Part 12

Instead of driving up to the front gates, William and his team had left the police carriages a way down the road, and instead walked through the park on foot to keep their element of surprise. They eventually reached the main outside wall and crept their way around the outside of the stable yard towards the main gates. The yard was large and fairly dark, and for William, part of him wished he'd brought a few more men.

On arrival, they had agreed they were splitting into 4 teams of 2, each team with a specific direction to look in. A Detective with a PC for 2 teams, taking the two north corners, and a team of two senior PC's taking the south corner to the left. William kept Detective Phillips at his side. They were headed to the south right corner of the grounds.

They entered the carriage and stable yard through large iron gates that gave a gentle squeak as they opened them enough to each get through and closed them again behind them. Without a word, and keeping to the darkest parts so as not to alert anyone to their presence, each pair quickly went off in their agreed separate directions with their guns ready.

The yard was noiseless apart from the occasional crunch of gravel under their shoes, and the odd whinny or huff from a horse in the distance. In places it had an eerily cold mist floating above the ground.

Whilst the night was dark, each of the large stone buildings had a fire lit torch hanging on most corners, which gave them some small pockets of light. William was grateful that there was a full moon and it was a cloudless night to help them see as they searched, even if it did make it bitterly cold. Their breath puffed out in white wisps in front of them as they walked.

The whole site had a number of different stone carriage house buildings, and black wooden horse stables. Some large some small, and it was anyone's guess which one Eliza might be in, if she was in any of them. William tried his best to push that thought out of his mind and concentrate on the matter in hand.

William and Detective Phillips walked quietly to their side of the site. There were wooden black horse stables to the right of them and various sized grey stone carriage house sheds to the left.

Heading to the left and over towards the carriage sheds, the first building they entered was a large stone building, full of 12 enclosed black painted Brougham carriages, each separated by wooden posts.

They conducted a thorough search of that building, checking each old looking worn down Brougham carriage and the space around them, opening each carriage door and searching inside them for clues. Phillips examined the whips that were lined up on wall hooks and the equipment racks and William looked over anything that didn't move and looked suspicious.

After they were sure it was empty they slowly walked back out and over to the next building to repeat their process. There was nothing of consequence in that shed, and they moved onto the next one. That one was similar to the first and held no clues.

They continued their methodical search into the next shed, this one full of different kinds of carriages, some elegant Growler branded ones that were large and fully enclosed with doors and a roof and 12 spoke wheels. There were also newer Hansom cabs that were wide open with no doors making them easy to check their wide leathers seats and around their even larger 18 spoke wheels.

The two detectives slowly walked the long length of the building. William was about to walk back up the shed to walk out the door they came in, when he noticed a small single doorway at the back of the shed. He motioned towards Phillips to follow him.

The door was so small that both men had to duck to walk through it as they exited the building. It was almost pitch-black this side of the building, with no fire lit torches here and the start of the thick woods just behind, but William continued to walk around carefully.

In the silence of the night, they could hear the gentle sound of something breathing in the distance, but it wasn't like the sound a person would make. It sounded more like a horse puffing from it nose, but the stables were the other side of the buildings, so it wasn't coming from there.

William tried to follow where he thought it was coming from. They continued walking around in the dark in search for the owner of the sound, until set back in the darkness towards the woods at the edge of the yard, they could make out a large horse hidden in the dark shadow of another building.

Without the aid of a light it was only the white stripe of fur down its nose and a ring of white fur around its hooves that made it stand out. As they got closer, they could see it was strapped up to a black enclosed Growler carriage, just waiting for its driver to return.

Slowly they approached the horse, afraid they might startle it and give away their presence. The horse gave a grunt as they got close, but Detective Phillips stepped in front and fed it something from his left hand, then petted it, settling it from alerting anyone to them. William looked at him curiously.

"Sugar cubes," he whispered. "Horse's love them," Phillips assured him.

William wasn't sure a sugar cube was the best thing to feed a horse, but it seemed to calm the animal while he moved on towards the carriage and Phillips petted the horse's nose, and appeared to feed it another cube.

The carriage door was unlocked, William opened it and glanced inside. He saw PC Honeychurch's police helmet half hidden on the floor under the seat to the left and Eliza's burgundy hat lay abandoned on the far corner of the same seat. At the very least that meant she was potentially here. William nodded to Phillips who came and stood next to him.

"That's Eliza's," William said quietly, pointing to the hat. Phillips agreed, having seen her wearing it earlier. "Lets keep moving."

Encouraged by finding Eliza's hat, William and Phillips moved on carefully in the darkness. They moved quickly through another carriage building before walking round to the next one.

They were just about to walk inside that building, when William looked towards the darken wood behind the building. On the ground, there were large wooden cellar doors that were set away from the back of the building walls. He walked over it, and pressed his foot lightly on it. It had a lock on one side and it didn't budge down when he trod on it.

Phillips put his hand out, motioning for William to stop. He put his hand inside his jacket pocket and pulled out a roll up dark green cloth that was held together with a thin cloth tie. He untied it, and shook it out reveling a selection of small metal tools tucked in tiny pockets inside it. He bent down and picked the lock with ease then opened up one side of the wooden doors.

It was pitch-black as they looked down in the void below. There were stone steps down on one side, and a slope the other, presumably for a horse. William couldn't see why anyone would want to take a horse down there, unless it was perhaps for slaughter.

Both men felt an uneasy nervousness in their stomachs as they exchanged a glance silently admitting they were going to have to go down there. William moved to grab a fire lit torch from the side of the nearest building, and letting out a heavy sigh, stepped forward to walk down the steps, and Phillips followed him.

At the bottom of the stairs in the cellar was a large long dark corridor. William held the fire torch high above his head to help him see his surrounding better. From what he could make out there were four sets of double wooden doors, two sets on either side. Hanging along the walls were various large rusty metal tools. There were picks, various sized saws, chains, horse muzzles and leather whips. What the hell was this place?

William resisted the urge to call out Eliza's name, not wanting to alert anyone further to them. Using the torch, he looked over to the two doors on the left then to the two on the right. The two on the left appeared to have a lock on them.

He motioned to Phillips to use his tools to unlock the first door. It didn't take him more then maybe 10 seconds to unlock it, and William had to admit he was suitably impressed with his new colleagues skill. He handed over the fire torch to Phillips and held out his gun, kicked the door open then walked in slowly.

He rounded the door and heard Eliza scream before she caught him off guard as she launched herself at him. Despite her tied hands, she partly knocked him off balance as she tried with all her might to struggle and attack him; unaware of who he was in the darkness.

It took William a few seconds to recover himself from her surprised ambush. He managed to duck her tied hands and then grabbed her round her waist. He spun them around and turned his back to her body slightly, protecting himself as she thumped his shoulder with her fists as hard as she possibly could.

"It's me, it's me." William finally repeated quietly, till her hits slowed and he was able to steady them both. They were both breathing heavily, while she took a moment to relax as she realised it wasn't the carriage driver returning, it was William.

Phillips had rounded the door and watched them both struggle with each other before they stopped fighting in a slight huddled of arms together. He used the fire torch to quickly look at the walls around and found a metal holder by the doorway to hang it in, and lit the room a fraction more.

With the aid of Phillip's light, William could actually see Eliza. He stared at her face noticing the large cut on the temple and dried blood on the side of her cheek. He placed a hand gently on her cheek and turned it to the light to examine the cut better.

"You okay?" He asked quietly, as he practically sat her down on the floor.

He could feel that she was shaking, but he couldn't tell if it was because of the cold, fear or pure adrenaline. He dropped his hand from her face and picked up her hands looking at the thick rope tied around them.

"I'm fine, I thought you were him," she said, relieved that it was William that had found her and not her captor.

William put his gun by his foot and made quick work of untying the rope to free her hands. He noticed the red raw burn marks on both her wrists from trying to free herself from the rope.

He rubbed his thumb over one and looked up and held her eyes for just a second. She was hurt, and he silently blamed himself for it. He should have taken her home himself. He should have made sure she got home safely.

"Where is he?" He whispered anxiously.

"I don't know. He was here. I'm not sure how long ago."

There was calmness to her tone as she felt her body relax for the first time in what felt like hours. Time had seemed to slow while she was held here. She had no idea how many minutes or hours had actually passed, only that it was still night.

"We found the carriage still outside, he won't be far." William told her, he knew they still weren't yet safe. "Who is he?" He needed to know what they were up against.

"He wouldn't say, but I don't think his name is Barnaby. The missing girl, Natalie, she's in the next room," Eliza whispered.

She wanted to go to her and make sure she was okay, untie her and get her out of the room next door.

William nodded and turned round to tell Detective Phillips to go and get the missing girl, but saw he the man creep up behind Phillips who had his back to the doorway. He was holding up a long metal pole ready to hit him.

"Phillips!"

Both William and Eliza shouted in unison, but it was too late. The man had stalked his way in the room, and hit Phillips hard on the back of his head with the smooth shiny metal pole, sending him crashing to the floor.

To be continued …