Blood Sun by David Gilman Read Free Book Online Page B

did not find reassuring.
    Stanton had changed his mind. Why would Jackson have phoned the nursing home to inquire about Tom Gordon? Stanton’s people had already checked the place out, and there had been no sign of Max. That was understandable given his father’s condition. So why phone? To reassure a boyabout his father? He had underestimated the possibility that Jackson might be canny enough to be suspicious of them.
    Jackson had lied; Stanton was beginning to be sure of it. He was protecting one of his pupils. Max Gordon was somewhere in that school, and if somehow Maguire had managed to get any kind of message to him, what would he do? Try to find answers.
    Under cover of darkness, Stanton edged the Range Rover beneath the overhang of a hollowed-out rock face. The night shadows swallowed the 4×4 easily, and the shelter allowed a brief respite from the cutting wind. The rain had not come, but a scarring north wind had frozen the last snowfall. From their vantage point, he and a less-than-happy Drew gazed across the hills, beyond the moon-white river, toward the fortresslike Dartmoor High.
    Wind crept and growled. Oak beams, hundreds of years old, creaked and twisted, moaning their discomfort like trapped ghosts. In the darkness of the school, only a couple of dim lights glowed at the end of each corridor.
    Max’s headlamp cut a wedge into the blackness. Sayid followed him down the stairs, a constant whispering of apprehension, teasing Max’s ear like a draft from below the heavy-paneled doors.
    Max stopped. “Sayid,” he said quietly, “shut up.”
    “Sorry. But it’s two in the morning and I’ve never liked the dark. And all this creaking and groaning gives me the creeps.”
    A door banged closed somewhere. Max turned off thelight, grabbed his friend’s arm and pulled him into the blackness of the stairwell.
    Footsteps. Leather shoes creaking. A cough. A door opening and closing. Somewhere to the left. Max whispered close to Sayid’s ear. “Probably Mr. Chaplin. He’s the only one who wears leather-soled shoes. And he fancies a hot chocolate before he goes to bed.”
    “Which is where we should be,” said Sayid, grimacing.
    Max led him down the corridor, eased open a set of swing doors, careful not to let the hinges squeak, and finally squatted down in front of Mr. Jackson’s door with his prized multitool pocketknife.
    Metal scraped metal inside the old mortise lock. He eased the handle, the lever clicked and he scurried into Mr. Jackson’s office with a huffing and puffing Sayid behind him. He was scared and it made his breathing ragged.
    Max gestured. Stay at the door. Listen. Watch . Max knelt in front of the safe. Like the granite of Dartmoor High, it looked solid. It was about the size of an undercounter fridge, had one opening lever and a combination dial. The best plan when robbing a safe is to steal the whole thing and then blow it up later, but Max couldn’t see that happening with only Sayid’s bike for transport and a few bangers from last year’s firework display. A half-empty Pot Noodle cup stood on a shelf next to the safe. Max could just see Mr. Jackson mooching around his bookshelves, putting the container down and forgetting about it.
    Memory carries smells and tastes, and as Max pressed his hands against the cold steel, his mind flooded with both.
    Hong Kong. Rich spicy food, the soft misty air of steamingnoodles. A cacophony of sounds. A trip when he was eleven to meet his parents, who were investigating the massive contamination the Chinese government was inflicting on the rivers and coasts of China. Tom Gordon had been banned from the mainland, and what was supposed to be a few days’ holiday turned into a daily round of arguments between his parents and government officials. He didn’t know the exact details of what was going on, but his mother woke him in the early hours one morning and told him to get dressed. She was packing their holdalls. Where was his dad? he had wanted