Chapter 14: THEY MUSTN’T ESCAPE!
Lou tore past the village school and down to the main road. It was dark in both directions. If headlights appeared from the left, it was almost certain to be the ghosts.
Was there anything she could do to delay them until the police arrived? She looked around in desperation. A glimmer of chrome from a tree in the picnic area – their bikes!
There wasn’t a moment to lose. Lou grabbed them both by the handlebars and dragged them into the lane. She lay one width-ways across the left hand side and the other across the right. A wide van would find it impossible to swerve around. The road was blocked! Lou flung herself behind the trees. She was just in time: headlights swung up from a dip in the road to her left.
Screech! A van of some kind juddered to a halt, inches from a still-turning bicycle wheel. Lou peeped through the trees in grim fascination. Now what would happen?
It looked a fairly old model. Who was inside it? Was it the ghosts? Yes! Lou could see them in the back – like a group of pale shadows. If it were daylight, under different circumstances, it would be a ridiculous sight. At 3.30am, and knowing the sort of people who must be beneath those sheets, it was alarming and unsettling.
Lou was getting weary now; she had had her fill of excitement. She just wanted to go back with Jack, drink a hot chocolate, eat a toasted, thickly buttered teacake and go to bed.
The driver’s door groaned open. Lou could see a male figure get out. She watched anxiously, preparing to take a run for it up the hillside if he walked in her direction. He grabbed first one bike, then the other and flung them into the ditch on the side of the road.
Blow!, thought Lou. Within a few seconds he would be back in his cab and off they would go. Her delaying tactic didn’t appear to have worked.
But the driver did not get straight back in. He was clearly surprised and suspicious to have come across two overturned bicycles with wheels still spinning strewn across a remote country lane at 3.30 in the morning. He whipped a torch out and shone it towards the trees.
‘Pwy sy ’na?’ (who’s there?) he shouted. Lou cursed herself for having allowed curiosity to get the better of her. She tore up the steep hillside but missed the path in the dark and quickly got snagged in brambles and bracken.
She pulled herself deep into the undergrowth and had to hope she wouldn’t be spotted. Where were the police? Surely they should have come along this stretch by now.
Then came the throb of another diesel engine and a swirling flicker of blue catching the bracken stalks above her head. It was the police! She heard what sounded like a handbrake going on and doors opening.
She could hear sharp, hard voices but could not make out the words. Lou pulled herself up and peered again through the branches. An officer was walking around the ghosts’ scruffy van and looking inside it. A few seconds later, a police car arrived from the opposite direction, parking directly behind the ghosts’ van and wedging it in. Good!
She watched as a dozen figures were ushered out and into the road. Lou couldn’t help but smirk. They stood there looking sorry for themselves, some still wearing bed sheets. That was a fine give-away. It meant that the police knew immediately they had apprehended the right people. She hoped they felt as daft as they looked.
They were led, one by one, into waiting police vans. She could not tell whether Idwal was among their number or whether he remained, fuming with rage, inside a blocked-in cellar. Either way, the police would get him now.
I must get back to Jack, thought Lou. He will be worried on his own on top of the hill. She took out her small torch and shone it up the slope. She saw the path she wanted leading directly up the hill. She ran briskly up it, hoping Jack hadn’t wandered off.
He hadn’t. He was standing on tiptoe doing his best to see the activity on the road below. He could make out the roofs of a dark van and the white tops of police vehicles, each crowned with a revolving blue light.
‘I’m back,’ whispered Lou, giving his arm a squeeze. ‘Sorry to leg it like that but I had to try to halt the ghost van somehow. Anyway, the police have got them!’
‘Fantastic, well done, Lou. Oh did you notice if our bikes were still ok by the tree?’ asked Jack.
‘Erm yes they’re fine, at least they were, until I used them as a makeshift roadblock,’ admitted Lou. ‘I think they’ll be ok, maybe a bit scratched. We’ll need to fish them out of the ditch. I’ll explain more later. Let’s take a stroll down but when we get to the bottom, stay behind the trees until the police drive the ghosts away. We don’t want them seeing us, even though they’ve been arrested.’
They climbed down the hillside path to the car park and peered out at the road through the branches. As they watched, they saw a police van with Idwal’s ghostly gang in the back drive away, its blue light still flashing, towards Abersoch. A second police van headed in the opposite direction. A police car remained at the roadside, and a powerful beam of light swept across the tree-lined picnic area.
‘Don’t worry,’ whispered Lou. ‘It’ll be a police officer searching for the owners of two children’s bikes. I hope I won’t get into trouble for doing that. Let’s go and explain everything. Hopefully, our bikes will still be ok and we can ride back on them.’
‘They ought to be pleased with all our help,’ said Jack.
So it proved, although the officers remaining at the scene were not keen on Jack and Lou riding back at nearly 4am, but Lou insisted.
‘Very well young lady, but you take care and don’t get involved in any more scrapes tonight, do you hear?’ said the officer gruffly, pulling their bikes from the ditch and handing them over. ‘I don’t know what your parents will say. Thanks for what you’ve done though – you’re a brave pair. Seek me out when you turn 17 and I’ll get you a job. Now be off with you.’
‘Take it from me,’ said his colleague, grinning, ‘that’s the nearest our chief comes to giving anyone a compliment.’
Something Strange in the Cellar Page 14
