The Great Escape

by Natalie Haynes

  ‘Maybe I should come with you,’ he suggested.

  Millie’s eyes popped. ‘Are you insane? You just escaped. I can’t deny having seen you if your tail is poking out of my bag, can I?’

  ‘No. I suppose not. I don’t want to go back, of course, but I don’t want you to have to go on your own either.’ He looked decidedly unhappy.

  ‘I’ll be fine. I’ll be with Dad. They can’t kidnap me – he’d notice. Probably before he and Bill got back here, even.’ He gave her a small smile. ‘This is a chance to get a proper look inside.’

  Max gave in.

  ‘Then we will make a plan, yes? I will show you where you need to be looking.’

  ‘Done.’ Millie was relieved they’d managed to avoid having a fight. ‘What am I looking for?’

  ‘Do you have a pen?’

  ‘Yes, why?’

  ‘To draw a map, from what I tell you.’ Millie pulled a quizzical face. He went on, ‘You will have noticed, of course, that although I have a fine speaking voice, I am not yet at the point where I have opposable thumbs.’

  She nodded. ‘Sorry.’

  Between them, they sketched out a good working plan of the building. It was a large oblong block, three storeys high, and Max knew he had come down three flights of stairs to the lobby, so they assumed that he had been on the third floor – the top-most one. Millie knew there were two staircases: the one which Max had raced down, and one in the opposite corner of the building, because she had cleaned the windows around them just yesterday. Max had only seen what looked like office or cupboard doors as he raced along the top corridor, unlike the glass-fronted doors of the laboratory, so they guessed that the researchers might work up on that floor too. Neither of them knew what went on on the second floor. Millie guessed that might be where the rodent research took place – the official purpose of the laboratory building. Max wasn’t convinced that there were any mice in the building at all. They knew no more about the first floor; probably more offices, Millie thought. The ground floor, which she knew best, having looked in through its windows several times, housed cleaning cupboards, the big lobby and its jungle of pot plants, plus one other room that Millie couldn’t quite remember. She must have looked glumly through its windows a dozen times, but she just couldn’t quite place what it was. Eventually, she gave up trying, and they agreed that her plan of action was simple: clean what she was asked to clean, and don’t look too interested but pay attention to anything she saw, in case it was useful. Don’t attract anybody’s notice. That was it.

  Millie told her dad that she’d come with him tomorrow, and he had been pleased, if surprised. Max had decided to spend the night outdoors and would turn up again the next afternoon for a report. So everything was settled quite easily and Millie gave the whole thing very little thought, which was a shame, because if she had thought for a few more minutes, she wouldn’t have been in Bill’s van, turning into the driveway of the Haverham lab, before she remembered that the far wall of the forgotten room on the ground floor, opposite the window, was taken up by a huge bank of television screens, connected to CCTV cameras, which covered the whole building – including, of course, the front doors.

  Chapter Twelve

  Millie felt sweat bead on her forehead. How could she have been so stupid? This was a scientific laboratory, the chances were it contained drugs. There was a security man in the lobby, and the building was patrolled by more of them at night – she’d seen them arriving early for a shift once. The research the lab carried out was controversial at best, and had attracted the attention of a band of determined and angry protesters. Any one of these reasons was enough for the building to be covered in cameras. How could she have thought otherwise? Even if she had never been there, even if she hadn’t seen the cameras, spinning slowly and silently around to keep a check on what she was doing, she should’ve realised. She was such an idiot. Of course they knew about Max’s escape – they would have seen a tape of the whole thing. This was a trap. Max had been right all along. She wondered if they’d called the police. Had she stolen Max, if they had stolen him in the first place? So maybe they couldn’t call the police. But the cats had been stolen abroad, if Max was anything to go by, and that might not count. How would the police in Haverham know about a spate of Belgian cat thefts?

  These thoughts fizzed around in Millie’s head, as her dad and Bill unpacked the van, filled the buckets, and went inside to find out where they were to start. The security man was the same one who’d been there on Tuesday, and he smiled at Millie. She felt a little better as she smiled back. He wouldn’t be smiling if he knew what she’d done, surely. Unless it was deliberate, and he was trying to put her off her guard . . .

  After an hour of cleaning the inside of the windows she’d cleaned only two days before on the outside, she began to wish someone would come and start shouting at her, just so the endless waiting would be over.

  As it happened, she didn’t have much longer to wait. A woman came out through the nearest stairwell and said something to her dad. He nodded, looking surprised, and followed her. Five minutes later, the same woman approached Bill, and he too disappeared. Millie looked over at the security man. He smiled again.

  ‘Everyone’s leaving you to do all the work today, huh?’ he said. ‘That happens to me all the time.’

  ‘I wonder where they’ve gone,’ Millie said, hoping she didn’t sound as desperate as she felt.

  ‘There’s probably some other things that need cleaning upstairs. Doors and windows and such. With the cleaners on strike, everything is getting messed up – the windows are dirty, the rubbish is piling up—’

  ‘Oh, are they on strike? No wonder. The windows down here are massive – they probably got sick of cleaning them.’ Millie sounded so boring she was embarrassed. But she was desperate to keep the conversation going to try to find out more.

  ‘Well, you should know, darling, you do them every week. And yes, on strike. Well, not exactly. They have been . . .’ he looked exaggeratedly from left to right ‘. . . got at.’

  ‘Got at?’ asked Millie, confused.

  ‘Terrorised. The protesters, you know.’

  ‘No, what did they do?’

  ‘They threatened to take the cleaners’ pets from their homes while they are here.’

  ‘Really?’ said Millie, thinking that this sounded extremely appropriate, given what had happened to Max. Still, she reminded herself, the cleaners hadn’t kidnapped him, had they? It was a bit hard on them to start pinching their dogs or gerbils – they were only cleaning, after all.

  ‘Yes. And the cleaners have walked out. They are not coming back until they are allowed to bring their pets to work.’

  ‘Er . . .’ Millie was at a loss for words. Did this man know she’d removed Max from the lab? Was that why he was saying all these things about taking pets that seemed designed to prick her guilty conscience? He looked so friendly, though – could he be so sneaky?

  ‘How come they haven’t threatened you?’ she asked, determined to find out more, even if she was being lied to.

  ‘They don’t know who I am,’ he explained softly. ‘And’ – he looked around again – ‘I have fooled them. I don’t have a pet!’ He exploded with laughter, as if this was the best joke he’d ever heard. Millie smiled politely.

  ‘So, no one’s doing the cleaning?’ she asked, trying to get back to the subject of the laboratory.

  ‘Nope. Just you today. I would help you, you know, but I have to answer the phones.’ Millie nodded understandingly. The phones had never rung while she’d been in earshot.

  ‘Cleaning windows is less boring than sitting at a desk all day,’ she said. She had found that most adults, except for her dad when he had had his computer job, spent a fair amount of time thinking they had a worse job than anybody else they knew, so she reckoned this was a good conversation-maker. But the security man seemed unusually happy with his lot.

  ‘Well, I’m sure that’s true. But don’t you go feeli
ng sorry for me. There’s some guys here have to do the night shift every week, wandering about every evening when it’s cold and dark, with dogs and torches.’

  ‘But some guys get to sit around watching CCTV screens all day. That must be the best job, surely?’ Millie couldn’t believe she was saying this. Maybe she should just hold out her hands and tell him she’d done it.

  The security man’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. ‘How’d you hear about that?’ he whispered.

  ‘Oh, I’ve just seen the screens, you know, through the windows,’ Millie answered, thinking that if they were supposed to be a secret, they should shut the blinds. And maybe disguise the cameras as really boring gargoyles.

  ‘Oh. I thought you meant Lance. You didn’t mean Lance?’

  ‘Who’s Lance?’

  ‘He’s a buddy of mine. He got fired yesterday.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ Millie’s insides were now twisting like a phone cable.

  ‘It’s not your fault, darling,’ he reassured her. Millie hoped this man didn’t know that it almost certainly was her fault. Well, hers and Max’s.

  ‘It was his own doing,’ the security man said irritably. ‘I told him a hundred times not to spend the day watching the wrong kind of TV. He just didn’t want to hear it.’

  ‘What’s the wrong kind of TV?’ Millie asked.

  ‘Well, our cameras only record things at night, you see.’ He gesticulated at the camera nearest them both, to illustrate his point. ‘During the day, they just show what’s happening right now. They don’t store the images, and the film gets wiped over straight away, because otherwise we would have hundreds of tapes of people who work here coming in and out, and doing their jobs, and nothing else. We don’t have room for all those tapes. The screens show what we call a live feed all day, so if someone runs towards the building holding a big round bomb, marked “BOMB”, we see them coming.’

  He paused and looked down kindly at Millie. ‘That isn’t going to happen, by the way.’

  She guessed she must look as bad as she felt, if he believed that the thought of cartoon bombers made her pale with fear.

  ‘So the tapes only get kept from overnight,’ he finished.

  ‘Uh huh.’ Millie thought she might actually be sick. Could it be that they didn’t have a record of Max sneaking into her bag? And that only one person might have seen it? So it would just be her word against someone else’s?

  ‘So, Lance is the one who is supposed to watch the cameras, keeping an eye on everything. But it is a boring job, you know, sitting in a room all day on your own, watching pictures of the building with nothing happening. You and your colleagues’– he said the word with an annoying emphasis, like they weren’t really her colleagues because she was just a kid – ‘were the highlight of his week. Some people to watch, for a change.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ She nodded. This was so unlucky. The man with the world’s dullest job had been watching her just because he had literally nothing else to watch. He must have seen her, then.

  The security man continued, oblivious: ‘Only, I guess you lot have been coming too long, and he’s not interested in you any more, either.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, he wasn’t watching the cameras this week. He was watching TV. He’d brought in a little aerial, and he was watching Murder, She Wrote when one of the big bosses came in to ask him a question. You know Murder, She Wrote? The one where the lady detective writer goes around solving crimes, and there is a new murder every day, and no policeman ever says, “You know what? I think it is you who is murdering everyone, and then bamboozling people with your detective books. I think they are a smokescreen for you being the most successful serial killer ever. You are under arrest. And do not threaten me with a new book, because it will not work! You will be in prison, where you belong – and you will not have a typewriter!”’

  Millie was getting more and more bemused, but she nodded encouragingly. He obviously felt strongly about this.

  ‘So Lance is out on his ear. No references, nothing. So you and me should be getting on with our work, in case the same thing happens to us.’

  ‘Yes, absolutely.’ Millie smiled at the man with relief and delight. She turned back to the window. They hadn’t seen her, because the man had been watching a murder mystery and not the front door. There wasn’t a tape, because it was immediately recorded over. She might have got away with it after all.

  ‘Excuse me, Millie?’ A woman was standing right behind her and Millie jumped about three feet in the air.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.’

  ‘You didn’t,’ Millie lied. ‘I just didn’t hear you come up behind me.’

  ‘I’m Elaine, Mr Shepard’s secretary. I was wondering if I could ask you a couple of questions. Would you come with me?’

  ‘Sure.’ Millie smiled without sincerity, hoping it would disguise her nerves. Who was Mr Shepard? And how did the woman know her name? She guessed her dad or Bill must have mentioned it. ‘Shall I leave my things here?’ She pointed down at her bucket.

  ‘No, bring them, too. We don’t want anyone tripping over them and suing us.’ The woman gave a mirthless laugh.

  Millie wished she could leave her bucket so her dad might wonder where she was. Although since he’d disappeared ten minutes ago himself, maybe that wouldn’t help. Millie waved to the security man and called, ‘See you in a minute,’ as she walked off towards the staircase. He mimed a question at her and she gave a big pantomime shrug back. No, she had no idea where she was being taken, either.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Elaine took Millie up two flights of stairs, down a corridor, turned right, and then down another corridor. Millie thought she must now be at the back of the building, but she found her sense of direction impaired by the fact that all the corridors looked the same. They came to a door on the right and the woman knocked briskly.

  ‘Come in,’ called a voice.

  She opened the door into a smart, functional office. There was a large wooden desk in the middle of the room, and behind that sat a pasty-looking man who might have been about the same age as Millie’s dad. It was hard to tell. He was the kind of person you forgot about the second after you laid eyes upon him. He was average height, average weight, had mousy hair and eyebrows, boring glasses, a grey suit, a navy tie and no distinguishing features whatsoever. Behind him was a row of filing cabinets, and on his desk was a grey computer that could have done with a good dusting. Apparently, in the absence of the cleaners, absolutely nothing got cleaned.

  ‘This is Millie,’ said Elaine.

  ‘Hello, Millie,’ said the forgettable man, in his forgettable voice. ‘My name’s Arthur Shepard.’

  ‘Hello.’ Millie stared back at him, trying to absorb what she could about him and his office without seeming too interested. ‘Did you want your windows cleaned?’

  ‘Ah, no, perhaps not today.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Millie, as Elaine left the room, closing the door softly behind her.

  ‘I wondered if I could ask you a few questions,’ said Arthur Shepard.

  Millie was entirely familiar with this grammatical construction, as she had had a particularly poisonous woman teaching her physics the year before who had phrased her sentences in exactly the same way: it sounded like a friendly question or a polite request, but it was always, definitely, an order. There was never the option to reply, for example, ‘How interesting for you. Well, keep wondering,’ and wander off happily with no further information about sound waves, for example, clogging up your brain.

  ‘Sure,’ Millie said. ‘About windows?’ This was the technique she had generally employed with the toxic Mrs Greenaway. Helpful, but stupid, so she had nothing to work with.

  ‘No, no.’ He smiled insincerely. ‘Not about windows.’

  ‘Oh.’ Millie stared again. Hopefully, he would soon decide she was too dense to have helped a cat escape from a pet shop, let alone a secure testing laboratory.
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br />   ‘You were here on Tuesday, were you not?’

  ‘What day is it now?’ Millie decided that if she were going to play dumb, she might as well enjoy it.

  ‘Thursday.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Millie was pleased to note that he sounded a bit tetchy now – he didn’t have Mrs Greenaway’s legendary patience, then.

  ‘Er, I think so, then, yes. Yes,’ she said.

  ‘You were cleaning the doors downstairs, I think?’

  ‘Oh, you want to talk about doors. Not windows.’

  ‘Not entirely, no. Just the doors downstairs, that lead to the outside of the building.’

  ‘Right. Yes, then.’

  ‘Yes what?’

  ‘Yes, I was cleaning those doors.’ Millie could see that the man was getting very tired of her unhelpful helpfulness. Good.

  ‘Excellent. That’s what I thought. Now, while you were cleaning the doors, at around five past three, did you see anything?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’ The man now sounded exactly like Mrs Greenaway when someone explained that they didn’t know quite how light travelled across the vacuum of space, but that bicycles might be involved.

  ‘I don’t know what time it is, ever. My watch is broken.’ Millie hadn’t quite got round to telling her dad that she’d drowned it, and was therefore still wearing it to fend off awkward questions. She held it out for the man to see, so he could verify her story. He didn’t even glance at it. She carried on: ‘It’s not waterproof, you see, and I put my arm in the bucket, and so it . . .’ She trailed off, as even the stupidest person could see he wasn’t listening.

  ‘Did you see anything at any time at all?’ His forgettable voice had now taken on a distinct tone of irritation.

  ‘I saw the security man on the desk through the doors. He’s nice.’

  ‘Apart from him.’

  ‘I saw my dad and Bill up on the platform. I never get to go on that.’

  Mr Shepard looked torn between telling her this was a good idea – as she was obviously too young and stupid to be allowed near anything dangerous, starting with cutlery and ending with window cleaners’ cradles – and telling her she should immediately be hoisted three floors up, surrounded by kitchen knives, blindfolded, and forced to fend for herself.