Olivia and the Great Escape (12 page)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Viktor staggered off the wire and half-fell into the arms of one of his team.

“I can’t go on,” he murmured.

“Get him in the tent,” said Ethan, brusquely. “We don’t want anyone spotting him in this state. I’ve got the doctor waiting.”

“The doctor?” There was a glimmer of hope in Viktor’s eyes. “He will certify I can’t go on. He must. Then I’ll be able to get some sleep.”

“In your dreams,” snorted Ethan, unsympathetically. “He’ll give you a shot to keep you going.”

“I can’t, Ethan. I can’t go back out there.”

Ethan put his face very close to Viktor’s pale one. “You can and you will,” he said. “I’ve too much riding on this to let Jack Marvell carry
off the prize now. I promise you, Viktor, if you can just hang on for another couple of days Jack Marvell will be gone and the way will be clear.”

“How can you be certain?” asked Viktor, exhaustedly. “He’s got guts. He won’t give up easily.”

“Oh, I don’t think he’ll have any choice,” said Ethan, with a grim little chuckle. “I’m going to make quite sure of that.”

Viktor looked horrified. “I didn’t sign up for this,” he whispered. “You promised me there’d be no dirty tricks.”

“I didn’t realise at the time that you had so much growing up to do,” said Ethan crushingly. “You don’t really have a choice, Viktor. Walk away now and you will forever be known as Viktor the loser.”

Viktor looked as if he was about to weep.

“Come along, boy,” said Ethan. “Let’s give you that shot. You know that I’ve got your best interests at heart. I’ve invested a lot in you.”

Viktor didn’t have the strength to argue. He just wanted to lie down and sleep for a week.

It was turning into another wild night down at the river. The snow was coming down in
great squally blasts and the wire was becoming treacherous. Jack almost slipped twice as he walked gingerly towards the river’s edge. He shivered. His thoughts were as dark as the night. There were still another ten days before he’d sleep in a warm comfortable bed again.

The nights were always the longest. Sometimes, when he was lying in his flimsy hammock being buffeted by the wind and feeling the damp seep into his bones, he fantasised about soft, warm duvets, fluffy eiderdowns and clean white pillows. He felt as if he hadn’t slept for a year. Everything he did required an almost super-human effort. For the first time in his life, he doubted his own strength and ability to succeed in the task he had set himself.

He unclipped his safety wire and stepped on to firm ground. “The wire’s slippery,” he said to Pablo, gruffly.

“I’ll deal with it,” said Pablo. He helped Jack into the small shelter. There was just one other member of the team there, at the ready with hot food and drinks and warm, dry clothes. It would just be the two of them on duty that night, taking turns to check that nobody went near the wire.

Pablo stuck his head out of the tent. The snow had turned to sleet, the extra-wet kind that always finds a way to get down the back of your neck. He slipped on Jack’s heavy duty cagoule, with its distinctive
JM
on the back, clipped on the safety harness and started to wipe off the build up of grease that could make the wire so treacherous. He was concentrating so hard that he didn’t notice the figure on the bridge filming him.

The alarm bell buzzed to warn Jack that he had just ninety seconds to get back on the wire or he would be in breach of the rules. It was so snug in the little tent. He stood up rather reluctantly and Pablo appeared at the flap of the tent and passed him back his distinctive cagoule. Jack put it on and trudged back down to the river. He had a long night ahead of him. He stepped back on to the wire at exactly 1.10am.

In the small shelter, Pablo rolled out his sleeping bag. “I’m going to get my head down for a few hours, Dave. Wake me at 5am and I’ll take over the watch. And wake me if Jack makes contact.”

The other man nodded. He went outside and sat under a canopy they had rigged up to
keep off the worst of the rain. It was freezing. He felt as if his toes had turned to ice. He watched Jack descend safely into his hammock then glanced back at the little tent. He could hear Pablo snoring. Dave put on his headphones to listen to some music. It would help to keep him alert and awake. And that was why he didn’t hear someone coming up behind him or feel the handkerchief soaked in chloroform being pressed over his mouth and nose until it was too late.

A few minutes later, a man wearing a coat with
JM
on the back could be seen stepping off the wire and quietly making his way up towards the shoreline, looking about shiftily as if worried he might be spotted. He headed swiftly into the maze of narrow streets around the bridge and into the shadows. Once there, another man handed him a new jacket and a cap. The man put them on and walked swiftly away.

Pablo woke with a jerk at 4.50am. He was alone. Through the tent flap he could see Dave sitting out front, watching the wire. He hoped the guy had stayed awake for the last four hours. There had been some lapses in the past
few nights.

He pulled on some extra layers and went outside. Dave murmured that all was well and then headed off home. The rest of the team would be back at six. Pablo settled down in the shelter with a black coffee. He knew that it was the dark hours before first light that Jack found most difficult and he often came off the wire shortly after 5am for a break. Pablo watched as the first rosy tints of morning began to streak the sky. The time ticked by. Pablo smiled to himself. Maybe Jack was actually having a rare good night’s sleep.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Olivia and Tom walked into the classroom together.

“Oh,” said Olivia, “I’ve forgotten to call Kasha back again. He left a message saying he wanted to talk to me…” She tailed off. There was something very strange about the atmosphere in the classroom. Most people were gathered around one of the computers in the corner of the room. When Kylie saw Olivia, she nudged Connor. People fell silent and turned round to stare.

“What is it?” asked Olivia, urgently.

“I think you’d better see this, Livy,” said Kylie. “We thought you must already know about it.” She shrugged and looked worried. “But it seems we were wrong.”

“Jack…?” asked Olivia, with a quiver in her voice.

The other children parted like a sea to let her see the screen.

Cheat!
screamed the headline to the news story, which said that, last night, Jack Marvell had been spotted leaving the wire and checking into a hotel near Tower Bridge. One of the receptionists had filmed him on her phone. Underneath there was a link to an interview with her.

“I recognised him at once,” said Tilda Soames. “We have lots of well-known people staying here. We’ve even had that lovely Kasha Kasparian. So I knew who the man was as soon as he walked in. I’ve always been a bit of a fan of Jack Marvell. But not any more! He checked in under another name and the room was already booked and paid for. But he seemed so shifty that I filmed him as he headed for the lift. I was so disgusted that somebody of his reputation should be cheating in this way. I knew it was my duty to contact the newspapers.”

The video she’d made had been posted below. Olivia clicked on it and gasped.

It wasn’t the greatest quality and the man
had a cap pulled down low over his head, but it certainly looked very much like Jack. He moved very much like Jack did and had all the same mannerisms.

Olivia knew it must be a forgery, but she couldn’t bear for people to think that her dad was a cheat.

She stood up, knocking over her chair, and ran from the room and out of the Swan towards the river, closely followed by Tom.

“It just gets worse and worse,” said Pablo, gloomily. They had retreated to the tent to get away from the photographers and TV crews that were everywhere. “Somebody else has come forward with more video evidence that Jack wasn’t on the wire last night.” He touched his phone and the video began. This time, Jack had been filmed in Tooley Street, asking directions to the hotel. Olivia’s heart was racing. Again the film was pretty blurry, but it certainly looked and sounded a lot like Jack.

“It must be a fake,” she said.

Pablo sighed. “Of course, but the people putting this stuff out are convinced it’s not. Apparently, they’ve grilled the receptionist
and the night porter backs her up. He thinks it was Jack, too.” He paused. “And there’s worse. There’s a film showing me on the wire wearing Jack’s jacket shortly before he checked in. The implication is that I was impersonating him while he slipped away to a hotel for the night. There’s even another bit showing him coming off the wire at 1.42am.”

“So why were you on the wire last night?” asked Tom.

“I was cleaning off the grease,” explained Pablo. “It’s got to be done regularly for safety reasons. There was nothing odd about it, except that unfortunately I’d borrowed Jack’s jacket when I did it. I didn’t know someone was secretly filming me.”

“But you must be able to swear that Jack went back on the wire at 1.10am and didn’t come off the wire again until 7.12 am?”

Pablo looked worried again. “That’s the problem. I can’t swear that, and neither can anyone else. I certainly saw him step on to the wire at 1.10am and I saw him come off at first light. I can also swear that he didn’t come or go between 5.02am and 7.12am because I was watching the wire. Plenty of other people were
with me from six o’clock, too.”

“But what about between one and five, then?” asked Olivia.

“I was asleep, and the guy on watch has confessed to falling asleep almost as soon as he sat down, and he didn’t wake up again until just after four-thirty. It’s odd, because he’s normally completely reliable. So, anybody could have come and gone on the wire during that time. We don’t have a leg to stand on.”

“It’s such bad luck,” said Tom.

“I don’t know how much is down to bad luck,” said Pablo. “Most nights there are at least three of us here all the time, sometimes more. It was as if somebody knew that there were only going to be two last night. I’m beginning to think that we’ve got a mole in our midst.”

Just then, a woman popped her head round the flap of the tent. “He’s coming off, Pabs,” she said.

Pablo stood up with a sigh. “This isn’t going to be pretty.” He turned to Olivia and Tom. “I think you two’d better go. You are not going to want to see this.”

But Olivia refused to leave so they went and stood by the end of the wire. Jack moved along it
like a man walking towards his own execution. On the bridge there was a loud crowd of people shouting, “Cheat! Cheat!” As he reached the end of the wire there came the sound of hundreds of camera shutters clicking.

“Are you going to make a statement, Jack?” called the reporters. But Jack said nothing. His face was grey and his eyes looked dull. As he tried to walk towards the tent he was jostled and pulled about by the press, which wasted precious seconds of his break.

“Are you going to give up?” cried one.

“What do you feel about the loss of your reputation?”

“Are you a cheat, Jack Marvell?”

Olivia couldn’t bear it. “He’s not a cheat,” she shouted. “He’s the most trustworthy person in the whole world. And I’m going to prove it.”

Pablo pushed them into the tent and closed the flap. Olivia threw herself at Jack’s neck. He gave her a small, sad smile.

“I hope you
can
prove it, Liv. Because otherwise I’m finished.”

When Olivia and Tom got back to the Swan, Alicia, Aeysha, Georgia and Eel were waiting
for them in the hall. Eel ran towards her sister and hugged her.

“We saw you on the TV, Livy! You were amazing.”

“You were,” said Alicia and she looked quite tearful. “We were all enormously proud of you.”

“We all totally believe in Jack,” said Aeysha, quietly. “We know he’s no cheat.” Olivia smiled gratefully at Aeysha as she continued, “We’re going to do whatever we can to help you prove that he’s been set up. We’ve got to find who’s responsible.”

“We do,” said Olivia. She just wished she knew where to start.

The bell rang and the hall filled with Swans scurrying to their next lesson. When they saw Olivia and the others standing in the hall, they all went quiet. Some averted their eyes and looked embarrassed, a few muttered “Sorry” as they passed by. None of them had seen Olivia’s outburst on the TV yet.

“Come,” said Alicia, “let’s go up to my office and have hot chocolate and talk.” Once again the sea of children parted to let Olivia, Alicia and the others make their way up the
stairs. As they neared the top, they passed Alex Parks. He was very pale.

“Livy, I’m very sorry about your dad,” he said, in a whisper so quiet she could barely hear him.