The Danger Game

by Kevin Brooks

  ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,’ Courtney said, smiling.

  ‘Yeah,’ Jaydie agreed. ‘Something like that.’

  ‘So you saw me picking the lock and going into the maintenance room,’ I said.

  Jaydie nodded. ‘I have to admit that was pretty impressive. You only just made it in time though, didn’t you?’

  ‘It was close, yeah.’

  ‘So, anyway, while you were in the maintenance room recording Bull and Dee Dee, I was looking down through the hatchway doing the same thing on my phone. The only difference was that I was smart enough to put mine on silent.’

  Courtney laughed, and I saw Gloria grinning.

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ I said, embarrassed by my own stupidity. ‘It’s the first rule of surveillance. Make sure your phone’s either turned off or on silent. I just forgot, OK? I was in a hurry—’

  ‘That’s no excuse, Trav,’ Courtney said. ‘You should have put it on silent before you even got there.’

  ‘I know. It won’t happen again. I’ve learned my lesson the hard way.’ I turned to Jaydie. ‘So what did you do when it all kicked off with Dee Dee and Bull?’

  ‘I waited to see what happened first. I didn’t think there was any point in me getting involved in any physical stuff. I mean, I can look after myself, but I wouldn’t stand a chance against two full-grown men, and there was no point in both of us getting caught. I thought you’d got away once you’d taken out Bull and got past Dee Dee, so then I decided to call your grandad to let him know what was happening. But I couldn’t get a signal. By the time I’d got down from the hatch and gone looking for you, I couldn’t find you anywhere. But when I went down to the ground floor and saw Ronnie Bull guarding the exit, I guessed you hadn’t got away after all. So I went out into the street, Googled your office number, and called it.’

  ‘I answered the phone,’ Courtney said, taking up the story. ‘I’m not supposed to be back at work yet, but Mum’s carer wouldn’t let me do anything to help out around the house, and I just got so bored sitting around doing nothing, so I popped into the office to see what was happening. I took Jaydie’s call, and she quickly told me everything about Dee Dee and Bull and what had just happened at the car park. I told her to stay where she was and I’d be there as soon as possible. I explained everything to Gloria and your grandad before I left, and while I went to get Jaydie and see if I could find you, your grandad and Gloria got working on a plan.’

  I looked across at Gloria.

  ‘I’m not what you think I am, Travis,’ she said, glancing sideways at me. ‘I’m not working for Omega.’

  ‘I saw you meeting with Winston,’ I told her. ‘I followed you to the castle and I saw you giving him something.’

  ‘I know you did. You were supposed to follow me and see me with him. That was all part of the plan.’

  ‘Plan?’ I said, confused. ‘What plan?’

  To bring Omega out into the open.’ She glanced at me again. ‘They’ve been keeping you and your grandad under surveillance ever since that night at the warehouse. That’s how they knew that your grandad had hired me. They’ve been blackmailing me from the day I agreed to work for Delaney & Co.’

  ‘Blackmailing you?’

  She sighed. ‘It started with a phone call from the man who calls himself Winston.’

  55

  ‘I was married for a short while in the late 1980s,’ Gloria explained. ‘It didn’t work out, unfortunately, but the one good thing that did come out of it was my son, David. I was doing a lot of deep undercover work for the security services while he was growing up, and the truth is I wasn’t a very good mother. I should have spent more time with him, but I was so obsessed with my work at the time . . .’ She shook her head. ‘I had my priorities all wrong. I know that now, but at the time I just couldn’t see it. Anyway, my relationship with David suffered as a result, and it wasn’t really until he was in his late teens that we finally managed to patch things up and get to know one another as mother and son.’ She smiled sadly. ‘Everything’s fine now. We’re not just mother and son, we’re really good friends, and I’m doing my best to make up for lost time. David’s doing really well for himself. He seems to have inherited my aptitude for information analysis and communication technology, and after getting a first-class degree in computer science at Cambridge, he now works in research and development for one of the big US technology corporations. It’s a great job – good money, excellent prospects – and he really loves it. So when Winston phoned me and threatened to ruin David’s career unless I did what he told me . . . well, as you can imagine, it put me in something of a quandary.’

  ‘How was he going to ruin David’s career?’ I asked.

  ‘He didn’t go into any specific details, he just told me to go to my computer and open up a certain email. When I did what he asked, I found pages and pages of personal information about David. They basically knew absolutely everything about him – email addresses, passwords, phone numbers. There were copies of his emails, both private and work-related, copies of texts, copies of document files, details of supposedly secret projects he was working on . . . there was even a video taken from the webcam of his own laptop, showing him typing away in his laboratory. Winston was letting me know that Omega had complete access to David’s phones, computers, everything.’ She sighed. ‘It wasn’t hard to guess what that meant. With that level of access, they could put whatever they wanted into his phones and computers – false information, incriminating information, information that, if it got out – which Winston promised it would if I didn’t do what I was told – would ruin both his career and his life.’

  ‘What did Winston want you to do?’

  ‘Work for him, basically. Take the job at Delaney & Co, keep track of your investigation into Omega, and keep him informed of your progress. If I did that, Winston assured me that David would be left alone.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘I told your grandad. On my first day at Delaney’s, I passed him a note telling him that we needed to talk privately, and that the office might be bugged. We arranged to meet in that little cafe at the end of North Walk, and I told him everything. That’s when we realised that if I pretended to go along with Winston’s demands, it would not only keep David safe, but we could actually use it to our advantage.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘By letting Omega know that we were getting close to proving they were responsible for your parents’ death. Once they knew that, we knew they’d have to do something about it. And they could only do that by coming out of hiding, which is exactly what your grandad wanted. By bringing them out into the open, that would give him the chance to go after them.’

  I remembered then what Grandad had said to me a few days ago. Whatever happens, he’d told me, right or wrong, never forget that there’s more than one way to catch a rat.

  I didn’t know what he meant at the time, but now I understood.

  ‘Why didn’t you let me in on all this?’ I asked Gloria.

  ‘I’m sorry, Travis, but we had to make it look as if I really was working for Omega. We swept the office for bugs, and we got rid of the ones we found, but we still couldn’t be 100% sure that Omega weren’t listening in. If you and Courtney knew what we were doing, we’d all have to have been so careful about what we said all the time . . . it would have been almost impossible not to let it slip.’

  I looked at Courtney. ‘You didn’t know either?’

  She shook her head. ‘I only found out a few hours ago.’

  Gloria went on. ‘We also realised that if you or Courtney suspected me, you’d probably start watching and following me, and that would make my betrayal look even more believable.’

  ‘Is that why Grandad showed me the trackers?’ I asked. ‘Because he guessed I’d try to follow you?’

  ‘He thought you might,’ Gloria admitted.

  ‘So you knew I was following you when you went to the castle?’

  She nodded. ‘Winsto
n spotted you too. And it worked. He genuinely thought that because you were following me, that had to mean that I was doing my job for him.’

  Although I finally knew the truth now, I was still just as confused as ever. There was no doubt that Grandad and Gloria’s plan made perfect sense. If it did work, if it did bring Winston and Omega out into the open, that in itself was further proof that Omega were responsible for the car crash that killed my mum and dad. Why would they come after us if they weren’t? And there was no question that proving Omega’s involvement in Mum and Dad’s death took precedence over everything else, and in that sense it didn’t matter that Grandad and Gloria had not only used me, they’d used Nan and Courtney too. But at the same time I couldn’t help feeling that it just wasn’t right to have put Nan and me through so much suffering, even if it was for a good cause.

  But then I remembered again what Winston had once said – sometimes we have to make short-term sacrifices for the sake of potential long-term benefits – and I wondered if maybe Grandad was right after all.

  It also suddenly struck me that perhaps Grandad had been just as confused and conflicted about the rights and wrongs of the plan as I was, and that was the reason behind the flicker of embarrassment and guilt I’d seen in his eyes that day in the office when he’d told me there was more than one way to catch a rat. He knew what he was doing was the right thing to do, but at the same time he couldn’t help feeling ashamed of himself for doing it.

  I couldn’t think about it any more. Not now. It was too confusing, and I was too tired. I’d talk to Grandad about it later on.

  I put it from my mind and turned to Gloria. ‘You knew Jaydie had planted one of the trackers on Dee Dee, didn’t you?’ I said. ‘That’s how you knew where Dee Dee and Bull had taken me.’

  She nodded. ‘I’d already connected both trackers to my laptop and my mobile before your grandad showed them to you. I guessed you might use one on me, and rather than having to keep looking through all my pockets and my handbag all the time to see if you’d planted one somewhere, all I had to do was periodically check the tracker screens to see where they were. So when Jaydie told us how you’d put a tracker on Dee Dee, it was a piece of cake to find out where you were. We just had to work out the best way of getting you out of there. That’s why your grandad stayed in the office while we set off after you. We guessed Dee Dee might want to double-check that no one else knew where you were, and that the simplest way for him to do that was to call the office and make sure someone was there. And besides, I knew that if I turned up at the house in Birch Grove on my own, Ronnie Bull would be more likely to let me in.’

  ‘Because he thought you were working for Omega.’

  She nodded. ‘I’d worked out that it was Bull who’d put Omega in touch with Dee Dee about the riot, and when I met up with him a few weeks ago – ostensibly to ask him what he knew about Omega and Dee Dee – I dropped a few fairly heavy hints that my loyalties lay with Omega rather than Delaney & Co.’ She paused then, looking up at the rear-view mirror. ‘We’re coming into town now, Jaydie. Do you want me to drop you off at the Slade?’

  ‘Yes, please. As long as it’s not any trouble.’

  ‘No trouble at all.’

  I turned to Jaydie. ‘Are you going to tell Mason or your mum about any of this?’

  ‘I think it’s probably best if Mason doesn’t know anything. I don’t know about Mum though. What do you think?’

  ‘She’s going to wonder why Dee Dee’s written off her debt and given her a pay rise,’ I said. ‘That’s if he does, of course.’

  ‘He will,’ Gloria said. ‘He can’t afford to let anyone see that video. It’ll bury him if it gets out. He won’t risk that.’

  ‘If I were you,’ Courtney said to Jaydie, ‘I’d just tell your mum that we managed to get something on Dee Dee and we used that to punish him for what he did to me, and that one of the conditions of his punishment was that he started treating your mum properly. You don’t have to go into any details, and it’s probably best if she doesn’t know that you were involved either. Just tell her that you heard from Travis what happened. Does that sound OK? I mean, I know it means lying to your mum a little bit, but that’s better than worrying her to death.’

  ‘I think I can live with a few little lies,’ Jaydie said, smiling. She looked out of the car window. We were on Slade Lane now, approaching the estate. ‘You can drop me off here,’ she told Gloria.

  ‘Are you sure? I don’t mind taking you all the way to your place.’

  ‘It’s probably best if you don’t.’

  ‘Of course,’ Gloria said, slowing down and pulling up at the side of the road.

  Before the car had stopped moving, Jaydie leaned forward and put her arms round my neck. ‘Promise you’ll call me soon, Trav, OK?’

  ‘Yeah, I promise. And thanks for saving my life.’

  She kissed me on the cheek. ‘You’re welcome.’

  ‘And I’m sorry I messed you about.’

  ‘I’ll forgive you this time,’ she said. ‘But if you ever do it again . . . well, Courtney’s not the only one round here who can kick ass.’ She playfully squeezed my neck. ‘Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes . . .’ I said, choking. ‘You’re strangling me, Jay.’

  ‘Oops,’ she said, grinning. ‘Sorry about that.’

  She gave me another quick peck on the cheek, then said her goodbyes to everyone and got out of the car. As Gloria drove off, I looked back and saw her waving both hands and doing a dopey little dance on the pavement.

  ‘She’s nice,’ Courtney said. ‘I like her a lot.’

  I smiled to myself.

  I liked her a lot too.

  56

  As we drove back to the office, Gloria was getting more and more concerned about Grandad. She was obviously very fond of him, which was nice, but also kind of unsettling. I liked the fact that she cared for him, but at the same I hoped – for Nan’s sake – that she didn’t care for him too much.

  Courtney tried calling him again, but she got no reply from his mobile or the office phone, and when she called Nan, she hadn’t seen or heard from him either.

  ‘When was he supposed to leave the office?’ I asked.

  ‘As soon as Dee Dee or Bull had called to check he was there,’ Gloria said. She glanced at her watch. ‘What time did they call?’

  ‘What’s the time now?’

  ‘Ten to nine.’

  I thought back to when Bull had called the office, but I realised that I had no idea what time it had been. ‘It was at least an hour ago,’ I said. ‘Maybe an hour and a half.’

  ‘There’s no way he could have been stuck in traffic for that long,’ Gloria said.

  ‘Maybe he was called out on an urgent job or something,’ Courtney suggested.

  ‘He would have let us know.’

  ‘Maybe the battery in his mobile ran out.’

  Gloria shook her head. ‘He would have found a way to contact us. Joe always finds a way.’

  We lapsed into silence for a while then, the three of us just sitting there in the car, lost in our thoughts. My head was still throbbing, and the side of my face where Dee Dee had hit me felt swollen and raw to the touch. I suddenly felt very tired, and as I leaned my head against the cool glass of the window and closed my eyes, I found myself thinking over everything that had happened in the house at Birch Grove, wondering what could have happened, what might have happened, replaying in my mind what did happen. I remembered the murderous look in Courtney’s eyes as she stood behind Dee Dee with the baseball bat in her hands, and I wondered how close she’d come to actually using it. I tried to work out how I would have felt if she had. Would I have felt that Dee Dee deserved it? Does anyone deserve getting badly hurt or killed, even if they are cruel and vicious and totally lacking in mercy themselves? An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth . . . is that the way it should be?

  I didn’t know.

  All I knew was that I was glad Courtney hadn’t killed him
.

  ‘There’s a light on in the office,’ Gloria said.

  I opened my eyes and looked out of the car window. We were just turning off the North Road roundabout, heading for the back street where Grandad usually parked, and the office wasn’t in sight any more.

  ‘You saw a light?’ I asked Gloria.

  She nodded, suddenly looking much more positive. ‘It wasn’t bright enough to be the main office light, so it must have been the light in Joe’s office. Did you see it, Courtney?’

  ‘Yeah, I think so,’ she said, allowing herself a tentative smile. ‘He probably fell asleep in there, forgot all about us.’

  Gloria smiled too, but I could tell she didn’t think Grandad would fall asleep in a situation like this, no matter how tired he was.

  We entered the back street and Gloria drove along until she found a parking space. She pulled in, turned off the engine, and we all got out of the car. It was a cold starless night, the street empty and quiet, and as we headed off towards North Walk, our footsteps echoed dully around the brick walls of the office buildings that backed onto the street.

  ‘You know all that stuff you told Dee Dee about a series of signals you’d worked out with Grandad?’ I said to Gloria. ‘Was that true?’

  She half smiled. ‘It didn’t have to be. As long as there was a possibility it was true, Dee Dee was never going to take the chance that it wasn’t.’

  ‘Do you really think he’ll leave us alone now?’

  ‘He’s not stupid. He’ll hate us for getting the better of him, and he’ll despise Courtney for humiliating him, and for a day or so all he’ll be able to think about is how to get revenge. But in the end he’ll realise it’s just not worth it. He’ll also realise that the only witness to his humiliation was Bull, and he’s not going to say anything, so his reputation is still intact. And reputation is all that counts to people like Dee Dee.’ Gloria put her hand on my shoulder. ‘We don’t have to worry about Mr Devon any more.’