CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
I fumbled in the dark for the car door handle. ‘I’m coming with you.’
Caleb leaned back in. ‘Why don’t you wait here and lock the doors? It might be safer.’
But I shook my head. ‘We’re in this together. I’m coming with you.’
He nodded and I got out, closing the door as softly as I could.
The garden gate creaked a little as Caleb pushed it open and I winced, half-expecting a light to come on in the bungalow.
But the place was in darkness. It was late – after ten o’clock – and I was hopeful that Eileen might be in bed asleep.
And then into the silence, Caleb’s phone began to ring.
Cursing under his breath, he answered the call with lightning speed, and again I glanced fearfully at the house, worried Eileen might have been alerted by the sound.
What if she were to call her grandson and tell him we were snooping around?
Family loyalty had obviously played a part in this because it was clear Eileen had lied to the police about having driven the BMW back from the local supermarket.
She must have been primed by her grandson to cover for him.
Caleb was speaking in a low voice and I knew it was Penny.
The phone wasn’t on speaker but I could still hear her .
. . sheer panic making her voice rise to a squeak.
Caleb was trying to reassure her, explaining that we were at the kidnapper’s house and we were going to find Will and bring him home.
At last, he pushed the phone back in his pocket. ‘So Penny got home to find a handwritten note pushed through her door,’ he whispered. ‘Basically, saying they’ve got Will and she’ll get him back if I go to the police and change my statement.’
His expression was bleak and I knew it was killing him. He was balanced on a knife edge of indecision – torn between doing the right thing morally and speaking the truth in court, and doing the right thing for Will and Penny.
I swallowed hard, my mouth bone-dry with fear. It was horrifying to think of Will being kept a prisoner somewhere . . . perhaps alone in the dark.
‘You won’t need to change your statement. Because we’re going to find him,’ I murmured.
Caleb looked at me and I could see doubt clouding his eyes. Then he drew a breath, touched my arm and nodded. ‘You’re right. We will. Come on.’
We crept along the side of the house, and that’s when we encountered our first obstacle. When Caleb tried the latch, we found that the simple wooden gate leading to the back garden was locked.
My heart sank. I didn’t fancy having to scale it. But how else would we manage to get into the garden and find that old air raid shelter?
Thankfully, Caleb was tall enough to reach over the gate.
‘It’s just a bolt,’ he whispered, and to my relief, I heard it slide out. The gate swung open silently and we walked through, onto a paved patio area.
The rooms at the back of the bungalow were also in darkness, and we used our phone lights to guide us through the wilderness of a back garden. My eye alighted on a small shed on the other side of an overgrown rockery.
‘Do you think he could be in there?’ I whispered.
Caleb nodded and we crossed the grass together.
Earlier, the police had found the bungalow empty apart from Eileen, who’d claimed she hadn’t had any visitors all week. It made sense that Will could be hidden somewhere else close by . . .
The shed was locked. And when Caleb shone a light through the window, he shook his head. ‘Nothing.’
We turned to go back.
And that’s when I saw it.
Caleb let out a triumphant gasp and I knew he’d seen the same thing – a metal rectangle that looked like a small door.
It was part of a concrete structure over which the rockery had been built, presumably to try and disguise the eyesore of a war-time Anderson shelter in the middle of the garden.
The entrance wasn’t visible from the patio.
I grasped Caleb’s arm. There was no need for words. I knew he was thinking the same thing as I was. We had to get in there.
I trained my light on the door while Caleb approached it, puzzled at first because there was no handle to open it. It seemed to be wedged shut in the space – rusted, maybe, after all these years – but finally, he managed to push it free.
As we peered into the darkness beyond, everything was silent, and I felt my hope die.
Will wasn’t here!
Then Caleb called out softly, ‘Will? It’s Uncle Caleb. Are you there?’
At that, we heard a strangled cry. And then movement at the back of the shelter.
‘Will?’
Caleb surged forward, and I heard a dull thud as he banged his head on the concrete above the low-hung entrance. But he hardly seemed to feel it in his rush to get to his nephew.
I entered the tight space behind him, stumbling a little over the threshold.
Bench seating lined both sides of the narrow space and there was Will, sitting on a chair at the far end of the metal structure.
My heart lurched with horror when I saw that he was tied to the chair and gagged.
He must have been petrified when we entered, thinking it might be his kidnapper coming back. No wonder he’d stayed silent.
Caleb was untying him and gently removing the scarf that had been tied around his mouth to keep him silent. Then he crouched down beside Will and gently took his face in both hands so he could see for himself that his nephew was at least physically unharmed.
‘You’re okay now, son,’ he murmured, drawing Will into the comfort of one of his big bear hugs.
Will gave a choked sob and sank into Caleb’s embrace.
They stayed like that for a long time, and as I watched – my heart bursting with relief that Will was safe – a happy tear slid down my face thinking of Penny and how overjoyed she would be when she heard we’d found him . . .
*****
A sound like a gate being pushed open brought us back to reality with a bang.
Who was that?
Had Eileen seen us and alerted her grandson? What would he do if he knew we’d managed to find Will?
Caleb was supporting Will. They were both on their feet.
‘What do we do?’ I whispered, hurrying to the back of the shelter, away from the entrance, worried that at any moment the kidnapper would burst inside.
‘Phone the police,’ said Caleb in an urgent whisper. ‘And look after Will?’
I nodded, terrified as I watched him make his way to the entrance. I put my arm around Will and whispered, ‘It’s going to be fine,’ and with the other hand I tried to call the police.
There was no signal!
I let out a cry of exasperation. And now we could hear footsteps rustling through the overgrown foliage on the lawn, getting ever nearer to where we were hiding out . . .
I held my breath and beside me, I felt Will brace himself.
What horrors had he already faced at the hands of that cold-hearted kidnapper?
It didn’t bear thinking about.