Bright Angel (20 page)

Now came the most agonising part – waiting till we were sure Radic had gone. We waited tensely in complete silence, our ears pricked for sounds of departure wafting from the open window high above us. It seemed like an eternity, but was actually probably only about ten minutes when we heard a car engine start up. An instant later, a beam of light washed past the window, the engine sounds grew louder, then began to fade as the car moved away from us. Even then we waited another few minutes, hardly daring to breathe, just in case he should take it into his head to come back. But he didn't. Soon, the sound of the car had faded away completely into the distance. We were alone. And we knew we had to work fast, because we had no idea when Radic and Steve might come back. We must be away as soon as we possibly could. That is, if the whole thing worked. I had no idea whether plaster was easy to get through, but even if it was, what if the plaster wall was just up against another stone wall? Or if it led into another locked room? Then we'd have demolished the room for nothing and when Radic came back, he'd know what we'd been up to.

It didn't matter. We had to give it a go. It was our only chance to escape.

We had to break the wall down first. We needed something heavy. The chairs were plastic. Useless. The table too. The bed legs might have done – they were heavy iron things – but they were impossible to remove from the bed. There was only one option. The cistern itself. We had to pull it off the wall and use it as a battering ram.

If we hadn't been in such dire straits, it might have seemed funny, what happened next. Daniel put his arms around the cistern, I put my arms around his waist and braced back, and together we heaved. But the cistern was china, heavy, attached securely. My arms felt like they were being pulled out of their sockets and Daniel was panting and grunting as he put all his strength into ripping the thing out. And then, suddenly, without warning, it came apart from the wall, and as it did so, the top of it came off, and a flood of water gushed out all over our feet and all over the wall. It came out so suddenly too that we were thrown off balance and I ended up on the floor with the water. I couldn't help laughing, rather hysterically, I have to say, and Daniel laughed too. He helped me up and kissed me, his eyes shining.

‘Look!' There was already a jagged hole where the cistern had been – that bit of wall was still attached to the back of the china. And beyond was no stone wall, as I'd feared, but empty space.

‘Yippee! Now we're cooking,' I said, a little wildly.

Daniel smiled and picked up the main part of the cistern. He bashed it hard against the wall, around the jagged hole. The hole grew bigger. Bigger. Soon it was big enough that he could put his head through and report on what he could see. ‘It's another room. But the door's not locked. In fact there is no door. I can't see what's beyond exactly but I think it's a passage. Sylvie, you'd better go and wake Gabriel. We're going to go as soon as this hole's big enough for us to fit through.'

You wouldn't think Gabriel could have slept through the noise, but he must have been exhausted, for not only was he still asleep when I went in but he took a little while to shake awake. Poor kid, he looked completely bewildered when he opened his eyes, and I had to explain really quickly what was going on and how he had to be brave and run away with us. He nodded without speaking, the sleepy-dust still in his eyes, and followed me meekly to the bathroom where his brother was still bashing away at the hole.

It was much bigger now. Big enough for Gabriel to fit through. Daniel was sweating, there was plaster dust on his face, in his hair, his eyelashes even, he kept brushing it away. But he kept on bashing grimly and the hole kept getting bigger.

‘It's big enough for us to climb through,' he said. ‘At least you, Sylvie. Then I'll hand Gabriel over to you, and then go through myself.'

So I had to climb on the loo and jump through the hole into the space beyond. To my own surprise – I reckon I'm a bit of a klutz – I actually made it without tripping or stumbling or falling flat on my face. Then Daniel helped Gabriel onto the loo, and I grabbed him. Now there were two of us out of the prison. Finally, Daniel told us to stand back a bit and he widened the hole a bit more – plaster going everywhere – and clambered through himself.

We didn't waste time jumping for joy. Okay, so we'd got out of the room but now we had to get out of the house. Then we'd have to get away from this place. We had no idea where it was and whether it was miles and miles from anywhere and how long it would take us to get to help and if Radic might come back before...

No, first things first. Forget future worries, we had to concentrate on getting out of the house. Daniel had been right, the room went straight onto the passageway, and we ran down looking for the exit. The place was like a rabbit warren, the passage twisted and turned and I was beginning to fear that we were in a maze and would never get out when suddenly there we were, facing not a set of stairs but a ladder that went up to a stone trapdoor with a ring set into it. Daniel turned the ring and the trapdoor slid open, with a grinding sound. Helping Gabriel, we scurried up the ladder and emerged blinking into a moonlit-washed room that looked like some sort of storeroom. It had a stone-flagged floor, each stone flag the same size as the trapdoor, so that when the thing was shut again, you'd never be able to tell it wasn't just an ordinary stone flag like the others. You'd have to know which one it was. Very clever, I thought, briefly. Very, very clever. Whoever had built that whole underground place had really been a genius.

We closed the trapdoor. Daniel thought it might gain us a tiny bit of time, if Radic came back unexpectedly. He wouldn't know as soon as he came in here that we'd gone. Then we hurried out of the storeroom into the room beyond, which was the kitchen. It was becoming clear now that this was a huge place, the kitchen was vast and echoey, with a very big fireplace. There was a door at one end of the kitchen that led into a narrow room lined with stone sinks and so on – a scullery, I think they're called, servants used to do the washing-up in places like that in the old days. At the end of the scullery, another door led to a porch thing and then outside, down a narrow brick pathway that itself led through a tangle of neglected garden, past a greenhouse that had some broken panes and then out into another garden, with a wall around it. There was a door in the wall and it opened easily enough onto a rather overgrown patch of ground with some big twisted trees in it, covered in blossom. Old fruit trees, I thought. An orchard.

We stopped to take our bearings. Behind us rose the house. It was huge, just as I'd thought. Almost a castle. Square, two-storey, built of whitewashed stone, with a kind of squat round tower at one end. The tower didn't have a crimped top or a peaked witch's hat thing like castles you see in pictures, but a plain tile roof. Yet the whole effect of the house was of a fortress. A shabby sort of fortress, with whitewash no longer quite white but greyish, and peeling off the stone walls, thorns twining up, the roof missing tiles, the whole thing clearly neglected, but still massive, formidable, like the stronghold of some ancient warrior lord or something like that.

‘How on earth did Radic find it?' I said, shaking my head.

‘He or his friend must have scouted around. There are many old places like this in the countryside,' said Daniel. ‘People own them but they've been let go, because they're so expensive to look after.' He looked around. ‘Over there's a grass road but I think it just leads into the fields – we've got to get round the front of the house, and go down the driveway till we find the main road.' He looked at Gabriel, who was standing silently, with drooping head. He said, gently,
‘Tu veux monter à cheval, Gabi?'

I was baffled. He'd just asked Gabriel if he wanted to go horse riding! What sort of mad thing was that to ask right now? But Gabriel nodded, his eyes brightening immediately. Then Daniel bent down and Gabriel jumped on his back. He threw his arms around his brother's neck. I felt like a right idiot.

‘That's called a piggyback ride in English,' I said, as we jogged along the top of the orchard, towards the side of the house.

Daniel laughed. ‘Did you hear that, Gabi? You're riding on a pig, not a horse, in English!'

Gabriel smiled. It was the first time he'd smiled since I'd woken him up. ‘Oh, I like pigs too,' he said, and lay his head against his brother's back.

We soon reached the front of the house. Sure enough, there was the driveway, shining gravel in the moonlight. It stretched quite a way into the distance, and we had no way of knowing how long it was. But we set off, going as fast as we could, not running exactly because we would soon have been out of breath, but almost. The driveway wound through an avenue of tall, tightly planted, prickly looking bushes that were so overgrown they had almost formed a canopy over the road. It was very quiet, nothing but the sound of our hurrying footsteps and our panting breath, but once I nearly jumped out of my skin as something silently swooped down from a bush above me and flapped on noiseless wings up into the night sky. ‘An owl out hunting,' said Daniel, over his shoulder, and I nodded, my pulse rate slowly settling down.

We crested a rise and there it was, just a hundred metres or so away. The end of the driveway. The beginning of the road. ‘Nearly there,' said Daniel, cheerfully, and then it happened. A flash of light, from the main road. A car, visible only as a dark shape behind blinding headlights, turning the corner into the driveway and heading straight for us.

No. No! He couldn't be back already! It wasn't fair. It just wasn't. Paralysed with horror, I was frozen to the spot for an instant, caught full in the glare of the headlights. But in the next moment, I was stumbling after Daniel as he plunged without hesitation into the roadside bushes, yelling at Gabriel to put his head down, so his face wouldn't get scratched. Poor Gabriel was yelling too, in fear rather than pain. I tried to comfort him, to say it was all right, but my breath was too ragged and the words came out as a croak. And up the road the car was still belting towards us. The bushes wouldn't provide much protection for long. He must have seen us. Must have seen me, especially, standing like a startled rabbit in the middle of the road.

A startled rabbit trying desperately to bolt now through a bushy jungle. It was dark in there, darker than on the moonlit road. Twigs and thorns whipped at my face and my hands, but I tried to see where I was going. Ahead of me Daniel powered through with Gabriel huddled up against him, hiding his face as he'd been told.

Where did we think we were fleeing to? Who knows? I certainly don't because at that moment I heard the car stop on the road beside us and I knew he was coming to get us. I tried to run faster but forgot about looking where I was going, tripped over a root or a vine or something of the sort and fell headlong, awkwardly, twisting my ankle as I crashed down. And then I knew it was all over. I couldn't get away. I had come to the end of the line. I screamed, ‘Run, Daniel! Run as fast as you can!'

Behind me, a crash in the bushes, a panting breath, and then – then I had the shock of my life. ‘What the hell? Sylvie, is that you?'

‘Mick?' I said, weakly, hardly believing it.

‘Yep.' He crouched down by me, pushing his glasses up his nose. ‘Are you okay? What's happened?'

I grimaced and tried to stand up. But it hurt. ‘My ankle. I think I've twisted it.' I looked at him. ‘I'm so pleased to see you, Mick.'

‘So am I,' he said. ‘I thought you were a goner.'

‘And I thought you were.'

‘What?'

‘I thought he'd hit you over the head.'

‘Oh no. I didn't get there in time. He had gone by the time I–'

At that moment, Daniel burst through the bushes. He didn't have Gabriel on his back. But he had a ferocious look on his face, and a sizeable tree branch in his hand. He said, ‘Let her go!' He raised the branch.

‘No, Daniel!' I shouted. ‘It's okay. It's Mick. He's okay.'

Daniel stared at Mick. He kept a tight hold on the tree branch. He said, harshly, ‘What are you doing here?'

Mick scrubbed nervously at his hair. ‘I was looking for her, mate,' he said. He fished in his pocket and pulled out an old-fashioned card of matches, you know the sort, with a picture on the front and matches on a kind of tear-off tab inside. ‘I was about to tell you – I found this near the busted window. He must have dropped it.'

We looked at the match-card. It had a name,
Chateau Espinous, Hotel – Restaurant,
on it, and a silhouette of a building. I recognised it at once. It was the big house, back down the driveway. I said, ‘Mick, when you came into the house, did you see Freddy or Claire? My aunt and my sister,' I explained.

He looked confused. ‘No, they must have slept through it all.' He looked at the match-card. ‘Anyway, I didn't understand what it meant, at first,' he went on. But then I heard a car start up further in the village, and I thought it must be him. I ran like crazy but he'd already gone when I got there. And I know I should have alerted the police at once. But I was so angry. So fired up. I ran for my car and I went after him – but I lost him and I had no idea what to do – then I remembered the match-card and I thought, maybe. I put in the name on my GPS – you know the one on my phone – and it came up – so I just drove hell for leather – it was a fair bit of a trot from St-Bertrand and I missed the turn-off back down the road – and then I realised from the way the signpost looked that the place was hardly a going concern any more and I thought I must have made a mistake, but decided I'd have a look anyway – and well, here I am.' His glasses fell down his nose again and he pushed them back up. He smiled nervously. ‘When I saw you standing in the road, Sylvie, I couldn't believe it–'

‘I thought it was him,' I said. ‘Thank God you went looking, Mick. Thank God.'

‘Yes,' said Daniel. He'd lowered the tree branch and he didn't look quite so ferocious any more but his eyes still didn't look very friendly. I thought, surely he hasn't still got a grudge against Mick? I mean, he's just rescued us – he's got a car, we can get away – no time now to rehash stupid old things! I said, ‘Where's Gabriel?'

‘Just over the other side. Waiting. I'll go get him.' Without another word, he plunged back through the bushes.

Mick whispered, ‘Are they okay?'

‘Sure. I'm sorry he's being a bit brusque. He's been through a lot. That Radic guy – he's a fruitloop.'

He looked at me. ‘What?'

‘Radic. That's the guy's name. Look, don't worry, I'll explain it later, we need to get away.' I looked at Mick. ‘I think we better go to the police station this time.'

‘Oh, yeah. Sure.' He shook his head. ‘My God, Sylvie, you've had a time of it, haven't you?'

I sighed. ‘Yeah. And it ain't over yet. Not till we've told the police everything and they can stop Udo from going to that rendezvous with Radic. Look, I'll explain that later, too,' I added, seeing a bewildered expression in Mick's eyes. ‘You won't believe it, it's all so full-on.'

Daniel emerged from the bushes, holding Gabriel in his arms. The little boy turned his head to look at us. His eyes were huge, exhausted. Mick said, ‘Hello.'

Gabriel didn't answer, but buried his head in his brother's chest. Daniel said, in a more friendly voice than before, ‘I'm sorry. He's just so tired.'

‘No worries,' said Mick cheerfully. ‘He can have a snooze in the car. Come on, let's get going before our friend turns up.'

How wonderful Mick's old rattletrap seemed to me! How wonderful to sit back on the lumpy seat! I sat in the front with Mick – Gabriel didn't let go of his brother – and as we pulled out of the driveway and onto the main road, I began to give him a precis of what had happened. He listened to me without interruption, his attention on the road, his jaw tightening as I described Radic's background and the crazy plot he'd devised to take revenge on the man who he blamed for his nephew's death. But his eyes widened with astonishment and he almost veered off the road when I told him how I'd been at Wedding Heaven that day. He said, ‘My God, how weird. How too bloody weird. It must've been awful. Do you remember much about it? I mean, about the guy – Thomas, was it? Could you tell, when you looked in his eyes, what he was about to do?'

‘No,' I said, quickly then, more slowly, ‘Well, I don't know. I'm not sure. There was something – or at least there was nothing – if you know what I mean. When I looked into his eyes, it was like a wall. Like there was no-one there. No expression.' I swallowed. ‘Radic, his uncle, has the same look. It's like he doesn't see other people.'

‘And you think that guy was like that?'

‘Oh. I don't know, Mick. I didn't know him, really. I am sorry that he felt that way, but it wasn't my fault – it wasn't our fault.'

‘No,' said Mick gently, ‘I don't suppose most people would think it was anyone's fault. Not even Udo's. You certainly couldn't bring a prosecution against him, could you? I suppose Radic knows that. So he's taken another way. An old way. Blood for blood, eye for an eye.'

‘That's crap, though,' I said angrily.

‘Eye for an eye makes the whole world go blind, eh?' quoted Mick lightly. ‘Sure. Problem is, that lets the guilty off scot-free. At least that's what people like Radic think.'

‘Yeah, but they're wrong. It's not Udo he's hurt so far – and me and Daniel – well, we're pretty pissed off but we're okay, but Gabriel, look at what he's doing to Gabriel.' I could see in the rear-vision mirror that Gabriel seemed to be asleep again, but I was whispering, just in case. ‘The poor little kid is probably going to be marked for life – he's so sweet and trusting and gentle and now he's so scared he'll probably have nightmares for ages.'

‘Kids can be tougher than you think,' whispered back Mick. ‘I know, it wasn't like the best idea, but I reckon he'll get over it quicker than you think.'

‘I hope you're right,' I said, soberly.

We had reached a crossroads. Mick took the one that was signposted for Toulouse. ‘We'll stop along the way,' he said, ‘just to call the cops and tell them to expect us. I think it's a good idea, don't you?'

‘I suppose so.'

‘We'll have to use a payphone – I think I've got a phone card somewhere in my pocket – I dropped my mobile back at the house. I don't suppose you've got yours with you? Or Daniel?'

I flung a glance into the rear-vision mirror. Daniel was being very quiet too. In fact I thought he might be asleep as well. I whispered, ‘No. I have no idea where it is. Radic got them both, I suppose.'

He nodded. ‘Okay. First payphone you see, tell me.'

It was about ten minutes later that I spotted it, standing lit up all by itself on the side of the road just after some village or other. I pointed it out to Mick, and he pulled up. He said, ‘I won't be long,' and headed for the booth. I saw him go in, and start making the call. I saw him begin talking. Then he looked towards me, and frowned. He talked a bit more, and then I saw him put the phone down on the bench and come out of the booth. He came to my window. ‘I spoke to the Captain. He wants to come and get us,' he said. ‘At least, to send the St-Gaudens police to come and get us. They're not far from here. The Captain wants to get a team together to go to Chateau Espinous, nab Radic and his mate there. I said I'd speak to you, see if it's okay.'

‘Would we have to wait long?' I said, a little fearfully, looking behind us in the dark night. But there were no headlights behind us, the road was empty and very quiet.

‘No more than fifteen minutes,' he said. ‘Probably less. And they know where we are now.' He looked at Daniel, who had just opened his eyes. ‘Is that okay with you, mate?'

Daniel shrugged. ‘I suppose so.'

‘I'll tell him it's okay, then.' He went back to the booth and talked some more. Then he smiled, and put the phone down. He said, ‘All set. We've just got to wait now. Tell you what, I've got a flask of hot coffee in the boot, almost forgot it was there. Brewed it up when I thought I'd have a long night looking for you. Anyone fancy any?'

‘Sure,' I said, suddenly feeling how dry my throat was. ‘That'd be great.'

Daniel said he'd like some too so Mick went round to the boot and rummaged around in there, coming out a few moments later with two tin cups full of coffee. ‘I tasted it, it's not that hot any more but it's not too bad,' he said, as he handed us the cups and went to get himself some too.

It was true that it wasn't exactly piping hot but it was still warm and it smelled nice. I gulped it down, and felt it shoot pleasantly down my throat. Daniel sipped his and then Mick came back with his own cup and we sat there drinking, not talking much, but waiting for the arrival of the St-Gaudens cops.