The Hawkshead Hostage (12 page)

Which was why she wanted to go and check for herself now whether she could find any sign that he had done as he intended. Listening closely to Simmy’s account of the boy’s movements, she concluded that he could have had time to walk over to Colthouse and back before running into trouble and dropping his phone. She also wanted to discover whether there were any pictures on the phone, which would not be easy. The police would presumably have the sense to look – but she could hardly expect them to tell
her
what they found.

When she had talked to him about the Meeting House, Ben had directed her to the burial ground instead. Now she went into it and paused. There were rows of plain stone grave markers, on sloping ground above the road. There were wooden seats, long grass, brambles and patches of
fern. She closed her eyes and called Ben to mind.
Where are you?
she called silently. What had become of the bond between them, that they couldn’t send telepathic messages? Did it mean he was dead or unconscious? The idea was literally stunning. It prevented any coherent thought, like a thick, damp blanket being wrapped around her head. But she threw it off, telling herself that she was by far the most likely person to come to Ben’s rescue. Nobody knew him better than she did.

One aspect of their game – which would remain at the notes stage for probably at least another year, and then somebody far more skilled at computer techniques than Ben would have to take it on – was secret messages. ‘The best ones are the most obvious,’ said Ben, and he had demonstrated a few while they sat on a patch of rough grass on the edge of Rayrigg Wood. First he plaited three tough grass stalks together to make a short green rope. Then he pulled together the stems of eight or ten tall fronds of bracken, being careful not to break any of them, and bound them with his cord. The result was a fan of bracken which was highly visible to anybody alert enough to spot it, while at the same time just an innocent overgrown patch of vegetation to almost any casual passer-by. ‘It works with anything with a fairly long stalk,’ he said. ‘Nettles are good, or docks.’

He encouraged her to experiment with her own variations, which she did with enthusiasm, weaving together stalks of timothy grass that she had cut down. She bent them over, leaving their distinctive seed heads as a fringe at the bottom. She then hung the finished product on a low elder branch. ‘Would people think it was something sinister?’ she wondered.

‘They wouldn’t think anything,’ he assured her. ‘But you really ought to leave them growing, not cut them down. They dry out and die too quickly your way.’

She remembered the wondrous model that Ben and Simmy had made the previous year and used for a window display at the shop. That had been created from sticks and dried seed heads and leaves. ‘This is a thing with you, isn’t it?’ she had said. ‘I bet you could build a whole house from dead branches if you had to.’

‘I bet I could, too,’ he agreed.

So when she saw a clump of ferns, their feathered stems held together with a twisted length of rushes, she knew for certain that Ben had been there. What she did not know was what the message conveyed. If her theory about the timing was correct, then it probably conveyed nothing at all, but was merely an example created for the game and photographed, while Ben killed time. Simmy had told him to get lost for an hour or so, and this was a typical example of how he might amuse himself. The unfortunate fact was that it must have been created before he went back to the lake and got himself abducted.

It told her nothing directly about where he was and what was happening to him. But it greatly boosted her confidence that he was all right. Ben was simply too clever to allow himself to be wiped out by a gang of criminals. She and Helen Harkness had agreed on that the previous day, although Helen had repeatedly dissolved into tears of despair as well. Bonnie had left her as soon as she decently could, afraid that the negative stuff would wash off on her if she wasn’t careful.

Which meant that she had to get herself to the hotel,
doing her best to work out Ben’s route and then trying to understand what had happened next.

She left the burial ground and looked around. The way lay over a stone wall, across a field and then into a very inhospitable-looking wood. It would be a slow and difficult walk, pushing through prickly vegetation, probably marshy underfoot, with fences on all sides. Somewhere in the middle of it all was the invisible Priest Pot. Ben wouldn’t have done it readily. Instead he’d have gone around by the road, so Bonnie opted to do the same.

Hawkshead was only five minutes away, by road. Then she worked out, after a brief moment of confusion, that she had to turn left at the junction and carry on down the road that led towards Satterthwaite, on the western side of Esthwaite. The hotel was off to the left, with a helpful sign to show the way.

She walked briskly, knowing she was due to phone Corinne in another minute or two. She paused beside a bend in the driveway, from which she could look down to the place that had seen such dramatic activity the day before.

‘I’m fine,’ she reported, when Corinne replied. ‘Give me another hour, and then I’ll walk back up to the road and find you. I want to pop into the hotel and see if Melanie’s there. Did you find the garage? I passed it just now and didn’t see you.’

‘What road do you mean?’ came the irritable reply. ‘This place is a nightmare. There are roads and tracks everywhere. I still haven’t found the garage. Tell me exactly how to get there.’

‘It’s a bit late now. They looked rather busy. I’ll need
you to drive me back. Tell you what – go to the car park and I’ll find you there. You’ll have to pay.’

‘Bloody hell, Bon. What am I meant to do for all that time?’

‘Go and have coffee. Then go back and wait for me in the car park, right?’

‘This is crazy, you know. A total waste of time.’

‘Yeah. You could be right.’

But Bonnie knew she had to keep looking. What she’d seen in Colthouse confirmed her hunch that Ben had been there.

She toyed with the idea of reporting her find to the police. There were good arguments both ways – they would gain a better idea of Ben’s abilities and be more alert to clues. But they would also get most of it wrong. They wouldn’t listen properly and even if they did, they’d say – rightly, in a way – it wasn’t relevant. Even though she felt a growing need to confide in
somebody
, she didn’t think the cops, even the familiar DI Moxon, would meet her requirements.

Which left Melanie. The hotel was just ahead of her up a gentle slope, its big windows looking out on the serene little lake. She could see a group of police people along the banks of the mere and some incongruous blue tape zigzagging amongst the trees.

The police people were irritating. She couldn’t see much prospect of their finding anything to show where Ben was now. There was a gaping hole in the story between his
phone call to Simmy and the discovery of the dead man from the hotel. When Simmy had told her about it, she had fixed all the details in her head and used them obsessively ever since in an effort to understand what had happened. But there must be a lot more that Simmy hadn’t told her.

She had never been to the Hawkshead Hotel, never even known it existed until Melanie started working there. Some girls might be intimidated by it, but not her, she thought proudly. Nothing intimidated Bonnie Lawson, other than the small matter of an abiding phobia, and even that was under control now, she assured herself. Since meeting Ben Harkness this was much closer to being true. But she loitered on the path, her eyes fixed on the building that offered bedrooms at more than a hundred pounds a night. It was a world she did not understand.

A figure caught her eye, on the upper floor, coming out onto a balcony that ran along half the length of the main building. She could see nothing more than a silhouette, the person apparently wary of being noticed. She couldn’t be sure, but it looked like somebody young, probably male, but not certainly. Most likely a junior member of staff skiving off for a quick smoke, or just a bit of sunshine, she decided. She’d have to ask Melanie what the rooms with balconies were like and who was staying in them.

The moment she saw the hotel car park, she wasn’t sure she dared go any further. It was full of police cars, vans, and a gaggle of people with big cameras and other equipment. Bedlam, in other words.

So instead she extracted her phone from her backpack and called Melanie. ‘Hi, it’s Bonnie. Where are you?’ she said as soon as it was answered.

‘At home. Where are you?’

‘At the Hawkshead Hotel. I thought you’d be here.’

‘They told me to take a day off. I wasn’t fit to work.’ The girl sounded stuffed-up and incredibly stressed.

‘Why – because of the bloke who was killed?’

‘Mostly, yeah. And Ben. If he’s dead as well …’ Her voice choked.

‘He’s not dead, you idiot. You should be here trying to find him, instead of going to bits.’

‘How?’

‘Well, by working it out. He’ll have left clues. You
know
him, Mel, nearly as well as I do. You know what he’s like. Nobody’s going to kill him.’

‘What clues?’

‘I don’t know yet. But you were right
there
. You and Simmy found his phone. You saw how it all was, before the police got there. You might have seen a clue without realising.’

‘I saw Dan’s dead body. I dragged it out of the water. I keep seeing it, every time I shut my eyes. I got soaking wet and nobody gave me anything dry for ages. I hate everybody at that bloody hotel. I hate the police as well.’

Bonnie tried to imagine how it was to be Melanie at this moment, with not much success. Not a lot made sense to her. ‘Did you catch a chill or something, then?’

‘No, of course I didn’t. They just
ignored
me. Even Simmy forgot all about me. All anybody cares about is Ben Harkness and what’s happening to him.’

‘Don’t
you
care?’

‘Yeah, I s’pose I do, but if you say he’s alive and unhurt, then that’s all right, isn’t it? Not like Dan – who’s
dead
.’

Something finally clicked. ‘You were in love with him? Is
that it?’ She frowned. ‘But you never said. You told Simmy he was smarmy. When did all this happen?’

‘He was smarmy to the guests, but really he was a great guy. Really sweet. Kind. Special.’ Her voice clogged up again.

‘You never said anything. Simmy didn’t know.’

‘So?’

Bonnie could recognise a dead end when she heard it. ‘Can I talk about Ben’s phone now? Did you look at it before the police got it? Did you check it for photos?’

‘Why would I do that?’

‘So what
did
you do?’

‘Looked at a couple of the calls, to check it was his. I just had to see your number to know it was.’

‘So it wasn’t locked?’

‘No. It just came on when I tapped it. It’s the latest smartphone. That family’s got so much money.’ Resentment came through loud and clear.

‘I need to see the pictures.’

‘The cops are sure to look at them. What’s in them?’

‘I dunno, but there might be clues. What if he got a shot at the people who kidnapped him?’

‘The police’ll find it. End of story. And that hasn’t happened, has it, because then they’d have named the people they want and sent descriptions out and all that. Listen, Bonnie – why don’t you just
ask
them? If they think you’ve got a useful lead, they’ll be glad to listen to you.’ Melanie sounded exhausted, the words painfully limping out of her.

‘Yeah.’ Bonnie was reminded that Melanie, against all habit and expectation of her family, had until very recently been going out with a police constable. She had no fear and not a lot of respect in her attitude towards them. ‘Except
I’m not meant to be here. They’ve taken me home once today already.’

‘Huh?’

‘I came over early, and they caught me wandering around, and took me back to the house. But I got Corinne to drive me back up here again. I couldn’t just sit and wait for something to happen, could I? It’s
Ben
.’

‘Oh, I don’t know, do I? There’s nothing
I
can do.’

‘No. Right. Sorry.’ She finished the call thinking Melanie was as bad as the police when it came to getting her drift. Why wasn’t she here, doing all she could to catch the people who killed her precious under-manager or whatever he was?

She noticed people on the lawn at the side of the hotel, some of them holding glasses. Gin and tonic, she supposed. Two women, four men and a small girl. What would they think if she strolled up and started talking to them, she wondered. She looked down at herself, assessing her own appearance. All her clothes were of good quality – not that anybody cared about that. Her shoes were fairly new trainers and her shorts a dark-blue denim. As for her hair, it always made a good impression, being so fair and frizzy. It haloed her face, making her look like a young angel. She could pass for fourteen easily and twelve with an effort. But people would wonder where she’d come from. They would know she wasn’t a guest at the hotel. Her mind raced with possible cover stories, until she fastened on one that seemed workable.

She walked up to the group, focusing on the child, as if too shy to address adults directly. ‘Um … hello? I think my mum is here. She called my dad and told him to drop me off, because something’s happened and all the shifts have
changed.’ She frowned. ‘Sorry,’ she added, scraping the grass with one toe.

‘Why aren’t you at school?’ asked one of the women.

‘Um …’

‘Why didn’t your father bring you right up to the door? Nobody would drop their kid at the bottom of the drive and leave her to walk,’ said a man sceptically. ‘How old are you?’

‘I’m nearly fifteen. I don’t need him to come with me. But I’ve never been here before. My mum works as a cleaner, making the beds and all that. It’s nearly the end of term, and we’ve got work experience on Wednesdays. They said I could do the same as her, for a week or two.’

It sounded hopelessly garbled to her own ears. Was fifteen old enough for work experience? She doubted it. But these people were mostly pretty old, and weren’t likely to know much about it.

One or two of the people exchanged glances, but most of them seemed indifferent to her and her story. The small girl eyed her curiously, though. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked.

‘Charlotte,’ came the answer in a flash. ‘What’s yours?’

‘Gentian.’

‘That’s nice.’ As of a week ago, she actually knew what a gentian looked like, with its deep, unique blue. Simmy had some in pots in the shop, and Bonnie had used them in her window display.

She glanced at the adults, trying to work out how they connected to each other. There was a long-boned, elderly man with thick white hair, beard and baggy trousers who seemed to have a lot on his mind. He held a long glass with a slice of lemon floating in the drink. A straw hat lay on
his lap. Another man, quite a bit younger, but still nowhere near young, was leaning against a white-painted metal chair, on which sat a woman with a big red handbag on her lap. Husband and wife, thought Bonnie. The other woman had to be Gentian’s mother, and the remaining two men were hard to examine because they had their backs to everybody. One was mostly bald, with just a ring of silver hair.

‘So, what’s going on, then?’ Bonnie asked. ‘Why is the car park full of police cars?’

Gentian eagerly supplied an answer. ‘A man was murdered, down there, his body was in the lake and he was all wet and
dead
.’

‘Oh my God!’ squealed Bonnie. ‘Is that
true
?’

‘It’s a terrible tragedy,’ said the man with the wife. ‘Turned the whole place upside down. We’re thinking of leaving early. These two gentlemen have only arrived today and they can’t believe what they’ve walked into.’

The two gentlemen ignored his reference to them, other than to walk a few steps further away from the group. They were not holding drinks. Bonnie could only see that they were nicely dressed and seemed vaguely foreign.

‘When did it happen?’ she asked.

‘Yesterday. I would think your mother would have told you about it by now,’ said the seated woman. ‘If she’s a chambermaid here, she’ll have been interviewed by the police.’

‘She didn’t. I was with my dad. They’re not together, you see.’ She could hear herself floundering, inventing as she went on.

The woman eyed her sharply. ‘I’m not sure I believe your story.’

Time to go
, Bonnie realised. ‘Oh! Well, never mind. Don’t worry about it. I’ll go and find her. Thanks, Gentian. See you around.’

Gentian gave her a wistful smile and Bonnie realised how glad the child had been to meet someone closer to her own age. There was something bleak and unnatural about a solitary child amongst a lot of adults. The mother looked rather a sourpuss and none of the others showed any interest.

With thumping heart, Bonnie went through the front entrance of the hotel. What could the police do to her anyway, she asked herself. It was a free country and she could go where she liked.
Free country?
She heard Ben’s ghostly laugh.
Where did you get that idea? Haven’t you noticed that people have stopped saying that lately?

Ben wasn’t free. There didn’t seem to be much doubt about that. But neither was he dead. There was no choice but to believe that he was very much alive and straining every brain cell to devise a way to escape. And Bonnie absolutely had to help him.

In the hotel foyer there was a surprising silence. No people, no voices. The first thing she saw was Simmy’s lovely display. The eucalyptus trailed exactly as planned, with the many small blooms cleverly nestled in the heart of the tendrils, the whole thing a magical blend of colours. It said
elegance, luxury, competence.
It clashed almost ludicrously with the scene out on the lawn, where people were inclined to blame the hotel management for the untidy fact of a murder in their grounds. You couldn’t blame them, Bonnie supposed. They’d expected peace and quiet and Lakeland beauty, not police interviews
and all kinds of worry about what might happen next.

She was at a loss as to what to do. She couldn’t remember what she thought she
might
do. Originally her plan had been to find Melanie and ask her for more details about what had happened the day before. Then she’d shifted her attention to Ben’s photos. And now she was just wasting time and making herself vulnerable to being rounded up yet again by the police.

But she was lucky in that respect, although it took a while to realise it. Two uniformed officers, a man and a woman, came out of a room on the left, and gave her identical careless glances. They thought she was a guest at the hotel, she supposed – although surely they knew them all by this time? Perhaps they’d only just got there – something fresh and crisp about their clothes suggested this might be so. Certainly they hadn’t been on duty all night, or sent to crawl around under trees looking for footprints. She gave them a hesitant little smile, which they barely acknowledged.

The hotel itself had a peculiar atmosphere. Where was everybody? Were the people on the lawn the only remaining guests? Wouldn’t it be more fitting to close the place down, and stop people from coming or going? Or were those still here all under suspicion, kept close and watched for incriminating behaviour? She ran through them again in her head. A tall elderly man; a middle-aged couple; a woman and her daughter (where was the father?); and two foreign-looking men. Was that all, she wondered. What about the staff? Wasn’t it likely that one of them had killed the Yates chap out of some work-related grievance? There must be somebody in the kitchen as well as the manager and at least one cleaner. That presented
quite a list of suspects – and what if one of them had Ben hidden away, tied up and gagged and left to starve?

She checked her phone for the time. Eleven forty-five. She’d have to go and meet Corinne in the main car park in another few minutes. The last hour had been a complete waste, which felt like a disaster from Ben’s point of view. She was just messing about playing games instead of employing observation and logic as the boy had taught her. Everything is connected, he had said. And – if you work out what a person wants, you can understand why they do things. None of that felt helpful now. She wasn’t sure it was true, anyway. How could all these people be connected except through the accident of all being together in the same hotel on the same day? Or was that what Ben meant? For the moment, they
were
connected.