Another drone started, another competitor, another zoom, another crazy jump, freestyle, then another.
On the last jump a miracle happened. I saw Kat. She was only a few metres away from me, up front by the railing, staring up at the jumpers. Her eyes and mouth were wide and round like three flying saucers. I went up to her and pulled the sleeve of her furcollared jacket. She didn’t notice at first. I pulled it again. She spun round. Her eyes opened wider, then scrunched up, and her face folded up small and mean and she bellowed so loud in my ear it hurt.
‘Bloody hell, Ted! What are you doing here?’
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TWENTY-EIGHT
Meetings
‘K at,’ I said. My head went off to one side. Even though Kat’s voice was like a supersonic boom splitting my eardrum, I was glad. Mr Shepherd says to remember to smile when you greet people, so I smiled. ‘Kat.’
Kat looked all around. Her voice dropped to a hiss. ‘Are you on your own?’
‘Yes.’
‘Auntie Glo – Mum – they’re not with you?’
‘No.’
‘They’re at home still?’
‘Yes.’
‘You didn’t give me away?’
‘No.’
She hugged me. ‘Go, bro. So where do they think we are?’
My hand flapped. I stopped it by holding it down with my other hand. ‘Not at Tiffany’s, Kat,’ I said.
‘They think we’ve gone swimming.’
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Kat looked at me, her head wagging like one of those toys that sit in the backs of cars. ‘Another lie, Ted. One of these days you’ll be nearly normal.’
I told her about finding my way on the tube. How I’d cracked the missing letters. How I’d phoned Frontline Security and spoken to the temp.
‘I met her,’ Kat said. ‘I went round there in person. Her name’s Claudette. She smokes Charisma cigarettes.’
‘She mentioned you,’ I said. ‘She said you’d been looking for the same man. And Kat . . .’
‘What?’
‘That was a good lie you told.’
‘Which one?’
‘The one about the asthma inhaler.’
‘Yeah. I was proud of that. It worked, too. She told me his name, Christy, and where he was. Then she told me all about her love life. She said she was bored as hell. She filed her nails, chewed gum and smoked, all at once. And guess what else?’
‘What?’
‘She offered me a fag.’
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‘Hrumm.’
‘I took it, too.’
‘Hrumm.’
‘Don’t hrumm me, Ted. I didn’t smoke it. Not really. I had a puff or two. But it wasn’t my brand. It tasted like cowshed.’
We walked around the first hall together. Kat didn’t seem to mind me being there. Her eyes darted everywhere. She whispered, ‘Oh, what I’d do to have one of my own!’ She starting picking up the biker language. ‘ Honda’s VFR . . . Buell’s Firebolt . . . Guzzi,’ she muttered, dragging me around the stands. I could hardly keep up. She pointed at the metallic paintwork, admiring the biggest, fastest models. She was in Biker Paradise. I was in Biker Hell. Why, I wondered, couldn’t we have tracked the strange man to somewhere more tranquil? A flower or antiques show, maybe? Or somewhere really interesting, like the Science Museum?
Then we saw him.
Him. He was standing six metres away, in the same clothes he’d worn on the day at the London Eye, 221
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minus the jacket, talking into a two-way radio. Kat dragged me behind a stand. I tugged away from her.
‘Don’t let him see you,’ she hissed.
‘Why not?’
‘I’m handling this one myself.’
‘But—’
‘No buts.’
‘I’m coming too, Kat.’
‘No. You’re not. That’s an order.’
‘An order?’
‘Yeah. I can give them. Because I’m older.’
‘I’m wiser. You said.’
‘Rubbish.’
‘You did, Kat. You said you needed my brains.’
Kat’s nostrils quivered. She does that when she’s about to erupt like a super-volcano. Then she forgot and gripped me instead. ‘He’s walking this way,’ she whispered.
He was right in front of us.
Kat stepped forward. ‘Excuse me, sir!’ she called.
The man was talking into his radio. He turned 222
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round, saw Kat, put up a hand and went on talking. We waited.
‘Over and out,’ he said, into the radio. He stared straight at Kat. ‘What can I do for you, young lady?’
he said. ‘Are you lost?’
Then he smiled. It was a smile I didn’t like. One eyebrow went up, his head tilted, he looked Kat up and down. Then he noticed me. My hand flapped up and my head was off to the side. His eyes opened wide and his mouth parted slightly, then he looked over his shoulder and shifted from one foot to the other. A second later his face changed back to a smile, a nanosecond flicker.
‘You lost?’ he repeated.
Kat smiled back. ‘No,’ she said.
‘On you go, then. Have fun.’
‘ We’re not lost,’ Kat explained. ‘But we know somebody who is.’
‘Oh?’
‘We thought you might be able to help.’
‘If you’ve lost somebody, go to the information desk. They’ll make an announcement.’
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‘He didn’t get lost here. He got lost two days ago. At the London Eye.’
The man shrugged. ‘So?’
‘I mean really lost. The police are looking for him. It was just after you came up to us and gave us that ticket. Remember?’
The man stared at us for a long time. I looked at his eyes. They narrowed slightly. The pupils seemed to get smaller.
‘The Eye . . .’ he said. ‘So that’s where I’ve seen you before. I never forget a face.’
‘You remember?’
‘Now I do. I’m frightened of heights, you see. I get terrible vertigo. You’re the kids I gave the ticket to, aren’t you? But I don’t know anything about your lost friend. Fancy our meeting up again. Coincidence, huh?’
I was about to tell him about the letters on his T-shirt, but Kat elbowed me, which means ‘Shut up’.
‘Yeah. Coincidence,’ she said.
‘D’you like motorbikes?’
‘Yeah,’ Kat said. ‘They’re great.’
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‘It’s a fantastic show this year. Best ever. Did you see the freestyle jumps?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Did you like them?’
‘They were awesome.’
‘If I were you, I’d go back to Hall Two. They’re giving lessons on the lighter scooters in a minute or two.’
‘Really?’
‘You’ll be zooming around the cones in no time at all.’
‘Honest?’
‘Sure thing. Off you go. Talk to my mate John in there. He’ll get you on a bike first if you mention me.’
‘Hey – thanks.’
‘Don’t mention it. I hope you find your friend.’ He saluted us with his radio, smiled and walked off.
‘Hrumm,’ I said.
Kat’s head went off to one side. Her face fell.
‘Hell,’ she said.
We stood together, jostled by passers-by, and 225
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watched the strange man disappear into the crowd, just as he’d done at the London Eye.
‘Dead end,’ Kat said. ‘I might have guessed.’
‘Guessed what?’ I asked.
‘It was the road to nowhere.’
‘The road to nowhere,’ I repeated.
‘Stop repeating everything I say! Let’s check out those scooter less
ons.’
She dragged me back to the second hall and found the man called John. I watched as she mounted a scooter, helmeted. She rode away. She wobbled, swerved, revved and giggled. My hand flapped up every time she turned because it looked like she was going to come off and break her neck. She wound around the cones and gathered speed. I watched. I shut my eyes and put my hand in my jacket pocket. Then I thought.
Salim vanishing. The police searching.
Aunt Gloria wailing. Mum raging.
Kat crying. Me lying.
The strange man . . . His face and eyes when he first saw us . . . The girl who did the first jump . . . 226
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Vertigo and claustrophobia . . . My brain wrreeurred like the bikes.
I opened my eyes.
Kat got off the scooter. She gave back the helmet. She came up to me, smiling with wide open eyes.
‘Ted, that was great. You should try it.’
I shook my head. I quoted the graffiti I’d seen on the tube. ‘No way.’
‘I’ve been on that bike and I’ve been round those cones, Ted. And d’you know what?’
‘What?’
‘When I’m on the bike, that’s when I can think.’
‘Think?’
‘Yeah. I was on the bike and I couldn’t hear the noise. The voices faded. I was on my own. Really on my own. All I could hear were my thoughts. My thoughts about Salim. That’s when I knew it, Ted.’
‘Knew what?’
‘Knew he was lying. That man, Christy. He was lying.’
I nodded. I had reached the same conclusion via a process of deductive thought. Our minds had met, 227
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which is a way to say that we were thinking the same thing at the same time, which was a rare thing between Kat and me. ‘Yes, Kat. He was lying.’
Maybe it was because I’d become a liar myself that day. They say it takes one to know one. I’d known almost as soon as he left us that he’d lied. It wasn’t so much what he’d said as how he’d tried to distract us from what we wanted to know. He was a mini Coriolis force, trying to deflect us. There’d been another thing, a contradiction. At the London Eye he’d said he’d decided against the ride because he was frightened of closed-in spaces: claustrophobia. Today he’d said he was frightened of heights: vertigo.
‘We’ve got to find him again,’ Kat said, ‘and make him tell us the truth.’
‘Yes, Kat. The truth.’
‘We’re a team, you and I. Let’s go, Ted.’
228
TWENTY-NINE
Pursuit
B ut we couldn’t find him.
The exhibition hall was full to bursting. My hand flapped so much that Kat told me to shove it in under my jacket. By now she was reverting to mean, mad Miss Katastrophe and our minds were at polar extremes. We ended up back at the entrance. There were several guards on duty, but the strange man wasn’t among them. Kat approached a woman guard, who was in the middle of searching somebody’s bag.
‘ ’Scuse, miss,’ Kat said.
The woman looked round, lips turned down.
‘What?’ she snapped.
‘D’you know where Christy is?’
‘Christy? What’s it to you?’
‘He’s a friend. I’ve a message for him.’
‘A message?’
‘An important message.’
‘What about?’
‘It’s private.’
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‘Private?’ The woman gave the handbag she was searching back to the owner. ‘He’s just radioed. He says he’s got a stomach bug. He’s leaving for the day. Which means me and my two mates, here, we’re on our own, right? And we’ve got no time to stand blathering to his friends. Right?’
‘Right,’ said Kat.
‘With him it’s always the same. Sick this, dentist that, dead uncle the other. Never rains but it pours.’
Her lips went down. She shook her head. ‘Ha-ha. Just like his name. If you do catch him up on the way to the tube, give him a message from me. I’m sick of him being sick. He needn’t bother coming in tomorrow. He’s fired.’
‘Fired?’ I said, thinking of people being burned on the stake in olden days.
‘Fired, sacked, given the boot. Take your pick.’
I stared at her and so did Kat.
Then Kat grabbed me by the sleeve. ‘Hurry, Ted!’
She dodged past the other people exiting, dragging me with her. I trod on three people’s feet, but they were big biker men wearing thick black boots and 230
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they didn’t notice. We were out in the open air, across the lights, and I’d only just time to notice the weather (high strata cloud, fine sunshine) before we were in the tube station, at the ticket barriers, and we glimpsed the strange man walking towards the eastbound platform.
‘It’s him,’ squeaked Kat. ‘Hurry!’
I took my ticket out of my pocket. My hand shook itself out so hard I dropped it. Kat screeched. I picked it up. The machine plucked it from my hand and spat it out on top.
‘Pick it up, Ted, pick it up.’
I’d forgotten that the barriers don’t open until you’ve retrieved your ticket. I picked it up and went through.
‘ Run! ’
I ran after her, head off to the side. I saw her hurl herself onto a waiting train. The doors beeped, about to close. I stepped on and got trapped. It felt like I was being squeezed from three dimensions into two. Kat heaved at the doors and yanked me in.
‘ Oaf! ’
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She’d turned into a tornado, an unstoppable force.
‘He’s in the next carriage down, not far from the door. I can see him,’ she said. ‘I’ll keep my eye on him. We’ll get off when he does.’
It was a rattling old-style tube-train that screeched and jerked. We held tight to the bar as it took the sharper bends. Sloane Square. Victoria. Blackfriars. Tower Hill. Aldgate East. The tube destination said UPMINSTER. Were we going all the way out there? After Stepney Green Kat stooped into a crouch, like a tiger about to spring, and dragged me into a stooping position too. ‘He’s getting up,’ she hissed. The train braked. It pulled into Mile End and halted. There was a pause. Seconds ticked by. Everybody waited silently. A man opposite tapped his foot on the floor. With a swoosh, the doors opened. Kat grabbed me and flew off the train, almost knocking over a gentleman trying to board.
‘ Sorry! ’ she muttered, pulling me after her by the sleeve of my sweatshirt. She ran behind a chocolate machine.
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The strange man was walking briskly down the platform and up a flight of steps.
‘ Now! ’ said Kat.
We emerged from behind the chocolate machine.
‘Don’t run,’ Kat said. ‘Saunter.’
‘Saunter,’ I said. I’m not good at sauntering, but I did my best. We sauntered down the platform, up the steps, through the ticket barrier, to the street entrance.
Kat spotted him across the street. We crossed too and did some more sauntering behind him. He never looked round. His hands were in his jacket pockets and his head was down as if he was having a long train of thought. He paused at a corner by some traffic lights and outside a pub called the Falcon Arms. We stopped too. After a moment he went inside the pub.
It was a large, grubby building with big bay windows and no curtains. It had a drooping white banner across the entrance saying OPEN ALL DAY. Above it swung a sign showing a picture of a falcon perched on a branch with a mouse in its beak. You 233
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could tell from the way the mouse’s tail was flying behind that in the picture there was a strong wind, maybe gale-force seven.
‘What now, Kat?’ I said.
‘We wait,’ Kat said.
‘Wait,’ I said.
‘As long as it takes.’
‘
You know what Dad says.’
‘What?’
‘Pubs are black holes. People go in there and never come out again.’
‘He’s only joking, Ted.’
We stood on the street corner for five minutes. Kat got restless. The traffic streamed by. Kat said she felt like a sore thumb. Her thumb looked fine to me. I was just about to ask what she meant when she said, ‘I’m gonna sneak up to that pub window, Ted. You stay put.’
I watched her sneak forward. She approached the bay window like a double-o agent on a mission to save the world. ‘He’s propping up the bar,’
she hissed over to me. I imagined a bar on wobbly 234
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trestles, liable to fall down at any moment. She took another look inside. ‘He’s got a long glass of dark brown stuff in front of him and he’s hardly touched it,’ she reported. ‘He’s watching TV
on a big screen.’
She rejoined me. ‘He could be in there for some time. Let’s cross and wait by the television shop near that bus stop. We can watch TV while we wait and people will just think we’re waiting for the bus.’
We crossed over by the lights and stared at the TV
images in the window: people chatting, laughing, shaking their heads – a mid-afternoon game show. We could see but not hear them. We had eighteen different TVs to choose from but they were all tuned to the same channel. The game show ended and the news came on. Eighteen screens of soldiers in a foreign country, walking up dusty streets with heavy guns. Eighteen screens of African children with flies around their large eyes and no clothes on. You could tell they were starving. Eighteen screens of the prime minister giving a speech at a convention, his 235