The Castle (17 page)

THIRTY-SEVEN

A
t first I thought he said ‘die'. And I did prepare myself, sort of. That is, I stopped feeling so terrified and thought of Mum. I also thought of all those times I'd spent in Winchelsea churchyard, thinking about Dad. Even being here, like this, was better than visiting those stupid ashes.

But he didn't say ‘die', he said ‘lie'. When the police boat came close, he put on a posh accent, like one of his old officers from the regiment. In fact, he sounded exactly like Rupert – the new stepdad he didn't even know I had.

‘Thank goodness you're here. We're off to hospital. This girl's got appendicitis, I think.' He indicated Amina, lying in
the bottom of the boat. ‘She's my daughter's friend. We're trying to get her to shore as fast as we can. Can you help us?'

Wait –
appendicitis
? What about the castle, and the dungeons, and the people who were chasing us down with guns two seconds ago?

A policeman stepped forward. ‘British, yes?' Dad nodded. The man smiled and spoke in careful English. ‘Some people have reported guns . . . shooting . . . from the Isola Sirena. That island over there. Do you know about this?'

Dad shook his head. ‘Guns? No. I might have seen fireworks. I can't be sure. I'm so worried about this girl. She needs to get to hospital.'

The policeman held up his hand. ‘What is that boat behind you, please?'

Dad looked round and gave a start, as if he'd only just noticed it. Nothing to do with him, he said. Nice, though. Pretty tender.

The police agreed. They seemed pleased to have the opportunity of stopping it and getting closer. Would we please wait, while they talked to the people on board?

‘Of course,' Dad agreed. But the girl . . . you know . . . appendicitis? Hospital?'

They nodded gravely. They wouldn't be long.

‘Da-ad,' I hissed as soon as they'd moved away. ‘What are you
doing?'

He crouched down low so Amina and I could hear him.

‘You have a choice,' he said urgently. ‘You can go with the police and tell them everything. If you do, they may investigate the island. I don't know what they'd find, but it wouldn't be much by then. Or you can follow me. I got you into this. I promise I'll get you out of it.'

Amina nodded earnestly.

‘Peta?'

I nodded too. ‘But why can't we at least . . .?'

‘There isn't time to argue. First, Wahool would rather kill those prisoners than have them discovered. And second, two of his guards have brothers in this police force. I don't know who to trust round here. OK?'

It was a
shut up
kind of OK. I shut up. Meanwhile, the police boat was heading back to us. Dad looked at Amina.

‘Can you walk?'

‘I think so.'

‘Pretend you can't. Hold your stomach . . . 
here
.' He pointed to the exact place. ‘It's hurting, OK?' He turned to me. ‘We'll only have one chance to disappear. Wait till we get ashore, then watch me for the signal. When you see it, say nothing and walk away, fast, both of you. If it doesn't work out and you end up at the police station, make them call the embassy. Say I was just a stranger who helped you escape.'

‘What signal?' I asked.

But by now the police boat was back alongside us.

‘Watch me,' Dad muttered, then turned away. ‘So glad you're back!' he shouted. ‘I think she's taken a turn for the worse. Can you possibly give us an escort?'

They did more than that. They took us on board their much faster boat, while one of the policemen drove our motor boat to shore. As soon as we were on deck, the policeman who had spoken to us before gave us a bright smile.

‘You forgot this!' he said, holding up a blue holdall.

‘I'm sorry?' Dad looked confused.

‘The men from the
Princess Nazia
. They were trying to give it to you, for your daughter's friend. They had nearly reached you, but not quite. So, you were staying on the
Princess
?' He looked impressed, as if to say that if you were going to go down with appendicitis, a superyacht was
the
place to do it.

They'd said we were staying on the yacht?

Dad considered the new development for a moment, then took the holdall from the policeman and looked through it, as if that's exactly what he'd expected to happen.

‘Great. Some useful drugs in here. Thank you.'

‘Can I administer some pain relief?' the policeman asked. ‘I have training.'

‘No, that's fine,' Dad replied quickly. ‘So do I.' He was rifling through packets of syringes and phials of liquid, holding them up to the light to see what they were. ‘Ah. This looks good.'

The police boat was nearing the mainland. I noticed that the tender from the
Princess Nazia
was still behind us.

‘What's it doing?' I asked.

‘Ah,' the policeman smiled. ‘They are most concerned about your little friend. They will follow us to Amalfi and meet us at the hospital. They fear very much for her.'

Oh hell.
So that was their plan. They'd said we were with them so they could follow us all the way. It wasn't over yet. It wasn't nearly over.

Dad gave only the slightest flicker of response. He bent over Amina with cool efficiency, clutching a syringe. Anyone would think he was a doctor with his patient. ‘Here,' he said, rolling up her sleeve. ‘I'm going to give you something for the pain. It will hurt, but don't worry.'

Bending lower, he muttered quietly in her ear. She flinched and moaned as he wielded the syringe. Then the policemen motioned him back across the boat to talk.

‘What did he give you?' I asked her, as quietly as I could
over the roar of the engines and the hiss of waves splashing against the speeding hull.

‘Nothing,' she said. ‘He told me to pretend.' She groaned as if in serious agony, so I really hoped she was acting.

I looked back to where Dad now stood with the policeman, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot. A thought struck me: what about his bare feet and broken toes? Wouldn't they cause suspicion? But when I checked, I realised he'd somehow shoved his feet and the bottoms of his ragged trousers into the too-small rubber boots.

‘Mr Allud is so brave,' Amina murmured.

‘Yes, he is.'

‘You called him your father . . .?'

‘Yeah, he is.'

‘But you said before . . .'

‘Mmm. I know. I was wrong.'

She frowned in confusion. How could anyone be wrong about something as important as their own father?

Especially me. I always thought Dad and I had a bond that nothing could break. The more I discovered, the less I understood.

By now the coastline was a necklace of sparkling lights. Clusters of pale-coloured houses emerged from the gloom, clinging to steep hillsides. They looked precarious, and beautiful. The police boat swung to the right and headed for the marina of a smart seaside town.

As the boat swerved through the water, Dad lost his footing and fell against the policeman, who clutched his leg in pain. Dad was hugely apologetic, patting him down. The idiot English father, with his bad sea legs. Except that Dad was always brilliant on boats. He was definitely up to
something, but I didn't know what.

We drew up alongside rows of tall, shiny yachts bobbing on the water. Two police cars were waiting for us onshore, along with a couple of police motorbikes and a small late-night crowd of curious locals.

On the dock, policemen surrounded us. I didn't see how we could possibly get away. Their faces were kindly, but their hips were bristling with guns. I followed as they gently placed Amina in the back of an open police car, where a police-woman stood nearby to keep an eye on us, while the rest went to the water's edge to watch the graceful speedboat arrive behind us.

All the time I didn't take my eyes off Dad, who hung back, hardly moving as he surreptitiously discarded the too-small boots. He mimed slipping off a life jacket, so I took off mine, and Amina's too. We were all in black again.

And then it happened. Without warning, the policeman who'd been chatting to Dad on the boat collapsed on the dock, moaning and clutching his stomach. The group around him called out anxiously as he knelt over and threw up. Everyone watched the scene, horrified.

Everyone except me. Because that looked like a signal to me.

I glanced back at Dad, who nodded very slightly. He'd said to trust him. Well . . . OK.

First, I gasped and pointed at the sick man, and the police-woman next to me rushed over to help. Then I turned to Amina. ‘Now!'

In one fluid movement, she opened her eyes, sat up and slid silently out of the car. I took her hand and we walked quickly towards the crowd of onlookers. Only one or two of them glanced at us as the rest focused on the incident by the
dock. Soon our dark clothes helped us disappear among their bright ones.

‘Keep going,' I said, as the sound of a siren pierced the air from a distance.

‘But Mr Allud . . .'

‘He'll find us.'

A minute later Dad was striding alongside us, barefoot, as if we were out for an evening stroll.

‘Good job, girls. I'm looking for a Mercedes.'

‘Er, how about that one over there?' I said, pointing to a coupé parked further down the road.

He took a key fob out of his pocket, pressed a button on it and shook his head.

‘Not that one.' There was a quiet
chirp
sound from behind us and he turned round with a smile. ‘That one.'

A large silver saloon sat next to the pavement, a few metres away. Dad opened the back door and motioned us in. Then he got into the driver's seat and drove away.

Just like that.

OK. So my father lied to the police and stole cars now. As we raced out of town, I wished it didn't feel so cool.

THIRTY-EIGHT

W
e rounded the corner and Dad sped up the road, narrowly avoiding an oncoming ambulance with some expert steering. He drove uphill, through winding streets, slowing only slightly for the switchback turns.

‘Did you inject that policeman?' I asked him.

He glanced at me in the mirror. ‘How did you guess?'

‘That syringe you had on the boat. You did it when you fell into him, didn't you? What was in it?'

‘Morphine from that damn medical bag he gave me,' Dad smiled. ‘Don't worry, he'll be OK.'

Actually, my first concern hadn't been the policeman's
long-term health, but that was good to know anyway.

Outside, dawn was breaking and the sky was slowly shifting from purple to pink. At the wheel, Dad looked perfectly calm.

‘So we're in Amalfi?' I asked, remembering the policeman mentioning it.

‘Yes.'

‘Where's that?'

‘About an hour's drive south of Naples,' Dad said. I thought you'd know that,'

‘Why?'

‘Because you must have come this way to get to the island.'

‘Nope. Came on the
Princess Nazia
.' I yawned.

Dad shook his head. ‘Very funny.'

‘I know that's what they said on the speedboat, but I really did.'

‘What? How on
earth . . .
?'

Our eyes met in the mirror again.

‘I could ask the same question.'

‘We have a lot to talk about,' he admitted. However, at that moment he was busy punching instructions into the satnav. As we reached the top of the town, the land dropped away to our left, with the sea beyond it almost invisible beneath the pale sunrise. Dark trees cast unfamiliar shapes against the skyline.

Amina stared out to sea. She was looking towards the island, I realised.

‘By the way,' Dad said, his eyes back on the road ahead. ‘They'll be looking for this car. We'll have to ditch it soon – and find disguises. We'll be travelling for a while. What's in that satchel, Peta? Anything to change into?'

‘Yes, actually.'

‘Good. Do it now. Is there anything for Amina?'

‘Uh-huh.'

He raised an eyebrow at me.

‘Good girl. Change now, if you can. I won't look.'

We did as we were told, scrambling out of our filthy, wet rags and into the soft, dry-ish vests and shorts from Yasmin's wardrobe. There were even designer sandals. They were too big for us both, but we weren't fussy. We shoved them on anyway.

‘Where are we going?' I asked.

‘West,' Dad said absently. He was obviously thinking about something else. ‘You stowed away on the yacht to find me,' he murmured, ‘and even though you thought it wasn't me, you still decided to rescue me. Sammy and Parissa too.'

He broke off and shook his head. He made it all sound a lot more intentional than it felt at the time, but basically he'd worked it out OK. I shrugged. ‘Yes, I suppose so. Well, Karim and I did.'

Amina looked round. Her tired eyes were haunted. ‘What will happen to my brother?' she asked.

Dad turned to us. ‘If anyone can survive in there, Karim can. He did the most amazing thing, Amina, to stay behind for those people . . .'

Please let that gunfire not have been for Karim.

‘He'll be OK,' I said, putting an arm around her. It was still hard to believe he wasn't with us, grinning gleefully.

‘But they will say what he did,' Amina said blankly. ‘Then he will be killed.'

A chill ran through me. Now she'd said it, it was obvious: the prisoners would describe what had happened in the cells, and then the guards would take Karim to ‘the room where they do these things' and . . .

‘No, they won't,' Dad said firmly. ‘She's extraordinary, that girl. So's Sammy, but he's too ill to talk. Parissa will tell them that I did everything. She may say I had outside help. I suppose she might say it was you, Peta. Did you tell her who you were?'

‘No. Nobody knew who I was. The guards didn't know I was there.'

‘They didn't . . .? That's . . . 
Really?'

I shrugged. ‘I laid low. Well, kind of low.'

Dad shook his head for a moment, trying to take it in. ‘Well, anyway, Parissa will protect your brother, Amina. You saw what she's like – how brave she is.'

‘Why is she even there?' I asked.

Dad scrunched up his face, like this was going to be complicated. ‘Do you know anything about a little country called Marvalia?'

‘Yes. And the Blue Revolution. And that they were revolutionaries.'

‘Oh.' He seemed surprised. ‘OK. So, Parissa was particularly famous. She ran a blog, telling the demonstrators where to meet and letting the outside world know what was going on. She did more than that, actually. There was one time, near the Great Palace, when the army moved in on the demonstrators—'

‘Oh my God.'

‘What?'

‘She was the girl on the tank,' I said. ‘Wasn't she?'

Those blue eyes. Those haunting blue eyes in the thin, dirty face. I knew I'd seen them before.

Dad smiled. ‘Yes, that was Parissa. And Sammy was a lawyer who helped write the new constitution.'

‘The Grandfather hated them,' Amina added quietly.

‘He did,' Dad agreed. ‘When he was exiled, he had them kidnapped. Wahool does most of the Grandfather's dirty work, so he was holding on to them.'

‘What for?'

‘Revenge. He was storing them up for later things.'

‘What things?' I asked. It sounded very ominous:
later things
.

‘You don't want to know,' Dad said.

‘I do.'

‘No, you don't.'

Dad's mouth set into an unrelenting line. This was annoying. It was a part of my father that I'd forgotten in all those months of missing him. The part where he told me I was ‘too young to understand', or it was ‘none of my business', just when things got interesting.

‘And you worked for this man, who kidnapped teenagers and lawyers?' I asked pointedly.

‘I did.' The muscle in Dad's cheek started pumping again.

‘And you did nothing?'

He flushed with anger. ‘No, Peta, I did not do nothing. I wanted to get them out. But Wahool got a new security adviser, and that was bad luck for me. Johnson had served with me once, in Kosovo, years ago and he recognised me. It was always a risk – Wahool liked to hire British staff. Anyway, Johnson got suspicious about why Mike Jones was at the castle, pretending to be Gerry Alard, and before I could arrange anything, I ended up in a cell next to them.'

‘And why
were
you there? Are you still working for the army, then?' I asked.

‘No.'

‘MI6? The CIA?'

‘No.'

‘Then . . . what, Dad? Why?'

‘I can't talk about it,' he sighed. ‘You know what it's like.'

But those were the only legitimate excuses I could think of. I'd lived without him for so long. I thought I deserved more of an explanation than
You know what it's like.

‘No, I don't,' I said coldly. ‘Tell me.'

He glanced at me again, frustrated. ‘I can't tell you the details. It was about . . . money. More money than you can imagine . . .'

Wait.
Hello?

‘You were doing this for
money?'

‘It's not as simple as that.'

That's all he had to say. I was dumbfounded. I just couldn't believe he was talking like this.

The car was quiet for a long time.

On we drove, and now the sky behind us was streaked with orange. Each bend in the road revealed a new cluster of houses, like limpets on a cliff, or a stunning bay where fast boats carved foaming wakes into the sea. Dad frequently checked the mirror for pursuing cars, but so far he seemed happy there were none.

‘It'll be a while before we get to the next town,' he said. ‘You might as well get some sleep.'

Amina curled up obediently in her seat. Her tired face had just enough energy left to gaze wonderingly at the back of Dad's neck. Any minute now, she'd be asking for his autograph. It was mildly sickening. I mean, Dad had his awesome moments – I knew that better than anyone. But he clearly had . . . issues.

‘I'm not tired,' I said grimly.

He saw the expression on my face and patted the empty
passenger seat.

‘Join me?' he asked.

Beside me, Amina's eyelids were fluttering closed. I climbed into the front. It felt odd to be here. The passenger seat was Mum's place; I always sat in the back while she and Dad chatted. It was beyond amazing to be so close to him, but at the same time, everything felt out of place. Dad was swiftly piecing me together, but even though I could finally reach out and touch him (I did – he winced with pain, but he was solid and real), I couldn't work him out at all.

I kept having visions of the filthy cell, and reliving the moments in the castle when Dad was dead, then not-dead. Dead, then not-dead. He was like one of those particles Mr Sarfield likes to tell us about in physics, which can exist and not exist at the same time. I didn't understand Mr Sarfield, and I didn't understand this.

‘Were you ever going to tell me?' I asked. My voice was low and growly. It made me sound tearful, and that annoyed me.

‘About what?' ‘About being alive. About not being in the churchyard where we scattered you?'

He winced. I might have said ‘scattered you' quite forcefully. It might have sounded a bit angry, even. Possibly.

‘Yes I was. One day.' His eyes were focused on the road. They wouldn't meet mine. He felt me go silent. ‘Peta! Honestly! Of course I was! Who do you think I am?'

I rolled my eyes. Suddenly all of this was supposed to be obvious to me? After the
urn full of ashes
and the
memorial service
?

‘You worked for a slave master. What am I supposed to think?'

‘It was part of a job,' Dad said.

‘For money.'

‘Yes, for money.'

I stared down the road ahead. Cars raced by with their headlights still on. The road was getting busier all the time.

‘Were there other jobs?'

‘Not yet. There would have been.' He kept his eyes on the road.

‘And me?' I asked.

‘I'm sorry?'

‘What about me?'

Dad hesitated for a very long time.

‘You were . . . you were safe, love. You had Mum. I thought that if you knew what I was doing, you'd understand.'

‘But I
don't
know what you were doing. I
don't
understand.' Now that he was safe, I felt myself getting angrier with every sentence. I was his only child. How could he
do
this to me? ‘And the bomb . . .?'

‘Ah, the bomb. We organised it so I could disappear.' He sounded a bit guilty. Not very guilty, though. Not guilty enough.

‘“
We
organised it”, you said – who's “we”?'

‘I can't talk about that.'

‘Aargh! Dad! Stop it. Who's “we”?'

His mouth was a grim line. ‘I really can't talk about it,' he said. ‘Not now. You need to trust me.'

‘I have a therapist who kept telling me you were dead for
six months.
How can I trust you? How?'

He looked hurt for a moment. Then he seemed to get it. The bomb, the urn . . . the TWO YEARS OF LYING were making the whole trust thing a little difficult right now.

‘You have a therapist?' he asked, changing the subject entirely.

He was right: we had a lot to talk about.

‘Did you ever give me a cat?' I said.

‘Er, what?'

‘A cat. A kitten. A tortoiseshell.'

‘Oh.' He looked sheepish. ‘I thought it might be nice for you. I got an old friend to deliver it. To cheer you up.'

‘To
cheer me up?'

He looked even more sheepish. ‘OK, you needed more than cheering up. But I thought you always wanted a kitten.'

‘Well, I did. And when it arrived, on my
birthday
, I assumed it was from you, and it proved what I always thought, which was that you didn't die. And Mum thought I was
insane
. So yes, I have a therapist.'

His jaw dropped. ‘My God . . . I was trying to fool some of the sharpest brains in Europe and I couldn't even kid my own daughter.' He shook his head. ‘So you didn't ever think I was dead?'

Silence.

‘Yes,' I said quietly. ‘I did. In that cell.'

We were passing through a sleeping village, and all the time the sun was getting higher and the sky was changing from orange and pink to blue. Behind us, we could hear the growing whine of a siren. Dad put on a small burst of speed, but the traffic was getting busier now and he kept having to slow down for passing trucks. Luckily, there was a big tourist coach a few cars behind us, and it would be almost impossible for the police car – if it was a police car – to pass on the narrow, winding road. For a while anyway.

‘We'll be stopping soon,' Dad said, checking the satnav again while the muscle worked away in his jaw. ‘Get ready to do whatever I tell you.'

Thanks, Dad.
So
enjoying this new relationship.