Almost Love (38 page)

Chapter Fifty-Two

Tim called the Herrick home immediately but could get no reply. Instantly he knew that Juliet’s hunch must be correct; there was always someone there ready to answer the phone, day or night, because children were admitted into care at all hours. He called Andy Carstairs again.

“Where are you now?”

“I’m heading back towards Gosberton Clough. We’ve received a report of a white van driving at speed through Gosberton village at about 6 p.m.”

“I need you to turn back immediately and get to Herrick House as soon as you can. Arrange for as many officers as you can get hold of to meet you there. I want you to cover the house from all sides, but don’t try to go in and use extreme caution. We don’t know exactly what’s happening there, but something is very wrong. No-one is answering the phone and because of circumstantial evidence we have reason to believe that the children are in danger. We must evacuate them as soon as possible, but we don’t know who may be in there with them or whether they’re armed. I’m going to get authorisation for an armed response team to join you. Then I’ll come out myself. I’ll be there in less than an hour.”

Chapter Fifty-Three

After she had been abandoned face down on the bed, Alex was at first vigilant out of fear, but eventually she fell into a troubled doze. She dreamt of the blood splatter on her kitchen wall. The face of the woman she had encountered in Chapel Lane was floating in front of it, disembodied, grinning fiercely. “Put your feet up. Ask your husband to make you a nice cup of tea.”

She could hear an unidentified noise in the background as the woman was speaking. It might have been the sound of slow footsteps. Alex stirred and half-woke. The footsteps weren’t part of the dream. She could hear that someone was approaching the door of the room. As she pulled herself from sleep, she was gripped by an agonising pain across her shoulder-blades, a legacy of the hours that her arms had been restrained in such an unnatural position. Simultaneously she became aware that her bladder was full to bursting.

The key turned in the lock and the door was opened. Someone approached the bed – she sensed that it was a lighter and more nimble person than the man who had deposited her there. But it was a man – she could smell the sweet astringent aroma of Paco Rabanne. She knew immediately who he was. She felt sick with shock.

Gently he cut the ties that were binding her wrists and rolled her on to her back. He peeled back the sticking-plaster from her mouth. Her legs were still bound, but she succeeded in sitting up unaided. The light of the small table-lamp enabled her only to see his face dimly, but she had no need of further proof.

“Oliver!” she said.

“Hello, Alex,” he said. “I am inexpressibly sorry about all of this.”

She was simultaneously incredulous, furious and almost speechless with tumbling questions and demands. She could articulate only one of them.

“I need to go to the toilet,” she said.

He whispered his reply: “Of course. That’s one of the reasons that I’ve come. But please keep your voice down. Swing your legs to the edge of the bed and I’ll cut the ties around your ankles, as well. I must warn you not to try anything, though. If you either lash out at me or try to escape I shan’t be able to guarantee your safety. You’ll have gathered that I am neither working on my own nor in control of the turn that events have taken. I want you to know that at no time have I sanctioned ruffianly or violent behaviour, nor any action that might result in injury or worse, especially to you. I have been very foolish; I’m trapped by something that I did years ago.”

He bent to cut the plastic ties that bound her legs together. Fleetingly she thought of kicking him in the face, but his warning had convinced her that the action could only harm her.

He pointed to a door in the far wall.

“There’s a kind of en suite washing closet with a lavatory through there,” he murmured, his voice low.

Alex hauled herself awkwardly to her feet. She took a couple of steps and stumbled back against the bed. Oliver gripped hold of her.

“Steady!” he breathed. “Your muscles have stiffened up because you’ve been lying in the same position for so long. Would you like to take my arm?”

Alex pushed it away indignantly and hobbled towards the door that he had indicated.

“Don’t turn on the light in there,” he said quickly. Although he was still barely more than whispering, there was a tautness in his voice. “No-one must know that I’ve released you, even temporarily. If you leave the door open you should be able to see well enough from the light of the lamp.”

Alex’s anger was gobbled up by fear. The terror that she had felt during the van journey came flooding back, sapping her will. She did as Oliver bade her.

A large old-fashioned porcelain lavatory with an oversized cistern stood behind the door of the room that he had indicated. By leaving the door ajar she would be able to preserve her modesty, if not her dignity. She tried to pee as quietly as she could.

“Don’t pull the chain,” said Oliver in the same taut voice.

“You will at least let me wash my hands?” she hissed.

“No. Just come back here.” He motioned her towards the small two-seater sofa which stood between the door and the bed. “Sit there for a while,” he said. “Swing your arms and legs about to get the blood circulating in them again, but try not to make any noise.” He listened intently, then went to the window and made a small chink in the curtains.

“They’re not back yet,” he was whispering again, “but we still need to keep quiet. We can’t afford to take any chances. I think that they’ve all gone out, but I can’t be absolutely certain of it. As soon as we hear them coming I’m going to have to tie you up again. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, Oliver, for goodness sake!” sighed Alex, her irritation getting the better of her fear. “You’re behaving as if we’re acting out some kind of boys’ own adventure.”

“It would be like that,” said Oliver, very quietly and gravely, “if it weren’t for the fact that the people who took you are for real. And unlike comic strip super-heroes, once we cross them, we’re finished. We shan’t have the power to heal ourselves miraculously in time for the next episode.”

“Do ‘they’, whoever they are, intend to kill us?” Alex’s tone now matched his own in sombre gravity.

He paused.

“I think that you stand more chance of getting out of this alive than I do,” he said. “I know too much about them; they won’t let anything or anyone get in their way now. That makes me a liability. The fact that you know very little and – I’m guessing – don’t at all understand what is going on can only help you, which is why I shan’t tell you much. But there is no point in my pretending that they won’t kill you if they think that it’s necessary. One of them is actually quite capable of murdering you on a whim, if he feels like it.”

Half an hour had passed. Alex remained on the sofa. Oliver was still jumpy, but less nervy than when he had first cut her bonds. Every few minutes he looked out of the window, making as small a gap in the curtains as possible. He listened intently each time he heard a slight noise. Evidently he thought that they were now alone in the house, but he wasn’t certain enough to relax. After some time, he went to the small bathroom, flushed the toilet and returned with a glass of water, which he gave to her.

“I’m sorry I can’t make tea. I’ll need to tie you up again the minute they come back. They mustn’t see any evidence that you’ve been free.”

“I’m hardly free, am I?” said Alex, her voice heavy with irony. “And neither are you, from the way you’re behaving. If we’re both in danger, why don’t we just leave now?”

“We’ll never get away with it,” said Oliver fearfully. “They’ll hunt us down and kill us. Going along with them is the only chance we have of getting out of this alive.”

“You’re speaking in riddles, Oliver, and you know that I don’t understand what you’re talking about. I’m grateful for your refusal to tell me stuff that might endanger me even more, but I should at least like to understand why you’ve got mixed up with these people.” She glanced again at the engraving on the wall. She was nearer to it now than she had been when she was lying on the bed.

“That’s a picture of Jacob Sparham, isn’t it? Your ancestor? Are we actually in your house?”

Oliver removed his spectacles and passed a weary hand across his face.

“Yes,” he sighed. “I should have realised that you’d recognise the engraving. There’s one like it at the Archaeological Society, isn’t there? Don’t let them know that you’ve found out where you’re being held.”

“I’m sick of hearing about ‘them’,” snapped Alex. “And I know you’re not going to tell me who ‘they’ are. But what about the rest of it? How
did
you get involved? Does it have something to do with Claudia McRae? Was your visit to her house on the day that she disappeared as casual as you said it was?”

“Yes . . . No. Well, sort of. When I said that I hadn’t seen Claudia for a long time before that visit, I was telling the truth. I actually had been back in touch with her again a few years ago, but only by e-mail. That companion of hers – Jane or Jean – got hold of me to ask me to contribute to a collection of occasional papers that she is planning to publish to accompany a new book by Claudia. She told me that this book would be the culmination of Claudia’s life’s work. I was a bit sceptical – Claudia was never any great shakes at writing – but I agreed to do it.”

“How did this woman find you?”

“I don’t suppose I’m that difficult to find. But it’s interesting that you ask, because this Jane – I think her name
was
Jane – was quite coy when I asked her the same question myself. She’d reached me through Edmund Baker – he’d supplied her with my e-mail address. Reading between the lines, I had the impression that there was something going on between her and Edmund at the time.”

“Really? That’s incredible!” Alex’s voice was high with shock. Her face paled, then flushed scarlet.

“Please keep your voice down!” said Oliver, panicky again. “It’s not
that
incredible. Do you know something that I don’t?” he added, regarding Alex more closely.

“No. No, of course not. Do carry on.”

Oliver was suddenly hesitant.

“How much do you know about Claudia and her work?” he asked.

“I read some of her writings when I was a student. I know about the McRae Stone, of course.”

“What did you think of her theory about that?”

“You mean the political gloss that she put on it? About one of the languages belonging to an early super-race? I can’t say that I thought about it very much at all. I was much more interested in what she said about the actual languages – their structure and the etymology of the words. If I had any opinion, it was that the theoretical stuff was pretty far-fetched. Surely you didn’t swallow it?” she added, as Oliver’s expression changed.

“I think that it’s all nonsense now. When I was a young man I was more impressionable. Naïve, I suppose you’d say. The fact is, Claudia belonged to some extremely right-wing political groups and she encouraged the young archaeologists who went on her digs to join them. I was quite under her spell in those days and I didn’t think twice about it. It was only later that I realised how unpleasant these organisations were. Some of them were illegal, in fact.”

“I’m surprised. I’d never have guessed that you were a . . . er . . .”

“Fascist, you mean? Well, it’s there in my history.” Oliver gestured towards the portrait of Jacob Sparham. “And in my genes, too, I guess. Jacob took Darwin’s writings and twisted them to demonstrate that the world order of which he approved was both natural and inevitable. No claim for originality there – poor old Darwin has had social divisiveness laid at his door ever since he published the
Origin of Species
. But what I knew about Jacob fascinated me as a young man, so I suppose that when Claudia sounded me out I was quite receptive to her ideas. As a matter of fact, I rejected all that years ago, both emotionally and intellectually. I saw the light when I understood that it had contributed to the failure of my marriage. It didn’t reject me, however. There was one extremist group in particular that Claudia had encouraged me to join. Once you’ve become a member of it, you’ve sworn lifelong allegiance. I wasn’t an active member after I was about thirty-five, but I knew that it could – probably would – call on me again. And the call came.”

“But you said that this Jane person contacted you through Edmund. Was he one of that group, too? He’s always struck me as being quite left wing.”

“I would agree with you. Edmund certainly wasn’t interested in committing himself to any of Claudia’s wider activities when we were students. He made it clear that he wanted to confine his association with her to the digs. I still think that he is involved with
them
in some way, though. I haven’t quite figured out how. I suspect that it may also have something to do with Jacob Sparham.”

“I’m not sure that I follow.”

“Jacob was a wealthy man. He was an amateur antiquarian who travelled extensively. He brought back all sorts of artefacts from his travels; you will have seen some of them at the Archaeological Society, or at least the records of them, because I think that most of them have been archived. He left to the Society most of his professional papers and the artefacts that he hadn’t already donated to museums. A lot of it was junk, the sort of stuff that a tourist might bring back from Egypt these days – fake Pharaonic pottery scarabs and so on. The souvenir industry was booming even then. But there was one thing that Jacob described in his journals that was apparently of great intrinsic value. He was quite enigmatic about what he did with it. It wasn’t among the things that he left to the Archaeological Society in his will and I and other family members have been unable to find it, despite scouring this house and others many times over the years. Edmund was very interested in it indeed; you could say, obsessed. He asked me about it several times and he definitely thought that he was on the trail of it. I didn’t believe that he could be, because we had been so thorough in our searches.”

“What was it?”

“A swastika that Jacob acquired in Albania. It was made of red gold and said to be encrusted with blue diamonds.”

“Did Edmund give you any idea why he thought he’d found a new lead?”

“Well, obviously, he hoped he’d get to the swastika before I did – or
them
. As you can imagine, they have designs on it, not only because of its value but because of what it represents. But he did drop some hints. Jacob had been engaged for a while to a woman from a fairly well-to-do local family. The engagement was eventually broken off, but Edmund seemed to think that either he gave this woman the swastika or told her where he had hidden it.”

“It all makes perfect sense now . . .” Alex realised that she was voicing her thoughts aloud.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing. Nothing of importance, that is. Jacob’s fiancée – was her name . . . ?”

Oliver cocked his head.

“Shhh,” he said. “Did you hear that? Someone’s coming. I’m going to have to tie you up again. Now!”

His tone of voice made Alex sick with terror again.

“Get on the bed! Quickly!”