The Danger Game

by Kevin Brooks

  The two of them had already had their dinner, and despite my protestations that I needed to talk to Grandad about something immediately, Nan insisted that I sat down at the table and had a proper meal before I did anything else.

  ‘You might thinkyou’re all grown-up and independent now that you’re fourteen,’ she said, half jokingly, ‘but as long as you’re living here, you’re going to eat something reasonably healthy at least once a day. Understood?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said, grinning at her.

  Her face broke into a fragile smile and she ruffled my hair.

  ‘How does beans on toast sound?’ she asked.

  ‘You’ll probably find out after I’ve eaten them,’ I said.

  It was getting on for ten o’clock by the time I got round to telling Grandad what I’d found out about Tanga Tans. We were in my room – me sitting at my desk, Grandad relaxed in the old armchair in the corner – and through the window I could see a fine wintry rain misting in the darkness.

  ‘I don’t really see what we can do to help Lisa Yusuf,’ Grandad said thoughtfully. ‘I’m perfectly happy to ask Jakes and Mortimer if they’d consider dropping the case, but I can’t think of any reason why they would. Their only responsibility is to their client. They’re not going to back off just because Lisa Yusuf is your friends’ mum.’ Grandad looked at me. ‘Sorry, Trav, but that’s just the way it is.’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ I sighed. ‘That’s pretty much what I told Jaydie myself. What do you think will happen to her mum if the compensation claim goes ahead?’

  Grandad shrugged. ‘It’s hard to tell. If the claim’s successful, I’d imagine the salon itself will take most of the blame. Whoever the official owner is, they’ll have to pay the compensation and probably a fine as well, but I doubt very much if Lisa Yusuf will get away without some kind of punishment, especially if she’s not qualified or legally employed.’

  ‘I think Mason’s more concerned with what Dee Dee has in mind for her,’ I said.

  Grandad frowned, stroking his chin. ‘Did Mason tell you anything else about Tanga Tans?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘How long Dee Dee’s run the business, when he took it over . . . anything like that?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘I’ve been trying to figure out why a man like him would want anything to do with a crummy little tanning salon in the first place. I mean, if he was trying to boost his reputation as a businessman, I would have thought he’d buy into a nightclub or a bar, not a tanning salon. Unless . . .’ Grandad paused, thinking about something.

  ‘Unless what?’ I asked him.

  ‘I need to wait and see what Gloria comes up with,’ he said, avoiding a direct answer. ‘I called her earlier this evening. She’s going to do some digging into Tanga Tans’ financial records over the weekend. If there is anything to find out, Gloria will find it.’

  I waited for him to go on, hoping he’d tell me what he thought Gloria might discover, but after thinking quietly to himself for a few moments, he turned to me and said, ‘So, Travis, how are you feeling about your debut investigation? Excited? Nervous? Scared?’

  I didn’t know what he was talking about for a second – I’d kind of forgotten about the thefts from the school changing rooms – and even when I finally realised what he meant, I can’t honestly say that I felt very much about it at all. In comparison to what Mason and Jaydie and their mum were going through, a bit of petty thieving at school seemed to pale into insignificance. I’d told Kendal I’d look into it though, and – as my dad once told me – a man is only as good as his word. Mind you, strictly speaking, I hadn’t actually given Kendal my word, I’d just told him I’d do it. But still, it wouldn’t be right to back out of it now just because it didn’t seem very important any more.

  ‘Yeah,’ I told Grandad, trying to summon up some enthusiasm, ‘I’m looking forward to it. The next cup game’s on Monday afternoon, so I’ll probably install the motion sensors on Sunday and then double-check them on Monday morning . . .’

  We didn’t spend a lot of time discussing the case. Grandad asked me some questions about the thefts, and after I’d explained exactly what had been going on, he gave me a few tips about installing the sensors, and some practical advice about thieving in general and what kinds of things I needed to look out for, and that was pretty much it. I got the impression that he probably had a lot more to say, but he didn’t want me to think he was intruding too much into my case.

  After he’d gone back downstairs, I waited five minutes or so, then I went to see Granny Nora.

  18

  Granny Nora quite often sleeps during the day and stays up late into the night, so although it was gone eleven o’clock when I went in to see her, she was wide awake and more than happy to talk to me. She was sitting in her usual place – in her ancient armchair by the window – and the table beside her was piled up with all her usual stuff: dozens of paperback crime novels, her iPhone, her iPod, her brand-new iPad. Her binoculars were on the windowsill right next to her, and she was fiddling with the controls of her latest online purchase, an infrared night-vision scope. Granny Nora likes to keep herself busy, and although she can’t get around very much any more, she still likes to know what’s going on. So when she’s not reading or listening to music or messing about online, she’s perfectly content just sitting by the window watching the world go by.

  ‘Is it any good?’ I asked her, glancing at the night-vision scope as I sat down in the cushioned wicker chair opposite her.

  ‘Is it what?’ she said, turning her good ear towards me.

  She’s completely deaf in one ear and losing her hearing in the other, but despite having a perfectly good hearing aid, she’s always forgetting – or pretending to forget – to turn it on. And even when she does turn it on, she ‘forgets’ to turn up the volume. I know she does it on purpose, and I also know that she knows I know. She still does it though. She’s got a wicked sense of humour, my gran.

  ‘The scope,’ I said, raising my voice, ‘is it any good?’

  ‘Ah, I don’t know,’ she replied, putting it down on the table. ‘I think maybe the street lights are too bright for it to work properly. Everything looks kind of glarey.’

  I smiled, enjoying the familiar sound of her voice. Granny Nora’s from Dublin, and she has a lovely thick Irish accent that I never get tired of hearing. I don’t know why I like it so much, but it just seems to make me want to listen to every word she says.

  ‘Maybe you could ring the council,’ I suggested. ‘Ask them to turn off the street lights for you.’

  She grinned. ‘I was thinking of buying myself an air rifle. I could turn off the lights myself then.’

  She raised an imaginary rifle and mimed taking a potshot out of the window. I knew she was only joking, but I also knew that if she did have an air rifle, and she really did want to shoot out the street lights, she wouldn’t think twice about doing it.

  ‘So, Travis,’ she said, turning back to me, ‘how’s everything going?’

  ‘Not too bad, thanks.’

  ‘School OK?’

  I shrugged. ‘Same as ever.’

  ‘And what about you?’ she asked quietly, her kindly old eyes looking deeply into mine. ‘How are you doing?’

  I knew what she meant – how was I feeling about Mum and Dad – and I knew she was only asking because she cared so much for me. But even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t have given her much of an answer. How was I doing? I didn’t know how I was doing. I didn’t know if all the stuff I was going through was the kind of stuff you’re meant to go through when both your parents die suddenly. I didn’t know if it was normal to sometimes feel OK, and then hate yourself for feeling OK. I didn’t know if I was supposed to cry myself to sleep every night and then get up in the morning and go to school and just carry on as if everything was perfectly normal. I didn’t know if it was OK to sometimes realise for a terrifying moment that I couldn’t picture what my mum and dad looked like
. . .

  ‘I honestly don’t know how I’m doing, Gran,’ I muttered. ‘I just . . . I just don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t have to know, Travis,’ she said gently. ‘If there’s one thing I’ve learned as I’ve got older, it’s that it’s perfectly all right to have doubts and uncertainties – about yourself, about the world, about everything. There are so many things that none of us will ever understand, things that simply don’t have any answers, but the trick is to realise that we don’t have to know all the answers. We live in a mysterious universe that has no purpose or reason. We don’t have to feel frightened of not knowing things.’

  ‘Do you really believe that?’ I said, looking at her.

  She smiled. ‘I don’t know.’

  We talked about Grandad for a while then. He’d always been prone to very dark moods, and he often suffered flashbacks and nightmares about the terrors he’d been through during his army career, especially the time he’d almost lost his life in a car-bomb explosion in Northern Ireland. But Granny had noticed that since he’d started running Delaney & Co again, his depressive moods had become far less frequent and debilitating, and he seemed to be actually enjoying life again.

  ‘I know he still comes across as being a grizzly old grump most of the time,’ she said, smiling, ‘but I know my son, and I can tell he’s got his lust for life back again. Everything about him is different now, even the way he walks. He doesn’t mope around with his shoulders slumped any more, he struts around the place, his chest out, his head held high . . . it’s a wonderful thing to see. And I’ve got you to thank for that, Travis. If it wasn’t for you, he never would have gone back to work.’

  ‘I needed Delaney & Co as much as he did,’ I said. ‘We’re both helping each other really.’

  ‘Well, that’s as maybe, but I’m still eternally grateful to you. You gave your grandad his life back.’

  After we’d carried on talking about nothing in particular for a while, we finally got round to the unfinished story of Grandad and Gloria Nightingale, or as Granny called her, the mysterious Ms Nightingale.

  ‘Who says she’s mysterious?’ I said.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because she is.’

  I sighed. ‘Are you going to tell me the story or not?’

  Granny just looked at me for a moment or two, her eyes twinkling with the impish delight of a gossip, then she leaned back in her chair and began telling me the story.

  Gloria’s surname was Hanson when Grandad first met her, Granny told me. She couldn’t remember the exact year they met, but it was sometime in the early 1970s, shortly after Grandad had joined the army.

  ‘Gloria was at Cambridge University at the time,’ Gran explained. ‘I don’t know how or where she met your grandad, but as I told you before, they went out together a few times, maybe over a period of a month or so, but it all fizzled out fairly quickly. They still kept in touch though, and from what I can gather they became very good friends.’ Granny looked at me. ‘That’s a rare thing, Travis, I can tell you. A very rare thing. Lots of couples promise each other they’ll stay friends when they break up, but they’re almost always empty words. Your grandfather actually meant it.’

  ‘I bet Nan wishes he hadn’t,’ I said.

  Granny nodded. ‘It was difficult for her. When she married your grandad she didn’t want to break up his friendship with Gloria, but it was only natural that she didn’t want him spending too much time with her. And to your grandad’s credit he realised how your nan felt, and although he still kept in contact with Gloria, they stopped meeting up on a regular basis.’

  ‘Grandad worked with Gloria though, didn’t he?’ I said. ‘That’s what he told me anyway.’

  ‘That was about ten years later, sometime in the early 1980s. Gloria was working for MI6 by then – she’d been recruited while she was still studying at Cambridge – and your grandad was an officer in the Army Intelligence Corps. I don’t know if their friendship had anything to do with them being teamed up to work together, or if it was just a coincidence, but either way they ended up working with each other on a joint-services undercover operation in Czechoslovakia. I’ve no idea what it involved – there were all kinds of shadowy Cold War operations going on back then – and your grandad’s always refused to talk about it, so I can only tell you what I’ve heard over the years, and I’m sure that most of that has been embellished to some extent. But what’s not in any doubt is that whatever your grandad and Gloria were working on, it all went terribly wrong for some reason, and they were both captured by the KGB, the Soviet Intelligence Agency, and held on charges of espionage somewhere in Czechoslovakia.’

  It sounded just like something out of an old spy film – KGB agents in long black trench coats interrogating British spies in underground prisons, shining lights in their eyes, beating them up, and worse . . .

  ‘What happened to them?’ I asked breathlessly.

  ‘Well,’ Granny said thoughtfully, ‘that’s where it all starts getting a bit mysterious. For about six weeks or so, neither MI6 nor Army Intelligence heard anything about your grandad or Gloria. They didn’t know where they were, whether they were still in Czechoslovakia or had been moved somewhere else. They didn’t know what the Soviets were doing with them. They didn’t even know if they were still alive. And then suddenly, completely out of the blue, Army Intelligence HQ received a call from the US Embassy in Prague saying that your grandad was safe and well and that arrangements were being made to fly him back to the UK.’

  ‘Was he OK?’

  ‘Physically he wasn’t too bad. He’d lost a lot of weight and was suffering from a severe chest infection, but apart from that, and a few cuts and bruises, there wasn’t anything seriously wrong with him. Psychologically though . . . well, like I said, he’s never talked about it, so we can only guess how the experience affected him.’ Granny went quiet for a moment, her eyes filled with sadness for the pain her son had suffered. Anyway,’ she said after a while, ‘it turned out that some kind of exchange deal had been made between the Soviets and the CIA. The KGB released your grandad, and in return the CIA released a Soviet spy.’

  ‘What was Grandad’s connection with the CIA?’ I asked.

  Granny shrugged. ‘Who knows? There were rumours that the Army Intelligence Corps had something the CIA wanted – information about something – and getting Grandad released gave the CIA the bargaining tool they needed.’

  ‘What happened to Gloria?’

  ‘No one knows. She wasn’t released with your grandad, and the CIA claimed they had no information about her at all. Your grandad hadn’t seen her since they’d been captured. MI6 had no idea where she was or whether she’d talked or not. After two years had passed without any news, it was assumed that she was either dead or that she’d been turned by the Soviets and was working for them.’

  ‘ Was she working for them?’

  ‘Again, no one knows for sure. The mystery deepened when all of a sudden, two and half years after she’d disappeared, Gloria resurfaced in London.’ Granny shook her head. ‘No one seems to know what happened to her, whether she somehow escaped, or was recaptured by MI6, or released for some reason . . . it’s anyone’s guess really. She just came back. And that’s when all the rumours started.’

  ‘What kind of rumours?’

  ‘She was a double agent, working for the Soviets. She’d been brainwashed. She’d been a double agent all along, and it was her who’d tipped off the KGB about the undercover operation in Czechoslovakia in the first place . . . even now, no one really knows the truth.’

  ‘Not even Grandad?’

  Granny Nora smiled. ‘You’ll have to ask him about that.’

  ‘Did Gloria carry on working for MI6?’

  ‘She was officially retired shortly after her return. She disappeared off the radar for a few years after that, and at some point she got married, but apparently it only lasted a few months. Some people say she moved into the private s
ector and made a small fortune working for multinational financial corporations, but others maintain that she never actually stopped working for MI6 at all, she just went deep, deep undercover. There are also those who think she was working for the Soviets all along, that she’s never stopped working for them, and that even now her true loyalties lie with the Russian intelligence services.’ Granny looked at me. ‘And that’s just about it really. End of story.’

  ‘Just about?’

  ‘Well,’ Granny said hesitantly, ‘there is one more thing you should know . . . but like so much of this story, it’s nothing more than hearsay and rumour.’ She paused for a moment, then sighed and went on. ‘There was a lot of talk going around that Gloria and your grandad weren’t just working together when they were in Czechoslovakia.’

  ‘You mean they were having an affair?’

  ‘Some people thought so, yes.’

  I stared at Granny, doing some quick mental calculations. ‘Dad would have been born by then, wouldn’t he? He would have been about five or six years old.’

  Granny nodded. ‘It was just talk, Travis. There’s no proof that your grandad and Gloria got back together. And while you can never rule out anything when it comes to matters of the heart, I’d bet my life that my son never cheated on Nancy. He just wouldn’t do something like that. He’s not that kind of man.’

  Nancy is my nan’s name, and Granny loves her as if she were her own daughter. From the look in Granny’s eyes just now, if she thought that Grandad had cheated on Nan, there was no doubt whose side she’d be on.

  ‘Does Nan know about these rumours?’ I asked her.

  Granny nodded. ‘She’s known about them for years.’

  ‘Is that why she’s so annoyed with Grandad for hiring Gloria?’

  Granny shook her head. ‘There a lot more to it than just that. There’s no doubt that Nan doesn’t like Gloria, but that’s mostly down to the fact that she just doesn’t like her as a person.’ Granny looked at me. ‘Your nan trusts Grandad. She doesn’t believe any of the rumours about him having an affair with Gloria. That’s not the main reason she’s so upset with him for hiring her.’