Bionic Agent Read online

  “You shouldn’t say that, Reece.”

  “It’s true. Uncle Henry’s into all sorts of stuff.”

  “Yeah,” Brady replied. “Protests and that sort of thing, but not killing people. No way!”

  In the background, Jordan heard footsteps leading to the door but no one came in. He assumed that Cara was lingering out of sight so that she could listen in secret. “What’s he got to protest about?”

  “Airport runways, motorways, burning oil and coal...”

  Reece butted in, “And animals.”

  “Animals?” said Jordan. “What have they done?”

  “No,” Brady replied. “Cruelty to animals. You know. Experimenting on them, eating them, and wearing fur. He got done for smashing up the Animal Breeding Station in Sheerness.”

  “And for attacking the oil terminal,” Reece added. “And...”

  “But he’s nice,” Brady said. “Not a mad bomber.”

  “I think your uncle’s right,” Jordan replied. “Ages ago, I got cautioned at a demo.”

  “Why? What for?”

  “Damaging a road-building machine. It was going to rip up our playing fields. Just to make a road wider.”

  “You should meet Uncle Henry,” said Brady.

  Jordan suspected that talking to him would be a waste of time. If Henry Quickfall was Red Devil, he’d lied successfully to the police. If Jordan spoke to him, he’d lie again. Jordan would prefer to listen in on a conversation between Henry and someone he trusted. Then he would tell the truth.

  Jordan remembered from Henry Quickfall’s file that the authorities had tapped his telephone calls. He guessed that Unit Red could do it again. Trying to focus on two things at the same time, Jordan logged on to Unit Red’s computer and thought a message into the system. Get ready to record a telephone exchange between Cara and Henry Quickfall. Then, knowing that Cara was eavesdropping behind the door, he continued to provide her with a reason to call her brother. “He sounds pretty interesting,” said Jordan.

  “For an uncle,” Reece replied, “he’s cool.”

  “Has he got his own boat?”

  “No. He used ours.”

  “Oh dear.”

  Reece frowned. “What do you mean?”

  Jordan explained, “Using the bomber’s boat puts him in the frame for being the bomber.”

  “Sounds like you know about these things,” Brady said.

  “My mum’s in the police.” With that, Jordan thought he’d done enough. As long as Cara had overheard, she would surely want to tell Henry. “Hey!” Jordan said, pointing at the monitor. “You beat me. I wasn’t concentrating.”

  Reece laughed. “Lame excuse. It’s just that I’m better.”

  Happy to let him win, Jordan put down the controller. “I’ll give you that.”

  8 ELIMINATED

  The vessels moored in Chalkwell Marina varied from expensive yachts to small scruffy motorboats that were taking on water. Any of them would be easy to steal, Jordan realized as he walked slowly along the wooden platform, checking out each one.

  Before long, a man chased after Jordan. As solid as a rugby player, he had a short and precisely sculptured beard. He also had the whiff of cigars and alcohol about him. “Can I help you, young man?” he called out.

  “Are you in charge?” Jordan asked.

  “Yes.”

  Jordan had already decided what to say. “Oh, good. Have you got any part-time jobs? You know. After school and weekends.”

  The boatyard manager looked him up and down with a curious expression. “Why would you want to work here? No one else does.”

  “Why not?”

  “Ever since the explosion.” He inclined his head towards the estuary. “They think it’s not safe. But now the Richard Montgomery’s gone, it can’t happen again.”

  Jordan nodded. “The boat came from here, didn’t it?”

  “Which boat?”

  “The one the terrorist used.”

  The manager seemed suspicious that a teenager should bring up the subject. He asked, “Who are you?”

  “Jordan Stryker. I live up the road.” He paused before adding, “And I’m short of cash.”

  “Ah. A job. Yes. Well...” He stroked his neatly trimmed beard. “What do you know about boats?”

  “I’m a quick learner.”

  “Mmm. Nothing, then. I could use some help with admin, though. How are you on maths, organization and computers?”

  Jordan smiled. “The best.”

  “Would your teachers agree with that? Can you get them to send me a reference?”

  Jordan imagined that Angel would write a glowing recommendation if he needed it. “No problem. I’ll get it emailed. What’s your address?”

  The man took a business card from the breast pocket of his jacket and handed it over. Jordan glanced at it and said, “Norman Lightfoot.”

  With a smile, Norman said, “At least that proves you can read.”

  “If you show me your computer, I’ll prove I’m good with that as well.”

  Norman hesitated for a while and then replied, “Why not? A quick test. Come this way.” He walked stiffly, shoulders back like an army officer, to the shack at the edge of the marina. His manner was more pompous than Jordan would have expected for a boatyard manager.

  Inside, the walls were plastered with pictures of boats and ships, and the air carried the smell of whisky and cigar smoke. The main room had several filing cabinets, a couple of chairs, a desk and a computer. On the monitor was a spreadsheet. Each entry named a boat and its owner, a mooring reference, payment details, and other particulars.

  “Yes,” Jordan said at once, “I know this program. I’ve used it before.” Taking hold of the mouse, he scrolled down the document. There was only one owner under the letter Q. “Look. The Quickfall boat. I know Cara Quickfall. Her sons are mates of mine.” He peered at the monitor a little too eagerly. “The boat was last used a year ago. By Cara’s brother, just before...”

  Norman leaned across him and logged out of the program. “You don’t want a job, do you? You’re just... prying. I don’t know what your game is, but I want you to leave.”

  Jordan shrugged as if he didn’t understand Mr. Lightfoot’s uneasiness. “Okay. But I was just showing you I could operate the system – using a family I know.”

  The manager stood beside the computer protectively and kept his eye on Jordan until he was out of the door.

  Jordan hadn’t learned much from the marina. He imagined that experienced Unit Red agents developed clever plans that took them straight to the answer. He imagined them wrapping up their missions quickly and efficiently. He imagined they’d never be shouldered off the ball as easily as Norman Lightfoot had just done to him.

  Fun was returning to Southend’s funfair. Not all of the rides had been replaced or repaired but people had begun to enjoy the fairground again. With his back to the park, Jordan leaned on the rail and looked out at the wounded pier and the wide estuary. He turned down his hearing because the mechanical noises, excited cries and terrified screams coming from the rides threatened to overwhelm him.

  Jordan was online, thinking his way around Unit Red’s documents with Angel instructing him via mobile phone. “Yes,” Angel said. “Open the one called Quickfall 17/04/2012. It’s a transcript of the Quickfalls’ telephone conversation.” He hesitated before adding, “I’ll give you a minute to read it.”

  Using the brain/computer interface in his head, Jordan found it easier to read with his eyes closed.

  Cara Quickfall: Hi. It’s me.

  Henry Quickfall: How’s it going?

  C.Q.: Maybe it’s nothing but the boys have just made a new friend. Jordan Stryker. Son of a police officer. Reece talked a bit too much – like always – and mentioned you and the boat. That set this lad off. He was asking all about you.

  H.Q.: Oh? How old is he?

  C.Q.: A teenager. Sixteen, maybe. A bit funny-looking. With a false arm.

  H.Q.: The pol
ice aren’t going to recruit their kids, Cara.

  C.Q.: But...I don’t know. He was fishing for information.

  H.Q.: It’s over, Cara. The police tried, failed, and gave up. They’re not going to catch whoever did it now. And this funny-looking kid... What was his name again?

  C.Q.: Jordan Stryker.

  H.Q.: Yeah. Stryker. He sounds normal to me, fascinated by bombs and bodies. I was at that age.

  C.Q.: Maybe I’m too jittery, but...

  H.Q.: What?

  C.Q.: I just don’t want the whole thing kicking off again.

  H.Q.: I don’t see why it should, just because a kid’s asked a few questions. Even if it does, we’ve got nothing to worry about. It may have been your boat but it wasn’t your fault, and I’m not mad enough to let bombs off. I don’t know any activists who are, apart from Max and we both know what happened to him.

  C.Q.: Okay. [Silence for 2 seconds.] Look, I’ll see you on Sunday. All right?

  H.Q.: Sure. Take care. And don’t worry. [Call ends.]

  “Nice work,” Angel said.

  “Really?”

  “You’ve probably eliminated two suspects. It was Cara Quickfall’s boat but not her fault, and Henry Quickfall isn’t mad enough. Unless he’s keeping it from his sister – which I doubt.”

  “Who’s Max?”

  “Ah. Mad Max,” Angel replied. “I checked police files. He’s an animal rights campaigner and he’s not a suspect. The night the Richard Montgomery went up, he’d broken into Sheerness Animal Breeding Station with a firebomb. That’s irony for you. He was freeing the animals when the building collapsed and killed him.”

  “What now?” Jordan asked.

  “Get on a train back to Kent. I’m intrigued by the missing science teacher, Salam Bool. He bought a new mobile after school on the day of the explosion. I’ve checked phone records. He called his previous number over and over again that evening from a few locations near Strood.”

  “So,” Jordan guessed, “he went around phoning his old mobile, hoping he’d hear it ring. Then he could get it back.”

  “That would be my interpretation as well. But how did he know where to go? I think it must have had GPS Tracker technology, so he knew which postcode it was in.”

  “There must have been something really important on it,” said Jordan, almost to himself. Then he added, “And whoever nicked it didn’t turn it off. It must have been ringing. Mr. Bool wouldn’t wander around calling it if the phone was dead. There wouldn’t be any point.”

  “Absolutely,” Angel replied. “Which almost certainly rules out organized crime. A gang dealing in black-market phones would whip the SIM card out and replace it in no time.”

  “What happens if you ring it now?”

  “Nothing. It’s out of commission.”

  “Shame. But why would anyone pinch his phone and leave it on for hours?” Jordan asked.

  “Over to you. But it’s interesting to speculate what would have happened if he’d come face-to-face with whoever took it.”

  “So, do you know where he was when he made the last call with his new phone?”

  Angel laughed. “Thought you’d never ask. Network operators can track the location of mobiles these days. He was at Hoo Marina.”

  “I know it. Some of the kids from school hung out there. On the headland.”

  “Look into it,” Angel said. “And Jordan...”

  “What?”

  “Don’t get yourself shot this time.”

  9 CAUSTIC

  Jordan had tricked his way into the Quickfall family, but the same sly tactic was useless for Mr. Bool. The police had not traced any living relatives. They discovered only that he had been engaged years earlier, but his fiancée had run off with another man. The rejection seemed to have hit him hard because, from that point, he’d sunk into an addiction to gambling. He owed a lot of money to a seedy loan company called EasyCash OnLine. Really, it was more a one-man loan shark than a company. The police had no evidence that EasyCash OnLine was behind Mr. Bool’s disappearance, even though other clients who got into arrears with their payments sometimes ended up in hospital casualty wards.

  The official investigation of Salam Bool had not got much further than that. In the days that followed the disaster, when the police combed the missing man’s house, forensic specialists examined the hard disk of his home computer. They found that Mr. Bool had used thorough disk deletion software. None of his documents and programs remained.

  This was a man who wanted to remain a mystery, or who had planned to disappear, Jordan reckoned. A man with secrets to keep hidden. A man anxious about the information on his computer. Jordan also knew that he’d been anxious about the information on his missing mobile. The police report made no mention of it. Clearly, the investigators hadn’t known about the stolen phone.

  The police had turned up only one tasty fact. There was a short message on his landline phone. It had been recorded a few minutes after the Richard Montgomery explosion. An unidentified male voice on a withheld number said simply, “I hear you’ve done the job. I’ll be in touch.” Immediately suspicious, the police had doubled the number of officers assigned to the search for Mr. Bool, but without success.

  Jordan had three possible starting points: Mr. Bool’s empty house, his last known whereabouts in Hoo, and the kids who were his students at the time of his disappearance. Like Amy.

  Jordan wasn’t convinced that breaking into Mr. Bool’s deserted house would help. He didn’t know what he could do there that the police hadn’t already done. So he decided to use one advantage he had over the police. His youth. He could mix with the school kids at Hoo Marina. If the police attempted to talk to them, they’d scatter and the ones who didn’t scatter quickly enough would clam up. Getting them to talk about Mr. Bool was Jordan’s plan. Where it would take him, he didn’t know. But he was willing to try anything to unmask Red Devil.

  He wanted to look around the marina before they arrived so he went during school time. And that was a mistake. Near the entrance, a uniformed policeman shouted at him. “Hey, you! Stop!”

  The officer strolled towards Jordan deliberately slowly, presumably to give him plenty of time to get nervous.

  “What’s your name?” the policeman asked.

  “Jordan Stryker.”

  “How old are you?”

  Jordan was about to answer truthfully, but changed his mind. “Seventeen.”

  The officer smirked at him. “Why the hesitation?”

  “Did I?”

  “You could be seventeen, but I’m guessing younger. And I’m asking myself why you aren’t in school.”

  Jordan sighed. “All right.” He reached into his pocket.

  The policeman took a step back. “Don’t do anything silly!”

  Realizing that the officer thought he was about to produce a weapon, he said, “Nothing silly about my ID.” He held it out, hoping that this particular policeman knew the secret code in the first four digits.

  The officer took one look at it and then gazed at Jordan. “Is this some sort of joke?”

  “No.”

  Red-faced, he returned Jordan’s ID. “I thought that code was a myth, but apparently not. You really exist.”

  Jordan smiled. “Yes, I exist. Just.”

  He walked away with the “Get Out of Jail Free” card in his pocket.

  He went through the boatyard and took the track onto the grassy headland. There he stopped and scanned the harbour. Ben Smith had not taken an interest in boats, but they seemed to be dominating Jordan Stryker’s life. First, there was the SS Richard Montgomery. Then there was Cara Quickfall’s tiny motorboat that catalysed the explosion. An oil supertanker and Ocean Courage made everything so much worse. And now there was Hoo Marina.

  Somewhere near these moorings, Mr. Bool had made his final phone call and then disappeared. What had happened to him? Had he simply sailed away? There was no point asking if one of the marina’s boats had gone missing. The estuary expl
osion had caused a surge of water down the Medway and one of the bombs from the Richard Montgomery had landed here. Quite a few boats had been lost.

  Beyond some workshops, an impact crater marked the position where the WW2 bomb had hit, seventy years late. On either side of the muddy footpath, small boats were lolling on the ground as if the area was a boats’ graveyard. Some were covered in tarpaulins, many were bare and rotting, others were burned out. The ones that had been reduced to wooden frames looked like discarded skeletons.

  In the river, on the side that led to the Thames Estuary, three rusting wrecks rested on the bottom.

  Experts, like detectives and forensic scientists, would probably examine the scene and read the signs of what had happened here. A disturbance of the earth might suggest a scuffle had taken place. Stains in a particular pattern could reveal a certain type of attack. But Jordan couldn’t do any of that clever stuff. Sitting down on the mud, he hoped he had other strengths to offer. Within minutes, he heard a group of boys in the distance.

  Jordan watched as they approached. There were about ten of them and most were older than him. More like young men than boys. Two were talking on mobiles. They were definitely not the friendly bunch he’d expected. He didn’t recognize any of them as schoolmates from a year earlier. And he got the impression that they were annoyed to see an outsider on their patch. Times had clearly changed.

  “Hiya,” said Jordan, as brightly as he could.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Nothing. Just hanging out.” Jordan’s plan to mix with the crowd until he could steer the talk onto stolen mobiles and schoolteachers was falling to pieces before it began.

  “Don’t go near him,” one of them cried. “I’ve got bruises that prove he’s dangerous.”

  “He’s a kid!”

  “He can bust doors and stop bullets with his hand.”

  The others laughed.

  “Yeah?” someone else said in a mocking tone. “And my baby brother wrestles tigers.”

  “I’m not joking!”

  Jordan didn’t recognize him but he must have been among the dealers at the sports club.