‘Yes, I know. But it’s quite a reliable report. It may not be him, but it’s the best lead they’ve had.’
‘Why would they take him there? Has someone seen him? Did he look all right? Who saw him?’ I couldn’t get the questions in the right order, and I knew there were hundreds of them queuing up in my brain, jostling to get to the front.
‘No-one knows much about anything,’ he said. ‘But there is a nasty little group of bandits who apparently have their headquarters in Havelock. They’re quite professional at doing border raids, revenge raids. A lot of them are on the government list of war criminals. It’s the sort of game they’d play, grabbing a kid and using him to bargain.’
‘So how do we get him back?’ I asked, forgetting all the other questions, or at least sending them to the back of the queue.
He paused then, for the first time, and frowned, and looked at the ground. I knew these signs as well as I knew Lee. Someone had made a suggestion, someone had a plan even, but it wasn’t Lee’s idea and he didn’t agree with it.
‘Come on, come on,’ I said with teeth clenched.
‘I think it’s crazy. The only part of it I agree with is that the government isn’t going to be able to do anything. Well, if they are, it’s going to take a long time, and bad stuff could happen in the meantime. These guys aren’t interested in negotiating with governments, and their own government can’t control them. I think it’s a situation that probably does call for a bit of individual action.’
‘So what’s the plan?’ I asked, trying not to grind my teeth.
‘It’s not a plan as such,’ he said slowly. ‘It’s just a concept, an idea. The beginning of a plan.’
‘I’ll do it,’ I said.
He grinned then. ‘Yeah, well I kind of expected you’d say that.’ He paused. ‘Like I said, it’s not a plan, in fact it’s not even the beginning of a plan, but there’s quite a large population of expatriates in Havelock.’
‘What are they?’ I asked.
‘People from other countries. A lot of administrative and government stuff happens there. Not that they call it Havelock any more. They’ve given it some new name that I can’t even pronounce. But the United Nations has about a hundred people there, and there are a few consulates setting up. What I’m getting at, or what the Liberation people are getting at, is that someone like you could walk around some areas of Havelock without standing out. Not many areas, but where the consulates are, the locals are used to seeing foreign faces. You’d have to get identity papers, but Liberation could supply those. At least it puts you closer to the action, if that’s where the action really is.’
‘What does the Scarlet Pimple think of all this?’ I asked.
‘Not happy. Bad idea.’
‘Why?’
‘Too dangerous, too random. The Scarlet Pimple likes plans and structures and details. Admittedly it’s not the way we worked during the war, but it seems to work pretty well with what Liberation do. I guess they have to be pretty organised, seeing there’s so many different groups, and so many different projects.’
‘How would I get to Havelock?’
‘They’re working on that. And they are producing identity papers right now. Apparently that’s pretty easy.’
‘At least no-one really knows my face,’ I said. ‘Even if the guys who took Gavin read my books, even if they know my name, even if they think they know a lot about me, hardly anyone would know what I look like. Given how many people are living over there now, I’d be pretty unlucky to run into anyone I met during the war.’
‘Yes,’ Lee nodded. ‘That much I agree with.’
‘So what don’t you like about my going there?’
He shocked me by suddenly exploding off the bench, long arms and legs flying. For a moment he looked like a praying mantis who’d been hit in the guts. ‘Because it’s only you,’ he said. I realised that he could almost have been crying. That really frightened me then, frightened me and shocked me. Lee? Emotion? Lee showing emotion?
He went on. ‘They said that you could maybe get away with one new teenage face on the streets of Havelock, but you’d never get away with more than one. If two or three of us turned up, the word would get out within a few hours and there’d be no hope for anyone.’ He gave me a little shaky grin. ‘I kept telling them that I’d go, because I think I could get away with being out on the streets much more easily, but the truth is I knew you’d never let anyone else go.’
I nodded. I’d already thought about the possibility of Lee going with me but realised his little brothers and sisters needed him too badly to risk him on something as deep into enemy territory as this.
He smiled at me again. It was the saddest smile I’d ever seen from him. ‘I know Gavin’s yours, and I know you’ve only got each other, in a family sense anyway. It’s right that you go. That’s assuming anyone goes, and I’m guessing there’s not much chance that you won’t.’
‘You got that right,’ I said, although the unfurling flower in my chest was now growing from a cold, wet black swamp in my stomach.
CHAPTER 6
We walked back to the house. Coincidentally the police were just leaving. Henry was looking for me. He emerged from the kitchen just as we got there. ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘Found you. Now look, Ellie, we can’t keep a police presence here any longer. We haven’t got the resources, and it’s become a pointless exercise, given that we’ve found no trace of the little fellow. But what you have to do, and I’m afraid this is an order, is pack a few things and move into town. This is not a safe place for you to be.’
I surprised him then. ‘OK,’ I said, dropping my eyes.
‘OK?’ he said. ‘Well, I didn’t think it’d be quite that easy. But I’m glad you’re showing some sense. Now, have you got someone you can stay with? My wife said you’re very welcome to — ’
‘No, I’m fine,’ I said. ‘I’ll go back with Lee and stay at his place in Stratton.’
He peered at me more suspiciously. ‘I hope you’re not cooking up any silly plots. You realise there’s nothing you can do to find Gavin?’
‘No, no,’ I said quickly. ‘It’s fine. I really want to get off the place. It’s giving me the heebie-jeebies at the moment.’
He seemed satisfied with that, and five minutes later I was shaking hands with the police, and thanking them, and then waving them goodbye as their cars headed down the driveway.
I went back into the house to start packing. The first things I grabbed were the firearms and all our ammunition, although I didn’t imagine I’d be able to carry them with me to Havelock, if that’s where I was heading. But I wasn’t going to leave them in the house either.
I’d just laid the shotgun on the dining room table when the telephone rang.
Since the kidnapping the ringing of the phone had been the most powerful sound in my life. It tingled through me like I was wired to it and we were both live. And I guess I must be psychic because I knew this was The Call.
I said to Lee, ‘Grab the phone in the kitchen.’ As he headed across there I called after him, ‘We’ll pick them up at the same time.’
He nodded, and when he reached the phone looked back at me. We nodded at each other then, and picked up the phones simultaneously.
‘Hello, Ellie Linton speaking,’ I said.
The line was crackly, and the voice was hoarse and had a heavy accent. It was a guy, probably only twenty or so. I felt I knew everything that he was going to say before he said it. A great heaviness came over me. ‘We have him,’ the man said.
‘Is he all right? Are you looking after him?’ I asked. I wanted to say, ‘I’ll kill you if you don’t get him back here within the next five minutes.’ But I held myself back.
‘He is all right. We don’t want. You have him back.’
For a moment I hoped Gavin had been so obnoxious and difficult that they were desperate to get rid of him.
