The Hawkshead Hostage (23 page)

The Lillywhites and the second woman were still in earshot. There was a frozen aspect to the situation, everyone apparently waiting for someone else to move. If this was a dramatic climax, unfolding to a spectacular denouement, there was no outward sign of it. People were passing by, chatting and laughing, entirely unaware that anything interesting was going on before their eyes. Their very presence was a rock-solid protection, Simmy realised. Not just for her, but for Ben and Bonnie inside the shop. And yet the urgency remained. Crossing the road again, she stood close by the display on the pavement outside the National Trust shop, and made her call.

Thankfully, Moxon answered almost instantly, with his habitual, ‘Mrs Brown? How can I help you now?’

‘I’m in Hawkshead,’ she gabbled. ‘We’ve found Ben.
He’s inside the big empty shop, in the middle of the town. Bonnie’s in there with him. The people who kidnapped him are here as well. She says they mustn’t escape, so you shouldn’t all rush here and frighten them away.’

His response was impressive. ‘Who are they?’ he asked.

‘Mr and Mrs Lillywhite, guests at the hotel. And another woman. Sheila something. Melanie thinks she might have found out what it’s all about. She called me just now.’

‘I see. And is Ben all right?’

‘Not really. Very dehydrated and not fully conscious.’

‘We’ll need medics, then.’

‘And I’m not sure Bonnie’s okay, either.’

‘Where are the Lillywhites now?’

She looked round. ‘They’ve gone. Oh, no, they’re still here – it looks as if they’re going into the shop, through the door at this end. Oh, my God. You’ll have to get here quickly. They’ve got a key to the padlock. I never thought they’d do it. I thought I’d frightened them off. Oh, please – please send someone as quick as you can.’

‘Five minutes,’ he said. ‘Stay where you are.’

But of course, there was no way she could do that.

Bonnie had not exactly found a hatch leading to a coal chute. Instead there was a low window opening onto the pavement, in a shadowy angle between two high walls. The pavement must have been built up over the years to half-cover the opening. There was about eight inches of glass pane, grimy and barely noticeable. A black car was usefully parked between it and the street, shielding her almost entirely from sight.

She could almost certainly wriggle through there if she could remove the glass. It was divided into three sections, each probably nine inches wide. She might even kick away the wooden dividers, making a hole over two feet long by eight inches high. That would be plenty. But her scalp tingled and her skin crawled at the thought. What was on the other side? Some small, cramped cellar, with a locked door and no light? There’d be light from outside, she reminded herself. It wouldn’t be so bad. It might be
a massive cellar, with an easy access into the rest of the building.

She had to do it, right away. Standing with her back to the wall, holding her phone and gazing intently at it, she kicked backwards as hard as she could, wishing that traffic was allowed into Hawkshead, to provide some covering noise. As it was, the place was entirely too quiet for comfort. But the tinkling glass was blessedly subdued, and although two or three people looked up, none of them spotted her, tucked behind the car.

She kicked again, trying to choose moments when nobody was close by. The brittle old glass fell into the cellar, and the wooden struts soon followed. It was done in a minute. She turned and looked at her handiwork. There were still some jagged spikes of glass, which she quickly disposed of, the resulting aperture quite big enough to admit her.

Again, her scalp reacted, the hair follicles behaving like a threatened dog’s. She could feel all her hairs rising, in an atavistic attempt to make her look more alarming. An old memory had her in its grip, of being pushed into a filthy, airless little space and left there. This, she assured herself, was altogether different. This was going to be easy. And the reward at the end would be immense. She was going to save Ben, because Ben mattered more than anything.

Waiting for a moment when nobody was walking close by, she dropped to the ground and pushed herself head first through the broken window. Head first had not been her primary choice. There was a lot to be said for going in backwards, stomach to the ground, feet and legs leading the way. Sideways would have been ideal, but there was
nowhere near enough space for that. But she could not summon the courage to go blindly into the unknown. She had a horrible image of her feet being grasped and pulled by some monstrous entity waiting for her on the floor. She had to
see
. So she dived through, head, shoulders, arms, catching herself on her hands as she tumbled from a height of five or six feet, cutting her right palm on broken glass and spraining her left wrist. At least there was no monster. Nothing but a lot of dust and cobwebs, and a flight of steps just visible across the open space.

The sprained wrist shot a painful jolt through her when she tried to lever herself to a vertical position, but she ignored it. The steps were in semi-darkness, made of stone and leading nowhere. She peered upwards in disbelief. Why wasn’t there a door? She tried to think of cellars she had seen in films, and slowly concluded that there must be a hinged hatch, set into the floor of the room above. It would open upwards, pulled by some sort of knob or handle and propped open. Or else pushed from below. It would have to be operable from below, she insisted to herself. What if it swung closed by accident while somebody was in the cellar? They’d have to be able to open it. There had been a film she’d seen not long ago with Corinne, a western, where there was just that sort of arrangement. This must be the same.

The light coming in through the broken window was not reaching the top of the steps. Her eyes were still adjusting to the gloom, she told herself. Soon she’d be able to see everything much more clearly. She looked back across the dirty floor, seeing her own footprints as darker smudges. There was no way she could get out again without
assistance. Only by shouting for help to passers-by in the street could she leave the way she’d come. And that was not an option until she knew what was happening to Ben, and what danger he was in.

So she climbed the steps, soon being forced to crouch in the dwindling space between the upper steps and the floor overhead. Which side would the hinge be, she asked herself, trying to work out the structure. Most likely above the top step, she concluded – otherwise the flap would have to be opened back across the floor of the room above, occupying excessive space, and being difficult to prop. This meant that she should push at the other edge, hoping desperately that there was nothing heavy on top of it, and no bolt or catch fastening it.

Her active brain was doing its best to subdue the physical reactions that her body was independently undergoing. Her legs trembled, her heart raced and she was very cold. Small whimpers came involuntarily to her lips, before she could bite them back. While there were definitely spiders on all sides, there could also be bats, mice, woodlice, and a whole lot more. Bonnie Lawson was not afraid of any of these things individually, but the idea of an accumulation of them was horrible. Much more horrible, however, was the
dirt
. Bonnie was very frightened of being dirty. She could feel sticky black stuff on her hair already. Her hands were not just injured, but foul from the grime on the floor. The shivering was totally out of control by this point, fuelled by disgust and horror at what was touching her.

Because that was the permanent legacy of the stupid prank played on her when she was little. Stuffed into a tight tunnel, she had soon tumbled free onto a forgotten
heap of coal. But then she had come away blackened by the dust. Her tears had welded it to her face. Her mother had screamed at the sight of her, and pushed her roughly away. She had used words like
filthy
and
disgusting
. From that day, Bonnie had needed to be very clean at all times. Otherwise, nobody would ever love her. At its worst, when she was thirteen and her body suddenly chose to develop its own special monthly dirt, she translated the associations via blood into food itself. Meat was dirty. Tomatoes and beetroot, butter and potatoes – they each had their particular revolting elements. Slime, crust, crumbs, seeds, juice – it was all impossibly vile.

Therapy had finally managed to dispel these extreme connections, and she was almost okay again about food. But dirt itself remained insupportable. And blood was hardly any better.

And now, in this neglected cellar, she was really quite dreadfully dirty, as well as bloody.

But Ben needed her, somewhere in a room above her. She was going to have to put her back against the hatch and heave away until it opened. Little Bonnie Lawson, barely six stone in weight, would have to become a lever, raising the heavy wooden flap and pushing it back far enough to climb through.

So she did it, for love of Ben as well as from a knowledge that there was no alternative. She had come this far, solving the mystery when nobody else could, and to go back now would be shameful. Even though nobody would expect a fragile woman-child with a sprained wrist to perform such a feat, she expected it of herself.

She crawled onto the top step, and on her knees she
bent over and set her back against the wooden slats above her. Then she pushed, expecting to have to push repeatedly until she dropped.

But it gave instantly. It moved willingly, rising an inch or so as she pushed, the whole thing balancing on her spine. It took a moment to understand that there was no hinge. It was also much smaller than she’d expected. It was almost
flimsy
, she realised with a thrill. It was impeded slightly by a floor covering, but when she pushed it gave readily. She raised both hands, and again ignoring the double pain, heaved the thing sideways, and pushed her head through the opening. The carpet on the floor of the shop did not come to the very edge of the room. Only a narrow band had been covering the hatch. Wonderingly, she hauled herself up and into the empty room.

It had been easy! Euphoria flooded through her. She was a hero! All she had to do now was find Ben and rescue him.

She crossed the room, which must have been the main part of the shop, once filled with books. It had a large window looking onto the town square. People would see her when she crossed it to the door at the back. So she moved in a great rush, thinking she’d make the merest flash to anybody outside. Glancing out, she saw a tall woman on the opposite pavement. Could it be Simmy? She didn’t wait to stare any harder, but the thought that there was a friend just outside gave her strength. Indeed, the whole cheerful scene, just a sheet of glass away, made everything feel much less terrifying.

There was a door, and a staircase and an upstairs and then another flight to a higher level, where she found a
nasty little room containing a bucket and a blanket and a huddled figure with hands and feet all tied up.

‘Ben! Hey, Ben!’ She shook his shoulder. ‘It’s me.’

He groaned, but did not open his eyes. His lips were cracked and his skin damp to the touch. There was a bruise on his forehead. His breath came loud and fast. Bonnie had never encountered anything like this before.

‘Ben!’ she shouted at him. ‘Wake up!’

One eye opened fractionally. Then it focused and widened and its mate joined in. ‘Ak!’ said Ben.

Bonnie leant back, bracing herself for the
filthy
and
disgusting
reaction. He couldn’t possibly love her any more, the way she looked. Then the dry mouth kinked and the tied hands behind his back twitched in an automatic attempt to reach her. ‘Bonnie,’ he breathed. ‘Oh.’

Where to start, she wondered. Untie his hands. Find him some water. Reassure him. Cuddle him.
Love
him. The first looked impossible. The second was insuperably difficult, unless there was still a water supply to the building, which she doubted. So she began with the others. ‘It’s okay now,’ she crooned. ‘I’ll get you out.’

‘How?’ The voice was painful in its aridity. ‘Knife?’ He wriggled to indicate the urgency of cutting the bonds that kept his arms painfully behind his back.

She shook her head, causing a small shower of black detritus to fall on his face. ‘Sorry,’ she said, and brushed it away. Then she rolled him over and inspected the tie around his wrists. It was black, plastic and tight. One of those things with ratchets that only went one way. ‘I could bite it, maybe,’ she suggested, and bent over to give it a go.

Her front teeth were sharp, but she couldn’t get a
proper purchase without nipping his skin. Then she found a quarter-inch between his two wrists and set to work. Her jaws were aching within seconds from the pressure she was exerting, but it worked. The plastic separated and Ben’s arms did the same. ‘Ak!’ he groaned again. Bonnie badly wanted to massage his damaged skin, but her own hands were so sore and dirty that she refrained. Instead she looked at his legs, taking great satisfaction from the fact that they were bare.

‘I knew it,’ she muttered. Aloud, she said, ‘Shall I try to do your feet as well?’

He gave her a look, full of gratitude and concern and unspoken questions. ‘Water?’ he asked hopelessly.

‘Sorry.’ She grimaced at this unforgivable oversight. ‘What a fool I am. I never thought.’

He frowned, as if this presented a considerable difficulty – which it probably did. She had a small cotton bag with her containing phone, tissues and a tube of Supermints. ‘Isn’t there a tap in here somewhere?’ she demanded.

He shook his head.

She was ready to open a vein to let him drink, if only she had a knife. Perhaps she could bite herself deeply enough to get some blood flowing. But that wouldn’t help. Blood was too salty to be of much use. Urine might be better, but she was fairly sure she couldn’t manage that, either.

Just outside, there were shops full of bottled water, juice, Coke. It was crazy to let Ben die of dehydration in the middle of a busy summer town. ‘I’ll have to go and get you something,’ she said, dreading a return through the cellar, and entirely unsure of the consequences of shouting for
help from random passers-by. They wouldn’t react well to a blackened girl emerging from a broken window at ankle level. They would bundle her into an ambulance without listening, or turn and head the other way, trying to pretend she was a hallucination.

‘No.’ He was emphatic. ‘Don’t go. Phone.’

‘Who?’

‘Simmy. People might come back.’ Fear was plain in his bloodshot eyes. ‘They want me to die.’

‘How do they get in?’

‘Padlock. Key.’

She nodded. ‘They don’t want you to die, Ben. They’d have done it by now and thrown you into one of the lakes. They might bring you some water any time now. Do they come in and out every day?’

He shook his head, less in a negative than confusion. ‘Don’t know. In and out.’

‘Is there a loo here?’ Where there was a lavatory, there’d be water. ‘What do you do, if not?’

His lips twitched again. ‘No water, no pee,’ he croaked.

‘Okay.’ There would be time enough later for all the questions. She focused on her phone and called Simmy.

More questions, more answers. ‘Call Moxon,’ she urged. And, ‘He’s got to have some water.’ The news that Ben’s captors were right outside came as a very nasty shock. ‘I’ll hide,’ she decided. But they would see that Ben’s wrist tie was severed, unless he lay on his back, hiding the evidence. Although he had said nothing directly, she knew how much it mattered that the criminals be caught. She knew that Ben would always feel his suffering had been for nothing, if he was merely rescued, without a proper end to the whole
business. They must be arrested, charged and convicted for what they’d done. She felt it as strongly as he did. She finished the call, not daring to feel reassured, but hopeful all the same.

‘I saw your sign at Colthouse,’ she told him. ‘The ferns tied with rushes.’

He frowned in puzzlement. ‘The game,’ she reminded him. Then, ‘When did you put the date on the window?
How
did you? That was what showed me you were here. Brilliant.’