Sudden Death (11 page)

‘. . . a lot we have to talk about,’ Powell was saying.

‘Just stay away from me,’ Jake’s dad replied. ‘
And
my son.’

‘We both have a job to do,’ said Powell. ‘I intend to do mine.’

Jake’s dad slammed Powell back on to the bonnet. ‘Don’t push me, Powell,’ he shouted. ‘This is bigger than you, and you’ll get hurt.’

Jake couldn’t hear what the American said back, but his eyes caught a swift movement. Powell reached into his pocket.
A gun
, Jake thought. But it wasn’t. The object looked like a stick of chewing gum.

In a single, fluid motion, Powell dropped whatever it was into the side pocket of Jake’s dad’s jacket.

‘OK, OK,’ said Powell. ‘You’re right. I’ll keep my distance.’ Jake’s dad seemed to relax.

They separated. Powell held up his palm in a defensive
posture. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Bastin. I guess my instincts got the better of me.’

‘Be careful, Powell,’ Jake’s dad said. The words were almost more threatening for the flat tone in which they were uttered.

Powell just nodded and walked off towards the car park exit. Jake’s dad stood motionless until Powell had left. Then he slammed his fist on to the bonnet of the car. ‘Damn it!’ he shouted. The sound echoed off the concrete walls.

Jake used the opportunity to make his exit. He dashed towards the stairwell, slipped through the door and hurried up the stairs. There was too much to take in.

First my dad’s lying to me, now he’s threatening reporters. Can this really be him?

Jake stepped back out into the conference room, where the last of the journalists and cameramen were clearing out, heading down to the pitch to set up for the practice session. His dad arrived in the lift a few seconds later. He was carrying a document case and looked surprised to see Jake.

‘What are you doing in here?’ he asked.

‘Couldn’t hang out with Popov and Truman all day. I got the feeling they wanted to be alone,’ Jake replied. ‘What took you so long?’

His dad grinned. ‘Y’know, couldn’t remember for the life
of me where the car was parked.’ He tapped his temple with an index finger. ‘Guess the brain is getting old like the rest of me.’

He walked over and mimed a light punch to Jake’s chin. ‘Sorry if I seem anxious, Sport. It’s just the job. It’ll be all sorted soon.’

Jake decided to return his dad’s new-found affection and lay it on thick too. He hugged his dad, squeezing hard. It was an awkward embrace. His dad stood motionless for a second but then leant in and patted Jake on the back. But Jake had an ulterior motive. He slipped his hand into his dad’s pocket and felt for the object.

They drew apart.

‘Anyway, Jake, I’ve got to get changed for practice. Why don’t you go to the stadium cafeteria, get something to eat. I don’t think the main restaurant is open yet.’

‘Sure thing, Dad,’ said Jake.

‘And, one more thing –’ his dad started.

But Jake finished the thought – ‘Stay out of trouble?’

His dad grinned. ‘You know me too well.’

Do I?
Jake thought as he watched his dad walk away. When he was on his own, he opened his hand to look at the object in his palm. A computer pen-drive. What was on it? And why had Powell slipped it to his dad?

J
ake had no intention of going to the cafeteria.

The last of the players were heading out towards the pitch. A security guard stood outside his dad’s office.

‘Steve Bastin – my dad – said I should wait for him here,’ he said, trying to sound as natural as possible. The guard nodded and waved him through.

Jake switched on the laptop on his dad’s desk and waited for it to boot up. None of this made sense. One moment Daniel Powell was about to get his jaw broken, the next he was handing over information to Jake’s dad. Jake was pretty sure his dad hadn’t noticed the pen-drive being slipped into his pocket – Powell had done it so covertly – so what was going on?

He wasn’t surprised to see that the screensaver was an image from his dad’s playing days. It was the team photo of the 1988 England squad. Steve Bastin, square-jawed and
long-haired, stood in the back row alongside his team-mates. It must have been taken a few days before he was stretchered off with the torn ligaments that ended his career. Jake shook away any sympathy. His dad was no legend.

Jake inserted the drive into the USB socket. The drive contained a single pdf file, called ‘Elisandos’. Jake double-clicked on the document icon.

The file was an article from
O Globo,
a Brazilian newspaper published in Rio. There was a picture of a round-headed man with a neat beard. Beside it was a shot of a forty-foot yacht being towed by a coastguard vessel. The man’s picture was labelled ‘Prof. Hector Elisandos’. Jake knew a little Spanish, but no Portuguese. He couldn’t understand the article, but he recognised one name immediately. Christian Truman.

Jake opened a translation programme from the Internet, highlighted the article text and dropped it into the programme. It took the computer a couple of seconds to convert the article into English. It wasn’t perfect, but it gave him the gist:

Hector Elisandos was the world’s leading authority on tidal energy. His yacht had been recovered off the coast of Jamaica with no one on board. Recently he’d been consulting for Christian Truman on energy projects.

There was a knock at the door. Jake quickly flipped the laptop closed. ‘Come in,’ he said.

It was Benalto, the Argentine player. His forehead was coated with a sheen of sweat and he was breathing heavily from training.

‘Oh, hello, Jake,’ he said. ‘Have you seen your father?’

‘I thought he was with you,’ Jake said.

‘No,’ said Benalto. ‘We look for Devon also. I thought they are here, but I see no. Sorry to interrupt.’

He closed the door and was gone.

Jake opened the computer again and continued to read. Apparently, no body had been recovered, but the suspicion was that Elisandos had drowned. There was a quote from Truman that said that he was devastated by the loss of such an eminent scientist, especially because his research seemed to have been lost with him.

Jake closed the file, then opened the Internet and searched for Elisandos. It was strange: none of the major English-language newspapers seemed to have picked up the story of the disappearance. Perhaps Elisandos wasn’t such a big deal, after all. So why had Powell slipped the story to his dad?

Jake deleted the history files of his search. He didn’t want to leave any sort of trail that his dad might pick up on. He took in the screensaver a final time. His dad’s smile seemed so innocent . . . Shaking any thoughts of loyalty away, Jake shut the computer down and pocketed
the pen-drive as he left the office, walking straight into Devon Taylor.

‘What the –’ he began. ‘Oh, Jake, it’s you. Sorry, dude.’

‘Hey, Devon,’ Jake replied. ‘Bennie was looking for you.’

‘I was seeing the physio,’ said Devon.

‘Everything OK?’ Jake asked.

Devon slapped his right thigh. ‘Hope so. Slight tear to my hamstring last year. It’s recovered, but still aches after sprints.’

‘The first game’s only a couple of days away. Will you be fit in time?’

‘Should be. If your dad doesn’t bench me for being late for practice.’

Jake laughed, but inside he felt only sadness. If Devon only knew that his dad didn’t care about football as much as he pretended. ‘Better get out there then.’

Jake followed Devon out to the pitch. It took him a few seconds to realise what was different: the sky wasn’t there. The stadium’s retractable roof had been drawn across like a gigantic shroud. Instead of the sun, hundreds of dazzling spotlights illuminated the pitch. Jake stood open-mouthed.

‘Wow!’ he said. ‘What a place to play.’

‘Sure is. And it looks like I’ll get away with being late,’ Devon smiled. Jake looked over to where he was nodding. The players were all gathered round the assistant coach near
the far goal, but his dad was nowhere to be seen. Devon jogged off to join them.

Jake was left alone on the sidelines. Where
was
his dad?

Across the other side of the pitch, above the tiers, was the Truman Oil sponsor box. Jake could tell that its view of the pitch was almost as good as the one from Popov’s office. Two figures were standing together behind the glass, and Jake squinted up. Truman and Popov. The Russian was gesturing over the pitch with one arm in a wide sweeping gesture. In his other hand he held a mobile phone to his ear.

A tannoy crackled into life, and someone spoke in Russian. A few of the security guards looked up, and so did the assistant coach. Then the message was repeated in English: ‘For health and safety reasons, please leave the football pitch. We will shortly be testing the stadium roof. I repeat, please vacate the football pitch.’

Some of the players drifted towards the opposite touchline. Devon and Janné came towards Jake.

‘Why do we all have to stay clear?’ asked Janné.

‘In case something goes wrong, I guess,’ said Jake.

‘Nothing will go wrong,’ Devon said. ‘They spent millions on the technology.’

The field is clear
, boomed the tannoy.
Proceed with testing.

The spotlights flicked off. Suddenly it felt like they were in a giant cave. It was dark as night.

‘Bloody hell, I almost missed it!’ said a voice. Jake spun round to see his dad limping quickly to the edge of the pitch. ‘Beats Wembley, huh?’

Jake was about to answer when the clanging of machinery interrupted him. A pale crack appeared where the roof panels parted, sending shafts of light on to the centre circle. As the mechanism whirred, the two wings retracted slowly.

A piece of debris detached from the edge of one of the wings and fell off. Straightaway, Jake knew something was wrong. A fraction of a second later, he realised it wasn’t debris at all.

It was a body.

Legs and arms spiralled as it plummeted, turning over and over. Jake turned away, but heard the sickening thud as it smacked into the turf. Bile rose into his throat. What followed was a blur. He didn’t want to see, but his legs carried him towards the centre circle anyway.

He heard someone shouting, ‘No, Jake!’ His father.

But Jake was close enough to see the limbs bent out of shape. The neck at an impossible angle. Blood colouring the clean white halfway line. No first aid could help this person. Then he saw the face, pale and lifeless.

Jake fell to his knees and his nausea overcame him. Retching from the depths of his guts, he vomited on to the grass.

The dead man was Daniel Powell.

S
trong arms seized Jake’s shoulders and pulled him from the scene. His dad.

Jake wanted to push him away, but he didn’t have the strength.

An accident?

Suicide?

Security guards streamed past on either side. ‘It’s nothing,’ they were saying in Russian. ‘Nothing to see.’

Jake saw Janné’s face, contorted with horror. Devon Taylor’s eyes were wide with shock.

Murder.

Jake knew he was right. Daniel Powell had been murdered. He remembered his dad’s last words to the journalist, uttered so coldly:
Be careful, Powell.

Jake’s skin prickled with fear and the sickness took him again, coiling in his guts like a snake. He puked in the
tunnel, spattering the concrete floor.

‘Get it all out, son,’ his dad said.

A man and a woman, both in police uniforms, rushed towards the pitch. A siren blared in the distance. Jake wanted to grab one of the officers, tell them what he knew, but his dad kept ushering him forcefully into the belly of the stadium. They reached the lift and stepped inside. Jake wiped his mouth and stared at his reflection in the mirror on the wall. He looked terrible: pale, sweating. Behind him his dad was stepping impatiently from foot to foot. He was stabbing at the elevator button. ‘Oh,
come on
!’

Why is he in such a rush?

The doors swished closed.

His dad said something Jake didn’t hear. His world was spinning.

‘I
said,
are you OK, Jake? Talk to me.’

‘I . . . I’m OK,’ Jake said.

He couldn’t tear his eyes from his dad’s hands. He kept asking himself:
Did those hands take Daniel Powell’s life?

They were in the car and driving away from the stadium just as another ambulance arrived, sirens on.

There’s no need to hurry,
Jake thought, remembering Powell’s broken body. Then he felt guilty. Weren’t they
fleeing a crime scene? His dad was on the phone, talking to Popov.

‘I thought it was best to leave,’ he was saying. ‘There’s no way we could carry on practice after that. Tell our driver to go home.’ A pause. ‘Yes, tomorrow. Bye.’

‘Dad,’ Jake said. ‘Shouldn’t we go back? I mean, the police . . . they might want to talk to us.’

He guessed the answer before his dad even spoke. ‘The Russian police can’t be trusted, Jake.’

A brush-off. He wasn’t going to let his dad get away with it.

‘Yeah, but after the plane crash, and him getting thrown out of the press conference . . .’

‘I said forget it,’ his dad said curtly. He was driving calmly, but quickly, nosing the Mercedes from lane to lane. Jake checked the speedometer: almost eighty miles per hour. His dad spoke again: ‘This isn’t like the UK. A lot of the police force here are in the pockets of Russian gangsters.’

‘Like Igor Popov?’ Jake sneered.

As soon as the words left his mouth, he regretted it. His dad swung the car across the inside lane of traffic and slammed on the brakes. Jake’s seatbelt tightened across his chest and he was thrown back into his seat.

His dad craned his head round, almost as though he
expected to see somebody seated in the back of the car. Then he fixed his eyes on Jake.

‘What the hell do you mean by that?’ His skin was bloodless with fury, or fear – Jake couldn’t tell which.

‘All I’m saying,’ said Jake, meeting his dad’s eyes, ‘is that I know a lot more than you give me credit for.’

‘Well, stop saying.’ His dad looked around again and then whispered. ‘You never know when someone may be listening.’