by John Moralee
Now he pressed the tip against the frame in the door. He sucked in a deep breath of the cold, cold air, thinking: Once I break the glass, there is no turning back. If he broke the glass, he couldn’t cancel the rescue for another day. Ravencroft would be ready for it.
What if smashing the glass triggered a burglar alarm?
No – Ravencroft wouldn’t have one. He wouldn’t want the police coming to his house, even if there was a burglary.
Ryan realised ruefully that he was thinking of excuses for not going ahead with their plan.
With his free hand, he pounded the chisel’s handle. The glass resisted for a split second, then shattered into a dozen long jagged pieces. He jerked the chisel out to avoid slicing his hand on the falling glass. The glass broke into smaller pieces when it hit the ground, mostly inside the kitchen. The noise seemed loud enough to wake the dead.
What if someone heard?
There was no point in worrying. He was already breaking the law. Carefully, he tapped away the hanging shards, making a hole he reached through, feeling for the latch. He found it and opened the door.
“It’s done,” he said into his microphone. “I’m going in now.”
“Okay. The subject’s walking towards the city centre. I’ll keep you advised if he changes direction.”
It was dark inside, but the heat was welcome. He stepped over the glass, turning on his torch. He could see well by the powerful beam it cast on the walls. Some keys were hanging from a hook. He grabbed them, then moved out into the hall. He wasted no time. He hurried to the stairs. He dashed up them two at a time, stopping when he reached the top floor. Shining his torch ahead of him, he moved down the long passageway. He stopped at the bedroom door. He knocked loudly. “It’s me again – Ryan Brewster! I’m here to break you out!”
He expected her to answer, but she didn’t.
“Hello?” he called out.
No reply.
Why wasn’t she answering?
He peered through the keyhole, but couldn’t see her.
Was she hiding, like last time?
“It’s okay,” he said to the door. “He’s gone out. You don’t have be scared.”
Silence. Maybe there was a good reason why she wasn’t answering. Her captor could have drugged her before he left the house. He could have bound and gagged her to the bed. He could have killed her ...
The thought made him feel ill.
He had to get into the room. Now.
The keys ...
... he tried each key in the lock one after another.
No ... no ... no ... no ... no ... yes.
One key slid neatly into the keyhole. He turned it, hearing a gentle click. He twisted the doorknob, calling out, “Hello? Hello? I’m coming in ... don’t panic ... I’m here to save you.”
He opened the door.
His elation at getting into the room so quickly soon faded when he looked left and right, his torch illuminating every corner. Though he could see every object in the room clearly, he couldn’t see one thing at all.
The girl wasn’t there.
The plan was going wrong.
She was supposed to be here.
He swore.
Now what?
Was she hiding?
He opened her wardrobe and looked under the bed, but she definitely wasn’t there.
“Houston, we’ve got a problem.”
“What?” Saffron said.
“I’ve got into her room, but she’s not here. Look, I’ll send you some pictures.” He sent her photos of the bedroom. “Did you receive them?”
“Yes,” she answered. “So where is she?”
“I don’t know. He must’ve locked her in some other stupid room.”
There was a pause.
“Saffron?”
“I was just thinking. That makes sense.”
“It does?”
“Unfortunately. Her room isn’t designed as a prison cell. It doesn’t have bars on the windows. Anyone, given enough time, could try to escape, Rapunzel-style. It makes sense that when he goes out he’d have to lock her up somewhere more secure. Probably a room without windows.”
“I don’t believe it. I’ll have to search the whole house,” he said. “Who knows how long that’ll take?”
“You’ll find her,” she said.
Her faith in him meant a lot.
He grunted in reply. “What’s the situation out there?”
“He’s walking towards the train station. Hopefully he’s going somewhere a long way away. I’m following at a safe distance.”
“Tell me if it looks like he’s coming back,” Ryan said. “Be careful, Saff. Don’t let him see you.”
*
“I won’t,” she said, looking at the tinted glass entrance doors of Hobley Central Station. The building was across a busy main road, which Ravencroft had crossed thirty seconds earlier. For a few seconds he disappeared behind a taxi dropping off a group of elderly woman, then he was approaching the entrance. The doors slid open for him. Seconds later, they closed after him and she could no longer see him because of the tinted glass.
She had to wait for some traffic lights to turn red before crossing. The doors slid open automatically when she stepped in front of the electric eye. She passed through before they closed into the crowded entrance lobby.
Hobley Central Station was lit by harsh fluorescent lighting, making its griminess hyper-real, almost as though British Rail – or whatever company ran the station – wanted to advertised how dirty and ugly the building was because they were proud of the state it was in. Grand Central Station in New York was an architectural wonder – she’d seen it in movies – but this dump had a bare concrete floor, iron-grey painted walls, and a nicotine-stained ceiling. NO SMOKING signs meant cigarette stubs were scattered by the entrance. A lot of people had tossed their used tickets on the ground instead of the litter bins provided. An unhappy cleaner was working a mop over an area where something black and sticky had been spilled, but he was so lacklustre the rest of the floor would never be done in a million years. Some university students were hanging around a Coke machine that charged twice as much as supermarket prices. An old man, wearing a camel-hair suit that had seen better days, shuffled into the men’s toilets talking to himself in a language only he could understand. There were four staff members behind a glass-protected booth selling tickets to a large zigzagging queue like in a bank.
She couldn’t see Ravencroft in the queue.
She couldn’t see him anywhere.
Where was he?
For a panicky minute, she looked around expecting him to be behind her, reaching for her with his hands, but he wasn’t.
Had he gone into the men’s toilets?
A row of open turnstiles led through to a concourse. She caught a glimpse of his coat and walking stick as he went through one. You were supposed to buy a ticket before going through the turnstiles, but it looked like he had not bothered.
Posters warned of the consequences of being caught: TICKET DODGING IS A CRIME. YOU MAY BE FINED UP TO £200 IF YOU CANNOT PRODUCE A VALID TICKET BEYOND THIS POINT.
Saffron looked at the large slow-moving queue and made the decision not to buy one. If she queued to buy a ticket just to get onto the concourse, she could lose him completely. She hadn’t dodged paying before, but since she had no intention of going anywhere, she couldn’t really see the point. It wasn’t as if she was stealing a free ride. Besides which, nobody was checking the tickets of the people leaving the station. There wasn’t an inspector in sight. And yet she felt like a criminal when she walked through the turnstile and stepped out onto the concourse.
Hobley wasn’t a popular destination, but it was where thousands of passengers changed trains to go to their real destinations. As such the concourse was impressively large, like an airport lounge without the style. The concourse led to twelve railway platforms marked 1A-6A and 1B-6B. Looking left and right, she saw Ravencroft to her right entering a gateway marked 4B.
An electronic board displayed the train timetable. Looking at the board, she saw the next train arriving at 4B was the London-Edinburgh expected in 15 minutes.
Saffron loitered for a minute before going after him, making sure some other people went ahead of her. She descended a sloping subway tunnel that emerged at an underground platform. Approximately twenty people were waiting, some with bags and suitcases. They were as far apart from each other as physically possible.
Ravencroft was standing furthest away, leaning against the wall. His briefcase was between his legs. He was looking down the tunnel where the track disappeared into darkness.
Fearing he would turn around and see her, Saffron slipped behind a concrete pillar, leaning against it as though waiting for the train. She could see Ravencroft clearly, but if he turned her way, she could hide in an instant. She studied the board as the time changed to 10 minutes. The train was coming from London and travelling to Edinburgh via six cities. If he boarded it, she had no intention of following. She hoped he did board it, because then he wouldn’t be returning to the house for several hours, at the very least.
She tried contacting Ryan to find out how he was doing, but there was something wrong with the signal. It was probably the tunnel because she overheard a businessman complaining about his cell phone not working. She hoped Ryan was okay. She hoped he had already rescued the girl.
She could feel a breeze coming down the platform. It was getting stronger, blowing litter along the track like leaves in a wind.
The train was coming early.
Chapter Eleven
Unfortunately for Ryan, searching every room wasn’t a simple matter because the layout of the house was complicated. The two wings were linked in several ways, by doors, passages and stairways, which meant he found himself entering the same places from different directions, so he had to go back and forth making sure every choice had been checked. His search of the top floor uncovered a dozen rooms filled with antique furniture. There were many strange objects - things that looked like equipment belonging in a science laboratory – but he didn’t have time to study them. He ended his search back at the main stairway puzzled and confused.
“Saffron, I haven’t found her yet.”
When she didn’t answer, he realised the connection had been lost sometime during his search. What was wrong? He examined his phone to see if the battery had gone dead, but it was apparently well charged. But he couldn’t get a connection.
BAD SIGNAL flashed on his screen.
He hoped that was all it was.
He prayed Ravencroft hadn’t caught her.
Ryan kept trying his phone as he continued the search on the next floor down. Again, there were some extremely odd and perplexing things in the rooms. One room smelled strongly of paints and turpentine. Flicking on the light, he saw it was an art studio. A dozen oil paintings were laid out for drying against a wall. They were of fantasy worlds painted by a master. They were stunningly bizarre and yet so realistic they looked like views through a window. In the centre of the room was an easel holding the latest work: a landscape painting of a golden city under a luscious orange sky flecked with creamy white clouds. The golden city stood proudly on the very edge of a mile-high cliff of granite-grey rock. A dark brooding sea crashed against the base, where several sail boats struggled to stay afloat. He could even see tiny figures on the deck, struggling against the overlapping waves. The painting was so fascinating he wanted to study it much longer ... but he’d already wasted precious seconds. He tore his eyes away. Focus on finding her, you idiot, he chastised himself. He turned off the light as he left.
He ran down the stairs and moved from room to room on the ground floor. She had to be nearby.
“HELLO?” he called out. “WHERE ARE YOU? CAN YOU HEAR ME?”
The girl didn’t answer.
Ryan stopped at another locked door. He tested the keys until it unlocked. On the other side was library. Leather-bound books reached the ceiling, accessible by a movable ladder. An Amazon warehouse couldn’t have contained as many different books. Some had titles in English, but as many had titles written in foreign languages – French, German, Russian, Latin, Greek, and other languages he didn’t recognise at all. Saffron would love this room, he thought. But he didn’t love it because the girl wasn’t in it.
However, at the far end was a wall safe. The heavy steel door looked like it belonged in a Swiss bank vault. It was locked by a series of seven combination tumblers marked not with numbers but with letters in the rune script. There were over twenty characters on each tumbler, which meant there were at least 20 to the power of 7 possible combinations or 1.28 billion choices. Judging by the size of the door, the safe itself was quite easily large enough for someone to be locked inside. Was the girl trapped in there? Hoping it had not been locked, he tried the handle. It didn’t open. Then he banged on the metal and pressed his ear against it. Nothing.
(If the vault was airtight, you could suffocate inside in a matter of hours.)
He gave up knowing he couldn’t open it without the code.
Ryan kept trying his phone as he continued his search of the ground floor. One time it connected long enough for him to hear his friend’s voice.
“Saffron?”
“... the ... unnel ... ocking the sig –”
“What?” he said.
“The tunnel ... blo...ing ... ignal.”
“The tunnel’s blocking the signal?”
“Yes!” she said. The rest was incomprehensible.
“Okay. As long as you’re all right. Call me back when you can. I’m still looking for her. There’s some really weird stuff in this house.”
“What?”
“I said I’m still looking for her.”
“... ight ... ind ... er ... oon.”
Then the call ended with a babble of electronic beeps.
He couldn’t get it back.
Eventually he had exhausted all of his options except one: a door under the main staircase. Initially, he thought it was merely a cupboard ... until he unlocked it with the right key.
The doorway led down into the darkness of a cellar. It was hellishly cold just standing at the top of the stairs, looking down. He could feel an ice cream headache strike his forehead from the cold, cold air.
“Of course,” he muttered to himself, “she’s bound to be in the very last place I look: the cellar. Couldn’t be a nice warm friendly place. No – got to be the scariest place in the world, the cellar of a madman.”
Ryan clicked on a row of switches that lit up the bottom of the stairs, where there was brick archway. He couldn’t see beyond it for overlapping curtains of thick semi-transparent polythene. The plastic curtains were similar to shower curtains, only thicker. Everything on the other side was blurred and shapeless. As he descended, he could feel the coldness increasing. The bare brick walls had a thin layer of frost on them. His trainers nearly slipped on the steps. He grabbed onto a banister for support. It was so cold his hand almost stuck to it.
“Feels as cold as a meat locker,” he said, noticing his breath forming a cloud. “He probably keeps the bodies of all his victims hanging from meat hooks. Eats them for breakfast. Mr Crazy Cannibal.”
Nearing the archway, Ryan thought he smelled chlorine like in a swimming pool. He could also hear the gentle lapping of water. He saw why when he reached the bottom and pulled aside the thick plastic curtains.
He stepped into the cellar, staring and staring.
“What on earth is that?” he wondered.
*
When the train appeared in the tunnel it looked like it was going too fast to stop at the platform, but its brakes turned on at the very last moment and it squealed to a stop. Saffron could see the faces of passengers looking out of the windows. None looked happy to have arrived at Hobley. The doors opened and about twenty men and women got out and shuffled towards the exit.
Saffron watched as the platform emptied as everyone boarded the train except Ravencroft. He
was watching the train and the platform, but not moving from his position. When he looked her way, she hid out of his sight, pressing herself against the pillar. She could feel his eyes on the pillar. It felt as though he could see through it. But the next time she dared look around it, his attention had returned to the train.
He was waiting for someone to get off.
The train was due to leave in a minute when another man stepped off just as the doors were closing. Saffron guessed his age at thirty. He wore a smart grey suit that made him look like a mid-level executive at an ad agency. He was white and heavily bearded. He wore thick-rimmed glasses concealing his eyes.
He was carrying a briefcase.
It was identical to Ravencroft’s.
Saffron took a sly picture of him, storing it on her phone. She wanted to send it to Ryan and moved her phone around hoping for better reception, but it didn’t help. There were no bars on the screen. She was in a coverage black spot.
The two men looked at each other like cowboys in a spaghetti western. Ravencroft nodded almost imperceptibly. The man nodded back, but he didn’t approach Ravencroft until the train had pulled away.
The first thing the bearded man did was pass his briefcase to Ravencroft. Then he picked up the one on the ground. They exchanged words, but she couldn’t hear them. The two men started walking towards the exit. Saffron stayed behind the pillar, craning her neck to listen. As they passed her hiding place, she overheard Ravencroft asking a question.
“You made sure you weren’t followed?”
“I changed trains several times,” the bearded man said. He had a slight Russian accent. “Standard protocols. You are safe, I assure you. Nobody followed me.”
“There’s no such thing as safe,” Ravencroft said. “When are you going back?”