Where Everything Seems Double by Penny Freedman (popular romance novels .txt) 📕

When I am finally released and told that an ambulance will be with me in ten minutes, I kneel down and gingerly lift Dumitru’s limp hand away from the t-shirt with which he has been trying to staunch the blood. It is having little effect now because he hasn’t the strength to apply pressure and the t-shirt is saturated. I ought to stay with him and I ought to look for something else to absorb the blood, but I can’t. Whoever stabbed Dumitru has Freda and is still in this building, I am sure. He may be planning to put her into that van outside, but he hasn’t driven away yet.

I go back into the hall and stand there with all my senses on high alert – a sound, a smell, a waft of human warmth, something must tell me where they are. And then I hear it, the very slightest scrape, like a foot readjusting its position. It came from the back of the house, and I move that way, as silently as I can manage, down a dark passageway that opens ahead into a room. As the room comes into view I stop to take stock. The door is only partly open but I can see an oblong table of the institutional kind, with metal and plastic chairs around it. Beyond that, facing me, is a wall of fitted cupboards. Is this a kitchen of some kind? I creep further and cautiously push the door open. Now I can see that this is quite a large room and besides the table and chairs there are soft chairs in a group under the windows. A common room of some kind? And then I see with a jolt that there is a chair out of place, not in the group. It is high-backed and is facing away from me and I am quite sure that someone is sitting in it. Surprise is all that I have on my side, so I take a deep breath, step into the room and demand, in a voice which I defy to tremble, ‘Where is Freda?’

Two things happen. The occupant of the chair jumps up and pulls something sharp and glinting from his pocket and, at the same time, I hear a muffled yelp which I think comes from one of the the cupboards. I move towards it.

‘Freda?’ I call, while looking, transfixed, at the weapon that is being pointed at me. It looks like a shard of glass, but it is not, I can see, a random piece of broken bottle. This has been made carefully – a viciously sharp, glittering glass icicle made, of course, by a master glass-blower.

I allow myself one glance away from his hand and up to his face. He looks utterly pathetic, his glasses crooked, his thin hair messy. Had he nodded off sitting there playing his cat and mouse game? With my eyes back on the glass dagger I call again.

‘Freda, are you all right?’

There is a silence and my heart pounds. Did I imagine the sound I heard from that cupboard?

‘Freda?’ I call, more urgently.

And then I hear her, muffled and shaky. ‘We’re all right.’

‘You’ve got Ruby and Grace with you?’

‘Yes.’

The shiny shard shifts in Neil Buxton’s hand, as if he is preparing himself for an attack.

‘It’s going to be all right,’ I say. ‘The police will be here at any moment. And I’ve called an ambulance for Dumitru.’

And then Neil makes his move. His arm goes up and he charges at me with that icy point directed straight at my face. I throw myself to one side, he charges past me out of the door, and as I pull myself up, I can hear that he seems to be grunting and struggling out in the passageway. Could he be having a seizure of some kind? A heart attack? Very cautiously I look out into the passage and see, of all the possible wonderful things in the world, David wrestling with him for possession of his weapon. He is no match for David, who has his arm twisted back to the agonising point where he has to let his dagger go. It clatters to the ground, where it doesn’t break, cushioned by the lino that paves the floor here, and rolls to the feet of – Gary, who, with impressive aplomb, takes a handkerchief out of his pocket and picks it up. David, meanwhile, has Neil face down on the ground and is applying handcuffs. Bless him. I’m sure he doesn’t usually carry the cuffs himself – he has menials to do that sort of thing for him – but he has come prepared and hasn’t forgotten how to do it.

Satisfied, I run back to the girls, sounding, I suppose, quite hysterical.

‘It’s all right!’ I shout. ‘I’m coming to let you out. David is here and he’s got Neil, and I’ll have you out in a second.’

The cupboard, I see, has sliding doors. There are two handles in the middle which must open it wide. I yank hold of one and pull furiously, babbling all the time. ‘Won’t be a moment… soon have you out…just a second.’ The door won’t yield. I try the other one, and that too stays resolutely shut. There is an agitated rustling from inside – they are panicking, I’m sure. I look again at the handle and then I see the keyhole. He locked them in. Of course he did. It wasn’t enough to threaten them with a deadly weapon.

‘He’s got the key,’ I shout, as I run back across the room to get David to retrieve it, but then I hear behind me the grating sound of a door being pushed open and I turn to see the three of them burst out of the cupboard. The tallest of them, who must be Grace, is saying, ‘I dropped the fucking key and we couldn’t find it in the dark,’ and they are