Agent 21: Codebreaker: Book 3 (22 page)

‘It was obvious,’ Malcolm said. ‘If
I
wanted to hide something, I would be more careful.’

Zak couldn’t help a smile. ‘I don’t think
most
people would find it obvious, Malcolm.’ And he thought:
But you’re not like most people, are you?
‘How often do the doctors come in and see you?’

‘In the daytime, every hour. At night, not so often.’

‘Right. I haven’t got long, Malcolm. I need your help. I think there’s going to be another bomb, and I don’t know where.’

‘Nor do I,’ Malcolm breathed.

‘Does the name Richard “Sonny” Herder mean anything to you?’

The boy shook his head.

‘Joshua Ludgrove?’

A blank look. ‘Who are these people?’

‘Dick Herder is some dead soldier from the seventies. Ludgrove worked at the
Daily Post
, the newspaper that published the crosswords.’

‘Why do you say worked? Has he been sacked?’

Yeah
, Zak thought.
Permanently
.

‘He’s dead. Murdered, sometime this evening. He was investigating the death of this Herder guy forty years ago.’ Zak shook his head. ‘Maybe it’s got nothing to do with anything. The guy who normally sets the crosswords is dead too. Someone tried to force him into printing three replacement crosswords. We’ve decoded two of them.’ He pulled out today’s
Daily Post
from under his jacket. ‘I think this could be the third. Can you solve it?’

‘Of course,’ Malcolm said, like it was a stupid question. ‘But why should I?’

Zak blinked in the darkness. ‘This bomber,’ he replied carefully, ‘is trying to massacre innocent people.’

‘People die,’ Malcolm interrupted. ‘All the time.’

‘For God’s sake, Malcolm,’ Zak breathed. ‘He blew up a
children’s
hospital. Don’t you want to help catch him?’

Malcolm sneered. ‘Nobody wants to help me. They want to throw me into a secure hospital and throw away the key.’

The words
for your own good
danced on Zak’s lips as he remembered the gunmen at Harrington Secure Hospital, and how lucky Malcolm was to be alive. But something told him that kind of argument wasn’t going to wash with Malcolm. He didn’t think the way other people thought.

‘I can get you out of here,’ he said. Malcolm looked at him sharply. ‘Not now,’ Zak said hastily. ‘You’re too weak and you need to recover. But I’ve done it once and I can do it again. You know I can, right?’

For a moment Malcolm didn’t reply. Then he nodded.

‘But I’ll only do it,’ Zak said, ‘if we stop the third bomb. If not . . .’ Zak gave him a severe look. ‘Well, I hope you like hospital food.’

Their eyes locked in the darkness. Then, with a painful wince, Malcolm took the newspaper from Zak and, in the light of the mobile phone, Zak saw his eyes scanning the clues beneath the crossword grid.

‘Do you need a pencil?’ Zak asked.

‘Shhh . . .’ was the only reply.

There was a minute’s silence. Malcolm’s eyes flickered back and forth. Finally he laid the newspaper down in front of him. ‘There are no messages here,’ he said.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course I’m sure. If there was a message, I would see it.’ There was no hint of doubt in his voice. ‘Maybe the bomber knows you have discovered his code. He would stop using it then, wouldn’t he?’

Zak gave a short nod. He felt like hope was draining from him. He recovered the newspaper from Malcolm’s bed and started folding it up. ‘I have to go,’ he said.

‘Where?’

Good question. Where
could
he go? What could he
do?
Hide out in the Knightsbridge flat? Get out of London?

Or maybe, go back to work. The
Daily Post
was still his best lead. In the absence of any better idea, he should get back there. Do some more snooping. He heard Gabs’s voice in his head.
I do wish he’d stop using that word . . . it sounds so uncouth
. A sudden anger filled him. His only friends were missing and he had done
nothing
to find them. And now he was out of ideas. But if he couldn’t find a solution, and soon, people would be likely to
die
 . . . He stood up. ‘I’m going to spend a day talking birds with a boring man called Rodney Hendricks,’ he said bitterly. ‘Nice knowing you, Malcolm.’ He strode towards the door.

‘Wait.’

‘I can’t. If they find me here . . .’

‘
Wait!
’ Zak heard the boy shuffle up in his stretcher bed. ‘What did you just say?’

‘I’m going back to the paper, see what I can dig up.’

‘You
didn’t
say that. You said . . .
Rodney Hendricks
 . . .’

‘Yeah. So?’

‘Don’t you see?’ Malcolm sounded almost contemptuous. ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’

‘
What’s
obvious.’ Zak was losing patience.

‘Did you say you had a pencil?’

Zak blinked in the darkness. ‘Yeah,’ he said, finally. He pulled a pencil from his jacket pocket and, still lighting his way with his phone, returned to Malcolm’s bed.

‘Give me the paper,’ Malcolm said. Zak handed over the paper and pencil and watched as, in the glow of the phone, Malcolm scribbled the name of Rodney Hendricks in the blank margin of the front page.

‘Don’t you
see
?’ he repeated.

Zak shook his head. ‘See
what
?’

One by one, Malcolm started crossing out the letters in Hendricks’s name, then writing each letter in a new space next to it as he did so. The D first. Then the I. Then the C.

And gradually, a new name appeared.

DICK SONNY HERDER.

‘It’s an anagram,’ Malcolm said. ‘I can always spot them. Rodney Hendricks is a fake name. It’s obvious.’ He peered sharply through his glasses. ‘Didn’t you say Richard Herder was dead?’

‘Yeah,’ Zak breathed. He could hardly believe what Malcolm had just revealed. That it had been there, under his nose, all the time. ‘Yeah, he’s dead.’

‘So, why would this Hendricks guy take his name . . .?’

All of a sudden, the pieces were falling into place. He recalled two lines from Ludgrove’s article.
Why did the Ministry of Defence go out of its way to cover up Herder’s death and the circumstances surrounding the car bomb that caused it? What is the truth behind the subsequent disappearance of his brother Lee?

The brothers were bomb-disposal experts. But surely, anybody who is expert at defusing a bomb, would be an expert at constructing one too. ‘Rodney Hendricks isn’t Richard Herder,’ he breathed, improvising slightly but knowing with a strange clarity that he was on the right track. ‘He’s his brother, Lee. And he’s about to take his revenge – today, on the anniversary of his brother’s death. I’ve got to find him . . . stop him . . . now . . .’

He was already standing up and heading for the door.

But suddenly it opened.

A figure stood there, dressed in doctor’s scrubs but Zak recognized him instantly. Black hair, slicked back. Flat nose. Weapon in his right hand. It was one of the two men he had fired at outside Harrington Secure Hospital. One of the two men who had come to kill Malcolm. And who had just killed the security guard sitting outside, whose body was slumped in his chair, his blood spattered all around.

‘GET OUT OF BED,’ Zak roared, even as he hurled himself at the impostor. They both fell into a scrambled heap in the corridor outside Malcolm’s room.

Zak heard the pop of a silenced pistol.

18

THE LONG-TAILED SHRIKE

THE MAN WAS
short, squat and burly. He was obviously immensely strong. Zak had only managed to floor him because he’d had the element of surprise. With both of them in a heap on the ground, he felt the round from his adversary’s gun whip past his right ear. With all the force he could muster, he swiped one arm against the man’s gun hand. The weapon clattered a couple of metres along the corridor.

Zak didn’t go after it. He scrambled to his feet and lunged back into Malcolm’s room, shutting the door behind him. There was a twist lock underneath the handle. Zak turned it and heard a thin clunk. It wasn’t much of a lock. It wouldn’t hold anybody for long. He switched the light on.

Malcolm was sitting up in bed. He didn’t look scared. Bemused, if anything. ‘Is he going to kill us?’ he asked, with the innocence of a small child.

‘No,’ Zak said, his teeth gritted. ‘He isn’t.’

As he spoke, there was the pop of another gunshot from outside. The door splintered, just a couple of centimetres from the lock. They had seconds before the gunman was inside. Another gunshot. Another splinter. They had seconds.

‘Can you walk?’ Zak demanded.

‘I think so,’ said Malcolm. He winced as he carefully swung his legs over the side of the hospital bed. Zak looked around the room. He needed a weapon. There was nothing. In the end, his eyes fell on a glass jug of water by Malcolm’s bed.

A third gunshot. The hole by the lock was the size of Zak’s fist now. He grabbed the water jug and emptied it over Malcolm’s bed. ‘Stand by the door,’ he told the boy. ‘By the handle, not the hinges.’

Malcolm nodded and, one hand clutching the bandage over his shoulder, took up position by the door.

A thud. The door rattled in its frame. The gunman was kicking it in. Zak could tell it wasn’t going to hold. Clutching the water jug with his left hand, he stepped over to the door, unlocked it with his right and then yanked it open.

The gunman was taking another kick. As the door opened, however, he tumbled into the room. Zak smashed the glass jug down on his head. It shattered. The man fell, bleeding from his scalp. Unconscious. Zak seized the gun from his hand and turned to Malcolm, who looked like he was watching an interesting TV programme.

‘We need to get out of here,’ Zak said. ‘There could be others like him, but the hospital staff will probably try to stop us. Don’t be surprised by anything I do or say – I promise I won’t hurt any of them, or you.’

Malcolm nodded, then winced again. Together, they stepped out into the corridor. Zak tried not to look at the gruesome sight of the dead security man’s body.

At first, he thought they might get away unnoticed, that the sound of the gun had sent all the hospital staff into hiding. He soon realized that wasn’t the case. Three security guards appeared at the end of the corridor and they started running towards Zak and Malcolm. Zak didn’t hesitate – he raised the gun into the air and fired at the ceiling. The security guards stopped as a shower of plaster fell to the ground and Zak placed the weapon against the back of Malcolm’s skull.

‘
Get on the ground with your hands on your head, or I’ll shoot!
’ he roared, his voice only slightly muffled by the mask.

The guards looked nervously at each other. Then they hit the ground.

‘Walk,’ Zak hissed at Malcolm.

There was a strange silence as they edged down the corridor. As they passed the men on the ground Zak lowered his gun in their direction to stop them from getting brave. Once they had cleared them, he told Malcolm to up his pace. Thirty seconds later they were at the top of a stairwell.

Voices echoing down below. Zak fired another shot. It hit the ceiling, debris rained down loudly and even Malcolm, who seemed immune to fright, jumped at the noise. Zak repeated his instruction to get on the ground by bellowing down the stairwell. They descended to find four doctors lying down, and the exit door that led out into the car park wide open.

‘Outside. Now.’

Zak slammed the double doors as they exited. As an extra precaution, he fired a single shot at the keypad that opened them. He didn’t know if that would disable the doors, but it was worth a try. He turned to Malcolm. ‘How are you doing?’

The boy’s face was white. He looked very weak. But he nodded.

‘We need to get to Knightsbridge. We’ll be safe there. Do you think you can walk that far?’

For the first time, Malcolm looked uncertain. ‘It
really
hurts,’ he said.

‘I know. I’ll be able to give you something for the pain when we get there. But it’s not safe for you here any more.’

Sirens. Approaching.

‘We have to move.’ Zak took off his jacket and helped Malcolm put his good arm through one of the sleeves while draping the other over his wounded shoulder. It wasn’t much, but it helped disguise his plain white hospital pyjamas a little. Malcolm’s slippers would get soaked in the rain, but there was nothing Zak could do about that. They just had to get to the flat as quickly as possible.

And then what? He didn’t know.

They emerged onto Victoria Embankment to find the rain falling more heavily than ever. It was a blessing in disguise. At this time of night, there were few people about anyway, but with this rotten weather, the streets were almost clear. Visibility was poor. And even though they could hear the sound of police cars growing nearer, nobody stopped them as they shuffled off through the elements.

By the time they reached the safety and shelter of the Knightsbridge flat, they were soaked through and Malcolm was shaking alarmingly. Zak stripped the boy of his clothes and gave him towels to dry himself before he even thought about sorting himself out. In the bathroom he found a medicine cabinet. It was somewhat better stocked than the average first-aid kit. There were morphine injections and saline bags here, as well as sterile dressings and prescription painkillers. For a moment, Zak’s hand hovered over the morphine, but then he rejected the idea. It was true that it would make Malcolm more comfortable, but it would also make him less sharp and Zak had a feeling he was going to need the boy’s skills before the night was over. He took the painkillers and the dressing to where Malcolm was sitting quietly in the front room, looking out over the London skyline.

‘Take these.’ He handed Malcolm two tablets, and the boy swallowed them without complaint. ‘I should change your dressing. It got very wet out there.’

Malcolm nodded his agreement and lowered the top of the white gown Zak had given him to wear. Carefully, Zak pulled away the adhesive strips that held the dressing to Malcolm’s skin. The boy winced, but did not complain, as Zak revealed the full extent of his gunshot wound.