As she watched the birds disappear around the bend, three kayakers came into view, paddling downstream towards her. As they came close, Maggie shrank back into the shadows of the overhanging roof and held her breath. Each of them wore a black diving suit and had a diving mask and snorkel draped around their neck. The slender grey kayaks were studded with pieces of equipment fixed with straps. When they came level with the boathouse, she recognized Victoria Juniper. One of the others turned his head slightly and she spotted the man with the ponytail, Mike McCain. The third one, a younger man with a deep tan and tattoos all over his arms, she’d never seen before. None of them spoke, but she could hear the rhythmic splashing of the paddles long after they had disappeared out of sight behind the reeds on the next bend. Maggie breathed out, and felt goosebumps creep up her arms. She looked out at the eddies and bubbles that were closing up the path left by the kayakers, like a scar healing over, and decided to disregard Jim’s advice. If she couldn’t find the guts to go to Hollowdale, she wondered if her world would ever feel safe again.
CHAPTER 25
The following morning, Maggie and Joel were sitting on the balcony at River’s Edge with mugs of tea on a cast iron table in front of them. Maggie described the three terrorists she had seen kayaking down the river the previous evening in full diving gear.
‘They were obviously doing something underwater, further up the river, but what?’
‘I have no idea, Joel, but it freaked me out. I had nightmares about them climbing into the house and dragging me off in their canoes to some hideout in the middle of the lake.’
‘You think too much, Maggie,’ said Joel. ‘I slept like a baby.’
‘Well, it’s time to think now,’ said Maggie, shoving him in the shoulder so he nearly fell off his chair. ‘Go and get the map, lazybones. It’s time we checked out that farm at Hollowdale. It’s the one lead we have to go on.’
Joel fetched an Ordnance Survey map. Archie, who had been resting his head on his paws, watching the ducks in the river, sprang up, sensing action.
‘I love the OS 1:25,000 scale,’ said Joel, spreading out the map.
‘You’re such a nerd,’ said Maggie.
‘I know.’
‘But you’re right. You can see every detail. Look. There are the islands. You can even see the little islet off the tip of Ransome Holme. Urgh! I so want to punch that Snakey boy. Now, let’s find this Hollowdale place.’
They hunched over the map. From Cedar Holme the pale blue ribbon of the Elleray tapered away to the west, while to the north the village of Watertop sat squashed into the centre of a small bowl-shaped valley, with the lake itself to the south. Between the village and the top of the map, a swathe of brown showed the high fells and valleys, arcing round from east to west like the ribs of a fan, each valley with its own ribbon of water heading downwards, as if determined to reach the body of blue to the south. Scattered here and there, patches of green indicated woodland refuge from the relentless march of the contour lines.
Maggie placed her finger on the map and moved it northwards across several of these valleys until it came to a stop in a deep U-shaped trough, framed by jagged ridges.
‘There it is,’ she said, tapping her finger on the map. ‘Hollowdale.’
‘It must be that farm there on the hillside,’ said Joel. ‘There’s nowhere else it could be.’
‘Tom said it would make a great terrorist HQ,’ said Maggie. ‘It’s not even on a proper road. That dotted line must be a farm track of some sort. The nearest road is that wiggly one there.’
‘I’m guessing Mr Clay didn’t choose this place for the shopping and nightlife,’ said Joel.
‘It’s the perfect hideout for someone up to no good,’ said Maggie. ‘No passers-by. And the farm probably has views right down the valley, so they would be able to see anyone coming up that track before they arrive.’
‘Which means we need to come at it a different way, so we’re not seen,’ said Joel. ‘But that will add miles to the route. We’ll have to take the main road through the village, walk up through those woods, around that tarn and then up that ridge.’ He drummed his fingertips on the map. ‘At the top we should get a view of the farm, and then we can check it out properly. After all, we don’t know for certain that this is their base yet.’
Maggie ran her finger along the route. ‘It’s quite a long way. And it’s going to be baking today, by the looks of it.’
‘In which case,’ said Joel, ‘I think a second breakfast might be in order!’
‘I’ve got a better idea,’ said Maggie. ‘I’m sure I saw an old tent in the boathouse downstairs.’
An hour later they were packed and ready to go. Joel thought the tarn below the ridge would make a perfect base camp, where they would be well hidden. Maggie suggested getting in touch with Tom to let him know the plan, just in case he was let out before they returned and wondered where they had gone. They tried his mobile but it went straight to voicemail. This, Joel pointed out, was not surprising, given the circumstances. They left a message about what they were planning to do, including the grid references for the tarn where they planned to camp, and Maggie left a note with the same information on it in his workshop.
‘Still,’ she said, ‘it would have been good to hear his voice before we go.’
They found Aunt Emily sitting in the kitchen, a folded newspaper on her lap and a cup of tea on the table. She looked haggard, Maggie thought.
‘Do you mind if we speak to you about Tom, Emily?’ said Maggie softly. She touched the teacup. It was cold, and a skin of milk had formed on the top. ‘Would you like me to make you a fresh cup of tea?’ she added.
‘Tea? Oh, no, thank you, dear.’
‘We tried giving Tom a call. To check he’s OK,’ said Joel. ‘But it went straight to voicemail. Have you heard from him at all?’
‘I saw him briefly at the police station but I haven’t spoken to him since then,’ said Aunt Emily. She pulled a tissue out of her sleeve and wiped her nose. ‘The social worker, who took Thomas with her, said not to get in contact yet.’
‘Why not?’
‘She said, “don’t call for a week”. I asked why and she said something about unsettling him.’
Maggie opened her mouth, but Joel cut in before she could speak: ‘I suppose they wouldn’t want outside contact with inmates at, er . . . what’s the place called again?’
‘Lindsay House,’ she said, creasing the newspaper along its fold. ‘It’s called Lindsay House Secure Children’s Home.’
Maggie and Joel shot each other a look.
‘Do you think he’ll be coping OK?’ asked Maggie after a few moments.
Aunt Emily gathered herself together and looked at Maggie and Joel, as if noticing them for the first time. ‘He’ll be coping better than I am!’ She smiled weakly at them. Maggie noticed the moisture in her eyes. ‘So long as he’s not cooped up in some small space.’
‘How do you mean?’ asked Maggie.
‘Hasn’t he told you about his claustrophobia? Thomas hates being in small spaces or underground. It goes back to when he was very small. He got trapped in a coal shed. It was just a silly mistake. Somehow he crawled in and no one noticed he was missing for a while. By the time they did Thomas was hysterical. And since then he’s always had this thing about being in enclosed spaces. Or being underground. It’s the only thing he’s properly scared of.’
‘Maybe that’s why he loves flying so much,’ Joel mused.
‘Flying? Yes, I suppose he would, if he had a chance. His father, you know . . .’ She broke off, and wiped her eyes with the tissue. ‘Anyway, it was underground that he had his accident. There’s a geography trip everyone does at his school. Thomas had been dreading it for months. They take you into an old slate mine.’
‘What happened?’
‘He said he had a panic attack in the tunnel and ended up falling down a ledge or something. The problem is . . .’
‘Yes?’
�
��Well, I wonder if there was more to it. But Thomas never wants to talk about it.’
They went into the garden where Joel googled the number and phoned the institution that was listed. ‘Hello,’ he said in his deepest voice. ‘I’d like to speak to Tom Hopkins, please . . . Thomas Hopkins. Yes, I’ll wait.’
Joel looked at Maggie and raised his eyebrows. After half a minute the person on the other end returned.
‘What? Tom Hopkins from Watertop. He was admitted on Wednesday. Are you sure? OK. Thanks.’ Joel ended the call and stared at the phone. ‘She says they have no one registered there by that name.’
‘Weird,’ said Maggie.
They were heading out of the gate when Aunt Emily appeared with a laundry basket. ‘I’d better get this washing in. There’s some heavy weather coming tonight. It’s all Thomas’s things, ready for when he gets home. They didn’t ask him to take any clean clothes. I don’t know why.’
Maggie stopped and turned to her suddenly. ‘Emily?’ she said. ‘You know the social worker you handed Tom over to?’
‘At the police station? Well, I didn’t exactly—’
‘But you met her?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did she look like?’
‘Well, dear, now I think about it, I didn’t notice very much. I was in a bit of a state, to tell you the truth. It’s all such a terrible mistake, you see. Thomas would never deliberately do something so rash. And I was so pleased that he’d found some friends, and he was getting out a bit more. And now this.’ She fiddled with the cord attached to her glasses, shaking her head.
‘But did you notice anything about the woman?’
‘She just seemed perfectly normal, I think. Young. Clever type. Oh, and lovely curly red hair.’
CHAPTER 26
Tom watched a spider crawl across the wall in front of him. It inched its way over the flaking green paint and dropped down to the floor, where it disappeared into a crack in the concrete. In the building above, a pipe hummed and gurgled. There were muffled voices somewhere far away and a metal door slammed shut. He had slept, but he had no idea for how long. He had no way of keeping track of time in the windowless room. They had taken his watch and he had not had his phone since he’d left it in his rucksack in Maggot after their encounter with the terrorists on Benson Isle, in the rush to get home with a waterlogged Skylark.
That was one of the many sudden flashes of memory and regret that had plagued his mind since the moment he realized it was the terrorists who had collected him from the police station, not a social worker, as everyone had been led to believe. If only he had kept the memory card in sight instead of putting it on the kitchen windowsill, he might not be in this mess now. He could have gone to the police with solid evidence of what these people were up to, and maybe they would be behind bars right now, rather than him.
Instead he had been taken to a remote farm and led down to a basement, where he was told he had to tell them what he knew, how he knew it and who else he had told, or they would take him, trussed up like a chicken in the bottom of a boat, and throw his weighted body into the middle of the lake. When he managed to force himself to think clearly, Tom turned this threat over in his mind. What bothered him was the fact that they had not blindfolded him for the journey.
At the police station he had said goodbye to Aunt Emily. She had not said an angry word to him. She’d just looked baffled, and he’d longed to explain everything to her. But they hadn’t given him the chance. PC Linda Clark, who kept calling him ‘young man’ and ‘my fine friend’, but spoke to him as if he had the mental age of a three year old, had then shown him into the back seat of a Toyota pickup and told him to wait while she and Aunt Emily had ‘a little chat’ with the social worker, who was waiting for them in another room.
There was a man in the driver’s seat in front of him and Tom could see his eyes in the rear-view mirror, but when Tom asked where they were going he didn’t speak or turn around. A few minutes later Victoria Juniper got into the passenger seat. The driver, who Tom then realized was Mike McCain, met Tom’s stunned reaction with a wink in the mirror, and the car sped off. The click of the central locking was like a gun being cocked.
They drove through the village and up the twisting pass, with buses and cars grinding down in low gear – strangers flashing past feet away, but so far from helping Tom they might as well have been on another planet.
They turned down a farm track, and as the bare valley opened out in front of them he knew where he was. Many times he had flown through Hollowdale, and barely noticed the lonely farm, hunched in the shadows of crevices and crags. So this was their HQ.
As they approached the farm, Tom could see a twelve-foot fence, topped with razor wire. Next to the entrance, in ridiculously cheery comic sans font, a sign announced:
Luscious Lakeland – Real Ice Cream, Fresh from the Farm.
The gates were opened by a guard with a sub-machine gun, whom he didn’t recognize. He began to wonder how many of these people there were. Inside the compound an open-fronted brick barn sheltered an assortment of vehicles: the ice cream van, the two black Land Rovers he had seen at the quarry, a quad bike and a yellow mini dumper truck. As the car came to a halt, a dog’s bark boomed around the yard.
Mike McCain, who turned out to be much stronger than he looked, pulled him out of the Toyota before he could grab his stick. He pushed him into a concrete building, dragged him along some corridors and virtually threw him down the steps into the basement, where Tom landed painfully on the floor. Before he could pick himself up, the man came over to him, pulled him up and thrust him into a chair.
‘All we want to know is how you knew. That’s all. If you tell us that – happy days.’ Mike leant closer and Tom got a whiff of breath that made him think of a butcher’s shop. ‘I’ll be back to take you to see the boss, when he’s ready. I’m sure you’ll open up to him.’ Then he was gone, slamming the heavy door, with its prison bars, and locking the deadlock with as much violence as he could throw at it.
A few minutes later, to Tom’s relief, the man had returned, said, ‘Fetch, doggy,’ and tossed his walking stick into a corner of the room. When he left, Tom crawled to the corner and sat on the floor, cradling it in his arms like a baby. But his relief at having his stick was short-lived. The thought that kept niggling him was that he had seen everything. If they ever intended to release him, why not blindfold him or throw him in the back of a van? Tom could only think of one answer to that question, and he realized with a sickening clarity that spilling the beans was not going to get him a ticket out. And – since everyone would assume he was safe in some institute for troubled teenagers, having long chats over hot chocolate with smiling therapists – no one was coming to rescue him.
CHAPTER 27
The route to Hollowdale took Maggie and Joel through Watertop, where they decided to stock up on supplies. In the village they joined the throng of pedestrians trudging along the narrow pavement, scrutinizing café menus, hovering by the windows of outdoor shops with their never-ending sales. No one was in a hurry. They got stuck behind a couple sluggishly pushing a balloon-festooned pram up the hill towards the crossing.
‘This is ridiculous,’ stated Joel loudly.
‘Thanks,’ said Maggie as the couple made space for them to pass. ‘Honestly, Joel!’
‘Well, not everyone has a friend who has been kidnapped by terrorists,’ he said hoarsely into Maggie’s ear.
As they were passing a tiny house built on a bridge, Archie began to growl, deep in his throat, and slunk down on his haunches. He was looking into a crowd of faces, a blur of tourists milling around with their heads in maps and leaflets.
‘What’s up, boy?’ said Maggie. ‘What have you seen?’
Then suddenly they were there, right in her face, so close she could smell the unctuous body spray. There was a new smugness in Snakey’s eyes.
‘Hello.’ He planted his feet on the pavement in front of them, causing a hiker with a
small child on his back to swerve into the road. ‘Nice day for a camping trip. But hold on, there’s someone missing. Oh, no, it’s Tom Hop-Hop-Hop-Hop-Hopkins! You haven’t left him behind, have you? Doh!’ He banged his hand on his forehead. ‘Sorry, I forgot, he can’t come, can he? Because he’s in the funny farm.’
The other two boys laughed. Podge was carrying a motorbike helmet in one hand and in the other an iced latte the size of a small bucket from one of the coffee shops that lined the main street. He looked at Maggie blankly, and licked his white moustache.
Maggie took a deep breath, trying to keep the tremor out of her voice. ‘Actually, we were hoping to bump into you guys. You have something that belongs to us and we want it back.’
‘Yeah?’ Snakey put a finger to his lips. ‘And what might that be?’
‘Do I need to spell it out? Something small and electronic that you took when you came sneaking around last week?’
‘Oh, that? Like I said before, if you want it, come and get it.’
Maggie was thinking hard. If she kept on about the memory card, she would give away how important it was to them. Better to leave it for now and think of a plan to get it back later.
‘Come on, Snakey,’ said Sam. ‘I could slaughter a burger.’
Snakey took a step closer and looked steadily at Maggie. ‘We’ll be seeing you again soon, losers. And this time, there will be nowhere to hide.’
Maggie felt like something inside her was about to snap. She saw the boy blink as she took a sudden step towards him, but then she felt Joel’s hand on her shoulder pulling her back. She bit her lip and walked away so quickly that Joel had to run to catch her up. Fifty yards later she looked back to see Snakey pointing pistol fingers at her before sauntering down the hill.
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