The Ultimate Truth Read Free Page B

jam-packed with traffic, and it’s one of those massive mega-roundabouts that are really hard to cycle round at the best of times, so I got off my bike and wheeled it along
the pavement, then crossed over the road at the pelican crossing instead.
    The crossing led me into North Walk, a pedestrianised street at the quiet end of town. If you keep going along North Walk, then turn left at the end, you’re right in the middle of town
where all the big shops are. But I wasn’t interested in big shops. All I was interested in was the familiar small office building at 22 North Walk, where Delaney & Co was located.
    That morning though, as I wheeled my bike along the pavement, nothing looked very familiar. A lot of the shops were closed, their doors and windows boarded up. Others were still open, but their
windows were cracked and shattered. As I passed by a shoe shop and looked inside, I could see that it had been ransacked – shoes and boots strewn all over the place, the walls kicked in, the
sales counter smashed up. The street itself was a mess too – litter bins ripped out, signposts bent out of shape, the road covered with broken glass and bits of rubble.
    As I stopped and looked around for a moment, I remembered seeing something on the local news about a small-scale riot in Barton. Under normal circumstances, I’m sure I would have paid more
attention to it, but these weren’t normal circumstances. Although Nan still turned on the TV most evenings, none of us really watched it. Even if we were sitting there looking at it, we
weren’t actually taking it in. We had other things on our minds, things that really meant something. So all I could remember about the news report was that there’d been some trouble in
Barton town centre recently and looters had damaged a number of shops and buildings.
    I hurried on down the pavement, hoping the rioters had ignored Mum and Dad’s office. But even as I approached the office building I could see that the main door was patched up with a sheet
of plywood, and it was clear that it had been kicked in and smashed open. I couldn’t understand it at first. It was obvious from the names of the companies listed on a plaque by the door that
there was nothing of any great value in the building:
JAKES AND MORTIMER, SOLICITORS
on the second floor;
TANTASTIC TANNING
on the first;
DELANEY & CO, PRIVATE INVESTIGATION
SERVICES
on the ground floor. I mean, why would anyone bother looting places like that? What were they hoping to steal – a sunbed and a couple of filing cabinets? But then I realised that
rioters and looters probably don’t think very rationally, they just break into anywhere and grab whatever they can. Even if there isn’t anything worth stealing, there’s always
going to be something to smash up.
    I wheeled my bike through the open door and headed down the corridor towards Mum and Dad’s office.
    The office door was half open, the pebbled-glass panel smashed out. As I leaned my bike against the corridor wall, I heard a muffled
clonk
from inside the office. I stopped and listened.
I couldn’t see anyone through the broken door panel, but there was definitely somebody in there. I could hear them – shuffling footsteps, a muted cough, a quiet sniff.
    My heart was beating hard now, and for a moment or two I was tempted to play it safe. Just turn round, walk out, and call the police. Let them deal with it. But my heart wasn’t just
pounding with fear, it was seething with anger too. This was my mum and dad’s office. I’d spent half my life in here. It was full of good memories. It was a special place. It was
our
place. No one else had a right to be in our place.
    I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then pushed open the door.

6
    The first thing I saw when I went into the office was a young woman picking up piles of papers from the floor. She had bright-red hair, a tattoo on her right shoulder, and she
was wearing a tiny black miniskirt, a vest top, and