Bionic Agent (12 page)

Jordan caught up with her and asked, “What happened?”

“You can guess. You’re a boy. How do boys and men solve anything? There was a lot of shouting, pushing, pulling and hitting.”

“And?”

Amy shrugged again. “That’s it. Ed and his mates ran off. I don’t know what happened to Mr. Bool. Or to his phone.”

“If I want to know any more, I’d better see Ed Hathaway.”

“Not easy,” Amy replied.

“Why?”

“He left.”

“Where did he go?”

“Newcastle.”

“Newcastle?”

“It’s a city up north,” Amy said dryly. “Even further north than Luton.”

Trying to behave like a normal boy again, he replied, “I didn’t know there was anything north of Luton, apart from the North Pole.”

“I’m going now,” Amy announced, pointing to a lane on the right. “On my own.”

Jordan came to a halt on the pavement. “Okay.”

Just before she dashed across the road, she smiled at him and said, “I’m Amy, by the way.”

He shouted after her, “See you around, Amy.”

When Jordan reported back to Unit Red, he told Angel and Winter that he’d gathered his information about Salam Bool by talking to a group of school kids. He didn’t
mention Amy. When he also told them about the car crash and the firefighter, he noticed that they exchanged a glance.

At once, Angel began to tap his computer keypad.

Winter said, “So, my guess is you want an outing to Newcastle to see this Ed Hathaway.”

Jordan nodded. “Yes.”

“I’ll find out where he lives or which school he goes to.”

“Thanks.”

Angel looked up from his screen. “I’ve got a recording I want you to listen to.”

“What is it?”

“When Ben Smith’s house collapsed, it was a female firefighter who found him,” Angel answered. “There aren’t many women in the local fire brigade so I’m
putting two and two together... But, I could be wrong. This is the recording of the rescue. Listen and tell me if you recognize her voice.” He hit the
return
key.

There was a pause in the exchange. Jordan nodded and said, “Yes. That’s her.”

“Thought so.”

Angel was about to turn off the sound file when Jordan put out his hand and said, “No. Let me hear what happened. Please.”

“All right.”

The recording ended but Jordan couldn’t speak. He felt completely churned up inside.

“You couldn’t possibly have moved,” Angel said. “She lied for some reason.”

“She’s another one who doesn’t give up,” Winter remarked.

Jordan found his voice again. “She saved my life! What’s her name?”

“You don’t need to know,” Angel replied.

“I should thank her.”

Angel shook his head. “No, you can’t. Ben died, remember. It’s very...awkward that she recognized you.”

“But she’s a hero.”

“Yes,” Angel agreed. “Hero
and
security risk.”

“Are you Ed Hathaway?” Really, Jordan didn’t need to ask. Ed still looked like the boy who had been in Ben Smith’s class a year earlier. He had the same
short silvery hair, pinched face and roguish appearance. But there was no sign of his once frothy nature.

“Maybe.”

“It’s all right,” Jordan replied, “I won’t tell anyone what you did in Hoo Marina.”

Wide-eyed, Ed exclaimed, “What? Who are you?”

“Jordan. I’m trying to find out what happened to Salam Bool. You’ll remember Mr. Bool.”

Ed’s cheeks glowed red. His mouth opened, but he didn’t say anything.

Behind Ed were the tall white railings that ran right around his new school. Jordan wasn’t sure if the spiked fence was there to keep students in or to keep everyone else out. The area had
seen better days. It was the sort of estate where a home-delivered pizza would arrive faster than an ambulance.

“Tell me, and that’ll be the end of it,” said Jordan.

“You’re not a mate of his, are you? Or in his family?”

Jordan shook his head and smiled. “Nothing like. My mum fell out with him over money. Something about gambling. She’s been trying to find him and get her own back for a year
now.”

“She’ll be lucky,” Ed muttered.

Jordan shrugged. “She’s threatening to go to the police with what we already know. And it won’t sound good. You took his phone, had a fight with him, and no one’s seen
him since. The cops’ll be round your place, kicking the door in. Not like us. We just want your side of the story.”

“Why isn’t she here?” he said, looking around.

“Working. She thought it’d be easier for me to talk to you because we’re the same sort of age.”

There was some truth in Jordan’s answer. He was exploiting his natural advantage over the police. Already, he’d got further than the official investigation into Mr. Bool because he
was the right age to chat to young people like Amy. He hoped it was going to work on Ed Hathaway as well. Of course, he also had the advantage of knowing about the teacher’s missing mobile
phone in the first place.

“But...”

“Did you come up here to Newcastle to get away from what you did?”

“I told Mum. She thought it’d be best...” He stopped and stared at Jordan. “Look. I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I didn’t do anything. Not
really.”

“You nicked his mobile.”

“That was just a prank,” Ed replied.

“But it went wrong.”

“Me and my brothers were going to have fun with it. We were going to phone his home number.”

“Dangerous. He was a big bloke, not the fun type really.”

“Yeah, well. He put me in detention and it wasn’t my fault. That’s why I was getting my own back. But the phone started ringing. Lots of times. Next thing, he was right on top
of us. We didn’t attack him. He attacked us. He was mad. Wanted his phone back.”

“What happened?”

Ed sighed. “We never meant... We were just defending ourselves. I pushed him away and he tripped over a rope. That’s all. No knives or anything.”

“And?”

“He bashed his head on one of those things you tie boats to.”

Jordan winced. “I bet that hurt.”

“More than that.”

“What? You mean, it killed him?”

“I think so.”

“How do you know?”

Ed grimaced. “He didn’t look good.”

“What did you do?”

He hesitated. “Will your mum really go to the police if I don’t tell you?”

Jordan nodded. “She’s like that.”

“All right,” Ed replied. He took a deep breath. “We were scared in case we got blamed for killing him. We were bound to. Boys always get the blame. So we covered it up. We
shoved him in an old leaky boat and pushed it out into the river. We thought it’d sink. I didn’t hear anything afterwards about him being found so I guess it worked. He must have gone
down with it. Maybe waves from the explosion swamped the boat if it didn’t sink on its own.”

Jordan had survived a similar wound to the head – and worse – but he’d been given expert medical attention. He hadn’t been pushed out in a boat and left for dead.
“What did you do with his phone?” Jordan asked.

“I threw it in the boat. It went with him.”

“Shame.”

“Why?”

“Because you found something on it, didn’t you? Pictures and stuff.”

“Yes,” Ed answered.

“What was that all about?”

“Not a clue.”

“Come on,” Jordan said. “You don’t forget when you’ve just killed someone and dumped his body.”

“I didn’t kill him. I didn’t mean to.”

“Okay. But tell me what you saw on his mobile.”

Ed took a moment to think. “There was a picture of this bloke, something about five thousand pounds and where he lived.”

“What was his name?”

“It was a long time ago.”

Jordan simply stared at Ed and waited.

“Can’t remember his first name. His last name was Dodd or Dowd or something, I think.”

“Where did he live?”

“I remember that because I’ve got an uncle there. It was somewhere in Peterborough.”

“What was his address?”

Ed exclaimed, “You’ve got to be kidding!”

“All right.”

Jordan thought the key words of
Dodd
,
Dowd
,
Peterborough
and
money
into the Unit Red computer, but the search did not bring up anything significant.

Clearly surprised by Jordan’s sudden silence, Ed prompted, “Well? I don’t know any more.”

“Sorry. I was thinking.”

“What happens now?” Ed asked him.

“Nothing. If you’ve given me all you’ve got.”

Ed raised both arms, palms upward, indicating that he had no more.

“Okay,” said Jordan. “Thanks.”

“You won’t dump me in it?”

“No,” Jordan promised. “I’m only interested in Salam Bool.” He turned his back on Ed and headed for the railway station.

On his way to Newcastle Central, Jordan called Unit Red to report on his exchange with Ed Hathaway. Angel didn’t know what to make of the contents of Mr. Bool’s phone either, but he
promised to search through databases for information on a man called Dodd or Dowd in Peterborough. He also promised to persuade a police team to look for Bool’s body.

The train trundled across one of the impressive bridges over the River Tyne. Drumming his fingers on the table, Jordan viewed the series of huge iron and concrete structures,
but he was thinking about the missing Mr. Bool. Jordan had never really imagined any teacher having a life outside of school so it had been a shock to find out that Mr. Bool was an obsessive
gambler, mixed up with a shady loan company. He remembered that the teacher had not been in school on the morning of the missing phone and the Thames explosion. Perhaps he was placing bets or
working on some money-making scheme.

The rumbling sound in the carriage changed as the train returned to solid ground and accelerated. Less interested in the industrial scenes out of the window, Jordan opened a file in his mind on
the casualties of the estuary blast. He scanned down the lists for all deaths that had occurred in boats. He wanted to know if every victim had been identified beyond doubt or whether one might
have been Salam Bool.

It was a depressing task. The register began with the crew of
Ocean Courage
. Not one of the thirty had survived. Twenty-eight of the badly burned bodies had been found in the wreckage of
the ship. Two more had been recovered from the estuary. The captain’s death was particularly sad, Jordan thought, because the voyage was his first in charge of the huge ship.

Six people in small boats had made it back to the shore. Two had not. Both of the drowned bodies had been identified by next of kin. A married couple in one of Southend’s marinas had
become trapped when their yacht submerged. The river police officers who had chased Cara Quickfall’s motor-launch had died when their patrol boat went down. Four shift workers unloading oil
at Canvey Island had died on the supertanker when it went up in flames.

Jordan saw nothing to suggest that one of these victims might have been Mr. Bool, wrongly identified as someone else. It seemed likely that what remained of his body was still in the river
somewhere – or maybe it had been swept out to sea and lost for ever.

As the train powered south, not far from York, Angel called. “I want you to get off at Peterborough,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because I’ve found a man called Vinnie Dowd. He still lives there. Winter will meet you at the station and take you to him.”

“Why me? Winter could do it on her own, couldn’t she?”

“Yes, but I’m not sure she’d be as successful. Vinnie Dowd might sympathize more with someone else who’s been disfigured.”

Keeping his voice down, Jordan said, “He’s been disfigured?”

“That’s how I found him. His hospital record says someone threw acid over him, same day as the
Richard Montgomery
went up.”

“That’s horrible. Why?”

“Over to you and Winter. But it’s worth pointing out that Bool taught chemistry, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“So he knows all about acid and no doubt he had access to it at school.”

“But...” Jordan stopped. He didn’t understand why Mr. Bool would do something like that. He didn’t know why Angel was suggesting that he might have done it.

“I’ve got a theory,” Angel said. “Winter’ll bring a photo of Salam Bool. Show it to Dowd and see if he recognizes him. Then we’ll know.”

Jordan and Winter found Vinnie Dowd pottering about in the tidy back garden of his small terraced house in a rundown suburb of Peterborough. He was blind in his left eye and
much of that side of his face had been burned. Surgery had repaired it as much as possible, but it certainly wasn’t a pretty sight. For Vinnie’s sake – and for his own –
Jordan hoped that people looked beyond surface blemishes.

Glancing round the garden, Jordan introduced himself and then asked, “Hey. Do you keep chickens down there, where it’s wired off?”

Vinnie looked him up and down, lingering on his face and artificial arm. “Yes. But, even round here, the foxes get them.”

“We had some once,” he replied. “A long time ago. And it was the same thing. But I guess foxes are just doing what they do.”

“What do you want?”

“I looked you up. Found out what happened to you. I’ve come to see if you can help me.”