Family Drama 4 E-Book Bundle (124 page)

‘Hello, Yardley,' the elderly teacher said as she walked up the path with Maggie.

‘Mrs Alderton,' he nodded in acknowledgment.

‘I've brought Maggie home. Is Dr Wheaton around?'

‘He's busy,' Yardley answered in his usual taciturn way.

‘Right, well I've got to rush back so here she is. Delivered as promised. If you'll just take her to the doctor … The woman laughed and looked down at Maggie. ‘Mr Yardley will take you to your father and I'll see you tomorrow.'

As she walked off Yardley stood there feeling ambushed. The last thing he needed was to have to take the child in to the doctor. He needed to be there on the drive, waiting for Mrs Wheaton to get back.

As he cussed to himself so the little girl looked up at him and smiled. He looked down at Maggie Wheatley and stared. As she continued smiling, waiting for him to reciprocate, so he continued staring.

Derek Yardley had never been bright, but because he had spent so much time alone, he had a brilliant memory and well-honed instincts. He'd had to be alert and cunning when he lived in the woods in order to survive, and although he no longer needed those skills in quite the same way, they had remained. He didn't need paper and pen to remember things, to work them out. His brain could do all that all by itself.

Ping, it went. And he knew.

He'd never really looked at the child before. He'd ignored her because he resented her very being – she was just a little girl who was there – but as she looked up at him his brain collated all the information and got a result. A good result, in chronological order.

He knew.

Ruby had gone back to London, aged fifteen, and then revisited the Wheatons a few months later with a man in tow. Johnnie Riordan. Yardley remembered it well. He'd felt the electricity between them and had been angry that she was responding to that man but had rejected him.

He'd been even more angry when Johnnie had tried to tap him for information about the Wheatons. Then three months later Ruby had turned up and stayed for a couple of weeks, tucked away of sight of everyone. But he'd known she was there. He'd always made a point of knowing everything.

Then the Wheatons had given him an extra day off and whisked Ruby away, with Babs driving.

Six months later the Wheatons went off in the car again, Babs driving again, and came back with a baby they were adopting.

Johnnie Riordan came sniffing around for information …

Ruby Blakeley threatened him with his life if he looked at Maggie.

Well, of course she did. Maggie was the illegitimate offspring of Ruby Blakeley and Johnnie Riordan. Just one look and any fool could see that!

He looked at Maggie again and saw both parents in her face.

‘Uncle George is busy at the moment but I'm going out on my bicycle. Would you like a ride on the handlebars? Down the lane and back?'

‘Oh, yes,' the little girl grinned up at him.

‘George? Are you there, George?'

‘I'm in the garden,' he shouted.

Babs went through and kissed him on the top of the head.

‘How's Ruby?'

‘Not very well at all at the moment, but she'll be OK. She took a nasty tumble and has some bad injuries. I think that Tony pushed her but she won't say. I'll have to leave it to Gracie to get to the root of it all. Ruby's more likely to tell her than us.' Babs looked around. ‘Where's Maggie?'

‘Still at Mrs Alderton's. She hasn't brought her back yet.'

‘That's strange. I'd better ring her.'

After she'd spoken to the teacher Babs ran back through to George.

‘Mrs Alderton said she brought Maggie back nearly two hours ago and left her with Yardley. He told her you were busy. He said he'd take her to you.'

They looked at each other, both immediately aware of the possible implications.

‘Maybe he's around somewhere. I'll go and call. He wouldn't do anything to our Maggie. He wouldn't. We've done everything for him,' Babs said, trying to convince herself.

‘You look all around and if he's not nearby then I'll go in and call the police. Two hours is far too long,' George replied.

Babs Wheaton's voice got louder and louder as she called Maggie and checked everywhere possible. There was just no sign of her or of Derek Yardley.

‘Mrs Wheaton …'

Babs turned to see Mrs Alderton standing on the path in tears. ‘I don't understand it. I left her with Derek Yardley. Two of the village children were playing out and they said they saw Derek Yardley on his bike with Maggie on the handlebars. He was heading out of Melton that way.' She pointed in the direction. ‘They said Maggie waved at them.'

‘George!' Babs screamed. ‘George. She's with Yardley. Tell the police he went through the village with her on his bicycle.'

Suddenly all hell broke loose in the village, with residents coming out of their shops and houses as word spread that Derek Yardley had abducted little Maggie Wheaton, the doctor's daughter. Search parties were organised and the evening dusk was lit up with the glow of flickering torches.

‘What do we tell Ruby?' Babs asked. ‘We have to tell her. Supposing something bad happens? She'll never forgive us.'

‘Ring Gracie. She's the only person who knows about Maggie.'

‘George, I feel so sick. What if he does something to her? She's only five years old. She trusts him. I knew something was wrong about him, but I didn't do anything.'

Yardley skidded his bike to a halt at the side of the road and jumped off. Then he lifted Maggie off and stood her on the ground.

‘Do you want to see my den, Maggie? It's a secret. No one else knows it's here. We have to follow the marks high up on the trees. I put them there a long time ago so I could always find my way there and back again.'

He pushed his bike by the handlebars as far into the wood as it would go, then tucked it under some heavy foliage; he made sure it was well camouflaged, then took the little girl by the hand.

‘Why have you got a den?'

‘So that I have somewhere to be all alone. I like to be alone.'

‘I want to see Mummy. She'll be home by now.'

‘It's just a little bit further, come on,' Yardley sighed, and tugged at her hand, pulling her along roughly.

‘I'm scared. It's too dark in here. I want to go home.' The child started to cry quietly.

‘Oh, stop whining, will you? You're just like your mother.'

He felt the child freeze. When she looked up at him, again he saw Ruby and Johnnie in her face.

He had the ultimate revenge in mind.

No one would ever find her in the woods, and the bitch Ruby would spend the rest of her life regretting the way she'd treated Derek Yardley. She had turned him down and then had sex with Johnnie Riordan. She'd ruined his life with the Wheatons.

It would serve her right.

‘Come on, don't you dare try and run off without me because you'll get lost in the woods and then you'll die.'

As the child wailed, so he snatched her up under his arm and carried her to his secret hideaway.

‘Ruby, I've got something to tell you.' Gracie had rushed back to the hospital the moment she'd put the phone down.

‘Did Johnnie ring about coming down? Did you tell him where I was?'

‘No, it's nothing like that. Ruby, I'm sorry but Babs telephoned me a little while ago. It looks as if Yardley might have abducted Maggie. They're both missing.'

It took a few moments for the words to impact on her still-befuddled brain. She tried to sit up but couldn't.

‘Abducted?'

‘He took her off on his bike a few hours ago and hasn't come back. Babs said he'd been acting strangely. She's beside herself. Everyone is—'

‘Oh God, this is all my fault,' was all Ruby said before she started coughing and bringing up blood.

Then she was rushed off to intensive care.

By the time they reached the den Maggie had calmed down a bit and even looked a bit interested.

Yardley pulled the tarpaulin from his bed of leaves.

‘Look, this is where I lie when I have really bad headaches. I cover myself in these blankets to keep warm. I'll make a fire in a minute, but first come and sit with me.'

‘No. I want to go home to Mummy and Daddy. Please?'

‘No. Not yet. We've got to stay here tonight now. There's wild animals out there who'll eat us up. It's much too dangerous to try and get back.'

Maggie wailed in fear.

‘Shut up … just shut up. I don't want to listen to that whining any more.'

He took hold of her, forced her to lie down and covered her with the dirty smelly blankets.

Again he looked at her face. She wasn't making a sound but tears were spilling over from her eyes, she was shivering with cold and he could see she was terrified. She turned onto her side and tucked herself into the foetal position with the eiderdown up round her neck.

‘Don't move from there. I'm just getting some wood for a fire,' he ordered her. He went around the back of his den and pulled some ready-cut small logs round to the flattened area outside and piled them up. He reached into his knapsack and pulled out a box of matches but as he struck a match he saw Maggie Wheaton's face in the glow. Her eyes were wide open as she stared at him in terror.

Her expression shocked him and the fog started to clear from his head. Suddenly he realised exactly what he'd done. Because he was angry he'd taken a small child and scared the wits out of her.

He stared at her but this time instead of seeing Ruby and Johnnie he saw George and Babs Wheaton: the people who had been so good and kind to him; the people who had rescued him and given him a life away from the den. They were the ones he was hurting and he couldn't do it to them.

He jumped up and went back outside. Leaning against a tree, he breathed deeply, trying to get some air into the bottom of his sickly lungs as he'd been taught. It helped clear his head a little and lessened the pain of his excruciating headache.

At the same time a second plan started to form. It would be too easy to let Ruby off scot-free, and if he was going to be homeless and jobless he would need money, and he wanted it from Ruby Blakeley. The one who started the whole thing. The one who had caused his house of cards to topple.

‘Come on then, little Maggie. This was just a game. Let's go back. But you did like my den, didn't you?'

‘Yes,' she sniffed hopefully.

‘Good. You mustn't tell anyone about it, though. Now, we'll go and get my bike and take you home but I have to go to the phone box. We have another game to play first. It's called How Loud Can You Scream?'

‘What about the wild animals? Won't they get us?'

‘No. I've got special powers, but I'll carry you, just to be sure.'

Derek Yardley carried the little girl to where he had left his bike. He placed her on the handlebars and then went a longer way out of the dense woods so Maggie would lose her bearings. He didn't want anyone ever finding his secret place.

After propping his bike up against a tree he put the girl down, took her hand and cautiously crossed the road to the layby that was at the entrance to a quiet lane, where there was a line of tied cottages and a phone box.

‘I want you to sit on the grass right there and don't move until I call you. And then I want you to scream really loudly down the phone to your mummy.'

He smiled at the irony and fumbled in his pocket for his diary where he had written all the details he had for Ruby.

He dialled the number for the Thamesview Hotel.

‘I want to speak to Ruby Blakeley,' he said, confident in his plan. But Ruby wasn't there. He didn't know what to do next. He needed money to get away.

As he flicked through his diary, trying to decide what to do, he saw Maggie stand up and wander towards the road.

He flung the phone-box door open. ‘Maggie, come back, come back here!' he shouted as loud as he could, but instead of stopping she ran. Straight into the path of a car.

Yardley didn't know what to do. He started to go towards where the child lay in the road, but when the driver got out he panicked and ran back over the road, jumped on his bike, took one last look over his shoulder and then rode like the wind back into the woods and back to his den.

When he got there he laid down on the lumpy mattress, pulled the cover over himself and savoured the excruciating pain of his headache.

It was his punishment.

Babs and George Wheaton were waiting down by the gate at nearly midnight when the police car pulled up outside.

‘Your daughter is safe but she's got a few cuts and bruises so she needs a check-up at the hospital tomorrow. She was hit by a car, but luckily it was someone on the lookout for her so it was going very slowly. She needs some other checks as well, but as you're a doctor …?' The policeman conveyed exactly what he meant with those few words.

There was a queue of well-wishers outside the surgery who, after fearing the worst, were all waiting to see the little girl brought safely back home.

As the car door opened, so Babs, trying to pretend she wasn't crying, snatched her up and hugged her as tightly as she could. She had never felt such fear in her life.

‘Mummy', Maggie cried, ‘Yardley was all horrid and not nice. We went to his den in the woods but I didn't want to sleep there in the dark. It was smelly and dirty but the nice lady washed my face and wrapped me in her blanket.'

‘Let's go inside into the warm and then you can tell us all about your adventure,' George said with a smile.

Once indoors, the two police officers explained as much as they knew: that one of the tenants at the cottages had helped the driver tend to Maggie and then taken her indoors to his wife before using the phone box to call the police. No one had seen Derek Yardley.

‘Did he hurt you? Yardley, I mean – did Yardley hurt you?' Babs asked nervously.