The Emerald Casket (11 page)

Chapter 7

‘S
he's gone!'

Gerald pushed through the crowd to where Alisha had been standing. Ruby and Sam were a metre behind.

‘She was standing right here. Then this guy grabbed her.' He scanned left and right, but there was no sign of her.

‘Are you sure?' Sam said. ‘She didn't just duck down one of these side streets?'

Gerald didn't respond. He knew what he saw. He turned to the shopkeeper: ‘The girl who was here— where did she go?'

The woman shook her head. She didn't understand.

Ruby spoke quickly. ‘There are only two ways they could have gone. Back the way we came or up this alley. I say we split up.'

Gerald knew there was no time to argue. He dived into the alley without looking back. Ruby and Sam would just have to keep up.

The crowd was thinner in that part of the market and Gerald increased his pace, dodging left and right between the shoppers. He looked around in desperation but all he could see was a line of stalls selling beads and sequins. He came to a crossroads: another alley cutting across his path. He looked either way and gazed up to the second- and third-storey balconies stacked up over the market.

Nothing.

No sign at all.

His mind raced. What was Alisha wearing? Jeans and a gold T-shirt? Or was it white? He couldn't think clearly. How would they find a policeman in this jumble of stalls and people? And would they be understood? Or even believed?

Then he heard a cry.

He looked around and caught a glimpse of gold in the night shadows. At a point where a lane forked in two and a pool of light spilled onto the ground, Gerald saw them. Alisha was struggling with the figure in black, battling to free herself.

Gerald yelled out and, for an instant, the attacker looked around. The figure's head was swathed in a black scarf that revealed only a narrow strip across the eyes.

‘You,' Gerald whispered.

It was the same person who had been watching him at the airport the night before. But before Gerald could take a step the lithe figure wrenched Alisha's arm and dragged her deeper into the maze of laneways.

Gerald set off. He had to keep up. He rounded a corner at speed only to find a cow lying in the middle of the path: a cow with two curved horns poking straight at his ribs. Gerald only had instinct to save himself from a certain impaling. He stuck out a hand and pushed down hard on top of the cow's head. Momentum lifted his feet from the ground and he spun a full twisting pirouette in the air. The cow let out a startled bellow as Gerald zipped past her head and skidded down to his knees. He bounced back to his feet and scrambled on.

His runners bit the pavement as he danced around a cycle rickshaw parked on the kerbside, its driver snoozing in the back seat. He was sure he saw the back of Alisha's head disappear around a bend. He slid sideways into the corner, upending a pile of baskets and sending their contents spraying across the ground. Ignoring the cries of the irate owner behind him, Gerald surged forward. He was gaining on them. He gulped in the hot night air.
This is good
,
I'm almost there
.

Then he ran smack into a wall of bodies. He'd wound his way into a lane so narrow that two people couldn't pass each other without turning sideways. Alisha and the figure in black were almost within reach, but between them and Gerald was a gridlock of maybe a hundred people all trying to squeeze through the bottleneck at once.

‘Alisha!' Gerald yelled. ‘I'm coming!'

Alisha turned towards him but her kidnapper was strong. She was dragged onwards. The harder Gerald pushed the people in front, the tighter he was stuck in the crowd. It was as if he'd blundered into a tar pit like some feeble-brained dinosaur. The crush of bodies pinned his arms to his sides and his progress stalled. All he could do was watch in despair as Alisha's terrified face grew more distant in the lantern light.

Gerald looked frantically around him. There were no gaps in the mob, no way through.

Then he looked up.

The gap-toothed array of awnings and sun-covers hovered above him. Just maybe…

Gerald heaved himself sideways, pushing past a middle-aged man in an orange turban to get to the brick wall between two storefronts. He freed his right arm and reached up. With an effort he grabbed a metal support rod that held up one side of a sheet of rusty corrugated iron. He wedged a foot into a gap in the bricks where the mortar had crumbled. Then he hauled himself off the ground and swung his other arm up to grab the rod. He pulled as hard as he could. But his hands were slippery with sweat. He needed more leverage.

He glanced down and saw the orange turban of the man beneath him. With a cry of ‘Sorry!' Gerald stepped onto the man's head with his left foot and scrambled up the wall, clambering onto the corrugated iron. He ignored the protests from below and jumped to his feet. A hotchpotch of iron and board stretched out before him like a line of stepping stones above the crowded laneway. Almost immediately Gerald spotted Alisha. She was only metres from the end of the alley where it opened onto a courtyard. At least five lanes twisted away in different directions. If they got much further ahead, Gerald could lose them forever.

There was a gap of a metre and a half to the next awning. Gerald peered at the people below. The man in the orange turban was yelling at him, shaking his fist. Gerald took a breath, edged his toes to the end of the sheet of iron and jumped. He soared over the gap and landed heavily on a section of plywood. The board shifted under his weight. He knew he was going to have to be quick to make this work. Without warning, the board dropped a foot and Gerald lurched backwards. His arms flailed as he tried to keep balance. With a push off his back leg he drove himself forward. He thumped down on the next board and it too began to collapse. Keeping his momentum rolling, Gerald stretched out, leaping across the trail of roofing off-cuts, flying along the line of awnings like a never-ending triple jump. Behind him battered iron and plywood swung over the heads of the startled people below. A storm of dust and bolts rained down as Gerald scrambled the length of the alley. He made a final leap onto the last of the awnings, landing on both feet with a resounding clatter. For a second he balanced there, unsure how to get down. Then the metal sheared away from the wall. Gerald rode the sheet of iron like a snowboard, bouncing first off a stack of wooden crates that splintered under him, then onto a trestle table covered with T-shirts. The table crashed to the concrete, and shoppers leapt clear as Gerald's makeshift ride skimmed across the ground. He didn't dare look back at the carnage behind him.

Gerald ran through a tight corridor and almost straight past the entry to a side street, only sliding to a halt at the last second. He backed up and peered into the gloom.

It was a dead end, lit by a single lamp suspended from a pole halfway down the street. The dirty yellow light cast a pall across the ground. Buildings stretched up three storeys on all sides creating a box canyon of decaying bricks and mortar. Blank windows and balconies stared down like the unseeing eyes of the dead. Unlike the rest of the market, this area was deserted… except for the figure in black and the terrified girl.

They stood at the end of the lane. The bandit rattled on door handles. All were locked.

Gerald took a few paces forwards, stepping past a cycle rickshaw in the gutter. ‘Alisha,' he said calmly, holding up his hands, ‘It's all right.' Her face shone wet in the lamplight.

The kidnapper—agitated, boxed in like a trapped animal—yanked Alisha to another door, squeezing a sob from her.

‘Let her go,' Gerald said. ‘Let her go…and you can go.'

Gerald took another step. He was only ten paces from them.

The bandit spun around to face Gerald, brandishing Alisha like a shield. A pair of eyes stared right through him, and towards the only avenue of escape. In a blink, the figure whipped a hand from deep within folds of cloth. A glint of silver. A dagger. Pressed into Alisha's throat.

Gerald had no idea what to do. There was no way he could try to free Alisha while there was a knife held against her neck. But he also couldn't stand aside and let the kidnapper escape with her. He stared into those eyes, searching for a solution.

‘You don't have to do this,' Gerald said. ‘If you need money, I can give it to you. Put the knife down. Let her go. And we'll get some money. Okay?' Gerald took half a step closer. The bandit tensed, tightening the grip on Alisha. The blade pressed into her skin.

A cry caught in Alisha's throat. Gerald could see the whites of her eyes grow large. He stopped. Then he sensed something move behind him.

‘Gerald?' a cautious voice called.

He shot a glance over his shoulder. Sam and Ruby stood at the entry to the cul-de-sac. He turned back to face the figure with the knife. At least now he had numbers on his side.

The bandit started moving in a shuffling crawl towards Gerald, with Alisha still gripped tight.

Gerald was distraught. How could he stop them?

The answer came too quickly for him to register. From a balcony up to his left a blur of movement shot across the alleyway. The figure in black fell backwards and crashed to the ground. Another flash in front of Gerald's eyes exploded in a shower of dirt, plaster and debris. Gerald blinked. Was that a flowerpot?

Someone up on a balcony was throwing pot-plants and one had connected with the kidnapper's head. Gerald grabbed a dazed Alisha by the hand.

‘Come on!' he said. ‘Time to go.'

They ran the short distance to join Ruby and Sam under the light pole. Gerald looked around to see the bandit stagger upright with a hand to his head. Another flowerpot smashed at the kidnapper's feet. All eyes shot up to the balcony where a figure stood in shadow, a pot in each hand.

The kidnapper turned to face Alisha, the dagger raised and ready. But before it could be launched, the knife was knocked out of the bandit's hand. Ruby crouched and picked up another rock from the ground. Her second throw missed the bandit's head by millimetres.

‘Join in any time you'd like,' she said to the others.

Gerald and Sam sent a hailstorm of stones and broken flowerpots across the alley. The figure in black ducked and weaved. Then the bandit pulled something from a pouch. It looked like a ball on the end of a short rope. The kidnapper swung it in an arc and flung it across the lane towards the balcony. It split into a three-pronged sling that sliced fizzing through the air. The ropes snared around a bamboo prop under the balcony and snapped it clean. With a wrenching screech, the metal balcony tore off the front of the building, sending the figure with the flowerpots tumbling into the street.

The bandit set off like an Olympic sprinter, heading straight at them.

Gerald tensed, ready to make the tackle. But the bandit dodged to the right clean past him, then jumped onto the canopy of the cycle rickshaw and up onto a balcony. In the same fluid movement, the bandit grabbed onto the gutter and swung up onto the roof. In a blink, the figure in black was off across the rooftops.

Gerald turned to Alisha but she waved off all his questions with, ‘I'm all right. He didn't hurt me.' She glanced at Ruby, who still held a rock in her hand.

Alisha opened her mouth but Ruby got in first. ‘It's okay,' she said, letting the stone fall to the ground. ‘You don't have to say anything.'

Alisha raised her chin an inch. ‘I wasn't planning to,' she said.

Ruby's eyes crackled with lightning. ‘Why, you little—'

She was cut off by a moan coming from the wreckage of the collapsed balcony. Sam and Gerald rushed across to find a man splayed on his back amid a twist of rusted metal and shattered pottery. He wore a black polo shirt and dark trousers, and what looked like military-issue boots. There was another moan and the man eased up onto his elbows.

‘Are you okay?' Gerald asked.

The man's dark hair was clipped short and he sported a neatly trimmed goatee. His arms extended out of his shirtsleeves like tree trunks. When he spoke from his mattress of pottery shards, it was with a French accent. ‘Thank you for your concern, Monsieur Wilkins, I am fine.'

Gerald's head jolted. ‘How do you know my name?'

The man pushed back on his shoulders and bounced to his feet like a gymnast. ‘It is the job of Interpol to know such things,' he said.

‘You're with Interpol?' Sam said. ‘Inspector Parrott said you'd be in touch.'

‘I was expecting a phone call,' Gerald said. ‘How did you know we were here. Who was that guy?'

The man waved his hand at the boys, as if shooing flies. ‘Your questions can wait. I must speak with Mademoiselle Gupta.' Ruby had stalked off into the shadows further down the alley and Alisha had assumed a pose of practised indifference beneath the streetlight.

‘Mademoiselle, I am Special Agent Leclerc. You are unharmed?'

‘My arm's a little sore but I'm okay.'

The man grunted. ‘You have a mobile phone?'

Alisha nodded and retrieved her phone from her handbag. The officer took it and stabbed his thumbs into the keypad.

‘I'm afraid mine is out of battery. Now, the local police will be looking for you,' he said, tapping out a message. ‘I need to contact them about pressing charges.'

‘Don't you have to catch that guy before you can charge him?' Gerald said.

‘I was referring to charges against you, Monsieur Wilkins.'

‘Me!'

‘You caused a great deal of damage in your pursuit of Mademoiselle Gupta. But if you do as I say you should avoid any time behind bars.'

Gerald's eyes widened. He had no desire to witness the Indian criminal justice system from the inside.

Leclerc handed the phone back to Alisha. ‘The local chief of police is a friend of mine,' he said. ‘That message should smooth things over until I see him. Now tell me, Mademoiselle Gupta, the man who attacked you, did he say anything: anything that might provide a clue to his identity, where he was taking you?'