Saving Sophia (7 page)

Attempted murder

Sleep comes slowly, but the morning seems to come too fast. I wake, strange sounds come from outside the boat, not giant prawn-eating lobster noises, more like chicken noises. I lift the side of the boat. Ned’s standing there, proudly holding a hen. A living hen, under his arm.

“Breakfast!” he says.

“Where did you get her?” I ask.

Ned nods over his shoulder away from the sea. “Farm – up there.”

“You’re not really going to kill her? Are you?” Sophia asks, creeping out behind me, her
eyes round.

“Why not? Mum does it all the time.”

“Yes, but have
you
ever done it?” I ask.

Ned sort of nods his head, then turns it into a shake. “Well, no, not actually, not as such – I’ve seen it happen, though.”

“Go on then.” I scramble out into the half-light.

Ned takes the chicken’s head in one hand and holds the rest of the bird in the other. She tilts her head and looks up at his hand as if it’s going to give her something interesting to eat. Sophia covers her eyes and turns back towards the boat.

I’m not sure if I want him to succeed or not. I’m not sure that even if he managed to do it, I could eat it.

Ned stares at his hand. He stares at the hen. I suspect he’s holding his breath because his shoulders are hunched with extreme concentration.

He sighs. “No, not today, henny penny,” he says, putting her gently on the pebbles. She responds by pecking at his shoes, lowering her bum and laying a small brown egg.

Ned picks it up immediately. “Result!” We all gaze at the egg as if we’ve never seen one before. “I’ll put it somewhere safe,” he says, pulling a tin
mug and a small take-away box out of his bag.

“What is
that
in there?” asks Sophia, staring at the box. “Looks like slugs.”

“Pinky and Perky,” says Ned, clicking off the top.

Two fat Roman snails lift their heads, waiting for food.

“Why are they here?” I ask, tweaking the baggy legs of my tracksuit.

“Because if I’d left them behind, I’d have had to tell Ollie to look after them and that would have given the game away.” He wraps the egg in a sock and stows it in the mug, before rummaging for a lettuce leaf from a sandwich bag and feeding it to the snails.

“WHAT?” I say, staring at the perfectly good green lettuce leaf going into the slimy box. “You’re feeding them when we’re starving?”

“They’re my pets, I have to look after them first.”

“They’d have survived,” I say, swapping my socks over.

“They might have died, and I would have felt guilty,” says Ned. “Anyway, they’ve got nothing to do with you – they’re my responsibility. Here, have some trainers. I don’t know if they’ll fit.”

He throws four shoes on to the pebbles. I look up at Sophia, elegant in a long green skirt-cum-shorts thing and a matching top, and then back at myself. An orange sweatshirt and faded navy tracksuit bottoms.

Ned studies us both. “Sorry,” he says. “They were the best I could find. And, Lottie, it was orange or pink and I knew you wouldn’t want pink. So…” He shrugs. “Anyway, no one’s going to see you.”

A princess castle

“Did I tell you that Pinhead was a murderer?” asks Sophia as we drop down into yet another valley.

“Do you mean like – killed someone? On purpose?”

“Yes – in a fight – in a pub, or was it a restaurant?”

We both stare at her.

“That’s awful,” says Ned.

“Really?” I say. “He actually killed someone?”

Sophia looks away. “Yes, it was … too awful.”

We pick our way through a bog. Personally, I’m scared. Discovering that Pinhead actually has killed someone changes my view of this whole thing, but
I don’t want the others to know. I want them to think I’m brave.

Daphne Downs in
Night of Crime
keeps going even though she’s so scared her heart stops.

Although, I don’t quite understand how that’s possible.

Sophia doesn’t seem to know who Pinhead killed.

“Some bloke,” she says. “I expect he owed him money. It’s usually about money, isn’t it?”

“Or love,” I say. “Although in
Death Among the Lilies
the murderer says he did it because he liked killing things. Perhaps Pinhead likes killing things?”

“Flip,” says Ned. “Hope he makes an exception for kids.”

“Was it just one person?” I ask.

Sophia doesn’t answer for ages. “I’m not sure,” she says in the end.

We struggle down the cliff on to another beach and start walking east along the edge of the surf so that our footsteps vanish. In
Canada by Gaslight
the heroine walks the whole of the west coast to keep from being tracked.

Or was it the east coast?

“Are you sure he killed someone?” asks Ned, emptying water from his shoe.

“Yes – well, I think so,” says Sophia. “He went to prison for it.”

“Flip,” says Ned again.

In the distance, the turrets of a castle appear against the horizon.

“It looks like a princess castle,” says Sophia. “My mother’s a princess.”

“Is she?” I ask. “Really?”

“Yes, really. Princess of some Italian place, I can’t remember where. It’s exactly the sort of place you might find a princess.” She points at the turrets.

“Or a prince – a handsome prince,” I say.

“Oh yeah,” says Ned. “There’s a handsome prince sitting in his tower window waiting for you, blowing kisses across the sand. ‘Ah, come here Charlotte, my lovely – I have been imprisoned here for years, release me…’”

Sophia laughs.

I could happily push them both into the sea, run back, tell Miss Wesson where Sophia is, go home to my skanky bedroom, stick my inner hero into a box under the bed and listen to Lurve FM until my ears fall off.

And I’m hungry – so hungry, my stomach’s eaten itself. I wonder if sand’s edible?

But then I think about Pinhead, the murderer, keeping Sophia and her mother apart, and carry on putting one foot in front of the other.

“If you’re really lucky he’ll see you wearing those fantastic trousers!” laughs Ned, and clutches his sides theatrically.

Sophia stops laughing and stares at the ground, but I know she thinks I look ridiculous. I do, I simply do and she looks fantastic in that skirt-shorts thingy.

I trek on across the sand and do my best to ignore Ned, but he’s slipped back into pondlife in my cast of characters. Something single cell and slimy with no eyes.

I hate him.

I’m not sure what I think about Sophia.

It takes an age to reach the rocks at the foot of the castle walls. They shoot up vertically from the ground and there’s no way we can do anything but walk around them until the beach seems to dwindle, forcing the castle garden wall to run straight into the sea. I can see why you’d buy this place: it’s inaccessible in every sense. I gaze up at the windows
and nothing more than a feather floats down to us. It looks unoccupied.

“We’ll have to go back,” I say. “Find a way up the cliff.”

“No, wait,” says Sophia, pointing to a rough wooden door set into the wall. She tries the handle and it opens. She pushes in and Ned follows, which leaves me standing outside feeling stupid and nervous. Eventually, I peer around the door. It’s a walled garden, filled mostly with flowers, but at the end tall pyramids of runner beans flag up the possibility of food.

I stand inside the door, listening. Apart from bird song, I can’t hear a thing, not even the sea, not even Ned and Sophia’s footsteps. Ned points at the runner beans and we creep deeper into the garden until we reach the vegetables.

Riches. Fat yellow carrots bulge out of the soil, long tresses of beans hang from the pyramids and wild strawberries dance along the paths. I cram unripe strawberries in my mouth before pulling a few carrots from a line; Ned picks beans and Sophia raises her eyebrows at us until I point to a lettuce that she wrenches from the ground.

I pull another – a snail sticks to my hand.
“Yuk!” I yell.

STUPID, STUPID, STUPID.

I hold my breath for about a minute.

“Flip,” whispers Ned.

I swallow, ready to run, but no one comes so I pull up six beetroot and pick hard little apples from the tree growing against the wall. I turn to Ned. His backpack’s overflowing, as are my stupid pockets.

“Time to go,” I whisper, just a little too late, because standing in the entrance to the garden is a tall man with a pitchfork, and he definitely isn’t a handsome prince.

Orange squash

The inside of the castle is surprisingly modern. In fact, because of the small windows, rather than a view of the sea all anyone sees is smooth white walls.

We follow the silent man through silent corridors until we reach a door marked:
Estate Manager
. The silent man opens the door and nods for us to enter. Another man sits behind a desk, writing something in careful red capitals.

My mouth goes dry, and I drag my feet on the way into the room. It feels like real life has kicked in; I’m desperately tired but don’t feel very hungry
any more. Ned goes first, then Sophia, then me.

Sophia slips me a smile and grabs my hand. I try to smile back, but I’m too scared.

“I hate being in trouble,” I whisper.

“Why’d you run away then?” mutters Ned, as if getting caught was my fault and shoves me towards a chair opposite the man with the red pen who appears to be the most miserable person in the universe.

The man’s sunburned face is too long and the hairs that grow out of his ears are too thick. He’s forgotten how to smile or even how to look up; either that or the paperwork on his desk is more interesting than we are. His lips move, so I lean forward to hear what he says.

“Kids today. Don’t know the difference between right and wrong,” he mutters.

I shuffle my feet. Behind the silent man who brought us up here is a fireplace with six carved wooden animals. They’re too big for the mantelpiece.

“Shockin’.” I look back at the miserable man, waiting for more, but he stacks the papers on the left of the desk, then picks them up again and moves them to the right.

We sit in silence.

This is like the chapter in
Castle of Doom
where the heroine is tied to a chair over a fire pit. There seems to be no possible way that she can get out of it.

There seems to be no possible way that we can get out of here.

I stare at my trainers. They’re all earthy and I see that we’ve left footprints all over the floor. “Sorry about the mud on the carpet,” I say.

He looks at me as if I’ve just landed from Mars, moves the stack of paper from one side of the desk to the other again and starts rummaging in a drawer.

I shrug and look at Sophia; she shrugs and looks at Ned.

We wait. I could do with using the loo but I’m too scared to ask.

A woman comes in with a tray of overly sweet orange squash and some Lincoln biscuits. She puts a cup of coffee in front of the estate manager, nods at the silent man in the corner, and slips out.

I nibble a biscuit, making it last, but I barely breathe.

We wait.

I look up at the silent man. He’s got a drip on
the end of his nose.

The phone rings. The estate manager picks it up before it’s even sounded properly and barks at it. “Yes… Yes… No… I won’t.” He slams the phone down and rearranges the desk again. It occurs to me that he’s as uncomfortable as we are, but I’m still too scared to ask him if I can use the loo.

“This is Lostham Castle,” he says suddenly. “It belongs to the Chief Constable who, incidentally, is on his way. You’re the missing nippers from Bream?”

At this point, I notice that Ned has eaten all the biscuits.

“We are,” says Sophia, slightly too loudly. “But it’s not their—”

The man waves his hands at her as if none of it is his business, which I suppose it isn’t.

He rises from the desk, unfolds himself and goes to the door. “I hate to lock you in like prisoners, but I’m going to – for your own good. Take those veggies out of your pockets and put ’em on my desk. I’ll be back soon as the police arrive.”

And he goes.

The silent man follows, rubbing his nose with a
grey handkerchief.

I wait a moment before trying the door. “We are locked in,” I say.

“Flip,” says Ned. He pulls Pinky and Perky out of his bag and slips them the beetroot leaves.

Sophia goes over to the window and opens it. “Too far to jump,” she says. “I guess this is the end of the journey.” She looks like she’s going to cry. “But thanks so much for trying. Both of you.” She closes the window and drinks the last drops of squash from her glass.

“If this was
The Prison on the Rock,
Sarah-Anne Wilmslow would have a rope in her bag…” I look up at Sophia; she’s staring at me as if I’m mad. “But it’s not, and we haven’t,” I finish, feeling foolish. “Actually, forget I said that. It was silly…”

“Well,” says Ned, rummaging in his backpack. “For once, you might be right.” And he pulls out a bundle of nylon that I recognise as a chunk of Mum’s climbing rope, then throws an orange harness thing to the floor.

“What?” says Sophia. “Where did you get that?”

“Had it all the time,” says Ned cheerfully. “After you ran away I put it in my bag, just in case.”

A pain of intense regret washes through me. Why didn’t I carry a climbing rope? Why couldn’t I have thought of this? Sarah-Anne Wilmslow, where are you now?

“Well, we don’t
all
have to get away, someone needs to stay at the top, just in case, but if Sophia can, that’s the main thing.” Ned finds the middle of the rope, loops it over his shoulder and around his waist before anchoring it around the leg of the desk. “This means there’s a sliding rope and a holding rope and even if I get dragged across the floor, the desk won’t fit through the window frame,” he says in explanation.

Sophia looks doubtfully at him. “Am I supposed to climb down without a helmet or anything?”

Ned nods. “You have done climbing before? Haven’t you?”

“Of course,” she says. “Loads of times, but never without a helmet.” She takes a deep breath and grabs the harness. She climbs into it, fits it around her waist and then clips one half of the sliding rope through it. She throws the holding rope out of the window. She tests the harness. “This is not how it’s meant to be,” she says, looking out to the sand below. “But…” She shrugs.

“Ready?” asks Ned, as I help her up on to the windowsill. “Here, you’d better take my bag with all the vegetables – I’m not sure…” He glances across at me.

“Not sure of what?” I ask.

“Which one of us will go with her,” he mutters. “We’ll talk about it.”

“Thanks, both of you,” Sophia says, leaning back on the ropes until Ned’s feet slide the last inch and wedge against the wall. “You’ve been great.”

And she disappears.