Iwas on my way back towards the cliff path when I saw a man – a figure on the hill inland – walking right through the middle of one of Mr White’s fields, heading away from the Castle. He was wearing a dark coat and hat. At first I thought it was Mr White himself, but then I saw that the figure was taller, leaner, and his stride was swift and athletic. It wasn’t the farmer at all – it looked more like Michael Baron . . .
It was Michael Baron.
What was he doing up here? More to the point, what was he doing in the middle of Mr White’s pea field? There was something odd and unsettling about the scene. Was it to do with the way Michael was walking? The pea plants were a sea of green under the grey storm-light – the colour of veins on a white wrist. They rippled like pond-water as he strode through them.
I couldn’t let Michael Baron see me – he might tell his mother I was there. It was possible she had even sent him to look for us. I was about to make a dash for it down the cliff path when he did something that made me stop and crouch behind the bramble bush that bordered the field.
He was now running through the plants to the edge of the field. He stopped at the telegraph pole that carried the telephone wire up to the Castle from the Dover Road and then looked back over his shoulder. As I watched, he shinned up the first few feet of the pole, and then clambered quickly all the way to the top, like a sailor monkeying his way up to the crow’s nest.
What is he doing? My hands gripped the bramble branches in front of me, the thorns pricking my fingers. When he reached the top of the pole, he took something out of his pocket and reached up towards the wire. The black cable suddenly dropped – it swung down like a trapeze wire, and was lost in the hedgerow.
Michael Baron had cut the telephone line.
It felt as if the cliffs were trembling beneath my feet, but then I realized that it wasn’t the ground that was shaking – it was me.
This wasn’t real life at all – how could it be? The dull, pewter light made it all the more surreal: clouds filled the whole sky now – brooding above me. Michael Baron made his way down the telegraph pole and starting striding back across the field. He’s coming this way, I thought, but there wasn’t time for me to run to the cottage or the lighthouse – he would see me. The only thing I could do was hide myself more deeply in the hedge. I tucked down into a ball and burrowed backwards, ignoring the thorns digging into my back and neck. My folded-up legs were still shaking and I had to put my scratched hands flat on the ground to stop myself from toppling over. I couldn’t see anything now except the patch of ground in front of me. I heard Michael approaching. A gull screamed overhead. There was a scuffling noise and then a thud as Michael climbed over the fence and jumped down just a few feet away from me. Then I heard his footsteps making for the path leading to the south cliff.
I followed him.
Looking back, it was such a stupid thing to do. I should have gone straight to the police station and told them what I had just seen: an act of sabotage. And what exactly did that make our headmistress’s handsome son? A collaborator, a fifth columnist? These were words I had heard on the wireless or seen in the newspaper, but they were suddenly as real as the rock beneath my feet. This was an act that could only help the enemy. What else had he done? And where was he going now?
Michael covered the ground quickly – he was tall, so his paces were much longer than mine. At points I had to trot to keep him in sight, ducking behind bushes from time to time in case he turned around. When we reached the barbed wire near Spooky Joe’s cottage, I stopped and stared. I could still see the neatly snipped ends where Michael had cut Mags free. How stupid I had been! Why would anyone go wandering over the clifftops so early in the morning with a pair of wire cutters in their pocket unless they were up to no good? Yet we hadn’t suspected a thing! I turned around, scanning the path and the clifftop for Michael’s figure, but he had completely vanished from sight.
Up there on the south cliff, there were only two ways he could have vanished so quickly, and it was pretty unlikely that Michael Baron had spontaneously thrown himself off the cliff . . . So that left only one option. He must have taken the tunnel.
Mags.
It was then that I realized I must have left the torch at the Castle when I went back to lock the door. I had never been up or down the tunnel without one. Under these circumstances – completely alone, chasing a criminal whom I knew to be armed with a sharp tool – bathed in the odd light of the gathering clouds, I was frankly surprised that I was still managing to put one foot in front of the other. I approached the old lookout tower and the entrance to the tunnel. I squatted down. ‘You’d better be grateful for this, Mags,’ I whispered under my breath. ‘I might be about to save your life.’ Then I launched myself into the darkness.
It was terrifying. A hellish helter-skelter through absolute darkness, like falling through a nightmare – squeezing and twisting, then slipping blindly while unknown things scratched my face and tore at my hair – down, down, down I fell, deeper into the earth. I may have been the one chasing, rather than being chased, but that didn’t make me feel any less like a helpless creature, like something’s prey. My feet and hands felt the change from loose soil to smooth chalk as I skidded from the upper burrow into the carved-out passage below. I slithered down a steep slope and the blackness was suddenly diluted into a dull, grey haze. The cave at last.
There was no sign of Michael, but my sister was awake and sitting up at the very front of the cave, staring out through the skull’s left eyehole.
‘Mags!’ I panted. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine, Petra – where on earth have you been?’
‘I had to go back to the lighthouse.’
‘Why—?’
‘It doesn’t matter now. Mags – did Michael Baron come through here?’
She stared at me.
‘Michael Baron – have you seen him? I’ve just followed him from the lighthouse. He must have come down here. Mags – he’s the saboteur!’
She blinked. ‘You’re insane, Petra,’ she said, after a stunned pause.
‘Mags! I’m serious – remember the wire cutters he had when he helped free you from the barbed wire? I just watched him use those to cut the telephone line to the Castle!’
‘What?Why would he want to do that?’
‘I don’t know, Mags! To cut off the line to the Admiralty, I suppose – to buy time if German U-boats or landing craft are spotted from the lighthouse? It could be lots of different things, but it’s not exactly going to be for a nice reason, is it?’ Then something else occurred to me – a flash of light. ‘MB!’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Look!’ I found the scrap of paper in my coat pocket and thrust it in front of her face. ‘This is what Spooky Joe was writing down that morning when we were spying on him.’
Mags frowned. ‘I thought I’d lost—’
‘Well, I found it again,’ I interrupted. ‘I don’t know what all the numbers mean yet but look, here at the top – MB – Michael Baron!’
‘MB could stand for anything, you idiot,’ Mags spat. ‘It could stand for . . . motor boat or moon beam or . . . mountain bear!’
It was my turn to blink at her. ‘Why would anyone be making secret notes about mountain bears, Mags? At first I thought it might even have been you – Magda Bernadette – but then when I saw Michael—’
‘You thought what?’
‘Please, Mags, listen! It must be Michael – it all fits together, don’t you see? He’s the one behind the sabotage, Mags. I bet it was him that cut the other telephone lines and set the village hall on fire too!’
‘You’re wrong, Petra,’ Mags said, her voice trembling with rage.
Why wouldn’t she listen to me?
‘I’ve got to go straight to the police station,’ I said. ‘Come with me, Mags – please.’
She shook her head. She looked frightened, furious. ‘You’re being ridiculous,’ she said. ‘I don’t believe a word of it. You need to stay here where you are safe, Petra. The whole point of coming to the cave was to protect us from being sent away. If you go to the police . . .’
‘This is more important than that, Mags. Can’t you see? This is about the war, the invasion!’
I saw that her hands were shaking. What was wrong with her? What had happened to my sister – the fearless girl who fought the bullies, the hero who had sailed over to Dunkirk and saved the lives of our stranded soldiers? Through the eyeholes in the rock behind her, I could see dark storm clouds swelling and gathering fast. My sister’s eyes were just as angry.
‘It’s not about the invasion,’ she snapped. ‘It’s about you being a ridiculous child with too much imagination. Don’t you dare go to the police with these stories about Michael.’
In that one unguarded moment, I saw a flash of truth on her face. I took a step back from her, towards the lower section of the tunnel.
‘He was here, wasn’t he, Mags? Michael did come through here! Why are you lying to me? You’ve been lying to me for months – to all of us! You have to tell me now, Mags – what’s going on?’
It was no use. Her jaw was locked with obstinate rage and her eyes were the same as the volcanic-grey irises that gloomed behind her head.
I took another step back from her.
‘I said, stay here, Petra,’ she growled.
But I didn’t.