Stormbreaker

other people who had come to the cemetery. Had they really known Ian Rider? Why had he never met any of them before? And why did he find it so difficult to believe that they really worked for a bank?
    “He is a good man, a patriotic man. He will be missed.”
    The vicar had finished his graveside address. His choice of words struck Alex as odd. Patriotic? That meant he loved his country. But as far as Alex knew, Ian Rider had barely spent any time in it. Certainly he had never been one for waving the Union Jack. He looked around, hoping to find Jack, but saw instead that Blunt was making his way toward him, stepping carefully around the grave.
    “You must be Alex.” The chairman was only a little taller than him. Up close, his skin was strangely unreal.
    It could have been made of plastic. “My name is Alan Blunt,” he said. “Your uncle often spoke about you.”
    “That’s funny,” Alex said. “He never mentioned YOU.”
    The gray lips twitched briefly. “We’ll miss him. He was a good man.”
    “What was he good at?” Alex asked. “He never talked about his work.”
    Suddenly Crawley was there. “Your uncle was overseas finance manager, Alex,” he said. “He was responsible for our foreign branches. You must have known that.”
    “I know he traveled a lot,” Alex said. “And I know he was very careful. About things like seat belts.”
    “Well, sadly, he wasn’t careful enough.” Blunt’s eyes, magnified by the thick lenses of his spectacles, lasered into his own, and for a moment, Alex felt himself pinned down, like an insect under a microscope. “I hope we’ll meet again,” Blunt went on. He tapped the side of his face with a single gray finger. “Yes …” Then he turned and went back to his car.
    That was when it happened. As Blunt was getting into the Rolls-Royce, the driver leaned down to open the back door and his jacket fell open, revealing a stark white shirt underneath. There was a black shape lying against it and that was what caught Alex’s eye. The man was wearing a leather holster with an automatic pistol strapped inside. Realizing what had happened, the driver quickly straightened up and pulled the jacket across. Blunt had seen it too. He turned back and looked again at Alex. Something very close to an emotion slithered over his face. Then he got into the car, the door closed, and he was gone.
    A gun at a funeral, Alex thought. Why? Why should bank managers carry guns?
    “Let’s get out of here.” Suddenly Jack was at his side. “Cemeteries give me the creeps.”
    “Yes. And quite a few creeps have turned up,” Alex muttered.
    They slipped away quietly and went home. The car that had taken them to the funeral was still waiting, but they preferred the open air. The walk took them fifteen minutes and as they turned the corner onto their street, Alex noticed a moving van parked in front of the house, the words STRYKER & SON painted on its side.
    “What’s that doing …?” he began.
    At the same moment, the van shot off, the wheels skidding over the surface of the road.
    Alex said nothing as Jack unlocked the door and let them in, but while she went into the kitchen to make some tea, he quickly looked around the house. A letter that had been on the hall table now lay on the carpet. A door that had been half open was now closed. Tiny details, but Alex’s eyes missed nothing.
    Somebody had been in the house. He was almost sure of it.
    But he wasn’t certain until he got to the top floor. The door to the office, which had always, always been locked, was now unlocked. Alex opened it and went in. The room was empty. Ian Rider had gone and so had everything else. The desk drawers, the closets, the shelves … anything connected to the dead man’s work had been taken. Whatever the truth was about his uncle’s past, someone had just wiped it out.

HEAVEN FOR CARS

    WITH HAMMERSMITH BRIDGE just ahead of him, Alex left the river and swung his bike through the lights and down the hill toward Brookland School. The bike was a Condor Junior Roadracer, custom built for him on his twelfth birthday. It was a teenager’s bike, with a cut down Reynolds 531 frame, but the wheels were fullsize so he could ride at speed with hardly any rolling resistance. He spun past a delivery van and passed through the school gates. He would be sorry when he grew out of the bike. For two years now it had almost been part of him.
    He double locked it in the shed and went into the yard. Brookland