Ten – Friday

Tintin woke slowly. He opened his eyes, but regretted it at once and closed them quite quickly. His head thumped and his brain ached behind his eyes. He could feel his stomach churning and he had to swallow a few times to keep whatever was in his stomach firmly down. That was, he thought, the worst part of chloroform: the magnificent hang-over that was a million times worse than any other hang-over. It was, in fact, the God of Hangovers.

He groaned and tested his limbs. His left leg still moved, that was for sure. He stuck it out and tested the air tentatively, like a baby deer sniffing for hunters. It was significantly colder than the rest of him, so he pulled it back in and realised he was under something.

He opened his eyes again and saw there was a blanket over him. This curious fact made him sit up with a louder groan and take a good look around.

He was… in a place. That was as far as his brain could work on that puzzle though, at least for now. It was darkish, but only because the lights were out. It was also made of stone, and had tall stone columns reaching up to what looked to be a vaulted ceiling. It was a proper vaulted ceiling too: it had the look of authenticity about it, as though it was old and had been built long ago when builders knew what they were doing. In fact, it looked remarkably like a cellar of some sort. It was definitely cold enough to be a cellar. Long, thin windows, the glass covered in old grime and streaks of dirt, were set very high up into the walls, and managed to shed as little light as possible.

He was lying on a make-shift bed near one of the walls. He struggled out of the warm blankets and made his way to his feet unsteadily. He looked around, wondering where the hell he was, and started to search for a way out. He wandered among the columns aimlessly, searching the walls for any sign of a door.

"Boo," said a voice. It wasn't a loud shout but it still made Tintin jump. He stopped short and looked around. It had sounded as though the voice had come from further ahead.

"Who's there?" he called cautiously.

"Come closer," the voice answered.

Tintin took a step or two closer to where he thought the voice was coming from. "Who are you?"

"I… am the ghost of the captain of The Unicorn!" A burst of mocking laughter accompanied these words and Tintin ducked behind a column. There's no such thing as ghosts! his rational brain told him.

But do the ghosts know that? his illogical imagination asked casually.

The laughter continued and Tintin risked a peek around the column. As far as he could tell, both the laughter and the voice sounded a bit too smug to be other-worldly. It sounded more like the voice of a cynical banker.

"Don't be afraid," the voice said mockingly. "Come closer to the door."

Door? Well, that interested Tintin. Where there was a door there was a way out, and at the moment it looked like he was very much a prisoner. He made his way cautiously towards the voice and saw a glint of steel in the gloom. There was a door, but it was made of iron and it was securely locked. He tested the handle anyway and spotted the thin chequered grill of a speaker set in the stonework beside it.

Well, that explained how he could hear the voice, and the camera secured to the column closest to the door explained how they could see him. It was turning slowly from side to side, surveying everything in the room over a period of a few minutes. He filed this away for future reference.

"Who are you?" he asked. "What do you want with me?"

"You must allow me to remain anonymous," the voice answered smugly. "And of course, you know why I had you kidnapped."

"No, I don't," Tintin said honestly. "I have no idea what's going on."

"You stole two pieces of parchment from me," the voice declared. "I don't know how you managed it, but you did. Now, there's three parchments all together, as you well know, and I have one: the one I had taken off you when you were brought here. I want you to tell me where you've hidden the other two. If you tell me what I want to know, I'll let you go. Alive. If you don't, well… Believe me, Tintin, I know a lot of ways to make you talk before you beg me for death. Do you understand?"

"I don't have your parchment!" Tintin cried. "I only ever had one. I haven't even seen the other ones. I have don't know what was on them."

"Lying is bad for the soul, Mr Tintin," the voice said pleasantly. "You should tell the truth."

"I am telling the truth!" Tintin insisted. "If you have my parchment, then I honestly don't know where any of them are!"

"I'm going to give you some time to reconsider," the voice continued. "Two hours, I think. Then I shall ask you again. If you lie to me again, you will pay for it. Think hard, Mr Tintin."

The speaker went dead. Tintin stared at it. "But I don't know anything," he said. The speaker stayed silent, and he knew he man wasn't listening to him any more. Well, one thing was for sure: he had to find a way out of here. In two hours he had to be long gone.

x

Snowy had walked for a very long time. Maybe even a week or more. He didn't know: dogs had a limited understanding of time. As far as he knew, time had passed and he was still on his own. And he was muddy. It had rained when it had gotten dark, so he'd had to find a place to curl up in. Unfortunately, the hole had contained a lot of mud and a rather irritable badger. Snowy had asserted his dominance and left, in case the badger got really angry, and had found a hedge to sleep under instead.

Now he was awake and walking again. He was very hungry but he discovered that drinking puddles kept his belly full, so he did that whenever he could remember to do so.

The rain was coming down harder. To dogs, this isn't much of an obstacle. It wasn't nice, granted, but Snowy was used to such weather and the urge to keep moving was stronger than the urge to stop and go home. There wasn't any home to go to: Tintin was somewhere else. Until Snowy found him, home was lost.

Something had happened. He wasn't sure what it was, and he hadn't quite figured out how Old Mrs Gustav's cat fitted in, but he had no doubt that the yowling beast was somehow behind it. Or maybe even that bulldog from down the road. One minute Snowy was playing with Roxy Foxy and then Tintin was gone. His voice had gone quiet and footsteps had walked away from the flat. Tintin hadn't come back.

Snowy had done the logical thing and jumped out the window. Luckily, the big bearded man was under it and had caught him. After that, it had simply been a matter of keeping his nose to the ground and walking, and Snowy was a champion at that.

Ahead, a large growling thing that looked like the thing the big bearded man and Tintin sometimes sat in came towards him. Snowy knew from experience that the large growling things, also called 'cars', didn't want to make friends, so he moved to the side of the road and took it as an opportunity to mark a nice-smelling tree as his own. He shook himself to get some of the rain off his coat.

The large growling thing went by at a very fast speed. Snowy barked at it out of habit, and regretted it at once. The large growling thing had just thrown mud at him! Snowy blinked in surprise and decided that anything that threw mud in such a sly way wasn't worth dealing with. He shook his head and trotted on.

x

A while later – maybe a few years later, maybe a few seconds – the rain stopped and Snowy smelt different water. He could hear it too, gurgling alongside the road. There were lots of trees now, and Snowy had done his best to mark them all but there were just too many and he'd run out of wee. The mud the large growling thing had thrown at him was starting to harden and tug at the hair along his nose and ears. It wasn't nice, and Tintin wasn't on hand with a piece of kitchen towel to wipe it off, so Snowy would have to do his best.

He cut through the trees and made his way to the water. Is was a long watery thing that had hard rocks sticking out of it. It wasn't very deep, but it was very inviting looking. Snowy jumped in and splashed about a bit. He took a couple of gulps of this clean, nice water before getting back out, shaking himself off and trotting back to the road. It felt nice to be clean again, and now his nose was clear he could smell more. The Smell he was following was metallic and oily and looked green in the strange world of dogs' noses. It was still here, but faint now: it had almost been washed away by the rain. But Snowy trusted his Nose. It had never let him down yet. He dutifully sniffed the air and allowed Nose to lead him up the road.

Another large growling thing appeared. Again, Snowy hustled himself to the verge and let it go by. This time he remembered his manners and didn't bark at it. As far as he was concerned they were but two ships passing in the night. Or at least, one dog and one large growling thing passing in the morning light.

Which was why he was very surprised when it threw another handful of mud in his face.

x

Tintin stood behind a column, out of the gaze of the inscrutable camera, and considered his options. He knew that he had no answers to give to whoever had kidnapped him. No matter what happened, he wouldn't be able to tell them what they wanted. But that sort of thing never stopped criminals before: they could keep torturing him for as long as they liked – until he broke. But even if he did break, he still wouldn't be able to tell them what they wanted to know, so they would just start again. And he had a sinking feeling that wherever they were, they were isolated. Nobody would hear his screams.

He had been staring at a large beam of wood for the last few minutes as he worked it all out in his head. He didn't even have an educated guess at where the two missing pieces of parchment were. The best he could figure was that the same thing had happened to him: they had been stolen by a pickpocket. If he had been stupid enough to put his piece in his wallet, who was to say that the man who had kidnapped him hadn't done the same? If that was the case then there was very little chance of getting the parchments back. Tintin getting his back was pure fluke: how many pickpockets were working the Christmas crowds in the city? Too many, judging by the placement of the pins in the Thompsons' map.

No, the parchments were gone: taken out of the equation. So he had no idea where he was or who had taken him, or how to get free. He didn't have what they wanted and had no way of getting what they wanted. What he did have, in fact, was the clothes he was wearing – a light t-shirt and a pair of jeans – and a large beam of wood that looked very heavy.

He couldn't stop looking at the wood. It was long and rectangular, and looked like a battering ram. He came out from behind the column, ignoring the camera, and went to the wood. He rubbed his hands against his jeans to get rid of the sweat that had pooled there and tried to lift it.

He strained against its weight, but it was no good: it was too heavy for him to lift by himself. He sat down on it, frustrated, and went back to thinking. There had to be a way out of here. He sighed and sat back, his eyes trained on the ceiling. His brain whirled, turning the problem over and over and prying at it, searching for a weak point he could exploit.

They weren't expecting him to do anything. That was their problem – that was always their problem, no matter who the 'they' were. They locked people up and bullied them, and then acted surprised when their victims hit back at them. It was as though they thought that their victims didn't have the right to fight back, as though it was bad sport for their victim to break free and escape.

They wouldn't expect him to use the wood as a battering ram… And they probably weren't expecting him to use their prison against them. High up on the ceiling a little black metal ring had caught his eye. It hung there, lonely and dusty and almost begging for company. Once, it had probably held an impressive light fixture.

He wondered if it would hold a beam of wood.

Author's Note: Slight change from the book here. In the book, whoever is speaking to Tintin through the speaker (Max or his brother) says that they stole Tintin's parchment from his wallet when they had his flat searched. That can't be the case because the parchment wasn't found until the day after the flat was searched, and it was found by Tintin. Therefore, logically, they must have taken it off his body - or out of his wallet - when he was unconscious.