The Red Road (42 page)

“It’s a good point, yes,” Mr
Davies said. “But this is the general method we use for working out
missing ratings. Now ...”

He sounded keen to move on. I didn’t
question the method any further, mostly happy to go with the flow.
There would be some influence from the parent company over the
smaller ones, I thought, but I didn’t see how people stuffing their
faces with chocolate could tell you how well they were caring for
their pets.

Mr Davies commenced with his
explanation of the calculation. “We take the ratings we know of,
adding them up with their relevant scores, and dividing them by the
total individual number available.”

Fair enough
, I thought. It
was just maths, even if a little contrived. I presumed they would use
real data when they had it to hand.

“That’s the left-hand
calculation done. We then do much the same with the right-hand
calculation, except that we also include the missing Enfield House,
giving it the lowest score available. Now, for each side we then
divide the subsidiaries’ internal score, as identified by the
client, who in this case we will pretend is the headmaster, by the
number of subsidiaries who have rating scores greater than B. We then
multiply those two together and then times that final result by
0.341.”

Pardon? My hand was up again, and I
could see that everyone else looked as bemused as I did.

“Yes?” Mr Davies said. The smile
wasn’t quite as full as it had been before. Maybe he knew what was
coming.

“Um, what’s the number?” I
asked.

“This one?” Mr Davies tapped the
right-hand portion of the equation.

“No, 0.341,” I said. “Is that
meant to be PI?” That wasn’t the only question I had. This was
the strangest way of averaging out a score I had ever seen.

“Don’t worry about that,” Mr
Davies quickly dismissed me. “No, it’s not PI. This is a number
that will have been worked out by the analysts, prior to us wanting
to score our subsidiary. This number will represent the keystone to
accurately discovering what the rating of our missing subsidiaries
will be.”

“How would we work out any other
missing ratings?” Silverman asked.

“The same way, per level,” Mr
Davies said.

“Do we need a different number for
each?”

“No,” Mr Davies said, clicking
the cap back onto his marker pen. “We use the same rating for all
the missing subsidiaries on the same level, until it is updated by
the analysts.” He spoke as if there was nothing at all wrong with
the information he had just supplied.

I opened my mouth to speak, to
contest what I had heard.

“It’s very important to get
these things right when dealing with hard currency,” Mr Davies
concluded, cutting me off and moving on to other things.

No wonder these guys working in
banks could afford boats and huge houses, I thought, they just made
it up as they went along. Clearly, they were trading in bullshit,
working magic with numbers to generate revenue. It sounded quite
wrong, and suddenly physics was making a great deal more sense to me.
At least physics was grounded in hard facts, rather than make-believe.

I
bit my tongue, however. I wanted to
be
one of these people,
one of those rich traders who was retired at thirty-five, without a
care in the world. If this was how it worked, then so be it. At least
there was nothing illegal about the process and no one suffered from
it.

Chapter Twenty-Six

I
couldn’t sleep. Why, I didn’t know. Maybe it was the excitement
of finally leaving St Christopher’s and starting my new life. Ever
since I had walked out of that final exam, I had felt like a free
man, the world at my feet. It was like I had just come into a large
sum of money and was planning what to do with it. It was like
Christmas Eve night when I was little, knowing that Father Christmas
would be arriving to deliver all kinds of wonderful gifts. I still
had two more days to go, though. My parents’ work had extended
their stay in the Netherlands by a few days, and so I had to wait for
their return before I could exit those gates for the final time.

The lack of sleep shouldn’t bother
me; it wasn’t as though I had anything to get up for or do. I had
sat in my dorm for the past couple of days, largely twiddling my
thumbs. A Game Boy could only keep you occupied for so long. Most of
the other third years had now gone, only the overseas students
remaining until the last day. With Simmons no longer here, I was
running the dormitory on my own. Or what passed for it at any rate.

A smoke would set me right.

I slipped out of bed, quietly
opening my tuck box and removing the cigarettes and lighter I had
replaced since the last time, when Father Thomas had caught me. No
longer a true pupil at St Christopher’s, being caught smoking would
simply result in the cigarettes being confiscated and nothing else. I
crept out of the dormitory, none of the second years so much as even
stirring as I moved past their beds.

I took a walk out around the
school, finding it comfortably warm. The summer season was well and
truly upon us, the days hot, the temperatures reaching into the high
twenties. The temperature tonight was likely somewhere in the upper
teens.

I made towards the same door I had
exited the school by the previous time I had taken a walk, before
thinking better of it and heading for another. Staff, security and
monks still patrolled the school, even if nothing had happened of
late. I saw none of them as I crossed the grounds.

My walk took me up to near the
junior school, where I stopped under a tree and lit one of the
cigarettes, taking a drag and looking about the buildings. I would
miss this place, I decided. I had been here for a good chunk of my
life. I briefly considered what it would be like to stay. It was a
fleeting thought, however, and it was brushed aside just as soon as
it arrived.

I then saw someone moving about.
Damn, someone out on patrol. I instinctively made to toss the
cigarette aside, the security staff well aware of the school rules,
when I remembered that it could no longer land me in trouble. It was
clear they hadn’t seen me. They likely didn’t have Max the
Alsatian with them, either. He would have smelled me. Odd to give a
dog a human name. Wonka was better. I decided to walk away, finish my
smoke elsewhere and go back to bed.

But as I made to do so, I saw that
the figure wasn’t alone. They were carrying something.
Someone
.

Subconsciously, I started forward.
Something about the shadowy figure was making me feel extremely
uncomfortable. This wasn’t one of the teachers, monks or patrol
staff. This was an intruder. Their gait, height and stature reminded
me of someone, too. I then saw who it was and the cigarette tumbled
from between my fingers.

“What are you doing?!” I cried.

Adrian Willis jumped, almost
dropping the limp body of the boy he held in his arms. He then gave
me a look that caused my blood to run cold and made me want to run
and hide. “Looks like I’ll be dumping two again tonight.” The
tone of his voice was something other than I could describe. ‘Evil’
was the only word that sprang to mind.

“Oh, holy fuck! It was
you
!”
I breathed. “You’re the killer! You’re the one who killed
those boys!”

“Joe?”

In the dark, and with me in my
pyjamas, Adrian hadn’t immediately recognised me. He then came
forward, peering a little more closely, still clutching the body to
him, their arms and legs dangling down.

“Adrian ... what ... what are you
doing?” I asked again. I should have been running to find help,
shouting to alert the rest of the school. Yet I found myself unable
to do so, quite staggered by the scene that lay before me.

“Go back to bed, Joe,” Adrian
growled. “This doesn’t concern you.”

“No,” I said. I could hear the
fear in my voice. It was a small boy Adrian held, likely one of the
junior first years, and probably not more than ten years old. The boy was
still in his pyjamas.

Scream for help!
my mind
shouted at me. My feet remained rooted to the spot.

“What are you
doing?” I asked again. “How did you get that boy? How did you get
into the school and past all the securi ... ” Oh. Of course. He had
told me that earlier. The side gate, by the lookout tower. But how
had he been sure no one would see him? Oh, hell. Baz and I had proved
it to him with that trip to the White Horse. Shit, shit, shit, shit,
shit!

“Do you think that I don’t know
all the ins and outs of this place?” Adrian asked. “I came here
for over nine years, spent four of those in Churchill House. I know
the place like the back of my hand.”

Churchill House? Someone else had
called it that once. Of course. The junior school. It had been known
as Churchill when Adrian had studied here, being a part of the senior
school before the senior school itself had really existed.

“Go back to bed, Joe,” Adrian
warned again. “Your exams have finished, you should have left by
now.”

His voice was different to how I
remembered. Normally warm and passive, he now sounded more like the
Adrian that had flared up in the White Horse. I suddenly felt
terrified of him and at last I heeded the suggestions my mind had
been issuing. Rubber necking was a terrible thing.

“Help!” I began shouting, my
legs moving automatically. I began running, wanting to go in several
different directions at once. Everywhere seemed logical – the doors
to the junior school, the doors to the houses, the classrooms. Yet I
found myself heading in any direction but those. That was what panic
did to you. I wasn’t moving nearly as fast as I wanted, either. I
looked down to see what the problem was and remembered immediately
that I was wearing slippers. Running in such footwear wasn’t in the
least practical. Running along the tarmac barefoot would be worse,
however.

“Hey! No!” I heard Adrian shout
behind me, and knew without turning around that the man was in
pursuit, having dropped the boy he was holding, so the body wouldn’t
weigh him down as he came after me.

I ran as best I could, still
shouting at the top of my voice, finally deciding on running straight
for Butcher, for my own dormitory. I must have subconsciously
realised that any door I made for would have been locked and would
only have impeded my escape. A slipper then flew off my foot,
skittering along the road, my toes scraping and bending along the
tarmac. Blood exploded immediately from my big toe as the nail was
folded over. The pain was instant and intense, causing me to start
hobbling as I tried to resume my escape.

Moments later, Adrian was on me.
Wearing proper shoes, he had had the advantage, but I was still
stunned at the speed that he was able to catch me. He wasn’t
exactly a teenager, nor very young for that matter. To my horror, the
next thing I discovered was that he was a great deal stronger than I
had expected.

I turned as he grabbed me, swinging
a punch that I successfully landed on his face. It lacked power, I
could tell, and Adrian didn’t even seem to feel it, dropping down
and pulling my legs out from beneath me. I braced myself as I went
over, managing to stop myself from striking my head on the road, as
was likely Adrian’s intent, and scrabbled back to my feet. I saw as
I did so that the boy that Adrian had been carrying was lying where
he had been dropped, still and quiet. Why hadn’t he gotten up? Had
Adrian killed him already? I was sure that the previous two had died
at the scene ...

Adrian made a grab for me again,
saying nothing as he attacked – no taunts, quips, mocks or insults
of any sort. He was entirely focused on this task. I struggled
against him, trying to bring myself around to face him. He was
holding me from behind, and no matter where I swung my fists, I could
find no effective part of his body to strike. I jerked my head back,
hoping to smash his face with it. I missed completely.

“Help!” I shouted. Something was
then on my face, covering my mouth, Adrian’s fingers pinching at my
nose. It was a cloth of some kind, and it wasn’t until I was forced
to draw breath that I realised how much of a mistake inhaling had
been. At first, I thought that the man had placed it over my mouth to
prevent me from shouting. But as an acrid taste filled my throat and
nostrils, I knew that he was trying to drug me. It was working
quickly, too. That would be because of the adrenaline in my body,
causing my blood to circulate a lot faster. This was likely why the
boy was so still on the ground – Adrian had done the very same to
him.

“Hey there! What’s all this?”

I recognised the voice, though I
couldn’t immediately place it. My vision was becoming hazy, my legs
turning to jelly. I felt Adrian release me as a dark, giant shape
descended on us, and Adrian proceeded to grapple with the robed
figure, still as silent as when the chase had begun. I then saw who
the giant was – Father Thomas.

“Joe!” he said to me, as he
fought hard to restrain Adrian. “Call the police! Now!”

I felt myself once more moving
automatically, my mind racing to think where the nearest telephone
was. In my house, I concluded. I staggered along, the world tipping
and tilting as I went. It was like trying to walk along a ferry
during a rough crossing. It took me a moment to appreciate why I was
having such difficulty opening the door back to Butcher, trying to
push instead of pulling to open it. I fumbled for the lights as I
entered. Whatever Adrian had done to me was making the dark far more
difficult to negotiate than usual.

I fell down, striking the floor
hard, but not feeling it. I pulled myself up, crashing next into a
wall. Reaching the telephone in this state could prove a
near-impossible task. But somehow I did, discovering it in its usual
place. I yanked the receiver free and stabbed at the keypad. As with
the door, it took me several attempts to get it right, at first not
realising why the phone was refusing to connect me. 999 was the
number for the police, not 899, 988, 888 or 998.