‘Nothing, Gabriel. He won’t hurt him. It’s all right. Daniel just has to make a phone call.’
‘To Uncle Ben?’
I nodded.
‘Is he going to hurt Uncle Ben?’
‘No, no, of course not,’ I said, with false cheerfulness. ‘He just wants to speak to him.’
‘I don’t like that man,’ said Gabriel.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t either.’
‘I tried to see his angel, but I couldn’t,’ said Gabriel. ‘I do not think she is there. There is no light around him.’
‘Really?’ I said, disconcerted and unsure what else to say.
He nodded, seriously, and surprised me yet again. ‘I don’t like him but it must be sad for him to be alone like that, always. I think it would be terrible, don’t you?’
I hugged him, tight. ‘Yes. You’re right.’
‘He is like Uncle Ben,’ he said softly. ‘Uncle Ben has chased his angel away, I think. Or maybe she is hiding and he doesn’t know where.’
‘Maybe,’ I said, gently. We all have our ways of coping with stuff, I thought. Who’s to say Gabriel’s way wasn’t right?
Suddenly, I heard a sound from next door. An unfamiliar, very deep, even rumbling voice. Udo’s on the speaker-phone, I thought. Daniel must have got through to him. I said, ‘Gabriel, I just want to go and listen at the door – do you want to come with me?’
He shook his head, silently.
‘You don’t mind if I do, though?’
‘No,’ he said, very quietly. He looked very small and vulnerable, sitting there by himself, and I felt my heart turn over. He was such a brave little kid, I thought. So brave.
I put my ear to the door. I couldn’t hear every word, but some. I heard Udo say, ‘Thank God, we’ve been so worried–’ and then an indistinguishable murmur from Daniel, and a roar from Udo that anyone could have heard clearly, ‘What the hell!’ Then a long, fast murmur from Daniel, which I strained to listen to but could only catch a few words – St-Bertrand – guarantee safety – please, Uncle.Then a rumble from Udo, much softer this time, so I couldn’t catch what he said. But his tone was different – hard, with a hint of menace – and I trembled, thinking of the dreadful position Daniel was in. If Udo was really a secret lord of crime hiding under a mask of respectability – then he hadn’t reached that status without foxy cunning – and violence. He’d operate by different rules from those in the daylight world. But Radic did too. He had risked big, and it wasn’t just to talk to Udo face to face, I knew that for sure. He didn’t need what people called ‘closure’. He didn’t want reparations or even justice. He wanted revenge. And that could only be the betrayal and destruction of the underworld king.
Think like Houdini
Radic came back into the room, the mobile in his hand. His face was alight. I faltered, ‘Did you – did Mr Udo agree to–.’
‘Of course he did. It’s all on.’ He looked at me. ‘Thanks to you.’
I swallowed. Looking at the nasty glitter in his eyes, the broad, unpleasant smile on his face, I felt like I’d been made his accomplice. It wasn’t a nice feeling. ‘Mr Radic, I’d like to speak to Daniel–’ I croaked.
‘Sure. In you go. And because you’re such a good girl,’ he went on, with an ugly twinkle, ‘I’m going to let you three stay together while I get Steve. I’m going to have to lock you in of course – but I’ll leave you some food and water. You’ll have a real cosy time.’ He saw my glance at the mobile and read the sudden hope that had risen in me. ‘Don’t think they’ll track my position with this.’ His eyes on me, he prised open the phone and took out the SIM card. ‘They won’t have had time while your friend was on the line and I’m getting rid of the card down the bottom of the river. And don’t worry, I’ve got others. Steve’s a bit of a whiz with that sort of thing.’ He laughed. ‘Everything’s falling into place. Good, eh?’
I said nothing. Taking Gabriel’s hand, I went past Radic and into the room where Daniel sat on the bed, staring into space. Behind us, Radic closed and locked the door. An instant later, I heard the outer door slam and the rattle of the key in that lock too. We were well and truly shut in.
‘Oh God,’ said Daniel, very low, as we came in, ‘I feel so bad.’
‘I know,’ I said, sitting on the bed beside him, while Gabriel clambered onto his lap and threw his arms around his neck. ‘You’re not bad, Danny,’ the little boy said, seriously. ‘You’re never bad.’
Over his head, Daniel threw me a wry glance. ‘I wish that was true, Gabriel.’
‘I want to go home, Danny. I’m so tired,’ said the little boy, closing his eyes.
‘I know,’ said Daniel, holding him tight. ‘I know, Gabriel. I wish I could take you home right now.’
‘It’s good Sylvie’s here with us,’ said Gabriel, drowsily. ‘Isn’t it, Danny?’
‘Yes,’ said Daniel, very gently, turning his head to look at me. Our eyes met, and my insides suddenly felt warm and liquid and sweet. I said, hoarsely, leaning up against Daniel and stroking Gabriel’s arm, ‘I’m really glad to be with you too. I’m so glad, even here.’
His eyes still on me, Daniel whispered, ‘You go to sleep now, Gabriel, and when you wake up, we’ll start on our way home, okay?’
‘Okay,’ said the child sleepily, and in a very short while, his breathing got longer, more regular. Soon, he was asleep.
Gently, without waking him, Daniel put him down on the opposite bed, and put a blanket over him. He said, ‘Poor Gabriel, he’s usually such a good sleeper but he’s hardly slept at all tonight, or the night before, when he was alone–’ He made a harsh gesture. ‘I can hardly bear to think of what it was like for him – snatched violently away – frightened and alone.’ His dark gaze hardened. ‘When I think about what he’s been through–’
‘Yes,’ I said, putting an arm around him. ‘I know.’
He clenched his fists. ‘How could people do that to a child? How could they? What has he done?’
‘Nothing,’ I said quietly. ‘People like that, they don’t care. They only think of themselves. Of their feelings. Everyone else is like, like something in a computer game that you have to destroy or get around.’ I took a deep breath. ‘We can’t let them get away with it, Daniel. We can’t wait till the rendezvous, cos God knows if he’s really going to let us go. We’ve got to get out of here.’
Daniel looked quickly at me. ‘But it’s impossible, Sylvie. I had a good look around when he first brought me here. We’re locked in. The window’s barred. The walls are thick. There are no trapdoors. Nothing.’
‘What about the bathroom?’
‘It’s tiny. There’s a fan set into a ventilation space but it’s far too small even for Gabriel to squeeze through.’
‘Maybe we could try to pick the lock.’
‘What with, for God’s sake?’
‘I don’t know–’ I jumped up and looked around the room, thinking of all the stuff I’d read about and seen on shows when people escaped from situations like this. Think like Houdini. What might he have done? How would he have got out of this tight spot? But there was nothing I could see, at least nothing obvious to my non-Houdini eyes. No handy files. No knives. No coathangers. Not even a paperclip or a hairpin. I went into the bathroom, which was just as Daniel said, tiny. A loo, with a narrow shower next to it. A towel. Loo paper. Nothing sharp or long or metal. And the space where the fan was, just as he said, far too small for anyone, even someone as small as Gabriel, to get through – that is if first you managed to pull the fan out.
I went back out. I said, ‘I can’t see anything obvious. But we need to think a bit more about how we can get out of here. We’ve got a chance, while Radic has gone to meet that Steve guy.’
‘Yes, but we don’t know how long he’ll be gone. We don’t know where Steve is. He could be nearby, on this property, even.’
‘I don’t think so,’ I said slowly. ‘Radic talked about going to get him – and leaving us some food and
water. That means he’s going to be away a while. He also said he was chucking his SIM card into the river.’ I broke off. ‘Hey, Daniel, is there a river near St-Bertrand?’
‘Yes. The Garonne,’ said Daniel. ‘It’s about two kilometres from the town.’
‘Well, at least we might have an idea now roughly where we are. Somewhere not all that far from the river.’
‘It’s a big long river,’ said Daniel, sighing. ‘This could be anywhere on it, hundreds of kilometres from St-Bertrand. That is, if it’s even the Garonne he was talking about.’
‘True,’ I said, feeling a bit dashed.
‘I tried to work out where I was too when I woke up in here,’ said Daniel. ‘I had a look through the window but it didn’t tell me much, only that we’re in the country.’
‘Yes,’ I said, sadly. ‘I saw that too. I did see a bit of the layout down here when he was bringing me along to you – I reckon we’re under a big sort of place, there’s like this warren of rooms – I was in a cellar before, it was full of wine, but I didn’t see any stairs or anything. It’s like we’re in this underground bunker, like something out of a war movie.’
‘Maybe we are,’ he said, his eyes suddenly lighting up. ‘Maybe it was once used as a safe house or hiding place or something. In the Second World War, Resistance fighters who were fighting the Germans sometimes had refuges like this – castles, too, in the old days – they had escape routes, underground safe houses – cellars and dungeons.’
‘It could be under a castle,’ I said. ‘It looks big enough. The passage just went on and on.’ I was thinking hard, reviewing in my head everything I’d seen. ‘This room, we know, opens on to the room beyond, which opens on to the passageway. But I wonder what the bathroom backs on to? Another room, do you think? Anyway, I suppose it doesn’t really matter, we’d need to be able to get into it and like you said, the fan-space is too small. We could stand on the loo, pull the fan out anyway and see if we could make the space bigger, maybe.’
Daniel gave a sharp exclamation. ‘My God! I didn’t think of that!’
‘Think of what?’ But he had already got up and rushed over to the bathroom. I followed him, puzzled. He was standing staring at the loo. ‘It’s not that good an idea,’ I said, ‘I don’t think it’s worthwhile–’
‘The toilet cistern,’ he said, pointing. There was a strange, breathless tone to his voice. ‘The bit with the water supply in it. Look at the wall just behind it. Not where the rest of the loo is, but just above, where the cistern is.’
I looked, and didn’t understand. ‘I don’t get it.’
‘The cistern’s been fitted to a plaster wall,’ said Daniel, excitedly. ‘Don’t you see? Before, I had only thought about how to get outside – and how impossible that was. But if this bathroom backs onto another room or even the passageway, we might possibly be able to get out that way. And plaster’s much easier to get through than stone.’
At that moment, we heard the room door rattling.
‘Quick,’ said Daniel, ‘back in, shut the door. Here, get in my arms.’
An instant later, the door opened and Radic came in. We sprang apart, as if he’d surprised us kissing. He grinned. ‘Well, pardon me for interrupting,’ he said, putting a bulging plastic bag on the table. ‘Just bringing your supplies. Enjoy.’ He looked across at Gabriel, peacefully asleep. ‘Hey, the kid’s got the right idea. Makes the time pass quicker. But I’m sure you two lovebirds have got an even better idea, eh?’
We made no response, and didn’t look at him. He didn’t seem to care. Laughing, he went out again, shutting and locking the door behind him.
A second escape
Now came the most agonising part – waiting till we were sure Radic had gone. We waited tensely in complete silence, our ears pricked for sounds of departure wafting from the open window high above us. It seemed like an eternity, but was actually probably only about ten minutes when we heard a car engine start up. An instant later, a beam of light washed past the window, the engine sounds grew louder, then began to fade as the car moved away from us. Even then we waited another few minutes, hardly daring to breathe, just in case he should take it into his head to come back. But he didn’t. Soon, the sound of the car had faded away completely into the distance. We were alone. And we knew we had to work fast, because we had no idea when Radic and Steve might come back. We must be away as soon as we possibly could. That is, if the whole thing worked. I had no idea whether plaster was easy to get through, but even if it was, what if the plaster wall was just up against another stone wall? Or if it led into another locked room? Then we’d have demolished the room for nothing and when Radic came back, he’d know what we’d been up to.
It didn’t matter. We had to give it a go. It was our only chance to escape.
We had to break the wall down first. We needed something heavy. The chairs were plastic. Useless. The table too. The bed legs might have done – they were heavy iron things – but they were impossible to remove from the bed. There was only one option. The cistern itself. We had to pull it off the wall and use it as a battering ram.
If we hadn’t been in such dire straits, it might have seemed funny, what happened next. Daniel put his arms around the cistern, I put my arms around his waist and braced back, and together we heaved. But the cistern was china, heavy, attached securely. My arms felt like they were being pulled out of their sockets and Daniel was panting and grunting as he put all his strength into ripping the thing out. And then, suddenly, without warning, it came apart from the wall, and as it did so, the top of it came off, and a flood of water gushed out all over our feet and all over the wall. It came out so suddenly too that we were thrown off balance and I ended up on the floor with the water. I couldn’t help laughing, rather hysterically, I have to say, and Daniel laughed too. He helped me up and kissed me, his eyes shining.
‘Look!’ There was already a jagged hole where the cistern had been – that bit of wall was still attached to the back of the china. And beyond was no stone wall, as I’d feared, but empty space.
‘Yippee! Now we’re cooking,’ I said, a little wildly.
Daniel smiled and picked up the main part of the cistern. He bashed it hard against the wall, around the jagged hole. The hole grew bigger. Bigger. Soon it was big enough that he could put his head through and report on what he could see. ‘It’s another room. But the door’s not locked. In fact there is no door. I can’t see what’s beyond exactly but I think it’s a passage. Sylvie, you’d better go and wake Gabriel. We’re going to go as soon as this hole’s big enough for us to fit through.’
You wouldn’t think Gabriel could have slept through the noise, but he must have been exhausted, for not only was he still asleep when I went in but he took a little while to shake awake. Poor kid, he looked completely bewildered when he opened his eyes, and I had to explain really quickly what was going on and how he had to be brave and run away with us. He nodded without speaking, the sleepy-dust still in his eyes, and followed me meekly to the bathroom where his brother was still bashing away at the hole.
It was much bigger now. Big enough for Gabriel to fit through. Daniel was sweating, there was plaster dust on his face, in his hair, his eyelashes even, he kept brushing it away. But he kept on bashing grimly and the hole kept getting bigger.
‘It’s big enough for us to climb through,’ he said. ‘At least you, Sylvie. Then I’ll hand Gabriel over to you, and then go through myself.’
So I had to climb on the loo and jump through the hole into the space beyond. To my own surprise – I reckon I’m a bit of a klutz – I actually made it without tripping or stumbling or falling flat on my face. Then Daniel helped Gabriel onto the loo, and I grabbed him. Now there were two of us out of the prison. Finally, Daniel told us to stand back a bit and he widened the hole a bit more – plaster going everywhere – and clambered through himself.
We didn’t waste time jumping for joy. Okay, so we’d got out of the room but now we had to get out of the house.
Then we’d have to get away from this place. We had no idea where it was and whether it was miles and miles from anywhere and how long it would take us to get to help and if Radic might come back before...
No, first things first. Forget future worries, we had to concentrate on getting out of the house. Daniel had been right, the room went straight onto the passageway, and we ran down looking for the exit. The place was like a rabbit warren, the passage twisted and turned and I was beginning to fear that we were in a maze and would never get out when suddenly there we were, facing not a set of stairs but a ladder that went up to a stone trapdoor with a ring set into it. Daniel turned the ring and the trapdoor slid open, with a grinding sound. Helping Gabriel, we scurried up the ladder and emerged blinking into a moonlit-washed room that looked like some sort of storeroom. It had a stone-flagged floor, each stone flag the same size as the trapdoor, so that when the thing was shut again, you’d never be able to tell it wasn’t just an ordinary stone flag like the others. You’d have to know which one it was. Very clever, I thought, briefly. Very, very clever. Whoever had built that whole underground place had really been a genius.
We closed the trapdoor. Daniel thought it might gain us a tiny bit of time, if Radic came back unexpectedly. He wouldn’t know as soon as he came in here that we’d gone. Then we hurried out of the storeroom into the room beyond, which was the kitchen. It was becoming clear now that this was a huge place, the kitchen was vast and echoey, with a very big fireplace. There was a door at one end of the kitchen that led into a narrow room lined with stone sinks and so on – a scullery, I think they’re called, servants used to do the washing-up in places like that in the old days. At the end of the scullery, another door led to a porch thing and then outside, down a narrow brick pathway that itself led through a tangle of neglected garden, past a greenhouse that had some broken panes and then out into another garden, with a wall around it. There was a door in the wall and it opened easily enough onto a rather overgrown patch of ground with some big twisted trees in it, covered in blossom. Old fruit trees, I thought. An orchard.
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