All My Secrets (22 page)

‘Stop right there,’ she snaps.

Josh and Pepper freeze. I stare at the gun. It must be the same one that Samuel saw. Which makes it even more certain that Bunnock has done something to him. Before I can form this thought into
words, Bunnock grabs hold of Pepper and swings her round, twisting her arm so high up her back that Pepper screams in pain.

‘Another step and I break her arm.’ Bunnock’s voice is ice-cold. I have no doubt that she means what she says.

Josh and I exchange a look, then he backs away.

‘Over there.’ Bunnock points her gun towards the boathouse. ‘Inside!’

Josh and I hurry along the path, Miss Bunnock and Pepper right behind. Josh’s hair and jacket drip with rain.

‘What the hell is going on?’ he murmurs in my ear. ‘I thought it was Lomax who was after you. What is Bunnock doing? D’you think that’s the same gun Samuel wrote
about in his notebook?’ He pauses. ‘Evie, d’you know what’s happened to him?’

I shake my head.

‘Hurry up!’ Miss Bunnock barks.

‘You can’t do this,’ Pepper insists. I can hear the pain in her voice. ‘You can’t kidnap people at gunpoint. Why are you—?’

‘Shut up.’ There is something so cold, so menacing about the way Miss Bunnock speaks that Pepper instantly falls silent.

‘How did you and Josh find us?’ Miss Bunnock asks angrily as we reach the door. I snatch a quick glance behind me. She’s still twisting Pepper’s arm high up her back, the
gun tightly gripped in her other hand. There’s no way Josh and I can overpower her without risking Pepper’s life.

‘We were looking for Evie,’ Pepper says.

‘And when we don’t go back everyone at the house will notice,’ Josh adds.

Bunnock doesn’t react to this at all.

I bite my lip. Suppose
all
the adults are in on the plot? Just because Lomax isn’t covering up a murder doesn’t mean he isn’t somehow in league with Bunnock over
wanting me dead.

‘Inside,’ Bunnock orders.

Josh opens the boathouse door. I follow him through, out of the rain. The boathouse smells damp. Across the room, the expanse of water that lies open to the sea is choppy. I stare at where the
boat used to be, where Kit and I worked together. Water slaps at the walls, echoing around the room.

‘What have you done to Samuel?’ I demand.

Bunnock ignores me. ‘Through there.’ She points to an alcove beside the big store cupboard where I’ve seen Mr Bradley store tins of varnish and brushes. Before it was covered
with old cloths. Now these have been pulled away, revealing a trapdoor set into the wooden floor. The iron ring that opens it is padlocked to the ground.

I glance anxiously at Bunnock. She lets go of Pepper’s arm, but keeps a tight hold of her gun. She tosses a set of keys at me. ‘Undo the padlock and go down the steps.’

I crouch down and fit the key into the padlock. It turns with a click. Hands shaking, I remove the lock and lay it on the wooden floor at Miss Bunnock’s feet.

‘Help her lift the door,’ Miss Bunnock orders.

Josh bends down and together we haul the trapdoor open.

A ladder extends into a gloomy cellar. It’s totally dark down there. Once the trapdoor shuts over our heads, we won’t be able to see our hands in front of our faces.

‘You can’t send us down there without any light,’ Pepper insists.

‘What about food? Or water?’ Josh adds.

‘And you still haven’t told us what you’ve done to Samuel,’ I say.

‘Enough,’ Miss Bunnock snaps.

I swing my leg over the hole and feel for the top rung. My palms are sweating as I descend into the darkness. I reach the stone floor at the bottom and look around. It’s a large room,
empty as far as I can see, apart from a table near the ladder set with a candle lamp. Beside the lamp are a box of matches, a large bottle of water and a loaf of bread.

My fingers shake as I take a match and light the lamp. It casts ghostly shadows over the walls which flicker as Josh and Pepper climb down. As Pepper reaches the ground, the trapdoor shuts with
a thud. Above our heads the padlock is clicked into position.

‘What the hell is Bunnock
doing
?’ Pepper exclaims.

‘She’s going to kill me,’ I say flatly. ‘She used Anna. I think someone is paying her. Possibly Lomax. Maybe all of them.’ I’m trying to sound brave, but my
voice trembles.

Pepper shakes her head. ‘I don’t get it,’ she says. ‘If they’re
all
in on it then why the subterfuge? It doesn’t make any sense.’

‘It doesn’t make sense anyway,’ Josh points out. ‘Why do they want Evie dead?’ He takes the lamp and walks across the cellar, lighting each corner in turn.

It’s soon obvious that apart from the table and its contents the cellar is empty, save for a heap of tarpaulin in one corner. The lamp casts sinister shadows as Josh sets it down on the
table.

‘What was that?’ Pepper grabs my arm.

I follow her pointing finger to the tarpaulin in the corner.

‘Oh man,’ Josh says.

‘What?’ I ask.

And then I see it myself: the tarpaulin is moving.

The three of us jump back, away from the tarpaulin. Josh puts out his arm, his hand reaching for mine. Even in the midst of my terror, I feel a glow that his first thought is
for me, to make sure I’m safe.

‘Who’s there?’ Pepper demands.

And then the tarpaulin rears up and Samuel emerges.

My whole body sags with relief. Josh squeezes my hand. I squeeze back, then remember Kit and let go as Samuel scrambles to his feet.

‘Man, you gave us a fright,’ Josh says.

Samuel nods. ‘I was hiding under the covering,’ he says unnecessarily. He’s shivering – though with cold or fear I can’t tell. He has always seemed younger than the
rest of us. Now he looks about six years old. I rush over and put my arms round him. He stands, letting me hug him, though not hugging back.

‘Miss Bunnock wants to kill you, Evie,’ he squeaks, his teeth chattering. ‘I tried to warn you. I found out, but now she wants to kill me too.’ He peers over my shoulder
at Josh and Pepper. ‘She’ll want to kill you as well. That will be at least twice the average number of UK murders in one day.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Pepper snaps. ‘What the hell is Buttockbreath doing with a gun, ordering us into a pigging cellar and trying to kill us?’

‘Let’s sit down,’ I suggest.

Josh nods. He helps me lead Samuel back to the tarpaulin. I settle Samuel in the corner, drawing the rough tarpaulin over his shoulders. Josh brings the bottle of water and the loaf of bread.
Neither looks as if it’s been touched, yet Samuel has been missing for nearly a whole day.

‘Have you been down here since last night?’ I ask. ‘Have you eaten anything?’

‘Yes to your first question and no to the second,’ Samuel says solemnly. ‘Did you know you can survive three days without water and three weeks without food?’

Josh tears a chunk off the loaf. He hands it to Samuel. ‘Never mind three weeks, you need to eat. Now tell us what happened,’ he says. ‘From the beginning.’

Samuel settles himself back against the wall with a sigh. ‘OK, well, the first thing – one – was that I found a gun yesterday morning when I was coming back from my one-to-one
with Mr Lomax, along with a picture of a woman who looked like Evie.’

‘That was the photo Bunnock switched with the knife,’ I explain. ‘The photo of my birth mum.’

‘Yes, I worked that out,’ Samuel says proudly.

‘
Bunnock’s
gun?’ Pepper wrinkles her nose.

‘Yes,’ says Samuel.

‘We found your notebook, Samuel,’ I say, exchanging looks with Josh. ‘You don’t say it’s Bunnock’s gun there.’

‘I didn’t know it was her gun then.’ Samuel pauses. ‘You said to start from the beginning.’

‘OK, sorry, go on,’ I say.

‘So I found the gun and the photo, and I remembered Josh and Kit arguing about Evie and her ghost and how she thought there was this cover-up of her mum’s murder, so I thought about
it logically and if the two things were connected then the gun must be to kill Evie to keep her quiet.’

‘Which was true,’ I said.

‘But then I thought the gun was Mr Lomax’s because
that’s
who Evie said was covering up the murder.’

‘Which was wrong,’ Josh says.

‘Right,’ Samuel says.

‘What did you do next?’ I ask, my eyes intent on Samuel’s face, pale in the lamplight.

‘I came to warn you.’

‘So that was what you meant when you saw me in the hall yesterday morning and said you had something important to tell me later?’ I ask.

‘Yes, but then Miss Bunnock called me for chores before I could say anything, so instead I decided to explain to her, so that she would understand and come and warn you herself. That was
“two”.’

‘But instead she kidnapped you?’ Pepper snarls.

‘Not at first,’ Samuel says. ‘Miss Bunnock made me show her the gun and she said it was just a pretend one that didn’t even work and that she didn’t know who the
photo was of but it couldn’t be anything important and that she’d ask Mr Lomax about the gun and that I shouldn’t say anything to anybody about it as it might frighten them. And
she stayed near me the whole time, except once when Mr Lomax called her away for something which was when I snuck the photo upstairs and wrote in my notebook and left them both in the hiding place
in the bedroom. And I still would’ve told Evie, but—’

‘But we’d gone missing by then,’ Josh says.

‘Exactly. And then later, after going-to-bed time, when everyone was asleep, I woke up and Miss Bunnock was pressing some bit of cloth down on my face, and it smelled odd, and then I
don’t remember anything until I woke up here, in the boathouse. Which was “three”.’

‘Whoa,’ Pepper whistles.

Josh shakes his head. Hearing Samuel explain everything so matter-of-factly somehow makes it sound even worse. I feel in my jacket pocket for the shoes. In all the turmoil, I forgot I have them
back now. It’s reassuring to touch their soft leather.

‘Wait a minute!’ Pepper’s eyes widen and she throws up her arms. ‘You must have been here while we were outside this morning . . . me, Evie and Josh, clearing the rubbish
from the storm outside the boathouse door.’

‘Yes, I could hear you, but I was tied up so I couldn’t shout or anything. That was “four”. Miss Bunnock came down after you went and untied me so I could eat. She said
that now I know about her being involved she can’t kill Evie the original way . . .’

‘By luring me to Easter Rock, pushing me off and making it look like I jumped,’ I mutter. ‘That’s why she put the knife under my pillow, so that Mr Lomax and everyone
would think I wanted to top myself.’

‘Anyway, now she’s probably going to find a new way to kill you,’ Samuel continues. ‘And she’s going to kill me at the same time.’

‘Oh man.’ Josh lets out a long, jagged breath. ‘What do we do now?’

‘We have to get out of here.’ Pepper jumps to her feet, a look of determination on her face.

Josh looks around the cellar. ‘The only way out is through the trapdoor.’

‘That won’t work,’ Pepper says. ‘Did you see the size of that padlock?’

‘So . . .’ I take a deep breath. ‘Our situation is that we have no weapons, no tools and no way of getting out of the cellar.’

‘Yeah, thanks for putting such a positive spin on it,’ Pepper grumbles.

‘We’ve got to shout,’ I say. ‘Think about it. The others are going to wonder where we are soon. They’ll come looking for us.’

‘Suppose Anna or Buttockbreath tells them some lie about where we are?’ Pepper says.

‘Suppose the others are in on it?’ Josh adds darkly. ‘Bradley is probably involved, maybe even Moncrieff. And we can’t be sure about Kit either.’

‘Kit isn’t involved,’ I say.

‘How do you know?’ Josh asked.

My thoughts drift to the way Kit looked at me earlier, the way he kissed me. He’s surely the last person who would want me to come to any harm. I look up, into Josh’s enquiring eyes.
My cheeks burn. ‘Kit just wouldn’t,’ I say.

‘Even if no one else is involved, it’s possible Buttockbreath will hear us before anyone else does.’ Pepper groans. ‘Then she’ll gag us on top of everything else.
What a cow. I never liked that woman.’

‘All that’s true, but as shouting is our only chance we might as well give it a try,’ Josh says.

No one can think of anything to say to that, so I clap my hands together to get us started.

‘Everyone together,’ I urge. ‘One . . . two . . . three . . . HELP!’ I yell as loudly as I can, the others joining in.

‘Again.’ Josh scrambles to his feet, pulling me up beside him. ‘One . . . two . . . three . . . HELP!’

The four of us shout until our lungs burn with the effort. But no one comes.

‘We should time it, space it out,’ Josh says. ‘Otherwise, we’ll have no voices left. Every couple of minutes or so, we yell.’

‘I’ll keep the count,’ Samuel says. ‘I’m good at counting in my head.’

An hour or so passes. Then another. And another. It’s hard to keep track of time, though from the sounds of wind and rain that reach us through the walls it’s obvious the storm has
been building up again. The sea will be at high tide now. I can just picture huge waves crashing against the cliffs and over the dark rocks that stick up out of the water.

The candle burns about a quarter of the way down inside the lamp. In spite of Josh’s plan to stagger our yells and Samuel’s careful counting, we’re all growing hoarse and the
bread and water are gone.

‘It must be night by now,’ I muse. ‘Do you think there’s any chance a boat’s made it here from the mainland?’

‘No way,’ Pepper says. ‘The storm’s too bad. I’ve done a lot of sailing on my dad’s yacht and there’s no way any ordinary boat would set out in a sea
like that unless it was a total emergency.’

‘Oh man.’ Josh catches his breath. ‘Bunnock could be back any second.’

There’s a long pause.

‘I don’t want to die,’ Samuel says.

‘Me neither,’ I say.

Into the silence that falls, a set of footsteps sounds above our heads. Josh and I exchange worried glances. Is that Miss Bunnock coming back for us?

I hold my breath as the padlock releases with a click and the trapdoor slowly opens.