The Messenger Bird Page 4

  “Spag bol or fish pie?” Mum was calling.

  …There was Foxglove Cottage and Brennan’s Wood behind it. There was the winding track through the trees, the one that started at the end of Auntie Hilda’s garden…

  “Nathan!”

  “Er … fish pie. No, spaghetti!” I peered at the label written along the path…

  … THE BREADCRUMBS TRAIL.

  I tapped the words with delight so the map went all wonky.

  I couldn’t help laughing to myself. The Breadcrumbs Trail! I should have remembered it before! That’s what Dad said Auntie Hilda called the path through Brennan’s Wood we went on. Only people who’d lived round here for years would know; there was no signpost or anything. It couldn’t just be a coincidence. I had to be on to something!

  I traced the path with my finger. TRAIL’S END it said where the line met the road. Lily’s next clue had to be along that path! Now all I had to do was go out and…

  Mum came in and I quickly shoved the Strum book behind a cushion. “It’s in the microwave,” she said. “Won’t be long.”

  “I need to go out,” I said.

  Mum glanced at her watch. “Where to?”

  “Just a walk,” I said. I hated lying to her, but I was dying to get on the Breadcrumbs Trail and find the next clue.

  “We’ve to set off for the solicitor’s at half one, so I want you to eat now, thank you. There’s snow forecast for this afternoon,” she said, like if I didn’t get some food inside me before then I was doomed. “Who ever heard of snow in early November?” she mumbled.

  I sidled towards the door, pulling on my coat, slipping the little Strum book from under the cushion into my pocket. “I’m not so hungry yet. I had a big breakfast and…”

  “You’re eating first!” Mum said in her absolutely no arguments voice, like as long as she kept us stuffed with food, everything would be all right.

  I stomped into the kitchen and watched the plastic tray turn inside the microwave. Round and round it went. Thoughts spun in my head. The words Lily had scribbled in her notebook. I have to save my dad. If only I can break the code. What did that mean? Round and round and round…

  The microwave beeped, making me jump. I took the tray out and peeled off the plastic lid, roasting my fingers on the steam. I slapped the whole thing on a plate. I jabbed a fork into the runny sauce, stabbing out strands of spaghetti and eating as fast as I could without burning my mouth; then, hearing Mum go upstairs, I shovelled the rest into Bones’s bowl before he drooled himself to death and he chomped it down in ten seconds flat, splattering bits of mince and red blobs all over.

  I opened the back door as quietly as I could, breathing in the cold, damp air. The light was murky, as if it was going dark already. Mist reached across the garden, and the grass was spiky with frost. The well crouched on the overgrown lawn, and trees huddled at the far end where the woods began, like they were sharing secrets. I zipped up my coat and went quickly past the tool shed, past the well, past the air-raid shelter, heading for the gap in the hedge with its half-rotted wooden gate, the gate I’d been through loads of times with Dad. What was I going to find? What could there be that I wouldn’t have noticed before? Whatever it was, I had to be there and back before we needed to go to the solicitor’s, so I had to get moving.

  I checked my watch, then started out along the Breadcrumbs Trail.

  5

  The Breadcrumbs Trail

  At first the path followed a little brook that was all choked up with brambles, before twisting deeper into the trees. I heard the church bell clang over and over and I checked my watch. Twelve noon. I passed the blackberry patch where we’d stuff our faces in the late summer, and the spot where Dad and I would lie and watch clouds make shapes through the trees. But now it was misty and cold and unwelcoming. Damp, rotting leaves made the path slippery, and feathery nettles stung my ankles.

  What was I looking for? Something that would get Dad off? A gingerbread house and a witch to put me in the oven? From somewhere behind me, a twig cracked. I spun around, seeing nothing through the thickening mist. I hurried on, stepping over fallen trunks covered in slimy moss. I just had to hope I’d know whatever it was I was looking for when I saw it, something I’d missed all the previous times I’d been here. On I went, walking slowly to check each side of the path for anything that might be something.

  I’d been walking a while and found nothing. I stopped at the big oak we called the Robin Hood tree. Not my favourite place. I glanced up nervously at the frayed piece of rope that used to be a rope swing, remembering that day and how I couldn’t stand heights since then.

  It happened when I was about six. Dad had somehow managed to get the rope looped round a high branch, with a thick, short bit of wood for a seat. We came to play here all the time, me and Hannah and Dad. I remembered being on the swing, making monkey noises as I swept from side to side; Hannah was in stitches. Then the weird cracking, ripping sound that seemed to go on for ever and then the falling, the falling and the landing with a scream, my right arm twisted under me. Then Dad running and running; carrying me back to the house, with tears streaming down his face. I got a broken arm, but it could have been a broken neck, and I’ve hated heights ever since. I don’t think Dad ever forgave himself.

  The wind got stronger, making the bare branches shiver, and dark clouds were building up in the sky. I zipped my jacket tighter around my neck and walked on fast. The mist made my face damp and I shoved my hands in my pockets to keep them warm. Why had Lily Kenley made a trail at all? If Dad knew about it, why had he waited until now to tell me? How could an old trail like this be important anyway?

  Mum and Hannah could help me understand it, I thought. But Dad had been clear. The more people who know, the more dangerous it is. I felt my palms go all clammy. Dad must know there was no choice about keeping the trail secret. No matter what, I trusted him. I’d always trust my dad.

  I trudged forward. I’d be at the road soon, the official end of the Breadcrumbs Trail, and I still hadn’t found a thing.

  The path wound on. The ground went up to a kind of hill smothered in rhododendron bushes, and then there was a big dip on the other side, a sloping basin of mud covered in patches of tangled ferns.

  Another twig snapped behind me. Birds flashed between the branches overhead like little missiles. A magpie cawed my name from a tree. It was just my imagination, right, like the phantom car on our drive last night, and the figure half-glimpsed in the garden?

  A last muddy climb and I’d be at the edge of the road. I looked at my watch – it was after half past one! Panicking, I got out my mobile. Mum should have phoned me if I was late. Why hadn’t she?

  SEARCHING said the screen in ghostly green.

  Stupid! I’d forgotten the signal could be dodgy in the woods. She might have been trying to get hold of me! I so had to get home.

  I looked at the phone screen again. Still searching, I thought grimly, just like me. No sign of any next clue. I’d have to go back over the trail again later and hope I found something then.

  I sprinted up the slope to the road. It’d be quicker to go back that way now. I stood on the edge of the frosty tarmac and was about to step on to it when I heard a car coming. Maybe it was getting spooked in the woods that had made me all jumpy, but I swerved back to hide just in time. A car revved past. Our car. Mum and Hannah in it. I was in big trouble now.

  I snapped open my phone. Out of the hollow, I had a signal again.

  FOUR MISSED CALLS shouted the screen.

  Mum had been trying to phone me. She was probably going mental.

  Stupid. Stupid. I stared after the red tail lights, then clambered up to the road as I started to phone her back. But my foot caught on something and nearly sent me sprawling on to the grassy verge. I crouched to look why I’d tripped.

  It was a rectangle of rock, and the weird thing was it looked like the thick tufts of grass and weeds and the leaves around it had been cleared a bit, and there was a
thin border of bare soil as if someone had recently tried to dig it out.

  I felt a rush of excitement. Might Dad have done that? I remembered how the window in the attic room had been wiped clean. For me?

  “They followed the breadcrumbs trail.” I quickly muttered the caption from the Strum book to myself. “But found themselves at the end.”

  They found themselves at the end! I thought back to the old map, with TRAIL’S END written where the path met the road. Right here. X marks the spot!

  My breath came out in grey-white bursts as I scraped at the surface of the stone. It was all crusted up with lichens and they were hard to make out but I saw now that there were letters on it, words! I ran my fingers in their worn grooves.

  BLETCHLEY PARK 6 MILES

  I’d found an old milestone, fallen over on its side so it laid flat on the ground. It must have been half-buried before, covered over with soil and plants.

  Might Dad have made the stone easier to find? Could it have been his way of helping me follow the trail?

  A scrap of sunlight lit the milestone. Bletchley Park! Did that mean I should go there next? I’d been there on a school trip once with Sasha and Josh. It was where they’d worked out secret messages during the Second World War. Bletchley Park, that code-cracking place.

  I remembered Lily’s words from her notebook – If only I can break the code – was there a link? I scoured the milestone and my eye caught more lettering. I peered close, using my fingernails to pick off the brittle patches of lichens.

  They were smaller letters, still old-looking, but more messy than the others. I imagined the milestone when it had been standing up straight. These extra letters weren’t on the front, but on a hidden place along one edge. Grooves scratched deep like graffiti or something.

  I heard a bus crunching its gears not far away. I checked my watch, thinking fast. It was too late to call Mum to come back for me now. The bus would take me into town. I definitely had to be on that one so I could get to the solicitor’s. I ran my mind back through what Mum had told me – Mr Edwards, Fitzroy Street.

  There were at least fifty metres to the stop, and I could hear the bus getting closer, but I stayed bent over the milestone, prising off clods of soil to uncover the other letters…

  I ran my fingers over the words, breathing fast. If I’d had doubts before, I knew now for sure. Lily’s trail was real, important. Dad wanted me to follow it. He believed in me, believed that I really could do it. It might not make any sense now, but give me time and…

  Just then my mobile beeped. I fumbled to get it out of my pocket and set off at a sprint as the bus came into view.

  At solicitor’s with hannah.

  The screen juddered as I ran.

  Where r u? Go round to

  josh’s and get his dad to

  drive you here asap. Mum.

  My heart thudded. It must be something serious, trusting me in a car with Josh’s dad behind the wheel, even if he says he never drinks and drives any more. There must be news about Dad. It might be good news, I tried to tell myself, but for some reason only horrible thoughts spiralled round my head.

  A drop of icy rain splashed the display as I shoved the mobile back in my pocket and flung out my arm for the bus.

  6

  Mr Edwards

  “Where the heck have you been?” said Mum, shooting up from her chair in the waiting room as I crashed through the door of the solicitor’s, slipping to a stop on the lino floor in my wet trainers. “It’s after two thirty in the afternoon!”

  Except she didn’t say heck.

  Hannah caught my arm and pulled me to the side. “Remember mobiles?” she said sarcastically. “You know? That wonderful invention of modern times?”

  I peeled down my drenched rain hood. “Did something happen?” I croaked.

  “Where were you?” Mum gave me a suspicious look. “I kept calling.”

  “Sorry,” I mumbled. “I…”

  “Mr Edwards will see you now.”

  Saved by the secretary. A woman in a long blue dress led us through a grey door and down a long corridor to a lift and up to the top floor and through another grey door with a brass plate that said:

  MR SAMUEL EDWARDS

  A man wearing glasses and a black suit came out and shook our hands, half his mouth turned up in a smile. “Please,” he said. “Come into my office. Tea all round, please, Susan.” The secretary nodded and left.

  Mr Edwards faced us across a big desk and linked his fingers together like he was praying over the stuff on it. A laptop, a neat pile of documents, a telephone, a desk lamp, a box of paper hankies, a Union Jack paperweight, a posh gold pen in a holder. There was a framed photo of a boy smiling over the candles of a birthday cake, another of an older girl on a pony.

  “Thanks for coming,” he said very slowly. He took off his glasses and rubbed them with a white handkerchief like he was waving a surrender. “You must all be very anxious, so I’ll tell you as much as I’m able to at this point in time.”

  The secretary came in with a tray, and Mr Edwards paused again while the cups were handed out, and he motioned to the silver pot of sugar cubes, like we all had to have one before he could go on. Mum splashed in three lumps and stirred her tea hard. Hannah grabbed one and crunched it between her teeth.

  “I think you know by now that Leon is being questioned over some really rather serious allegations,” Mr Edwards said in that slow voice of his, like words cost a lot, which they probably did, and he wanted us to get our money’s worth saying them.

  “We know,” said Hannah. “Breaking the Official Secrets Act.”

  Mr Edwards gave a small, sad smile. “I’m afraid the charges have been stepped up.”

  Mum gave him a sideways stare. “What do you mean stepped up?”

  Mr Edwards shifted in his seat and fingered his paperweight. “Leon is now being questioned under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.”

  Hannah gasped. Mr Edwards’s words hung in the room like thick drops of glue sticking the air together. Prevention of Terrorism. I felt my fingernails digging into my palms. My dad was no terrorist!

  “‘Section 58: Collection of information useful for a terrorism act’,” Mr Edwards read from a paper on his desk. “‘Section 59: Inciting terrorism overseas’. The pre-charge detention can be up to twenty-eight days with a special warrant. At the moment, the situation’s stable,” he continued quickly. “Leon hasn’t actually been charged with anything yet, and until he is…” He ran a finger where his shirt collar rubbed his neck. “I’m monitoring your dad’s case carefully, believe me, and making sure he gets the full legal protection he’s entitled to.”

  Stable. I imagined Dad balanced on a tightrope between tall buildings.

  Mum’s cup clattered down in her saucer and she let out a strained laugh.

  “I understand your distress, Mrs Vane. I was as shocked as you were when I found out Leon had been arrested, believe me. You know that we were friends at school together. But he had classified files on his computer at work and…”

  “Course he did!” cut in Mum. “He works at the Ministry of Defence, for goodness’ sake!”

  “They were files he didn’t have clearance for.”

  Mum went quiet. That was serious, then.

  “He’s being questioned about stealing confidential military files and selling them overseas.”

  Mum stayed very quiet. That was really serious.

  Mr Edwards wiped some sweat off his forehead.

  “I don’t need to tell you the implications,” he said quietly. “With our country involved in several armed conflicts at the present time…”

  “When do we get to see my dad?” cut in Hannah. “We have rights.”

  Mr Edwards sighed and shifted the position of some papers on his desk. “I was telling your mum earlier, given a few recent events I’m sure you know about, there’s been some rapid tightening of the anti-terrorism laws. The family are allowed no contact while a suspect is being
held. Not before he’s formally charged, and even then…”

  “What?” Mum said, her voice straining.

  “No contact at all?” I couldn’t help blurting.

  Mr Edwards looked at me and tapped his fingers on his desk. He tried to smile, which made his face wrinkle up like a Guy Fawkes mask. “Your mother tells me it’s your birthday on Sunday, Nathan. Maybe I can arrange a call between you and your dad, on compassionate grounds?” He fiddled with the cuff of his jacket, looking shifty. “No promises, though.”

  “What if he’s found guilty?” Mum fiddled with her wedding ring, her face flushed, like she was embarrassed even thinking that.

  Mr Edwards leaned forward, the way I’d seen Mum comfort relatives at the hospital. “We’re looking at a long prison sentence, Mrs Vane.”

  I just sat there, like I was tied to the chair.

  “How long?” asked Mum, her voice all scratchy like an old record.

  Mr Edwards joined his hands together and pressed two fingers over his lips. “Perhaps life.”

  Mum gave a little cry. “Bit extreme, isn’t it?” she said, her voice strangely faint.

  Hannah kept tugging and tugging at her hair.

  “The leaked information…” Mr Edwards was choosing his words carefully. “It is already thought to have led to fatalities in the military.”

  Hannah knocked over her tea, soaking the papers on the desk, and Mr Edwards rushed to pick them up. “What?” she said shakily. “Soldiers died because of it?”

  “Information about their positions fell into enemy hands,” said Mr Edwards. “That’s all I can say about it at the present time.”

  Soldiers died. Life in prison. The words like a bomb falling. Then the explosion that changes everything. But you can’t move. You’re trapped under rubble and it’s pressing at your chest and you know nothing can ever be the same again but you just can’t move.

  Life in prison.

  Memories of Dad flickered in my mind like a film reel. Dad and me writing our names with sparklers on Bonfire Night, Dad and me playing football on the fields, Dad and me singing songs in the car on hot summer holidays, Dad running alongside my bike as I wobbled along, Dad reading me a book as I sipped hot chocolate. Dad meeting me at the school gate and lifting me on his shoulders so I was taller than anyone… Dad carrying me in his arms after I fell from that tree.