“Hey,” Bobby said with a big grin when he saw Max. “Got your message. Thought you’d be in the hospital a while-but look at you. Got your backpack in the van.”
Max nodded at them and gratefully accepted a mug of coffee. “I’m OK. Hospital food’s grim and-can you believe it? — they hacked off my jacket.” A hot dog was already filling his mouth-squelching, soggy sausage doused in ketchup. Sweet mush slithering down, satisfying his hunger.
“Yeah? Not a problem,” Bobby said, and gestured to one of the others, who ducked inside the van and came out a moment later with a really cool snowboarder’s jacket. “Try that. One of the guys left his gear in my van. He’s about your size. Take whatever you need; he won’t be back for a couple of weeks.”
The jacket was a good fit. Max nodded his thanks. “Where’s Peaches?”
Bobby shrugged, made a grunting, squashy sound and shoved more food into his mouth. “Cut out. Just a sore loser. We’ll connect in Biarritz at my gran’s place. Girls, eh?”
“Yeah,” Max said, wishing he had Bobby’s experience. “Girls.
“I never had a chance to thank you, Bobby. If you hadn’t alerted the mountain ski patrol, I’d still be out there like an ice cube.”
Bobby spluttered flecks of food. “Nah, that was nothing. Anyway, didn’t think you’d make it with an avalanche like that. But you did. That’s cool. Sometimes you get lucky. I didn’t come down and see you ’cause we had an ace party and did some riding on the new snow. I figured it was no good being here holding your hand. Y’know.”
“Can’t miss a good ride,” Max agreed. He washed down what was left in his mouth with a swig of coffee. “You said you could put us up for a couple of days.”
“Sure. My crazy grandmother has a place in Biarritz. I figured we’d get a couple of weeks’ surfing, then we’ll split and head for the Alps. They’re expecting good snow and we can get work in the chalets. Bed and food and free ski passes.”
Max was silent. He cleaned his teeth with his tongue. The coast was less than two hours away if they went down the motorway, probably double that if they took the country road. He had everything he needed in his backpack for a couple of days in the mountains, but he wanted to make sure Sayid was looked after until he got back.
By tomorrow the doctors would probably want him and Max on a plane back to England. Trouble was, Max didn’t want to go back. Not yet. The kayak attack was clearly meant to cause him serious injury for saving Sophie in the village that night. If the organized crime gangs dealing in endangered species were using these mountain passes to ship animals through Spanish ports and into France and the rest of Europe, Max was at the sharp end right now.
In his heart he knew that even though animal smugglers might have associated him with Sophie, the real mystery was something entirely different. Pursued across the snow and then shot, Zabala had made an enormous effort to pull the rosary and the pendant from his neck before he died. Max still heard the man’s desperate and insistent shouts just before he fell to his death, telling him to find an abbey and whatever connection it held to a crocodile and a snake. Why? It was something so important the man had taken his dying breath trying to pass it on to him with a final warning about Lucifer. The Fallen Angel-was that part of the mysterious monk’s message? Max knew what his dad would do. He’d honor the dying man’s pleas and try to discover his secret. If the police became involved, any impetus would be lost as they set up a lumbering investigation, so they shouldn’t be told-not yet anyway. Max had to make a decision: stay and find out more about the monk, or go home and forget the whole thing?
Fragmented pieces of clues, shards of information like a broken mirror.
“Keep Sayid with you. I need to go and look for something. It’s important, Bobby. But you have to trust me, I can’t talk about it yet.”
“What I don’t know, I can’t tell.” Bobby smiled. “What do you need?”
Max quickly explained his plan. He had no sooner finished than he saw the distant blue-tinged headlights of a car as it turned off the road towards the hospital. He had run out of time.
It was a black Audi.
Bobby’s van lurched up to the hospital entrance, then stalled. Raucous music blasted the night air as the snowboarders piled out and tried to push-start it.
The two night-duty staff were quickly out of the hospital’s doors, demanding they turn off the music. There were patients sleeping! After some furious gestures from the staff, Bobby finally realized they did not like his taste or the volume of his music. He did as he was told and turned it off, mumbling apologies about being lost, saying that he was an American, that this was a really pretty town but how did anyone find their way around this one-way system? He managed all of this in really bad French, despite the fact he could speak the language fluently.
Finally everything and everyone quietened. Bobby conveniently got the van started just about the same time he saw Max move through the entrance, past the now-unmanned security desk, and into an elevator.
The corridors and wards were quiet and mostly in semi-darkness. Two or three voices murmured somewhere in the distance. There was a clink of metal from a trolley, a sigh from a closing door and the hum of an elevator as it sank down to the basement. Max walked quickly; he did not want to be seen or heard up here on the wards, so he stayed close to the wall, where the downlighters created the most shadow. His father had taught him to stalk animals in the jungle so they could get close enough to capture them in the camera lens. Walking on the edge of the foot lessened any sound of impact and that was what Max did now, but he moved quickly.
The corridor’s windows looked onto the car park, and six floors down he could see the dull sheen reflected from the men’s leather jackets as they got out of their car. Max recognized them instantly as the men from the mountainside road at the kayak rapids. They glanced around the near-empty parking area. One nodded to the other and they split up. The bigger of the two men walked towards the reception area; the other skirted around the back of the building.
Who were these guys?
A chair scraped. Someone moved. Max pressed against the wall and peered round the corner into a nurse’s duty room. A night nurse had pushed her chair back from her desk. If she came out into the corridor she’d walk right into him. Max looked at the room’s reflection in the corridor windows opposite. The nurse tapped a handful of patients’ files into a neat block, tucked them under her arm and moved towards the door. No matter what explanation Max could come up with, she would be suspicious and phone security. Skulking in a corridor was going to be a difficult one to explain.
Max reached into his pocket and found a coin. He lobbed it gently across the doorway, saw it land edge-on and roll against a filing cabinet. The nurse heard the tinkering coin, turned to follow its path, searched for it and finally bent down to retrieve it. By which time Max was gone.
He passed a few private rooms and felt uncertainty tug in his stomach. Was this the correct floor? He couldn’t remember the room; it all looked different at night. Then he heard the sound he needed.
Within moments he opened the door to Sayid’s room. His best friend lay in bed, mouth wide open, snoring as contentedly as a pig in straw. Max shook him gently. Sayid gasped, turned over and began to snore even more loudly. Max shook him again, harder this time, but he didn’t budge. He put his hand over Sayid’s mouth to try and make him gasp for air. His friend suddenly became quiet, then started to spasm. Max released his hand and Sayid sucked in a lungful of air; as he did, Max tipped the glass of bedside water over his face.
Sayid choked. Max held his spluttering face in his hands and whispered urgently, “Sayid! Quiet! It’s me!”
Sayid’s eyes blinked open. He stopped coughing and gazed blearily at Max. “Max … hey … what are you … They … gave me … drugs …”
“What?”
“Yeah … tol’ them … I … er … I was in a … lot … of pain …” Sayid laughed stupidly. “It worked … see? Ha-ha … worked a treat …”
Sayid started to fall asleep again. Max shook him. Sayid opened his eyes again. “Max. Hi. Just had a dream about you…. You poured water … Hey, whaddya doing here?”
He was clearly out of it. Max couldn’t spend any more time trying to explain or, come to that, get his friend out of bed and dressed. Max shook him again. “Sayid, listen. We have to get out. Stay with me a bit longer, mate!” he said, gently slapping his face.
Sayid rallied. “Yeah, yeah. Right there, Max. Go where?”
