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

I was woken up early by my phone beeping. It was a message from Simon.

No luck with the schools. Managed to get through to three of them – rest unreachable. Power lines are still down in remote areas and there’s been more damage to buildings. Aftershocks caused badly constructed buildings to topple, and people are trapped underneath the rubble. I’ll keep trying. Wanted to update you.

My stomach clenched.

‘OK, thanks anyway,’ I wrote back, ‘I’ll let you know if we hear anything from the police.’

I was skimming through the pages of Grandma’s album when I spotted a photo of her at a market stall. At first I thought she was buying earrings, but when I inspected it more closely, I saw that she was looking at lots of tiny keys. I imagined Grandpa must have taken the picture before he’d bought the very key that Jack had left behind. Below the photo, was a note that said, ‘Souvenir shopping at L…’ The last word was so smudged that I couldn’t work out what it said. I decided that I would call Grandma and ask.

‘Hello, Felicity, darling. Any news about Jack?’

‘Nothing, Grandma, I’m sorry.’

‘Ah, well.’ I could hear her struggling to sound cheerful. ‘Soon, hopefully.’

‘Yes. Grandma? You know the place that you and Grandpa got engaged? Where he bought you the key? I found a photo of it in your album. Do you remember what it was called?’

‘How could I forget? It was a little village called Llave, with a double L. It means “key” in Spanish. It was in the middle of nowhere and it took us an age to get there. I even got fed up and wanted to turn back, but Grandpa insisted because he’d heard from some locals about how interesting it was.’

My heart sped up.

‘Did Jack ever ask you about it?’

‘He did. He was fascinated by it.’

‘Thank you, Grandma. I’ve got to run.’

I raced upstairs to get my tablet and searched for ‘Llave, Peru’. I prayed that the village still existed. A few hits came up, and I clicked on the first entry which was an encyclopaedia article.

It looked like the place hadn’t changed much since Grandma and Grandpa had visited. It was pretty tiny, but there was a larger settlement close by, which was big enough to be a town. It was called Cortegana. I discovered that there were two schools.

I grabbed my phone and called Simon. He answered straight away.

‘There’s a village called Llave that I need you to look up, next to a small town called Cortegana. It’s outside the area that you mapped, but I honestly think that Jack could be there. Could you try the two schools?’

I loved that Simon didn’t ask me anything about how I’d come across these places or why I thought they were important.

‘Sure, I’ll try them now. I’ll ring you back,’ he promised.

To distract myself from the agony of waiting, I researched the history of the village. It had been founded by Spanish conquerors in the seventeenth century and for many years had been home to cattlemen and their families. Until, in the late 1920s, a local businessman opened a key factory there, which soon began supplying keys to the surrounding area and, later in the 1960s, became a tourist attraction. It was around this time that the village changed its name to Llave from its much less interesting name of Aqa.

Next, I looked up Cortegana. I scanned the article. There didn’t seem anything particularly unusual about the town. It was the childhood home of a famous Peruvian film star, and was known as the remotest town in Peru, reachable only by one road. It was encircled by mountain ranges, and in all the images, I could see snow-covered peaks and dense forest.

I prayed that wherever Jack was, he was safe and had access to his medicine. I was about to close the page when something made me click on the image of the town’s cathedral. This brought up a whole new entry. I scanned the page and my eyes rested on the subtitle, ‘Legend of the Inca Gold’.

It was the cathedral that Jack had told Finny about. I punched the air. Just then my phone vibrated on the desk.

‘No connection at either school,’ said Simon. ‘But I rang the community centre in Llave and a guy called Carlos picked up. It was a different type of number so I reckon it could be a mobile. Anyway, he said that there were lots of people staying at the centre and at the supermarket next door, as they were the two larger buildings that had managed to survive the tremors. Many of the houses have been flattened. He didn’t know the names of everyone staying there, but he did say that there were tourists and travellers. Loads of them were asleep, obviously – I’m an idiot for not remembering the time difference – but he took my number and he promised to send me a message if he had any news on Jack.’

‘That’s amazing. Thank you so, so much.’

I could tell that Simon seemed surprised by how happy I was.

‘Hey, no problem. But this doesn’t necessarily get us any closer to finding him, you know that, right? I spoke to a random guy who had mobile signal in a small village somewhere in central Peru.’

‘Trust me on this,’ I told him boldly.

It made perfect sense – this was the place where his favourite key had come from, and it was close to the origin of the Inca gold. I was so certain of being right that I sat cross-legged with my phone in front of me, waiting for the call. I stared and stared at the screen.

Eventually, I couldn’t bear it any longer and I shoved it out of sight under the bed. My fingers brushed against something leathery – the book of riddle tales. I’d forgotten all about it. I brushed off the layer of dust from the