Blood Sun

Her eyes scanned the glass. Among all the smudges was a full handprint at shoulder height, as if someone had wanted to touch the very place shown on the map. She opened a small pack of what looked like cellophane peel-offs, pressed one against the glass and lifted the fingerprints. If these prints were by any chance Max Gordon’s, then she knew he was not going to Peru, where Danny Maguire had been working, but to Central America. Why? What was there?

“Officer Morgan!” The irate voice echoed down the corridor into the room.

Charlie looked up, annoyed to have her chain of thought broken, but by the look of the wildly beckoning figure marching back outside, it looked like she was going to have to do even more thinking. And fast.

Four police cars, lights flashing, stood guard over the museum’s main entrance gates. Uniformed officers were coming and going, still searching the grounds and buildings for Max. Paramedics attended to the security staff. Charlie Morgan walked out into the courtyard. Crowds of faces pressed against the gold-tipped iron gates. There were always so many people on the streets even at this time of night.

“Who’s paying for all of this?” the red-faced inspector demanded.

“What?”

“Police time! You’ve pulled four area patrol cars and a dozen of my officers off the streets. This is not a major incident. A half-baked bunch of activists making fools of the security here is not worth my people’s time! I’m leaving one officer to take statements.” He turned on his heel.

Damn. Charlie needed these people for another few hours, but he was right-she had no authority to use his officers, and there was always the question of who paid for what in this bureaucratic world. How far could she go before this was blown out of all proportion? There was only one way to find out. “Inspector! This comes from the top. The Home Office. We think it might have been a practice run by terrorists. We have good information. They’re using a boy to get past security,” she lied. “We think he’s still inside.”

Mention the word terrorist and the world freezes. At least the inspector’s did. Was he going to take responsibility for letting an extremist escape?

“Is he dangerous? Do we need an armed team here?”

This was where it got tricky. Just how far could she go? Fear is a wonderful instrument to control people. She didn’t hesitate. “That would be a very good idea. Thank you.”

Now the inspector felt important. He was part of a bigger, more dangerous picture. He nodded. “I’ll bring sniffer dogs in as well. You can have them till the morning.”

He turned away. Charlie sighed. Whoever had caused havoc in the museum was already gone. Eyewitnesses had seen a car with four men inside pull away from the side entrance just before the police arrived. Two of the men were injured. There was little point in tracing the number plate; it would be false. Perhaps CCTV could track where it went.

But those were men. Where was the boy? Where was Max Gordon? All her instincts told her he was still inside.

Max waited until the initial shouts, lights and the sound of running feet had faded into a more industrious and less frenetic pace. The voices were more measured now, and it was obvious they were searching for someone. It did not take a great leap of imagination to guess who.

The false wall behind the exhibit case of the Tomb of Jericho was a space for pipework, most of which was as thick as his forearm. Old, solid, Victorian-era conduits. The gap was narrow, but if he held his backpack in one hand and a pipe with another, he could ease himself down. By the time he reached the bottom, he was in a network of underground pipes and cables. A service tunnel. Max knew he had been close to the west stairs when he hid but had no idea where he was now. It was almost pitch-black down here. Max did not like dark, enclosed spaces. He could feel it close around him, like an invisible night monster suffocating him.

It’s your mind. Ignore it. It’s only fear, and fear can’t hurt you. He tugged out his compass, found his beta lamp and watched the needle swing. He followed the direction west, stumbling, barking his shins on unseen pipes. Cobwebs caught his face and hair, and as he moved deeper along the tunnel, he heard scratching sounds scurrying before him. Rats.

The service tunnel led to a set of iron steps that went up into the back of the museum’s loading bays.

Max breathed in the cold night air and exhaled the fear he had bottled inside him. Now there were lights. Police cars blocked all the gates, officers came and went, and to the front and to the left of the loading bays, a woman wearing biker leathers was talking to a police officer. She had tufts of colored hair. She was pretty in a funky way. But tough-looking. She never smiled. That was the MI5 woman Sayid had told him about. And she had the place sewn up. There was no way Max could make a run for it.

At the end of the loading dock, an ambulance waited. It was almost as if it was not part of the activity in the nearby courtyard. Doors opened behind him and two paramedics wheeled out a blanket-covered body. They went down the side ramp, opened the vehicle’s doors and began to load Dr. Miller’s body-Who else could it be? Max reasoned-into the ambulance.

Max followed in their footsteps, and as they clambered out, he waited until they noticed him. His sadness was not really an act, but he had to make sure they believed him.

“Excuse me,” Max said.

“You all right, mate?”

“That’s my granddad in there. We were in the museum together when he … fell down.”

“Oh, I’m really sorry, son.”

“I tried to save him,” Max said.

“Yeah, we saw someone had had a go. Look, there’s nothing you can really do in a situation like that. Even if we’d been there, we probably couldn’t have saved him either.”

Max nodded and took genuine comfort from the paramedic’s consolation. “I’ve just spoken to the police. They said if it was all right with you, I could go with him. My mum and dad are on their way to the hospital.”

The female paramedic looked at her partner, who seemed uncertain. “You sure you want to?”

Max just nodded.

They closed the doors. Max sat on the opposite stretcher to Dr. Miller’s body. The ambulance smelled of disinfectant-a cold, functional place created to save lives. Or to ferry the dead on to the next stage of their journey.

The ambulance stopped at the gates. A police officer waved it through, giving it safe passage through the gawping crowd. It slipped away quietly. No flashing lights or siren needed. There was no need to trumpet a man’s death.

Max watched the police activity recede beyond the city streets. He reached out his hand and laid it on the still form in front of him.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

The trail had gone cold.

There was no trace in the database of the fingerprints Charlie Morgan had found in room 27 at the British Museum, and the search was called off by the time it opened the next morning.

Ridgeway had spoken to Fergus Jackson, but, despite his most persuasive efforts, had failed to convince him that taking fingerprints from Max’s room could aid in tracking him. Jackson was adamant. Such an act would be an infringement; he had no desire to have an innocent pupil’s fingerprints on a police or Security Service database.

No one is innocent, Ridgeway wanted to say, but did not.

Now Ridgeway faced a defeated, gum-chewing Morgan in his office.

“We might have to do this off the record,” he said, finally airing his thoughts.

“All right, boss,” she said. She didn’t care. Rules were for the guidance of the unthinking and the masses. The two were not mutually exclusive.

“I had a brief and robust conversation with a senior member of the civil service who had Jonathan Llewellyn as his shepherd dog.”

Llewellyn was a higher-up in MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service. “Does Six have an interest in Max Gordon?”

“Not him. Riga. He’s international and seems too big a hitter to bring in to get involved with the Gordon boy.