Demon Storm by Justin Richards Read Free Book Online Page B

traffic from outside.
    ‘Just thinking out loud, sir. And I was thinking …’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘I was thinking that I’ve been very stupid,’ he lied. ‘It was just … You know.’
    ‘We all have stupid moments.’ Mr Magill smiled. ‘Whatever’s wrong, Ben, we can get it sorted out. All right?’
    Ben nodded. ‘All right. I’d like to call Mr Logan at the home. To say sorry.’
    ‘I think that’s a very good and sensible idea.’
    ‘Thank you.’ Ben held out his hand, hoping that Mr Magill wouldn’t just tell him to use the office phone on the desk.
    But, perhaps instinctively, Mr Magill handed Ben his mobile. And Ben could see in the man’s eyes that he regretted it immediately.
    Ben took the phone and turned quickly away, as if embarrassed.
    Mr Magill seemed to understand this and said, ‘I’ll give you a minute. It’ll be fine.’ Then he patted Ben gently on the shoulder, smiled reassuringly and left the room.
    The phone was quite complicated. It had a menu of small icons – many of which Ben didn’t understand. But he managed to find the call register and the list of calls made.
    The last was simply: ‘Knight’.
    ‘Check in the contacts list or address book or whatever it has,’ Sam would have suggested. ‘See if there’s an address.’
    There was: Knight – Gibbet Manor, Hangman’s Lane, Dartmoor.
    Ben closed the phone and put it down on the desk. It would be useful to keep it, but that was stealing. And mobile phones could be tracked, couldn’t they?
    The wedge from the door was lying on the floor. Ben pushed it under the door and kicked it into place, jamming the door shut. Then he climbed out of the open window.
    He didn’t know how long he had before Mr Magill realised he’d gone. But he did know where he was heading now. For the first time since Sam had disappeared, Ben felt he was in control.

8
    O F COURSE, IT WASN’T QUITE THAT SIMPLE . BEN had a name and an address. But he had no idea where Hangman’s Lane was and Dartmoor was a big place. He didn’t like to think about what would happen if this man, Knight, knew nothing about Sam. But he knew that Knight had been worried about her – so surely he’d help Ben find Sam, even if he knew nothing … At last he was doing something. He was making progress. He’d find her again no matter what it took, or how long he had to search.
    Ben didn’t want to spend his money on another taxi. Even though it was a long walk back into the centre of Bristol, it was still early – the school run had barely ended and the streets were busy with cars taking people to work. By the time he found a shopping centre with a bookshop it was almost eleven o’clock.
    The bookshop was one that had a coffee area. Ben bought himself a Coke from a bored, spotty young man who barely glanced at him, then found a good-sized table. He’d already bought a notebook and a pencil, but he didn’t want to have to buy the road atlas or detailed Ordnance Survey map he’d found.
    His first task was to find Hangman’s Lane and this took longer than he had expected. It wasn’t in the index of the road atlas and there was no place name in the address – it could be any small stretch of road on Dartmoor. He unfolded the OS map and began to work across it, searching for Hangman’s Lane.
    Eventually, he found it. A winding, narrow white line that ended at a cluster of dark buildings. Could that be Gibbet Manor? The road atlas was no help – it showed the whole area as empty ‘National Park’. But Ben made a rough sketch in his notebook of where the major towns were in relation to Hangman’s Lane.
    The nearest place was Princetown, which didn’t seem to be on a railway. It looked like the nearest train station must be in Plymouth. Would there be a bus from there? A rough measurement told him that it was fifteen miles from Plymouth to Princetown. Then another seven or eight to get to Hangman’s Lane.
    A lady was clearing away the used coffee cups and plates. She