It was almost eleven when George woke up. The good weather promised at dawn had reneged and the clouds were gathering though he thought the wind had dropped; the waves did not look so fierce or so deeply steely grey.
He washed and dressed and padded down the stairs in stockinged feet. The house was so quiet. He’s never known it be so silent.
Passing through the front hall he glanced through the glass panel and saw that the patrol car had gone. A light-blue hatchback had taken its place on the drive.
Visitors? He didn’t recognize it and he had got to know the usual company that frequented Hill House.
Some instinct caused him to pause. It was, he thought, too quiet. It was not unusual for Cheryl to be on her own at this time of day. The day shift was made up of part-timers that covered the busy times, cooking meals, dealing with the chaos when everyone was there, but late morning was a slow time. Even so, Cheryl was by nature not a silent body. She bustled and clattered and made noise just standing still.
Had she gone out, left him alone?
No, that wouldn’t happen. George was sure there were rules about leaving even the older kids alone.
Straining his ears, George heard a voice coming from the dining room right at the back of the house. It wasn’t Cheryl, it wasn’t anyone he could place. The voice, effectively coming from two rooms away, was muffled and unclear. George slipped out of the hall and through the television lounge, into the little sitting room beyond. From there he could get into the conservatory and, if he was careful, he’d be able to see into the dining room which, like both rooms at the rear of the house, had French doors that had once led out on to the terrace and down on to the lawn and which opened now into his and Ursula’s favourite retreat.
He trod softly, willing the sitting room floorboards not to creak, glad that the conservatory floor was solid and would not give him away. He slipped through the sitting-room door and sidled along, keeping as flat to the wall as he could. He came finally to the dining-room doors and risked one look inside, thankful that he was shielded in part by the heavy curtains.
The door was closed but the voice was clearer now and George realized that it was a man speaking on the phone.
One look was enough.
George gasped, flattened himself closer to the wall, his heart pounding and the breath chafing in suddenly tightened lungs and throat.
The blond man.
Cheryl lay on the floor, very still, her body looked crumpled though George had been unable to see if she was badly hurt. Two little girls, dressed only in pyjamas, sat tied to two of the dining chairs. They were gagged with what looked to George like tea towels and they stared at the blond man with large, frightened eyes.
Gathering his courage, George crept back the way he had come. The conservatory doors were still locked after the alarm of the night before and he did not know where Cheryl kept the key. He suspected she might have it with her; she usually had a whole bunch of the things dangling from the belt loop of her jeans or tucked into an apron pocket. He could not get out that way. He’d have to go back into the hall and out of the main door. Then where? He had to get help but he dared not use the hall phone, he would be heard.
The hotel? Neighbours were a bit few and far between and George could think of nowhere but the hotel that had a public phone. How long would it take him to get there?
An additional problem occurred to him. The cliff path leading back in the direction of the hotel could easily be observed from the rear of Hill House. The blond man would only have to glance out of the window at the wrong moment and George, with his red hair, was pretty unmistakable. He had no doubt that the blond man would realize who he was and George did not for one minute think he could outrun him, not in his socks along a rough path and he had already decided he dare not risk going back upstairs to get his shoes.
His luck had held so far, but would it continue to hold if he tugged too hard?
No option, he’d have to risk the path.
Then he remembered Simeon. The distance to Simeon’s house was about the same as that to the DeBarr Hotel and it went the opposite way. Simeon would call Rina for him and she would get hold of Mac and the other advantage of that was that Simeon would see logic in calling Rina first, the people at the hotel would insist on calling the police and that was if they believed him.
George did not want to think what the blond man might do if he heard sirens heading for Hill House. Cheryl and the kids would be finished, he was sure of it.
George had reached the door. The house seemed even more silent, no longer even the murmur of the blond man on the phone. Thinking about it, George realized that what he’d been hearing was a series of very short conversations with periods of quiet between and it was this that had first caused him to pause, this which had attracted his attention.
He had read somewhere that mobile phones were now easier to trace than land lines. Who was the blond man calling? Were others on their way?
The front door was unlocked. George breathed a sigh of relief. He had been so worried that Cheryl might have increased security after last night. He wondered how the blond man had bluffed his way in.
Easing the door open just enough to slip through, George fled out into the chill air of another wintry day. Of course, it had now begun to rain again. Not looking back, he crossed the side garden and climbed the low fence, leaping from there on to the cliff path and then he ran, the cold air filling his lungs and then burning. Simeon, be in, he prayed. Simeon, please be in.
The world seemed to be holding its breath and waiting, Mac thought. He leaned wearily against Kendal’s car and sipped a mug of tea that someone had handed him. Apparently, some enterprising soul had co-opted the nearest neighbours and they were doing their bit to keep the troops happy.
Randall’s solicitor had now arrived and was in consultation with his client. Mac would return later and sit in on part of the interrogation.
Mr Goldman was still refusing to speak until he had news that his children were safe. More worryingly, he was also refusing to eat or drink. The on-call doctor had been to see him and he had been placed on suicide watch. Mrs Goldman was still under heavy sedation.
He had spoken to Rina and heard about the petty vandalism, wanted to send someone round but Rina would have none of it. The sense that they had been invaded was, she said, overwhelming for a while, though it was soon evident that the damage done to the Martin household was largely superficial and somewhat half-hearted, more for effect than for lasting impact.
‘A few broken ornaments and emptied drawers,’ she told Mac. ‘We’ve cleaned and scrubbed and tidied and the place feels like ours again.’
She wanted no more fuss and he had settled for dispatching Andy Nevins to take a statement. That would be fun for the young probationer, he thought; Andy was quite terrified of ‘Miss Martin’.
Kendal came back from one of his regular visits to what he called the front line. Tyson was in regular radio contact but Kendal wanted to see for himself what wasn’t going on. He was tense and bored and impatient for action.
‘Anything?’ Mac asked.
Kendal shook his head. ‘Tyson thinks they’re getting restless, there’s been more movement and the odd argument.’ He frowned. ‘Tyson reckons there’s something wrong here, but he can’t put his finger on it. He says he’d have expected more dialogue by now, more straight demands. It’s almost as if they’ve lost the script and can’t improvise.’
Mac nodded, similar thoughts had occurred to him. He remembered a bank siege in his last job in which he’d had peripheral involvement. They had known very early on what the criminals wanted and, though there had been glitches in communication, those inside the bank had been quick to try and control the situation. Here, it was almost as if no one knew what to ask for.
George was hurting. His feet were cut and bruised by the sharp stones of the path. His lungs were burning from the fierce cold of the air and the tension in his chest that prevented him from breathing properly. His knees and hands hurt from where he had slipped and fallen on gravel and mud. And he was cold, freezing cold, gone past the shivering stage and transformed into a solid block of discomfort.
But he was almost there. Would Simeon be home? Would Simeon let him in? All the doubts he had been shoving to one side as he ran the mile along the cliff path assailed him now.
Stumbling on frozen feet across the last bit of lawn, George circled the house and hammered on the front door.
To his surprise and shock it was not Simeon who answered. It was another man, taller, darker but enough alike for George to remember that Simeon had said he lived with his brother.
‘What the hell?’ Andrew said, staring at the sodden, frozen boy standing on his doorstep.
‘I’m George,’ George said. ‘I met Simeon on the cliff.’
‘When? Today?’ Andrew was confused. ‘What’s he doing out in this?’ He looked again at the boy. ‘Oh, for goodness sake, come on inside. George? George Parker? Rina’s talked about you. Your dad.’
George nodded frantically. He had begun to shiver now. ‘Got to call her,’ he managed. ‘The blond man’s at Hill House. He’s hurt Cheryl and he’s got two kids there and—’
‘Enough, into the kitchen with you, the fire’s lit.’ Andrew led George through. ‘That door there’ – he pointed to the far side of the kitchen – ‘there’s a shower room. Strip off and put the shower on hot, get warm. I’ll rustle up some clothes and tell Simeon you’re here then you can tell me what this is all about.’
George was dripping on the kitchen floor. The thought of getting warm and dry was almost overwhelming but there were other concerns, more urgent ones.
‘No,’ he almost shouted. ‘You’ve got to call Rina now. I’ve got her number, I think, but I don’t have Mac’s and I need Mac.’
‘Mac? The policeman? DI McGregor. God, look at you, you’re freezing. OK, at least get out of your wet things, I’ll grab some clothes and the phone. If you freeze to death Rina will never forgive me.’
He dashed off out of the kitchen and George, reluctantly, went into the little shower room Andrew had indicated. It was evidently not much used for its intended purpose, stuffed with buckets and brooms and potatoes sitting in wooden boxes. George peeled off his sodden clothing and rubbed himself dry with a towel, grateful that it was warm from the radiator. A knock on the door told him Andrew had returned. He opened the door a crack and accepted the clothes, pulling on tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt and warm jumper. They were much too big, but George didn’t care; they were warm and dry and felt perfect. He emerged to see both brothers in the kitchen and Andrew was speaking into the phone.
Simeon handed him socks. ‘Warm,’ he said. ‘Your feet are cold.’
‘Thank you,’ George said. He struggled to put them on with hands that still had frozen sausages for fingers.
‘Something about a blond man,’ Andrew was saying. ‘Look, I’ll hand you over. Rina, if there’s a story in this?’ He laughed at the response and gave the telephone over to George.
‘George, why aren’t you in school today?’ Rina said.
‘What?’ George was baffled. Sometimes even the most reliable adult could be stupid.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, George, it’s been a long night. Tell me. You’ve seen Coran?’
‘Coran?’
Belatedly, Rina realized the boy only had half the current information. ‘Blond man,’ she said. ‘That’s his name. Now, talk to me.’
George took a deep breath. He told her how Paul had cracked up in class and how he’d been allowed to take the day off because he hadn’t got any sleep either because Cheryl had been warned something might be up and how he’d slept late and when he’d woken up …
‘She was lying on the floor and there were these two kids tied to chairs. Two girls with dark-brown hair. Rina, I didn’t want to leave them but I couldn’t do anything on my own. I daren’t try and use the hall phone, he’d have heard me. I was going to run to the hotel, then I remembered Simeon and that he knew you and so I came here.’
Simeon was listening with interest but little comprehension. Andrew stared, his mind clicking and turning as he collected facts.
‘You did the right thing,’ Rina told him. She questioned him carefully, extracting everything he could remember about the children he had seen.
‘George,’ she said, ‘hand me back to Andrew, please.’
George did as she asked and Andrew listened and then hung up. ‘She wants you to stay here,’ he said. ‘She’s going to call Mac and he’ll probably want to talk to you so we stay put and wait for orders, OK?’
George nodded. ‘Do you think they’ll be all right? Cheryl looked, I don’t know, she looked crumpled, limp. And who are the kids?’
‘I don’t know,’ Andrew told him. ‘She promised she’d give me an exclusive afterwards.’ He grinned at George.
‘You’re a reporter?’
‘Not usually that kind,’ Andrew said. ‘But a good journalist knows a scoop when it lands on his doorstep.’ He smiled reassuringly then pointed to an easy chair close by the fire. ‘Sit,’ he said, ‘before you fall down. Simeon and I will rustle up something for you to eat.’
‘What’s going on?’ Tim asked.
‘That was George. He was off school today. Coran is at Hill House and he has the girls with him. They aren’t at the farm. Mac is on a wild goose chase there.’