11

OVER AND OUT

ALEX HAD FOUND WHAT he wanted in the common room.

When Nurse Wendy had shown him around the abbey, she told him that Dr. Feng liked to go fishing, and there were actually three rods ready for use, each one of them brand-new and state-of-the-art, with graphite bodies and titanium oxide guides. These were specialist bass and catfish rods, for use in the lake . . . but fishing was the last thing Alex had in mind. It had taken him only a moment to loosen and then remove the aluminum spools. Each one of them came complete with at least three hundred feet of line. He had taken all of them, racing back up to the first floor and along to the spiral staircase.

He knew that Feng and the others were looking for him. He could hear the guards shouting at each other somewhere in the distance. As he continued forward, he caught sight of someone coming toward him and ducked into a doorway just as Ivan, the orderly who had always brought his food, came rushing past. Alex was lucky that the corridor was dark. The two of them missed each other by inches.

Alex pressed on, through the archway and up the stone stairs. The security office would be manned, of course. The two men that he had met earlier would be on full alert. But he had a gun . . . even if he was reluctant to use it. Hopefully, showing it to them would be enough.

In fact, only one of the men—the one with the twisted lips—was in the security office. He looked up as Alex came bursting in, the three fishing reels grasped in one hand, the gun in the other.

“Get out of your chair,” Alex said. “Keep both your hands in sight. If you try anything, I’ll shoot you. I mean it.”

The man got up slowly. “You’re wasting your time,” he said. “You should give yourself up before you get hurt.”

Alex looked around him. His eyes settled on the metal cupboard. He opened it. There were a couple of jackets hanging there and about a dozen wire hangers but nothing else. It was perfect. “I want you to get in here,” he said.

“You might have to shoot me first.”

Very casually, Alex brought the gun around and fired, knowing that the thick walls and the height of the tower would muffle most of the sound. He had intended merely to hit the floor, but quite by accident, the bullet found its target barely an inch from the man’s foot. A splinter of wood stabbed into his ankle. The guard leapt up, all the color draining from his face. “All right! All right!” he exclaimed. “No need to get nasty!”

He hurried into the cupboard.

Alex slammed the door. He had taken out several of the wire coat hangers and he used one to secure the handles, twisting it around. The guard might be able to force his way out, but by then, Alex would be long gone. Fortunately, he had seen what he was looking for, the second part of his plan. It was sitting on the console, with the joystick beside it.

The Crow.

Alex’s best friend, Tom Harris, had a drone and the two of them had often played with it in Battersea Park, flying it over the Peace Pagoda and the River Thames. They’d always been nervous about getting into trouble, as drones were increasingly prohibited all over London, particularly near airports, and the Battersea Helipad was only a short distance away. The moment Alex had seen the Crow, he’d had a vision of using it to fly himself out of here. He couldn’t cling on to it, of course. The maximum weight that a drone like this could carry (he had read about Amazon using drones to deliver packages) was about five pounds. But if he was careful, if he took his time, he could use it nonetheless.

First of all, he pulled out the ends of the fishing lines from all three aluminum spools and tied them to the camera underneath the Crow. Then he took everything outside to the balcony where he had stood only a short time before. He saw that the searchlights had been turned on. The entire area between the abbey and the perimeter fence had been floodlit. It was still raining, but for now the thunder and the lightning had stopped. Dressed only in the tracksuit he had been given, Alex was quickly soaked and he wished he had thought to take the guard’s jacket before he had locked him up.

Ignoring the muffled thumping and the shouts coming from the cupboard, he went back for the joystick. He guessed it would work exactly the same way as Tom’s—weren’t all drones more or less identical?—with one switch to go up and down, the other to go left and right. Of course, he would have preferred a bit of time to get used to the machine’s sensitivity, to work out how quickly it responded to his commands. Unfortunately, time was something he didn’t have. He heard Brutus barking. The searchlights were crisscrossing the grass. Any moment now, Feng’s people would notice that the security office had become completely silent and would be running up to find out what was going on. He had to do this now.

He had set the drone down on the edge of the stone banister. Now he lifted the joystick and activated it. At once, the propellers began to turn. So far, so good. Alex did his best to put everything out of his mind: the lights blazing, the men searching for him all over the abbey, the security guard locked in the cupboard, trying to break out, the possibility that one or more of his colleagues might arrive at any time. All that mattered was the dark black metal and plastic machine in front of him. He pressed on one of the controls, accelerating the propellers, and the Crow lurched into the air, more like a drunken animal than a bird. Alex gritted his teeth as it toppled to one side, seemingly about to crash into the wall of the tower, but at the last moment, desperately manipulating with his thumbs, he was able to hold it steady. The Crow continued upward, carrying the three nylon fishing lines with it. When it was a couple of yards above his head, he paused, examining the lines that glinted in the light and the rain. Taking a deep breath, he guided the drone away from the tower. The three lines had somehow woven themselves together into one. They stretched out, high above the ground.

Now came the difficult bit. The drone had crossed the electric fence, still trailing the triple fishing line. It hovered over the jetty. Alex pressed down, lowering it, then cursed as it dipped too far, briefly out of control. Forcing himself not to panic, not to try and rush things, he steadied it, then guided it around the hoist that stood at the water’s edge, effectively looping the line around it. Behind him, he could hear the guard pounding at the metal cupboard, but the twisted metal coat hanger seemed to be holding up. Far below and out of sight, the dog was barking frantically as if it alone knew what was going on. The lights were fanning out left and right, desperately searching for any movement but not looking in the one direction that would have revealed all. Alex had steered the drone over the L shape formed by the top of the hoist and its outstretched arm. It was hard to be certain, with the rain driving into his face. With one sodden sleeve, he wiped water away from his eyes. Had he done it? He was about to find out.

He stabbed sideways with his thumb, pressing the control on the joystick and bringing the drone back to him, the three reels still emptying their load. Effortlessly, the drone soared up and across toward the tower, a good Crow returning to its master. Drops of rain splattered off the black plastic. Now there were no fewer than six lines trailing behind it: three going out, three coming back. He would need that extra strength. The drone hovered in front of him. Alex brought it gently down. All three spools were empty. Alex saw that he had used almost all the line; there couldn’t have been more than a few inches left. But he had achieved what he wanted. He had connected the tower and the jetty, using what must have been the thinnest bridge in the world.

Would it hold his weight? Again, Alex remembered his uncle. Ian Rider had often gone fishing and had done his best to persuade Alex to come with him, although Alex had never seen the point of killing any animals in the name of sport. Even so, Ian had talked about his equipment. Alex knew that fishing lines were given test ratings that could be as low as two or as much as four hundred pounds. He didn’t know if these lines were monofilament or braided, and they probably had a diameter of no more than 0.015 inches. But he was fairly sure they’d been designed for big fish . . . Nurse Wendy had mentioned catfish, which might weigh up to twenty pounds.

At the end of the day it was all guesswork, but the last time Alex had stood on a set of scales, he had weighed in at 110 pounds. He was probably quite a bit thinner after a week at the abbey. There were effectively six lines stretching out from the tower to the lake. Suppose each one was capable of holding twenty pounds. Six times twenty equals 120. It wasn’t a huge margin, but surely, together, the lines would be strong enough to take his weight.

He was about to find out. He was going to slide out of here, over the electric fence. If he didn’t actually clear it, if his foot touched the wire, he would die. If the fishing lines broke, he would die. If the guards looked up and saw him, he would die. But if he simply waited for them to find him, the result would be exactly the same. He had no choice. He couldn’t think of any other way.

He cut the lines off the drone, using the scissors he had taken from Feng’s bathroom, then tied them around one of the stone columns of the banister, ensuring that they were as tight as possible. Finally, he grabbed hold of two of the wire hangers he had taken from the cupboard and bent them into an upside-down U shape, curving over the line. He held one end in each hand. Taking a deep breath, he looked down.

He still couldn’t bring himself to go. It was raining harder again and he was half blinded. It was a very long way to the ground. It suddenly struck him that this whole scheme was madness, and he was about to give up and find another way when he heard the door of the security office burst open and somebody shouted.

Alex heaved himself over the edge of the tower and jumped.

He fell, incredibly fast, as if he had simply leapt to his death. He was certain that the lines—all six of them—would break. But then he lurched back upward and felt a jolt in his arms that told him the fishing lines were holding and that he was actually dangling in the air like an oversized puppet. Or a fish. His hands were hooked into the bent wire, barely able to keep their grip. He couldn’t feel his fingers. The rain whipped into his face. The electric fence rushed toward him in a blur.

He was too low! His feet were going to plow straight into it. Crying out, Alex curled his legs up, putting more strain on his stomach and arms. He folded his knees into his stomach, desperately aware that his feet were still too low. The wire was suddenly very close. He saw the rain hitting it and imagined the current running through it. He closed his eyes, waiting for the shock.

But then, somehow, he passed over it, missing it by less than an inch. He wasn’t going to be electrocuted. But there were other ways to die. He was traveling too fast. In about one second’s time he would hit the wooden hoist and that would smash every bone in his body. Alex felt the wind and the rain slamming against him. He could hardly see at all. At the last moment, hoping he had judged it right, he swung himself sideways and let go.

Briefly, he hurtled downward. He must have been traveling at forty or fifty miles per hour, faster than a speeding car. For a horrible fraction of a second, he felt himself twisting through the air, falling into nothing. Then his feet hit water. He had missed the jetty and plunged into the lake. Was it deep enough? The thought hadn’t even reached Alex’s mind before he was sinking into utter darkness, bubbles erupting from his nose and mouth, drowning. He floundered with his arms, kicked out with his legs. Everything was confused.

Then he broke the surface. He was on the other side of the fence, outside the abbey. But the guards had seen him. They knew what he had done and they were already shouting for the gate to be opened. Alex was soaked, he was terrified, he was half frozen. And he still hadn’t gotten away.