The Ultimate Truth (23 page)

I waited a minute or two, then I crawled across to the shed on my hands and knees. Another quick look at the kitchen, then I got to my feet, opened the shed door, and went inside to get my
bike.

As I wheeled it out and scooted off down the garden path, I checked my watch once again.

9.36 p.m.

I went out through the back gate, just as I had that morning.

It seemed like a thousand years ago.

The roads through the industrial estate were dark and quiet, and as I pedalled along Sowton Way – the approach road to Sowton Lane – the only sound I could hear was
the rubbery hum of my brand-new tyres on the tarmac. It was a crystal-clear night, the air cool and fresh, and the sky was bright with stars. A pale crescent moon was rising over the distant
chimneys, bathing them in an eerie grey light. The tall chimneys looked dark and stern, like faceless sentinels.

When I got to Sowton Lane, I cycled past it for another thirty metres or so, then pulled in at the side of the road beside a five-barred wooden gate. Mason was already there, waiting for me as
we’d arranged. Big Lenny was with him, as usual. And as I got off my bike, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Evie Johnson was with them too. They were all wearing dark gear and black
hoodies – Lenny wearing his under a long black coat – and they all looked ready for action.

‘Thanks for coming,’ I said to Mason, nodding at him and Lenny. I looked over at Evie. She was leaning casually against the gate, her hands in the back pockets of her tight black
jeans.

‘I thought we might need some help,’ Mason said, glancing at Evie, then turning back to me. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’

‘No . . .’ I said, smiling at Evie. ‘No, of course I don’t mind.’

She smiled, pushed herself off the gate, and came over to me. ‘What happened to you?’ she asked, grinning as she glanced at my hair.

‘What?’ I said, reaching instinctively for my head.

‘You look like you’ve been dragged through a bush.’

As I ran my fingers through my hair, bits of lavender bush started falling out. Leaves, purple petals, broken stems . . .

‘Here, let me help you,’ Evie said.

As she stepped close to me and began brushing her fingers through my hair, carefully picking out little bits of stick and stuff, I wasn’t sure what to do. I felt awkward and slightly
embarrassed, but I also felt kind of OK.

‘It’s lavender,’ I told her, my voice oddly croaky.

‘Yeah?’

I cleared my throat. ‘I jumped off a drainpipe.’

‘Right . . .’

I looked at her.

She smiled at me.

‘It’s a good job Jaydie’s not here,’ I heard Mason say.

Evie glanced at him. ‘Who’s Jaydie?’

‘Travis’s girlfriend.’ Mason grinned. ‘She’d smack you one if she caught you running your hands through his hair.’

‘Jaydie’s not my girlfriend,’ I told Evie. ‘She’s Mason’s little sister.’

Evie shrugged. ‘Doesn’t bother me who she is.’

‘You think you’re funny, don’t you, Mason?’ I said, giving him a sideways look.

‘He’s about as funny as a kick in the head,’ Evie muttered, giving my hair a final ruffle. She stepped back and appraised her work. ‘There, that should do it.’

‘Thanks,’ I said.

She smiled and bowed her head. ‘You’re welcome.’

As we all went over to the gate, I saw Evie give Mason a dirty look, warning him to watch himself. He tried to shrug it off with a carefree grin, but he didn’t look quite as confident as
he usually did. It was the first time I’d ever seen a lack of certainty in Mason, and for a moment or two I found myself wondering what it meant . . .

Then Evie said, ‘Do you really think Bashir’s in there?’ And I refocused my mind, leaned on the gate beside her, and gazed out across the moonlit fields.

The warehouse was roughly a hundred metres away, over to our left, dimly visible in the darkness. There were no lights on at the back of the building, but a faint glow was showing from a small
window in the left-hand wall, and I could just about make out the shapes of two vehicles in the car park at the front.

‘Yeah,’ I muttered, ‘I think he’s in there.’

‘But you don’t know for sure?’ she said.

I shook my head. ‘That’s why I want to get in there.’ I looked at Mason. He was busy studying the landscape ahead of us now, his eyes taking everything in – the
warehouse, the fields, the fencing, the hedges.

‘Are your people ready?’ I asked him.

He nodded. ‘They’re in position, waiting for my signal.’

‘How many did you get in the end?’

‘About forty.’

‘And they know what to do?’

‘Make a lot of noise, chuck a few stones, but stay outside the fence.’ Still studying the field, he said, ‘Are you sure this is the only way in? I mean, if we head across the
field to the warehouse from here, we’re bound to be seen.’

‘We’re not going to head across the field, ‘ I told him. ‘We’re going to climb the gate and then follow the hedges round the edge of the field.’ I indicated
the hedge to our left, running along Sowton Way back to the corner of Sowton Lane. ‘We follow this one down to the corner, then turn right and follow the other one to the fence at the side of
the warehouse. As long as we keep in close to the hedges, we should be all right.’

All three of them were quiet for a moment as they contemplated the route I’d explained, looking down to our left, then over to the right. Eventually, one by one, they looked at each other
and nodded.

‘Any questions?’ I said.

‘I’ve got a few,’ Mason said.

‘Yeah, me too,’ Evie added. ‘In fact, come to think of it, I’ve got about a million questions.’

‘How about you, Len?’ I said, turning to Lenny. ‘Have you got any questions?’

He didn’t say anything, he just looked back at me for a moment, shrugged his shoulders, then shook his head.

‘Right then,’ I said, climbing up onto the gate, ‘that’s that sorted out. Let’s get going.’

It was impossible to tell if we were being watched or not as we crept along the hedges towards the warehouse, but by the time we’d got to the fence there were no obvious
signs that we’d been spotted. Of course, that didn’t necessarily mean that we hadn’t. But even if the Omega men
had
seen us, and were just waiting quietly to see what we
did next, there wasn’t anything I could do about it. So I didn’t bother thinking about it.

We were crouched down in the corner between the hedge and the fence now, no more than fifteen metres from the warehouse. The car park was immediately in front of us, the warehouse over to our
right. A rusty old skip full of rubble and bricks was parked in the corner of the car park, shielding us from the warehouse. As we gathered round behind the skip, Mason took a pair of wire cutters
from his pocket and passed them to Lenny. Lenny shuffled over to the far end of the skip, settled himself down on his knees, and began cutting a vertical slit in the fence.

‘All right, listen,’ I said quietly. ‘Before we go in, there’s a couple of things you all need to know.’ I looked at Evie. ‘Has Mason told you what’s
going on here?’

‘He’s given me a rough idea, yeah. I mean, I know there’s a bunch of guys in there who might or might not have Bashir. I know they might be protecting him from some bad guys,
but they might be holding him against his will. And I know we’re going to break into the warehouse and see if we can find him.’ She smiled. ‘Does that sound about
right?’

‘It’s close enough.’

‘So what else do I need to know?’ she said.

‘Well,’ I said cautiously, ‘at least one of the men inside has got a gun.’

‘They’re
all
going to have guns, Trav,’ Mason said, as if it went without saying.

‘Do you think so?’

‘You said they were professionals, didn’t you?’

‘Yeah.’

He shrugged. ‘So they’ll have guns.’

‘Right,’ I muttered, wondering why I hadn’t thought of that. ‘Well, anyway,’ I went on, ‘I just thought you ought to know what we’re up against before
we go in . . . just in case you want to change your mind or anything. I mean, I don’t expect they’ll actually start shooting—’

‘We live on the Slade, Travis,’ Evie said matter-of-factly. ‘We’re up against guns every day. It’s no big deal.’

‘We eat guns for breakfast,’ Mason added.

Evie looked at him.

‘What?’ he said, grinning at her. ‘Come on, you’ve got to admit that’s pretty funny.’

She shook her head dismissively, but I could tell she was trying hard not to smile. Mason kept on grinning at her for a second, then he looked over to see how Lenny was getting on with the
fence. The slit was about two metres high now. Easily big enough to get through, even for him.

‘That’ll do, Len,’ Mason told him. ‘Good job.’

Lenny stopped snipping and passed the wire cutters back to Mason. Mason slipped them in his pocket, then bumped fists with Lenny.

‘So,’ Mason said breezily, turning back to me and rubbing his hands, ‘are we going to do this or not?’

‘Just one more thing,’ I said. ‘I don’t know if Bashir actually needs rescuing or not. Like Evie just said, they might be holding him against his will, but it’s
equally possible that he
wants
to be with them. We won’t know which it is until we find him.’

‘
If
we find him,’ Mason said.

‘Right. But if we
do
find him, and he tells us that he’s not a prisoner and he wants to stay where he is, it’s important that we just leave it at that, OK?’

‘We take his word for it?’ Evie asked.

I nodded. ‘We don’t say anything. We don’t ask him anything. We just turn around and leave him to it.’

‘What if he
is
a prisoner?’

‘We get him out.’

‘Just like that?’ Mason said.

‘Yep.’

‘We just get him out?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Then what?’

I shrugged. ‘We’ll think of something.’

Mason laughed. ‘That’s your plan? We’ll
think
of something.’

‘Have you got a better idea?’

He looked at me for a moment or two, not quite sure what to say, then he just shrugged one shoulder, as if to say, ‘Ah, what the hell?’ and reached into his pocket and took out his
mobile. ‘Just tell me when,’ he said, thumbing the screen.

I looked at Evie and Lenny. ‘Ready?’

They both nodded.

I turned back to Mason. His thumb was poised over the screen.

I nodded at him.

He pressed a key.

Almost immediately the silence of the night was broken by the sound of forty kids making as much noise as possible. Raised voices, shouts, the stomp of running feet. It came from across the
road, and as I leaned to one side and looked through a gap in the hedge, I saw them emerging from the abandoned car-repair place where they’d been waiting for Mason’s signal – a
mob of tough-looking kids, most of them hooded up, some of them with scarves over their faces, all of them swarming across the road towards the warehouse. The noise rose and swelled as they got
closer – chanting and whooping, banging dustbin lids – and as the mob approached the double gates, some of them started throwing missiles. Stones, rocks, bricks, fireworks. I heard the
thud of bricks landing on cars, then car alarms going off, sirens wailing, lights flashing . . .

‘Come on, let’s go!’ Mason hissed, grabbing my arm.

I looked round and saw that Evie and Lenny had already slipped through the gap in the fence and were hurrying round to the back of the warehouse. I followed Mason through the gap, and we set off
after the other two.

With a bit of luck, the diversion I’d arranged with Mason would work, and all the attention inside the warehouse would be focused on the mob of kids out the front. Hopefully that was going
to give us the chance we needed to sneak in without being seen, quickly find Bashir (
if
he was there), and then sneak out again. With or without Bashir.

And after that?

Well, when I’d told Mason that I didn’t have a plan, I wasn’t being completely honest. I had a plan. I knew exactly what
I
was going to do. But it didn’t concern
Mason. It didn’t concern anyone except me and the man with the steely grey eyes.

‘It’s locked,’ Evie announced as Mason and I joined her and Lenny at the back door of the warehouse. ‘Bolted shut from the inside.’

‘No keyhole or anything?’ Mason asked, studying the solid wooden door.

‘Nope.’

‘It’s not an electric lock, is it?’ he said, looking around for an entry-code box.

‘I just
told
you, Mase,’ Evie sighed. ‘It’s bolted shut.’ She looked at me. ‘What about trying one of the windows?’

I glanced along the rear wall, checking out the windows. ‘They’re too small,’ I told her, shaking my head. ‘You and me could probably just about squeeze through, but
Lenny and Mason would never make it.’ I looked at the door. ‘We’ll have to break it down.’ I turned to Lenny. ‘Can you smash it in without making too much
noise?’

Lenny thought about it for moment, then looked at Mason.

‘He’ll do his best,’ Mason said, answering on Lenny’s behalf.

‘OK,’ I said, nodding at both of them. ‘Do it.’

As Evie moved out of the way, and Lenny lumbered up to the door, I crossed my fingers and hoped that the racket the estate kids were making would drown out the sound of Lenny breaking the door
down. That was if he
could
break it down, I suddenly thought. Maybe it wasn’t
just
bolted shut on the inside? Maybe it was secured with heavy-duty industrial bolts, or
reinforced with steel bars or something? Or maybe—

Thud!

The door was open.

While I’d been busy thinking about it – worrying about this, fretting about that – Lenny had just gone up to the door, looked at it for a moment, then slammed it open with his
shoulder. He’d hit it just hard enough to wrench out the bolts but leave the door swinging on its hinges, and he’d hardly made any noise at all.

‘Top man, Len,’ Mason said, patting Lenny’s arm as he headed for the open door.

Lenny just nodded.

Mason stepped through the doorway and paused for a moment, looking around. A wide corridor stretched out in front of him, a pale light glowing at the far end. In the shadowy light I could make
out a bare concrete floor, metal cupboards lined against the wall, and another corridor immediately to the right of the door.