Jaws of Death Read online

  ‘You train like this every evening?’ Chris asked when they paused to rest.

  ‘Not every evening. Sometimes I have a night off, go out with my mates, or just chill out in front of the TV.’ Max rubbed the sweat off his face with a towel. ‘I’m going out for a jog now.’

  ‘You want me to come with you?’

  ‘No, thanks. I’m meeting a friend in the park.’

  Chris grinned at him. ‘Oh, yeah? A girl?’

  Max didn’t rise. ‘See you later,’ he said.

  He went upstairs and let himself out of the front door. It was a warm evening, the sky grey and overcast. Max jogged down the street, noticing the Avensis out of the corner of his eye as he ran past. It was too brief a glimpse for him to see what the two men were doing, or even whether they were the same ones as earlier. They must have a change of shift at some point, he thought. Bring in the night-watch team.

  In the park, he met up with Andy and gave him back his phone. Andy was in the school football team and played in the local Sunday league too. He came out jogging with Max a few times a week to keep up his fitness. They did three circuits of the park, a total of about three miles, then sat on a bench for a while chatting before heading back to their homes. The two men in the parked car were still there.

  Max paused outside his front door and looked back up the street. The men were staring straight at him now. One of them leaned forward, lifted something off the dashboard and put it to his mouth. He was talking into a radio. Seconds later, Max heard the roar of an engine. A dark blue police van slewed round the corner and came racing down the street.

  For a moment Max was paralysed. The van was getting nearer. He could see another vehicle behind it, a sleek black Mercedes that looked somehow familiar, though he couldn’t place it. Were they coming for him? A vanload of police officers for one teenage boy? Surely not. Who then? Consuela? That was just as unlikely. Chris? Were they after Chris? He had been followed from Heathrow when he arrived back in the country, but had shaken off the tail. Did the police suspect that he was holed up in Max’s house? Were they coming to arrest him? Max had a sudden inkling that they were.

  He broke out of his trance, threw open the front door and dashed inside the house, locking the door behind him. He ran down the hall to the kitchen. Consuela was measuring out rice with a cup, pouring it into a saucepan. Chris was sitting at the table, drinking a cup of coffee.

  ‘The police are here,’ Max whispered breathlessly into his ear. ‘I think they’re looking for you.’

  Chris stiffened. He glanced at Max in alarm and stood up quickly. There was a loud hammering on the front door. A voice shouted, ‘Police! Open up!’

  Max grabbed Chris’s arm and gestured towards the basement door. They crossed the room and hurtled down the stairs. Max pulled open the door of the large metal cabinet that he used in his act and felt along the inside edge for the hidden catch. A panel in the base slid open, revealing a shallow compartment.

  ‘There are air holes. You’ll be able to breathe. Above all, don’t panic. Get in.’

  ‘Look, I’m not sure—’ Chris broke off as an almighty crash reverberated through the house. The police had smashed open the front door. ‘I could hide in the garden,’ he went on.

  ‘There’s no time,’ Max hissed urgently. ‘Get in.’

  There were heavy footsteps on the floor above them, then on the basement stairs. Chris scrambled into the compartment and curled up on his side, his knees tucked up against his chest. Max slid the base panel back into place and closed the cabinet door, then dashed over to the cycling machine. He was in the saddle, just starting to pedal, when the basement door slammed open. Two policemen burst in. One of the officers turned the key in the door that led to the garden and went outside. The other one started searching the room, checking the cupboards and the cubby hole that contained the central-heating boiler.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Max said.

  The officer ignored him. Max got off the exercise bike and went upstairs. There were more police officers in the kitchen, and a man in a dark suit who had his back turned so Max couldn’t see his face. The man swung round. Max froze, staring in astonishment at him, realizing now why the black Mercedes had looked familiar.

  ‘Hello, Max,’ Rupert Penhall said smoothly. ‘Surprised to see me?’

  Max took a moment to respond. His heart was racing, his mouth dry as sandpaper. ‘What … what’re you doing here?’ was all he could mumble.

  ‘You’re in trouble,’ Penhall said.

  ‘Trouble?’

  ‘Ask your lovely lady assistant over there.’

  Consuela was standing by the oven, looking pale and shaken. She handed Max a piece of paper. ‘They have a search warrant,’ she told him.

  Max peered at the piece of paper. He’d never seen a search warrant before, didn’t know what he was supposed to be looking for. He skimmed over a lot of legal jargon about statutory powers until he got to a paragraph explaining what the police were searching for: Any equipment or other materials that might be used in the furtherance of any offence under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.

  Max read the words three times, wondering whether he’d understood them correctly. ‘Terrorism?’ he said incredulously. ‘You think we’re terrorists?’

  ‘I don’t know what you are, Max. Or what you’re mixed up in. That’s why we’re here. You ever come across a man called Chris Moncrieffe?’

  Max kept his face expressionless. ‘No,’ he said.

  Penhall took a step towards him, his manner turning aggressive. ‘You’re lying, Max. I know you are. Where is he?’

  ‘I don’t know who you’re talking about,’ Max said.

  ‘Don’t play games with me. Is he here? If he is, we’ll find him.’

  ‘There’s only me and Consuela here, no one else. You can look around, if you like.’

  ‘That’s what we intend to do,’ Penhall said.

  He leaned in closer, so his face was only inches away from Max’s. Max could smell the cloying scent of his aftershave.

  ‘You should have listened to me last time. I told you not to meddle in things that didn’t concern you.’

  ‘You think my dad disappearing doesn’t concern me?’ Max said defiantly. ‘You think my mum being in prison for a murder she didn’t commit doesn’t concern me?’

  ‘What do you mean, “last time”?’ Consuela asked. ‘Have you met this man before, Max?’

  Max didn’t reply.

  Penhall gave a thin, humourless smile. ‘Didn’t he tell you? Naughty boy, Max, keeping things from your guardian.’

  ‘Max?’ Consuela said. ‘Have you been in trouble with the police?’

  ‘No,’ Max said. ‘You’re not the police anyway, are you, Mr Penhall? But what exactly are you? That’s what I’d like to know. Maybe you should tell us.’

  ‘Not the police?’ Consuela frowned. ‘Then who are all these men?’

  ‘These men are police officers, as you can clearly see,’ Penhall said. ‘They have a legal right to search your house.’

  ‘And you?’ Consuela stared at him. ‘Who are you? How do you know Max? I want some answers.’

  ‘He’s “connected to the government”,’ Max said. ‘Isn’t that what you told me when we met before, Mr Penhall? When you threatened me.’

  ‘He threatened you?’ Consuela stepped forward to confront Penhall. She was a couple of inches taller than he was. She looked down at him, her eyes burning with anger. ‘I want to know what’s going on,’ she said. ‘Show me some identification.’

  Penhall shook his head contemptuously and started to turn away. Consuela grabbed hold of his arm. ‘I want to see some ID.’

  ‘Let go of my arm, Miss Navarra,’ Penhall said calmly. He held her gaze, a smug half-smile on his pink, fleshy face. ‘My arm, Miss Navarra.’

  Consuela glared at him for a moment, then released his arm.

  ‘Sir, I think you should see this.’ One of the police officers had been searching t
he kitchen drawers. He held out a cardboard folder.

  ‘Hey, you can’t take that!’ Max yelled. ‘Give it here.’

  He tried to snatch the folder away from the officer, but he was too slow. The officer pushed him back with a hand the size of a shovel and passed the folder to Penhall.

  ‘That’s got nothing to do with terrorism!’ Max shouted.

  He tried to reach Penhall, to retrieve the folder, but the police officer held him back. He was a big man, well over six foot tall and packed with muscle. Max was powerless against him.

  ‘Those are personal papers,’ he said angrily. ‘You can’t take them.’

  ‘Calm down, Max,’ Penhall said soothingly. ‘We can take whatever we like.’

  He put the folder down on the kitchen table and looked through the papers inside it – Max’s notes on Episuderon and the men who’d been held on Shadow Island, his father’s medical file from the island and the letter he’d left for Max. Penhall took the letter out and studied it carefully.

  ‘Well, well,’ he murmured. ‘Now that is interesting.’

  ‘It’s mine,’ Max said. ‘You can’t have it.’

  Penhall slipped the letter back into the folder. Max lunged forward, trying to grab it, but the police officer restrained him, holding him at bay with an arm that was as strong and unyielding as a steel girder.

  ‘This is outrageous!’ Consuela snapped. ‘You can’t do this. Let him go, you brutes.’ She pulled Max away from the policeman and stepped protectively in front of him. ‘Leave him alone – he’s just a boy. And those are his papers. Give them back.’

  ‘Get in the way, Miss Navarra, and I’ll have you arrested. Max too,’ Penhall said curtly. He tucked the folder under his arm. ‘You should have listened to me before, Max. I’ll tell you again now. You’re out of your depth, meddling in things you know nothing about. You carry on and you’ll get hurt. Badly hurt. You understand me?’

  He looked at Max, then at Consuela, his small, piggy eyes glinting with malice. Then he turned to the police officer. ‘Call me if you find anything else.’

  He spun round and left the room. Max watched him go, the anger like a furnace inside him. Never in his life had he felt so helpless. The police could break into his house on some fabricated excuse about terrorism; they could search everywhere, remove his private papers and he could do nothing about it. Nothing.

  He went out into the hall. The front door was wide open, the wood around the lock crushed and splintered where it had been forced open with some heavy instrument. Rupert Penhall was outside in the street, climbing into the back of his chauffeur-driven Mercedes. He paused, half in and half out of the car, and looked across at Max, who was watching him from the house. For a few seconds the two of them locked eyes. Then Penhall slid inside the Mercedes and closed the door, the tinted glass hiding him from Max’s furious gaze. The car pulled away and purred off up the street.

  Max retreated into the hall. There were police officers searching the sitting and dining rooms and, when Max went upstairs, more officers in the bedrooms, checking the wardrobes, the drawers, the bookshelves. They’d even climbed up into the loft to explore the roof space and eaves. Max stood on the landing and watched them searching his desk, his cupboards, snooping through his clothes and other possessions. He was outraged that they could do this. Worried too. And, if he was honest with himself, scared.

  He went back downstairs. Consuela was still in the kitchen, sitting at the table while the policemen went through the cupboards and drawers, taking down her cookery books one by one and flicking through the pages. Max sat down opposite her. They didn’t speak to each other, not with a room full of coppers and bugs in the wall. They would talk later, when it was safe to do so.

  The two officers who’d been in the basement came up the stairs with empty hands. Max felt a surge of relief. At least they hadn’t found Chris. Max wasn’t surprised. His father had built that trick cabinet himself. The secret compartment in the base was cunningly constructed so that it was very difficult to detect, and the catch that opened the access panel was even harder to find. Max had used the cabinet several times on stage and it had never let him down yet. Thank goodness for Alexander Cassidy’s incomparable craftsmanship.

  It was another hour before the police finally left, leaving behind them the messy evidence of their search – cupboard doors hanging open, clothes tossed on beds, duvets and cushions strewn around the floors.

  Max watched the blue van depart, then ran down into the basement to release Chris, Consuela following behind. Chris was red-faced and sweating, his whole body stiff and aching from being confined in such a small space.

  ‘That was the worst experience of my entire life,’ he said with feeling. ‘I’ve been in a few tight corners, but nothing like that.’ He stretched his arms and rubbed the back of his neck. ‘What happened?’

  ‘They were looking for you,’ Consuela said. ‘And for anything else they could find. They had a warrant that mentioned terrorism.’

  Chris froze, his hand still on his neck. ‘Terrorism? That’s ridiculous. Me, a terrorist?’ He thought about it for a few seconds, then gave a nod of understanding. ‘It’s good, though. You want someone out of the way, a trumped-up charge of terrorism is a pretty failsafe method of doing it. I knew we couldn’t trust the police.’

  ‘It wasn’t just the police,’ Max said. ‘The man in charge claimed he was connected to the government in some way. I met him once before, after Luis Lopez-Vega was killed in that hotel near King’s Cross. He warned me off, told me to mind my own business.’

  ‘“Connected to the government”?’ Chris said. ‘The Security Service – MI5?’

  ‘I don’t know. He took away my folder. My research, my dad’s medical file, his letter to me. I should’ve hidden them, but I didn’t have time. I need that letter. It’s the only proof I have that Dad is still alive. The only proof that Mum couldn’t have killed him. Without it, I can’t get her case reopened, can’t get her out of prison.’

  Chris put a reassuring arm around Max’s shoulders. ‘Hey, we’re going to crack this. You’ve got me and Consuela with you. We’re in this together.’

  ‘But in what together?’ Consuela said, her voice unsteady with anxiety. ‘What’s going on? Terrorism? The police involved, maybe the Security Service too …? This isn’t just Julius Clark we’re up against. It goes further than that. But how much further? Who else are we fighting?’

  Max had no answer to that. The police search had frightened him. So had Rupert Penhall. Who was he? Why had he taken Max’s file? What was he going to do with it? Max felt as if he were stumbling around in the dark, unable to see where he was going, to see what hazards lay ahead. Santo Domingo and Shadow Island had been dangerous places, but Max had got away from them. He had thought he would be safer back in England, on his home territory. Now he was beginning to realize how wrong he’d been.

  FIVE

  Max didn’t sleep that night. He was too wound up, too worried. He lay awake into the small hours, thinking back over the evening’s events: the police search, his conversation with Rupert Penhall, the loss of his folder. It was the folder that bothered him most. He was furious with himself for being so careless, for not hiding it somewhere more secure, for not taking photocopies of all the documents and depositing them in a safe place. But how was he to have known that the police would come and search the house? That possibility had never crossed his mind. In the days since his return from Central America he had been preoccupied with Julius Clark. It was he who seemed to be the threat. It was Clark, after all, who had imprisoned Max, Consuela and Chris on Shadow Island, just as he had imprisoned Max’s father there two years earlier. It was Clark who had intended to inject them with the brainwashing drug Episuderon, and it was Clark’s armed guards who had tried to kill them as they escaped from the island.

  The intervention of the British police was something Max had not expected. It put a different perspective on everything. Did Clark have the kind
of influence that could prompt the police to carry out a search of Max’s home? Maybe he did. He was a very rich man, and rich men had powerful friends.

  But his influence went further than just a simple search. The police had been looking for Chris too; they’d been looking for materials relating to some kind of terrorism. That scared Max. He wasn’t a terrorist; nor were Chris or Consuela. Did the police genuinely think they were, or was the whole terrorism thing a big excuse to search Max’s house looking for something else – for papers connected to Max’s father and Shadow Island, for instance? If that was the case, then the plan had been unquestionably successful. Rupert Penhall had all Max’s papers now. Without them, Max couldn’t prove that his father had been a prisoner on Shadow Island, or indeed that he was alive at all. It would just be Max’s word against Julius Clark’s. And who would be believed – a fourteen-year-old schoolboy or an influential business tycoon?

  Max knew he had to get the papers back. That was absolutely vital. But how? He didn’t know who Penhall was. He didn’t know where the papers had been taken.

  He thought about it through the night, and by morning had come to the conclusion that he needed help from someone who knew how the legal system operated. An insider, an expert. He considered going to a lawyer. His mother had a solicitor, Malcolm Fielding, who had offices near the Royal Courts of Justice. Max had met him a few times and didn’t think much of his abilities. Fielding was supposed to be trying to get Max’s mum out of prison, but in the eighteen months he’d been on the case he’d charged a massive amount in fees but achieved precisely nothing.

  There was somebody else, however, to whom Max could turn for help and advice – Detective Chief Superintendent Richardson. Max wondered about him over breakfast and then during the morning at school. He liked Richardson. The detective had known Max’s father, both professionally and socially: Alexander Cassidy had worked with the Metropolitan Police on several occasions, advising them about locks and security, and Richardson had been to the Cassidy house for dinner a few times. Max had had a couple of meetings with him before the detective took part in his stage show and they’d got along well. The chief superintendent had seemed a straight, honest police officer, a man who couldn’t be bought or corrupted. Max had good instincts about people, and he had a feeling that Richardson could be trusted. At lunch time he went up onto the field with his new mobile phone and called Scotland Yard.