Free The Chaos Code by Justin Richards

Posing carefully for shots, rather than relaxed and unaware. There were three of them – Dad, Aunt Jane, and another girl. Matt stared at the pictures of the three children. There was no mistaking the third child. Aunt Jane looked about sixteen now, and Dad was maybe fourteen – the same age as the other girl – the one who looked so like Robin. It had to be Robin’s mother, and the daughter had obviously inherited the mother’s looksand appearance. The two sets of parents must have been friends, he thought. All those years ago …
    There were older people too in some of the later pictures. Matt knew his grandparents from other pictures he had seen in the past. He could dimly remember his grandmother – Dad’s mum – as a frail elderly lady. But here she was in her forties, fifty at the most. She looked so happy with her husband. His hair was grey and thinning and in most of the pictures in which he appeared he had a pipe clamped in his mouth.
    In one final picture, the last in the book, was another figure that Matt knew. Or rather, that he thought he did. Julius Venture, standing with Robin’s mother and Matt’s Dad and Aunt Jane. Of course, the man in the picture couldn’t be Venture himself, but must be his dad – Robin’s grandfather. Again the family resemblance was obvious, and Matt recalled the pictures he had seen in the house. Matt wondered who had taken the picture – one of his grandparents, probably.
    He closed the book and returned it to the cupboard. I wonder what happened to Robin’s mother, he thought as he made his way quietly back to bed. It seemed strange that there were no pictures of the young Julius Venture either, since he was the one who lived at the manor house. He must have been friendly with the girl – after all, he’d ended up marrying her. They must have all played together in those days – Matt’s Dad, Aunt Jane,Robin’s mother, and her future husband – the young Julius Venture. So why were there no pictures of Venture? A mystery, he thought as he picked up the Agatha Christie novel again.
    And almost at once he realised there was no mystery at all. Of course the young Julius Venture was there, in most if not all of the pictures. He must be the photographer. It was his camera, that was why he never appeared.
    Pleased with himself for working it out, but also disappointed at the simplicity of the solution, Matt turned out the light. The wind rattled the window and whispered round the casement. But Matt didn’t listen to what it said.
    The bedroom was bathed with warm summer sunlight when Matt woke. He saw from his watch that he’d slept in till mid-morning. He must have been more tired than he thought. Aunt Jane had left him a note on the kitchen table, saying she’d gone up to the manor house and hoped Matt could look after himself. She had obviously thought he needed his sleep. She was probably right, he decided while yawning at cereal packets.
    There must be buses from the village to somewhere worth spending the day, Matt thought. Gloucester or even Cheltenham weren’t that far away. In the other direction there was a castle at Berkeley, wasn’t there? What he needed was a bus timetable. He couldn’t see one lying around in the cottage, but he could probably print oneout from the Internet. Or he could walk into the village and look for a bus stop – there’d be a timetable there.
    But all thoughts of buses were put out of Matt’s mind by the arrival of the helicopter.
    He had barely left the house when he heard the thwock-thwock-thwock of the rotors. Far off in the steel-grey sky, above the trees to the side of the manor house Matt could see the tiny shape of the helicopter as it approached. He ran out on to the main drive for a better view as it grew closer and larger.
    The rotor blades were a blur in the air above the machine itself, which was dark and angular like a