The Key to Finding Jack by Ewa Jozefkowicz (i can read books TXT) 📗

Peruvian cathedral. Apparently the jewellery in them had been mined by the ancient civilisation of the Incas and had been passed down through the generations until it was eventually hidden by a group of priests in the vault of a church. Then, one day, it mysteriously vanished. Jack said that the strangest thing about it was that the vault seemed completely untouched.

‘This meant that the priests began to accuse one another, because somebody must have used the key to get the treasure. But the mystery deepened when it became apparent that the key itself was missing.’

‘Seriously? Did they find it?’

‘I don’t know, because we’d reached the school gates by then and both had to go home. I noticed that Jack had been fiddling with something at his throat as we were walking. When I asked him what it was, he showed me the key. I should have confiscated it because you’re not allowed jewellery, but I didn’t. I asked him jokingly if it was the key to the Inca gold. He just laughed.’

‘And you never spoke about it again?’

‘We never had any reason to. In fact it was only about a year later that Jack came to me wanting to do guitar lessons. By then I’d forgotten all about it.’

‘Until now,’ I said quietly.

‘Until now,’ he agreed.

As we walked out of school with Finny, my brain was brimming with information about Jack. The tiny drummer was beating out scrambled beats – each one a tiny snippet of a melody, but none of them coming together in a recognisable song. Sometimes the beats overlapped and the noise got so loud that it caused a pain in my temple, but my feet kept walking beside Keira, moving towards her mum’s waiting car.

Eleven

‘He wasn’t on the trip!’

Mum’s yell tore me from the murky depths of a dream. I’d been standing in a dimly lit underground cavern, a glass door before me. From behind it came the gentle strumming of a guitar. As I crept closer, I made out a familiar silhouette sitting in a chair, swaying gently to the music. I banged on the door, but nothing happened. In my left hand I was holding a bunch of keys – maybe a hundred. I was struck with the awful realisation that only one of them would open the door. Then I heard Mum’s shout.

I switched on the light. It was the middle of the night. I could hear Dad’s frantic voice from the kitchen. I crept to the top of the stairs to listen.

‘What do you mean? He was going. He said he was going! He told us he would get on the bus to Lima so that he was there when Simon arrived at the weekend, and they’d go on to the national park.’

‘He didn’t get on the bus. They checked all the records.’

I tiptoed downstairs and sat on the bottom step, listening.

‘What does this mean?’ asked Mum. Her voice sounded as if it was coming from underwater.

‘I suppose it’s good news for us. Quite a number of the people on that trip have now been confirmed dead, haven’t they?’

Mum mumbled something in response.

‘Sorry. Sorry. Obviously, I didn’t mean it like that. Their poor families… But it means he’s still out there. I’m certain he’s still out there,’ said Dad decisively.

‘But where? The last time that we spoke, he distinctly said he’d signed himself up for it. If he didn’t end up going, then where is he? Hold on, didn’t Jack say something about this in his voicemail?’

I heard Dad scrambling around for his phone and then Jack’s voice resounded so clearly that he could have been standing right there in the kitchen. It sent a jolt up my spine.

‘Hey, Dad, if you get this within the next hour, call me back. If not, I’ll try you again tomorrow. This week I’ll be heading to Arequipa and then hoping to catch the Lima bus so that I can meet Si when his plane comes in on Saturday night. We’ll go to Paracas and then later maybe to Cusco. It’s a bit touristy and not the cheapest, but hey, I’m sure I can wangle myself a discount using my charm. Si’s excited to join me. We’ve been arranging logistics already. Love to Mum and Flick. Adios.’

‘It’s a case of finding out where he went instead. I’ve already spoken to Simon and he says Jack didn’t specifically talk about any change of plan although he did mention “a surprise” which we don’t know anything about. We’re going to have to keep thinking.’

Simon. I should have gone to see him yesterday when I had the chance. Without his address, my best bet was to ask Sutty. I didn’t want to bother Mum or for her to find out about my playing detective before I had something more concrete to tell her. As I crept back to bed, I made a mental note to locate Simon as soon as possible.

‘Right, what have you got for me?’ Keira asked as she collected me for school the following morning. She had by now fully assumed the role of junior police inspector investigating a disappearance. Maybe she thought that by using phrases borrowed from TV, I’d forget that the investigation we were conducting was actually to do with Jack.

‘He didn’t go on the trip to Lima,’ I told her. ‘It’s such good news, Keira! It means that he probably stayed further from the centre of the earthquake and that it’s more likely he’s safe.’

‘Hey, that’s amazing,’ she said, giving me a big hug.

‘I also did a bit more research into the Inca gold… I kept wondering what Jack would have said to Finny if they hadn’t gone home that day. I looked into the different theories of what may have happened to the gold. Some say that it’s been taken by pirates to a remote island off the coast of a town called Pisco, others reckon that it’s buried somewhere deep in the