by Chris Ryan
Outside the rain came down harder; the kind of drenching storm you only got in summer.
Hex had the map he rescued from the kitchen and Alex checked the compass from his survival tin. ‘Best to head up as high as possible,’ he said.
They climbed up on top of the ridge fairly quickly. The rain brought the noise of traffic from the road far below. Three jets screamed overhead, making the five friends jump. Alex broke into a run. He was too wound up to keep still. Like spooked deer, the others followed. They ran up the slope and off into the hills.
After a good twenty minutes Alex slowed to a walk. They had probably gone far enough for now. The rain was teeming down, but they were warm from running.
‘They obviously intended to sort us out,’ said Hex. His short hair was even more spiky than usual in the rain. ‘What will they do now?’
Paulo said, ‘Maybe if they can’t find us, they’ll cut their losses and run. Before the police close in.’
‘If they do that,’ said Li, ‘they’ve got a big bad dealer who’ll come after them. I saw that guy and they are scared of him. I think they’ll do the deal before they get out.’
‘I saw a tall guy in a kilt,’ said Hex. ‘Not one of the gamekeepers. There are more of them than we think.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘I don’t know. I only saw him from behind.’
Rain was dripping down Amber’s nose. She wiped it away. ‘Hey, guys, reality check. Things have changed. Those gamekeepers are now out for our blood. We should go straight to the police.’
‘No,’ said Alex.
Amber stopped walking and stared at Alex. ‘No?’
Alex looked away into the distance, as if thinking. ‘The police don’t know where to find them. They’ve got the whole of this estate to search. The gamekeepers know every inch and they’ll probably get away – and then what? We might be safe in the short term, but there are a bunch of drug dealers out there with a score to settle. We don’t know if we’ll ever run into them again, but if we do our lives will be in danger.’
‘We’ve got to put them behind bars,’ said Li.
‘For a long time,’ added Paulo. ‘So we need the police to see all the evidence and catch all the dealers.’
Alex knew he was right, but he wanted to make sure everyone was with him on this. ‘Hex, what do you think?’
‘It’s a no-brainer,’ said Hex. ‘We go to the police now and look over our shoulders for the rest of our lives. We wait a few hours and set up a nice trap, and then we can all sleep easily. I say we have to stick to our plan.’
Alex looked at Amber again.
Amber nodded. ‘I’ve had school friends whose lives were ruined by drugs. And do you know what? I don’t like being threatened by guns. Let’s put them away.’
They started walking again slowly, still lost in thought. Over the top of a ridge they came to a single-track road. As they crossed it they took advantage of the view and looked carefully in both directions. The only moving things were two bedraggled Highland cattle in the distance, swishing their tails in the rain.
‘Next question,’ said Alex. ‘Where do we go from here? How do we find out when the buyers are coming?’
‘We need two teams,’ said Hex. ‘One to go close in, follow them around at the lodge, and one to stay hidden in the field. Which of us can they identify?’
Alex thought. ‘They might have seen me up close in the bothy this morning. I don’t know how long they were watching us for. Paulo, they’ll have seen you too.’
‘They could identify me anyway,’ said Paulo. ‘They saw me that day when I caught their pony.’ He turned to the others. ‘How close did you get to them at the factory?’
‘It’s hard to say,’ said Amber. ‘We were all running around. I certainly didn’t get a good look at them, so maybe they didn’t get a close look at us.’
‘I gave one of them a good kicking,’ said Li. ‘I don’t think he’ll forget me. And I was there when the pony bolted.’
‘What about that day when we took the dog into the yard?’ said Amber. ‘They must have seen all of us. Alex, you talked to one of them, when he wanted the ketamine box.’
‘Yes, but I’m out of the close surveillance team anyway,’ said Alex. ‘Did he talk to anyone else?’
‘He was looking at all of us,’ said Paulo.
‘But it was at a distance, right?’ said Hex. ‘With a complete change of clothes and context, there are two of us who could maybe slip past them unnoticed.’ He stopped and unfolded the map.
‘You’re forgetting something,’ said Amber. ‘I’m gonna stick out like a sore thumb at the lodge. There aren’t many black people in this part of Scotland.’
Hex shook his head. ‘Except for that celebrity singer and all her friends who are staying there. The lodge is over-run with sassy black Americans. Just dress like them and you could easily be part of her entourage.’
‘I’m not part of anyone’s entourage,’ sniffed Amber.
‘We don’t have to stay there long, so a superficial disguise is fine. We find out when the delivery is scheduled, tell the others and get out.’
‘We?’ said Amber dubiously. ‘You think they’ll let you into a place like that?’
Hex grimaced. ‘I promise not to drink the fingerbowls.’
Alex recapped the plan so far. ‘OK, so you two are in the lodge. You get the information. Meanwhile we’ll go to ground on the moors and check out the factory in detail.’
Li said, ‘I think we should take a closer look at the stalagmite cave too. It’s very close and we never explored properly underground – I did hear the generator from there. There could be other tunnels nearby and they might have an escape route.’
The others nodded in agreement.
‘How,’ asked Hex, ‘are you going to pick up a mobile signal from there? Most of the moors are dead zones.’
Four blank faces looked back at him.
Hex unclipped the palmtop from his belt and handed it to Alex. ‘I got an upgrade this morning. It uses a communications satellite to bounce signals off the nearest phone cell. Sort of a hacker’s version of a satellite phone on a ship. When we’ve got the information, we’ll give you a call.’
Alex took the palmtop almost reverently. ‘I’ll take good care of it.’
20
UNDER COVER
‘Reservation for two,’ said Amber. ‘My agent phoned you last week about it . . . No, you’ve made a mistake.’
Hex looked in the window of the Glaickvullin country clothing shop. The space where his palmtop usually was felt very empty, like a missing tooth. He never went anywhere without it. And the window display was faintly disorientating. Gleaming, polished rifles rested on a background of green and blue tartan, overlooked by a stuffed jay. It was a dead bird and a couple of guns, but it was trying to look like a cosy Christmas card. Hex remembered the last time he’d seen guns – just that morning. Rather a different story.
Amber was different too. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve filled every room,’ she said into the phone. Gone was the girl who squirmed through muddy ditches and hung onto ATVs for dear life. Here was richbitch Amber, bullying Glaickvullin Lodge to give her a room. ‘Two singles in a suite. That’ll do.’ She cut the connection.
Hex looked at her. ‘Is this wise? Wasn’t the hostel booked in the name of Middleton?’
Amber shook her head. ‘It was booked as Adventure Tours dot com. They can’t link me to them through my credit card. If we’re guests, we can get through a lot more doors than if we’re grubby vagabonds who’ve wandered in off the moor.’ She linked her arm through his.
Hex realized she was propelling him towards the door of the shop. ‘We’re going in there?’ he exclaimed.
‘We need a superficial disguise.’
Inside, the shop was deeply carpeted. A wooden cabinet stood opposite the entrance, the drawers stacked with silk tics and handkerchiefs. A small assemblage of dummies wore complete tweed shooting outf
its.
Amber grabbed a pale creamy yellow flat cap from a dummy and pulled it onto her head. Then she spotted something else and stopped suddenly. Hex nearly ran into her. ‘Wow, look at this.’ She handed him a black leather riding boot, running her fingers over the shiny contoured leg with an expression of awe. ‘Feel this. They’re handmade in Argentina. Aren’t they divine?’
Hex didn’t need to feel the boot, he could smell it. It smelled like the interior of an expensive car. He caught sight of the price tag and nearly fainted: £950!
Close by his elbow, a black-clad assistant said, ‘We can have them added to your bill, if you’re staying at the lodge.’
Hex shook his head and was about to give the boot back to Amber, but she had moved on, rummaging through a rack of clothes, making selections at lightning speed. It was like watching a Special Operations ambush – swift and effective. The assistant hovered, ready to help, but saw that Amber knew what she was doing.
Amber straightened up. ‘Come and try these on.’ She didn’t need to be shown the way to the changing rooms: she had already sussed the shop’s layout.
Hex followed, bewildered. A swish of a curtain and he found himself inside a room as big as his entire bedroom at home. A plush velvet-upholstered chair sat waiting for his discarded clothes. The last changing room he’d been in had been a poky cupboard with a plastic chair.
On a rack were the clothes Amber had picked out. He lifted up a frock coat made from green tweed criss-crossed with fine purple lines like graph paper. It looked like something Prince Philip would wear. How could she do this to him? Next door he heard rustlings and the smart buzz of a zip. Amber’s voice fluttered over the partition. She was next door.
‘Honey, I don’t hear much changing going on.’
Hex sighed. It was clothes for a mission, not to make him feel like himself. He pulled off his black O’Neill fleece, picked up a checked shirt and winced.
He came out wearing green plus-fours in a lightweight summer tweed, matching long green socks and his walking boots. He barely recognized Amber. She was dressed virtually the same but had made it look trendy – green plus-fours except a size too big so they hung around her hips like cropped cargo pants, and a long, tight-fitting tweed waistcoat that emphasized her narrow waist. The corn-coloured flat cap gave it an appealingly roguish look. She looked expensive and chic – and a good few years older. If the gamekeepers were looking for a bunch of kids, they certainly wouldn’t recognize her.
Hex looked down gloomily at his own legs. ‘Not sure about the plus-fours.’
Amber shook her head. ‘Try the moleskins.’
Hex heard the sound of fingers on a keyboard. On the glass counter, above racks of gloves, was a computer. The assistant tapped in a password, then pushed the keyboard towards him. ‘Would you like to try our tartan research database? Just type in your family name and we can find out what the most appropriate tartan is for you.’
Hex took the keyboard and had a quick look at the menus. If the computer could send bills to the lodge, it must be part of a network.
The assistant hovered. ‘You just type your name in here.’
Amber realized that Hex had plans for the screen in front of him if only he could be left alone. She pulled a jacket out of a rack. ‘Can you help me find what he needs to wear with a kilt?’
The assistant was only too happy to join her.
On the screen was a man in full formal Scottish evening dress – bow tie, silver-buttoned jacket, sporran and kilt with criss-crossed lines of green, red and yellow on a background of pale dusty blue. Hex crashed it and he vanished. Now, he thought, let’s go for a wander around the server – have a look at the Glaickvullin Lodge accounts.
Amber watched patiently while the assistant took her through a selection of bow ties. Out of the corner of her eye she watched Hex, typing away furiously.
‘What kind of dress shirt does he like?’ said the assistant.
‘I don’t know,’ said Amber. She pulled two down off the shelf and held them out. ‘Hey, honey, do you like this?’
Hex looked up. ‘Not quite me.’
Amber wasn’t surprised. It had a double line of lacy frills down the front like cream on top of a gateau.
Hex put his head on one side, thinking. ‘Have you got something plain? Or black?’
‘I’ll have to see what we’ve got in the back,’ said the assistant.
Hex’s eyes bored into the screen, making the most of the minutes while the assistant was out of the room and he didn’t have to disguise what he was doing.
She soon came back, saying, ‘We don’t seem to have any in your size. I can order some for you.’
Amber realized with horror that the assistant was heading for the computer. She had to distract her. She seized a tweed jacket off a rack and swung it at her. ‘Does this come in medium?’
The assistant turned round. ‘I’ll have a look for you,’ she said, and went into the back of the shop again.
Amber breathed a sigh of relief. Crisis averted. Hex mouthed at her, ‘Nearly done.’
‘I think we’re out of stock of those as well. I can order one and have it sent up to the lodge,’ the assistant told them.
‘Oh – shame,’ said Amber. ‘We’re not staying long.’
Hex turned the screen round with a flourish. ‘I’ve found my tartan.’
Li crawled along the narrow tunnel to the stalagmite cave, hauling herself up with the tiny handholds. Her fingers were hardened from her years of free climbing, but she had put on her gloves. Every resource they carried was vital now, and they couldn’t afford to use their precious water on washing grit out of wounds.
Her head felt vulnerable – they hadn’t had time to pack helmets. It was just lucky they’d managed to grab the ropes, otherwise they wouldn’t have managed the abseil down into the cave entrance. Nor did they have knee pads, so they had improvised some out of T-shirts, cutting the material into strips with Alex’s knife and wrapping them around her knees. But at least they had their waterproofs and torches. It would have been very miserable without them.
She reached the elbow in the tunnel. She called back, ‘I’m starting my descent now.’
‘OK,’ came Paulo’s and Alex’s voices. It was good to hear they were close.
She squirmed along, her torch in her right hand. The patch of light kept jumping around. No helmet also meant no headlight. She peered down into the tunnel below her – how much further? Were there stalagmites ahead yet?
Finally the torch picked out a faint glitter. She called back again, ‘I’m at the cave.’
Paulo’s voice came back, echoing: ‘OK.’
She jumped down to the floor and looked around. There it was, as she remembered. The jagged, glittering stalagmites, sticking up from the uneven floor like teeth in a shark’s mouth. The drip, drip of water and the occasional rasp of pebbles moving. But not the other noise. The generator wasn’t on. That meant the men weren’t in there. It was safe to look around – for now.
According to the cavern plan Li had memorized, the far wall was the nearest point to the buried factory. So that was where she needed to explore. She picked her way round the edge of the cave. It was like tiptocing round a room filled with sharp ornaments. She reached the far wall and the cave roof opened up into a hole.
A cold light breeze touched her right ear and the top of her head. A draught meant a hole. Li ran her torch over the rock wall. It went on up, beyond where her light could reach. What was it? A shaft? Only one way to find out where it went. She would have to climb.
The rock was quite smooth, but her experienced eye picked out a few hand- and footholds. She’d definitely need her bare fingers, though. She peeled off her gloves and put them in her pocket, then felt the wall. How would she hold the torch? Could she climb in the pitch dark?
She would have to. Her fingers closed on the switch. They wouldn’t obey her. She didn’t want to turn off the torch, feel the darkness close in.
She tried shutting her eyes. There, that was what the dark was like. It would be no worse than that.
She switched off the torch and slipped it into her pocket. Then she opened her eyes and tilted her head up.
Far above, there was a tiny patch of light. It was about the size of a coin, but it was a patch of light nevertheless. It was a way out, near the factory. She definitely had to investigate.
Li gave her fingers a quick stretch and clenched her fists a few times to get the circulation going. Then she put her hands on the wall.
Once she started, a kind of calm settled on her. Concentration drove all fears out of her head. She just went steadily up.
The tunnel became narrower, until the rough rock wall touched her back. She leaned into it and pushed herself up with her legs. The patch of light became bigger and the draught of fresh air was getting stronger, banishing the smell of wet rock and mud.
There was something else: one edge of the hole was straight and smooth. Li reached the top and found a grey plastic drainpipe ran across the top of the shaft like a bridge. By the drainpipe was a ledge. Li pulled herself up and stretched her aching limbs. Above her was a small crack in the rock, about fifteen centimetres wide – far too small to climb through, but big enough to let light in.
The drainpipe came horizontally out of the crack and went down a tunnel. Li shone her torch down it. It was wide enough to crawl down on hands and knees. Well, she might as well see where it went.
Suddenly her torch picked out a dead squirrel; it had died quite recently, she thought. It must have fallen down the fissure. She pushed it aside with her elbow. Under it were dead beetles. She looked around. The tunnel was littered with dead squirrels, field mice and voles.
This was odd. She might have expected to find one or two dead creatures, but all these? And what was this pipe?
Alex waved his arms and paced up and down the tunnel to get warm. He’d actually had a mad moment when he’d been excited about going into hiding. He didn’t envy Hex and Amber their upmarket lodge. Living off the land was far more his style. After all, his dream for the trip was cooking mussels and cockles in a fire pit on the shore of the Kyle. But waiting for Li in a dark, freezing tunnel was something else.