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.
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 grab 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.