Arsenal game.” He paused and let out a short breath. “I hope you find her, Jack.”
“Me, too, mate. Me too.”
Two hours and a hundred miles or so later, Adesh slowed the Ducati and pulled over.
“Where are we?” Jools asked as she swung herself down from the seat and stood up. Her legs were numb.
“The sign back there said Banbury.”
“Okay. Then we’re in Warwickshire, not far from Shipston-on-Stour.”
Before she could say anything more, a car approached, its headlights sweeping through the darkness just ahead.
“Quick!” Desh hissed. “We’ve got to hide.”
He steered the bike, still running, into a thicket of bushes. Jools crouched down next to him just before headlights raked across their hiding place. They waited for the car to pass.
“We can’t use the motorcycle much longer,” she pointed out. “The police probably have an APW out on it – an all-ports warning,” she explained. “Someone might spot us.”
Desh glanced over at her. “We can leave it here, I suppose. But…where do we go once we ditch it?” He let out a frustrated breath. “I wish I had my mobile.”
“No worries,” Jools said. “I know where we can go.”
“Yeah?” Adesh was sceptical. “Where’s that?”
“My uncle’s place.”
“Your uncle? Won’t he tell your mum, then?”
She shook her head. “He’s not around much; he travels a lot. I only see him once every few years when he visits my dad. But he’ll help us. And he’ll know exactly what to do.”
“Will he be there, do you think?”
“I doubt it,” Jools answered, unconcerned. “But it doesn’t matter; I know where he keeps the spare key. He said if I ever needed a bolt-hole, Barrow Cottage was always there for me.” She paused, embarrassed. “I was furious with Mum and Dad after they first got divorced.”
“How far is it from here?”
“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “I was only there the once, when I came up with Dad from London. Not far, I’d say, maybe forty minutes.”
Adesh was silent, thinking. “It’s risky, but I think we should keep on until we get to your uncle’s place. You say it isn’t much farther, and it’s dark, so we should be okay. If we leave the bike here, someone’s bound to find it, and the Bombers will know we’re nearby. Is there a place to hide it once we get there?”
“There’s an old barn,” she said, remembering, “with a haymow. The place used to be a farm years ago.”
“Okay. Let’s go.”
As they dragged the Ducati out of the bushes and swung themselves back onto the seat, Jools knew that Desh was as tired as she was; but adrenaline – and fear – spurred them on.
“Which way?” he asked Jools over his shoulder.
She pointed to the right. “That way. Look for signs for Shipston-on-Stour.”
He nodded and turned the bike back onto the road, and they headed off into the Warwickshire darkness to find Barrow Cottage.
“I’ve got something, Jack.”
Jack sat up the next morning and pressed the mobile phone closer against his ear. He’d fallen asleep on Oliver’s sofa, and now his back was killing him. “I’m listening, Dev.”
“We’ve got CCTV footage from a Rotherham motorway station. A white van – a Transit – pulled in just after midnight. Four males exited the van, one started fuelling up, and the others went inside the station.”
“The Bombers?”
“We think so, yeah. As soon as the fourth guy went inside, two people – male and female, late teens or early twenties – rolled out of the van. They disappeared behind a lorry fuelling up at one of the other pumps. The girl’s hands were tied and they both had a scarf of some kind pulled down around their necks.”
“Julia and her boyfriend,” Jack said slowly.
“When the lorry pulled away a few minutes later, there was no sign of either of them. It’s like they vanished right into thin air.”
“Or into the back of that lorry.”
“Most likely, yes. We need to find that lorry driver…and hope that the Bombers don’t find him first.”
Jack stood up abruptly. “Did you get a license number off the van?”
“The plates were covered up. No surprise there.” Dev paused. “But we’ve got a partial number on the lorry. Once we trace the owner, we’ll be a lot closer to knowing where your niece is.”
Barrow Cottage was dark against the night sky when Jools and Adesh arrived a half hour later. It looked just as she remembered it; a small, two-storey house, its Cotswold stone partly obscured by ivy, except the original thatched roof had been replaced with slate.
Daybreak was still an hour or so away; nevertheless, as a precautionary measure, Desh disconnected the bike’s ignition wires and pushed it silently up the sloping hill that led to the cottage.
“No use announcing to all and sundry that we’re here,” he said in a low voice, and yawned.
“I told you, there’s no one here.” Jools felt light-headed with exhaustion, and unaccountably irritable.
Desh looked up at the cottage. “Are you sure?”
“Well, there’s one way to find out, isn’t there?” she retorted, and marched up to the flowerpots lining the path. She lifted the middle one, praying that the spare key was still there. It was.
Cautiously, she fitted the key in the lock and they let themselves in. All was silent save for the ticking of the grandfather clock in one corner of the sitting room. It had ticked in that same corner, according to her uncle, since 1795.
“Hullo?” Jools called out, her eyes searching the hallway and the shadowy environs of the kitchen beyond. “Is anyone here?”
Of course, there was no answer. Relieved, Adesh shut the door behind them and turned the lock. “Best not switch on any lights,” he advised, and headed across the uneven oak floorboards and up the stairs. “I don’t know about you, but I’m knackered.”
She followed him up to the master bedroom – her uncle’s, overlooking sloping pastures and the escarpment beyond – and she was too tired to reply. It was cold. They crawled, fully dressed, into the bed. Adesh drew her close against him.
“G’night,
