Wanted (Flick Carter Book 1) (24 page)

Jessica Dixon stood as the major sat down. ‘Thank you Sir,’ she said. ‘Now firstly some background. It is our belief that Mayor Griffin is secretly raising a private army and that he intends to move against the king. That is still some way off. Quite recently he learnt of the presence of a high ranking Scav operative in the region, something which, incidentally also came to our attention some months ago.

‘And this is where you come in, Carter. It seems that Carter’s sister Felicity had contact with this Scav, the exact nature of which we still need to determine. And then Griffin attempted to extract his whereabouts from her. We do not believe she divulged the information, and she may have been actively helping the Scav. Anyhow, we believe that Griffin decided to exact revenge by burning down the Crown Inn. We regret to say that the status of two persons is currently unknown, namely Rosemary Carter and Nicholas Carter, and we do unfortunately fear the worst.’

Adam was stunned. ‘Are you telling me my dad and little sister are…’ He swallowed. His voice went quiet and seemed to go up an octave. ‘Dead?’

‘We can’t be sure, but we fear that may be the case, yes. I’m very sorry Carter.’

Adam steadied himself. The lieutenant had only mentioned Dad and Rosie. Had she got away? ‘And Flick? Sorry, Felicity?’ he asked.

‘As of this evening, she was alive, although she had sustained some injuries. Unfortunately she was the further victim of a kangaroo court instigated by the mayor, and has been sentenced to termination. Normally this wouldn’t happen for several days, but we suspect that Griffin will advance his agenda.’

‘So Mayor Griffin wants to kill Flick too?’ Adam could barely get the words out.

The lieutenant nodded. ‘Yes, I’m afraid so. We’ve pulled you out of training, and we want you to come along. This is a highly irregular action, and I must stress you will take no active part in the operation. You will be present only to provide local knowledge and first hand information regarding your sister, her friends, activities and so on. Do you understand?

‘Yes, ma'am.’

‘Now as an adjunct to the operation, Socko here has another mission. He is being tasked to examine the scene of the fire and attempt to determine exactly what happened. Back in the old days before The Collapse, they had a thing called a scene of crime, and our researchers over at the Bodleian have discovered a number of instructional works on the topic of forensic science. This seems the ideal opportunity to see what can be accomplished.’

The briefing continued for a while longer, but Adam didn’t really take anything in. All he could think of was Rosie and Dad. Flick too. Once it was over, the Kingsmen headed out.

After the briefing, they were led down into the cellars and through a series of passages until they arrived in a large underground garage. There were vehicles in here the like of which Adam had never seen; buggies, stagecoaches, limousines, hatchbacks, estate cars, wagons, flatbed trucks, coaches… Most of the vehicles had been adapted to be pulled by horses, but some hadn’t. Adam gawped open-mouthed.

‘What is this stuff?’ he asked the room in general.

‘Don’t get ideas, kid,’ Sergeant Wailing said to him. ‘This stuff is way above my pay grade. From where you are, you can’t even see it!’

They wove between the trucks and wagons until they came to a large vehicle parked right by the entrance. From the rear, it looked a bit like a large truck, but the entire back of the vehicle had folded down to form a ramp, and the Kingsmen all marched up into the cavernous opening and sat on the benches that ran down each side. Once they were all in, the back of the vehicle rose of its own accord and closed, leaving them in darkness.

Adam was seated between Bill Young and Mo Fletcher. As Adam’s eyes adjusted, he could see that it was not totally black; there were small slit-like windows in the sides of the vehicle.’

‘This the first time you’ve been on an APC?’ Fletcher asked him.

Adam nodded. ‘I was just thinking it must take a lot of horses to pull a wagon like this. What is it? Six? Eight?’

She laughed. ‘It really is your first time, isn’t it. This is the finest machine you’ll ever see. It’s not even old. It doesn’t need horses!’

 
‘So what is it then, steam?’

‘Not steam,’ she said. ‘Dunno what it is–it’s top secret–but it’s not steam.’ Then she called out, ‘Hey sarge, what’s this battle wagon powered by? It’s not steam, is it?’

‘It’s powered by all your bull crap, Fletcher,’ Sergeant Wailing growled, ‘now zip it.’

Fletcher leaned across to Adam. ‘We let the locals think it’s steam, but it’s not,’ she whispered, and winked at him.
 

The APC started moving. Adam didn’t know how fast an APC went, but he imagined it would take them a good three hours to cover the eighteen miles to Faringdon. It had taken two hours to come the other way, but that was in a light carriage. So he shut his eyes and let the rhythmic motions of the truck lull him to sleep.
 

FLICK SHOUTED AND screamed at the closed door, the empty room, her cell. She pulled and rattled at the bars in frustration and desperation, but of course they were firmly locked and didn’t budge. Eventually she collapsed against the back wall and sobbed.

She must have slept, because she remembered the nightmares. She dreamt that she was chained and manacled, being led up the steps to the scaffold. Mayor Griffin was there, jeering and laughing and so was Mary, and Joe and Maggs, laughing and mocking. Maggie was the one that put the noose around her neck, whispering in her ear.

You should have done what he wanted, Flick.

Then she saw her father and Rosie standing in front of her, on fire.

Why should you live? It should have been you.

She screamed, trying to block her ears against the words. Then Rosie had her flaming hand on the lever, pulling it, and the ground opened and she fell.

She woke with a jump. It was dark, but she was still in the cell, cold and uncomfortable. She sat up and rubbed her arms to get the circulation flowing. Something was different. At first she couldn’t tell what it was, but then it struck her: there was a draught.

The tiny windows at the top of the cell didn’t open; they barely let in any light. But something somewhere must be open for there to be a draught. She looked around. The limited amount of moonlight that did reach through the windows was enough to make out shapes but not much else. But there was definitely a draught coming from somewhere. Then she noticed that one of the windows looked different. It was broken. She was sure it hadn’t been broken before.

Why would someone break the window?

To throw something in.

She felt about on the floor until she touched the broken window glass. The largest sliver she slipped into a pocket; it might come in handy as a weapon if she wrapped a piece of blanket around it so she didn’t cut herself. She smiled. So someone had deliberately broken the window. Maybe they had sent her a message: stand back this is a jail break or something. She scrabbled around the floor with renewed vigour. It was still too dark to see clearly, but she thought she could make out something glinting. She picked it up. It was small and metallic. A key.

Someone had broken the window and given her a key. Now she was really excited. Just two doors separated her from freedom, and she had the key. This really was an escape. She went to the cell door and tried the key in the lock. It didn’t fit.

Bugger
.

There must be another key. Two doors… two keys. Why hadn’t she seen that before? She felt around the floor, but there wasn’t another key lying anywhere inside the cell. Maybe it had rolled through the bars. She put her arm through them, stretching as far as she could reach, but there was still no key. Finally she had to admit defeat. She slumped back against the wall. Why would someone throw her a key, just to get her hopes up, if it didn’t open the door? It looked like she was stuck here after all.

Flick stared at the bars of her cell. This was so frustrating. The key had to be to the outside door of the jail, but trapped inside the cell, there was no way to get to it. She stared at the bars. Gradually the moon moved around, changing the shadows. She wondered idly what it would be like, when the time came. She guessed she’d know soon enough. Or she could rob Mayor Griffin of his victory and end it now; she had the glass knife, wrapped in a strip of blanket for a handle. It would be so easy.
 

But what had Fred said? “We’ll think of something?” Maybe it was Fred that broke the window and threw in the key. But where had he got the key from? He’d already told her that Griffin had the only key, so surely it couldn’t be Fred. But he’d said something else. She hadn’t registered it at the time and then it had slipped from her mind. What was it?

These bars are not much more than show
.

That meant there must be a way out. There had to be. If only she could fathom what it was.

She looked hard at the bars. They went from floor to ceiling, fixed into a strip of metal at the top and bottom, and passing through another strip in the middle to hold them rigid, so they couldn’t be pulled apart. Then there was the door, made from more bars, but it was shorter, so it could be dropped on its hinges.

She stared at the hinges. Of course, it was so obvious now she could see it. The hinge was made from a simple vertical pin welded to the frame, which went through a loop on the door. The space at the top of the door was to allow the door to be dropped onto the pin. Then a cap was welded to the top of the pin to stop the door from being taken off again. Only there were no caps. So if she could lift the door, she could get out. The lock was just a simple plate stopping the door from swinging open, and wouldn’t stop the door from lifting.

She could get out!

The door turned out to be incredibly heavy. She found she could lift it a little way, but not far enough to get the barrels of the hinges off their pins. She needed something to use as a lever.
The stool
. The legs were long enough and she’d be able to fit one through the space under the door if she broke it apart first. She picked up the stool and swung it against the wall as hard as she could, and the stool came to pieces. Now she slid a wooden leg under the door and pulled upwards with all her might. She managed–just–to get the barrel to the top of the pin. She leant her weight against it and that was enough to dislodge the barrel and the door fell noisily into the stairwell outside the cell.

Flick cringed. Someone must have heard that. But outside there was only silence. Her arms were trembling now, partly from the effort of lifting the heavy door, but partly also from the fear that even now she could get caught, and that would be more terrible than she could even imagine.

She pulled the key from her pocket. She had to hold it steady with both hands, she was shaking so much. There was just one door between her and freedom. She put the key into the lock… it fitted, but try as hard as she might, the key wouldn’t turn.

Now she wanted to scream. What good was a giving her a key if it didn’t unlock the only door between her and freedom? Flick sagged against the wall. She stifled a sob. She’d got this far; she was out of the cell, and so close to freedom she could almost smell it. Why couldn’t she unlock the door? Come to that, why didn’t whoever had thrown her the key simply unlock the door themselves and let her out?

Because the Watchmen on guard duty would stop them, of course.

But then, wouldn’t they stop her as soon as she opened the door?

But then the key didn’t unlock the door from the inside anyway. That seemed odd. If the key didn’t unlock the door from the inside, surely it wouldn’t unlock the door from the outside either? So the key didn’t unlock the door at all. Which meant this
wasn’t
a rescue. So why throw her the key?

This didn’t make sense.

Think it through, Flick, she muttered. There had to be a point to the key. It didn’t fit the outside door, and now she remembered Fred saying something about the mayor having the only key. If that was true, he definitely wouldn’t let it out of his sight. So the key had to fit something else. Not the cell door, she’d managed to take that off its hinges. And anyhow if it fitted the cell door she’d be no better off than she was now. It had to be something else. If only she had some light she’d be able to see if there were any other locks.

Light. That was it!

The first day she was here, it had been dark too. Fred had said to her the thugs should have opened the upstairs door to let some light in.
 

She could go upstairs!

She climbed over the cell door to the staircase. Just after the point at which it doubled back on itself there was a door. She felt for the handle, and sure enough there was a keyhole underneath. She tried the key and it fitted. And it turned with a satisfying click. The door was unlocked! Flick almost skipped up the remaining stairs and into the small court room.

She’d spent hours looking at those big windows during the trial, wondering how easy they would be to open. As it turned out, they were plain ordinary sash windows, held shut by a simple latch. She flicked open the latch on the window farthest from the door and lifted the sash. It was stiff, but with some effort she managed to lift the window high enough that she could squeeze through. The guards would be on the other side of the building, but she checked that there was no one about before easing her legs through the gap. She lowered herself as far as she could, hanging on to the window ledge by her finger tips until she dropped to the ground below.

The moon was now low in the sky, but it was still bright enough that Flick would be clearly visible if anyone should look, and in a few hours the sun would poke above the horizon. So now her only thought was to get as far away from here as possible, and with that in mind she slipped out of the square. She made her way through the dark streets to the edge of town. From here there was a wide clear grassy area separating the town from the embankment and gates. A fire glowed close to the gate, and she could be sure that there would be at least two guards on duty. She might manage to cross the gap, but she wouldn’t get through the checkpoint without being seen and identified.