The Key to Finding Jack by Ewa Jozefkowicz (best classic books to read TXT) 📕

It was a beautiful, cold day at the end of January. The warm sun shone for the first time in days. Outside the window, the determined heads of daffodils were already beginning to emerge – specks of brilliant yellow among the sea of green.

I’d been sitting in the kitchen with Mum and Dad eating blueberry pancakes, which we’d all made together, like we used to on the weekends.

My hands shook as I held the receiver but I managed to keep my voice steady.

‘Hello?’

‘Flick? Is it you?’

‘Yes, it’s me,’ I said, as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

‘You won’t believe how happy I am to hear your voice.’

‘Same,’ I said. And then the tears came. I couldn’t hold them back any longer and they flooded down my cheeks like rainwater.

‘It turns out that you managed to solve the biggest mystery of your career to date without my help.’

‘I suppose I did. Are you all right?’

‘Yes. It’s been horrible, but I was lucky. I always am, aren’t I?’

His voice was exactly the same and it sounded as though he was smiling. I imagined him now with his mouth turned up at the corner.

‘You are, always,’ I told him. ‘Will you come back now, Jack?’ I asked, suddenly freaked out that he planned to carry on travelling.

‘Obviously, Sergeant Flick. You can’t continue to do all your work alone. Even the best detective needs a sidekick, so I’ll be back to help you. I promise.’

Nineteen

On Saturday we were all at the airport, waiting for Jack’s plane to land – me, Mum, Dad, Simon and Grandma Sylvie, in her new wheelchair and wearing her best red lipstick. Mum clutched my hand. I think neither of us would believe that Jack was truly safe until he was home with us. What if something had happened to him on the way to the airport? What if he didn’t make the flight?

I hadn’t told anyone, but that morning I’d woken from a nightmare. Jack was about to get on the plane when a giant hand appeared out of the sky, slowly forming a fist which pounded the runway and made the ground crack. I woke up shaking.

But when we arrived at the airport, things seemed more reassuring. A few minutes earlier we’d heard an announcement that said the flight from Lima had landed with no delays, and yet my back tensed even tighter. I stepped closer to the arrivals gate as a group of people began to emerge. The hall was suddenly full of children’s excited shouts and the steady, rhythmic rolling of suitcase wheels. The sun beamed, reflecting the black tiles beneath my feet. I shaded my eyes with my hand, breathed deeply and waited.

Around me, people hugged friends and relatives who had just landed, and the steady trickle of newly arrived travellers seemed to dwindle. My throat tightened. And then, through the sunshine, I saw a person walking towards me – a head of blond hair, a pair of angular shoulders, a fast, familiar walk.

‘Sergeant Flick.’

He was suddenly there, with his arms around me, as if nothing had happened, as if he’d been here all along. And then Mum and Dad joined us, to complete the family hug which we’d missed for so long. I breathed in Jack’s familiar smell and all the fear and distance was gone.

We all wanted to keep touching Jack when he got home, as if to make sure that we hadn’t imagined him – that he was really there. And when we’d eaten and he was sitting on the sofa, we finally heard the answers to all the questions from when he was missing.

‘I found out about Oro from a man I met on the bus,’ he told us.

‘The teacher called Rowan?’ I asked and Jack looked impressed.

‘Yes, exactly. He’d been there the previous month and he told me that the whole project was quite new, so they hadn’t recruited many volunteers. He said he’d learned so much in his short time there and met some incredible people who he was still in touch with. I asked where the place was, and he showed me on the map – that was when I saw that it was close to the village of Llave.’

‘It’s as if it was meant to be,’ said Grandma Sylvie, smiling. ‘It’s where I went with Grandpa all those years ago.’ I looked at the framed photo of the two of them that I’d copied from Grandma’s album and placed with the other family snaps on the mantelpiece.

‘I know, and I’d wanted to visit that area at some point in the trip because it’s near Cortegana, where—’

‘—The legend of the Inca gold originates,’ I said.

‘Exactly,’ said Jack and raised his hand to high-five me. ‘How amazing a coincidence is that? Anyway, we called the Oro staff from his phone, and they actually had a couple of spaces available that week, so I thought it would be a great thing to do with you, Si, before we moved on anywhere else.

‘I was already pretty close to Oro, so it made sense. They had another volunteer arriving from the UK the same day as you were meant to fly in, so I thought you could get a transfer together. It’s tricky to find it – it’s nestled among the mountains and you can only get there using one narrow road.’

‘So you went straight there?’ Mum asked.

‘Yeah. It was such an easy journey, considering. I arrived late in the evening and I was shattered so I checked in and went straight to bed. I was given one of the treetop rooms and I couldn’t wait to see the view in the morning. Everything was so clean. They even asked if I needed sterile water for my injections. I tried to message you, Mum, but there was no signal in my room and I didn’t have the code