Everyone knew about the man in the white car.
He was in his twenties, bald, and had two broken stumps where his front teeth should have been and five metal studs in his ear. He didn’t advertise his name. When people talked about him, they called him Skoda – after the make of his car. But there were some who said that his name was Jake and he had once been at Brookland. If so, he had come back like an unwelcome ghost; here one minute, vanishing the next – somehow always a few seconds ahead of any passing police car or over-inquisitive teacher.
Skoda sold drugs. He sold soft drugs to the younger kids and harder stuff to any of the sixth-formers stupid enough to buy it. It seemed incredible to Alex that Skoda could get away with it so easily, dealing his little packets in broad daylight. But of course there was a code of honour in the school. No one turned anyone into the police, not even a rat like Skoda. And there was always the fear that if Skoda went down, some of the people he supplied – friends, classmates – might go with him.
Drugs had never been a huge problem at Brookland, but recently that had begun to change. A clutch of seventeen-year-olds had started buying Skoda’s goods and, like a stone dropped into a pool, the ripples had rapidly spread. There had been a spate of thefts, as well as one or two bullying incidents – younger children being forced to bring in money for older kids. The stuff Skoda was selling seemed to get more expensive the more you bought of it – and it hadn’t been cheap at the start.
Alex watched as a heavy-shouldered boy with dark hair and serious acne lumbered over to the car, paused by the window and then continued on his way. He felt a sudden jolt of anger. The boy’s name was Colin and just twelve months ago he had been one of Alex’s best friends. In fact, Colin had been popular with everyone. But then everything had changed. He had become moody and withdrawn. His work had gone downhill. Suddenly nobody had wanted to know him – and this was the reason. Alex had never thought much about drugs, apart from knowing that he would never take them himself. But he could see that the man in the white car wasn’t just poisoning a handful of dumb kids. He was poisoning the whole school.
A policeman on foot patrol appeared, walking towards the gate. A moment later, the white car was gone, black smut bubbling from a faulty exhaust. Alex was on his bike before he knew what he was doing, pedalling fast out of the playground, swerving round the school secretary, who was also on her way home.
“Not too fast, Alex!” she called out, and sighed when he ignored her. Miss Bedfordshire had always had a soft spot for Alex without knowing quite why. And she alone in the school had wondered if there hadn’t been more to his absence that the doctor’s note had suggested.
The white Skoda accelerated down the road, turning left, then right, and Alex thought he was going to lose it. But then it twisted through the maze of back streets that led up to the King’s Road and hit the inevitable four o’clock traffic jam, coming to a halt about two hundred metres ahead.
The average speed of traffic in London is, at the start of the twenty-first century, lower than it used to be in Victorian times. During normal working hours, any bicycle will beat any car on just about any journey at all. And Alex wasn’t riding just any bike. He still had his Condor Junior Roadracer, hand-built for him in the workshop that had been open for business in the same street in Holborn for more than fifty years. He’d recently had it upgraded with an integrated brake and gear-lever system fitted to the handlebar, and he only had to flick his thumb to feel the bike click up a gear, the lightweight titanium sprockets spinning smoothly beneath him.
He caught up with the car just as it turned the corner and joined the rest of the traffic on the King’s Road. He would just have to hope that Skoda was going to stay in the city, but somehow Alex didn’t think it likely that he would travel too far. The drug dealer hadn’t chosen Brookland School as a target simply because he’d been there. It had to be somewhere in his general neighbourhood – not too close to home but not too far either.
The lights changed and the white car jerked forward, heading west. Alex was pedalling slowly, keeping a few cars behind, just in case Skoda happened to glance in his mirror. They reached the corner known as World’s End and suddenly the road was clear and Alex had to switch gears again and pedal hard to keep up. The car drove on, through Parson’s Green and down towards Putney. Alex twisted from one lane to another, cutting in front of a taxi and receiving the blast of a horn as his reward. It was a warm day and he could feel his French and history homework dragging down his back. How much further were they going? And what would he do when they got there? Alex was beginning to wonder if this had been a good idea when the car turned off and he realized they had arrived.
Skoda had pulled into a rough tarmac area, a temporary carpark next to the River Thames, not far from Putney Bridge. Alex stayed on the bridge, allowing the traffic to roll past, and watched as the drug dealer got out of his car and began to walk. The area was being redeveloped, another block of prestige flats rising up to bruise the London skyline. Right now, the building was no more than an ugly skeleton of steel girders and prefabricated concrete slabs. It was surrounded by a swarm of men in hard hats. There were bulldozers, cement mixers and, towering above them all, a huge canary-yellow crane. A sign read:
Alex wondered if Skoda had some sort of business on the site. He seemed to be heading for the entrance. But then he turned off. Alex watched him, puzzled.
The building site was wedged in between the bridge and a cluster of modern buildings. There was a pub, then what looked like a brand-new conference centre, and finally a police station with a carpark half-filled with official cars. But right next to the building site, sticking out into the river, was a wooden jetty with two cabin cruisers and an old iron barge quietly rusting in the murky water. Alex hadn’t noticed the jetty at first, but Skoda walked straight onto it, then climbed onto the barge. He opened a door and disappeared inside. Was this where he lived? It was late in the day. Somehow, Alex doubted he was about to set off on a pleasure cruise down the River Thames.
He got back on his bike and cycled slowly to the end of the bridge, and then down towards the carpark. He left the bike and his backpack out of sight and continued on foot, moving more slowly as he approached the jetty. He wasn’t afraid of being caught. This was a public place and even if Skoda did reappear, there would be nothing he could do. But he was curious. Just what was the drug dealer doing onboard a barge? It seemed a bizarre place to have stopped. Alex still wasn’t sure what he was going to do, but he wanted to have a look inside. Then he would decide.
The wooden jetty creaked under his feet as he stepped onto it. The barge was called Blue Shadow but there was little blue left in the flaking paint, the rusty ironwork and the dirty, oil-covered decks. The barge was about ten metres long and very square, with a single cabin in the centre. It was lying low in the water and Alex guessed that most of the living quarters would be underneath. He knelt down on the jetty and pretended to tie his shoelaces, hoping to look through the narrow, slanting windows. But all the curtains were drawn. What now?
The barge was moored on one side of the jetty. The two cruisers were side by side on the other. Skoda wanted privacy – but he must also need light, and there would be no need to draw the curtains on the far side with nothing there apart from the river. The only trouble was, to look in the other windows Alex would have to climb onto the barge itself. He considered briefly. It had to be worth the risk. He was near enough to the building site. Nobody was going to try to hurt him with so many people around.
He placed one foot on the deck, then slowly transferred his weight onto it. He was afraid that moving the barge would give him away. Sure enough, the barge dipped under his weight; but Alex had chosen his moment well. A police launch was sailing past, heading up the river and back into town. The barge bobbed naturally in its wake and by the time it settled Alex was onboard, crouching next to the cabin door.
Now he could hear music coming from inside. The heavy beat of a rock band. He did
n’t want to do it, but he knew there was only one way to look in. He tried to find an area of the deck that wasn’t too covered in oil, then lay flat on his stomach. Clinging onto the handrail, he lowered his head and shoulders over the side of the barge and shifted himself forward so that he was hanging almost upside-down over the water.
He was right. The curtains on this side of the barge were open. Looking through the dirty glass of the window, he could see two men. Skoda was sitting on a bunk, smoking a cigarette. There was a second man, blond-haired and ugly, with twisted lips and three days’ stubble, wearing a torn sweatshirt and jeans, making a cup of coffee at a small stove. The music was coming from a ghetto-blaster perched on a shelf. Alex looked around the cabin. Apart from two bunks and the miniature kitchen, the barge offered no living accommodation at all. Instead it had been converted for another purpose. Skoda and his friend had turned it into a floating laboratory.
There were two metal work-surfaces, a sink and a pair of electric scales. Everywhere there were test-tubes and Bunsen burners, flasks, glass pipes and measuring spoons. The whole place was filthy – obviously neither of the men cared about hygiene – but Alex knew that he was looking into the heart of their operation. This was where they prepared the drugs they sold; cut them down, weighed them and packaged them for delivery to local schools. It was an incredible idea – to put a drugs factory on a boat, almost in the middle of London and only a stone’s throw away from a police station. But at the same time, it was a clever one. Who would have looked for it here?
The blond man suddenly turned round and Alex hooked his body up and slithered backwards onto the deck. For a moment he was dizzy. Hanging upside-down, the blood had drained into his head. He took a couple of breaths, trying to collect his thoughts. It would be easy enough to walk over to the police station and tell the officer in charge what he had seen. The police could take over from there.
But something inside Alex rejected the idea. Maybe that was what he would have done a few months before. Let someone else take care of it. But he hadn’t cycled all this way just to call in the police. He thought back to his first sighting of the white car outside the school gates. He remembered Colin, his friend, shuffling over to it and felt once again a brief blaze of anger. This was something he wanted to do himself.
What could he do? If the barge had been equipped with a plug, Alex would have pulled it out and sunk the entire thing. But of course it wasn’t as easy as that. The barge was tied to the jetty by two thick ropes. He could untie them – but that wouldn’t help either. The barge would drift away – but this was Putney; there were no whirlpools or waterfalls. Skoda would simply turn the engine on and cruise back again.
Alex looked around him. On the building site, the day’s work was coming to an end. Some of the men were already leaving and, as he watched, he saw a trapdoor open about a hundred metres above him and a stocky man begin the long climb down from the top of the crane. Alex closed his eyes. A whole series of images had suddenly flashed into his mind, like different sections of a jigsaw.
The barge. The building site. The police station. The crane with its great hook dangling underneath the jib.
And Blackpool funfair. He’d gone there once with his housekeeper, Jack Starbright, and had watched as she’d won a teddy bear, hooking it out of a glass case with a mechanical claw and carrying it over to a chute.
Could it be done? Alex looked again, working out the angles. Yes. It probably could.
He stood up and crept back across the deck to the door that Skoda had entered. There was a length of wire lying to one side and he picked it up, then wound it several times round the handle of the door. He looped the wire over a hook in the wall and pulled it tight. The door was effectively locked. There was a second door at the back of the boat. Alex secured that one with his own bicycle padlock. As far as he could see, the windows were too narrow to crawl through. There was no other way in or out.
He crept off the barge and back onto the jetty. Then he untied it, leaving the thick rope loosely curled up beside the metal pegs – the stanchions – that had secured it. The river was still. It would be a while before the barge drifted away.
He straightened up. Satisfied with his work so far, he began to run.
HOOKED
The entrance to the building site was crowded with construction workers preparing to go home. Alex was reminded of Brookland an hour earlier. Nothing really changed when you got older – except that maybe you weren’t given homework. The men and women drifting out of the site were tired, in a hurry to be away. That was probably why none of them tried to stop Alex as he slipped in among them, walking purposefully as if he knew where he was going, as if he had every right to be there.
But the shift wasn’t completely finished yet. Other workers were still carrying tools, stowing away machinery, packing up for the night. They were all wearing protective headgear and, seeing a pile of plastic helmets, Alex snatched one up and put it on. The great sweep of the block of flats that was being built loomed up ahead of him. To pass through it he was forced into a narrow corridor between two scaffolding towers. Suddenly a thick-set man in white overalls stepped in front of him, blocking his way.
“Where are you going?” he demanded.
“My dad…” Alex gestured vaguely in the direction of another worker and kept walking. The trick worked. The man didn’t challenge him again.
He was heading for the crane. It was standing in the open, the high priest of the construction. Alex hadn’t realized how very tall it was until he reached it. The supporting tower was bolted into a massive block of concrete. The tower was very narrow – once he had squeezed through the iron girders he could reach out and touch all four sides. A ladder ran straight up the centre. Without stopping to think – if he thought about it he might change his mind – Alex began to climb.
It’s only a ladder, he told himself. You’ve climbed ladders before. You’ve got nothing to worry about.
But this was a ladder with three hundred rungs. If Alex let go or slipped, there would be nothing to stop him falling to his death. There were rest platforms at intervals but Alex didn’t dare stop to catch his breath. Somebody might look up and see him. And there was always a chance that the barge, loose from its moorings, might begin to drift.
After two hundred and fifty rungs, the tower narrowed. Alex could see the crane’s control cabin directly above him. He looked back down. The men on the building site were suddenly very small and far away. He climbed the last stretch of ladder. There was a trapdoor over his head, leading into the cabin. But the trapdoor was locked.
Fortunately, Alex was ready for this. When MI6 had sent him on his first mission, they had given him a number of gadgets – he couldn’t exactly call them weapons – to help him out of tight corners. One of these was a tube marked ZIT-CLEAN, FOR HEALTHIER SKIN. But the cream inside the tube did much more than clean up spots.
Although Alex had used most of it, he had managed to hold onto the last remnants and often carried the tube with him, as a sort of souvenir. He had it in his pocket now. Holding onto the ladder with one hand, he took the tube out with the other. There was very little of the cream left but Alex knew that a little was all he would need. He opened the tube, squeezed some of the cream onto the lock and waited. There was a moment’s pause, then a hiss and a wisp of smoke. The cream was eating into the metal. The lock sprang open. Alex pushed back the trapdoor and climbed the last few rungs. He was in.
He had to close the trapdoor again to create enough floor space to stand on. He found himself in a square metal box, about the same size as a sit-in arcade game. There was a pilot’s chair with two joysticks – one on each arm – and, instead of a screen, a floor-to-ceiling window with a spectacular view of the building site, the river and the whole of west London. A small computer monitor had been built into one corner and, at knee level, there was a radio transmitter.
The joysticks on the arms were surprisingly uncomplicated. Each had just six buttons. Ther
e were even helpful diagrams to show what they did. The right hand would lift the hook up and down. The left hand would move it along the jib – closer to or further from the cabin. The left hand also controlled the whole top of the crane, rotating it 360 degrees. It couldn’t have been much simpler. Even the start button was clearly labelled. A big button for a big toy. Everything about the crane reminded Alex of an oversized Meccano kit.
He pushed the button and felt power surge into the control cabin. The computer lit up with a graphic of a barking dog as the warm-up program came into life. Alex eased himself into the operator’s chair. There were still twenty or thirty men on the site. Looking down between his knees, he could see them moving silently far below. Nobody had noticed that anything was wrong. But he knew he still had to move fast.
He pressed the green button on the right-hand control – green for go – then touched his fingers against the joystick and pushed. Nothing happened! Alex frowned. Maybe it was going to be more complicated than he’d thought. What had he missed? He rested his hands on the joysticks, looking left and right for another control. His right hand moved slightly and suddenly the hook soared up from the ground. It was working!
Unknown to Alex, when he gripped the handles of the joysticks, heat sensors concealed inside had read his body temperature and activated the crane. All modern cranes have the same security system built into them, in case the operator has a heart attack and falls against the controls. There can be no accidents. Body heat is needed to make the crane work.
Luckily for him, this crane was a Liebherr 154 EC-H, one of the most modern in the world. The Liebherr is incredibly easy to use – and remarkably accurate. Now Alex pushed sideways with his left hand and gasped as the crane swung round. In front of him he could see the jib stretching out, swinging high over the rooftops of London. The more he pushed, the faster the crane went. The movement couldn’t have been smoother. The Liebherr 154 has a fluid coupling between the electric motor and the gears so that it never jolts or shudders – it glides. Alex found a white button under his thumb and pressed it. The movement stopped at once.