Agent 21: Reloaded: Book 2 (11 page)

Ellie stared at it for a moment. It was pretty creepy, like she was looking in on herself while she slept. ‘What do we do now?’ She was still whispering, despite what Gabs had said.

‘We wait. And we watch. And if nothing happens we come back tomorrow night and we wait and watch again. But you know what? I’ve got a feeling that won’t be necessary.’

She was right.

They had been sitting in absolute silence for a good couple of hours. Ellie had started to get cold and, if she was honest, a bit bored. She was staring at her watch, trying to make out the time in the darkness – it was about five to three – when she heard the faint sound of footsteps in the street below.

Gabs and Raf looked at each other. The footsteps stopped. The two adults turned their attention to the screen at the back of the night sight. Ellie did the same. She didn’t know what she was waiting for, but she found herself holding her breath in any case.

She shivered. Was it the cold, or something else?

Four minutes past three. Ellie couldn’t help gasping as, in the green haze of the screen, she saw her bedroom door open. A man entered. It was difficult to make out his features through the night sight. She could see, though, that he was wearing glasses. One lens was covered up with some kind of dressing. He had a shaved head and was very thin. There was a rucksack on his shoulder.

As he stood by Ellie’s bed, looking down on the bulge created by the pillows, she saw something in his right hand. But it was only when he fired silently into the duvet that she realized it was a gun.

Ellie cried out. She felt Gabs’s hand on her shoulder. ‘It’s OK, Ellie …’

But it wasn’t OK. It wasn’t anything
like
OK. The
man was peeling back the duvet to reveal the pillows she’d stuffed down there. She felt herself on the brink of tears. ‘He wants to … He just tried to …’ She couldn’t bring herself to say the words ‘kill me’. ‘Why?’ she wailed. ‘What have I done?’

The ghostly green image showed the man removing something from his rucksack and fiddling with Ellie’s bedside light. But suddenly Ellie wasn’t concerned with any of that. Another, more sinister, thought had entered her head.

‘My mum and dad,’ she breathed. ‘What’s he going to do to my mum and dad?’

She stood up and started to make for the door of Mr and Mrs Carmichael’s bedroom. But then she felt Gabs’s hands on her again. Firmer than last time. Rougher.

‘Get off me!’ Ellie hissed. ‘
Get off me!
I have to go and warn them. I have to go and—’

‘Your parents are perfectly safe,’ Gabs told her. Even though Ellie continued to wriggle, she didn’t let go and she was too strong for the younger girl.

‘What do you
mean
they’re perfectly safe? There’s a murderer in my house with a gun. What are you, stupid? Let me go …’

‘Stop and think, Ellie,’ said Gabs, her voice much more abrupt than it had been up till now. ‘Who did he just try to kill?’

‘Me, obviously.’

‘So if he still wants you dead, why would he kill your parents? The police would be crawling all over this place. He wouldn’t be able to get near you.’

Ellie stopped wriggling. She looked over at the screen. The man was just leaving the room, closing Ellie’s door behind him.

‘Listen carefully,’ Gabs breathed.

They stood still. Ellie could hear nothing but the beating of her heart. And then, a minute later, footsteps on the pavement outside again, disappearing up Acacia Drive.

Silence in Mr and Mrs Carmichael’s bedroom. Ellie was too shocked, too terrified to speak.

‘I think,’ said Raf after a few seconds, ‘we should find out why our friend was so interested in Ellie’s bedside lamp. Ellie, time for you to pop back home.’

Ellie shook her head. ‘I can’t …’

‘Yes you can, sweetie,’ Gabs told her.

‘What if he comes back?’

‘He won’t come back. Not tonight.’

‘But what if he
does
?’

Gabs gave her a bleak smile. She put her hands inside her black leather jacket and pulled out a gun. ‘If he does,’ she said quietly, ‘I’ll deal with it. I’ll be covering the entrance to your house, Ellie. You’ll be fine. Go up into your bedroom, remove the bulb
from your lamp and examine it. When – if – you find anything, bring it back here.’

Ellie looked from Gabs to Raf. Their faces, shrouded in the darkness of the room, were very serious. She didn’t know if Gabs and her gun made her feel better about all this, or worse.

‘Why does he want to kill me?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know. Maybe it’s because you can recognize him. He’s not the kind of guy who likes to be recognized.’

‘Who
is
he?’

‘You don’t need to know that, Ellie.’

‘Yes I do.’

‘Trust me, Ellie, it’s much better—’

‘If you want me to go and check my light, you’d better tell me what’s going on, Gabs. Otherwise I’m going to stand in the middle of the street and start screaming for the police.’

Gabs and Raf exchanged another glance, and Ellie saw Raf nod slightly.

‘All right, Ellie,’ said Gabs, her voice serious. ‘His name is Adan Ramirez. His nickname is Calaca, which means
skeleton
. He comes from Mexico and I honestly don’t know how many people he’s killed.’

‘But what’s this got to do with me? Why did he show me a picture of Zak? What’s it got to do with him? Zak’s
dead
, for God’s sake …’

‘Ellie, sweetie, I can’t tell you anything else. You’ve just got to trust us.’

‘Trust you? How can I trust you? How can I trust anyone? What happens when you’re not here? I’ll never get away from him.’ She could feel the tears coming again and she didn’t care. ‘He’ll kill me.’

‘No he won’t, Ellie.’

‘How do you know? How can you say that?’

‘Because we’re here. Me and Raf. And believe me, we’re very good at this sort of thing. But you
have
to do as we ask, Ellie. You
have
to go over to your house and check out that lamp. You can do it, sweetie. You really can.’

Ellie took another deep breath and tried to get control of herself.

Raf’s voice: ‘If you hadn’t trusted us up till now, Ellie, Calaca wouldn’t have put a bullet into your pillows tonight. He’d have put one in your head.’

There was no way Ellie could argue with that.

Outside Mr and Mrs Carmichael’s house, Acacia Drive was silent. A black cat padded across the road, but apart from that there was no movement. ‘Can’t you come with me?’ Ellie asked Gabs. Raf had remained in the house, keeping up surveillance on her room.

Gabs shook her head. She still had the gun in her right hand. ‘I need to watch from here,’ she said. ‘It’s safer that way. Go now.’

As the strange woman with white-blonde hair retreated into the shadows cast by Mr and Mrs Carmichael’s front porch, Ellie crossed the road. It was only fifteen metres to her house. It felt like fifteen miles. Her head was filled with the terrifying image of the man they called Calaca. They had heard him walking away from number sixty-three, but they hadn’t
seen
him. Which meant he could still be here.

And if he was still here …

She entered the house by the back door, unlocking it as quietly as she could. Inside the house, all was dark. She heard the cuckoo clock ticking in the dining room. As she walked upstairs, she knew which was the creaking step and she avoided it. Seconds later she was in her room.

She noticed the smell. A faint reek of burning, like someone had lit a match in here. She tiptoed over to her bed and ran the flat of her hand over the duvet. Her fingers brushed against the bullet hole. The edges were crispy and flaked away as she touched them. As she poked her finger into the hole, she couldn’t help imagining what that bullet would have done to her skin …

Footsteps on the landing. Ellie gasped. She looked towards the window where she knew Raf would be watching her. But before she could make any sign of distress, the footsteps had got closer.

The door was opening.

Ellie spun round.

Light. It hurt her eyes.

A figure in her room.

‘Ellie Lewis, what on
earth
do you think you’re doing?’

She blinked. Her mum, dressed in a flowery dressing gown and with her hair in a net, was standing in the doorway.

‘Why are you dressed? What’s going on? What’s that smell?’

Ellie looked guiltily at her duvet. Her mum pushed past her and touched her fingers to the hole just like Ellie had done in the darkness.

‘What on
earth
is this?’ she demanded.

Ellie didn’t know what to say. She glanced towards the window again.

‘Don’t just stand there, young lady. I asked you a question. What is it?’

Ellie bit her lower lip. ‘Cigarette burn.’ She couldn’t believe what she was saying. She’d never touched a cigarette in her life. She
hated
them.

Her mother blinked. ‘I beg your pardon?’ Her voice was a dangerous whisper.

‘Cigarette burn,’ Ellie repeated. ‘Sorry.’

A second figure appeared in the door. It was her dad. He was wearing nothing but a pair of Y-fronts.
Ellie wished he wouldn’t walk about the house like that. His hairy belly wobbled out above the waistband. It made her skin crawl.

‘She’s been smoking in her room, Godfrey. Look, she’s made a cigarette burn in my best linen.’

Ellie’s dad gave her a thunderous look. ‘You’re a very silly little girl, Ellie Lewis. A
very
silly little girl. I don’t know what’s gone wrong with you lately, but I
won’t
have it. Trouble with the police. Now this. You get into bed, young lady, and I don’t want to hear another peep from you. We’ll discuss this in the morning.’

Seconds later, they were gone.

Ellie was shaking. She switched out the light. It took a minute or two for her eyes to get used to the darkness again. She could hear the murmur of her parents’ voices in the room next door and could just guess what they were saying. The voices died down after about ten minutes. In the morning there would be hell to pay. But right now she had work to do.

She fumbled in the darkness for her bedside lamp and very quietly unscrewed the bulb from its fitting. She put her fingertips inside the metal shade and felt around. It didn’t take more than a couple of seconds to locate a flat, round object, about the size of a twenty-pence piece. It was stuck to the inside of the shade, but it came away easily. Ellie had no idea what
it was. She put it in her pocket and sat on the edge of her bed.

And waited.

She needed to be sure her mum and dad were asleep before she left the house again. It wasn’t until she heard the cuckoo clock cheep four a.m. that she dared listen in at their door to hear the steady sound of their breathing. Then she crept downstairs and out of the back door again.

It had turned colder. Ellie shivered as she crossed the road. Gabs was still waiting in the porch of Mr and Mrs Carmichael’s house, the gun still in her hand. ‘I found something,’ Ellie said.

But immediately Gabs put one finger to her lips. She led Ellie back into the house. Before they went upstairs, however, she held out one hand and nodded. Ellie understood what she meant. She put her hand in her pocket, pulled out the object she’d removed from the light shade and gave it to her. Gabs only examined it briefly before laying it on the kitchen table and leading Ellie up to the bedroom. Raf was waiting for them.

‘What kept you?’

‘My mum and dad woke up.’ The words tumbled out of Ellie’s mouth. ‘I had to tell them the gunshot was a cigarette burn, and … and …’

‘Nice hairnet your mum wears,’ Raf said. ‘Suits her. Not sure your about your dad’s pants, though. You
should think about getting him a dressing gown for Christmas. Did you find anything?’

‘Listening device,’ Gabs said. ‘Looks like our friend Calaca wants to keep tabs on Ellie’s movements.’

The thought of that made Ellie feel sick. ‘I’m going to throw it away,’ she said. ‘Tread on it or something. Stick it in the bin. I’m not having that man listening in on me.’

But Gabs shook her head. ‘No, sweetie,’ she said. ‘If you do that, he’ll know you’re on to him. And he’ll know you’re receiving help. What you’re actually going to do is go back home and put the listening device back exactly where you found it. If you want to put an end to all this, that is.’

‘
What
? Didn’t you see what that man just tried to do to me? Are you crazy or something?’

‘No, sweetie. Not crazy. But I do have an idea.’ Gabs looked over at Raf. ‘You know, Ellie’s really got herself in trouble lately. First the police, now smoking in her room. I think it’s time she went the whole hog and found herself a boyfriend. Don’t you?’

10

RUSSIAN ROULETTE

Thursday, 08.00 hrs West Africa time

ZAK WAS DREAMING
.

He found, these days, that his sleep was either dreamless, or haunted. Dreamless was good. Haunted was very bad. It was always the same. He was being hunted by a thin figure whose face was the stuff of nightmares even at the best of times. His pursuer only had one eye, and the skin had grown over the socket of the missing eye, smooth and unblemished. No matter where Zak ran, the one-eyed man appeared straight ahead of him. Zak would turn and run in a different direction, but Calaca was always there.

As the dream progressed, a second figure appeared next to him: Cesar Martinez, the drug dealer he had been sent to entrap on his first mission, had a rictus smile and a bloody patch on the front of his shirt. A third figure joined them. His son, Cruz. Zak’s former friend.

He tried to run from them, but they kept appearing.

And now, each time they appeared, they were a little closer.

Closer
…

‘Jay! Jay!
Wake up!
’

Zak sat bolt upright. For a moment he couldn’t work out where he was. This didn’t
look
like St Peter’s Crag, the place he’d come to think of as home. Then he saw the mosquito nets surrounding him and everything came flooding back. Lobambo. Black Wolf. The MV
Mercantile
. It was due to arrive today, and the thought made Zak very uneasy. Then he remembered Ntole, drunk and asleep, his weapon by his side. The building site with no building. Bernardo: the schoolboy with no school.