Chapter 9

 

 

Ben’s gran, Alice Williams, woke up with a sharp headache behind her eyes and the feeling of cotton wool in her mouth. She stirred, groaning with the effort and managed to sit up and look about. She was in a large but sparsely furnished bedroom. Two curtained windows were in the far wall and a closed door on the left. Through the thin curtains she could see the night shrouded buildings of the city.

 

She managed to focus on what had happened to her and slowly the night’s events came back. She and Ben had been about to have dinner when the doorbell had rung. She had opened the door to find Alex Runcin standing there with another man.

 

Alex Runcin had asked to see Ben… no, had said he wanted to give something to Ben. A reward, he had said. She had opened the security door and then the other man, a big brute of a fellow had charged in, grabbed her and stuffed something smelly against her face.

 

Then she had blacked out and had now woken in a strange bedroom. And where was Ben, she thought?

 

She was suddenly quite frightened. Just who was this Alex Runcin that could just… kidnap her and she supposed Ben. She remembered he had been at Mr Wallace’s funeral and wondered whether it had something to do with him.

 

She swung her legs off the bed, her head spinning slightly, still a little woozy from the knockout drug. Her legs were a little wobbly, but she managed to walk to a window. She parted the curtains and found herself high up a building, the city streets far below.

 

She thought she might be in a hotel or maybe a private penthouse of some kind. She wondered what time it was and how long she’d been knocked out. But she didn’t have a watch on and there was no clock in the room. There was no phone either, so there was no way to call for help.

 

But Alice was suddenly angry enough to find out just why she had been kidnapped. She stepped to the closed door of the room and found it unlocked. She opened it and peered down a long hallway. There were other closed doors along it, but a door at the far end was open. She could hear noise coming from it that sounded like a television or radio.

 

She walked down the hallway and stepped through the door into a large lounge room. To her left was a set of twin doors she guessed led out of the penthouse. To her right were floor to ceiling length curtained windows.

 

But against the far wall was a large bank of televisions screens, a good dozen of them. Each was tuned to a programme, but with the sound now turned off. Then a voice spoke.

 

‘Ah… Mrs Williams. You’re awake.’

 

Aunt Alice turned to find Alex Runcin seated in one of two lounges around a coffee table facing the screens.

 

‘What’s… what’s going on here?’ she asked, her voice shaky with fright. ‘Why have you brought me here?’

 

‘Come and sit down, Mrs Williams,’ Alex Runcin replied, waving a hand at a couch. ‘And I’ll explain what this is all about.’

 

‘I want to know why you have kidnapped Ben and I!’ Alice demanded, not moving from where she was.

 

‘Oh, Ben isn’t here, Mrs Williams,’ Alex Runcin replied. ‘Please, come and sit down and have a coffee or tea. I’m sure your throat is a bit dry from the drug that was used to sedate you.’

 

Alice said nothing, eyeing the man warily. If Ben wasn’t here, where was he, she thought? He had been in the house when Alex Runcin had arrived.

 

‘I don’t understand?’ she said. ‘Ben was in the house tonight. What have you done with him?’

 

‘As I said, he isn’t here and I don’t know where he is. I only have you and that will suffice for the moment.’

 

‘There’s a law against kidnapping,’ Alice said firmly.

 

‘Oh, there’s a law for everything in our lives, Mrs Williams,’ Alex Runcin said, then added bluntly. ‘But few laws concern someone as powerful as I am.’

 

That comment suddenly woke Alice to who Alex Runcin was. She came over to sit in the lounge opposite him.

 

‘I know who you are!’ she said. ‘You’re the CEO and owner of Runcin Limited, one of the biggest multinational companies in the world.’

 

Alex Runcin nodded.

 

‘That’s correct.’

 

‘Then what does someone as rich and powerful like you want with Ben and I?’ she asked.

 

‘Ben has something… or knows something that I want that belonged to John Wallace,’ he replied.

 

So it did have something to do with John Wallace, she thought. Then a new, disturbing thought came to her.

 

‘Did… did you have something to do with the fire that destroyed his house?’ she asked. ‘They said that its cause was suspicious.’

 

‘Yes, you could say I was involved.’

 

‘That almost makes you a murderer!’ she said accusingly.

 

A thin smile creased Mr Runcin’s lips and his curt reply chilled Alice to the bone.

 

‘It wasn’t the first and won’t be the last time I have had to do something so unpleasant. Like my father, my grandfather and my great grandfather before me, we Runcin’s have never allowed anyone to stop us from getting what we want. John Wallace has the distinction of not only causing me trouble, but great grandfather as well.’

 

Alice gave a nervous laugh.

 

‘If John Wallace upset your great grandfather, he must have been a child!’

 

‘Oh, it has been some time since John Wallace was a child, Ms Parker,’ Mr Runcin replied. ‘You might be interested to know that at the time of his death, he was almost two hundred years old.’

 

Alice almost laughed at the ludicrous statement, but the serious expression on Alex Runcin’s face stopped her.

 

‘You’re being serious!’ she said in shock.

 

‘I have never been more serious, Mrs Williams,’ Alex Runcin replied. ‘John Wallace was born in eighteen hundred and ten, though his name was different then.’

 

‘But that…. that’s impossible!’ Alice exclaimed in disbelief.

 

‘Oh, it’s certainly an impossibility in this world, but I have good reason to believe that John Wallace had some way of visiting other worlds. In one of those worlds he acquired the ability to have a very long life. And I believe your Ben knows something about it.’

 

‘Ben never mentioned anything to me,’ Alice replied.  ‘I think he would have told me.’

 

‘Oh, I don’t think so, Mrs Williams,’ Alex Runcin said. ‘Not if it was something so unusual, so alien to this world that you would not have believed him had he told you.’

 

‘Then what do you think he has… or knows?’ Aunt Alice asked.

 

‘I think he was access to some kind of machine, or a tool, a key… something that allowed John Wallace to visit alien worlds. The same thing that allowed Ben used to escape from your house tonight when I knew for a fact that he was there.’

 

‘Do you mean some kind of …time travel or something?’ Alice asked, her mind whirling with such a thought.

 

‘Perhaps… or something that opens doors to other worlds. It doesn’t really matter what it is, just the fact that I want it.’

 

Alice’s eyes widened as the truth dawned on her.

 

‘So that’s why I am here,’ she said. ‘I’m the bait to bring Ben here.’

 

Alex Runcin nodded.

 

‘I have left a message for him outlining what I want for your safety.’

 

‘You… you want to slow your own ageing, don’t you?’ Alice said.

 

‘Oh, I’m not concerned with merely slowing my ageing, Mrs Williams,’ he replied bluntly. ‘If there is a world out there that can do that, then there’ll be one that can stop it altogether.’