by Ali Sparkes
Freddy helped him out of the water at the other side and for a moment Ben just stood, shivering with excitement and delight. Keeping his back to the bridge, he glanced back to the other side—he had swum the River Am! ‘Good fun, yes?’ said Freddy. ‘Me and Poll used to do it all the time with local children, in the hols. We used to have races. Don’t you do that here any more?’
Ben shook his head regretfully. ‘Council doesn’t allow it.’
Freddy made a scornful snort. ‘Sounds like your council members are a bunch of lily-livered old codgers to me! Where on earth did you get them from?’
‘Well … er … most of them probably used to swim the River Am with you,’ said Ben.
Freddy grimaced. ‘Oh. Well, pretty poor show then, the lot of them!’
Dripping slightly, they picked their way through the little wooded area and across to a path that led into Riverside Close. Number 21 was a small red-brick house on the end of a terrace with a neatly kept front garden and late honeysuckle growing around its door. Hesitantly Ben lifted his hand and pressed the doorbell. Inside the house there was a distant jingle. They stood and waited. Nobody came. Ben rang again.
‘Oh blow!’ said Freddy. ‘After all that he’s not even in! It’s too bad!’ He leaned down and peered through the letter box and as he did so the door clicked and opened inwards. Freddy fell into the hallway with a surprised gasp and then scrambled to his feet. ‘I say—I say, Mr Shaw … are you in?’ he called. There was no reply.
‘We should go,’ said Ben, uneasily. ‘It’s not right to go in.’
‘Mr Shaw! We need to speak to you!’ called Freddy and wandered further into the hallway.
‘You can’t just—’ Ben stopped and sighed. Freddy was already peering into the little front room.
‘It’s all right—I’m not going to burgle the place! Just having a bit of a squint around. I don’t like this— I don’t like it at all. First JJ and now Percy. Where is he?’
‘He might just be up the shop or something,’ said Ben, edging around the door after Freddy. The sitting room was tidy and smelled of furniture polish and old wood. The furniture was elderly but clean. The small fireplace held an old fashioned grille gas fire and the TV was a big square one, in a wooden cabinet. A clock ticked steadily on the mantelpiece.
‘Come on, we should go,’ said Ben.
‘No. Not yet.’ Freddy went past him back into the hallway and along to the little kitchen at the back. A glance through the dining room door showed him there was nobody there either and the kitchen, painted pale green and with furniture not unlike the stuff in the vault, was also empty. A dishcloth lay folded and dry over the hot tap nozzle of the old Ascot water heater on the wall. ‘There’s something odd going on,’ said Freddy and Ben knew he was right. He could feel it. He didn’t object when Freddy climbed the stairs and checked the bathroom, the small back bedroom, and the front bedroom. All were just the same really. Neat, well kept, clean—and empty.
‘Do you really think he’s disappeared?’ asked Ben in almost a whisper as they padded across the highly patterned carpet on the landing. Through its small square window the sky was darkening. ‘He was going to tell us stuff, wasn’t he? He was going to look into the files again.’
‘Maybe he found something out and had to dash off somewhere in his motorcar,’ said Freddy.
Ben shrugged. He couldn’t quite picture old Percy dashing anywhere, and he was pretty sure he didn’t have a car. He was about to say they should give it up and go when he heard something scrape. A hollow, long scrape. He felt something fall on his shoulder.
‘F-Freddy,’ he whispered. His hair prickled from his neck to his forehead. Now he could hear breathing. Freddy looked back at him. ‘What?’
Ben looked up and shouted out in horror.
Polly sang old-fashioned songs in a sweet, breathy voice, as she rummaged through the many wiggly bits of cardboard and tried to find a corner.
Rachel smiled, in spite of her anxiety. Polly was quite happy at that moment, lost in the big thousand-piece jigsaw of a Swiss chalet which an aunt had given them for Christmas, and which would almost certainly never have been opened if they hadn’t dug Polly up. She had cleared space on the dining room table and was ordering all the pieces into sides and non-sides, and, of course, the four corners. She sniffed a little and then went on singing. Rachel looked at her watch. It was gone six now. Where were Ben and Freddy? Surely they must have found Percy by now? She had been expecting them to turn up, or at least phone, at any time for the last hour, with some kind of information. Hopefully with news that Percy had heard from Uncle Jerome and that he was even now on his way back to Darkwood House. She looked wishfully through the tall dining room window, up to the gate. Clouds had rolled in across the warm day and it was getting dark. She thought she could hear thunder in the distance. She switched the table lamp on, so they could see the jigsaw better.
‘Don’t go walking down lover’s lane … (sniff) … don’t go … (sniff). I say, have you got a hanky, Rachel?’ Rachel got loo roll from the downstairs toilet which Polly seemed slightly startled by, but she managed not to gosh and just blew her nose. She screwed up the tissue to tuck it into her sleeve and then stopped still. In her opening palm the scrunched up white loo roll spread itself back out, like a flower blooming. There was red in the centre of it. Polly gulped and raised her eyes to Rachel. ‘It’s starting, isn’t it?’ Rachel felt a chill pass through her. First Bessie, then Freddy— and poor Polly didn’t even know about that—and now Polly too.
‘It’s just a little nosebleed,’ gulped Rachel. ‘Nothing at all to worry about. I get them all the time.’
‘Do you think so?’ Rachel knew Polly didn’t believe her. She also knew that Polly wanted to believe her, desperately. What else was she to do?
‘Yes. I do think so,’ lied Rachel, unable to avoid glancing at the girl’s fingernails. She walked to the high sash window at the front of the room and pulled it down—she didn’t like the feel of the clammy warm air funnelling through it. Outside it was very dark for so early in the evening. Where were the boys? She returned to the jigsaw. ‘Come on—let’s start joining up the edge pieces.’
They had connected three pieces when the phone rang and made them jump violently and mess up two lines of edge pieces. Rachel ran to pick it up. ‘Hello? Ben? Freddy?’
Silence.
‘Hello?’
Silence.
‘Hello. Who’s there?’
Silence.
She clicked off the phone and put it down on the hall table. She stared at it, remembering the woman who’d rung last night. Goosebumps broke out again. ‘Oh stop it,’ she muttered to herself. ‘You’re just being stupid.’
Then the phone rang again. She seized it and said, ‘Yes, hello?’
Silence. This time Rachel could almost feel it pulsing out of the receiver and into her ear, like a toxic gas. She said nothing. The silence spoke back to her. For several long seconds. Rachel pressed down the receiver but when the button clicked back up there was no dialling tone—just more silence. She gulped and put the phone down and went back to the jigsaw where Polly was concentrating just as hard as she could. ‘Who was it?’
‘Nobody. Wrong number, I suppose.’
‘Twice?’
‘Yes … I suppose.’
Polly went on with the jigsaw, barely glancing up. ‘Close the doors,’ she sang, in almost a whisper, ‘they’re coming in the windows … ’
It made Ben feel better that Freddy shrieked too. The face above their heads was contorted and wild eyed and a spider fell from its shaggy grey hair right onto Ben’s terrified upturned face.
‘Oh, don’t take on so, you pair of ninnies,’ said the face. It was hardly what they expected. A groan or a bloodcurdling scream, before the sudden arrival of a bloodied axe or something, but not that. Ben realized in a second that this was just Percy, upside down and certainly not at his best, but still just old Percy. He found his hands were at his throa
t where his heart seemed to be beating at four times the usual speed. ‘Sorry if I gave you a bit of a scare … but if you will go breaking and entering.’
‘We didn’t!’ said Freddy, affronted. ‘The door was open and we were trying to find you. We were worried about you—and I should jolly well think we were right to be.’ His voice was slightly higher than usual and he was gabbling. He’d obviously had a huge fright too, thought Ben, letting out a shaky breath of relief. The hatchway above them moved further sideways and with a rasping metallic rattle, an aluminium stepladder swung down. Percy was on the landing beside them a few seconds later. The right way up he looked quite normal, if a little cobwebby.
‘W-what were you doing up there?’ asked Ben.
‘What do you think? Hiding!’ Percy shook the dust out of his hair. ‘I thought they’d come this time.’
‘Thought who had come?’ asked Freddy.
‘Why are you both half naked?’ enquired Percy; not unreasonably, Ben realized.
‘We had to swim across the river to get to you. Trouble on the bridge,’ said Freddy, quickly. ‘Now what on earth do you mean—who is coming?’
Percy went into the front bedroom and peered discreetly through a gap in the thick white netting. They followed, exchanging glances. ‘I had hoped Jerome would have got you away by now. I left him a message,’ Percy muttered. There was a roll of distant thunder beyond the window. ‘They’re coming. You’d better not go back now. Better get straight away from here.’
Ben wondered if old Percy actually was a little bit senile. Almost as if he’d heard this thought, Percy turned round suddenly from the window and fixed Ben with a hard stare. ‘The Clean Up car. Remember? I told you. I saw it back then, fifty-three years ago. Black. A certain kind of number plate. I’ve seen it again. I saw the Clean Up car in town this morning. Then I got the silent calls an hour ago. Two of them. Then I knew. It’s only a matter of time before they come for me. And for you. You need to get away now.’
Ben swallowed. ‘But—but why are you still here? If they’re coming for you?’
Percy sighed and shook his head. ‘I’m too old to run. Better to hide it out and hope they won’t check the loft. Thought I might make it look as if I’d gone away.’
‘What—and leave the front door open?’ said Freddy.
‘Open? Oh, blast that old catch! I thought it was shut. Chain usually catches it—but you can’t put a chain on from the inside when you’re supposed to have gone away.’
‘Wait a minute—you said you’d left a message for Uncle Jerome?’ asked Ben. ‘Does that mean you’ve got a number for him? We haven’t! We can’t find a number and we can’t get through to him and he’s been away for days and days now.’
Percy looked worried. ‘How long?’
‘Almost a week. And he’s never left us that long before. It was only meant to be a couple of days. We had to sell stuff to get food!’
Percy shook his head and now looked extremely worried. ‘I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. I tried your house these last couple of days but nobody’s been in—and he gave me his London office number but he’s never there … finally I had to leave a message on the answerphone this morning. Stupid of me. It’s probably how they’ve traced me.’
‘What message did you leave for Uncle J?’ asked Ben. ‘Have you found anything out?’
‘Not much,’ said Percy, glancing out of the window again. ‘But something … I asked one of my young chaps who still works in London on the Met, just about to retire—knows someone in MI5. He looked into it and told me more or less what I thought he would. It’s not good for a country to know its top brains are running off to the enemy. So it seems as if the government believed your father did defect to Russia, but wanted to keep it quiet. I’m sorry, young man,’ he added, seeing Freddy’s thunderous face. ‘But you see, they also thought that you children must have gone with him, and that’s why you were never found. But I found out something else. Your father’s friend, Professor Richard Tarrant, disappeared too, at the same time … although that didn’t come out in the press either. He was a bachelor man and given to travelling, so nobody realized for a while. Then they thought maybe both men had gone across together … except …’
‘Except what?’ asked Freddy, coldly. ‘I can’t believe Uncle Dick would have gone either—I really can’t. He was a good sort!’
‘Well, he came back, you see. He came back in 2007. He was ill—dying. Wanted to make his peace with them. Gave the government some useful information and was allowed to end his life quietly in his home country.’
Freddy dropped his head for a moment, remembering the man they’d called Uncle Dick—but then looked back up and demanded, ‘But what about Father? He must have told them about Father!’
‘Maybe—but if so, my man didn’t hear anything. Maybe there’s nothing else to know. Maybe it’s all still a mystery to them, even at the top. It’s probably too long ago for anyone these days to care.’
‘So how come you’re worried about the Clean Up car now then? If nobody cares any more?’ said Ben. ‘Why would they come along now, if nobody knows anything about Polly and Freddy except our family and you?’
‘It’s not only our lot have clean up cars,’ muttered Percy. ‘Just because our lot might not know what’s what, doesn’t mean someone else hasn’t worked it out. Have you kept Freddy and Polly at the house all the time, up until now?’
‘Well, no—they had to come to school with us. Uncle J sorted it out with the head teacher,’ said Ben.
Percy stared at him and then pinched his nose and shook his head. ‘So … two children from 1956, out and about in 2009—in a modern school. No. They’re not going to stand out, are they?’ Ben realized he was being sarcastic and abandoned all thoughts of Percy being senile.
‘But why should we worry if everyone just thinks Freddy and Polly are in Russia now?’ said Ben. ‘It makes much more sense than the truth, doesn’t it? Nobody will ever, ever guess. I can’t believe anyone’s really coming for us—or you. I think you’re just nervous.’
‘I told you,’ said Percy. ‘Silent calls. I’ve had them twice today … and I know what that means, even if you think I’m just a daft old man. Someone, somewhere, is checking who’s in—and who’s not. Where are the other two?’
‘Back at the house,’ said Freddy. ‘Oh, blast it! Ben—what if Percy’s right? The Clean Up men could be going there now? We have to get back—we have to warn them!’
He made to run downstairs but Percy shouted, ‘Wait! Use the phone first. And then get some ruddy clothes on. You can’t go charging about like that and expect to not get noticed. I’ll get you some clothes and shoes.’
Ben ran downstairs to the hallway, pushing the front door shut as he passed it, and picked up the receiver of Percy’s phone. He paused as it reached his ear and then stared at Freddy.
‘What is it?’ asked Freddy. ‘Can’t you remember your own number?’
Ben held out the receiver. ‘C-c-can’t c-call them. The line’s d-dead.’
Freddy stared back at him and then glanced across to the door. ‘Get down,’ he said. ‘Get down. Right now.’
As they sank to their knees, Ben realized why. A flash of lightning flared through the frosted glass pane. The sudden light threw a shadow. Somebody stood, motionless, on the other side of the door.
The warm, clammy wind curled through the garden as Rachel took Bessie out for a toilet stop behind the rhododendrons. The sky glowered dark grey and violet. Fine prickles of lightning lit up the eastern sky every few seconds. Thunder rumbled, still distant. Shadows moved in the corner of her eye but she knew she was just nervous and seeing things.
‘Come on, Bessie.’ She picked up the puppy, which playfully tried to nibble at her hands, and walked quickly back to the house. She firmly shut the door behind her with a shiver. Polly was in the kitchen, getting beans on toast ready for them. They were both worried about the boys and trying to get on with stuff, to avoid thinkin
g about it too much.
‘What were you doing by the gate? Did you see the boys coming?’ called Polly from the kitchen.
‘We weren’t by the gate, we were round the side,’ said Rachel.
There was a pause. ‘Oh,’ said Polly. Another pause and she walked into the hallway. ‘Well, maybe they’re back then … and just larking around in the garden still.’
‘I didn’t hear them,’ said Rachel, stepping into the front room with Bessie at her heels and glancing through the high sash window at the front. The gate and drive could be seen from here, but nobody was there.
‘Oh,’ said Polly, again, following her in. ‘I just thought I saw someone out there. Probably just the lightning playing tricks with me … I suppose.’
They looked at each other, saying nothing, but both gulping. For a moment, silence reigned and then Bessie began to whine. They stared at her. She was shivering and looking fixedly across to the other side of the room, where a second window gave on to the side passageway. The window here was slightly open at the sill. Rachel stepped across and shut it quickly, seeing nothing outside but the unkempt forsythia bush waving its tall twigs in the air. A flash of lightning made the twigs look like witch’s fingers. She felt her skin prickle with fear.
‘Close the doors,’ sang Polly, picking up Bessie and looking around with big, frightened eyes, ‘they’re coming in the windows … ’
‘Will you stop that?’ hissed Rachel.
Polly stared at her and mouthed, ‘Close the doors … they’re coming up the stairs … ’
Now there was movement in the side passage beyond the window. Rachel was sure of it. A shadow, shifting suddenly sideways as if it was scared of being seen.
‘Is the back door locked?’ asked Polly. Rachel nodded. ‘Are you sure?’ Rachel walked quickly into the kitchen where the beans were bubbling on the stove. The back door was shut and the bolts were across.
