6

IT WAS SO STRANGE to be back in Putney. It felt as if years had passed since he had sneaked onto the building site close to the River Thames—his first encounter with Skoda. In fact, it had been a matter of weeks. He saw the wooden jetty jutting out into the river. That was where Blue Shadow had been moored, but it was empty now, the brown water churning sluggishly past. And there was the brand-new conference center that he had accidentally destroyed when he dropped the boat. It was covered in scaffolding now. They were building a new roof. The building site was exactly as he remembered it. They hadn’t done a great deal of building since the last time he was here. Alex guessed that the arrest of Skoda, the police inquiry, and the confusion surrounding what had happened would have slowed things down. The area was still surrounded by a tall wire fence with a gate giving access from Richmond Road. The gate should have been locked. It was hanging open.

Alex had run down from Putney Bridge tube station. He still had five or six minutes in hand, but he moved warily, looking around him. The clouds had closed in and darkness had come quickly. Skoda could be anywhere. There were half-built walls, scaffolding towers, deep trenches, and vehicles parked all over the compound. Alex examined the mechanical diggers, the bulldozers, the compactors. In the hands of a maniac, any one of them could become a weapon as dangerous as those he had seen in the V and A. Where was Skoda? He thought about calling out to Tom but decided against it. He didn’t want to put the other boy in any more danger than he was already in.

He saw something out of the corner of his eye. A light had blinked on and off: a flashlight. Where was it? The beam flashed a second time and Alex looked up, his eyes traveling to the control cabin of a crane that loomed high over him, in the very center of the building site. He waited a moment to be sure. Yes. There it was. Skoda knew exactly what he was doing. This was the same crane that Alex had climbed when he had followed the drug dealer to his river hideaway. He had sat in the control cabin and used the two joysticks to hook Blue Shadow and lift it out of the water like some fantastic arcade game. Well, Skoda had invited him back. The fight was going to end exactly where it had begun.

Alex knew he was being watched. He was in full view of Skoda and he guessed that Tom would be up there with him too. He hadn’t enjoyed climbing the crane the first time: a metal tower with three hundred rungs and nothing to stop you if you lost your grip and fell. This time it was worse. Skoda was waiting and Alex knew exactly what he intended to do. Would he be armed? Alex was fairly sure that Skoda didn’t have a gun, but he had taken the samurai sword with him when he escaped from the museum and he would certainly have it with him now. As Alex took hold of the first rung and began to climb up, he found himself thinking of Miss Maxwell. She’d saved his life, but he was still annoyed with her. If only she’d been a better shot!

The ground was disappearing behind him, the vehicles and building equipment getting smaller and smaller. Just to add to his troubles, it had begun to rain, a thin drizzle that stung his face and the backs of his hands and made the rungs slippery. Part of him wondered if he was doing the right thing. Maybe he should have told Miss Maxwell the truth and let MI6 deal with it. No. Tom was his best friend. Skoda must have seen the two of them together when they were in the schoolyard. This was his fault. He would deal with it.

His arms were aching. His clothes were damp. His hair hung down in his eyes. But finally he reached the top, two hundred yards above ground level. He was effectively in the middle of a gigantic T. The cubicle with the controls was right in front of him, but there was no one inside and the door seemed to be locked. Over to the left, he could make out the massive concrete blocks that kept the whole thing balanced. Looking the other way, he saw the operating arm stretching out into the darkness with the hook hanging below. There were two figures waiting for him about halfway down. Tom Harris was on his knees. Skoda was standing over him with the sword pointed at his neck.

Alex looked down. The ground was a long way below, the drizzle hanging, suspended, in the air. Skoda was about four or five yards away. To reach him, Alex would have to walk along the arm, steel struts crisscrossing each other and wide gaps beneath his feet. Worse still, the safety railings along each side only came up to his thigh. It was hardly safe at all. If he slipped, he could all too easily fall over the edge. And that, of course, was exactly what Skoda wanted to happen. Preferably after Alex had been stabbed.

“So you came!” Skoda said. It was as if he couldn’t believe his luck.

“That’s right, Skoda. I came.” Alex examined the other man. He was in a bad way. Miss Maxwell had shot him high up in the shoulder and his shirt was hanging off him, already made damp by the rain and saturated with blood. Shock and pain were distorting his face. His eyes were wide. His skin had no color at all. It was extraordinary, really, that he was still conscious.

Meanwhile, Tom was slumped in front of him, refusing to look up. He was crying. Now that Alex was closer, he could hear the boy gasping for breath. Everything about him suggested that he was terrified.

“I’m here now,” Alex said. “So you can let him go.”

“I’ll let him go when you’re dead!” Skoda almost screamed the words. “I want to see you jump. That’s how it works. You do what I say or I’ll cut off his head . . . I swear to you.”

“Alex!” Tom sobbed. “He grabbed me at the museum. He made me come here.”

“It’s all right, Tom.” Alex looked Skoda in the eyes. “How do I know I can trust you? Let him go first. Then it’ll just be you and me.”

“I don’t care about him. It’s you I want. Climb over now. Do it or watch your friend die.”

“Alex . . . !” Tom was wailing like a little child.

“Now!” Skoda tightened his grip on the sword.

And then everything happened at once.

Tom suddenly straightened up, slamming his fist hard between Skoda’s legs. Skoda gasped and doubled up in pain. Alex knew that Tom had been faking the tears. His friend was a brilliant actor and there was no way he would have allowed a thug like Skoda to humiliate him. And Alex had been waiting for exactly this moment. Even as he had talked, his hand had been behind him, searching in his back pocket for the weapon that he had concealed there. It was one of the five-pointed stars, the ninja shuriken, that had fallen out of the display case back at the museum. With a single movement, he took it out and threw it. The star didn’t have very far to travel. It spun through the air and buried itself in Skoda’s hand. Skoda screamed and dropped the sword. The sword slipped through one of the gaps in the floor and disappeared.

With a noise that was more animal than human, Skoda threw himself at Alex, half tripping over Tom. Somehow his hands found Alex’s throat. For a moment the two of them were close together and Alex saw the man grimacing at him with his dark gap where his front teeth should have been. Tom got to his feet and threw himself at Skoda. At the same time, Alex lashed out and felt Skoda’s hands lose their grip. That was when Skoda lost his balance. He let out a final whimper and toppled to one side. The railing wasn’t high enough to save him. He plunged into the darkness.

Neither boy watched him as he fell. It seemed to take a long time before the sound of his body thudding into the gravel came from far below. At almost exactly the same moment, they heard police sirens. Tom pointed. There were two police cars tearing across Putney Bridge. They came around the corner and began to follow the road down toward the building site. Alex guessed that Miss Maxwell must have finally noticed that they were missing and called them in.

Tom was soaking wet. His hair was plastered over his forehead. It took him a few moments to recover from what had just happened. “So what was all that about?” he asked.

“I have no idea,” Alex said. He had decided at once that he would have to lie. Nobody at Brookland, not even Tom, could know the truth.

“He didn’t seem to like you,” Tom said.

“He certainly wasn’t very friendly,” Alex agreed.

The police cars had arrived at the foot of the crane, their lights flashing blue and white across the yard. A few of the policemen were already searching for Tom and Alex. The others were examining the broken doll that had once been Skoda.

The two boys began the climb down.