When Gregg felt sure Alicia was calm enough to be taken from Chambers; he placed his jacket on her shoulders and walked her, head-down, into the shaft.
She was only wearing the white button-down blouse, and the grey skirt of the uniform she’d been abducted in a week ago. Her blazer and socks and shoes, were missing. And because of that he offered to carry her through the tunnels, but she refused, shaking her head. It seems, even after her ordeal, thought Gregg; this young girl still had some measure of pride.
After hearing the van outside just a few minutes ago, he knew Jill and Nick were already back, and were probably wondering where he’d got to.
He and Alicia were still walking along the Chambers tunnel when Gregg heard voices in the distance. He’d no idea where or how far away they were, but he was more than certain, none of the voices belonged to either Jill or Nick.
Standing at the first junction, and looking around the clay wall into the black of the main tunnel, he saw a beam of light jittering around inside the tunnel leading to the garage. A few seconds later two figures turned north heading towards the town hall, one of them looked to be carrying something over his shoulder. But all Gregg could see were silhouettes, so he couldn’t be quite sure. And although the silhouettes were laughing and talking at volume, he couldn’t make out anything said between them.
He waited until their voices disappeared into the distance before he felt it safe enough to carry on. Now, moving at a more brisk pace, they started along the main tunnel. Gregg remained silent as they traversed their way to the garage, and not just because there were others in there, all he had were questions for Alicia, he wanted to get her warmed up and feeling much safer than she felt right now, before he asked any of them.
After turning into the garage tunnel, the small amount of light from the shaft showed something lying at the bottom of the steps. Gregg stopped, and although he wouldn’t be able to see her face, he turned to Alicia.
‘Alicia, I need you to know that further up ahead in the tunnel, there’s body, so from right here, and until we’re out of it, I’m going to carry you. While I’m carrying you, I want you to put your head on my shoulder, and keep your eyes shut tight, okay?’
Alicia still said nothing, but Gregg saw a shimmer of light flicker off her arms as she raised them in acceptance of what he’d said. He picked her up and, exactly like he’d told her, she had her head buried deep into his shoulder.
Once they were in the garage and safe, Gregg again switched on the heater and sat Alicia in front of it. He went over to the red 4X4 abandoned by the silhouettes and began to search through it, and being an ex-cop, the first thing he did was to pull down the sun-visor. There he found the owner’s driving licence trapped behind a grey plastic band. He looked at the embedded picture of the owner before looking at the name below. But he didn’t have to look at the name below, he knew the girl.
He remembered the black and white photographs Celia Brontrose had in her front room. “The morning room” he recalls the snobby English guy calling it. So he was right, the silhouettes were carrying something. This seemed like too much of a coincidence though, the daughter of the woman who’d sent him down there had been kidnapped by these people.
Something here was definitely out of sync, way off balance. If this had been a jigsaw puzzle, that Celia Brontrose woman had hidden pieces from him, some very important pieces at that.
He searched the car some more but found little else of use, except for the keys hanging in the tail-gate. After returning to where Alicia sat, he held out his hand to her. She was curled into a tight ball holding her knees to her chest, but still managed to snatch at the bag of sweets he’d retrieved from inside the car. She pushed half a dozen into her mouth before she’d even started chewing, and it wasn’t long before she’d finished off the bag. Gregg now hoped she’d be able to answer some of the questions he had for her.
He was about to ask the first of those questions when he heard someone tapping on the shutter. If it was Nick or Jill, he’d have expected them to pull up in the van outside. But they could have seen the 4X4 out on the road, in fact, they must have seen it, and were just being cautious.
Even so, on the off-chance it wasn’t either of them, he guided Alicia to the 4X4, putting her on the rear seat and instructing her to keep very quite. Not that she was making much noise to begin with. He told her to stay down, and no matter what happens, she wasn’t to move.
With an almost silent click, he closed the car door, and again, just in case it wasn’t Jill or Nick, he withdrew his gun before pressing the button for the shutter to rise, and then stood back.
