Thirteen (15 page)

“I'm not with the police.” It was the best half-truth that Adam could come up with; it wasn't
actually
a lie. “Asa—I really need your phone.”

“Why? Rachel and I have been doing a bit of texting.”

Adam had to advance quickly to proper lies.

“I need to contact the hospital about my parents. My mum is
seriously
hurt. My dad might
die
. Megan's parents won't let me call.”
Hospital
and
seriously
and
die
were words that hung in the air. Adam whispered and lied on: “I'll hand it back in a few minutes,” he said.

Once Adam had the phone, he ran.

Megan's phone buzzed and she blearily picked it up. She had left it on in case another anonymous message arrived, but Asa's name was on the screen.

She pulled the phone under her covers and hissed, “Asa, it's eleven thirty. Why are you ringing me?”

“Meg. It's Adam. Listen. You've probably heard what's happened, or a version of it.” He didn't pause, except to get a breath. “Hatfield was going to kill me, Meg. If I'm seen, I'm finished. I'll be handed over to the police, or worse, to Hatfield. Tomorrow night I'll try to find the boy who saved me and my parents. But
until then I need to lie low. I need to rest and have something to eat and drink.” He paused. “I don't have a choice.”

“Oh God,” said Megan. There was a pause. She felt that she was standing with her hand on a door, weighing up whether to enter, gathering the strength to make a decision. She knew that a lot of trouble lay behind the door, and that she would have to leave her parents behind. Whatever she did could change her life.

The pause grew into silence. There was a buzz and a hiss on the connection. Then she spoke. And she never wavered, right until the end. “Okay, Adam. How can I help?”

“I need some things.” Adam listed three items. “And this is where I'll be hiding. . . .”

Megan's eyes widened as Adam explained.

As soon as they agreed where and when to meet, the connection was cut. The phone went dead. Megan tried to call back, but it went straight to voicemail: “Hi, this is Asa. I'm busy, probably with girls, so leave me a message. . . .”

Adam looked at Asa's phone. The battery was dead.
Sod it
.

There was a knock on Megan's door and her father walked in. “Megan?” her father said. “Megan, are you on the phone?”

A shaft of light illuminated Megan's bed, Megan, and the phone. She looked embarrassed. “I'm really sorry, Dad. It was Asa.” She showed him the evidence on the screen. “He's having problems with Rachel. You know . . .”

Her dad took the phone, shaking his head, and said, “With everything else that's going on, the last thing we need is you girls and boys messing around together.”

Megan's alarm sang under her covers and she was dragged from anxious dreams. She had set her alarm for 1:54 a.m.

Adam slept fitfully in the shed. He couldn't seem to get beyond the first chamber of sleep into the deep caverns that lay beyond. Every tap and rustle made him sit up, fiercely awake, and grab the shears he intended to use as a weapon.

Something clattered far in the distance, perhaps a cat on corrugated iron. Adam tightened his grip on the shears. He looked at his watch: 1:56 a.m.

Megan put on her nightgown, slid a backpack from under her bed and tiptoed downstairs—softly, slowly, secretly. Then, in the hallway downstairs, a sudden whirring and two solemn
bong
s from the clock: 2:00 a.m. The time they had arranged to meet.

Moonlight, shining through a tree, scribbled a pattern on the kitchen floor. No need for a flashlight.

She turned the key in the back door and froze. All quiet upstairs. Slowly, she opened the door; slowly, she went through and eased it shut.

Megan's father woke.

Adam unlocked the shed as Megan rustled down her garden and through the bushes.

Her father saw an empty bed. “Megan?” Worry edged into the fringes of his mind.

Adam saw Megan scamper past the shed window. The door opened. “Meg, I don't know what I'd do without you,” he said as he weighed the backpack in his hand.

Megan smiled faintly. “Be careful. I don't trust the guy you're going to. He's not
normal
.”

“This whole thing isn't
normal
, Meg. I'll try to get in touch somehow.”

Megan's father went downstairs and stood next to the clock. “Megan?”

At the same time, Megan put her hand on Adam's shoulder. “Don't laugh, but I want you to take something.” She pulled out a red wristband bearing the words
London 2012
. “It reminds me of the day we went to the cycling. I loved that day.”

Adam still remembered flags and cheering, then their picnic, tearing cheese sticks in two and sharing pork pies. He remembered playing Frisbee and Asa singing a song from
South Park
.

Megan's father reached the kitchen door. “Megan?” His worry was maturing into panic.

“Oh, Meg. I don't know what I'd do without you.” Adam's hand was shaking as he put it on Megan's arm. He felt so self-conscious, even embarrassed.

He put the wristband on and smiled.

Megan's mother dashed down the stairs: “Megan?”

Her father stepped outside: “Meggie? Megan?”

“Oh no,” said Megan. “Hide!” She closed the shed door and stood in Adam's garden as her mother and father appeared through the bushes.

“Megan!” her mother said. “My God, Megan, what on earth are you doing?”

Megan looked toward Adam's old house. “Sorry, Mum. Sorry, Dad. I just had to come and have a look.”

“Meggie, Meggie,” her mother said. “You are being stupid. You must never leave the house at night again.”

“Okay.” Megan's parents saw her look at Adam's house, with its charred brick and fallen roof beams. The one place she did
not
glance toward was the shed, where Adam now hid, barely five paces away.

Coron strode up to Dorm Thirteen. Urgent, excited.

Asp was no longer there. She had used the gun.

Coron pushed a button to the right of the door, then used a key. A wild-eyed man in his early twenties scampered to the far end of the cell, terrified. Otherwise, the room was empty apart from a light sunk into the ceiling, small circular grilles in three of the walls, a bottle of water and a plate of food.

“I am
instructed
to be here,” said Coron, “but you have
chosen
. You said you wanted to join us and then you wanted to leave. It isn't like that. This is a commitment that you must be trained into. Isn't it?”

The man didn't know if the answer was yes or no. “I don't—”

“Now, let me tell you something. I have done wrong myself. You see, I was told to kill a woman. Marcia was her name. And I was slow. I was wrong. I was weak.” Tears leaked from Coron's eyes. “And the Master killed her himself.”

For Coron, the unseen hand of the Master was everywhere. For Coron, the car didn't crash because Hatfield lost control; it crashed because the Master willed it. The Master, although a figment of Coron's imagination, dominated his entire thinking.

The man pushed himself farther back against the wall.

“And it is worse. The Master used
Adam
as his angel of
death,” Coron whispered, glancing behind him to see if anyone was there. “Shhh. I'll tell you a secret. Perhaps the Master wanted to use him. I can't let the Master down again. I have failed to bring Adam here for his sacrifice. I must be punished.”

The man was confused. “You? Punished?”

“Oh yes. I want you to understand that even I must be punished.” Then, kneeling close, Coron whispered something else.

The man dragged his knees close and tried to hide his face behind his hands. “Please, no . . .” The crying began, as it usually did.

“Yes,” Coron said. “I must suffer too, you see. We will suffer together.”
I will suffer for my weakness
, thought Coron.
I will suffer badly
.

“And after we have endured our punishment together, we will consider what else is going to happen to you.”

Little more than ten miles away from the Old School House, several police vehicles were parked on a small country lane next to a hill partially covered by large white tents. A line of officers walked through the field, gazing at the flinty ground in front of them, searching for evidence.

One of the white tents covered the area where Python lay, knife projecting at a right angle from the center of his chest, the body returned on Coron's orders so that Hatfield could pin the blame on Adam. Rain had smudged footprints back to mud.

Two other officers stood talking, looking down toward the nearby fields where Rock Harvest had been held. “The body must have been here since the festival, not very well hidden, but undiscovered somehow. The knife was left in, can you believe? We might be able to get a print.”

A photographer was documenting the scene, each click of the camera underlining the severity of Adam's situation.

“And the suspect is the same child who shot the boy and set fire to his own house?”

“Yep. The boy had confessed to Hatfield, who was driving
up here to investigate. Then the boy went crazy and caused the crash.”

Both officers shook their heads. Most of the time child criminals knew nothing beyond the dreadful world they inhabited. “Weird. And this boy comes from what seems to be a good home.” The officer saw a man in a suit approaching. “Look out.”

“This is a right bloody mess,” said the chief superintendent. “I'm going on the six o'clock news before it's all over tomorrow's papers. I'll put out a description of the boy. Thirteen years old.
Bugger it
.”

“Do we have any idea where he is, sir?” one of the policemen asked.

“Vanished into thin bloody air. But he won't be able to stay invisible for long.”

Just under one hundred miles to the south, five people, two of them policewomen, sat around the table in Megan's kitchen.

“I
said
that I don't know if he's in London,” repeated Megan. “I have no idea where he would go, or what he would do, or who would help him.”

In each case Megan lied.

“We know that you're telling the truth,” her mother said, “but we need you to
think
. We just want to find Adam before he kills someone else.”

Megan was thinking—thinking hard about how not to give anything away. “Is Mr. Hatfield going to get involved again?” she said.

One of the police officers spoke, moving her gaze from Megan to her parents and back again: “The chief inspector is keen to get back to work as soon as possible. We've heard what you've been saying about him, but he is a very experienced man, one of the best we have.”

Then the other officer said, “Are you sure there's nothing else you can tell us?”

They think I'm just a silly infatuated kid protecting Adam
, thought Megan. “No. There's nothing more I can say.”

Less than 200 yards away from Megan, Adam was lying behind a locked shed door, wearing a pale gray hoodie from Megan's wardrobe. Tiny flecks of cereal and a half-empty bottle of tap water were just out of sight of the window.

£1,000, taken from a Quality Street tin, was in Adam's pocket.

Megan concentrated hard on not glancing toward the shed when talking to the police, but when she returned to her bedroom afterward, she allowed herself a glance at the small patch of roof visible through the bushes.

Adam stayed there until just after midnight.

Adam knew where he had to go: the boy had said that he would be where they went through the water. That could only mean one place: the ponds, where they had once managed to escape him.

Paradise Fields wasn't far—just down a few streets, past a row of shops, and then across Park Avenue—but it was far from heavenly at night. Most of it was ominously dark, and tramps retreated there after a day in the center of London, but Adam welcomed the company of anyone else, especially those who had no sympathy for the police.
My world is upside down
, he thought.

By using the path that ran between houses, Adam managed to avoid one street entirely, and the next two were deserted. Most houses were dark and quiet, but the erratic blue glimmer of television screens still came from one or two upper windows.

The shops were closed and shuttered like eyes that refused to watch Adam. In the day it was a pleasant area that was being invaded by smart coffee shops, but at night it was steely, cold, drab and bleak. And exposed.

Adam walked quickly, then ran as he reached the main road, dashing in front of a taxi coming one way and a night bus the other. He didn't stop until he was wrapped in the darkness of the park.

Adam listened. He could hear drunken shouting in the
distance, but no one responding. A dog was barking. A tree creaked. Nothing else.
If some of the people here knew I had £1,000 on me, I'd be attacked in seconds
, Adam thought. He felt around the backpack for the flashlight.

As Adam neared the ponds it was too dark to see, and he had to put the torch on. The beam immediately lit up a man lying across a bench.

“Go 'way. Clear off!” Adam heard a couple of threats and ran on, into the bushes now, stumbling and bumping, until he reached the point where Megan and he had left the pond just over a fortnight ago. There was no one there.

Of course he won't be here
, Adam thought.
He can't sit here 24–7 waiting for me to turn up
. He risked a quick flick of the flashlight.

No one.

Trees, pond, bushes, cans, plastic bags.