The Boy Who Wasn't There

by K. M. Peyton

  Nutty thought survival training was a much better subject than home economics and wished her dim school offered it. She thought poor Arnie looked like death and Christian not much better, white and shaking with his stiff-upper-lip reticence, not complaining. John Pike was like a steadfast terrier, always ready to beaver away or stand firm, as the case required. Funny how being in trouble showed up people’s characters. Christian must have gone in after Arnie without even thinking of the risk, and who was Arnie to him? Not as if he was his brother or something. Imagine Hoomey doing such a thing! And herself, come to that. Jodie, cool, calm and aggressive, was tearing at the logs with her violinist’s pared-down nails already showing blood. The torchlight was trembling violently in Hoomey’s hand – poor little Hoomey, who only asked for a quiet life and didn’t seem to get it!

  With such total concentration beamed on the creation of fire, there was no way the single match could fail to get a result. After a heart-stopping, damp splutter, it raised enough energy to set alight page one hundred and ten of Jeffrey Archer’s Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less which was then applied to one, and then all of the candle stumps. Whole chapters of literature were then lit in the fireplace, the smallest log propped behind and the tinder fed into the flames. The logs, being of pine and birch, and dry, took light without any trouble. John Pike piled on more and the crackling flames were soon roaring up the chimney.

  It was amazing how quickly their spirits revived. They crouched round, steaming, the smell of hot wet wool filling their nostrils. Sparks flew; round black holes soon spattered their best clothes. John Pike burst the top of the bean tins by battering them with stones, and they propped them to warm by the flames.

  Arnie was pushed to the front, to the hottest spot, and felt himself reviving, in spite of an almighty headache.

  ‘He knocked me stupid with a spanner or something. And when we were driving along, every time I moved he gave me another clonk. By the time we got to the bridge I was all groggy. I thought I was going over a cliff. I thought I was dead.’

  ‘You’ve got as many lives as a cat, Arnie,’ said John Pike.

  ‘What’re we going to do next?’ Nutty asked. ‘They’ll all be searching for us madly. We ought to put out signals! We got to spend the night here?’

  ‘Think of somewhere better! You can go and make signals to your heart’s content, but leave me out of it.’ Christian, steaming, could not stop yawning. ‘I’m going to bed down for a few hours. Wait till the rain stops. We can go down when it gets light.’

  ‘D’you think they’ll put out a search-party?’

  ‘Only if they know we’re missing. The Turkins have probably told ’em we got a lift home with someone. Or they would take us in their Citroen. It’s big enough. Being friends of Boris. I wouldn’t put it past them.’

  ‘Oh!’ Nutty’s face dropped. She fancied being searched for by helicopter and, with luck, being swung aboard on the end of a rope like you saw on the television. She got up and went over to the window that looked down the valley. It was still raining hard. She pressed her burning forehead against the glass and looked out into the darkness. There was nothing to be seen, not even a rim of horizon against the sky – only . . . She stiffened, stared.

  She tried to sound cool, like Jodie. ‘You know what?’

  ‘What?’ they said to humour her.

  ‘Someone’s coming!’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Christian woke up abruptly.

  ‘Headlights coming up the valley.’

  They all rushed to the window to look. Far away, the way they had come earlier, still far in the distance, two sets of headlights could be seen approaching.

  ‘Oh good!’ cried Hoomey, thinking of his warm bed and cups of tea and more chocolate cake. ‘They’ve found us!’

  Not all the others seemed to share his enthusiasm.

  ‘Who’s found us? That’s the question,’ Christian said quietly.

  In the crush, Arnold found himself suddenly feeling queasy again.

  ‘You don’t mean—?’

  ‘Might be just gamekeepers or something,’ Jodie said hopefully.

  ‘It might be,’ Christian agreed. But his voice was subdued. Then, ‘They’re a funny lot, Boris’s keepers. Persistent. I don’t think it would be wise to run and meet them, waving our arms.’

  ‘Blockade the door!’ Nutty decided.

  ‘Wait and see.’

  The fire no longer seemed to give out the same cheer. It fell into embers and its bright light died. Arnie went back to it with what sounded suspiciously like a sob – a gulp, at least – (after all, it was him they were after) and the General’s disquiet infected all the others. Nutty’s enthusiasm faded.

  ‘You think it – it really is – them?’

  ‘We’ll soon find out.’

  Slowly but steadily, occasionally lurching out of sight, but always reappearing, the two sets of headlights moved towards them up the valley.

  CHAPTER NINE

  NOBODY SAID MUCH. Mildred’s car blocked the track below the bothy and there was no way round it, but no-one offered to go and move it.

  Christian walked back to the fire and stood silently looking into its cheerful flames. He knew he was the natural leader and knew that he had got them all into this jam. But he had saved Arnold. So far so good. But he did not like what he was thinking now. He was thinking that Boris’s keepers were a ruthless lot and were no doubt wishing the six interfering kids could be wiped off the face of the earth. How? If they didn’t have a plan, why were they coming? Why were they persisting?

  He felt afraid, and very tired. Blast Jodie for producing the troublesome Arnold! Yet Christian admired Arnold’s resilience; he was like a rubber ball, bouncing back from disaster with his hair sticking up ever more briskly, his beady dark eyes alert for the next sniff of danger. No-one could accuse him of being a whinger.

  John Pike joined him presently.

  ‘What if it’s them?’

  Christian knew John Pike knew, but the girls still thought it was a lark. Hoomey was useless but Arnold a born fighter.

  ‘Bad.’ He shrugged.

  ‘They can’t murder six of us. Bit over the top,’ John Pike said, and grinned.

  ‘I bet they’d like to. They’ve got a grand living ahead of them, if nobody knows. Boris is world class. You think about it.’

  ‘Rather not actually.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘We could keep ’em out. Barricade the door.’

  ‘Yeah, I was thinking that. There’ll be a search party for us eventually, if we can hang on.’

  There was only the one door which could easily be kept shut with a large log shoved against it, wedged under its cross-timbering. A large log was to hand, in the shape of a makeshift bench balanced on a couple of rocks beside the fire.

  Christian went back to the window and looked out. The lights were now quite close, having passed the track down to the Falls. It could be a couple of innocent parties going up the valley – the track obviously led somewhere . . . Christian savoured for a moment the relief he would feel if that proved the case.

  The lights halted. In the headlights Mildred’s car showed up, blocking the way. The watchers held their breath.

  ‘The keys are still in it. They can move it, if they want to go on.’

  The person driving the first car got out and went back to the second car. After he had crossed the beam of the headlights they couldn’t see what was happening, but presumably they were talking.

  ‘Hush! Listen!’ Christian commanded.

  After about half a minute there came the sound of car doors slamming. Then the headlights were extinguished.

  ‘They’re coming!’

  ‘Get that bench!’

  They manhandled the hefty log into place, jamming it hard against the door and wedging its heel into the earth floor as best they could.

  ‘That’ll hold them.’

  The rain had eased off and in the half-gloaming of the Northern night th
ey knew the hut was visible. No doubt too the firelight showed through the windows. There were only two windows, both small, and with fixed glass. Christian turned the beam of Mildred’s torch through one of the windows and picked them out – Ferretface and the two Turkins approaching like tanks over the hinterland.

  They were all very tense: even Nutty’s adrenalin could not spark any witticisms in the face of this relentless pressure. Nobody could work out what they intended to do. They couldn’t murder all six of them! Could they . . .? Hoomey made some faint squeaking noises and turned away. Arnold tried not to feel as if someone had hit him on the head with a spanner and thrown him over a waterfall, but found it very difficult. He could not stop himself trembling.

  Christian kept the full beam on them as they came to the door. Ferretface tried to open it and found he couldn’t. He thumped a few times and then turned to Mrs Turkin. They conferred.

  ‘We wish to talk with you! Let us in!’ Mrs Turkin shouted.

  They were all crowded round the two windows to watch, with the torchbeam steady on the trio. Their respective faces were no more attractive in the dusk and the rain than they had ever been, nutcracker faces with angry mouths and hard eyes – hatchet faces, whose physiognomy traced back to Genghis Khan or worse. Manipulators of the unfortunate Boris, who was a really nice guy. Boris needed rescuing as much as Arnold, Christian thought, as he made his reply.

  ‘No deal! You can talk from there.’

  ‘We don’t want to talk to you!’

  ‘Shut up, Nutty!’

  ‘You do not understand us! We wish to explain.’

  ‘Explain from there.’

  After a few moments discussion Ferretface applied his bulky form to the door but it held easily.

  ‘Very cold out here. We wish to talk!’

  Christian was relieved how easily their defence held off the attack and knew they had the upper hand. The door was very strongly built and the bench massive against it. He stood watching them, still holding the torch in his hand.

  Suddenly, to his amazement, Mr Turkin, the shadowy background one of the three, stepped forward and levelled a revolver straight at him.

  ‘Open the door!’

  ‘It’s a toy gun!’ Nutty shouted. ‘Bet you!’

  ‘Don’t fall for it, Chris,’ John Pike. ‘It’s just a trick.’

  The next moment there was a sharp explosion and the window glass shattered. Christian jumped back, dropping the torch, and instantly there was another crack and the toy gun let rip into the top of his arm with a bite that made him scream out.

  ‘You let us in!’ Mrs Turkin roared. ‘Or we keel you all!’

  ‘Chris, are you OK?’

  They thought he was dead, about to sway and fall like a cowboy actor. John Pike leapt to his side. Christian found that he was still very much alive, but shaking with anger more than fright.

  ‘It missed – of course I’m all right!’ He let out some fearful oaths that the girls had never dreamed he knew and then said, ‘Let them in, for goodness sake, they mean business!’

  His arm burned like fire and he could feel the blood running down inside his best orchestra jersey, but it didn’t feel like an artery or bone, only flesh – as far as he could tell, never having been shot before. He had had hurts worse than this though, and never screamed out. He was furiously angry, his pride and his plans smashed simultaneously.

  The shooting seemed to have enraged Mrs Turkin equally, for she was berating her husband like a virago out in the rain. Even if they could not understand what she was saying, the gist was very clear. She was still at it as they opened the door.

  Mr Turkin, taking no notice of her, swung the revolver round at them and gestured them all up one end of the room. They went, very cautiously. Turkin picked up the torch and shone it on them.

  ‘You keep steel,’ said Mrs Turkin, switching her vitriolic gaze from her companion to them. ‘You no trouble!’ She jabbed the torch at Christian. ‘You – you keep quiet.’

  Then she switched her nagging attention back to the two men. They neither of them changed their expressions at all. Ferretface went over to the fire and stood in front of it, looking into the flames. Then he put some more wood on it and the fresh pine crackled up with a roar and spat out sparks. Ferretface brushed them off his trousers.

  ‘Hope he goes up in smoke,’ said Nutty.

  They all sat along the wall, in a row, watching the revolver. There was safety in numbers but they didn’t feel very safe. The revolver shots had made everything quite different. Nutty could see a large patch of blood on Christian’s upper arm, which he was holding with his other hand. He was very white.

  ‘You can’t kill all of us!’ John Pike said suddenly, sounding rather cross. ‘What are you going to do next?’

  ‘We stay ’ere and you keep quiet, or we ’urt you.’

  They put the big log back to its use as a bench and sat on it in front of the fire, muttering between themselves. The man with the gun was turned in their direction, watching them, and the gun was still in his hand. They all muttered together, apparently in argument. The woman seemed to be the boss, or at least was the most outspoken, and her ‘husband’ with the gun was the quietest. But his silence had an ominous weight. One had the feeling that, if he wanted, he could toss off the lady’s vituperation with a shrug like shaking off a fly, and she would be quiet.

  Nutty christened her Navratilova. ‘She’s got a big serve. Wham!’ Nutty could not believe, in spite of Christian’s arm, that any harm could come to them.

  ‘Fort Knox’ll be over soon in a helicopter,’ she said to Hoomey. ‘Stop sniffling.’

  Ferretface gave the impression of being subservient, perhaps just a hired ‘heavy’, the one who murdered the first Mr Turkin no doubt, and who had been directed to wipe out Arnold. He had never been seen with the musical set, but only in the chauffeur’s job. Perhaps he kept tabs on Boris. Where was Boris? By now, they assumed, their friends would all be home and dry, tucking into supper. A nice thought.

  The bothy was now warm and snug and when the Russian trio told them all to lie down and go to sleep the idea seemed quite attractive. Better than being lined up against the wall and shot, which alternative had been in all their minds. Better to be killed in the morning, fresh and alert . . . should sleep come, which it did quite quickly to Hoomey and Arnold, less quickly to the girls and not at all to Christian. His arm had stopped bleeding but the shock and the throbbing pain seemed to have fixed in his brain rather than in his body.

  John Pike, who knew his dilemma, said, ‘It’s not your fault how it turned out.’

  ‘No?’

  It had all been a lark, hiding Arnold, when in fact it wasn’t at all, and they should have turned it over to their teachers straight away. Especially after Arnold’s night in the ballroom. But Christian had wanted to get on with the music: he saw his mistake now – not wanting his good time interrupted. Being irresponsible. Christian’s upbringing had been all about being responsible. John Pike knew Christian’s burdens, having stayed with him during the holidays a few times.

  ‘They can’t kill us all, for goodness sake!’

  They kept telling themselves that. The waterfall would get a blockage.

  The Russians kept the fire going, sitting muttering between themselves for some time, then stretching out to sleep in the best spot in front of the hearth – but always with one of them awake, gun at the ready. They seemed quite prepared to accept the hardship of the bothy in the pursuit of their goal: they were an iron-hard bunch, the lady included.

  Some time during the night the rain stopped, the stars came out and the wind died down. It started coming light early and for once, when there was very little to look forward to, the day was full of promise.

  John Pike woke and went outside for a pee. Ferretface followed him with the gun and leaned in the doorway. John Pike had no illusions about getting away: if he ran for it, he knew the man would shoot him. He looked out down the valley and saw a warm m
ist lying, the hillsides glittering, a trio of deer on the far hillside watching, then moving off with effortless grace up over the tops. They got shot too. He watched them, trying to get the feel of this strange new day. Below on the track the three cars stood one behind the other: Mildred’s old Cortina, the Citroen and a rather battered van.

  As there was no dressing to do and no breakfast to cook, getting ready to go took no time at all. They went out into the day stiffly, urged by Ferretface’s revolver. Arnold appeared to have recovered from his experiences of the day before, but Christian’s arm was stiff and swollen and he felt only half there – and that reluctantly. They slithered down the track, shivering in the bright air, and were herded into the back of the battered van. The door behind them was shut and locked, and Ferretface came round and got in the driving seat. Mrs Turkin got in beside him, with the revolver.

  They had all expected that the cars would turn round and go back the way they had come, and were surprised when Mr Turkin drove the Cortina off the track out of the way, got back in the Citroen and started off to continue up the valley. Ferretface started the van and followed. The road was very bad, full of potholes, and progress slow, and none of them could work out where it could possibly be leading.

  ‘Perhaps they’re just going to dump us?’ Jodie suggested.

  ‘Oh, great! I like hiking!’ said Arnold.

  ‘Better than swimming?’

  Christian couldn’t work it out. However far they travelled in the cars to be dumped, they could get back to civilization, surely? The cars could hardly take them into so remote an area that they could not find a way back. The track was climbing and the motors were in low gear, having a rough time. Ahead there seemed to be a saddle between the steep hillsides on either side: the track disappeared over the top and the horizon beyond that was far distant. The top, when they arrived, appeared to be another sort of beauty spot, no doubt for the view, for there was car parking scraped out on one side and the track from there on was only for walkers.