“She must have gone straight home,” Clive said eventually.
“We ought to make sure,” said Podge.
“How can we, you fat git?” Mitch rounded on him. “We don’t know where she lives.”
“We ought to tell the police or something.”
“If she doesn’t come home, her mum will report it.”
Mitch’s faith in grown-ups prevailed. It was conceded that nothing could be done and they dispersed, after vowing to assemble again at the same place next day. “And I bet she turns up as usual,” said Clive.
In reality, Mitch had a horrid conviction that Clive was mistaken. Danny would not turn up, and he was responsible for the adventure that had gone so tragically wrong. In bed that night, he struggled to reassure himself that somehow his father must have been misinformed and cannibalism had not broken out in suburban Worcester Park. No one could get away with it, even if they were so ghoulish as to try. But the fears returned at intervals through the night.
In the morning everyone except Danny turned up at the rec. The optimists among them said they should wait. Clive wanted to go to the police right away.
“No,” said Podge. “They don’t believe kids like us. We’ll get done for trespassing, and it’ll get in the papers, and our new schools will know about it.”
“What are we going to do, then?” said Clive. “We can’t just forget about Danny. She’s in the gang.”
“It was never a gang,” said Mitch.
“Was.”
“Wasn’t.”
“Was.”
“While you’re arguing,” said Clive, “Danny might still be alive. She could be killed any minute.”
Mitch may have been short of original ideas, but he was sharp enough to tell when his leadership was under threat. This was a moment for action. “We’re going back to the house.”
“What?”
“We’re going to get Danny out. If we stick together, there’s enough of us to take on anyone, even old Coldharbour. Strength in numbers, right?” He held a fist aloft.
“Right,” said Clive, raising a fist.
“Right,” said the others with less animation.
For mutual encouragement, they marched like a platoon to Almond Avenue, swinging their arms high and trying to stay in step. At the railings of Sam Coldharbour’s house they halted.
“Look,” said Morgan.
Anyone cherishing the hope that the man who ate people might have slipped out for an hour, to church, or the paper shop, or to walk the dog, must have felt a draining of enthusiasm at the sight of the prominently muscled figure reclining beside the swimming pool on a sunlounger.
Mitch, however, was equal to the challenge. He believed that they were capable of rescuing Danny if she was still alive. And he did accept responsibility for what had happened to her. This was the right way, the man’s way, to put things right. He felt like a leader now.
He explained how they would take care of Sam Coldharbour.
They climbed over the railings at the place where the foliage was thickest and crept like Indians around the perimeter, using the shrubs as cover, and staying close to the railings. The reclining figure continued to recline. No one else was in the vicinity of the pool.
A toolshed stood close to the railings near a kitchen garden, and this was where they headed first. Their luck was in. It was unlocked, and there was room for everyone inside. Better still, the shed was well-equipped. The boys started arming themselves with garden tools. Roger had a large wooden mallet. Morgan and Daley started to wrestle for possession of a scythe.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Mitch said in a voice that shamed them all. “Put those things down. We don’t want to get in a fight.”
“We might,” said Podge. “We need to arm ourselves.”
“Bollocks,” said Mitch. “We need both hands free. Our weapon is surprise.”
So it was that in a moment the Class 5 assault team emerged from the toolshed armed with nothing more lethal than several lengths of rope and a narrow-mesh net, of the sort used for keeping birds off red-currant bushes. This was the most dangerous stage of the operation, for they had to cross an open stretch of lawn.
Mitch led the advance, his eyes fixed on the recumbent figure of Sam Coldharbour. The eight small boys moved stealthily but rapidly towards the ex-Olympian, who still didn’t stir. His eyes opened only when Mitch was so close that he blotted out the sun.
This was Mitch’s first close sight of the cannibal’s face, and it was not so frightening as it had been in his mind’s eye. The teeth were not the vampire fangs he had pictured and the eyes weren’t, after all, narrow slits edged with red. Close up, Sam Coldharbour was unremarkable, the more so when an oily rag was spread over his face and the net thrown across the entire length of his body and held down by six boys, while two others passed ropes around to secure him to the frame of the sunlounger. Morgan, who was strong in the arm and good at knots, drew the ends of the ropes tightly together and fastened them. Sam Coldharbour was efficiently trussed, his protests muffled by the rag. It had all been done so rapidly that Mitch doubted if any of them had been recognized.
“Leave him,” he ordered. “We’re going into the house.”
With a perceptible swagger, he led his commandos across the patio and up to the house. The patio door was slightly open. It squeaked as he pushed it aside. He had never been inside a house so modem looking, or so large. There was steel and leather and stripped pine and huge plants in white containers. “You three take the downstairs,” he told Clive, Daley, and Roger. “We’ll try the bedrooms. And remember,” he said in an afterthought to Clive, “to look in the freezer.”
The house was silent except for their footsteps on the spiral staircase, which was made of wrought iron, painted white. With a silent prayer that they would find Danny still alive, Mitch progressed to the landing and opened the first door. The room was some sort of office, with maps on the walls. He tried the next. A bathroom. Then discovered a bedroom with a single bed, a featureless room devoid of anything notable except what Podge noticed — a pair of blue and white trainers half hidden under the bed.
“Those are Danny’s.”
“She’s here, then,” said Mitch.
“She was,” said Podge in a low voice.
Mitch shuddered. “We’ll try the other rooms.”
Two more unoccupied bedrooms.
The last door on their left was ajar. Mitch pushed it open, and stood staring. The room contained a huge circular bed, out of keeping with the other furnishings, which in Mitch’s opinion were silly for a bedroom — a glass-fronted cocktail cabinet, a fridge, a music centre, pink-tinted mirrors the length of two of the walls. When his gaze travelled upwards, he saw that another vast, pink mirror was attached to the ceiling.
It was in the reflection on the ceiling that Mitch noticed something stir in the untidy heap of bedclothes. “Someone’s there!” he told Podge. “Come on.”
He approached the bed, with Podge observing a judicious step behind him. For a worrying second or two Mitch wondered if he was in error. The bedclothes were quite still.
Then they were flung aside and a red-haired woman sat up and shouted, “What in the name of Satan...?”
The words didn’t trouble Mitch so much as the sight of her rearing up from the bed, not unlike a ship’s figurehead he had once seen in a maritime museum. She was bare-breasted and gave every appearance of being carved out of oak and painted bright pink with dabs of crimson on the points of her chest. No doubt the effect was partly due to the light from the mirrors and partly to Mitch’s immaturity. Female torsos in general had yet to persuade him that they were anything but grotesque.
Without even covering herself, the woman demanded, “Just what do you think you’re doing in here?”