A. N. T. I. D. O. T. E. Read Online Free PDF

began.
    ‘How? Do we walk up to Marcus Pardela and demand to see the evidence? “Excuse me, Mr Pardela, but we want to see the CCTV footage you’re supposed to have of Elliot’s mum. We think you’ve doctored it in some way and we want to try and prove it,”’ Nosh said scornfully.
    ‘Well, the police must have a copy …’
    ‘They’re about as likely to show it to us as Marcus Pardela is.’
    ‘Maybe we could get someone at ANTIDOTE to help us? After all, Uncle Robert works for them,’ I thought out loud. ‘We could look up their address and phone number in the phone book.’
    ‘And then what? Someone at ANTIDOTE is an agent. A spy! A traitor! And we don’t know who. If we go blundering around, we could make things worse for your mum and your uncle – not better.’
    ‘Then what would you suggest?’ I asked, annoyed.
    That shut him up!
    ‘Yeah, that’s what I thought,’ I said. Now it was my turn to be less than impressed.
    ‘You’re the ideas person in this partnership,’ Nosh told me. ‘I’m just the voice of logic and reason.’
    ‘Since when?’
    ‘Since five seconds ago!’
    I folded up the print-out of the letter and put it in my pocket with Mum’s phone. I came out of Mum’s file and had a hunt around the hard disk for anything else that might throw some light on what was going on. Nothing jumped out at me. As far as I could see it was just a load of ordinary-looking data and text files. I didn’t really know what I was looking for. To be honest, I wasn’t even sure why Mum needed all the PC equipment she had, I was just glad she did. I’d never thought to ask her before. I guess I’d just been too busy enjoying it . And now Mum was missing and I couldn’t even ask her – at least not until I spoke to her next. All at once, knowing why Mum had all this stuff seemed terribly important. It was as if I was waking up from a long, long daze and for the first time I was seeing and hearing things that I’d been too preoccupied before to notice.
    ‘Anything?’ Nosh asked.
    I shook my head. ‘Not that I can find. Just lots of files and documents sorted into job numbers. Lots of job numbers.’
    ‘Job numbers?’
    ‘For each different job Mum does, it looks like she holds all the files and documents to do with each separate job in a different directory – and each one of those directories has got a different job number. But I can’t tell what any of the jobs are by just looking at the numbers.’
    ‘Why don’t you go into some of the files and have a look?’ Nosh suggested.
    But before I could answer, the doorbell rang. Nosh and I exchanged a look.
    ‘Dad!’
    ‘Your dad!’
    Nosh and I spoke in unison.
    ‘We’d better get going,’ Nosh sighed.
    I took one last look at the computer screen, then switched everything off. I decided to have a closer, more detailed look the following day after meeting Mum. I ran into my bedroom to shove a few things into a carrier bag whilst Nosh went to the door.
    ‘Elliot, I think you should come over to our house now,’ Nosh’s dad called out from the hall. ‘We don’t want you in here brooding.’
    We? Who was ‘we’? I shook my head at my reflection in the wardrobe mirror. Nosh’s dad sounded just like a grown-up! I noticed that my pockets were bulging so I took out Mum’s phone and Uncle Robert’s disk and placed them on top of the carrier bag. I didn’t want Nosh’s dad asking me questions about what ‘we’ might have in our pockets! After a moment’s thought, I stuffed them down under my clean pair of trousers, balled up at the top of the bag.
    My thoughts turned to Uncle Robert. I was slightly ashamed of myself. I’d been so busy concentrating on how Mum was doing and what she was going through that I hadn’t really thought about my uncle. Maybe I could visit him at the police station tomorrow? Maybe with his help Mum and I would get all this straightened out and life could return to normal. With one last look around, I