Top-Secret Grandad and Me Page 9

  I nodded. If I was out of my depth, I was pretty sure she was wearing armbands. “Shouldn’t you be doing something by now?” I asked.

  Graves was tapping the end of her pen hard on the desk, like she was squashing insects with it. “Don’t worry, we’ve put out an alert for the white van. We’ll find your friend. It’s our top priority.” She pushed back her seat and stood up.

  “Good!” declared McBurnie. “That’ll give me something decent to do, instead of sitting about here like a muppet.” He leaned forward, as if confiding a secret in me. “I thought this job was going to be all cop cars flying about and chasing baddies. All I seem to do is stand about, guarding things, or watching, or waiting, or fillin’ in stupid forms.”

  “Do you still have my business card?” Graves said to me. “If you think of anything else, I mean, anything you forgot – call me.”

  She opened my palm and pressed five pound coins into it.

  “What’s this for?” I asked.

  She flung open the interview room door. “Your taxi. We’re releasing you now. Both of you.”

  “Really? My mum too?”

  “RESULT!” cried Grandad, pumping his fist.

  “Oh, yes.” Graves led me down the corridor to another interview room. It was one of those rooms with a two-way mirror, which meant the people outside could see in, but the people inside couldn’t see out. Mum was sitting on top of the table, her legs crossed in the lotus position, and her long, flowing skirt draped all around her. Her hands were outstretched and she was chanting:

  “I am fuuuull of love and pxweaaace!”

  “I’ll be glad to be rid of her, to be honest,” said Graves. “She’s only been here one afternoon and she’s turned the place on its head. Two of my officers handed in their notice to go and become Buddhist monks. Oh, and she found a spirit path between the staff canteen and the toilets, so everyone else thinks the station is haunted.”

  “It IS haunted,” said McBurnie.

  “Oh, it definitely is.” Grandad, gritted his teeth and pulled his leg back to kick McBurnie, but once again there was no reaction. “Ach! I’ve lost it! I’m too tired.”

  Graves caught my arm. “And, please, don’t get any more involved in this matter.”

  The edges of her mouth turned up slightly. It wasn’t exactly what you’d call a smile, but it was at least some way from being a frown. And then she was gone, shuttling down the corridor with McBurnie in her wake, who was suddenly keen as mustard now he knew there was a chase on.

  “You heard the woman,” said Grandad. “Don’t get any more involved in this matter. That is good advice.”

  Good advice, yes. I had to agree. Except this matter was still involved with me.

  Chapter 26

  The Rissole Escape

  Mum stayed sitting in the lotus position in the back seat of the taxi home. And now she was chanting:

  “I am caaallm and at peeeaaaace!”

  That is, until the taxi driver leaned round and said, “Do ye mind knocking that off?” He glared at us. “And could ye get your Dr. Martens off my seat n’all?”

  Suddenly Mum lapsed out of her trance. Her face twisted up into a snarl and she barked back at him, “Shuttup, ya muppet! And drive!”

  Mum unwrapped her legs, then placed her right foot on top of her left knee. She clasped her hands together, closed her eyes, and then, instead of chanting she began to hum, which was almost as annoying.

  “I’m so sorry you were dragged into all this, dearie,” she said to me, between hums.

  She assumed the police only interviewed me because of her. Surely even Mum must have wondered why her son was found in the back of a laundry with the dead body of a Glasgow crime lord. Or rather, in Maw Cleggan’s case, crime lady, or even more appropriate, crime gorilla.

  She continued, “Don’t think I don’t know what’s going on here. I do.”

  “You do?” Or was I wrong about Mum? Maybe she did know. For a second I thought I was about to be rumbled. That is, until she leaned towards me and spoke, her eyes glistening with concern. “Your aura, it’s damaged.”

  “My what?”

  “Your aura, the field of energy surrounding your body. It’s too mauve!” She flung her hands up to her cheeks, as if it was a big disaster.

  Grandad groaned and passed his hand over his face. “Here she goes! My son married a fruitcake!”

  “Right,” I said. “Mauve, and that’s bad?”

  “Mauve means danger.”

  “Ha!” laughed Grandad. “Well, she’s right about that. You have been in danger.” He sighed. “I feel bad, boy. I know you are trying to find your father, but you should not be doing it alone. Your mother lives in a fantasy world. As for your granny, she is too old and frail.”

  “Ha!” Now it was my turn to burst out laughing. “Frail? Have you ever seen Granny hack down a wall with a claw hammer?” The older Granny got the more she seemed like a kind of robot terminator, on a secret mission to rip things apart.

  “Oh, I would love to see that,” grinned Grandad.

  “What did you say?” asked Mum, with a look of mild amusement. I’d forgotten once again that I was having two separate conversations at once.

  “Eh, nothing Mum, just talking to myself.”

  “Quite right, dearie,” said Mum. “I do that all the time too.”

  When we got back to the flat Granny was in the hall. One of the bedroom doors was off, and she was bent double over a workbench, sanding the door with a look of ferocious glee.

  ***

  Mum got dinner ready while I went to my bedroom, slumped down on the bed and stared at the wall. Stared at the leads to Dad’s disappearance, marked out and criss-crossed in string over the map of Glasgow. Leads that, so far, had got me nowhere.

  At times like this I really missed my dad. He would’ve given me a big bear hug, as he always did, hoisting me off my feet, spinning me round, before collapsing on the bed in hysterics.

  I shook my head. I couldn’t think like this. I had to pull myself together and focus on the case. I started running through everything that had happened in my mind. I turned over Morrison’s business card in my fingers.

  I reached into my schoolbag and yanked out a copy of the school handbook, then flicked through it. Cheap paper, loads of errors. Then the price list I picked up from Duke’s Laundry. The same cheap paper, and the same errors. The price list was practically gobbledygook. It barely made any sense at all, as if it had been written by a senile computer. Or someone who really couldn’t be bothered… who didn’t want customers.

  I went in to the kitchen, wrinkled up my nose at the smell of Mum’s cooking, flipped open the laptop and checked out Big A Printers.

  “I see you are not going to let this go, are you?” said Grandad.

  He was right. I was weighing up whether or not I really could stay out of this. Not because I wanted to find the murderer myself. I was happy to let the police do all of that now. It was because of Sian. She’d been kidnapped, and finding her was a race against time. And let’s face it, the Pollockshields police force had not exactly covered themselves in glory so far.

  A loud reverberating gong called me and Granny to the dinner table. Which would have been fine, except I was already sitting there. My eardrums rattled.

  Mum set the plates down in front of us with a flourish. “Ta-daaaaaaa. Spicy nut rissoles.” She announced it as if it was the next act at a cabaret – the worst, most depressing cabaret ever.

  Squirrel vomit. Burnt squirrel vomit.

  Even Granny looked defeated.

  Grandad puffed out his cheeks. “Never thought I would say this, but for once I am glad to be dead.”

  Both Granny and me pretended to eat, which mainly involved rearranging our food around the plate. I began to wish we had a cat, just so that I could feed this rubbish to it, though it would have to be a pretty weird squirrelly kind of cat that enjoyed punishment. Granny waited until Mum wasn’t looking and scraped her plate into a p
lant pot, which was a shame, because that’s exactly where I was planning to put it, and there wasn’t any room now.

  Fortunately, Granny was looking out for me. She quickly emptied mine into her toolbox and slipped me a five-pound note under the table, then nodded towards the front door.

  Now all I needed was a diversion, so I could slip out of the house unnoticed. It wasn’t long in coming, as Mum’s ‘Earth Healing’ group soon arrived for their weekly meeting. This was a bunch of people just like her, who spent an evening a week carrying out the vital work of putting the world back together, all with the power of their positive mind waves.

  The hall was soon full of them, dressed up in what looked like old curtains, with leggings underneath, wearing bandanas, and dancing round in a circle singing, “All you need is love…”

  Meanwhile, Granny had gone back to her DIY, and was lying on her side on the floor, a tin of white paint by her side, daubing the skirting boards.

  “It’s like Central Station in here,” said Grandad.

  “Follow me.” I grabbed my parka and slipped out the door.

  ***

  Fifteen minutes later, I stood in the queue at the local fast-food restaurant, fingering the five-pound note Granny had given me. All around me was bustle and noise, from the servers behind the counters rushing about fetching chips and drinks, to the close press of people behind me in the queue. Yet I felt detached from it all. I suppose I should have felt a sense of relief, a great weight lifted off my shoulders. It was all up to the police now, and I could go back to my life. But part of me just couldn’t. I kept worrying about Sian. I hoped she was alright. More than anything, I was tired, and I hadn’t eaten all day, apart from a few pretend bites of Mum’s squirrel rissole.

  “Oh, man!” said Grandad, who was standing off to one side. “Do I miss chicken burgers!”

  Someone dropped a load of coins at my feet, just as I was picking up my tray. Then a massive scrum of people bent down to help pick them up.

  I flopped down at a booth in the quietest part of the restaurant. I slurped my drink and prised open the box, only to find my appetite desert me. I kept turning over the deaths in my mind. I was thinking about what linked Morrison to the school. And Maw Cleggan, for that matter. That link was the epicentre of this whole thing. That missing link was what led to them both being murdered.

  Grandad plonked himself on the seat opposite. He nodded down at my burger, as if offended. “Are you not eating that? I hate to see good food go to waste.” He licked his ghostly lips together. “Oh, being dead is rubbish!”

  I touched my fingers to the bridge of my nose. There was a throbbing pain in my head that was building, and I felt woozy. A strange feeling. A strange, sleepy feeling, an urge to close my eyes and sink into a dark hole. It was almost as if I’d been…

  “Jayesh?” he asked. “Are you OK, boy?”

  Grandad’s voice echoed round my head. Then a man slumped down on top of him. A man I recognised from somewhere. A brown raincoat and fedora hat. Up close, his skin was dark, rough and blotchy. He grinned. A wide smile, white teeth. “Hello.”

  “OW!” said Grandad, moving over. “Do you have any idea how much that hurts a ghost? I mean, hurts its feelings? It’s like I’m not here at all.” Which he wasn’t, to be fair. “Nice hat, though!”

  I felt my eyes drooping now. As hard as I tried, I just couldn’t keep them open. I thought back to when I was standing at the counter with my tray. The dropped coins. I remembered a hand reaching over my tray just as everyone bent down to look. That was when it must have happened.

  I’d been drugged.

  “Jayesh?” said Grandad, as my head lolled forward. The man in the overcoat reached out his hands to catch me.

  Chapter 27

  The Tongs Torture

  When I opened my eyes again, groggy and dry-mouthed, I found myself staring at the same man.

  Except something was different. For a start, he wasn’t wearing his overcoat and hat any more. They were hanging up on a solitary coat stand in the corner behind him. Underneath he wore a grey waistcoat and trousers, with a white open-necked shirt, and his sleeves rolled up. I noticed he had perfect nails and neatly styled black hair, which was shaved in at the sides and swept over on top.

  I wasn’t in the fast food restaurant any more either. I was in some kind of factory space, with a bare concrete floor, breezeblock walls, a corrugated steel roof, and a door at either end.

  “Jayesh!” It was Grandad’s voice. “Are you OK, boy?” His ghostly face loomed into mine. As if being pale and greenish wasn’t bad enough, it now took on a creased, worried look.

  The only response I could give was to cough. My throat ached. It felt like someone had driven a truck down it.

  The man was slouched back on a chair opposite, one ankle balanced on his knee, picking his teeth with his fingernail. “Nice burger, by the way,” he said.

  “That guy ate your burger and kidnapped you!” said Grandad, indignant. “Better than letting it go to waste, I suppose. But still…”

  “Water,” I croaked.

  “Give him water!” Grandad demanded, pointing out a plastic water bottle sitting at the man’s feet. “Are you heartless? You drug him, you kidnap him, and you don’t even give him anything to drink! He is my grandson!”

  “Please, don’t worry,” said the man. He had a trace of an accent, but what was it? Spanish? No, maybe Portuguese. “I will give you the water. In a while. I might even let you go. It depends.”

  “On what?” I asked.

  “On whether you co-operate.”

  “Huh! I’ll get you the water!” declared Grandad. “Just you wait. I’m going to lift the bottle.” He bent over, wrapped his greenish hands around it, and gritted his teeth. “I’ve got this! I’ve got this!” He heaved and strained. The bottle wobbled slightly. I thought for a second he really was going to lift it. But then it just tipped up and fell over onto the floor. “I have not got this yet!” Grandad said, disappointed.

  The man merely glanced down at it, puzzled, then shrugged, and continued picking his teeth for a bit.

  “Mind if I ask where I am?” I croaked.

  He looked round at the place. “I rented this facility. It is very reasonable.”

  “You are in an industrial unit,” said Grandad. “That one right next door to the tennis centre, you know.” I pictured it in my head. I’d gone past it a few times. It wasn’t far from school. I started working out an escape plan in my head, but Grandad was already on it. “You are upstairs. That door behind him is the way out. It’s just on a snib, so it is easy to open. And look…” He nodded down at my hands. They were free. The man hadn’t tied me up. What did that say? It told me he was pretty confident, perhaps too confident for his own good.

  “And who are you?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “It’s no problem. I can tell you. My name is Valente. Hector Valente. I represent the G.D.F.”

  I was surprised when he told me his name. Not many kidnappers would. And who he worked for. And even more surprised when he flicked his business card at me. My pockets were getting stuffed with these things.

  I turned it over.

  It gave his office address as Lisbon. So, I was right about him being Portuguese. “G.D.F. is short for Global Diamond Federation.”

  Diamonds!!!

  I imagined some tiny diamonds floating individually around a lady’s neck. “G.D.F. – never heard of it, but it sounds important,” I said.

  “We are a consortium of diamond exporters, who have a legitimate interest in what happens to our diamonds.”

  Morrison, Marlin Shipping, diamond mines, PROJECT 212; now the diamonds round the lady’s neck were beginning to link together, one by one, piece by piece.

  “So, let me ask you,” he continued, and his face turned into a fierce snarl.

  “WHERE ARE OUR DIAMONDS?”

  “HE. DOES. NOT. KNOW!” yelled Grandad.

  “You’re probably expecting me to say this,
” I said, “but I really don’t know.”

  Valente gave a self-satisfied chortle. “Yes, indeed. But, you’ll talk.”

  He stood up, strolled over to a table and unrolled a large bundle of cloth. I caught a collective glimmering of cold steel: sharpened blades, tongs and weird tubes.

  “No!” cried Grandad.

  I gulped.

  “Oh, you’ll talk,” said Valente. “You see…” He picked up the tiniest bit of his torture kit, which looked like a metallic comb, and began ambling over to me. My skin crawled. “We knew someone was smuggling these diamonds back from Africa. We just didn’t know how.”

  Africa, I thought.

  Of course, that was where PROJECT 212 and the diamond mines were located. Now the chain was linking up, right round the lady’s neck. Back to where it all began.

  He waggled the comb in my face. “You are involved in this. You are the one who keeps showing up. You are the one the police are interested in. Now, come on.”

  “Please,” I said, “I’m only mixed up in it because my mum found a body in the library. But the body disappeared. And then my friend Davie and me saw the white van on CCTV taking the body away, but he got killed… eh… and that took me to Duke’s Laundry and Maw Cleggan, but now she’s dead too… And Morrison took us to Marlin Shipping, where we met this girl Sian, but she got kidnapped, so now she’s also gone… Uh, this doesn’t sound good, does it?”

  Valente was staring at me side-on, as if he was sizing me up for a portrait. A cold chill crept up my spine as he stepped closer.

  “What are you going to do to me?” I asked.

  “Do not touch him!” cried Grandad. “If you touch him I will haunt you! I mean it!” He looked about, frantic. Then he looked down at his hands, angled himself and launched a kick at Valente’s backside. Grandad’s foot went right through and Valente barely noticed. “Ahhh! It’s useless being a ghost!”

  Well, he could reliably sneeze and blow up a fine gust of wind, so that was something. But Valente was pretty strong. I didn’t imagine a blast of air would shift that thing from his fingers, or put him off what he was about to do. I thought of punching him in the stomach and making a run for it. That would at least give me a fighting chance. But it would probably just make him angry.