Stormbreaker Read online

  Leaving his bike propped against the wall, Alex ran further into the yard, crouching down behind the wrecks. With the din from the machines, there was no chance that anyone would hear him, but he was still afraid of being seen. He stopped to catch his breath, drawing a grimy hand across his face. His eyes were watering from the diesel fumes. The air was as filthy as the ground beneath him.

  He was beginning to regret coming – but then he saw it. His uncle’s BMW was parked a few metres away, separated from the other cars. At first glance it looked absolutely fine, the metallic silver bodywork not even scratched. Certainly there was no way this car could have been involved in a fatal collision with a lorry or anything else. But it was his uncle’s car. Alex recognized the number plate. He hurried closer, and it was then he saw that the car was damaged after all. The windscreen had been smashed, along with all the windows on one side. Alex made his way round the bonnet. He reached the other side. And froze.

  Ian Rider hadn’t died in any accident. What had killed him was plain to see – even to someone who had never seen such a thing before. A spray of bullets had caught the car full on the driver’s side, shattering the front tyre, then smashing the windscreen and side windows and punching into the side panels. Alex ran his fingers over the holes. The metal felt cold against his flesh. He opened the door and looked inside. The front seats, pale grey leather, were strewn with fragments of broken glass and stained with patches of dark brown. He didn’t need to ask what the stains were. He could see everything. The flash of the machine-gun, the bullets ripping into the car, Ian Rider jerking in the driver’s seat…

  But why? Why kill a bank manager? And why had the murder been covered up? It was the police who had brought the news, so they must be part of it. Had they deliberately lied? None of it made sense.

  “You should have got rid of it two days ago. Do it now.”

  The machines must have stopped for a moment. If there hadn’t been a sudden lull, Alex would never have heard the men coming. Quickly he looked across the steering-wheel and out the other side. There were two of them, both dressed in loose-fitting overalls. Alex had a feeling he’d seen them before. At the funeral. One of them was the driver, the man he had seen with the gun. He was sure of it.

  Whoever they were, they were only a few paces away from the car, talking in low voices. Another few steps and they would be there. Without thinking, Alex threw himself into the only hiding place available, inside the car itself. Using his foot, he hooked the door and closed it. At the same time, he became aware that the machines had started again and he could no longer hear the men. He didn’t dare look up. A shadow fell across the window as the two men passed. But then they were gone. He was safe.

  And then something hit the BMW with such force that Alex cried out, his whole body caught in a massive shock wave that tore him away from the steering-wheel and threw him helplessly into the back. At the same time, the roof buckled and three huge metal fingers tore through the skin of the car like a fork through an eggshell, trailing dust and sunlight. One of the fingers grazed the side of his head – any closer and it would have cracked his skull. Alex yelled as blood trickled over his eye. He tried to move, then was jerked back a second time as the car was yanked off the ground and tilted high up in the air.

  He couldn’t see. He couldn’t move. But his stomach lurched as the car swung in an arc, the metal grinding and the light spinning. It had been picked up by the crane. It was going to be put inside the crusher. With him inside.

  He tried to raise himself up, to punch through the windows. But the claw of the crane had already flattened the roof, pinning his left leg, perhaps even breaking it. He could feel nothing. He lifted a hand and managed to pound on the back window, but he couldn’t break the glass, and even if the workmen were staring at the BMW, they would never see anything moving inside.

  His short flight across the breaker’s yard ended with a bone-shattering crash as the crane deposited the car on the iron shelves of the crusher. Alex tried to fight back his sickness and despair and think of what to do. He had seen a car being processed only a few minutes before. Any moment now, the operator would send the car tipping into the coffin-shaped trough. The machine was a Lefort Shear, a slow-motion guillotine. At the press of a button, the two wings would close on the car with a joint pressure of five hundred tonnes. The car, with Alex inside it, would be crushed beyond recognition. And the broken metal – and flesh – would then be chopped into sections. Nobody would ever know what had happened.

  He tried with all his strength to free himself. But the roof was too low. His leg and part of his back were trapped. Then his whole world tilted and he felt himself falling into darkness. The shelves had lifted. The BMW slid to one side and fell the few metres into the trough. Alex felt the metalwork collapsing all around him. The back window exploded and glass showered around his head, dust and diesel fumes punching into his nose and eyes. There was hardly any daylight now, but looking out of the back he could see the huge steel head of the piston that would push what was left of the car through the exit hole on the other side.

  The engine tone of the Lefort Shear changed as it prepared for the final act. The metal wings shuddered. In a few seconds’ time, the two of them would meet, crumpling the BMW like a paper bag.

  Alex pulled with all his strength and was astonished when his leg came free. It took him perhaps a second – one precious second – to work out what had happened. When the car had fallen into the trough, it had landed on its side. The roof had buckled again … enough to free him. His hand scrabbled for the door – but of course that was useless. The doors were too bent. They would never open. The back window! With the glass gone, he could crawl through the frame, but only if he moved fast…

  The wings began to move. The BMW screamed as two walls of solid steel relentlessly crushed it. Glass shattered. One of the wheel axles snapped with the sound of a thunderbolt. The darkness closed in. Alex grabbed hold of what was left of the back seat. Ahead of him he could see a single triangle of light, shrinking faster and faster. With all his strength, he surged forward, finding some sort of purchase on the gear column. He could feel the weight of the two walls pressing down on him. Behind him the car was no longer a car, but the fist of some hideous monster snatching at the insect that he had become.

  His shoulders passed through the triangle, out into the light. But his legs were still inside. If his foot snagged on something he would be squeezed into two pieces. Alex yelled out loud and jerked his knee forward. His legs came clear, then his feet, but at the last moment his shoe caught on the closing triangle and disappeared back into the car. Alex imagined he heard the sound of the leather being squashed, but that was impossible. Clinging to the black, oily surface of the observation platform at the back of the crusher, he dragged himself clear and managed to stand up.

  He found himself face to face with a man so fat that he could barely fit into the small cabin of the crusher. The man’s stomach was pressed against the glass, his shoulders squeezed into the corners. A cigarette dangled on his lower lip as his mouth fell open and his eyes stared. In front of him was a boy in the rags of what had once been a school uniform. A whole sleeve had been torn off and his arm, streaked with blood and oil, hung limply by his side. By the time the operator had taken all this in, come to his senses and turned the machine off, Alex had gone.

  He clambered down the side of the crusher, landing on the one foot that still had a shoe. He was aware now of pieces of jagged metal lying everywhere. If he wasn’t careful, he would cut the other foot open. His bicycle was where he had left it, leaning against the wall, and gingerly, half-hopping, he made for it. Behind him he heard the cabin of the crusher open and a man’s voice call out, raising the alarm. At the same time, a second man ran forward, stopping between Alex and his bike. It was the driver, the man he had seen at the funeral. His face, twisted into a hostile frown, was curiously ugly; greasy hair, watery eyes, pale, lifeless skin.

  “What do you think…
!” he began. His hand slid into his jacket. Alex remembered the gun and instantly, without even thinking, swung into action.

  He had started learning karate when he was six years old. One afternoon, with no explanation, Ian Rider had taken him to a local club for his first lesson and he had been going there, once a week, ever since. Over the years he had passed through the various Kyu – student – grades. But it was only the year before that he had become a first grade Dan, a black belt. When he had arrived at Brookland School, his looks and accent had quickly brought him to the attention of the school bullies; three hulking sixteen-year-olds. They had cornered him once behind the bike shed. The encounter had lasted less than a minute, and after it one of the bullies had left Brookland and the other two had never troubled anyone again.

  Now Alex brought up one leg, twisted his body round and lashed out. The back kick – Ushiro-geri – is said to be the most lethal in karate. His foot powered into the man’s abdomen with such force that he didn’t even have time to cry out. His eyes bulged and his mouth half-opened in surprise. Then, with his hand still halfway into his jacket, he crumpled to the ground.

  Alex jumped over him, snatched up his bike and swung himself on to it. In the distance, a third man was running towards him. He heard the single word “Stop!” called out. Then there was a crack and a bullet whipped past. Alex gripped the handlebars and pedalled as hard as he could. The bike shot forward, over the rubble and out through the gates. He took one look over his shoulder. Nobody had followed him.

  With one shoe on and one shoe off, his clothes in rags and his body streaked with blood and oil, Alex knew he must look a strange sight. But then he thought back to his last seconds inside the crusher and sighed with relief. He could have been looking a lot worse.

  ROYAL & GENERAL

  The bank rang the following day.

  “This is John Crawley. Do you remember me? Personnel Manager at the Royal & General. We were wondering if you could come in.”

  “Come in?” Alex was half-dressed, already late for school.

  “This afternoon. We found some papers of your uncle’s. We need to talk to you … about your own position.”

  Was there something faintly threatening in the man’s voice? “What time this afternoon?” Alex asked.

  “Could you manage half-past four? We’re on Liverpool Street. We can send a cab—”

  “I’ll be there,” Alex said. “And I’ll take the tube.”

  He hung up.

  “Who was that?” Jack called out from the kitchen. She was cooking breakfast for the two of them, although how long she could remain with Alex was a growing worry. Her wages hadn’t been paid. She had only her own money to buy food and pay for the running of the house. Worse still, her visa was about to expire. Soon she wouldn’t even be allowed to stay in the country.

  “That was the bank.” Alex came into the room, wearing his spare uniform. He hadn’t told her what had happened at the breaker’s yard. He hadn’t even told her about the empty office. Jack had enough on her mind. “I’m going there this afternoon,” he said.

  “Do you want me to come?”

  “No. I’ll be fine.”

  He came out of Liverpool Street tube station just after four-fifteen that afternoon, still wearing his school uniform: dark blue jacket, grey trousers, striped tie. He found the bank easily enough. The Royal & General occupied a tall, antique-looking building with a Union Jack fluttering from a pole about fifteen floors up. There was a brass name-plate next to the main door and a security camera swivelling slowly over the pavement.

  Alex stopped in front of it. For a moment he wondered if he was making a mistake going in. If the bank had been responsible in some way for Ian Rider’s death, maybe they had asked him here to arrange his own. No. The bank wouldn’t kill him. He didn’t even have an account there. He went in.

  In an office on the seventeenth floor, the image on the security monitor flickered and changed as Street Camera #1 smoothly cut across to Reception Cameras #2 and #3 and Alex passed from the brightness outside to the cool shadows of the interior. A man sitting behind a desk reached out and pressed a button and the camera zoomed in until Alex’s face filled the screen.

  “So he came,” the chairman of the bank muttered.

  “That’s the boy?” The speaker was a middle-aged woman. She had a strange, potato-shaped head and her black hair looked as if it had been cut using a pair of blunt scissors and an upturned bowl. Her eyes were almost black too. She was dressed in a severe grey suit and she was sucking a peppermint. “Are you sure about this, Alan?” she asked.

  Alan Blunt nodded. “Oh yes. Quite sure. You know what to do?”

  This last question was addressed to his driver, who was standing uncomfortably, slightly hunched over. His face was a chalky white. He had been like that ever since he had tried to stop Alex in the breaker’s yard. “Yes, sir,” he said.

  “Then do it,” Blunt said. His eyes never left the screen.

  In Reception, Alex had asked for John Crawley and was sitting on a leather sofa, vaguely wondering why so few people were going in or out. The reception area was wide and airy, with a brown marble floor, three elevators to one side and, above the desk, a row of clocks showing the time in every major world city. But it could have been the entrance to anywhere. A hospital. A concert hall. Even a cruise liner. The place had no identity of its own.

  One of the lifts pinged open and Crawley appeared in his usual suit, but with a different tie. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, Alex,” he said. “Have you come straight from school?”

  Alex stood up but said nothing, allowing his uniform to answer the man’s question.

  “Let’s go up to my office,” Crawley said. He gestured. “We’ll take the lift.”

  Alex didn’t notice the fourth camera inside the lift, but then it was concealed on the other side of the two-way mirror that covered the back wall. Nor did he see the thermal intensifier next to the camera. But this second machine both looked at him and through him as he stood there, turning him into a pulsating mass of different colours, none of which translated into the cold steel of a hidden gun or knife. In less than the time it took Alex to blink, the machine had passed its information down to a computer which had instantly evaluated it and then sent its own signal back to the circuits that controlled the elevator. It’s OK. He’s unarmed. Continue to the fifteenth floor.

  “Here we are!” Crawley smiled and ushered Alex out into a long corridor with an uncarpeted, wooden floor and modern lighting. A series of doors was punctuated by framed paintings, brightly coloured abstracts. “My office is just along here.” Crawley pointed the way.

  They had passed three doors when Alex stopped. Each door had a name-plate and this one he recognized – 1504: Ian Rider. White letters on black plastic.

  Crawley nodded sadly. “Yes. This was where your uncle worked. He’ll be much missed.”

  “Can I go inside?” Alex asked.

  Crawley seemed surprised. “Why do you want to do that?”

  “I’d be interested to see where he worked.”

  “I’m sorry.” Crawley sighed. “The door will have been locked and I don’t have the key. Another time perhaps.” He gestured again. He used his hands like a magician, as if he was about to produce a fan of cards. “I have the office next door. Just here.”

  They went into 1505. It was a large, square room with three windows looking out over the station. There was a flutter of red and blue outside and Alex remembered the flag he had seen. The flagpole was right next to Crawley’s office. Inside there was a desk and chair, a couple of sofas, in the corner a fridge, on the wall a couple of prints. A boring executive office. Perfect for a boring executive.

  “Please, Alex. Sit down,” Crawley said. He went over to the fridge. “Can I get you a drink?”

  “Do you have Coke?”

  “Yes.” Crawley opened a can and filled a glass, then handed it to Alex. “Ice?”

  “No thanks.” Alex took
a sip. It wasn’t Coke. It wasn’t even Pepsi. He recognized the over-sweet, slightly cloying taste of supermarket cola and wished he’d asked for water. “So what do you want to talk to me about?”

  “Your uncle’s will—”

  The telephone rang and with another hand-sign, this one for “excuse me,” Crawley answered it. He spoke for a few moments then hung up again. “I’m very sorry, Alex. I have to go back down to Reception. Do you mind?”

  “Go ahead.” Alex settled himself on the sofa.

  “I’ll be about five minutes.” With a final nod of apology, Crawley left.

  Alex waited a few seconds. Then he poured the cola into a potted plant and stood up. He went over to the door and back into the corridor. At the far end, a woman carrying a pile of papers appeared and then disappeared through a door. There was no sign of Crawley. Quickly, Alex moved back to the door of 1504 and tried the handle. But Crawley had been telling the truth. It was locked.

  Alex went back into Crawley’s office. He would have given anything to spend a few minutes alone in Ian Rider’s office. Somebody thought the dead man’s work was important enough to keep hidden from him. They had broken into his house and cleaned out everything they’d found in the office there. Perhaps the next-door room might tell him why. What exactly had Ian Rider been involved in? And was it the reason why he had been killed?

  The flag fluttered again and, seeing it, Alex went over to the window. The pole jutted out of the building exactly halfway between rooms 1504 and 1505. If he could somehow reach it, he should be able to jump on to the ledge that ran along the side of the building outside room 1504. Of course, he was fifteen floors up. If he jumped and missed there would be about seventy metres to fall. It was a stupid idea. It wasn’t even worth thinking about.