Point Blanc by Anthony Horowitz Page A

seemed
endless. After only two days, Alex was beginning to think that Fiona was right.
He was a city boy. He had lived his whole life in London and felt utterly lost,
suffocating in the big green blanket of the countryside. The estate went on for
as far as the eye could see, and the Friends seemed to have no connection with
the real world. Alex had never felt more isolated. Sir David himself had
disappeared to London. Lady Caroline did her best to avoid Alex. Once or twice
she drove into Skipton--the nearest town--but otherwise she seemed to
spend a lot of time gardening or arranging flowers. And Fiona...
    She had made
it clear from the start how much she disliked Alex. There could be no reason
for this. It was simply that he was an outsider, and Fiona seemed to mistrust
anything that didn't belong to the miniature world of Haverstock Hall.
She'd asked him several times what he was really doing there. Alex had
shrugged and said nothing, which had only made her dislike him all the more.
    And then, on
the third day, she introduced him to some of her friends.
    "I'm
going shooting," she told him. "I don't suppose you want to
come?"
    Alex
shrugged. He had memorized most of the details in the files and figured he
could easily pass as a member of the family. Now he was counting the hours
until the woman from the academy arrived to take him away.
    "Have
you ever been shooting?" Fiona asked.
    "No,"
Alex said.
    "I go
hunting and shooting," Fiona said. "But of course, you're a
city boy. You wouldn't understand."
    "What's
so great about killing animals?" Alex asked.
    "It's
part of the country way of life. It's tradition." Fiona looked at
him as if he were stupid. It was how she always looked at him. "Anyway,
the animals enjoy it."
    The shooting
party turned out to be young and--apart from Fiona--entirely male.
Five of them were waiting on the edge of a forest that was part of the
Haverstock estate. Rufus, the leader, was sixteen and well built with dark,
curling hair. He seemed to be Fiona's boyfriend. The others--Henry, Max,
Bartholomew, and Fred--were about the same age. Alex looked at them with a
heavy heart. They had uniform Barbour jackets, tweed trousers, flat caps, and
Huntsman leather boots. They spoke with uniform upper-class accents. Each of
them carried a shotgun, with the barrel broken over his arm. Two of them were
smoking. They gazed at Alex with barely concealed contempt. Fiona must have
already told them about him. The city boy.
    Quickly, she
made the introductions. Rufus stepped forward.
    "Nice
to have you with us," he drawled. He ran his eyes over Alex, not
bothering to hide his contempt. "Up for a bit of shooting, are
you?"
    "I
don't have a gun," Alex said.
    "Well,
I'm afraid I'm not going to lend you mine." Rufus snapped the
barrel back into place and held it up for Alex to see. It was a beautiful gun,
with twenty-five inches of gleaming steel stretching out of a dark walnut stock
decorated with ornately carved, solid silver sideplates. "It's an
over-and-under shotgun with detachable trigger lock, handmade by Abbiatico and
Salvinelli," he said. "It cost me thirty grand--or my mother,
anyway. It was a birthday present."
    "It
couldn't have been easy to wrap," Alex said. "Where did she
put the ribbon?"
    Rufus's
smile faded. "You wouldn't know anything about guns," he
said. He nodded at one of the other teenagers, who handed Alex a much more
ordinary weapon. It was old and a little rusty. "You can use this
one," he said. "And if you're very good and don't get
in the way, maybe we'll let you have a bullet."
    They all
laughed at that. Then the two smokers put out their cigarettes and everyone set
off into the woods.
    Thirty
minutes later, Alex knew he had made a mistake in coming. The boys blasted away
left and right, aiming at anything that moved. A rabbit spun in a glistening
red ball. A wood pigeon tumbled out of the branches and flapped around on the
leaves below. Whatever the quality of their weapons, the