Thirteen (16 page)

A waste of time.

Then, realization.

Wrapped around one of the branches was a tatty plastic bag, but it was the word printed on it that caught Adam's eye.
Silverstone
—the British Grand Prix. It was his big trip of the year, a boys' day out with his dad.

Images of his parents burst from the back of his mind: metal hospital beds with wheels, equipment that bleeped and hummed, pale skin, closed eyes. He forced himself to think of them sitting in the garden, smiling, before everything happened. But this vision fragmented away and was replaced by an anonymous hospital room.

Masking the flashlight with his hand, Adam went to the bag. There wasn't much inside, if anything.

He found half a postcard, folded over, and sixty pence, the cost of a telephone call.

Adam shone the flashlight quickly. The words
Greetings from Falmouth
and a picture of a headland and half a beach sprang out of the night.

Un-bloody-believable
. They had stayed in Falmouth when visiting Cornwall in July. Adam turned the card over. Another burst of light. “Look inside the box you used when she lost her phone.”

Adam thought.
She
must be Megan—Megan had lost her phone a few weeks ago. He remembered the day: everyone had been unsympathetic, saying that it was a crappy phone anyway. Megan had only realized because they were late and Adam had left his phone in his locker at school. So they had to use a phone box, one of the old red ones, for the first time ever. It was on the far side of the park by the war memorial.

Adam moved quickly. His head was buzzing. This guy must have been watching them for
months
.

Adam tried not to use the flashlight, but sometimes had to switch it on, its beam leaping up and down as he ran. He went as fast as possible, wary of anyone waiting to grab him. Despite being a good cross-country runner, he was out of breath when he reached the path behind the telephone box.

A bus and a few cars trundled lazily past. Adam found them vaguely threatening, imagining people looking at him from the windows, or getting out and pursuing him like zombies in a tacky horror film. He darted into the old-fashioned red telephone box, struggling to pull the door closed behind him.

The area around the phone was colorfully decorated with ads for girls, as well as three cards for taxis, one for furniture repairs and one for home removals.

Adam looked lower down: more girls of all shapes and sizes. Then a phone number next to the initials ATG & MEJ. Adam's and Megan's initials.

Adam rang the number.

“It's me.”

“Stay there. I'll be on a bike.”

The line went dead. Adam imagined himself riding away on a bicycle's handlebars. Then there was a tap at the window of the phone box. Adam would have preferred to see a gang of brutal
robbers with knives rather than the two young policemen who stood there, a police car behind them.

“Can we have a word with you, lad?”

Adam looked through the glass. These were not aging coppers he could outrun; they were young and tough and probably much faster than him.

“And can we have your name, please?”

Adam couldn't think of a convincing lie. He
must
get better at lying. “Jim,” he mumbled.
Jim. How idiotic
.

The policemen looked at one another. One of them turned his back and spoke into his radio. Adam clearly heard his real name along with a lot of jargon.

“I'm just going home.”
What an idiot. This is it. Arrest. Prison. Or death
.

One policeman opened the door but kept Adam trapped inside the phone box; the other returned and asked, “Are you Adam Grant?”

“I have money. Lots of it. Just let me go.” Adam pulled out a handful of notes.

The policemen didn't even look at the money. “You're coming with us.”

Adam saw a motorcycle pull up at the curb. It wasn't a powerful machine, little more than a scooter, but it would seat two people. A seventeen-year-old boy stepped off, carrying one helmet and wearing another.

“Sorry, mate,” came a muffled voice. “This kid's my brother.”

“Please stand back, sir,” said the policeman who had been on his radio. “We have reason to believe this boy is wanted.”

From inside the helmet came another attempt: “No way! This squirt is always running about at night, but he's all right.”

More words went into the radio and some came back, one of which sounded like
Hatfield
. There was something about injuries. Adam bore clear evidence of facial wounds from the car accident.

“Sir,” the policeman said to the older boy, “you're welcome
to follow us to the station, but the boy must be brought in for questioning.”

In an instant of blurred action, Simon swung the spare helmet into the policeman's cheek, knocking him backward, then sending him to the ground with a kick to the chest.

The other officer stepped forward, and Adam wriggled out of the phone box. He dashed toward the bike, grabbing the helmet as he passed. As Simon backed away the policeman reached out, but Simon twisted him around, dragged his feet from under him and thrust him to the pavement.

Simon ran across, threw a leg over the bike, kicked down and pulled away in a mist of exhaust, Adam clinging on the back.

The policemen could only watch.

A radio appeal went out immediately and was heard by a police officer sitting at a red light as the bike passed. “That's that one they've just mentioned,” the driver said, looking at the bike and hearing its squealing engine.

Accelerator down. Lights on. Radio contact. Other cars were being called in.

Simon wound past a traffic island and went the wrong way up a road, then down side streets, angling left and right. But he couldn't escape: there was more than one car in pursuit now, and the bike didn't have enough power.

“Hold on,” he shouted.

Adam pushed his knees close to the bike and wrapped his arms around Simon. He realized that the road they were on would lead them back to Paradise Fields, but Simon didn't slow as the turn came. From three hundred yards behind, the nearest police car saw the bike disappear into the park.

Trees and benches whistled past Adam as they sped down the main path, and then—with the lights off—across the field, dancing dots of light in the distance edging closer and closer. They went past the bathrooms and sundial, then, to Adam's amazement, when the road was at last in view, Simon cut the engine.

Adam could only hear the whistling of tires as the bike
drifted out of the park and squeaked across the empty road. Then they went down some steps at the side of a house; Adam bumped in and out of his seat, struggling to stay in place. Exhausted, he was hauled off the back.

Simon wheeled the bike, quietly, into a corner and covered it with a tatty sheet.

Adam was about to speak, but Simon put his finger to his lips, shook his head and beckoned Adam to follow him behind the houses.

Three minutes and five houses later, Adam was led through a rotten and scuffed back door. He didn't know whether he was more worried about the uncertainty that lay ahead of him or the threat that pursued him.
Is this a trick?

The hall and stairway were dirty and undecorated. The carpet was ripped and threadbare in places, and brown wallpaper hung in patches that vaguely resembled continents. The door on the first floor was open, laughter spilling out into the hallway, and Adam smelt a sweet odor that he didn't recognize. Loud heavy metal music thumped from another room.

At the top of four flights of stairs they reached a plain brown door. Perhaps he would be grabbed and tortured to death? Dreadful images cartwheeled through his fatigued mind.

Simon opened the door; Adam hesitated.

“Look,” whispered Simon in a low monotone, “you'll be free to leave at any time. D'you really think that if I wanted to kill you, I couldn't have done it already?”

Adam gave a tiny nod and followed Simon inside.

The flat had high ceilings, with crown moldings and fireplaces that betrayed it as part of a once-grand house that had clearly fallen into disrepair and become a squat. There was a chipped table in the middle of the room and two or three chairs with the flowery patterns that old people liked. Simon led him past an old, chain-operated toilet and into a stale bedroom. Being with Simon in the flat seemed odd, but being in a bedroom was creepy, even for Adam.

“Look,” started Adam, hesitating again. “I don't . . .”

“Please be sensible. Why is this room more dangerous that that one? I could have knocked you out and dragged you in here.”

Simon then prodded open a door in the ceiling, and a rickety metal ladder slid down. It looked as if it led to the loft. “We're going up here.” He sounded so much older than seventeen.

I must be mad
, thought Adam, as he followed Simon up the creaking metal steps. Simon pulled the ladder up behind them, and in one movement the door snapped shut, leaving the room in complete darkness. Adam closed his eyes for an instant and the same blackness remained. He could hear Simon moving away from him.

What was I thinking? I've been so stupid
.

Coron went down the stairs again and knelt before the Master.

For a time he almost dreamed. Ghostly men with no eyes and bony faces swarmed around a rusting tractor on a farm. Dark clouds crackled overhead. Birds swept down on a scarecrow, pecking open its stomach. Worms poured out of the ground, which became a sea of wriggling slime.

Then a train appeared, carrying children with no faces, and standing at the back of the final car was the Master.

Coron's eyes flicked open. The Master was before him. Immediately. Completely. Screeching and thumping continued in his ears, and somewhere in the distance he thought he heard crying.

“I enjoyed your punishment.” The Master's voice was pitched even higher than before, almost feminine. “I was with you. I am always with you.”

“Master, I empty myself for you.” Coron bowed his head. He heard screeching in one ear, thumping in the other.

The Master continued. “Adam is the one. The old rebellious god is using him to torment us.”

The Master was coming closer to Coron, alongside him; whispering, touching.

“He must be sacrificed publicly. Just as two thousand years
ago there was a sacrifice on a hill.” Lips were tickling Coron's ear. “He must be taken to the highest point in the city and sacrificed. And at that moment our reign will begin.”

Coron imagined the sharp triangular building pointing up into the sky and Adam, arms outstretched, secured at the very top. A glass shard piercing the Imposter for all to see.

The Master was seeping into Coron. Dark blood pulsed through him, turning arteries and veins to cracked black channels.

“I am here.” The voice was in Coron's right ear.

“I am here.” The voice was in Coron's left ear.

Then behind.

Then deep inside his chest. “I am here.” Then: “Find Adam. Bring him to us. Sacrifice him on the eve of our new kingdom.”

“Yes, I will please us,” Coron murmured.

He felt tugging and twitching as the Master left him.

A wispy swirl drifted away across the room and noise became louder: he imagined helicopters and roaring and the clanging of pipes. Louder and louder.

He saw the train again. This time there were faces.

No—one face.

Again and again and again, looking out from every car: Adam.

Seagulls screeched as they curved and twisted above a vast port. Below them, thousands of containers were chaotically colorful. In the distance, nearly thirty cranes pecked at the boxes, lifting them from huge ships.

Each container was twenty feet long and eight feet wide; three-and-a-half million of them passed through the port of Felixstowe every year.

Like ants with leaves, trucks shuffled and shunted the containers. On one vehicle was a blue one, plain apart from letters and numbers at the top right. It was one container among millions.

Inside this particular box, wooden crates were stacked from floor to ceiling. To a seagull, this was a tiny detail; there were thousands of wooden crates and thousands of containers in a port with a quayside over a mile long.

Two of these wooden crates had traveled over eleven thousand miles, criss-crossing the globe on their way to Felixstowe, now nearly at the end of their journey.

The crates were destined for a remote address about a hundred miles north of London.

Clunk
. The container was dropped into place.

Open the crate, open the crate
, the seagulls seemed to cry.

Inside the crates were explosives and the other materials necessary for bomb making. There was enough material here to destroy a small town—or the center of a large city.

Simon switched on the light, a single bare bulb.

Adam saw they were in a large loft space. He struggled to take in his surroundings. The room had been half boarded over, but in places he saw thin yellow insulation fiber between the roof beams. His eye was drawn to a small table in the middle of the space, scattered with a handful of papers and maps. Everything there was to do with Adam. His stomach suddenly felt very empty. “What the hell is going on? This is
bloody
wrong,” he muttered.

There was one other small desk with a laptop on it, and a thin mattress and duvet. Next to that was a small fridge, several bottles of water and a bucket with a sealed top.

“You're a
weirdo
.”

Simon spoke. “You can leave when you like, but hear me out.”

Adam pulled his fingers into fists, though more for show than anything. Odd though it was, Adam didn't feel scared. This boy looked so
normal
. He was adult height and broad across the shoulders, but could have passed for a sixth-former. Adam couldn't work it out. He couldn't make up any story that would explain what was going on. “This is seriously messed up.”