Untouchable (11 page)

Paulo brushed them away and they stuck to his hand. When he looked at them he realized what they were: pills.

The other gamekeeper pushed Paulo out of the way and shoved the bag back into the carcass. The pony jogged, upset. Paulo recognized the man – the pale blue eyes, the acne scars and the longer scar like a cut. It was the gamekeeper who had been staring at him the previous day in the yard by the lodge. He turned to Paulo and brushed the white beads firmly off Paulo’s hand, the rifle still over the crook of his arm.

‘Polystyrene packing,’ said the gamekeeper. ‘Punters don’t like to see a big bloody hole.’ He wiped his hands on his trousers and snapped the rifle together. He looked as though he was checking it but the safety catch was off. Paulo was in no doubt that it was a warning to leave. He turned and walked back to the others.

Tiff’s pony was munching the grass, while Li had dismounted to hold her Arab and Jess. Jess’s ears pricked up as she caught sight of Paulo.

‘What’s up?’ said Li.

‘Have you got a hoof pick?’ said Paulo.

Li handed him a hooked piece of metal from the pocket of her jacket.

Paulo lifted his right foot. In the tread of his boot were a couple of white dots. He eased them out with the end of the hoof pick, then scraped them carefully off the metal into his hand. Jess tried to sniff them and Paulo pushed her questing muzzle gently away.

Li watched, intrigued. ‘What are those?’

‘Polystyrene packing, so I’m told,’ said Paulo. He got a tissue out of his pocket, carefully picked the mud off the pills, then wrapped them up and put them away. Jess sniffed at his pocket, curious. Paulo stroked her. ‘Jess, they’re not mints.’ He took the reins back from Li and prepared to mount.

Tiff watched, wondering what on earth Li and Paulo were up to.

Paulo threw his jacket in the back of the Range Rover and climbed into the front seat beside Alex.

‘Polystyrene packing?’ said Alex incredulously.

Paulo did up his seat belt. He glanced in the rear-view mirror. Tiff wouldn’t be able to hear. She was taking her time putting her coat in the boot. ‘Yeah. This guy said they used polystyrene packing to pack the body cavity after gutting. It’s so the punters don’t get upset.’

‘Utter rubbish,’ said Alex. ‘I’ve been hunting with my dad enough times. Anyone who’s prepared to shoot an animal doesn’t mind a little blood.’

Li climbed in and did up her seat belt. ‘They don’t mind leaving entrails on the ground outside the bothy, but they pack the carcasses with polystyrene? It doesn’t add up.’

‘I saw the laird out with Rob this afternoon,’ said Alex. ‘They had a gutted stag on the roof rack. It wasn’t full of pretty polystyrene beads.’

Tiff got in, her coat dragging across the seat. Alex started the engine and switched on the wipers. They would talk about this later.

Alex pulled up in the garage beside the hostel. Tiff opened the door before he’d even cut the engine and jumped out, then ran to the front door.

Li, Paulo and Alex looked at each other. ‘What’s got into her?’

Li looked at her watch. ‘Is it time for
EastEnders
?’

Paulo grabbed his jacket from the back seat. ‘Conference – while she’s occupied.’

They took their boots off and went straight to the kitchen. Delicious smells of baking wafted around them. ‘Wow, Amber,’ said Alex. ‘What’s that?’

A large roasting dish stood on a wire rack. Inside was something with a golden crust, slightly cracked to reveal a yellow spongy interior. ‘Cornbread,’ she replied. ‘It’s Roseanne’s recipe; I got her to text it.’

‘Wow,’ said Paulo. He remembered Roseanne’s cornbread well; Roseanne was Amber’s housekeeper and had cooked for them when they’d all been over in New York. He leaned over the golden square and breathed in the warm fragrance. ‘Mmmm,’ he said.

Hex was perched on a kitchen stool. ‘You wouldn’t say that if you saw Amber’s attempt. That’s my version.’

Li looked at Hex. ‘You cooked this?’

Hex shrugged. ‘I just followed the instructions, that’s all. No great mystery.’

‘Speaking of mysteries’ – Paulo threw his jacket on the stool and began to fish around in the pocket – ‘I have something rather interesting.’ He lowered his voice. ‘It’s not poaching that’s going on around here. It’s drug smuggling.’

Hex and Amber looked at him incredulously. ‘It’s
what
?’

‘We met a pair of gamekeepers,’ said Paulo. ‘They were transporting a dead deer on a pony and it fell over. The deer carcass split and inside was a bag full of little white pills.’ He searched his inside pocket, then picked up the Range Rover keys. ‘Back in a moment.’ He went out and they heard the front door shut.

‘Of course,’ said Hex. ‘That’s why we found that gutted deer in the water this morning. They transport the pills in the carcass, put them in the boat, then they don’t want the carcass any more. They throw them overboard.’

‘I wonder what drugs they’re smuggling?’ said Li. ‘And where they’re coming from?’

Paulo came back in and began searching on the floor. ‘Has anyone seen a tissue? I picked up some of those pills and they’re inside it.’

For a moment they all looked around on the floor. Paulo picked up his jacket and went through the pockets again.

‘And now you can’t find them?’ said Alex.

‘I definitely put them in my pocket.’ Paulo stopped. He remembered Tiff had been in the back seat next to his jacket. ‘Tiff,’ he said. ‘Do you think she would know what I had? Would she take them?’

‘No wonder she dashed inside like a bat out of hell,’ said Li.

Amber rolled her eyes. ‘Oh brother.’

Alex stood up. ‘If she has, she’d better not be alone. If it’s like the stuff I had it’s horrible.’

He went out into the corridor. The sound of the TV floated towards him – the news on high volume.

At the far end, the TV room door opened. Tiff twirled into the corridor, and skipped lightly towards the crowd coming to join her.

Alex caught her in his arms. He’d expected her to struggle and maybe even kick him but instead she swayed to and fro. She was trying to get him to dance. He looked into her face. Her expression was cherubic – completely unlike the sour Tiff they knew. Her eyes were flicking quickly from side to side. She had definitely taken something.

She slithered past him and ran into Paulo. ‘Got any music, cowboy? Do you dance?’ She twirled in front of him, round and round, delighted by the movement.

Paulo gave Alex a long-suffering look and pushed her back into the TV room. She went easily, but he didn’t follow her in. He slammed the door as though he’d trapped a rat in there.

‘Should we call a doctor?’ asked Li.

Alex shook his head. ‘She seems OK. She’s not like I was; she’s having a good time.’

‘How long does it last?’

Alex shrugged. ‘Who knows? We don’t know what it was.’

The TV sound jumped. Tiff was channel-hopping.

‘We’d better not leave her alone,’ said Amber. ‘She might not stay in there. We’ll watch her in shifts.’

‘I’ll do the first,’ sighed Hex. ‘After all, I’ve done it before.’

There was silence. Tiff had turned off the TV. ‘Uh-oh,’ said Amber. ‘The pacifier isn’t working.’

Hex put his hand on the door. His face was grim. ‘Check on me in half an hour.’

Paulo said, ‘Let’s have a look in the Range Rover. I had two pills; one of them might still be in there.’

Li, Amber and Alex joined Paulo outside. Paulo had scoured the entire Range Rover twice.

‘Nothing?’ said Alex.

Paulo shook his head.

‘It’s not in her room,’ said Li.

‘And it’s not in her pockets,’ said Amber. ‘She must have taken them both.’

Paulo straightened up and ran a hand through his hair. ‘That was good evidence. We could have taken that to the police. I shouldn’t have let them out of my sight.’

Li spluttered, ‘None of us thought she’d actually go through your pockets.’

‘We can still go to the police,’ said Amber. ‘A pickup by boat, a slick method of transportation across the moors – all the suspicious stuff you guys saw at night . . . It’s a big operation, transporting big quantities. There must be a factory close by.’

‘Paulo and Li, you’ve seen the strongest evidence,’ said Alex. ‘You come with me.’

Li turned to Amber. ‘Amber, will you be all right here to take over from Hex?’

Amber sighed. ‘It’ll be an experience, I suppose.’

Tiff was sitting quietly on the floor in the TV room. Hex had done his best to keep the atmosphere calming – the TV was off, the curtains were closed because the sun wouldn’t be going down yet. At first she’d been leaping around like a monkey, excited by every sound, trying to get him into the same mood. Now she was sitting with her back to the cold radiator, looking thoroughly bored, her knees pulled up to her chest. Aside from that she looked fairly normal, except that her pupils were huge black holes and she kept grinding her teeth. And she was rather more talkative than usual.

‘You guys, you just want to stop me doing anything. I should be having fun. You think you can brainwash me to be like other people . . . It’s so boring.’

Hex tuned it out. He was catching up on his e-mails. He had friends in online communities all over the world, some of whom he hadn’t e-mailed for a while. Plenty to be getting on with.

‘Everything is so dull,’ said Tiff. ‘Everything and everybody. Dull, dull, dull.’

Hex was looking at the screen but no longer paying attention to it. He was listening to Tiff in spite of himself. He was thinking about what it was like before he met the others. Bored rigid by school, he was an outsider no one understood. Everything seemed trivial and unchallenging. Then he’d discovered the Internet and had reinvented himself in a virtual world. He had friends – people he’d met online who were interested in the same things. He was e-mailing some of them now. He didn’t know what most of them looked like, how old they were, what their real names were – in the online universe, you chose your own name, you were a person you’d invented.

‘You won’t understand,’ said Tiff. ‘Nobody does.’ She ground her teeth again.

Perhaps he should tell Tiff to go online. Sort her life out that way. His online world had been more real than reality. He’d quite happily have become a pixel, slid into a machine and stayed in virtual reality for eternity. That was until he’d met Amber, Alex, Paulo and Li. Virtual Hex had thought he knew what excitement and danger were. If he made a wrong move on the Internet his machine could be trashed – his virtual world could end. It seemed like high stakes indeed. Now, though, he could pay for mistakes with real injuries, his actual life. Not only that; other people could be hurt, crippled or killed. His four friends, to whom he was closer than he had ever been to anyone, were still alive today because of things he had done. He was alive because of things they had done. Together they’d saved people, brought killers to justice, changed people’s lives. They’d done things that mattered, and that made the real world worth living in.

He looked at the e-mail windows he had open, the friends waiting for a reply. The first was to ScaryHarry. He’d ‘known’ ScaryHarry for years. He was a reformed hacker who designed security systems for banks. Not the kind of security systems that dealt with hold-ups; the kind that kept out other hackers like him. Hex didn’t quite feel able to relate to ScaryHarry right now. He miniaturized the window. Next was johnsmith. Hex knew even less about johnsmith – all lower case – than he did about ScaryHarry. Hex was intrigued by him – johnsmith revelled in enigmatic e-mail exchanges yet had chosen the world’s most deliberately anonymous name. But that would have to wait until later too.

He glanced at the clock in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. Any moment, Amber would take over.

‘Dull,’ said Tiff again. She fidgeted in the pockets of her denim jacket and pulled out a dark tube. She looked at it and shook it, inspecting it minutely. It was her green glow stick from the morning. ‘It’s dead,’ she said. ‘What a pity.’ She flicked it from side to side, trying to start it again.

She looked so genuinely sad. It was such an unexpected sight, after her habitual carping sarcasm that Hex found himself looking at the dark stick too. It reminded him of cramped places, of breathing in dust, of a dead body. ‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘you think you’re going to die and you don’t. That stops you thinking life is dull.’

It came out before he even thought it. He buried his head in his hands. What was he doing?

‘Wow,’ said Tiff. ‘That is so profound.’

She was stoned out of her head, thought Hex. Tomorrow she wouldn’t remember a word he’d said. He looked at his watch. ‘You need to have a good talk to Amber,’ he said confidently. ‘She’ll understand exactly where you’re coming from.’

The door opened. Right on cue, Amber was here.

Hex was on his feet immediately. ‘See you in a bit,’ he said, and closed the door behind him.

Tiff was talking immediately. ‘I’ve misjudged Hex. He’s a really good listener. He’s so cool. Really deep. No one’s ever listened to me like that before.’

Amber was wary. Tiff laid back, thoughtful? What on earth was that drug she’d taken? Perhaps they were wrong to go to the police if it could tame a hellcat like Tiff.

‘Hex says I need to have a talk to you, woman to woman,’ said Tiff.

Thanks, Hex, thought Amber.

‘OK,’ said the officer, scanning the statement. Alex, Paulo and Li sat on the opposite side of the table from him. ‘You have speculated that there might be a drugs factory somewhere on the estate, that drugs are being made and smuggled out inside freshly killed deer. Do you have any thoughts on where the factory might be?’

They shook their heads.