Anthony Horowitz - Necropolis

“I was on my way to Chislehurst. I’m a piano teacher. I pulled out without looking. I can’t tell you how dreadful I feel…”

Matt watched as they breathalysed him and it almost made him smile, seeing him blow into the machine. His breath wasn’t human and if he’d drunk a crate of whisky it was unlikely that it would register. Meanwhile, their driver was loaded into an ambulance and driven off to hospital. Thirty minutes or more had gone by and Richard was desperate to be on his way, but the police weren’t having any of it. They would have to take a statement. Will you come with us to the station, sir? There was no way out. Richard, Matt and Jamie were driven away.

It was almost four o’clock by the time the police finished with them. Even if they had wanted to go to Heathrow, it would have been too late. Scarlett would already be in the air, on her way to Hong Kong.

They left the police station and dropped into a local cafe but Matt refused the offer of a drink. He was angry and depressed. The Old Ones were out-manoeuvring him at every turn. They seemed to know exactly what he was going to do and the trap they had set had been childishly simple. He didn’t mention the taxi that he had seen pulling out of Ardbeg Road, but it had already occurred to him that Scarlett might well have been inside it. Their paths had finally crossed… but seconds too late.

“Let’s go to her house,” Matt suggested.

“Why?” Richard didn’t even look up from his tea.

“I don’t know. She could still be there. But even if she isn’t, now that we’ve come this far…”

Neither Richard nor Jamie spoke.

“I’d just like to see where she lives,” Matt said.

The three of them walked back to Ardbeg Road. It reminded Matt a little of the street where he had once lived. All the houses were terraced with bay windows, neat front gardens and shrubs to hide the wheelie bins. Scarlett’s was about halfway down.

They rang the bell, not expecting it to be answered, but after about half a minute the door opened and they found themselves being examined by a short, stern-looking woman with black hair tied back and eyes that seemed to be expecting trouble.

“Yes?” she said. She had a Scottish accent.

“We’re looking for Scarlett Adams,” Matt said.

“I’m afraid you’ve missed her. She left this morning.”

Richard moved forward. “Do you live here?” he asked.

“Yes. I’m the housekeeper. Are you friends of Scarlett’s?”

“Not exactly,” Matt said. “We’ve just arrived from America. We were hoping to see her.”

“That’s not going to be possible. She’s going to be out of the country for a while.”

“Do you know when she’ll be back?”

“It could be a week or two. I’m very sorry, if you’d been here just a few hours ago, you’d have caught her. Do you want to leave a message?”

“No, thank you.”

“Right.”

The woman closed the door.

And that was it. There was nothing more to be done. For a moment, nobody spoke. Then Richard sighed. “Anyone fancy a trip to Hong Kong?” he said.

Originally, there had been twelve members of the Nexus – the organization that existed only to fight the Old Ones. Professor Sanjay Dravid had been the first to be killed, stabbed at the Natural History Museum the same night that he had met Matt. Later on, a man called Fabian had also died. That just left ten – powerful people who lived in America, Australia, Europe… all over the world.

They had all flown in to meet Matt and Jamie and at half past seven that evening they came together in the secluded, wood-panelled room which was their London base.

The building, which the Nexus owned, stood between two shops and there was nothing, no name or other marking, to suggest that it was anything but a private house. The room itself, up on the first floor, was equally plain. It could have been the meeting place of some small business, perhaps a firm of expensive solicitors. There didn’t seem to be much there – just a long table with thirteen antique chairs, a handful of telephones and a computer and a lot of clocks showing the time all over the world. But the glass door that slid open automatically and then hissed shut, sealing itself as the ten men and women came in, suggested that there might be more to the place than met the eye. A sophisticated camera blinked quietly in the corridor. And the Nexus arrived one at a time, each one entering a different six-digit code before they were allowed in.

Matt wasn’t looking forward to seeing them again. He knew that they were supposed to be on his side, but even so he felt a certain dread entering the room. It was like facing ten head teachers at the same time, knowing he was about to be expelled. There were only two people there who he felt he knew. He had met Susan Ashwood, the medium, at her home near Manchester, and although he had thought she was completely mad, at least he was fairly sure that her heart was in the right place. And he had got to know Nathalie Johnson in the past few months. She was the American computer billionaire who had helped Scott and Jamie and she had travelled down to Nazca a couple of times to make sure they were all right.

But that still left eight strangers. There was an Australian, broad and bullish with a round face and close-cropped hair. His name was Harry Foster and he owned a newspaper empire. Next to him, there was a bishop who dressed like a bishop and talked like a bishop but who hadn’t actually told Matt his name. He was about sixty years old. Tarrant, the senior policeman who had helped put taps on Scarlett’s phone, was at the head of the table, dressed in a smart blue and silver uniform.

Among the others, Matt had noted a Frenchman in an expensive suit, a small Chinese man who was continually rubbing his hands, a German who was something big in politics and two others who had made no impression on him at all. They might all be world leaders. But tonight they just looked tired and scared.

Richard, Jamie and Matt had taken their places at the table, bunched together at one end. The three of them were in a gloomy mood. Scarlett Adams, the fifth Gatekeeper, had turned up in London and they had flown thousands of miles to see her. But she had slipped through their fingers and even as they sat there, she would be thirty thousand feet up in the air. Every word that they spoke, every second that passed, only carried her further away.

“We made a mistake.” Nathalie Johnson came straight to the point. “We knew who she was. We knew where she lived. We should have approached her ourselves.”

“It was my fault,” Susan Ashwood said. “I didn’t want to frighten her. I thought it would be easier for her if she heard it all from you.” She turned to Matt. “I hoped you’d be here sooner. I didn’t realize we’d have to wait for the new passports.”

“I thought you had people watching her,” Matt cut in. “Weren’t there two private detectives or something?”

“They were ex-policemen,” Tarrant said. “Duncan and McKnight. Good men, both of them. I’d worked with them before.” He paused. “Scarlett may have caught sight of them. They were parked in a car outside a park in Dulwich and they had to be more careful after that. They kept their distance. But they were still on top of the case. Until last night…”

“What happened” Richard asked.

“They’ve both disappeared. Vanished without a trace. I’ve tried to contact them but with no luck. I have a feeling they may have been killed.”

There was a brief silence while the rest of the room took this in. It was obvious to all of them that they had underestimated the Old Ones. From the moment Scarlett had been identified, they had been running rings around the Nexus.