the third floor – the top-most one. Millie knew there were two staircases: the one which Max had raced down, and one in the opposite corner of
the building, because she had cleaned the windows around them just yesterday. Max had only seen what looked like office or cupboard doors as he raced along the top corridor, unlike the
glass-fronted doors of the laboratory, so they guessed that the researchers might work up on that floor too. Neither of them knew what went on on the second floor. Millie guessed that might be
where the rodent research took place – the official purpose of the laboratory building. Max wasn’t convinced that there were any mice in the building at all. They knew no more about the
first floor; probably more offices, Millie thought. The ground floor, which she knew best, having looked in through its windows several times, housed cleaning cupboards, the big lobby and its
jungle of pot plants, plus one other room that Millie couldn’t quite remember. She must have looked glumly through its windows a dozen times, but she just couldn’t quite place what it
was. Eventually, she gave up trying, and they agreed that her plan of action was simple: clean what she was asked to clean, and don’t look too interested but pay attention to anything she
saw, in case it was useful. Don’t attract anybody’s notice. That was it.

Millie told her dad that she’d come with him tomorrow, and he had been pleased, if surprised. Max had decided to spend the night outdoors and would turn up again the next
afternoon for a report. So everything was settled quite easily and Millie gave the whole thing very little thought, which was a shame, because if she had thought for a few more minutes, she
wouldn’t have been in Bill’s van, turning into the driveway of the Haverham lab, before she remembered that the far wall of the forgotten room on the ground floor, opposite the window,
was taken up by a huge bank of television screens, connected to CCTV cameras, which covered the whole building – including, of course, the front doors.

Millie felt sweat bead on her forehead. How could she have been so stupid? This was a scientific laboratory, the chances were it contained drugs. There was a security man in
the lobby, and the building was patrolled by more of them at night – she’d seen them arriving early for a shift once. The research the lab carried out was controversial at best, and had
attracted the attention of a band of determined and angry protesters. Any one of these reasons was enough for the building to be covered in cameras. How could she have thought otherwise? Even if
she had never been there, even if she hadn’t seen the cameras, spinning slowly and silently around to keep a check on what she was doing, she should’ve realised. She was such an idiot.
Of course they knew about Max’s escape – they would have seen a tape of the whole thing. This was a trap. Max had been right all along. She wondered if they’d called the police.
Had she stolen Max, if they had stolen him in the first place? So maybe they couldn’t call the police. But the cats had been stolen abroad, if Max was anything to go by, and that might not
count. How would the police in Haverham know about a spate of Belgian cat thefts?

These thoughts fizzed around in Millie’s head, as her dad and Bill unpacked the van, filled the buckets, and went inside to find out where they were to start. The security man was the same
one who’d been there on Tuesday, and he smiled at Millie. She felt a little better as she smiled back. He wouldn’t be smiling if he knew what she’d done, surely. Unless it was
deliberate, and he was trying to put her off her guard . . .

After an hour of cleaning the inside of the windows she’d cleaned only two days before on the outside, she began to wish someone
would
come and start shouting at
her, just so the endless waiting would be over.

As it happened, she didn’t have much longer to wait. A woman came out through the nearest stairwell and said something to her dad. He nodded, looking surprised, and followed her. Five
minutes later, the same woman approached Bill, and he too disappeared. Millie looked over at the security man. He smiled again.

‘Everyone’s leaving you to do all the work today, huh?’ he said. ‘That happens to me all the time.’

‘I wonder where they’ve gone,’ Millie said, hoping she didn’t sound as desperate as she felt.

‘There’s probably some other things that need cleaning upstairs. Doors and windows and such. With the cleaners on strike, everything is getting messed up – the windows are
dirty, the rubbish is piling up—’

‘Oh, are they on strike? No wonder. The windows down here are massive – they probably got sick of cleaning them.’ Millie sounded so boring she was embarrassed. But she was
desperate to keep the conversation going to try to find out more.

‘Well, you should know, darling, you do them every week. And yes, on strike. Well, not exactly. They have been . . .’ he looked exaggeratedly from left to right ‘. . . got
at.’

‘Got at?’ asked Millie, confused.

‘Terrorised. The protesters, you know.’

‘No, what did they do?’

‘They threatened to take the cleaners’ pets from their homes while they are here.’

‘Really?’ said Millie, thinking that this sounded extremely appropriate, given what had happened to Max. Still, she reminded herself, the
cleaners
hadn’t kidnapped him,
had they? It was a bit hard on them to start pinching their dogs or gerbils – they were only cleaning, after all.

‘Yes. And the cleaners have walked out. They are not coming back until they are allowed to bring their pets to work.’

‘Er . . .’ Millie was at a loss for words. Did this man know she’d removed Max from the lab? Was that why he was saying all these things about taking pets that seemed designed
to prick her guilty conscience? He looked so friendly, though – could he be so sneaky?

‘How come they haven’t threatened you?’ she asked, determined to find out more, even if she was being lied to.

‘They don’t know who I am,’ he explained softly. ‘And’ – he looked around again – ‘I have fooled them. I don’t have a pet!’ He
exploded with laughter, as if this was the best joke he’d ever heard. Millie smiled politely.

‘So, no one’s doing the cleaning?’ she asked, trying to get back to the subject of the laboratory.

‘Nope. Just you today. I would help you, you know, but I have to answer the phones.’ Millie nodded understandingly. The phones had never rung while she’d been in earshot.

‘Cleaning windows is less boring than sitting at a desk all day,’ she said. She had found that most adults, except for her dad when he had had his computer job, spent a fair amount
of time thinking they had a worse job than anybody else they knew, so she reckoned this was a good conversation-maker. But the security man seemed unusually happy with his lot.

‘Well, I’m sure that’s true. But don’t you go feeling sorry for me. There’s some guys here have to do the night shift every week, wandering about every evening when
it’s cold and dark, with dogs and torches.’

‘But some guys get to sit around watching CCTV screens all day. That must be the best job, surely?’ Millie couldn’t believe she was saying this. Maybe she should just hold out
her hands and tell him she’d done it.

The security man’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. ‘How’d you hear about that?’ he whispered.

‘Oh, I’ve just seen the screens, you know, through the windows,’ Millie answered, thinking that if they were supposed to be a secret, they should shut the blinds. And maybe
disguise the cameras as really boring gargoyles.

‘Oh. I thought you meant Lance. You didn’t mean Lance?’

‘Who’s Lance?’

‘He’s a buddy of mine. He got fired yesterday.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ Millie’s insides were now twisting like a phone cable.

‘It’s not your fault, darling,’ he reassured her. Millie hoped this man didn’t know that it almost certainly
was
her fault. Well, hers and Max’s.

‘It was his own doing,’ the security man said irritably. ‘I told him a hundred times not to spend the day watching the wrong kind of TV. He just didn’t want to hear
it.’

‘What’s the wrong kind of TV?’ Millie asked.

‘Well, our cameras only record things at night, you see.’ He gesticulated at the camera nearest them both, to illustrate his point. ‘During the day, they just show what’s
happening right now. They don’t store the images, and the film gets wiped over straight away, because otherwise we would have hundreds of tapes of people who work here coming in and out, and
doing their jobs, and nothing else. We don’t have room for all those tapes. The screens show what we call a live feed all day, so if someone runs towards the building holding a big round
bomb, marked “BOMB”, we see them coming.’

He paused and looked down kindly at Millie. ‘That isn’t going to happen, by the way.’

She guessed she must look as bad as she felt, if he believed that the thought of cartoon bombers made her pale with fear.

‘So the tapes only get kept from overnight,’ he finished.

‘Uh huh.’ Millie thought she might actually be sick. Could it be that they didn’t have a record of Max sneaking into her bag? And that only one person might have seen it? So it
would just be her word against someone else’s?