Free Blood Sun by David Gilman

knew anything. Limbo. That was where Fergus Jackson felt himself to be. Schoolboy honor and friendship closed doorsagainst the adults who were trying to help one of their own. Although Jackson grudgingly admitted to himself that of all the boys at Dartmoor High, Max Gordon was probably the one who least needed help.
    He heard the slick-engined motorbike before he saw it. So did the boys in the staff room. They crowded the windows to see the rider crest the hill over the still-frozen approach road.
    “Look at that!” one of the boys said as the rider wobbled at speed, corrected the spin and then opened the throttle again. It was a big, heavy machine, and the slightly built figure looked as though he would have trouble lifting it if it fell. Which probably meant he didn’t lose control too often—an expert rider.
    The black-clad figure wore a full-face helmet, and the leathers had creases of red in the gussets. It looked as though flames sneaked from the side vents on his jacket, like a Spitfire’s engine used to spout flame.
    Now the rider downshifted, and the sweetly tuned engine idled. He wore a body-hugging backpack that matched his leather gear. Racking the bike onto its stand, he turned and looked directly at the boys’ faces. The smoked Perspex helmet hid the rider’s features.
    “That’s awesome,” one of the boys muttered.
    “That’s a liquid-cooled, six-hundred-cc, four-cylinder, four-stroke, sixteen-valve engine, giving one hundred twenty-five bhp at thirteen thousand five hundred revs. Zero to sixty in three seconds, zero to a hundred in about six. Top speed one hundred sixty-five miles an hour,” said Baskins, almost drooling.
    The rider pulled off the helmet. A purple and crimson head emerged. Jackson was momentarily lost for words. The highlighted tufts of hair were chopped short, there was a stud in the rider’s nose and once the gloves came off to shake his hand, Jackson could see she wore Goth jewelry.
    She.
    “Charlotte Morgan,” she said, and smiled, extending her hand. “Great place you’ve got here. Roads were rubbish. M5 was terrible. A lorry had slipped its load—took me longer than I thought. Wouldn’t half mind a cuppa.”
    She was already pulling a slimline laptop from her backpack and peeling off her leather jacket to reveal a T-shirt hidden by a sweatshirt that sported a Sundance logo. At least, that was what it appeared to be to Mr. Jackson. For all he knew, it could have been an advert for a grunge band.
    “Tea. Ah. I have coffee on the go.…”
    She smiled. “A cup of tea would be ace.”
    “Yes. Of course. Forgive me. I’ll … er …” He reached for the phone, pressed a button and asked if one of the teachers could rustle up a pot of tea from the kitchen. The young woman was keying information into her laptop. She pulled out a file from the backpack and laid a mobile phone on his desk.
    He replaced the phone. “You’re not quite what I expected, Charlie.”
    “That’s what most people say. I find that helps.”
    “Understandably,” he said.
    She turned her computer round so he could see the screen. Hash marks crisscrossed it; a small red dot blinked.
    He watched as she bent down and ran her fingers underthe edge of his desk. She pulled out what looked like a Shreddies square, dropped it on the floor and crushed it under her boot heel.
    “Cheap as chips, no pun intended, but effective up to about a couple of Ks.”
    “Pun?” Jackson said.
    “Microchips,” she said. “The phony guys bugged you.”
    Stanton and Drew’s intrusion felt all the more grubby. They’d been eavesdropping! Had he said anything that could have endangered Max?
    “OK. Let’s speak to this Max Gordon and see what he can tell us about Danny Maguire,” Charlotte Morgan said.
    “Well, Charlie, that’s where we have a problem.”
    There was no sign in the frozen snow of anyone using the road that led in and out of Dartmoor High. So Max Gordon must have gone cross-country. To where ?