Dead Ball by Tom Palmer (best novels in english .TXT) 📗

you out of trouble. To your parents. Remember I promised you’d be fine. That I’d look after you?’

Danny knew now that there was definitely something going on. More than Holt just writing a story. Why was he being so cagey? He’d always been straight before.

And an insane thought drifted into Danny’s mind.

Holt.

Was he a double agent? Someone who worked for two sides. Maybe he was involved in something more than writing newspaper articles.

But Danny knew he was being stupid. The book he’d been reading was warping his thoughts. Holt was his friend. Holt was straight. If he was hiding anything it was to protect Danny.

But Danny just couldn’t leave it alone.

‘You’re treating me like a kid,’ he said. He regretted it immediately.

‘That’s way out of order,’ Holt whispered loudly. ‘I have never treated you like a kid. What about Sam Roberts? I trusted you all the way with that. Remember?’

Danny nodded. He had to concede that point. It was true.

‘So don’t accuse me of that,’ Holt went on.

‘Tell me something,’ Danny pleaded.

‘I’ll tell you one thing, Danny. And this is the last thing I’ll say. Otherwise you’re going back to England on this plane once it reaches Moscow.’

Danny’s shoulders dropped. ‘What?’

‘Leave it well alone. Enjoy the trip – but no funny business. And that is the last I have to say on it. If anything, you’re making me treat you like a kid by behaving like a kid. OK?’

Holt held Danny with a fierce stare.

‘OK,’ Danny said, reluctantly.

It was a closed door. Danny tried not to feel the sort of frustrated anger he felt towards his parents when they told him off. Because that was what had just happened.

An hour later – somewhere over Poland – Danny was waiting outside the plane toilet. In the space between business class and economy. Bursting. The cabin crew had brought him three cans of Coke already.

He tried to take his mind off it by looking around the plane. At the small oval windows. At the seats, row after row, going back to the tail of the plane. But he couldn’t stop hopping from one foot to another. Until he heard a voice behind him.

‘You all right?’

Danny turned round.

It was Matt McGee. The Matt McGee.

Danny had nothing to say. Here was the man he’d been thinking about, almost investigating.

‘You’re a bit young for press, aren’t you?’ McGee went on. He was tall – like Finn – but had darker hair and a more friendly face.

Danny grinned. ‘I’m on – er – work experience. With Anton Holt.’

McGee stepped back. ‘You’re kidding,’ he said. ‘When I was a kid I did work experience at a supermarket. Unbelievable.’

‘I was lucky,’ Danny said.

‘So what are your mates doing for their work experience? Is one of them flying this plane?’ McGee grabbed on to one of the seats, like he was worried they were going to crash.

Danny laughed.

Then the toilet door opened. Danny recognized the man emerging from the small room. Ray Stubbs from Match of the Day. Stubbs nodded to McGee.

‘After you,’ McGee said to Danny.

And Danny locked himself in the toilet. He put his back against the door. To get his breath back. He’d talked to Matt McGee. And he’d seemed all right. A really nice man. Not the drunken, gambling, former criminal everyone made him out to be.

WEIRD CITY

The first thing that struck Danny in the airport was the signs. Half the letters in the words were weird – not from the A to Z alphabet he knew. There were back-to-front Ns and upside-down Vs. It was seriously unsettling. Danny liked to know what signs said.

All the press and FA officials had to queue in a line to have their visas checked. Along with Danny. But the players had gone on, whisked away by the man with his pile of passports.

As Danny approached passport control he began to feel nervous. There were several glass booths. Each had a stern-faced official checking the passengers through. Danny saw what they did. They looked at the passport, then at the person’s face. After putting the passport through some sort of scanner, they then spent a long time reading it.

Behind them was a row of police or army officers. Each with a huge brimmed hat. And – Danny was shocked to see – they carried machine-guns. He’d never seen a machine-gun before: not in real life.

There was a line on the floor you had to stand behind before you were summoned. Danny dutifully stood behind it. Then he was summoned. By a woman. About the same age as his mum. Her dark hair pinned back severely so that it pulled her eyebrows upwards with a look of surprise. Her eyes were narrow, her nose long and thin.

She looked at Danny’s passport. Then at his face.

Danny knew he had to try and look like himself. He didn’t want to smile. You weren’t supposed to smile.

Then she scanned his passport through her machine. And passed it back to him.

He was surprised how quick it had been. But he didn’t hang around to complain.

Danny walked on. Past the machine-guns. As fast as he could without running. He wanted to find Holt. Quickly. Where was he? Everything was glass panes and white panelling. It was featureless, putting Danny on edge. All the time he was thinking that security would be on the look-out for people behaving strangely. And now he couldn’t help but think that he was behaving strangely.

Danny looked back for Holt, but was quickly told – in hand gestures – to move on, by one of the machine-gunners.

So he kept walking, down a corridor, through a hall, a string of people passing ahead of and behind him.

Where was he going?

Where was Holt?

He was starting to wish Holt had put him back on the plane. He felt out of his depth. And all he was doing was walking through an airport. What would he be like in the city? At the football stadium?

He came to another corridor. Two automatic