The Hawkshead Hostage

by Rebecca Tope

  Motive again, she chastised herself. Stick to observable facts. Like that big room with the balcony. She had seen someone there, hadn’t she? Someone who gave an impression of furtiveness. What was that room? Why wasn’t it used more regularly? What was in it? She should ask Melanie, check there was nothing important she ought to know about it. She’d intended to do that already, but never got the chance.

  She continued with her internal catechism. Where would Ben have been taken? If the kidnappers wanted to carry on as normal, in the eyes of the world, they’d have to tie him up and leave him alone for long periods of time, while they went about as usual. Especially if they were registered as guests in a hotel. That meant it would need to be somewhere close by. Somewhere they could come and go without being conspicuous.

  She could feel herself inching towards a theory. Better than a hypothesis, according to Ben, a theory made use of known facts and constructed a viable picture that could be tested. She went over it carefully, finding new details to support it.

  She had to speak to Melanie. Then she had to go into Hawkshead and summon all the courage and quick-thinking she could manage. She must be prepared for anything. And she had to do it all by herself.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Melanie answered after several long moments. ‘Yes? Bonnie? What do you want?’

  ‘Three questions. It won’t take long.’

  ‘Where are you? What are you doing?’

  ‘Never mind. Where are you?’

  ‘At work. Busy.’

  ‘Okay. Listen. First – what’s that big room at the hotel used for? The one upstairs.’

  ‘Groups. It’s kept clear, with just chairs and the equipment for presentations. People rent it at weekends mostly, in the winter. We can do banquets in there if we have to, as well. There’s a shiatsu woman who does special sessions in there sometimes. She brings lots of mattresses and cushions.’

  ‘Is it fully booked for this winter?’

  ‘No way. In fact, nobody’s used it for the last month. Dan was trying to get somebody for October, but I don’t know who.’

  ‘Thanks. Second question – is the front door locked at night? What happens if a guest comes back at midnight? Is the reception desk manned round the clock?’

  ‘No, it’s not. There’s a keypad by the door and we give them the code. They can let themselves in and out, as they want.’

  ‘Right. And what happens after breakfast? I mean – do they have to go out so the room can be cleaned, or can they stay in all day if they want?’

  ‘God, Bonnie – haven’t you ever stayed in a hotel? They put a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door and nobody goes in. They’ve paid for the room – they can do what they like, when they like.’

  ‘I haven’t, actually,’ said Bonnie quietly.

  ‘Sorry. Is that everything, then? Am I allowed to ask what this is all about?’

  ‘Not yet. Just one more thing – are there any rooms on the ground floor? Guest rooms, I mean.’

  ‘Yes. Two. The Lillywhites have got one, and the other’s empty at the moment.’

  ‘Thanks, Mel. That’s great. Bye now.’

  ‘No, but—’ Too late. Bonnie had ended the call with a decisive press of her thumb.

  None of Mel’s answers had done anything to dent her theory, but neither had they confirmed it in any concrete way. The rest was up to her. With a deep breath she stood up and went back to the gate. Climbing over it was easy enough, although she wobbled slightly at the top. She had never been good at gymnastics or athletics or any of the sporty stuff they forced you to do at school. She generally ended up bruised and sore and resentful.

  It took six minutes to walk back to the centre of Hawkshead, trying her best to look purposeful and old enough to have business to attend to. With every step, she had a new thought, ranging from a recitation of virtually everything Ben had ever said to her, to an awareness that there were no school-age children anywhere to be seen. Barnaby and his family must have stood out a mile, taking their kids away in term time. If the muddy-jeans guy had been on the lookout for a schoolboy, he would have had very slim pickings. And who else but a younger boy would have done as he asked? No adult would have gone along with it. What would he have done if no suitable kid came along?

  Do it himself, of course. So why hadn’t he, anyway? Yet again, she rehearsed the whole peculiar scenario. Maybe that had been the plan, but the appearance of Barnaby had given him a new idea. If he was the son or brother of the kidnappers, he’d want to stay in the shadows, doing nothing worthy of notice. Had he assumed that the holidaying family would disappear before anyone could question them? Was it a major glitch in the plot that Bonnie had actually spoken to the boy? Surely it must be. She was merely intended to read the note and stop worrying about Ben. So did they know she’d met Barnaby? Had they been watching? Was that even possible? The idea made her shudder.

  She was passing the upmarket gift shop with its pricy china, and taking a left turn into the crooked little square at the heart of the town. The National Trust shop was one of the few things she remembered from her last visit to this part of Hawkshead, some years earlier. She looked around, trying to work out directions and landmarks that she and Ben had used in the game. Everything had been on paper, gleaned from Google Earth and maps. The buildings were accurately positioned, but the reality was unsettlingly different. Everything was much closer together than she had realised. The road surfaces, the sounds from the pub, the way the shadows fell on this sunny July day – none of them had been factored into their embryonic storyboard. Ben had talked about the need to make an actual film of the place when it came to the final stages. He had admitted to a lack of detailed knowledge as to how that was done, airily dismissing it as a technical issue that could be delegated to somebody else when the time came. Bonnie had been more than happy to go along with that approach. For her, the interest was in the history and the secret messages and the way the whole thing fitted together.

  The very heart of the village was comprised of a big, oddly shaped three-storey building that was actually two separate establishments. They were connected by a single wall, and one was an abandoned bookshop. Its windows were blank and the two doors firmly rendered impassable with padlocks and stout chain. It did nothing for the look of the place and she found herself fantasising about opening some sort of shop there herself. Something artistic, brightly coloured and enticing. Like Persimmon Petals in Windermere, but far larger and more ambitious. And in keeping with the rest of Hawkshead, she thought ruefully, as she recognised two art galleries close by. There were people sitting at tables on the pavements, just a few feet away, laughing and boasting about their good sense in coming here when the sun was shining.

  She crossed the square and examined the shop again from a different angle. The upstairs windows were grimy. It must have been empty for ages. What a waste. She meandered a little way along the pavement, in front of the well-remembered National Trust shop, until another face of the empty shop was visible and tilted her head back to look at the upper windows. She saw it immediately. Etched into the grease and dust of a high window were four numerals. Impossible to miss; impossible to mistake their import.

  1780

  It stood bright and clear in the sunny July day. And only one person in the entire universe would have written those numbers in that way.

  ‘I’ve found him!’ she muttered aloud, scanning the window feverishly for any sign of life. Then she turned cold and still at the thought that someone might be in there watching her, realising what she was thinking, plotting how to escape again. And if they could not escape safely with their hostage, they might murder him, just as they’d murdered Dan Yates.

  Her options were essentially twofold. She could slip away out of sight and call the police, telling Moxon what she had seen and assuring him that Ben either was in the shop now or had been very recently. She could almost trust the trained officers to break down the door, surge up the stairs with guns drawn, and gr
ab Ben from his captors before they could inflict any harm on him. It would probably work. There would be no advantage, at that point, to killing Ben. But then, neither would there be any worse outcome than could already be expected as penalty for killing Dan. They had nothing to lose.

  And, of course, they might not be in there, anyway. Her beloved might be lying in a dusty corner, trussed and starving, barely conscious, just waiting to be released from his bonds. All the police would need to do was to walk in and collect him. But they would not do that – because they’d be expecting a trap, an ambush. A bomb rigged to go off, perhaps, or a gun that would fire when a door was opened. They would go through a whole rigmarole of safety checks before they could place any of their team at risk. If they thought someone could be in there with a weapon, the rigmarole would be tenfold.

  So there really was only one option. Bonnie herself had to get into the building, dodge any traps and bring Ben out again, without the kidnappers ever knowing it had happened.

  He must be upstairs. She walked all around the three accessible sides of the shop, counting doors and windows, wracking her brains for any scrappy little hint she might have picked up from Ben in their discussions about crime and chases and how to solve a mystery. They had watched every single episode of Spooks together, with its innumerable tricks for following people and blending into the landscape. They had stolen a few ideas for their game, building on them until they’d made them their own.

  How had the kidnappers got in? If they’d done it during the day, in full view of people in the streets, they must have some tricks of their own. All the local shopkeepers would know the building was empty and unlikely to be visited by two adults and a teenaged boy. So what had they done? She walked around it again, trying to look as if she was waiting for a friend who was late. She pretended to make a call on her mobile, and then spent two full minutes admiring the window display in one of the art galleries. Inside she was growing increasingly distraught. Ben might be dying, just a few feet away. And here she was dithering about, wondering how to get into a disused shop. How tight was the security going to be? There was nothing in there to steal. There must be loose window catches or a forgotten back entrance. It was an old building, probably with a cellar. That might have its own entry.

  Architecture was another new subject that Ben had begun to teach her. Not because his mother was an architect, but because buildings played such a vital role in human life. He had a special interest in the way that doors opened – inwards or outwards, and which side the hinges were placed. ‘Just take note,’ he’d told her, ‘and see if you can work out why they’ve been placed as they are. Sometimes you can see it’s been done all wrong.’ They’d made a note for their game, to include some unwisely designed doors that would impede the player’s progress.

  Oh Ben, she howled inwardly. In the short time she’d known him, he had filled her with inspiration and confidence and a whole new view of the world. If there was anything at all she could do to save him, then she must do it. And quickly. No more hanging around, agonising about it. A dawning sensation of being watched was nagging at her, too, as she stood there. Was there someone inside that building, monitoring her movements and getting ready to hit her if she caused trouble? Never mind if there was. She had absolutely no choice in the matter. She had to act.

  She was afraid she would be noticed if she took yet another walk around the same route. So she crossed the street away from the shop and made a crooked path through another small street containing a pub and one or two houses. Everything was suddenly in a different time zone, with cobbles underfoot and only a handful of parked motor vehicles in sight. Ahead the street fizzled out into a country lane, which climbed up into the higher ground that eventually became Hawkshead Hill.

  There were alleyways between the houses, leading back into the town square. There were square openings designed for a horse and carriage to go through. Many of the streets were too narrow for a modern car to pass along. Very probably there were underground tunnels connecting them all up, but she had no way of knowing that. All she knew was that the core of the town dated back well over five hundred years and during that time a lot of politics and conflict had happened. If there weren’t tunnels, there certainly ought to be.

  Too much thinking, she chastised herself, and too little action. She’d been ten minutes faffing about, probably making herself stupidly conspicuous and putting Ben in even more danger. She knew, really, what she was going to have to do. She had done it before, though unwillingly. Kicking and screaming, in fact. It was the one part of her early years that she had not yet fully confided to Ben. It was almost always kept shut away and ignored. But now it came roaring out, filling her head with panic.

  Because she had seen outside the abandoned shop the only possible way in. It was close enough to a childhood experience to bring back all the terror of being forced into a space leading to a dark, stifling cellar. She knew she had to do it, while at the same time knowing she could not.

  She knew because she had once been pushed down a filthy, dark coal chute into a cellar by a drunken immature boyfriend of her mother’s, who thought it would make a good game.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Simmy had seated herself near a window in the Queen’s Head pub, with a glass of wine and a ploughman’s. Her view of the street was patchy, and there was no way she could be sure of Bonnie’s movements from there, but she was content for the moment to be close enough to be of some use if there was trouble. In a few minutes she would phone the girl and ask if she was all right, without revealing how nearby she was. It was a poor compromise, she supposed, but better than nothing.

  Her car was in the main car park, which was full to bursting with visitors’ vehicles. It seemed they routinely left the car there and went off in all directions on foot. A great many of them were in the town, messing about in the shops and pubs instead of climbing the fells as might be expected.

  Bonnie had leapt ahead of her in the search for Ben, putting her to shame for her lethargy and hopelessness. She must have discovered something from that Barnaby boy which sent her into the middle of Hawkshead, because Simmy had seen the girl walking the quarter-mile from Colthouse into the village, and felt a pang of frustrated remorse that she wasn’t at least driving her. She had been told to go away, it was true, but she ought not to have obeyed the order. Bonnie was little more than a child, unable to grasp the real danger she would be in if she tried to tackle the unknown murderers.

  Simmy drained her glass, thinking she ought to indulge in wine a bit more often. It made her feel relaxed and optimistic. The ploughman’s included the nicest chutney she’d had for ages, and there was a very pretty girl behind the bar. In the midst of violence and worry, she found herself in a momentary oasis of calm. It was her nature to do so, she supposed. Never tempted to see herself as a rescuer, she was content to be the bringer of delight in the form of flowers. And even though the occasion was not always a happy one, the flowers themselves gave pleasure.

  Then she saw people she recognised outside. It was the couple from the hotel, the Lillywhites, walking briskly along the pavement towards the village centre. The wife was in front, which seemed at odds with the relationship Simmy had observed on Tuesday. She was throwing remarks over her shoulder at the husband, who looked mutinous, but not nearly as domineering as Simmy remembered. They certainly did not look like carefree holidaymakers.

  She watched them out of sight, wondering whether she ought to follow. The idea was both exciting and ridiculous. They would see her in no time, because she was tall and unskilled and Hawkshead was a very small place. That would be embarrassing. So she finished the last of her cheese and sat back for a moment, asking herself exactly what she thought she was doing.

  Then another familiar figure passed by the window. This time it was the smart woman in high heels, head held high and tight skirt emphasising the curves of her posterior. The word streetwalker flashed disconcertingly into Simmy’s head. The wiggling walk
was provocative, and quite out of place amongst these wholesome fell walkers and their friends. Except, she supposed, nobody was altogether wholesome. In ordinary life, they were quite likely to be addicted to gambling or online pornography or be cruel to animals, or conducting dishonest transactions of one kind or another. Bad people went on holiday just as much as good ones – possibly even more, spending their ill-gotten profits.

  The woman teetered away, the heels of her shoes surely lethal on the cobbled streets.

  And this time, Simmy got up and followed.

  Afterwards, she could not properly account for the way time telescoped. Events felt to be passing in a flash, from that moment when she left the pub, even though there were long minutes in which nothing happened and she felt mad with frustration and indecision. The little procession proceeded the few yards into the centre of Hawkshead, where there were cafés, galleries and a big abandoned bookshop. Simmy loitered uncomfortably, keeping the dark figure of the high-heeled woman in view and hoping not to be noticed herself. The woman went around the disused shop, where there was an open area in front of the King’s Arms pub. A shop selling fancy jams and cheeses was the main attraction. A steeper street led up to the church. Simmy wondered if she could walk briskly past as if going up there, without being recognised. It would give her a useful vantage point. So she gave it a try, rounding the corner and trying not to catch the eye of any of her three quarries gathered together outside the bigger and more handsome building attached to the empty one. The two women were speaking, while the man stood a little distance away.

  Clumsily, Simmy walked by. A large man was walking towards her, and she stepped around him, so he would hide her from sight. Then a woman pushing a baby buggy provided a similar screen. By the time she dared take another look, the trio had closed up and were apparently heading back the way they’d just come.