Frozen in Time (27 page)

She gripped the ladder platform cage tightly and leaned out to look. Her head swam. The garden below looked as though it was on another planet. The tall oaks that lined their land waved their topmost branches at her … from below. It felt like a bad dream.

‘Sh-shall I go first? Would it help?’ asked Polly, her face pale in the dim light.

Rachel shook her head. ‘No, it wouldn’t be safe to try to squeeze past me. I’ll be OK. I can’t see anyone down there. I think they must be in the house by now.’

As if to confirm this, there was a thud from inside and they both jolted. Rachel lost no more time. She turned round and hung tightly onto the metal grip as her feet found the top of the ladder. It was quite steady, but as soon as she stretched her foot down below the guttering, the aluminium step beneath it twisted madly, three storeys of thin air beneath it. She had never been so scared in her life. Still, there was no waiting now. She gritted her teeth and put her other foot down. And then took the next step below that. Once she was clear of the roof her own weight held the ladder steadier and this would help Polly to climb after her. She moved rapidly now, glancing below, seeing no one. She was desperate that all this fear and struggle would be worth it—how awful to reach the ground only to be captured. And by whom? She wished Uncle Jerome’s message had told her more.

It felt like an hour, but was probably less than a minute before she reached the ground. She held on to the ladder, anchoring it as Polly came down too. ‘OK?’ she whispered as the girl reached the ground. Polly nodded. They took one look around and then ran down the garden, keeping to the hedge until they were forced to dart from cover and across to the rhododendron bushes. They scrambled down the slopes beneath and ran across the lower lawn, leaped across the stream and into the wood and as the trees closed in around them Rachel began to think that they would make it. They would follow Uncle J’s instructions and seal themselves in until he came for them and knocked seven times.

They hurled themselves down the shaft, its light sending up a warm, welcoming glow and Polly hit the SHUT button, and pulled down the LOCK lever as she passed. The hatch cover slid smoothly across with a metallic rattle and they heaved shaky sighs of immense relief. They staggered down the remaining rungs and stumbled along the corridor and into the sitting room, collapsing on the old sofas, gasping with delayed shock.

‘I—I can’t believe we just did that,’ breathed Rachel. ‘I never would have thought I could ever do that in my life!’

‘I’ve never been so terrified,’ breathed Polly. ‘I feel absolutely dreadful that we had to leave poor Bessie … but, oh, it’s good to get in here. JJ will be here any time, I know he will! I just hope those bad sorts don’t come searching for us and find the hatch. I’m sure they can’t get in, though. It’s tough enough even when it’s
not
locked from the inside. Jolly good thing we left it open, earlier. Although we really oughtn’t to. It’s jolly unsafe!’

Rachel felt a quietness drop around her. She stilled her breathing and tried to focus on something that niggled at her through all the excitement and drama. ‘Polly … when did we leave it open?’

‘Well, we didn’t. It must have been the boys.’

‘But they haven’t been down here since yesterday. Do you think they would have left it open all night? I—I don’t think they would do that.’

‘They didn’t,’ came a voice behind them. ‘I opened it.’

‘We’re going to have to jump off soon,’ shouted Ben, over the engine noise, as he and Freddy clung on to the muddy shallow ridges in the back of the truck to try to stop sliding around. With every bump they went up and thudded back down and Ben’s chin cracked onto the metal bed. He’d already bitten his tongue twice. ‘I just hope the lights are red at the top of this road—if they’re not we might have to jump for it anyway—we can’t go too far past the entrance to our road. We’ve got to get back to Rachel and Polly …’

‘Before anyone else does,’ concluded Freddy. ‘All right.’

Ben raised his head as high as he dared, peering up through the back window of the cab, to the front. The driver need only flick a glance in his rear-view mirror and one of his stowaways would be in full view. The engine note changed as he shifted down a gear and Ben hoped fervently that this meant the lights ahead were on red or going to red. He looked back down the road behind them and was relieved to see that there was no queue of cars; only one, too far back to see them. The engine note changed again and the truck slowed down to perhaps fifteen miles an hour. Ben saw the lights. They were red
and
amber and flashing—ready to return to green at any second. It was now or never.

‘NOW!’ he shouted and Freddy shot up beside him. They hurled their bags ahead of them on to the kerb and then stepped up on the truck side and leaped for it. This time Ben’s feet really did complain, even with shoes on. They had never been required to leap onto concrete from a moving vehicle before. Freddy pitched forwards and landed on his hands and knees. He winced and gritted his teeth and when he got up his knees were badly skinned and he was examining his palms and compressing his lips with pain. Only for a second though. As the truck pulled away, with a confused backward glance from its driver, they grabbed their schoolbags and ran back to the corner of Darkwood Lane. It would be at least another two minutes of hard running before they reached the house. Freddy got a few metres along the steep road before shrugging his school bag off and throwing it in some bushes. Ben did the same. They couldn’t afford to be slowed down. His text books and school clothes would wait for him.

It was as if he existed in two layers, as they pounded along in the sultry, darkening evening, lightning throwing white streaks into Freddy’s wildly flying hair. One part of him was whimpering with exhaustion and pain from his feet and lungs, while another part was utterly without compassion for the first part. The urgency of the situation demanded that not one second of slacking could be tolerated. He glanced back over his shoulder, expecting the black car to come gliding up behind them at any moment and the men to simply lean out and pluck them inside. He wondered what they had done with Percy. Had the old man managed to delay them or send them in the wrong direction? He doubted it. If they knew about Percy and they knew about Professor Emerson then they would certainly know where he and the others lived.

Freddy suddenly stopped, twenty metres or so before they would reach their gate. He leaned against a tree at the roadside and bent over, panting, his hand to his face. As he caught up, Ben saw, with horror, that Freddy’s nose was bleeding. A lot. He touched the boy’s shoulder and Freddy shrugged him off. ‘Go ahead!’ he said. ‘Don’t stop for me. You’ll have to go on ahead.’

‘You can keep going!’ argued Ben. ‘It’s just—it’s just a nosebleed. You’ll be OK!’ Freddy turned to face him, but he did not look right. It wasn’t the blood on his face. It was something else.

‘You have to go ahead … and then come back for me,’ said Freddy. ‘I’m sorry, old chap … it’s just that I can’t see.’

‘YOU!’ Rachel was so flabbergasted that this was all she could say. Polly was also gaping with astonishment. After the terrors of the last thirty minutes: the silent phone call, the shadows in the garden, unknown people breaking in, their desperate escape onto the roof and down the ladder; the very last thing in the world she could have imagined was this.

‘Hello again. Rachel, is it?’ The woman perched on the arm of the sofa opposite them, smiling. She was holding a small metallic case with curved edges, about the size of a book, in her hand.

‘You—you’re the librarian!’ Rachel’s brain could hardly bend around this. What was the town librarian doing down in their vault? Visions of black shadows in her garden fought with the sight of this woman, here in her trousers and navy cardigan, smiling as if she’d just been asked for
Wind in the Willows
.

‘Well remembered,’ she said, smoothing back her neat brown hair. ‘Hello, Polly. How are you?’

‘What are you doing down here?’ Polly demanded. ‘You’ve jolly well no right to be down here!’

‘I’ve been given permission. Don’t worry your head about it. Everything’s going to be fine. How are you finding twenty-first century life?’

Polly looked at Rachel. Could this woman
know
?

‘How would you expect her to find it?’ snapped Rachel.

‘Pretty dreadful, I should think. Poor child. Has the bleeding started yet?’

Again Rachel and Polly gasped and stared.

‘I see that it has,’ sighed the librarian. ‘Which makes it even more important that you come with me now. I can take you somewhere safe and make sure you get the care you need.’

‘She’s not going anywhere with you!’ said Rachel, fiercely. There was something about the woman’s tone that she hated. A smug, know-it-all kind of tone that made Rachel want nothing more than to punch her hard in the face.

‘Oh, but she is—and so are you,’ said the librarian. ‘I wish I could leave you behind, Rachel, but there’d be far too much trouble if I did. Now, be good girls and come along with me. Making a fuss really won’t help.’ Rachel and Polly anchored themselves to the sofa and glared at her. ‘Really, Polly, I’m surprised at you,’ she said, getting up and walking to the door to the exit corridor. ‘Don’t you want to see your father?’

Ben staggered to the side of the road and tore great ragged gasps of air through his aching lungs. He had tried to drag Freddy along with him but the boy had struck out at him and insisted he had to go on alone. ‘I can’t help you! I’m no good to anyone now, blast it!’ he’d said, with tears in his voice, which convinced Ben he was right. Freddy really could
not
see. Now Ben thought of the rats which had died in Professor Emerson’s early experiments and shuddered. Just a few steps away was the fabled black car. It had to be a second one— the first would have passed them on the road if it had come here, and he knew it hadn’t. It wasn’t possible to make out if anyone was inside because the windows were mirrored, so he daren’t dash past it. For the third time that day Ben dropped to the ground, this time to wriggle across the tarmac of the road on his belly. His only chance was to stay very low and hope no lightning flared to show him up as he went. A few drops of rain were beginning to fall now and the thunder rumbling in the east sounded louder.

As soon as he reached the gate he crawled around it and scrambled into the hedge to the right. Panting, he got up on his knees and stared along the drive to the front door of Darkwood House, which was wide open, with light flooding out. As he watched, a man clothed in black came out from the hallway, speaking into a hand-held radio or phone. The man signalled to another, who now joined him from the side alley of the house, moving with purpose towards the back garden. He shouted something in a foreign language, taking no care now to keep his voice down. Ben felt his heart thud hard inside his chest. They must have got Rachel and Polly then. And even if he had hoped against hope that they were actually just the local— or even London—police, sent by their own government after a tip off, the foreign language convinced him they were not. They sounded Russian. What should he do? They were too late. What would Freddy say? He felt fearful indecision settle on him like wet cement.

‘You mean he’s … he’s alive?’ Polly abandoned all pretence. The thought that her father was still on the earth knocked every other thought out of her.

‘I can take you to him,’ said the librarian. ‘Come with me and you’ll see him very soon. I work for the same people your father works for.’

Polly took a step towards the librarian. ‘You work with him?’

‘For the same people,’ she repeated. ‘The government. That’s how I know about you and about this place. So come on now—he’s missed you so much, Polly. He told me he’s looking forward to giving you a big hug and a kiss and telling you how much he loves you.’

Polly blinked, and then a coldness crept over her face. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, do you? You’re making it up!’

The librarian looked slightly uneasy, for just a fraction of a second. ‘Why would I do that?’

‘Because Father isn’t like that! He’s not a hugging and kissing sort at all and he certainly wouldn’t ever say that to
you.
You don’t know where he is at all and you certainly don’t know
him
!’

The librarian sniffed and pursed her thin lips. ‘I really don’t have time for this. Look, I work for some very powerful people, who would really think nothing of it if I just finished off your friend here, Polly. We don’t need her. So fine—come nicely or don’t come nicely. It’s all the same to me.’ She walked briskly along the exit corridor as Polly and Rachel exchanged appalled glances, and then they heard her go up the metal rungs of the shaft and then press the unlock button.