CHAPTER SEVEN

A cold wind blew off the River Tyne, bringing with it a complex and nasty smell that seemed to blend dead fish, industrial effluent and rotting vegetation into some toxic mix that made Kieron’s nose itch. He turned his collar up against the chill and tried to ignore the smell. It was hard, but then this was Newcastle and he was an emo teen. Everything was hard.

Why couldn’t he live somewhere interesting, like New York or London?

Why couldn’t his mum and dad still be together?

He’d read something once where a person said, ‘If wishes were fishes then we’d all have a feast!’ He supposed that was a way of saying that everyone wished for lots of things all the time. He’d also read somewhere that if you wanted something badly enough, and worked hard enough, then you’d get it. But life had taught him that sayings like that were just sayings, designed to make people feel slightly better. They weren’t actually true.

He and Sam stood in the shadow of a large building with metal walls that creaked occasionally as the wind gusted. The metal panels were fastened together with rivets, and each rivet had streaks of rust running down from it. Somewhere around the side a panel had come loose and whenever the wind was particularly harsh it banged against the metal scaffolding to which the panels were attached. The building had probably looked wonderful when it was first built, but now, Kieron reflected, it just looked sad and tired and broken.

Nothing lasted. He was beginning to realise that, and it made him feel strangely grown-up in a way that he didn’t want. Buildings rusted and fell down; neatly mown parks became overgrown with weeds; hills and cliffs crumbled; and childhood just melted away when you weren’t looking. He had a vague feeling that it was something called entropy – he’d learned about that in physics lessons – but knowing that something happened and it had a name didn’t really explain why it happened. It just did.

‘We might be at the wrong place,’ Sam muttered. He looked cold as well: hands stuck in pockets and feet stamping on the ground to keep himself warm. His breath rose in front of him like steam.

Kieron gestured towards the sign on the warehouse across the other side of the tarmac parking area from where they were standing. A sign attached to the wall read: Horowitz Automotive.

‘The CCTV images of the van that took Bex’s friend showed it stopping at a place called Horowitz Automotive,’ he pointed out. ‘According to Google, there’s only one Horowitz Automotive in the whole of Newcastle and Gateshead, and this is it. The van stopped here somewhere. We just have to find it.’

‘Where is there another Horowitz Automotive?’ Sam asked.

‘Manchester. Why?’

Sam shrugged. ‘They might have gone there, not here.’

‘OK, two things,’ Kieron pointed out irritably. ‘First: the CCTV images had timestamps, and they couldn’t have driven to Manchester from here before the picture was taken. Second: we haven’t got time and can’t afford to get to Manchester today, so if they’re not here we have a problem. So they’d better be here.’

‘All right. I was just saying.’ He glanced at Kieron’s face. ‘Your cheeks have gone white.’

‘I’m cold.’ He indicated the thin black knee-length coat he was wearing. ‘That’s the problem with being a greeb in winter – we’re not really dressed for it.’

‘Just be thankful we’re lads, not girls,’ Sam pointed out. ‘At least we’re wearing trousers instead of tights with holes in them.’ He glanced down at his ripped jeans. ‘Well, you know what I mean. At least the material is thicker.’

Kieron looked around. When they’d first arrived, having caught a bus into the centre of Newcastle and another bus out again, the industrial park had been filled with cars and vans, but come five o’clock everyone had left, and by five twenty the place was almost deserted. Somewhere in the distance it sounded like someone was rehearsing a mediocre pub band in one of the warehouse units, or maybe they were just playing the radio loudly, but the relative silence just emphasised the noise. The song was an old one Kieron’s dad used to play badly on his electric guitar – ‘House of the Rising Sun’. Just hearing it again made Kieron feel sad.

‘I think the last people have left,’ Sam said, ‘and if we don’t move then my feet will freeze to the tarmac.’

Kieron looked around. A central spine road led off the main road, with metal warehouses clustered around short side roads that ran off like ribs. The signs on the buildings indicated a mixture of car mechanics, sign-makers and computer repairers, with one picture framer and one provider of solar panels in evidence.

‘OK,’ he said, ‘I’ll take the right, you take the left. Call my mobile if you find a dark blue Delica van. I’ll do the same.’

‘I’m out of credit,’ Sam said. ‘I can receive calls, but I can’t make them.’

Kieron sighed. ‘OK. If I find anything I’ll call you. If you find anything, then come back to the road and wait for me. If you haven’t seen me and I haven’t called by the time you’ve checked your side to the end then we’ll meet back here. Say, half an hour.’

‘You’ve got enough battery power?’

Kieron pulled his mobile out of his pocket and checked. The little battery bar icon indicated that he was pretty low. He glanced back at Sam and shrugged. Sam delved in his pocket and pulled out a small bright purple cube from which a short micro-USB cable dangled. ‘Extra power,’ he said. ‘You have it; I’ve got enough.’

Taking it, Kieron nodded his thanks.

They split up: Sam running across to the other side of the spine road and, keeping close to the buildings, heading off in one direction while Kieron stayed on his side and did the same. Off in the distance, ‘House of the Rising Sun’ started up again, the opening ripple of notes sounding as if someone was painfully searching for each string on the guitar and each fret on the neck.

The first road was empty of cars. Instead of coming all the way back to the spine road, Kieron found that he could slip along the side of the last warehouse, along a path between the metal walls and a wooden fence taller than him. The ground was covered with weeds and grass, but a faint bare trail existed all the way along. Probably left by foxes, Kieron thought. The next side road had several company vans parked in it, left overnight presumably, and he checked that the dark blue Delica wasn’t hidden between them before he moved on.

When he got back to the spine road Sam had just arrived. His dark clothes hid him well against the warehouse walls. He waved, and Kieron waved back.

They moved on, in opposite directions. The third side road of Kieron’s had a large lorry parked in one of the bays, sticking out so far it was almost across to the other side, and Kieron had to squeeze past it before he could check the three cars that were hidden there. Still no Delica. At the end he did the same thing he had done before – slip along the rough path between the warehouse and the fence. This time a bush grew right in the middle, and he had to squeeze past it. A small pile of cigarette butts had gathered beneath the bush, probably shepherded by the wind.

The fourth side road had a dark blue van parked halfway along. Kieron felt his heart beating faster as he cautiously crept forward. While he was still six feet away he realised that it was the wrong shape. The licence plate confirmed that it wasn’t the Delica.

When he got back to the spine road again he halted, waiting for Sam to appear.

Sam didn’t appear.

Kieron skulked in the shadow of the last warehouse on his side, waiting for Sam. Surely his friend couldn’t have got ahead of him? Kieron had only stopped briefly to look at the licence plate on the van, so it wasn’t likely that Sam had already got to his end of the road and moved on. Even if Sam wasn’t using the path on the far side of his warehouses, he still would have covered the same distance as Kieron, almost certainly in the same time – give or take.

Maybe Sam had found something.

Kieron waited for a few minutes, arms folded to try to conserve some heat, but Sam didn’t appear. In the end, he looked left and right to check that nobody else was around and then crossed to Sam’s side.

Two cars with flat tyres and a motorcycle that looked like it had been abandoned occupied that stretch of tarmac. When he got to the end, Kieron turned around and looked back towards the junction. Still no sign of Sam. He felt slightly stupid, knowing that it was more likely than not that his friend had somehow got ahead of him, but a growing bud of worry expanded in his chest.

Maybe something had found Sam.

Taking a deep breath, he headed down the side of the warehouse, between its wall and the fence, back towards the side road he’d last seen Sam heading along.

Just before he got to the corner his foot caught an exposed root. It pulled him back with a jolt.

‘Is he the only one?’ The voice was male, and harsh.

It came from just around the corner. If Kieron’s foot hadn’t been caught by the root he would have walked right into the person who had spoken.

‘Only one I’ve seen.’ Another man’s voice.

‘Take a look around – quietly. Kids are like rats: they travel in packs. Fortunately, unlike rats you can break their necks quite easily. With rats you have to put a lot of effort into twisting.’

Freeing his foot, Kieron moved quietly towards the corner of the warehouse. He knew there was a risk that the second man might suddenly appear, but Kieron was too far away from the other corner to have got back there in time. Not quietly, anyway. Besides, it was more likely the second man would go along the side road and look up and down the spine road.

He heard footsteps heading away. They sounded heavy, as if the man wore boots.

He thought the men in the shopping centre, the ones who had taken Bex’s friend Bradley, had been wearing boots.

‘I hate kids,’ the first man said. Kieron heard a scuff of rubber on tarmac as he turned around, and then footsteps as he headed away. The footsteps suddenly became a lot quieter, as if he had gone into a building. Into the warehouse, probably.

Kieron took a risk and peered around the corner. A new, highly polished BMW sat on the tarmac, and beyond it he saw a man walking away from him: short blond hair and a puffy waterproof jacket. The sun was behind the warehouses now, heading for the horizon, and the sky was dim and overcast. The man was almost, but not quite, just a silhouette against the light. As Kieron watched he got to the spine road, looked in both directions, then turned left and disappeared from sight.

Dim light spilled out of an opening a few feet away from Kieron. Taking a deep breath, he slipped along the few feet of metal that separated the corner from the door and peered around the edge.

The opening was a door in a larger garage door that could lift up so that a car or small van could drive into the space. A van sat inside: a dark blue Mitsubishi Delica. Kieron didn’t have to check the licence plate, but he did anyway. It was the van he’d seen back in the car park of the shopping centre.

A doorway at the back of the garage area, half hidden by the van, led into the depths of the warehouse. Kieron heard the first man’s voice echoing from it, saying, ‘Got any friends out there, have you? Any more little rats like you?’

‘I called the police,’ Sam’s voice said. ‘They’ll be here soon. You’d better let me go before they arrive.’

‘I’ve got your mobile right here,’ the first man said. ‘You ought to put a security code on it, by the way. Anyone could just look at it and see there’s been no calls made today.’ Something hard suddenly hit concrete, followed by the sound of a boot heel coming down on something that cracked under the pressure. ‘There you go – problem solved. No need for a security code now.’

‘You’re going to pay for that,’ Sam snarled. Kieron could tell from his voice that he was scared, but Sam’s immediate reaction when someone pushed him was to push back harder.

The first man sounded amused. ‘Pretty soon,’ he said, ‘you’re going to be as broken as that mobile. The only choice you get is how fast it happens. A few seconds if you tell me where your friends are; a few hours if you don’t. I’m not playing a game here, son. I need to know.’

‘I’m by myself,’ Sam said. Kieron felt a little glow of appreciation for his friend’s bravery.

‘On an industrial estate? After everyone’s gone home? I doubt it.’

‘It’s something I do – exploring places when there’s nobody around.’

Kieron slipped along the side of the van, past a metal table with a toolbox and a set of car keys sitting on it, to a point where he could see through the doorway into the rest of the warehouse. The door opened into the garage area, and he could see heavy shelving on both sides of the warehouse. The space itself was dark and shadowed, full of stacked crates and lit only by occasional lights high up in the metal rafters. There were tables and chairs in there, and a large plasma TV screen, but they weren’t what immediately grabbed Kieron’s attention. Sam had been secured to a metal chair near the doorway using plastic zip ties. And beside him, secured in the same way, sat Bradley. Unlike Sam, he looked like he was in a bad way: head low on his chest. There might have been dried bloodstains on his shirt.

Kieron’s mind raced: possible courses of action appearing almost fully formed and then vanishing again when he realised they were flawed. If he phoned the police, they wouldn’t believe him. If he went to release Sam and Bradley he’d be caught. If he did nothing, his friend was going to be hurt, possibly killed. What was left? What option was he missing?

He could create a diversion. Maybe, if both the men were lured away, he’d have time to rescue them both.

But what kind of diversion?

It had to be outside, and far enough away that the men would go to investigate it. He supposed he could set fire to something, but there was a good chance the fire would spread out of control. He wondered if he could make some kind of noise – banging a heavy spanner from the toolbox against the metal walls of a nearby warehouse – but he quickly realised that would leave him outside and at the same place where the two thugs would be heading.

The two thugs. He turned his head, suddenly convinced that the second man – the one who had gone searching for him – was standing right behind him. There was nobody in the garage space. As his heartbeat returned to merely the panicked rate it had previously been at he started to breathe again.

‘Look,’ the first man said in a reasonable tone from inside the cavernous interior of the warehouse, ‘let’s be sensible. I don’t want to spend too much time hurting you, and you don’t want to be hurt. It’s in both our interests to co-operate on this. There’s a garage out there where I can pick up anything from a pair of pliers to a blowtorch. If I really wanted to be unpleasant, I’d get a car battery and a set of jump leads and wire you up. Believe me, when you see your skin start to smoke you’ll tell me everything you know. Let’s save me the trouble and you the pain.’

‘Is that what you did to him?’ He could hear a tremor in Sam’s voice as he nodded his head towards the unconscious Bradley.

The first man shrugged. ‘That sort of thing. He’s been trained to resist interrogation. You haven’t. Cracking you will be easier than cracking an egg with a hammer. And talking about hammers, how fond are you of your kneecaps?’

Kieron looked around wildly, trying to find anything that might help. His gaze snagged on the car keys, which had a BMW key fob on them, and a plan formed in his mind so quickly it was as if it had always been there and a spotlight had suddenly been shone on it.

He snatched the keys up and quickly moved to the far side of the Delica. The keys had two buttons for remotely locking and unlocking the car outside. If they were anything like his mum’s car keys then pressing the ‘lock’ button twice would set off the car alarm.

So he pressed the ‘lock’ button twice.

Outside, the BMW’s horn started to blare. Flashing lights illuminated the night.

‘What the –’

As Kieron hid, the first man ran out of the warehouse, through the garage area past the van, and outside to see what had set off the alarm.

Kieron dropped the car keys, snatched a knife and a handful of plastic cable ties from the toolbox and ran into the warehouse, pulling the door shut behind him and engaging the lock. He moved quickly to Sam’s side and sliced through the cable ties that were securing him to the chair.

‘I thought you were still searching,’ Sam breathed. ‘I thought I was finished!’

‘Never,’ Kieron said. He handed the knife to Sam. ‘Cut Bradley free. I’ve got to do something.’

Outside, the BMW’s alarm abruptly stopped. Kieron cursed himself. He should have kept the keys.

While Sam moved across to the other chair, Kieron quickly strung together the extra plastic zip ties into a chain about six feet long.

The door to the garage area rattled: first slightly, then heavily. Seconds later the entire wall shook as someone wrenched at the handle.

Kieron knelt down and, working fast, passed the chain he’d made through the struts of the metal shelving on either side of the door. He made sure the ties were tight, and set at about ankle height. Standing up, he saw that Sam had pulled Bradley from his chair. The man appeared woozy, but he seemed to understand what was going on.

‘Go into the shadows, round the back of the crates,’ Kieron said hurriedly to Sam. ‘Get out of sight.’

As Sam helped Bradley away, Kieron grabbed the two chairs, dragged them to the doorway and turned them over so that their metal legs pointed upward, and towards the door. Once he felt happy with the placement, he checked that Sam and Bradley couldn’t be seen and followed them.

He’d only just got to the nearest crates when the door to the garage area burst open. The second man had obviously returned, and the two of them had used the metal table to smash the door. They threw the table behind them and came through the doorway together. They were holding guns. Kieron caught his breath in shock. They were actually holding guns.

The first man, the one who had menaced Sam, hit the stretched cable ties first. His feet stopped while the rest of his body kept moving. His face contorted in surprise as he toppled forward. His friend was only a moment behind him. He stumbled over the first man, rather than the cable ties, but they both fell into the warehouse.

And into the upturned chairs.

Grunts of surprise turned to cries of pain as the metal legs hit their faces, their shoulders and their ribs like so many blunt spears. They tried rolling out of the way, but their arms and legs got tangled together and the chairs rolled with them, ending up in a confused mess of men and furniture. Both of them managed to hold on to their guns, however, which made Kieron curse. He’d been hoping to grab one of them at least.

He sensed Sam behind him. ‘Have you got the knife?’ he whispered.

‘Not much use against guns,’ Sam whispered back.

‘Depends how you use it.’ Kieron reached a hand backwards and felt the handle of the knife being pressed into his palm. He waited while the two men disengaged themselves from the chairs with a lot of swearing and climbed unsteadily to their feet. The first man had a long line of blood beneath his left eye. The second man held his right arm as if the shoulder was damaged. They both looked very, very angry. Actually, they both looked like they were going seriously insane with rage.

‘Get them!’ the first man snarled. ‘I really want to hurt them, and then I really want to kill them.’

Kieron reached his arm backwards and threw the knife across to the other side of the warehouse. It spun through the darkness, arcing above the concrete floor and hitting a pile of crates with a clatter.

‘Over there!’ the second man said, pointing.

Both men hobbled, rather than ran, away from Kieron, Sam and Bradley, towards the place where the knife had hit the crates. They vanished into the shadows of an aisle between the rows.

‘Right,’ Kieron whispered. ‘Let’s go.’

With him under one of Bradley’s shoulders and Sam under the other they scooted across the ground, with Bradley sometimes helping and sometimes allowing himself to be dragged. They got to the door into the garage area without being spotted. The door was wrecked, so unfortunately Kieron couldn’t close it behind them. He hoped it would take the thugs a while to realise they’d gone, but he wasn’t holding out much hope.

‘What now?’ Sam hissed as they got to the blue van.

‘I hadn’t thought that far ahead,’ Kieron admitted. ‘Maybe we could steal the BMW outside.’

‘Have you got the keys?’

‘No,’ he admitted sheepishly. ‘You can hot-wire a car, can’t you? You used to hot-wire teachers’ cars and move them to different parts of the school car park. You almost got expelled for that.’

‘Not the ones with a security chip in the key and an engine-management system,’ Sam replied urgently. ‘Didn’t you learn anything in motor mechanics?’

‘No.’

Between them, Bradley tried to struggle upright. For the first time since the shopping centre Kieron saw his face clearly, and he was shocked by the bloody cuts and dark bruises.

‘The van,’ Bradley said through bruised lips.

‘What?’ Kieron asked stupidly.

‘The van,’ he mumbled. ‘No security chip. Just keys.’

Kieron reached out and tugged at the sliding side door of the van. It moved smoothly backwards, along the van’s length, on oiled runners. Quickly he and Sam helped Bradley get in, joined him and slid the door shut.

They both hung back, each waiting for the other to get into the driver’s seat.

‘Look,’ Kieron admitted, ‘I can’t drive. You’ll have to do it.’

Sam shook his head. ‘How do you ever intend getting a girlfriend?’ he asked.

Kieron shrugged. ‘My whimsical sense of humour?’

While Sam squirmed his way into the driver’s seat, Kieron leaned over Bradley.

‘We’re friends,’ he said. ‘We’re helping Bex.’

‘Shouldn’t be risking your lives,’ Bradley murmured.

‘Try not to talk. We’re going to get you to somewhere safe.’

Shouts from outside were followed by the two thugs running into the garage area, having figured out what had happened. Fortunately they ran past the van and outside, through the open door and into the gathering darkness.

Sam turned and flashed an anxious glance at Kieron. Kieron tried to look as confident as possible, and nodded firmly.

Sam reached beneath the dashboard, grabbed a set of hidden wires and pulled them into view. Selecting two, he pulled hard until they broke, then touched the bare metal of the wires together.

The van’s engine started with a roar.

Outside, the two thugs turned around. Sam flicked the headlights on – main beam. The thugs staggered backwards, shielding their eyes.

Sam slammed the gearstick into ‘drive’, yanked the handbrake off and pressed his foot on the accelerator. The van leaped forward, heading for a doorway about a third its size. The bull bar on the front hit the much larger, and closed, main door to the garage – the one that folded up into the ceiling to let cars in and out. For a stomach-churning second Kieron thought the van was just going to bounce back and its engine stutter to a halt, but instead it ripped the main door out of its frame and carried it forward.

Right into the two thugs.

Kieron didn’t see where they fell, but the van kept going. One side of the door hit the rear corner of the BMW. The door spun around and fell onto the car, leaving Sam to jerkily drive the van past it and out onto the tarmac.

Kieron expected his friend to turn and head out onto the spine road, and away to safety, but he didn’t.

Sam braked.

Before Kieron could ask him what the hell he thought he was doing, Sam slammed the van into reverse, turned the wheel hard and accelerated backwards at an angle, right into the bonnet of the BMW.

Kieron couldn’t see what had happened, but he heard an almighty smashing of glass and crumpling of metal. As Sam put the van into ‘drive’ again and pulled away with squealing tyres, he scuttled to the rear door and glanced out of the window. Behind them, getting smaller as the van raced away in a cloud of blue exhaust fumes, the BWM was canted to one side, its bonnet rucked up and the nearest wheel leaning at an odd angle. Kieron hadn’t learned much in motor mechanics, but he didn’t think it was drivable.

The two thugs suddenly appeared from behind the car, where they must have taken refuge. The first one – the one who had threatened Sam – raised his hand and pointed his gun at the van. The van’s engine was racing too loudly for Kieron to hear anything, but a hole suddenly appeared in the glass, surrounded by a halo of white cracks. Then the figures disappeared as the van careered round the corner.

‘Good work!’ Bradley said weakly from where he lay on the floor.

‘Any idea where we’re going?’ Sam yelled over his shoulder.