by Jack Higgins
“I agree. And so does Viktor.”
Stabb scowled. “Glad to hear you both approve.”
“Oh, don’t misunderstand me,” she said, smiling. She brushed her hair away from her face as she got into the car. “You are in charge here.”
Stabb looked at her, then started the engine and pulled out of the parking space.
“So what do you want me to do?” she asked.
“Nothing for now. We’re watching Chance, and so far he’s not made contact with anyone. But the children may provide an opportunity.”
The woman smiled, watching out of the car window as a huge 747 took off into the cloudy sky. “I like children,” she said.
“Jade won’t like that,” Rich warned Chance.
Chance lit the cigarette anyway. He put the packet and his silver lighter down on the coffee table beside his mobile phone. Rich could see there was a heart engraved on the lighter.
Chance blew out a long breath of smoke and Rich winced, trying not to cough. He hated the smell of cigarettes, hated the way the smoke got into your mouth and the stale smell of it lingering on your clothes.
“I’ve had a really long day,” Chance said.
At that moment, Jade appeared in the doorway to the living room. Rich recognised the expression on Jade’s face and from experience he knew it was not good news.
She walked over to Chance and plucked the cigarette from his mouth. Then she ground it out in the ashtray.
“What are you doing?” Chance asked.
“You’re not smoking that,” Jade told him.
“You can’t order me about in my own flat.”
“It might be your flat,” Jade said, “but we all have to live here.”
“Sometimes I just have to have one.” He opened the cigarette packet again.
“You’re killing us as well as yourself,” Jade told him. “Killing your own children.”
Chance was on his feet. He pushed the lighter into the space inside the cigarette packet, then closed the packet and tossed it down on to the table beside his mobile phone. “I’m sorry, but I can’t deal with this right now. I’ll phone schools and you should be somewhere more pleasant by the weekend. Things are not easy for me at the moment – not easy at all.”
He turned and walked quickly from the room.
As soon as the study door slammed shut, Jade scooped up the cigarettes from the coffee table. “Confiscated,” she said. “Since we’re all treating each other like school kids. And that,” she added, picking up Chance’s mobile phone. “That’s confiscated too.”
“What are you going to do with them?” Rich asked. “Ciggies, fine. But you can’t chuck away his phone. And he put his lighter inside the cigarette packet.”
“Then I’ll put them somewhere he won’t find them,” she said.
“He’ll go ape,” Rich said.
Jade grinned. “I know.” She headed for the bedroom.
Rich stared at the empty space on the table where the cigarettes and phone had been. There was a new packet of cigarettes on a table in the hall, and he fetched it and put it on top of the telly. After a moment’s thought, Rich tore the cellophane wrapper off the packet. Maybe Chance would assume he’d opened a new pack and not get too cross when he couldn’t find his phone or his lighter.
Rich didn’t ask where Jade was actually hiding Chance’s stuff. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. And when Jade returned and moved on to the kitchen, he decided he really didn’t want to know and went to the bedroom. He pushed the door shut and tried to read. He couldn’t concentrate, and when he heard the study door open, he cringed.
A few moments later, he heard the explosion he had anticipated.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Chance asked.
Rich took a deep breath, then went to see what was happening.
Jade had been pouring beer down the kitchen sink. Empty bottles were neatly arranged on the worktop, and now she’d started on the champagne. The room reeked of alcohol.
Jade and Chance were staring at each other, and Rich would not have put money on who would blink or look away first.
“Let’s just all calm down,” Rich said. His voice seemed quiet and strained and rather weedy, even to himself.
“I am calm,” Jade said. She didn’t sound it.
“Maybe we should…” Rich swallowed, “…talk about this.”
“I’ve nothing to say,” Jade replied. She was still locked in a staring match with her father.
“Fine,” Chance said. “Then you can listen. Both of you.” He broke from the confrontation with Jade as he turned to glare at Rich. “In the living room. Now.”
“I don’t—” Jade started to say.
“Now!”
She didn’t finish the thought. She pushed past Chance and Rich and went and sat on the sofa. Rich hesitated a moment, then went and sat beside her.
Chance stood in front of the fireplace, facing them. He looked down at the coffee table between them.
“Where are my cigarettes?”
“I don’t know,” Rich said. “Haven’t seen them. On top of the telly, maybe?”
“So you’re going to smoke at us again, are you?” Jade asked.
“I’m going to tell you some things that you may not want to hear,” Chance said. “And some things that you may not believe, but need to know.”
“So no slouching at the back,” Jade muttered.
Despite himself, Rich giggled.
“Absolutely,” Chance told them, deadly serious. “It’s bad for your posture.” His mouth twitched, just slightly. But it was enough to defuse the tension a little. He took a deep breath, as if gathering himself for what he was going to say.
Rich waited to be shouted at. He and Jade were used to being told off, and despite her bravado, Rich knew that Jade didn’t like it. He could feel how tense she was. He just hoped she’d take it and not yell back like she sometimes did at Mum. Or used to.
But Chance didn’t shout. When he spoke, his voice was calm and quiet. “You’ve been through a lot,” he said. “I know it hasn’t been easy for you, even without the upheaval of coming here and coping with me. It’s difficult, losing someone you love. Especially the first time.”
“Like you’d know,” Jade said.
“I said you might not believe what I say,” Chance told her. “But I do know. I lost both my parents before I was twenty. But this isn’t about me, it’s about you. Right now it’s you two who are important. We don’t know each other yet, let’s not even pretend that we do, but I hope we will. I guess there’s never a good time for what’s happened, but right now may be even more awkward than it should be.”
“Why?” Rich asked.
Chance sighed. “One of the most awkward things is that I can’t tell you. Not at the moment. There are things about…” He hesitated, deciding how to phrase what he wanted to say, “…things about my job that I can’t tell you right now.”
“Like why you have a security thing on the phone?” Jade said.
He nodded. “It’s a scrambler. For secure conversations. My work is important and it’s taking up a lot of my time just now. I have some things I need to finish up – urgent things. I can’t have distractions.”
“Is that what we are?” Rich said.
Chance smiled. “With the best will in the world, what do you think? I’d love for it to be possible for you to just move in here and settle down and all of us to carry on as if nothing’s changed. But that isn’t possible. Things have changed – changed radically, for you and for me. We need time to come to terms with that, and to make it work.” He leaned forward and looked at them both intently. “And I do want it to work. I really do. I want to get this right, for all our sakes.”
“Cruel to be kind?” Jade wondered.
“Nothing so calculated,” Chance told her. “I just need time to sort things out.”
“So you dump us at boarding school so you can get your work done.”
Chance sighed. “I suppos
e that’s what it comes down to. I know you don’t like the idea – I don’t like the idea either – but I’m afraid that’s how it has to be.”
“But why?” Rich demanded.
“I’ll tell you why as soon as I can,” he promised. “Really I will. You don’t know me, but I’m asking you to trust me. This is the best way. Till the end of term – a few weeks. Then we’ll discuss it properly.” He nodded to Rich. “And I mean discuss it. And we’ll decide together what to do next, what’s best. As a family. Deal?”
Neither Jade nor Rich said anything.
“Like I said,” Chance went on. “I don’t expect you to like it. But I hope you’ll trust me enough to take my word.”
“That’s not fair,” Jade said.
“I’ll tell you what’s not fair,” Chance said quietly. “I could have ignored the call from Mrs Gilpin. I could have told her that I never even saw my children, or that I don’t think they’re mine at all, or that I’m just not interested in my own kids. They don’t want to know me, so why should I want to know them – look after them? Put myself out for them? Change my entire life for them? Just because they lost their mum and there’s no one else. But I didn’t. Because that wouldn’t be fair. It really wouldn’t.”
Both Rich and Jade were looking down at the floor. By the time they looked up again, Chance had gone.
“Maybe we should give him a break,” Rich said to Jade. “Give him back his phone and cigarettes.” Rich could sense Jade tense. “You can’t keep blaming him for what happened to Mum.”
“Just because he suddenly goes all slushy and says he cares doesn’t mean it’s true.”
“He said we’d talk,” Rich pointed out.
“Yeah, after he’s packed us off to school. Then what? A live-in nanny for the holidays so he can get on with this important job of his? So he can build his career without being distracted. Well, Mary Poppins we don’t need.”
“I’m going to tell him you took his mobile and his ciggies,” Rich decided. “And the lighter.”
“Creep!” Jade made to grab Rich, but he was already on his way to the study.
They heard the phone ring and both stopped, close to the study door.
The door was open a fraction and they could hear Chance’s voice from inside.
“No, not at the flat,” he was saying. “Too many… distractions right now.”
“He means us,” Jade mouthed at Rich.
“I know,” he mouthed back. “We shouldn’t be listening,” he whispered. But neither of them moved away from the door.
“I have it safe,” Chance was saying. “I’ll bring it with me. Be happy to get it to someone who knows what to do with the stuff. I can’t risk them finding it.”
“Does he mean us again?” Rich murmured.
Jade shrugged.
“Half an hour then,” Chance was saying. “Somewhere safe where we can talk and I can hand it over to you. Don’t come here, though, whatever you do… Because I’m telling you.” He sounded angry now. “Put them in danger, and it’ll be the last time I work for you. Ever.” There was a pause. “That old scrapyard? Yes, I know it. Totters Lane, isn’t it? Yes. Half an hour.”
Jade grabbed Rich’s arm and pulled him into the bedroom.
“What?” Rich said.
“What do you mean, ‘what?’? If this job of his is so important and if it’s on the level, and if he really does work in the oil industry…”
“If?” Rich countered.
“Yes, if. If that’s all true, then why is he going to a meeting to hand over something he shouldn’t have, in a scrapyard?”
Rich sighed. “All right. Look, he said there were things he couldn’t tell us right now. But maybe we should find out.”
“Yeah? Like how?”
“By following him and seeing who he meets.”
“We can’t do that,” Jade said. “Can we?”
Rich shrugged. “You can nick his mobile – I don’t see why we can’t follow him to a meeting.”
The bedroom door opened and Chance was standing there. “Look, sorry,” he said. “I have to go out. We’ll talk again when I get back, all right?”
“All right,” Jade said.
They watched him cross the living room. He paused to pick up his cigarettes from on top of the television. He seemed about to open the packet, but he caught sight of Jade and Rich still watching him, and instead stuffed the cigarettes into his jacket pocket.
“See you in an hour or so then,” Chance said. He didn’t wait for a reply.
They heard the hall door slam shut behind him.
“We’ll see you a lot sooner than that,” Rich said.
5
The evening had drawn in and it was getting dark. There was a light drizzle, enough to permeate through Jade’s coat and make the air feel colder than it was.
“There he is, look,” Rich said, pointing to the dark silhouette of a figure passing under a streetlight further down the road. They hurried after Chance, keeping to the shadows in case he looked back.
He did not look back, and Jade could not believe he knew they were following him. But even so, Chance suddenly darted into an alleyway. If she had blinked, Jade would have missed it – it would have seemed like he had simply disappeared into thin air.
They approached the end of the alley hesitantly, in case Chance was standing waiting for them. Jade wasn’t frightened of him, but she didn’t fancy another argument. For all her bravado she didn’t like falling out with anyone – even when they were wrong. Like he was.
Rich looked at her, and Jade nodded. “Let’s do it,” she said quietly.
Together, they stepped into the end of the alley and looked along it.
Nothing.
The alley was empty.
Chance was gone.
They sprinted along the alley and found it turned a sharp corner and then came out in a busy street. A bus sprayed water up at them as it went through a shallow puddle. People walked past quickly, huddled into their coats as the rain got heavier. Cars and taxis splashed after the bus.
There was no sign of John Chance.
“It’s like he knew we were following him,” Rich complained.
“How could he, though?” Jade said.
“Maybe he just thought someone might follow him,” Rich said. “Not us, but someone else. I don’t know. We need to find a bookshop.”
Jade stared at him. “We need to find Dad.”
“So he’s ‘Dad’ now, is he?” Rich seemed amused.
“What else should I call him? And what good will a bookshop be? Or do you just want to get something to read?”
As they walked along the street, a woman stepped out of the shadows. She was careful to keep well back, though neither of the children had noticed she had been following them since they left the flat.
There was a bookshop further down the same road. It was a small branch of a big chain, and it had what Rich wanted – an A to Z of London.
“Gonna look him up in the index?” Jade suggested. “John Chance is here with a big arrow, maybe?”
For reply, Rich pointed to part of one of the maps. “That’s where we are now, right? Just there.”
“So?”
Rich moved his finger across to the facing page. “This is Totters Lane.”
“Of course. Where the scrapyard is. How much is the book?”
Rich closed it and put it back on the shelf. “Dunno,” he said. “But I can remember the way from the map. Come on, we’ve got fifteen minutes before his meeting.”
The moment they were out of the shop, the woman who had been standing on the other side of the bookcase, listening carefully, took a mobile phone from her small handbag. She pushed aside her long, straight black hair as she made the call.
“Totters Lane,” she said, as soon as the call was answered. “The scrapyard. He’ll be there in about ten minutes.”
Chance paused to have a cigarette. He was surprised to find the packet was full.
He s
tared at the tightly-packed ends of the cigarettes and frowned. He had not finished the packet, and his lighter had been inside. His mind raced through the possibilities. He checked his watch, and decided it was too late to get back to the flat and have it out with Jade and Rich. He had to be at the scrapyard in less than ten minutes. He’d decide what to do then.
In the mean time, he had a box of matches in his pocket. He could at least have a smoke.
* * *
Ten minutes later, out of breath, Rich and Jade arrived at the scrapyard. Huge, heavy metal double gates were standing slightly open at the end of the lane. Jade eased through first, followed by Rich.
There were no lights inside the yard. The high gates and walls kept out most of the light from the streets outside. They found themselves in a world of shadows and silhouettes. There was an open area immediately inside the gates, where lorries and cars could drive in. After that the place was a jungle of discarded debris. Cars were piled on top of each other, crushed down under the weight from above. Prams and old shopping trolleys, iron bedsteads and old bicycles lay in heaps. Pages of damp newspaper blew like tumbleweed through the landscape.
“This place is huge,” Jade said. She spoke in a hushed whisper, as if the dead cars might hear her.
“He could be anywhere,” Rich agreed.
As he finished speaking, there was a sound from behind them – a rasping, scraping sound as the heavy gates were pushed open. Rich grabbed Jade’s hand and they ran for the nearest shadows, hiding in the darkness by the gutted shell of an old Rover.
A dark shape pushed into the yard and stood in the darkness inside the gates. There was a flare of light as the figure struck a match, and the twins could see that it was their father. He lit a cigarette and flicked the match away.
“He took his time,” Jade whispered.
“Came the long way,” Rich whispered back. “Making sure he wasn’t being followed, remember?”
“But who is he meeting?”
As Jade spoke, they could hear the sound of an engine – a vehicle approaching at speed. Chance had heard it too, and he moved quickly away from the gates, obviously expecting them to be pushed open.