Blame

by Simon Mayo

  ‘CBS,’ she said out loud, ‘then two threes, an eight and a two.’ She turned as Max appeared beside her, phone in hand.

  ‘It’ll be quicker with two,’ he said. ‘I’ll read them out, you look them up.’

  She nodded and waited, fingers hovering above the keys. What were you trying to tell me, Brian? What was so secret you had to hide it in a code? She saw again his agonized face, heard the tunnel door closing, pushed by his dying kick.

  ‘OK. There are twenty-four combinations with the CBS prefix,’ Max said. ‘First up, CBS 8332.’

  Ant hit the keys. ‘It’s a song called “Wages of Love”.’ She shrugged. ‘Next.’

  ‘Did you love Brian or something?’ he asked.

  ‘No. Next,’ said Ant, impatient.

  ‘2338.’

  She typed; he waited, already looking at the next number.

  ‘Nothing. There’s nothing.’

  ‘OK. 3832.’

  ‘That’s something called “It’s Your Turn”,’ said Ant, shaking her head. ‘Move on.’

  ‘3283,’ said Max.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Ant, frustrated.

  Oblivious to everything except the numbers, they stood side by side, their faces lit by their phones. Four more combinations followed; each met with a swift ‘Nothing’.

  ‘8323,’ said Max.

  Ant’s fingers typed, and then her body tensed. Max saw the shift in her stance. ‘What is it?’

  But she was reading. As fast as she could, she scrolled through the words on her screen.

  ‘Ant, what is it? Let me see!’

  She read from the screen, ‘CBS 8323. Catalogue release number from 1980. “Bankrobber” by The Clash.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of it,’ said Max, peering over her shoulder. ‘You said your Brian was into his music. Did he ever mention The Clash?’

  ‘Might have done,’ said Ant, ‘and he wasn’t “mine”.’ She read on. ‘The song is a story, Max. A crime story.’ She looked up. ‘About someone whose father was a bankrobber . . .’

  Max read from her screen. ‘Brian’s dad was a bankrobber?’ he said. ‘How does that help us?’

  ‘No . . .’ said Ant slowly. ‘Brian said Grey would go mad. This is about Grey, not Brian.’

  Ant and Max got it at the same time, their eyes popping.

  ‘Assessor Grey’s father was a criminal!’ gasped Max. ‘Can that be right?’

  ‘Let’s assume it is,’ said Ant. ‘And let’s also assume that he was never caught.’

  ‘Which makes Grey—’

  ‘A strutter!’ exclaimed Ant. ‘But he hates strutters. More than anyone else. So he must have gone to great lengths to cover up his past. He would never have got where he is now if this is true. This changes everything.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t Brian just tell you?’ wondered Max. ‘Why put it in a code?’

  ‘Too scary,’ said Ant. ‘Too dangerous. If it’s true, if the leading campaigner and enforcer of the heritage-crime laws is actually a heritage criminal himself, this must have been as clear as he felt he could be.’

  Max stared at her. ‘This is huge, Ant.’

  She nodded. ‘If we can prove it, yes. Otherwise it’s useless.’

  Three sounds in rapid succession brought them back to reality. A desperate shout from Henry. A car starting and accelerating hard. Then, coming towards them, heavy running footsteps.

  Ant and Max spun round to face whatever was coming their way. There was no time to hide, barely time to brace themselves. But then Ant saw that it was Henry, saw the anguished look on his face, and knew with a gut-twisting certainty why he was running.

  Mattie.

  Henry took a deep breath. ‘Your brother!’ he gasped. ‘He’s been taken!’

  Ant had known fear all her life, but never had she felt the numbing terror that now scorched into every part of her. A breathless, distraught Henry got as far as ‘That man . . . he came back . . .’ before Ant started sprinting towards the container.

  Mattie si ale.

  Mattie’s gone.

  She yelled his name over and over as she searched the woods, but there was no reply.

  Mwen kite l’ale.

  I let him go.

  The container was empty, the van was empty, the woods were empty.

  Papa ale ave’t.

  Papa’s taken him.

  And the car was gone. On the dirt track by the houses, a thin cloud of dust still hung in the air, marking its route.

  Pitit la mouri.

  He’s dead.

  Mwen mouri.

  I’m dead.

  Tout bagay fini.

  It’s all over.

  Ant fell to her knees and howled. The rage, horror and grief of the last two days boiled over in a torrent of unstoppable emotion. She cried with such force that Max was unsure whether to approach her. He waited for the storm to calm, then knelt beside her.

  ‘We’ll find him, Ant . . .’ His words were barely a whisper. ‘We have to go now, but we will find him and get him back.’

  She turned to him, her eyes raw. ‘But how has he gone? How did that happen? He was with you! He was with Henry! He was right here! I thought . . . I was only . . .’ And the tears overwhelmed her again.

  ‘He was in the van,’ said Max, ‘just getting some stuff. I thought . . . Henry was just there . . . and I assumed your dad had gone.’ He pulled the car keys out of his pocket and threw them on the ground in disgust. ‘Either these are fake or he has a spare.’

  Henry shuffled towards them, then slumped down on the grass.

  ‘What happened, Henry?’ said Max.

  He coughed and spat, then wiped his eyes with his sleeve. His hands were shaking. ‘I was in my place, just putting some music on.’ He paused, staring at the grass. ‘Then I was walking around, calming down, you know? I heard a noise, like a bang, coming from your van. I should have called you then – I should have had my gun—’ He broke off, swallowed, then slowly raised his eyes to Ant’s. ‘I went over . . . and saw that man climbing in. I called out to him and started to run, but I’m not as fast as I used to be. Before I was halfway there, they were gone. I could see he had a phone in one hand, but then he had . . . he had a knife in the other.’

  Ant swallowed another cry, holding a hand to her mouth. Henry pressed on.

  ‘He saw me and held it up . . . I froze . . . He was scary, Ant. Who is he?’

  Max glanced at Ant. ‘He’s their father.’

  Henry looked like he’d been struck. ‘Your father? But then . . . he wouldn’t . . .’

  ‘No, no, he would,’ said Ant. ‘He absolutely would.’

  ‘He must be a sick man.’

  ‘You got that right,’ she said. Then a thought: ‘Why was Mattie in the van?’

  Max and Henry shrugged.

  ‘Did he have anything with him? When he was taken?’

  Henry shook his head. ‘Nope. Not as far as I could see.’

  Ant hauled herself up and trudged wearily over to the van, Max following behind.

  ‘We need to go, Ant – we need to disappear again.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘We should get this to the Bug sites – we need to tell them about Grey. They’re all we have now.’

  ‘I know.’

  Ant opened the driver’s door and climbed in. ‘Oh, I know what you were doing . . .’ she muttered. She looked around, then dropped to her knees. Under the back seat, stuffed in amongst the springs, was Mattie’s journal – a red HMP London exercise book. Head on the floor, she reached through the old crisp packets and tried to pull it free. It seemed fatter than normal, its cover catching on the wire. She got out her phone to light up the floor. Some of the book’s pages were caught in the seat’s suspension, and Ant picked them out one by one.

  ‘You sure rammed this in hard, Mattie,’ she said.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Max.

  ‘He had a journal. It’s stuck in the springs. Hidden in a hurry.’

  Ant prised the
wires apart and eased the book out. From inside fell a long brown case. Ant looked puzzled.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Max.

  ‘It’s the case the strap-key was in. He must have had it since . . .’ She paused, thinking. ‘I gave him the strap-key in the case to unlock the Pearsons before we escaped from the coach . . . But then he only gave the key back to me.’

  ‘So was he hiding it?’

  ‘Looks like it.’ Ant stared at the journal and felt herself go weak again. Mattie’s tiny handwriting filled the pages. She had never dared look at it before – prison was intrusive enough without people reading your diary – but now she flicked through to the last entry. Lines of small, neat script ran down one page; large, scrawled words down the other. She read them out loud:

  ‘Papa back. On phone. Someone’s mad. Needs strap-key case. Hasn’t seen me. Hiding.’

  She handed it to Max, who read it again.

  ‘So your father was being shouted at because he had the strap-key but no case,’ he said. ‘And when you showed it to him, he said, “Does it come with anything?”’

  She opened and closed the strap-key case. It was just a box – hinged like a glasses case, moulded to fit around the strap. She shoved it deep into the pocket where, until an hour ago, the key itself had been. No key. No Mattie. Ant was bereft. It felt like half of her had been ripped away. For about as long as she could remember they had been a team. They’d had to be. With no friends, no family, and parents who didn’t or couldn’t care, they had come to rely on each other completely. Five years younger than her maybe, but Mattie calmed her down, made her think, nagged at her impetuousness.

  Everything she did, she did for both of them. When she was fighting, when she was stealing extra food, when she was charming the POs, she was doing it for both of them. When she wasn’t with him, it usually meant trouble. Surviving life with their parents had been teamwork, surviving prison had been teamwork, and she gave herself no hope of surviving outside without him.

  ‘I want to get him back, Max,’ she said in a small voice. ‘I need to get him back.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Max. ‘And we need to get away from here fast. Let’s cut the van free before your dad comes back. Again.’

  They instinctively glanced at the dirt road where they had seen Kyle Turner’s car, but it was deserted. Henry headed off for his container. ‘I’ve got some tools!’

  Ant found Henry’s knife on the ground where she had dropped it, and set about the roots. She hacked and sawed with such ferocity that by the time Henry got back, one wheel had already been released. His saw made short work of the rest, and within minutes the van was free. Max started the engine and carefully backed away from the tree.

  ‘Henry, we have to go.’ His voice was agitated now. ‘You should disappear too,’ he said through the window.

  Ant was about to get in when Henry grasped her arm. ‘I hope you find your brother. I . . .’ He faltered. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t stop it.’ She nodded and climbed into the passenger seat. ‘I put some supplies in the back,’ he continued, ‘in case you need them. And you should take this.’ He handed her his cap and a battered old scarf. ‘I hope . . .’

  He was still talking as they pulled away. Max accelerated round the field, and by the time they hit the track they were already doing forty miles an hour. Ant pulled on the cap, tied the scarf around her neck and strapped herself in. She wouldn’t complain if he was doing a hundred.

  Max barely slowed as they joined the main road. ‘Where am I going?’ he said.

  ‘Anywhere. Doesn’t matter. As long as we aren’t there,’ she said.

  Max took roads at random. He cursed and hit the steering wheel. ‘Amos was right, after all,’ he said.

  ‘Excuse me?’ said Ant. ‘Right in what way?’

  ‘There’s just two of us left, Ant! What can we do with two? We need help. We’ve lost too many people—’

  ‘Yes, we have, and whose fault is that?’ said Ant, realizing she was crossing a line but ploughing on anyway. ‘If you’d—’

  ‘Are you blaming me for Mattie’s kidnap? Seriously?’ Max was aghast, his expression furious. ‘Who ran off to get the signal? Was that you, Ant? Yes, it was. Did you ask him to join you? No, you didn’t.’ The louder he spoke, the faster he drove. ‘And whose fault is it that we are here in the first place? Eh? How come my mum and dad were in prison, and HOW COME THEY’RE PROBABLY DEAD?’ Max wiped his eyes with his sleeve. ‘AND HOW COME YOU DON’T SEE THAT IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT!’

  On a small country lane, the van was clocking sixty miles per hour and still accelerating.

  Ant, her eyes closed, said nothing. She didn’t trust herself. Her heart was breaking, but she didn’t want Max to see that. He was right, of course – this was all her fault, and now she had lost her brother. If Max crashed the van, she hoped she died because she didn’t want to feel like this for a moment longer. As the engine strained, she expected to hear the screeching and tearing of metal on metal. She braced herself.

  I’m sorry, Mattie. Sorry, Dan. Sorry, Gina. Sorry, Daisy, sorry, Jimmy, sorry, Brian . . .

  The van was slowing, its roar easing; Max’s foot was off the accelerator, and she opened her eyes. He was gripping the wheel with clenched fists, jaw set and face flushed. They drove on in stony silence. Ant stared out of her window, seeing nothing.

  After a few miles she heard Max sigh. ‘This van is too big, too obvious,’ he said. ‘Wait . . .’ He braked hard and pulled off the road. ‘The Lithuanian plates are still on.’

  They both leaped out, wrenched off the number plates, then froze as a police siren suddenly blasted through the air behind them. It was moving fast. Ant and Max threw themselves to the ground as the car sped past.

  ‘That was close,’ said Max.

  ‘Was that for us?’ Ant brushed gravel off her face.

  ‘Who knows? But let’s assume so.’

  Imminent danger and fear of arrest had halted their battle, but they both knew it was unresolved. They were united in their need to rescue Mattie and the others – maybe even Dan and Gina – but beyond that there was nothing.

  They had stopped in the driveway of what looked like an old garage. They headed towards a dilapidated main building with an empty forecourt, expecting to be challenged. A burned-out kiosk and a row of broken windows suggested safety, and Max ran back to the van to park it out of sight.

  Then they sat on the rough tarmac, phones in their hands. Ant took a deep breath. ‘OK. We log on. We tell them about Grey. Someone must know about his criminal past.’

  ‘And if not, at least we can get the information out there,’ said Max.

  ‘You do the Bug sites, I’ll check the news sites,’ said Ant. They hit the keys, and while Max waited for the logon sequence to run, he peered over at Ant’s screen. He was close enough to catch her phone when she dropped it.

  ‘Young strutter prisoner caught in Cornwall,’ he read out loud. ‘Matthew Norton Turner, eleven, seized by police. My God,’ said Max, shocked and incredulous. ‘But it wasn’t the police! It was a gang operation, wasn’t it?’

  Ant felt numb. Mattie had been found by the police. The police would hand him over to Grey.

  ‘His father was a bankrobber . . .’ she said slowly. ‘Grey’s a crook. A gangster. They’re all working for him. They’re all the same.’

  Max nodded. ‘Of course . . .’

  ‘So Amos was wrong,’ she said. ‘If we’d asked the Cloverwells to get involved, we’d all be inside. Yes?’

  ‘Yes, Amos was wrong,’ Max conceded. He was still reading, and held the phone up to Ant. ‘There’s one other thing you should see.’

  The scrolling caption read: Breaking: HMP Bodmin announce public re-strapping to take place tomorrow at midday.

  Ant stood up and threw a stone through one of the garage’s windows.

  ‘And now that includes Mattie,’ she said. ‘So. We have our deadline.’

  Hunched in the corner of the twenty-four-hour fas
t-food restaurant, Ant and Max were trying to stay awake. They had used the cashpoint and had feasted on everything they could manage, their table littered with empty wrappers and cartons. If they did fall asleep, they wouldn’t be the only ones; as long as you bought food, no one seemed to mind if you dozed off. Ant, with Henry’s khaki army cap pulled low, counted four sleeping customers between her and the till. She checked her phone: 3.30 a.m. A woman dressed in the restaurant’s uniform cleared their table, her necklace swinging as she swept the rubbish away. Ant and Max shrank back, but she took no interest in them and moved on to the next table.

  Ant yawned. ‘Keep me awake, Max. Throw ice at me or something,’ she said. ‘We mustn’t miss the truck.’

  Max noisily sucked the last of his milkshake through the straw. ‘We don’t know it’s coming, Ant. Just because we saw it last time . . .’

  ‘Correct,’ said Ant. ‘We don’t. But it might. And if it does, we need to be on it.’ She could tell he was unconvinced, but one of the Bug sites had reported that a TV truck had been spotted on its way to Bodmin, and this seemed the most likely refuelling stop.

  ‘And then what?’ he said. ‘Once we’re in, what happens next?’

  ‘We find out what happened to Dan and Gina. And we tell Grey we know he’s a crook. Threaten him. Get him to release everyone.’

  ‘Really? On the basis of what? Even you can’t think that’s going to work—’

  ‘Max, I’ll go on my own if I have to. I am getting in there, and I am finding Grey. If you don’t . . .’

  ‘Ant,’ said Max.

  ‘. . . think we can do it, you just need to say . . .’

  ‘Ant,’ he said again, more firmly this time. ‘Look.’

  He was staring at the till. The woman who had cleared their table was cashing up, her attention divided between the till and the computer next to it.

  ‘What am I looking at?’ Ant asked.

  ‘That thing around her neck.’

  What she had thought was a necklace was now plugged into the computer. The waitress finished her work, hit a few final keys, then, as the machine shut down, pulled the necklace free. Ant and Max stared at each other.