***
Chapter 5
As Linda, aghast, began to protest Simon again spoke.
'Whether you are or not can be decided later. For now you're coming back to the house with me. Luckily you don't have to manage a long gown, you can sit in front of me.'
She glanced across to the horse, and found several people, both in costume and spectators, listening eagerly to their confrontation. Argument would get her nowhere.
'OK then, but once back there I won't be bullied and shut out of the way for your convenience. I want to know what's going on.'
Wordlessly Simon, grasping her arm firmly, led her across to where his horse waited. Seizing her round the waist he hoisted her into the saddle, and Linda hastily grabbed the pommel. Simon vaulted up behind her and briefly thanked the man who held the reins. Pulling them either side of Linda, he briefly ordered her to hang on and turned away from the tents.
'Where are we going?' she demanded, her voice shaking with mingled anger and something else she could not define. He was so close to her she could feel his chest moving as he breathed, and feel the breath on her neck when he spoke. 'The house is the other way.'
'We'll go through the caravan field. I upset enough people galloping through their camp ground, let's not annoy them further. Besides, I'd have thought you would prefer to be less conspicuous. We still haven't traced Jackson yet.'
He was guiding the horse past a long row of caravans, cars, and a variety of vans and even a couple of small horse boxes. Linda scanned the latter eagerly, but they were not the ones Pete had been using yesterday.
They were about half way down the row when something landed on the grass in front of them, causing the horse to throw up his head in alarm. Then whatever it was appeared to explode in a series of fizzing sparks, and Linda realised it was a firework, one of the kind that jumped about in haphazard fashion, hissing and ejecting tiny flames.
It was too much for the horse. It reared and swerved, and Simon, though he clung desperately to the animal's flanks, could not retain his seat. He slid to the ground, and Linda, without his arms holding her, found herself falling sideways. She braced herself to hit the ground, but instead collided with a human body.
'Got you!' Pete crowed. 'Let the horse go,' he said in a louder voice, and Linda, struggling to turn away from the fierce clasp which bound her to his chest, saw two brawny men grabbing Simon and yanking him to his feet.
Then she was thrust through the small door of a caravan, and thrown roughly onto the bench seat. Only the table beside it stopped her from falling onto the floor, but she was uncomfortably wedged, unable to sit upright.
Outside she heard sounds of a struggle, some panting and cursing, then a door was slammed and a chain rattled.
'OK, boss, 'e's safe,' someone called, and she recognised the voice of the man who had carried her upstairs. Was it only twenty-four hours ago? Weeks seemed to have elapsed. And now Pete was standing, no longer in his Tudor costume, but dressed in jeans and a thin, long-sleeved sweater, hands on hips, smirking down at her.
'Right, my lovely, first you can tell me all you told the fuzz.'
'Find out.' Linda felt it was a childish riposte, but things had happened so rapidly, and she'd bumped her head on the table as she'd been thrown onto the bench, and couldn't think clearly. 'Where's Simon?'
'You tell me what I want to know and you can go and join lover-boy.'
Linda compressed her lips. She would not satisfy him. In any case, what could Pete do? The police would miss them, especially when the riderless horse was found, and there would be a search. At the very least all vehicles would be searched before they were allowed to leave the site. Surely they would do that?
As the thoughts formed, the caravan was jolted, and she slid further against the end wall. The levelling supports had been moved, and moments later a car engine burst into life, and the caravan rocked forward. Pete had thought ahead, and planned this. Presumably one of his accomplices was driving.
There would be people on the exit, surely! There had been stewards directing the traffic to the parking areas when she'd come, so long ago, and they had still been there when she and Simon had left the previous evening. She could shout for help.
Pete was ahead of her. Hauling her upright he again gagged her.
'Once we're in a nice quiet spot you can tell me all about it,' he said, grinning at her futile struggles, capturing her hands and tying them behind her back. 'Now lie down. It'll illegal to travel in a towed caravan, you know. We don't want your police buddies to spot us, so we'll lie down all peaceful and keep mum until we're out of here.'
An hour later the caravan rocked to a halt. Linda could see trees all round, but the only sound she heard was another vehicle, and through one of the big windows she saw a small horse box pull up beside them. Part of her felt relief that Simon was with her, then she felt guilty that he had been dragged into this fiasco through her stupidity. If she hadn't disobeyed orders and escaped from the house neither of them would have been kidnapped.
'Now, my pretty one, you'll tell me all,' Pete said, pulling her to a sitting position and untying the gag.
*
Linda saw, through the gloom of the windowless horsebox, Simon sitting in a corner with his ankles bound and his arms, also presumably secured, behind his back. He had a livid bruise on one cheek, and blood had trickled from a cut on her forehead.
Pete thrust her inside and as she fell onto her knees she heard the slam of the ramp which formed the door, and the bolts which held it in place being pushed home. This left a gap wide enough for a horse to hang his head out, but as she began to hope this would allow them to escape, if only they could get free of their bonds, two narrow lengths of wood were nailed roughly across it.
Then she heard a car start, and it was driven away. All she could see through the small gaps left were patches of sky and the topmost branches of a tree.
Rolling over into a sitting position, bracing her back against the horsebox wall, she looked at Simon.
'Simon, are you badly hurt?' she asked. 'I'm so dreadfully sorry, it's all my fault.'
'I should have left you to be hauled off like this on your own, should I?' he asked, and his contemptuous tone made her shrivel inside. He was furious with her, and no wonder. It was all due to her crass stupidity they were in this jam.
She swallowed, and said no more. At least she had the satisfaction of knowing she had told Pete nothing. He'd wanted to know what the police planned, how much she had told them about him, whether she could recognise and identify the other two men, who else he'd known, and where they'd been, especially the pubs, restaurants, and houses they'd visited,
After a few minutes Simon moved, sitting more upright. 'I'm sorry, Linda. Recriminations won't help. Perhaps now there are two of us we can at least undo these cords.'
'Sure,' she replied listlessly. 'But how can we get out of this contraption?'
'We'll figure that out when we're free. If we sit back to back, one of us might have enough movement in our fingers to undo the other one's knots.'
It took considerable manoeuvring before they could get into position, and both of them were sneezing from the dust disturbed from the layer of straw on the floor. But at last they sat in a position where Linda, whose hands seemed to have been less tightly bound, could set to work.
It was frustrating and tedious, especially as she had to work blind, but at last she loosened the knots sufficiently for Simon to get his hands free. He rubbed the circulation back into them, and Linda, twisting round to look, gasped in horror at the red weals where the cords had bit into his flesh.
'The brutes! How could they tie them so tightly! That's pure sadism!'
'They didn't intend me to escape. It was your good fortune they were less vicious with you.'
'Pete clearly either hasn't the same expertise as the others, or is less brutal,' Linda said.
'Or lover-boy put you here for some purpose of his own. Give me a moment to untie my leg
s, or I might lose my feet! Then I'll free you.'
Linda glared at him. The light was fading now, but enough light came through the small gaps to let her see his face.
'How can you still believe I'm in league with Pete after the way he treated me? What could he possibly hope for by chucking me in with you?'
'An entree into The Old Grange? Someone on the inside? When I took you back there last night he might have thought I'd been sufficiently attracted to you to give you free run of the place, which could have been useful for the things he didn't manage to remove the first time. In case you didn't know it, he missed some of the real treasures, though he'd started to take other less valuable items in the same cabinets.'
'Well, he didn't!' Linda said. 'Put me in here to spy on you, I mean.'
'As you say. Let me untie you now.'
Soon she was free and flexing her muscles. She hurt badly enough herself, but Simon must be in agony. She moved across to the back of the horsebox, and peered out. They were in a clearing, and it seemed to be in the middle of a densely wooded area, one which had not been managed very well, for thick tangled undergrowth and several dead and fallen trees covered the whole visible area.
Linda pushed the wooden bars, but they wouldn't budge. She glanced round their prison. Apart from the straw there was nothing else, nothing that could be used as a lever or battering ram to try and pry loose the planks.
Simon came up beside her, and she flinched away from the touch of his warm arm against hers. She'd liked him so much, they'd got on so well the previous evening. His friendliness, his admiration, had to some extent restored her self-esteem after the shock of discovering Pete's true nature.
'Linda, I'm sorry,' Simon said suddenly, putting his arm round her shoulder and hugging her. 'I don't know what to think, and I'm furious with myself for allowing that crook to get the better of me. You must admit that as his girlfriend it looks suspicious, especially when you don't stay put, and instead go off to try and find him.'
'I was not his girlfriend!' she insisted. It was important to her that he believed that. 'I'd been out with him a few times, that's all. And I went out today because I was the only one who could identify him. I didn't expect him to have all this set up, or you to come after me like that.'
Simon pulled her closer, and she relaxed against him.
'It was Jackson's good fortune that I decided to go back to the house the more discreet way,' he admitted. 'If I'd stayed in the living history encampment he couldn't have caught us. But like you, I didn't think he'd attack us unless he was cornered. He's obviously deeper into criminal activities than we thought. I wonder?'
He paused, and absently stroked her arm, turning her to face him. Linda trembled. His closeness was doing things to her heart rate, and she was suddenly unable to breathe properly.
'Wonder what?' she asked, and her voice came out on a gasp.
'I wonder if some of the thefts from other country houses are connected,' he said slowly, and now both arms were round her and he was pulling her close to him.
Then Linda's heart performed acrobatics, for he smiled down at her and lowered his lips to hers.
'I can't really believe you and he are in cahoots,' he whispered, and captured her lips with his.
*
It was some time later when they once more faced the problem of what they could do to escape. By now the light had almost gone, and only a faint blur of lighter shapes revealed the gaps between the wooden bars.
'I'll have to try brute force,' Simon decided.
First he pushed as hard as he could on each length of wood, first one side, then the other, but none of them moved. He began to test each point where nails had been driven into the planks.
'I can get my hand out, but only so far. Your arms are slimmer, can you reach through and feel whether the nails are in firmly?'
Linda tried, but Simon had to lift her and support her before she could reach some of the nails. Eventually she gave a cry of triumph.
'This one's not fully home, and I can rock it slightly. Hold me steady, and I'll see if I can shift it.'
It took time, and it was fully dark by the time the nail came free, but Linda was working by touch in any case. Simon set her on her feet and pushed that end of the plank loose. Then he began to push and twist it, trying to loosen the nail on the other side, and eventually managed to prise the plank away. Carefully he pulled it inside, and used it as a lever against the other one, but it stubbornly refused to give way.
Simon paused for a rest, and Linda looked out of the gap, and then felt all round.
'Simon, are there just bolts at the top of the ramp, to hold it in place?'
'Probably. Why, can you reach them? I couldn't, and my arms are longer.'
'No, but I think I could get my head and shoulders out of this gap, if you hold me, and perhaps I could reach them then.'
'Let's try. They say if you can get your head through a space you can get the rest of your body through too.'
'Do they? Well, I don't want to fall head first on the ground. Let's see if this works first.'
It was a struggle, and Linda scraped her shoulder on the plank above, but she managed to reach the bolts, and with a sigh or relief she almost fell out of the horsebox as the ramp crashed to the ground.
'Quick, let's get out of here in case they're still around,' Simon said as they ran down it, and grabbed her hand.
Linda glanced across the clearing, and to her dismay saw the caravan and one car on the far side. A faint light glowed through the window of the caravan, and she needed no further urging to run as fast as she could for the shelter of the trees and the thick tangle of undergrowth.
Simon pulled her down into a hollow behind a large tree trunk. 'I think they'd have heard us if they were still there,' he muttered in her ear. 'I expect they've gone for a meal, or to finish off something, such as hiding the loot. But the light indicates they mean to come back.'
'Then we'd better get away as fast as possible.'
'Not yet. I'm going to bolt the ramp and try to stick the plank back in place. Unless they look at us when they come back tonight, which I doubt, that will give us until morning before they realise we're gone.'
'I'll help then,' Linda said, though she wanted nothing more than to get as far away as they could, as quickly as possible. 'It'll be quicker.'
Together they crept back, raised the ramp and bolted it in place, and then fixed the plank roughly in place.
'Now we'll remove their car,' Simon said cheerfully.
'Steal it?' Linda asked. 'How?
'They can't be here, so I'll break a window if it's locked, and luckily I was once shown how to start a car without a key.'
First they had to unhitch the caravan, and when it listed to one side Linda was finally convinced there was no one else around. Simon found a short, stout branch and broke the driver's window, and soon he was driving along a narrow track which led out of the clearing.
'Let's hope they don't come back and block us in,' he said, and Linda wondered how he could be so cheerful in such a desperate situation. 'If they do, if we meet any other vehicle, dive out and run for it,' he ordered.
To her immense relief, after what seemed hours, they left the trees behind, and after a short stretch across an open field, the track ended at a narrow road. To the left was a glow of lights which appeared to be at a road junction, so Simon turned that way.
'Soon, let's hope, we'll know where we are and be able to get back to The Old Grange.'
***
Chapter 6
'We must keep track of the route back home,' Simon said. 'If we can get the police back here before they realise we've escaped, there's a chance of capturing them.'
'Couldn't they be followed to wherever they've hidden the pictures, and the other things they stole?'
'Perhaps, but I'd rather get them in custody. Unless they've passed the things to another accomplice already, we'll find them in the end.'
Linda nodded. She was tired
and hungry. She hadn't eaten since breakfast, it was now after midnight, and various parts of her body ached or felt sore. She was also tingling with her memories of Simon's kisses. He'd been so suspicious, and then so tender, she was bewildered. Had it been affection, or was it that he'd felt remorse for his suspicions, and wanted to apologise. Or, and the thought gave her no satisfaction, had he merely been trying to comfort her for the dire situation they had been in?
The moon had risen, and outside the beam of the headlamps she could see ghostly shapes of trees and hedges, with the occasional cattle or horses suddenly silhouetted against the sky. She tried to concentrate on the signposts they passed, frantically memorising them and the way Simon turned at junctions. He seemed to know the way, and half an hour after they left the clearing he turned into the gateway leading to the drive which wound through the farmland to the back of The Old Grange.
In the distance across the fields, she could see some tents remaining. The last of the re-enactors would be leaving tomorrow, Simon had told her. Many of them had too much to pack, or too far to go, to want to leave late on Sunday, when the spectators had finally departed.
Simon drove along a narrow track right into the courtyard, where lights still shone from the old dining room, and the modern kitchen. As he drew to a halt Maggie appeared from one, the Inspector and another policeman from the other. Simon gave a deep breath and stepped out of the car.
'Come on, we've still work to do, I'm afraid.'
Despite the Inspector's weary demands that he be told at once all that had happened, Maggie insisted on supplying a huge pile of sandwiches.
'I made them earlier, and before you say a word I'm making a fresh pot of coffee. Would you like some as well?' she asked the Inspector, and he nodded.
He ushered them into the dining room, and they almost fell into chairs.
'Before you start, we think they are hiding in a wood about twenty miles away,' Simon said. 'Have you a map?'
Silently Inspector Stone handed him one, and with occasional checking with Linda, Simon traced the way they had come.
'I think that's the track, but there are two, and I didn't notice whether we passed another on the way to the main road. And the car belongs to them, you should find finger prints.'