S.O.S (19 page)

Whoever he was and wherever he was, Molly knew that she had to find him.

*

“Father Tom?” The voice that came from behind was smooth and friendly and Tom turned to see who it was. He thought, from the voice that he must know him, but the man in front of him he didn't recognise and he never forgot a face.

“Yes? How may I help you?” It was rare to get new visitors to the parish; God wasn't very popular these days.

“Hi, I'm Bill,” The man held out his hand. His manner was easy and open and Father Tom shook his hand. He looked at him. He looked young, with his large framed glasses and slicked back hair. He had a nice, symmetrical face that may have been handsome if it wasn't for the eyes. Tom stared at the eyes and they stared back; there was nothing behind them.

“I'm from the
Morning News
,” the young man went on, “and I know it's late, but I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions?” He had a press pass round his neck on a lanyard and Father Tom frowned then; there was only one thing that this could be about.

“Oh,” he said, rather disappointedly.

The young man noticed the note in his voice, and tried to placate him. “I realise that it's not very pleasant to bring up what happened here, but I wanted to take another angle on the story, something more personal,” he said. “I will only take a few minutes of your time.” The young man smiled. “I'd be very grateful. I'm just starting out and I'm looking for unusual stories.”

Tom was taken in by the man's earnestness; there seemed something genuine about him. “OK then,” he said, “how about we go in here.” Father Tom waved the man through to join him in a small room off the main church. “We use this room for our liturgy group on a Sunday.” Tom smiled and shrugged. “As you can see, we're not very well attended.”

The young man nodded and smiled. Again Tom noticed that the smile seemed odd; it was all mouth and no eyes. The two men settled down in the small room to chat.

The interview was polite, with the young man's main focus on the nature of the light that Tom had seen; not particularly unusual given the fantastical nature of the saga. Father Tom tried to answer the probing questions as best as he could, but inevitably the man looked frustrated when he couldn't come up with a reply to some of his questions. The questions began to peter out and the interview was pretty much over when the young man asked if he could use the bathroom. Tom stood and showed him the right door, across the other side of the entrance to the church. He went back to his chair and waited. He had never been interviewed by the press before so he had nothing to gauge this experience against, but if he was honest, it felt peculiar. The questions had been intense and the young man had seemed irritated.

The assassin paused inside the bathroom door, appraising what he was about to do with a calculating mind. He removed his glasses, pocketing them as he prepared to enter the state of calm that was necessary for this work. The priest had not been as helpful as he had hoped, and now he would have to use other methods in order prise the information from him that he so needed. It was regrettable, but necessary he thought. The old man seemed pleasant enough, peaceful and reasonable, unlike so many of his fellows, but that was irrelevant. There was a job to be done. Turning, the assassin walked slowly towards the door, pausing for one last moment before unlocking it.

“Father Tom? Could I have a word?”

The assassin froze at the voice. It seemed to echo around the church entrance. Instantly he moved away from the door and replaced the glasses that built up his disguise. He listened intently to the murmur of conversation. It was an elderly woman's voice then moments later there was another voice that joined hers, younger, higher pitched. The moment was lost; he would have to wait.

Quietly he slipped across the entrance, the low hub of conversation in the side room covering any noise his exit might have made; he opened the door and vanished into the icy morning. Later Father Tom would wonder what had happened to the polite journalist, but he thought nothing of it. These days it seemed that there was very little left that could surprise him.

*

Molly sat on her bed with her rucksack packed and waited until morning. She wondered about messaging Dev, but thought better of it; she didn't want anyone to know where she was. As the light slowly crept over the city and stole into her room, she collected up the contents of her savings and stuffed them into her purse. She pulled her hat down over her ears, buttoned up her coat and left the house before her mother could wake and try to stop her.

The first morning train pulled out of Kings Cross station with a small jolt, hardly felt by the passengers making their way north. Most read their morning papers, or spent their time figuring out the crossword, or sat with headphones in ignoring the world around them, or played with their phones. Molly Sharp did none of those things. She had chosen a window seat and now sat in an angry daze, staring out at the passing world which slowly became less urban and built up. The countryside beckoned and the rolling hills began to emerge alongside meadows of grass, occasionally hidden when they passed through a tunnel and everything was darkened. The scenery however did little to help Molly's mood.

She was numb with fury; confused and bewildered by how someone she had loved for all those years could have kept this a secret. A twin; it was like half of Molly was missing and she had never known about it. God, no wonder she was weird, she thought. What else could her mother have been hiding about the past?

Feeling tired now, and hungry, she stood and made her way to the buffet car. She was unsteady with the motion of the train and she felt slightly sick having not eaten since last night. But she didn't have money to waste on an expensive breakfast, so she bought herself a big cup of coffee and a packet of crisps. That should keep her going, at least until she could find a Lidl when she got to the other end to buy some lunch.

Molly had switched off her phone and dozed for the rest of the journey without being interrupted by any calls or messages. When the train pulled into the station she was jerked awake and looked out at the Victorian roof of the station. She gathered up her bag and queued to get off the train. As she stepped onto the platform, she had the sudden realisation of what she had done. She was in Newcastle, with just some adoption papers and the name of a children's home. She had been rash and stupid. She shivered and pulled her coat a little tighter around her. Following the other passengers out to the main station concourse, she looked for the nearest information desk and made her way across to it.

*

A remote area of North Korea

Zack heard noises before he saw the light. There was some shouting and what sounded like the rattle of chains and locks. Suddenly blinding sunlight flooded the space and he had to shut his eyes. He heard more shouting and then the sound of heavy boots. He opened his eyes. He was still in the jeep but it was in some kind of massive storage container the doors of which were wide open. Zack stood and jumped down from the jeep, standing at the open doors of the container. It was a railway coach; he was on a railway somewhere in North Korea. He heard more shouting and jumped right down onto the track and then the scrub land beside it. He looked up the track at the rest of the train.

“There's nothing here sir, not that we can find.”

An American voice. Zack turned.

“Well we've got no jurisdiction to hold them for any longer Sergeant. I guess we'll have to let the train go and head back to Pyongyang. I know that they're hiding something, we just can't find any blasted evidence of it!” The man who spoke wore a uniform and a blue beret. “Load up the trucks then Sergeant and let's get outta here.”

Zack hurried across to the man and stood by his side. UN Forces, he read from the cap badge. He wanted to punch the air. Zack had lived his whole life with nothing ever going right and now, in the middle of North Korea he had been inadvertently rescued by a United Nations nuclear search party heading back to the capital. He smiled and that broadened to a grin and finally he let out a yell and laughed out loud, only no-one there was able to hear him.

*

Newcastle

Molly took a taxi to the address that the woman in the information office had given her. The woman told her that out in Heaton it was better to use a cab and to keep it waiting while she made her visit to the address that she had. It was a trek back to the city centre and she was better not doing that alone.

Leaving the driver a tenner as a deposit, Molly made her way up the path of an ugly, old neglected building. Net curtains twitched at one of the windows as she stepped over an abandoned bicycle. The sign ‘Helton Court' had been knocked sideways and the end of the word had been half scratched out so that it read, ‘Hell Court'. Molly knocked on the door and waited. She had been rehearsing all the way here what she was going to say, how she was going to track him down, but when the door was opened and she stood face to face with an old, fat man who had brushed the last strands of his hair right over the top of his head to hide his baldness, she lost her nerve. He stared at her, small piggy eyes in a face bulging with flesh.

“What?” he snapped. “You looking for som'ing?”

He wore a vest and trousers, and over the top of these a cardigan that had lost some of its buttons.

Molly cleared her throat. “I'm looking for someone,” she said. “He was adopted from here and I wanted to see if erm...if I can find him.”

The man stared at her. “Unlikely,” he said, “we get loads of kids thru here, and none of ‘em ever settle. This isn't yer usual home ye know.”

“Oh, I...” Molly cleared her throat again. She had lost all her nerve. “I've got a picture of him,” she blurted, “and his original name. Do you have any records I could check?”

The man shrugged. He seemed to be weighing up the situation. He glanced over Molly's shoulder and looked at the waiting taxi. “You can have a look at me records for a small donation to the home,” he said.

Molly nodded. Mentally she calculated the cost of the return fare to the station, with maybe a deviation to another address in the city, if she could find out where Michael had gone. She might just be able to do it.

“OK,” she said, “I've got three pounds, but that's my only offer. It's all I've got.”

The man thought for a few moments, again weighing up. Finally he shrugged. “OK. In the room at the back. They're in the cabinet, marked Personal Records. I'll let you get on with it.” He opened the door a bit wider and Molly slipped into the house. Before she did so she waved at the taxi driver, pointed at her watch and mouthed five minutes.

The room at the back was grubby and dim with a thin film of grime that seemed to cover everything. Molly took a good look round and wondered what it must feel like to live somewhere like this. She shivered; it was freezing in there. Across the room, under a table, she spotted a filing cabinet and went to it. The whole top drawer was marked 'Personal Records'. Opening the drawer, she found a file of registers first and opened it. Remaining standing, she ran her finger down the list scanning the names. She supposed he would be Michael Sharp before he was adopted and that's what she was looking for.

She found him in the third set of registers. So, that told her that he'd been there, but not where he'd gone. She glanced at her watch, conscious of the time and the meter running on the cab. She thumbed through the rest of the files in the drawer and right at the back she found one marked adoption records. This would be it, she thought, this would tell her where her twin brother was. With trembling hands, she opened the file and leafed through the papers. His were there just towards the back; Michael Sharp's adoption papers. Molly lifted them out and looked at the snap shot of the smiling blond haired boy and read the name on the records. She dropped the file.

Stepping back, she caught a sob in the back of her throat and put her hands up to her face. Her heart beat frantically in her chest and she had to focus on breathing. A few moments later, she recovered enough to drop her hands away and knelt and picked up the file. Right across the front of it, across the photograph and the name that she knew so well was the word RETURNED. Molly replaced the file back in the drawer, closed it and with a heavy heart, she left the home and climbed into the taxi.

“Where to now pet?” the driver asked.

“Back to the station,” Molly said. “I have to go home.”

*

London

The young man was frustrated. He was no further forward and he had been in London for almost a week already. The systems that he'd hacked weren't proving valuable and he had little to report on a daily basis to the Colonel. He sat in his hotel room and picked at a plate of food while he checked his computers. The curtains were closed and the faintly green glare from the screens made him look old and haggard. They made him look like a killer.

He was browsing the net when one of the system alerts went off. He had put key words into the alert code and now the NHS medical records site had notified him that several of those words had come up in a new report filed the previous night. The assassin entered the site and brought up the relevant record. He scrolled down the report. It didn't seem to add up to much – it usually didn't with mental health records, but he stopped the curser on one sentence and highlighted it. The young girl in the report had been talking about dark matter and seeing a light. She also, according to the report, was having delusions about dead people and hearing voices. The assassin moved back to the top of the report and made a mental note of the name and address of the patient. Somewhere in the back of his mind was the faint flutter of a thought but it was too far away at the moment to harness it. He closed the file and exited the site.