The Revelation Room (The Ben Whittle Investigation Series Book 1) (2 page)

Ben told Pastor Tom about the phone call and the case that
his father was working on.

For once, those clear blue eyes looked troubled. ‘Maybe you
should just call the police anyway.’

Maddie tightened her ponytail.  ‘You heard what Ben
said; his father told him not to.’

Tom didn’t look convinced. ‘But they’re professionals.
They’ll have the experience to deal with this sort of thing.’

Ben shook his head. ‘I can’t risk that.’

‘Perhaps your dad’s not thinking straight,’ Tom said. ‘He
might be disorientated and wandering around dazed somewhere.’

‘I reckon the cult’s got him,’ Ben said.

Tom took off his hat, pulled a handkerchief from his breast
pocket and mopped his brow. ‘Has this cult got a name?’

Waco popped into Ben’s mind. ‘I don’t know anything about it.’

‘And you have no idea whereabouts it might be?’  

Ben shook his head. ‘It’ll be in Oxfordshire somewhere. He
doesn’t like to rack up too many miles.’

Tom put his hat back on. ‘That’s a start.’

‘That narrows it down to just the whole county,’ Maddie said.
‘Should be simple.’

‘I’m not saying it is simple,’ Tom said, ‘but when there’s a
mountain to climb, you have no choice but to start at the foot of it.’

Ben didn’t feel equipped to climb Salisbury Hill, let alone
a mountain. ‘And what am I supposed to do if by some miracle I manage to find
this cult? Abseil down the roof and burst through a window like the SAS?’

‘You’d be surprised what you can do when the Lord challenges
you.’

Ben looked at the floor. His head was banging like a
bailiff’s fist on a door. ‘My mother’s going to go into meltdown.’

‘Let’s just try and deal with one thing at a time,’ Tom
said. ‘Do you have an address for the folks that hired your dad?’

‘It’ll be written down in the appointments book. But they
won’t know where the cult is, will they? That’s why they hired us.’

‘They must have given your dad some information to work
with.’

The air was hot and heavy, clogging up Ben’s throat. Now he
knew how Old Joe felt being zipped up in his “body bag”. Why did this have to
happen? Youth club was supposed to be the highlight of his week. He’d spent the
last few nights practising new jokes with Old Joe. Now the joke was on him.

‘It’ll be a start, Ben,’ Maddie said.

Ben couldn’t get over how weak and scared his father had
sounded on the phone. How could he have been reduced to such a pathetic,
quivering wreck? His father, the chin-up, back-straight ex-policeman who’d set
up Whittle Investigations after taking early retirement from the force. Ben
felt as if his whole life was being sucked down a plughole and into a drain.

‘Ben?’ Maddie prompted.

‘This can’t be happening.’

‘We have to try and deal with it.’

‘I don’t know what to do. I can’t think straight anymore. My
head’s all over the place.’

Pastor Tom fiddled with the rim of his hat. ‘It’s your
choice, son. You either call the police, or you try and work something out
yourself.’

Ben groaned and begged the bailiffs to go away and leave his
head alone. ‘I can hardly manage my hair, let alone a rescue mission.’

‘You’re stronger than you think, son.’

‘And what am I supposed to tell my mother?’

Tom formed a steeple with his fingers. ‘Explain to her as
best you can what has happened and then tell her what you’re going to do about
it.’

‘Have you met my mother? She frets over what to cook for
dinner.’

‘So reassure her.’

Ben laughed. ‘If I tell her I’m going to try and rescue my
father from a cult, she’ll be ringing the undertakers to arrange both of our
funerals.’

Tom reached out and touched Ben’s hand. ‘Human beings have
an amazing capacity to cope. I shall pray for a successful resolution to this
terrible predicament.’

Ben didn’t believe in God, not as a single entity sitting up
in Heaven listening to prayers and dishing out salvation. But he thanked Pastor
Tom anyway. Whatever the rights and wrongs of religion, Pastor Tom’s intentions
were good. As for his mother, she might need tying to a chair and shooting with
a horse tranquilliser dart. ‘You don’t know my mother.’

‘The Lord does, son. The Lord knows your mother better than
she knows herself. Would you like me to come home with you?’

Ben took a deep breath. He needed to get his head straight.
‘I don’t want to put you to any trouble.’

Pastor Tom reached out and patted Ben’s hand. ‘It’s no
trouble. No trouble at all.’

‘What the hell am I going to tell her, Tom? She’ll fall to
bits.’

‘Then it’s your job to put her back together again.’

Maddie offered Ben a bottle of water. ‘Dad’s right, Ben. You
haven’t got any other option.’

‘I don’t think I can do this.’

Tom removed his hat and wiped his forehead with the back of
his hand. ‘That’s what I said after Susan’s murder. People told me I would get
through it. Told me to trust the Lord and look to the future. They meant well.
They were only trying to help. But I rejected everything. I even lost my faith
for a while. But guess what?’

Ben shook his head, setting off firecrackers in his neck.

‘I got through it. I picked myself up. I had a two-year old
little girl who needed me. Bit by bit, I put the jigsaw back together again.
And you can do the same, son. You just need to trust the process of life.’

‘I’m not as strong as you, Tom.’

Tom smiled. A tired smile, frayed around the edges.
‘Nonsense, lad. Life makes you strong. The tests that the Lord puts before us
are all designed to make us stronger. After Susan died, I blamed God. Shoved
the lot of it at His door. Why was I being punished? I was in Rwanda trying to
help. Trying to make a difference. I’d offered my life up to teach the
disadvantaged, to give hope to the poorest of the poor, so why did He take
Susan? Why did she have to die? She wasn’t even thirty years old.’

‘I’m sorry, Tom. I didn’t mean—’

‘You’ve nothing to be sorry for. The perpetrators of the
genocide have an awful lot to answer for, but that’s God’s business, not mine.
But I’ll tell you this for free; bitterness can eat you right up on the inside.
It’s like rust around the heart.’

Ben considered his own childhood. The humiliation. The kids
who had mocked and abused him at school just because he’d been different to
them. ‘I’m just not cut out to rescue people, Tom. I can barely rescue my hair
in the morning.’

‘And I didn’t think I was cut out to raise a little girl on
my own. I didn’t think I had the strength to come back to England and start
again from scratch. We were all set to live our lives out in Rwanda. We had
plans. Simple plans for a simple life. But the thing is, Ben, I found the
strength, because God gave me the strength. Slowly but surely, my faith
returned. I started teaching again. I raised Maddie as best as I could. I lived
again. And you will find the strength, too.’

‘I can’t even brush my teeth without poking myself in the
eye.’

‘The Lord trusts you, son. The Lord has faith in you.
Susan’s death, as terrible as it was, as heart-breaking as it was, was God’s
way of putting me to the test and giving me strength and courage to succeed.’

‘And what happens if I don’t want to accept the test?’

‘That’s your choice, son. It’s what we call freewill.’

‘Come on, Ben. You can do this,’ Maddie encouraged.

Ben laughed. ‘He was originally going to train me to go out
on operations. Everything was going so well until I got stuck in railings
opposite a client’s house. The picture of the fire brigade cutting me free made
the third or fourth page of The Feelham Gazette.’

Maddie smiled. ‘Everyone has a mishap now and then. You have
to focus on what’s happening now. Focus on being strong for your mum and your
dad.’   

Ben looked into her beautiful green eyes. He wanted to thump
his chest and declare himself ready for battle, but he wasn’t capable of
finding sand in a desert, let alone a man being held captive by a cult. He
still slept with the light on at twenty-two years of age, for God’s sake. And
he was terrified of spiders.

Tom wedged his hat back on his head. ‘Come on, son. Let’s
get you and Old Joe home.’

Ben stood up. He felt  like a condemned man about to
walk to the gallows. He picked up the canvas holdall. For once, Old Joe was
quiet.  

Ben stood on the front doorstep with
Maddie and Pastor Tom and introduced them to his mother.

Anne Whittle looked from one to the other like a dormouse
contemplating cats. ‘Is something wrong?’

Ben’s stomach churned like a cement mixer about to pour
concrete all over his mother’s life. ‘We need to talk to you.’

‘Why? What is it?’

‘Let’s go inside.’

They followed Anne along the hallway and into the front
room. She muted the telly. ‘Well?’

‘Sit down, Mum.’

Anne plucked at her blouse. ‘I’d rather stand if it’s all
very well with you.’

Ben looked at Pastor Tom.

‘It’s your husband,’ Tom said.

‘Geoff? What about him?’

‘We think something may have happened to him,’ Ben blurted.

Anne frowned. ‘What in tuppence is that supposed to mean?’

Pastor Tom removed his trilby. ‘We don’t really know, Mrs
Whittle. He phoned Ben and asked him to help him.’

Anne’s hands flitted around her face like nervous birds
looking for somewhere to roost. ‘Help him? Why? Where is he?’

‘He may have been abducted,’ Tom said.

‘Abducted? Who the hell by?’

‘You know the missing girl he was looking for?’ Ben said.
‘The one that joined a cult?’

Anne nodded.

Ben took a deep breath. ‘We reckon the cult’s got him.’

Anne looked at her son as if he’d just told her that his
father had piloted a space shuttle to Mars. ‘I knew something was wrong. I told
Aunt Mary that he hadn’t phoned all day. He always phones. Even when he’s busy.
Aunt Mary joked that he was having an affair.’

‘I’m sorry, Mum.’

Anne walked over to a mahogany coffee table and picked up
her mobile phone. ‘I knew something was wrong. We always get fish and chips on
a Friday.’

Ben watched her fiddle with the phone. ‘What are you doing?’

Anne looked up from the screen. ‘We have to call the
police.’

‘We can’t call the police.’

‘Why in heaven’s name not?’

‘Because Dad said not to. And he meant it.’

Anne’s mouth opened and closed like a broken gate flapping
in the wind.

Ben walked over to her and took hold of her hands. ‘Sit
down, Mum. It’s been a huge shock to all of us.’

 Anne sat down on the edge of the sofa. She plucked at
her lips as if trying to pull a reason from her mouth. ‘I don’t understand.’

Maddie offered to put the kettle on.

‘Good idea,’ Pastor Tom said.

Anne stared at Ben. Her eyes looked glazed. ‘He always gets
fish and chips on Friday…’

Ben watched Maddie walk out of the room. She seemed to
bounce as she walked.   

Anne’s lower lip trembled. ‘Can’t you just go and get him?’

Ben wanted to hug her and promise her that everything would
be just fine. But he couldn’t. Not when he didn’t believe it himself. ‘We don’t
know where the cult is.’

‘So how are you going to help him if you don’t even know
where he is?’

Ben needed painkillers. His knee had joined the growing list
of casualties demanding attention. The damned thing always flared up when he
was exhausted. A constant reminder of his childhood humiliation and shame.

A tear hatched from the corner of Anne’s left eye. ‘Well?’

Ben remembered the awful noises accompanying his father’s
call for help. ‘I don’t know yet, Mum. That’s what we need to figure out.’

Anne smoothed out imaginary creases in her skirt. ‘And you
think
you’re
going to figure it out, do you?’

Ben sighed. ‘I’m going to try.’

Pastor Tom looked at Anne. ‘Would you like something
stronger than tea?’

‘I don’t drink alcohol.’

Maddie called out and asked Ben where the teapot was. Ben
went to the kitchen, grateful for the distraction. He took a teapot from a wall
cabinet and handed it to her.

‘How do you like your tea?’

Ben rubbed the back of his neck. ‘My head’s throbbing. I’ll
just have a glass of water and some paracetamol.’

‘Your mum took the news quite well, considering.’

Ben swallowed three painkillers. ‘It’s going to be a long
night.’

‘I’ll stay over if you want,’ Maddie offered.

‘You don’t have to do that.’

‘I want to. I could help your mum.’

‘She’ll be all right. She’s got sleeping tablets.’

‘I’m not doing much until Sunday service.’

‘I—’

Maddie put the teapot on a tray. ‘I want to.’

A hand squeezed Ben’s heart. ‘The milk’s in the fridge, and
there’s a sugar bowl up in that cupboard.’

Maddie cocked her head to one side. ‘Well?’

‘Well what?’

‘Do you want me to stay?’

‘What about your dad?’

‘He’ll be fine. Perhaps we could do some brainstorming
later? See if we can come up with a plan of action?’

Ben didn’t feel he had much of a brain left to storm. ‘If
you’re sure.’

‘Of course I’m sure. I wouldn’t offer otherwise. You go on
through. I’ll see to this.’

They all sat around the dining table in silent
contemplation. Pastor Tom sipped his tea and smiled at Anne. ‘You have a lovely
home.’

Anne ignored the compliment. ‘I always knew something like
this would happen. I always said to Aunt Mary that he’d wind up getting hurt.’

Ben thought that if you always erred on the side of
pessimism, you were bound to be vindicated one day.

Like you
, a voice whispered in his head.  

Anne banged her teacup down on the saucer. ‘It’s beyond me
why he always has to do dangerous jobs. First the police force, and now this
stupid detective work. It’s just asking for trouble.’

Ben massaged his temples. Why did painkillers take so long
to get into the system? ‘I’m sure he’ll be all right.’

‘Do you remember that time he fell out of a tree?’

Ben did. How could he forget? His father had spent a week in
hospital with a broken ankle, and then three months recuperating at home with a
foul temper to accompany his injuries.

Anne kept looking out of the window as if her husband might
pull up at any moment with a bag of fish and chips and a guilty grin.

‘He was trying to get pictures of some floozy in a bedroom,
if I remember rightly.’

Ben’s headache gnawed at his nerves. ‘It was a bloke, actually.’

Maddie handed Anne a cup of tea. ‘If it’s all right with
you, Mrs Whittle—’

‘Anne. Please call me Anne.’

‘Of course. Anne. If it’s all right with you, I could stop
over for a while to help out.’

Anne took a sip of tea and lowered the cup. ‘I think we
should just call the police and let them deal with it.’

Ben silently begged God for some of that strength Pastor Tom
talked about. ‘I’ve already told you. Dad doesn’t want us to call the police.
He wouldn’t say so without good reason.’

‘What if he’s fallen out of a tree again and banged his
head?’

‘Would you like me to stay, Anne?’ Maddie asked again.

‘I’d like my husband to come home. That’s what I’d like.’

Pastor Tom finished his tea and turned to Maddie. ‘It might
be better to let these folks have some time on their own.’

‘I want Maddie to stay,’ Ben said.

Pastor Tom didn’t look convinced. ‘Anne?’

Tears spilled onto Anne’s cheeks. ‘It makes no difference to
me whether or not she stays. I just want my husband home.’

Pastor Tom stood up and put his hat back on. ‘I’ve got to
make tracks. You call me tomorrow, Madeline.’

Maddie nodded.

‘I want you back for Sunday service.’

‘Of course.’

Ben showed Pastor Tom out. ‘I really appreciate this, Tom.’

‘Take care of your mother, son. She’s in shock.’

Ben didn’t have a clue how a gangling, useless geek like him
was supposed to look after his mother
and
rescue his father. ‘We’re all
in shock, Tom.’   

‘God bless you, son. I shall pray for you.’

Ben closed the door and returned to the front room. His head
felt like a block of concrete. Someone was trying to dig up that concrete with
a pneumatic drill. Maddie was sitting beside his mother on the sofa, comforting
her.

Ben sat down with them. ‘We’ll find him, Mum.’

Anne stood up and walked over to the window. She looked left
and right several times, putting Ben in mind of a dog waiting for its master to
come home. She turned back to face Ben. ‘When did he phone you?’

Ben looked at his watch. ‘About an hour ago.’

‘Have you tried to ring him back?’

‘Yes. There was no answer.’

‘Try him now.’

Ben did. Same result. ‘He called on his watch-phone. The
battery’s probably dead. He only uses it for emergencies.’

‘So what’s happened to his mobile?’

Ben was about to say that someone in the cult must have
taken the phone off him, but then thought better of it. ‘It’s probably run out
of charge.’

Anne plucked a tissue from a box of Kleenex on the coffee
table and dabbed at her eyes. ‘So what are you going to do now?’

‘Try and find him.’

‘And what if this cult thing gets hold of you as well? What
then?’

Ben shuddered. ‘I won’t let that happen.’

Maddie walked over to Anne and grasped her hands. ‘Ben won’t
do anything silly, Mrs Whittle.’

‘You don’t know my son as well as I do.’

‘I’ll help him.’

‘Why don’t you take a couple of sleeping tablets and get a
good night’s rest, mum?’ Ben said.

Anne nodded. ‘Yes, perhaps I will.’

‘Things will look a lot better in the morning,’ Maddie said.

‘You wake me up straight away if there’s any news.’

Ben didn’t think there would be any need to wake her. Not
unless Pastor Tom’s prayers summoned a miracle. ‘Of course.’

Anne shuffled out of the dining room as if her mind and body
were disconnected from one another.

Ben closed the door behind her. ‘She’ll be out for the count
in about half an hour.’

‘She’s lovely.’

Ben could think of a few other words to describe his mother.
‘ Do you want a proper drink? There’s vodka in the cabinet.’

‘Not unless you want me dancing on the table and then
sleeping under it.’

Ben laughed. ‘I don’t mind. It might cheer the place up.’

‘I’ll stick to coffee. Do you want one?’

‘Yeah. Strong and black, please. Three sugars.’

They sat at the dining table drinking coffee in silence for
a while, and then Ben told Maddie how Pastor Tom had helped him after he’d
fallen from a conker tree and fractured his knee. ‘I spent most of that summer
with your dad. That’s when he introduced me to Old Joe.’

Maddie looked surprised. ‘I don’t remember you.’

‘You were always out. Your dad reckoned you were a boy in
disguise.’

‘I was a tomboy.’

‘Back then you wanted to be an explorer.’

‘Cool.’

‘And an astronaut.’

‘Funny what we want to do when we’re kids. All the silly
little dreams and the great big expectations.’

‘I just wanted to be normal,’ Ben said. ‘Normal and left
alone.’

Maddie frowned. ‘Why?’

‘I used to get picked on quite bad.’

‘By who?’

‘Kids at school. I had a bad stammer. They used to call me
“Stutter-buck”.’

‘Kids can be so cruel.’

‘It’s all in the past. It doesn’t matter now.’

Maddie sipped her coffee. ‘It does matter. Everyone ends up
carrying around this great big bag of hurt because of others.’

Ben looked away for a few seconds and then changed the
subject. ‘Old Joe belonged to your granddad.’

‘Granddad John?’

Ben nodded.

Maddie took a sip of coffee. ‘Granddad John was great. We
used to visit him in Sunnyside Nursing Home. He could still do these amazing
card tricks. And, get this: he was pushing eighty and he had a girlfriend.
Betsy. She had this great big puff of white hair and the kindest eyes you could
ever imagine.’

Ben smiled. ‘Cool.’

‘Granddad John died two years ago. Betsy went a few months
after. It was so sad.’

‘They’re probably together again now.’

‘Nana June might have something to say about that! Anyway,
why did dad give Old Joe to you?’

‘To help me overcome my stammer. At the time it was really
bad, especially when I was under pressure. The more I tried, the worse it got.
But your dad taught me the art of ventriloquism. How to control my thoughts. It
was weird at first because it was like magic when I spoke through Old Joe. It
didn’t take half an hour to say a simple sentence. Then, bit by bit, I spoke
properly without using Old Joe.’

Maddie grinned. ‘Wow! That’s fantastic.’

Ben’s heart swelled. ‘Not that I’m much cop at it. Even Old
Joe reckons I’m rubbish.’

‘Don’t put yourself down. You’re brilliant with him.’

‘It’s all down to your dad, Maddie. He’s a great man.’

‘I know.’

‘I can’t ever repay him.’

‘You already have.’

‘I don’t follow.’

‘It’ll mean the world to him that you’ve turned out to be
such a good person.’

Ben blushed. ‘I wish.’

‘Don’t put yourself down. You’ve got a lot going for you.’

‘Like what? A missing father?’

‘So let’s get cracking and do something about it. You said
there’s an appointments book?’

Ben nodded. ‘In the office.’

He led Maddie through the kitchen and into a small
eight-feet-square room that had started life as a brick-built coal shed in the
1940s semi. He switched on the light. A shiny black desk with a computer and a
printer dominated one wall. Next to this, a filing cabinet. Ben unlocked it and
took out a black leather-bound book. He put the book down on the desk and
leafed through it. He stopped about halfway through the book and tapped the
page.

‘Here we go. Barnaby and Annabelle Hunt, Britannia Bungalow,
The Street, Upper Feelham. Girl’s name is Emily Hunt. Missing for two years.
Demanding money from parents. Aged nineteen. There’s a phone number.’