BLUE SHADOW
Point of view: Third person limited
The worst time to feel alone is when you're in a crowd. Alex Rider was walking across the playground, surrounded by hundreds of boys and girls of about his own age. They were all heading in the same direction, all wearing the same blue and grey uniform, all of them probably thinking much the same thoughts. The last lesson of the day had just ended. Homework, tea and television would fill the remaining hours until bed. Another school day. So why did he feel so out of it, as if he were watching the last weeks of the term from the other side of a giant glass screen?
Alex jerked his backpack over one shoulder and continued towards the bike shed. The bag was heavy. As usual, it contained double homework … French and history. He had missed two weeks of school and he was having to work hard to catch up. His teachers had not been sympathetic. Nobody had said as much, but when he had finally returned with a doctor's letter (…a bad dose of flu with complications…), they had nodded and smiled and secretly thought him a little bit pampered and spoiled. On the other hand, they had to make allowances. They all knew that Alex had no parents, that he had been living with an uncle who had died in some sort of car accident. But even so. Two weeks in bed! Even his closest friends had to admit that was a bit much. And he couldn't tell them the truth. He wasn't allowed to tell anyone what had really happened. That was the hell of it.
Alex looked around him, at the students streaming through the school gates, some dribbling footballs, some on their mobile phones. He looked at the teachers, curling themselves into their second-hand cars. At first, he had thought that the whole school had somehow changed while he was away. But he knew now that what had happened was worse. Everything was the same. It was he who had changed.
Alex was fourteen years old, an ordinary schoolboy in an ordinary West London comprehensive. Or he had been. Only a few weeks ago, he had discovered that his uncle had been a secret agent working for MI6. The uncle – Ian Rider – had been murdered, and MI6 had forced Alex to take his place. They had given him a crash course in Special Air Service (SAS) survival techniques and sent him on a lunatic mission on the south coast. He had been chased, shot at and almost killed. And at the end of it, he had been packed off and sent back to school as if nothing had happened. But first, they had made him sign the Official Secrets Act. Alex smiled at the memory of it. He didn't need to sign anything. Who would have believed him anyway?
But it was the secrecy that was getting to him now. Whenever anyone asked him what he had been doing in the weeks he'd been away, he'd been forced to tell them that he'd been in bed, reading, slouching around the house, whatever. Alex didn't want to boast about what he'd done, but he hated having to deceive his friends. It made him angry. MI6 hadn't just put him in danger. They'd locked his whole life in a filing cabinet and thrown away the key.
He had reached the bike shed. Somebody muttered a "goodbye" in his direction and he nodded, then reached up to brush away the single strand of fair hair that had fallen over his eye. Sometimes he wished that the whole business with MI6 had never happened. But at the same time – he had to admit it – part of him wanted it all to happen again. Sometimes he felt that he no longer belonged in the safe, comfortable world of Brookland School. Too much had changed. And at the end of the day, anything was better than double homework.
He lifted his bike out of the shed, unlocked it, pulled the backpack over both his shoulders and prepared to ride away. That was when he saw the beat-up white car. Back again outside the school gates. For the second time that week.
Everyone knew about the man in the white car. He was in his twenties, bald, and had two broken stumps where his front teeth should have been and five metal studs in his ear. He didn't advertise his name. When people talked about him, they called him "Skoda" – after the make of his car. But there were some who said that his name was Jake and he had once been at Brookland. If so, he had come back like an unwelcome ghost; here one minute, vanishing the next – somehow always a few seconds ahead of any passing police car or over-inquisitive teacher.
"Skoda" sold drugs. He sold soft drugs to the younger students and harder stuff to any of the sixth-formers (seniors) stupid enough to buy it. It seemed incredible to Alex that "Skoda" could get away with it so easily, dealing his little packets in broad daylight. But of course there was a code of honour in the school. No one turned anyone in to the police, not even a rat like "Skoda". And there was always the fear that if "Skoda" went down, some of the people he supplied – friends, classmates – might go with him.
Drugs had never been a huge problem at Brookland, but recently that had begun to change. A clutch of seventeen-year-olds had started buying "Skoda"'s goods and, like a stone dropped into a pool, the ripples had rapidly spread. There had been a spate of thefts, as well as one or two bullying incidents – younger students being forced to bring in money for older students. The stuff "Skoda" was selling seemed to get more expensive the more you bought it – and it hadn't been cheap at the start.
Alex watched as a heavy-shouldered young man with dark hair and serious acne lumbered over to the car, paused by the window, and then continued on his way. He felt a sudden jolt of anger. The young man's name was Colin, and just twelve months ago he had been one of Alex's best friends. In fact, Colin had been popular with everyone. But then everything had changed. He had become moody and withdrawn. His work had gone downhill. Suddenly nobody had wanted to know him – and this was the reason. Alex had never thought much about drugs, apart from knowing that he would never take them himself. But he could see that the man in the white car wasn't just poisoning a handful of dumb teens. He was poisoning the whole school.
A policeman on foot patrol appeared, walking towards the gate. A moment later, the white car was gone, black smut bubbling from a faulty exhaust. Alex was on his bike before he knew what he was doing, pedalling fast out of the playground, swerving round the school secretary, who was also on her way home.
"Not too fast, Alex!" she called out, and sighed when he ignored her. Miss Bedfordshire had always had a soft spot for Alex without knowing quite why. And she alone in the school had wondered if there hadn't been more to his absence that the doctor's note had suggested.
The white Skoda accelerated down the road, turning left, then right, and Alex thought he was going to lose it. But then it twisted through the maze of back streets that led up to the King's Road and hit the inevitable four o'clock traffic jam, coming to a halt about two hundred metres ahead.
The average speed of traffic in London is, at the start of the twenty-first century, lower than it used to be in Victorian times. During normal working hours, any bicycle will beat any car on just about any journey at all. And Alex wasn't riding just any bike. He still had his Condor Junior Roadracer, hand-built for him in the workshop that had been open for business in the same street in Holborn for more than fifty years. He'd recently had it upgraded with an integrated brake and gear-lever system fitted to the handlebar, and he only had to flick his thumb to feel the bike click up a gear, the lightweight titanium sprockets spinning smoothly beneath him.
He caught up with the car just as it turned the corner and joined the rest of the traffic on the King's Road. He would just have to hope that "Skoda" was going to stay in the city, but somehow Alex didn't think it likely that he would travel too far. The drug dealer hadn't chosen Brookland School as a target simply because he'd been there. It had to be somewhere in his general neighbourhood – not too close to home but not too far either.
The lights changed and the white car jerked forward, heading west. Alex was pedalling slowly, keeping a few cars behind, just in case "Skoda" happened to glance in his mirror. They reached the corner known as World's End and suddenly the road was clear and Alex had to switch gears again and pedal hard to keep up. The car drove on, through Parson's Green and down towards Putney. Alex twisted from one lane to another, cutting in front of a taxi and receiving the blast of a horn as his reward. It was a warm day and he could feel his French and history homework dragging down his back. How much further were they going? And what would he do when they got there? Alex was beginning to wonder if this had been a good idea when the car turned off and he realized they had arrived.
"Skoda" had pulled into a rough tarmac area, a temporary car park next to the River Thames, not far from Putney Bridge. Alex stayed on the bridge, allowing the traffic to roll past, and watched as the drug dealer got out of his car and began to walk. The area was being redeveloped, another block of prestige flats rising up to bruise the London skyline. Right now, the building was no more than an ugly skeleton of steel girders and prefabricated concrete slabs. It was surrounded by a swarm of men in hard hats. There were bulldozers, cement mixers and, towering above them all, a huge canary-yellow crane. A sign read: RIVERVIEW HOUSE. And below it: ALL VISITORS REPORT TO THE SITE OFFICE.
Alex wondered if "Skoda" had some sort of business on the site. He seemed to be heading for the entrance. But then he turned off. Alex watched him, puzzled.
The building site was wedged in between the bridge and a cluster of modern buildings. There was a pub, then what looked like a brand-new conference centre, and finally a police station with a carpark half-filled with official cars. But right next to the building site, sticking out into the river, was a wooden jetty with two cabin cruisers and an old iron barge quietly rusting in the murky water. Alex hadn't noticed the jetty at first, but "Skoda" walked straight onto it, then climbed onto the barge. He opened a door and disappeared inside. Was this where he lived? It was late in the day. Somehow, Alex doubted he was about to set off on a pleasure cruise down the Thames.
He got back on his bike and cycled slowly to the end of the bridge, and then down towards the car park. He left the bike and his backpack out of sight and continued on foot, moving more slowly as he approached the jetty. He wasn't afraid of being caught. This was a public place and even if "Skoda" did reappear, there would be nothing he could do. But he was curious. Just what was the drug dealer doing onboard a barge? It seemed a bizarre place to have stopped. Alex still wasn't sure what he was going to do, but he wanted to have a look inside. Then he would decide.
The wooden jetty creaked under his feet as he stepped onto it. The barge was called Blue Shadow but there was little blue left in the flaking paint, the rusty ironwork and the dirty, oil-covered decks. The barge was about ten metres long and very square, with a single cabin in the centre. It was lying low in the water and Alex guessed that most of the living quarters would be underneath. He knelt down on the jetty and pretended to tie his shoelaces, hoping to look through the narrow, slanting windows. But all the curtains were drawn. What now?
The barge was moored on one side of the jetty. The two cruisers were side by side on the other. "Skoda" wanted privacy – but he must also have needed light, and there would be no need to draw the curtains on the far side with nothing there apart from the river. The only trouble was, to look in the other windows Alex would have to climb onto the barge itself. He considered briefly. It had to be worth the risk. He was near enough to the building site. Nobody was going to try to hurt him with so many people around.
He placed one foot on the deck, then slowly transferred his weight onto it. He was afraid that moving the barge would give him away. Sure enough, the barge dipped under his weight; but Alex had chosen his moment well. A police launch was sailing past, heading up the river and back into town. The barge bobbed naturally in its wake and by the time it settled Alex was onboard, crouching next to the cabin door.
Now he could hear music coming from inside. The heavy beat of a rock band. He didn't want to do it, but he knew there was only one way to look in. He tried to find an area of the deck that wasn't too covered in oil, then lay flat on his stomach. Clinging onto the handrail, he lowered his head and shoulders over the side of the barge and shifted himself forward so that he was hanging almost upside-down over the water.
He was right. The curtains on this side of the barge were open. Looking through the dirty glass of the window, he could see two men. "Skoda" was sitting on a bunk, smoking a cigarette. There was a second man, blond-haired and ugly, with twisted lips and three days' stubble, wearing a torn sweatshirt and jeans, making a cup of coffee at a small stove. The music was coming from a ghetto-blaster perched on a shelf. Alex looked around the cabin. Apart from two bunks and the miniature kitchen, the barge offered no living accommodation at all. Instead it had been converted for another purpose. "Skoda" and his friend had turned it into a floating laboratory.
There were two metal work-surfaces, a sink and a pair of electric scales. Everywhere there were test-tubes and Bunsen burners, flasks, glass pipes and measuring spoons. The whole place was filthy – obviously neither of the men cared about hygiene – but Alex knew that he was looking into the heart of their operation. This was where they prepared the drugs they sold; cut them down, weighed them and packaged them for delivery to local schools. It was an incredible idea – to put a drugs factory on a boat, almost in the middle of London and only a stone's throw away from a police station. But at the same time, it was a clever one. Who would have looked for it here?
The blond man suddenly turned around and Alex hooked his body up and slithered backwards onto the deck. For a moment he was dizzy. Hanging upside-down, the blood had drained into his head. He took a couple of breaths, trying to collect his thoughts. It would be easy enough to walk over to the police station and tell the officer in charge what he had seen. The police could take over from there.
But something inside Alex rejected the idea. Maybe that was what he would have done a few months before. Let someone else take care of it. But he hadn't cycled all this way just to call in the police. He thought back to his first sighting of the white car outside the school gates. He remembered Colin, his friend, shuffling over to it and felt once again a brief blaze of anger. This was something he wanted to do himself.
What could he do? If the barge had been equipped with a plug, Alex would have pulled it out and sunk the entire thing. But of course it wasn't as easy as that. The barge was tied to the jetty by two thick ropes. He could untie them – but that wouldn't help either. The barge would drift away – but this was Putney; there were no whirlpools or waterfalls. Skoda would simply turn the engine on and cruise back again.
Alex looked around him. On the building site, the day's work was coming to an end. Some of the men were already leaving and, as he watched, he saw a trapdoor open about a hundred metres above him and a stocky man begin the long climb down from the top of the crane. Alex closed his eyes. A whole series of images had suddenly flashed into his mind, like different sections of a jigsaw. The barge. The building site. The police station. The crane with its great hook dangling underneath the jib. And Blackpool funfair. He'd gone there once with his housekeeper, Jack Starbright, and had watched as she'd won a teddy bear, hooking it out of a glass case with a mechanical claw and carrying it over to a chute.
Could it be done? Alex looked again, working out the angles. Yes. It probably could. He stood up and crept back across the deck to the door that "Skoda" had entered. There was a length of wire lying to one side and he picked it up, then wound it several times round the handle of the door. He looped the wire over a hook in the wall and pulled it tight. The door was effectively locked. There was a second door at the back of the boat. Alex secured that one with his own bicycle padlock. As far as he could see, the windows were too narrow to crawl through. There was no other way in or out. He crept off the barge and back onto the jetty. Then he untied it, leaving the thick rope loosely curled up beside the metal pegs – the stanchions – that had secured it. The river was still. It would be a while before the barge drifted away. He straightened up. Satisfied with his work so far, he began to run.