Gareth grinned. As he stood up both men heard the tinny notes of the Bob the Builder tune. ‘Mine,’ said Gareth, pulling his mobile from his pocket.
Gareth continued walking as he held the phone to his ear. He made it as far as the bar then turned on the spot, shot a quick look at Harry and left the pub, pushing aside two boys who looked barely old enough to drink.
For a second Harry didn’t move. Then he got to his feet. It would be a problem at Gareth’s work, he told himself, nothing important. The noise in the pub seemed to have increased. Over at the office-party table girls were squealing, and blowing on the paper trumpets that came out of crackers.
He took a step towards the door.
Millie would be fine. She’d been shopping with her mother that morning, the last big shop before Christmas, nothing could happen at the supermarket. A waitress was walking from one diner to the next. ‘Sherry trifle?’ she was saying. ‘Who ordered the sherry trifle?’ Even the till at the bar seemed unnaturally shrill.
‘Merry Christmas, Vicar,’ people called after him as he made his way through the crowd. He ignored them. Millie would be fine. She was never allowed out of her mother’s sight these days. Someone dropped a glass just behind him, he might even have knocked it over himself. It shattered on the tiled floor.
He pushed at the door; the cold evening air hit him and so did the silence. He took a deep breath and looked around. It was completely dark. Gareth was fifteen yards further up the hill, about to get into his truck, and for a moment Harry just wanted to let him go. He didn’t want him to turn round; he didn’t want to see that look on anyone’s face again as long as he lived.
‘Hey!’ he shouted, because for the life of him he’d forgotten what the other man was called.
Gareth turned back. There it was again, that look: sheer terror. He opened his mouth and Harry could just about make out what Gareth was croaking at him. Not Millie then, Millie was OK after all.
Joe was the one who’d gone missing.
69
‘OK, THEN, THIS IS WHAT WE KNOW.’ DETECTIVE CHIEF Superintendent Rushton stopped and cleared his throat. He had to look at the top of Alice’s head, her eyes were staring down at a stray cornflake on the kitchen table.
‘Joe was definitely still in King George’s at the interval,’ continued Rushton, ‘which took place from three fifteen to three forty-five. The front-of-house manager was quite definite about timings. Joe was bought an ice cream and more than one little lad remembers seeing him in the toilet queue. What we can’t be certain of is whether he was still in the theatre for the second half.’
‘Who the hell was sitting next to him?’ said Gareth. He hadn’t stopped moving since he and Harry had walked through the door. He paced the floor, he rocked back and forth on his heels, he wandered from room to room, shouting his thoughts out to whoever might be listening. Alice, in sharp contrast, had barely moved in three hours. Her face seemed to be getting paler and smaller by the minute.
Harry looked at his watch – almost eight o’clock. He pulled his phone from his pocket and checked the screen. No messages.
‘Well, that’s the thing,’ said DI Neasden. ‘The kids didn’t have allocated seats, they all swapped round at the interval. One or two of the little ones got scared of the baddie up on stage and went to sit next to the teachers. The theatre wasn’t completely full, so there were empty seats. No one we’ve spoken to can definitely remember seeing Joe during the second half. We’ve checked with the event stewards; there were three of them on duty and none of them remember seeing a young lad wandering round by himself.’
‘The school didn’t know for certain he was missing until they got all the kids back on the coaches and did a head count,’ said Rushton. ‘This was at ten to five. The staff went back into the theatre to search, and gave up after another thirty minutes. We were notified at twenty-five past five.’
‘He could have been gone two hours by then,’ said Gareth, pushing his way past DI Neasden to get to the sink. He ran himself a glass of water, raised it to his lips and put it down again. He turned as the kitchen door opened and Tom came in. The boy stood in the doorway, looking from one adult to the next. No one seemed to know what to say to him. Then Jenny Pickup appeared behind him, paler and more dishevelled than usual, with Millie in her arms.
‘Come on, Tom, love,’ she said. ‘Let’s leave everyone to talk. Shall we play on the computer?’
Tom opened his mouth as if to say something, but his bottom lip began to tremble. He turned and ran from the room, just as Millie started squealing to get to her mother. Alice stood and held out her arms. She took her daughter and dropped down into her seat again, as though the effort of standing was just too much.
‘I’ll stay with Tom,’ muttered Jenny.
‘Thanks,’ said Gareth. ‘I’ll come through in a sec. They should probably be in bed.’
Harry checked the screen of his mobile again as Jenny slipped out of the room.
‘OK then,’ said Rushton. ‘Next thing we did was have a look at the CCTV footage. Not the easiest of tasks; it’s a big building. As well as the pantomime, they had a conference in the Northgate Suite and the café-bar was as busy as you’d expect a few days before Christmas.’
‘And?’ said Gareth, pouring the water down the sink.
Rushton shook his head. ‘The cameras in the foyer didn’t pick up anything. Of course there were a lot of people milling around in the interval and it’s not impossible he slipped out behind someone else, but the school had a member of staff standing by the doors to prevent exactly that. She’s adamant no child went past her and she seems pretty reliable.’
‘What about other doors?’ asked Harry.
‘Including the staff entrance and the fire doors, there are nine exits from the building,’ answered Rushton, ‘some covered by cameras, some not. We did pick up one image that we want you to have a look at. Have you got it, Andy?’
Detective Constable Andy Jeffries, who looked more like a teenage hoody than a member of the Lancashire Constabulary, had his laptop ready on the kitchen table. He pressed two keys and then turned the screen to face Alice. Gareth approached the table and leaned over the back of his wife’s chair. Harry moved closer. They watched as a clip of CCTV footage started playing. They were looking at one of the corridors in King George’s Hall. Two members of staff walked towards the camera and, as they disappeared from view an adult and child came on screen, walking out of shot. The adult was wearing a baseball cap, trousers and a thick quilted jacket. The child was similarly dressed in an oversized baseball cap and a large, blue plastic raincoat. They walked to the doors, the adult with one arm around the child, and then disappeared outside.
‘What do you think?’ said Rushton.
‘Let’s see it again,’ said Gareth.
The clip was played again. ‘Impossible to be sure,’ said Gareth, after they’d seen it a third time. ‘Right sort of height for Joe, right build, but we just don’t get any sort of look at his face. What do you think, Al?’
For a second Alice didn’t react. Then she shook her head.
‘We’re going to be running that clip on the news tonight,’ said Rushton. He looked at his watch. ‘In just over an hour. Asking them to come forward. If it was nothing to do with Joe, we can rule them out.’
‘Is that a man with him?’ asked Harry. ‘Woman? Teenager?’
‘Anybody’s guess,’ said Rushton. ‘We’ve got people trying to enhance the image, but when all you’re working with is the back of someone’s head it’s tricky. Of course, these two might have nothing to do with Joe. We’ve got officers talking to all the bus drivers who were working that patch this afternoon. Taxi drivers too, in case the lad managed to sneak some money out. Needless to say, his picture’s been sent to all stations in the area, along with a description.’
Harry put his phone on the table in front of him. ‘What about cameras around the town?’ he said. ‘Don’t we all get caught on camera about a hundred times
a day? If that’s true, some of the ones around Blackburn must have picked Joe up.’
‘We’ve got a team going through them all,’ said Rushton. ‘It’ll take a while, as I’m sure you can imagine, but you’re right, some of them will have spotted him.’
‘Can we help?’ said Harry. ‘If it’s a question of manpower. We can sit and look at TV screens.’
‘It’s a good thought,’ said Rushton, ‘but these things need to be done by people not emotionally involved. Your place is here, with the family. Right, where was I?’ He glanced down at his notes. ‘We’ve got officers working their way through Blackburn town centre, asking in all the shops that are still open. They’re all carrying his photo.’
‘Joe wouldn’t just go off with a stranger though,’ said Gareth. ‘If he left King George’s with someone, it would have to be someone he knew.’
‘Quite possibly,’ said Rushton. ‘On the other hand, he is a very young lad. And people can be very convincing. We’ve also been talking to all his classmates. If Joe had any plans, he might have mentioned them to someone. Right, I need to get back to the station now. When the news bulletin goes out, the phones will go bananas.’ He reached out and patted Alice’s shoulder. ‘Keep your spirits up, lass,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘Someone will have spotted him.’
‘Hold on a second,’ said Harry, pushing back his own chair. ‘What you’re doing in Blackburn looks very thorough, but what about here?’
Rushton was frowning at him. ‘Here?’ he said.
‘Who’s looking here? I’ve seen no sign of a search going on outside. And we still haven’t found this girl Tom’s been talking about.’
‘Blackburn’s twelve miles away, Harry,’ said Rushton. ‘I doubt he ran away from the theatre only to make his way back home on his own.’
‘And you think Joe’s disappearance is just coincidence?’ said Harry. ‘That it’s not connected to what’s going on up here?’
Rushton seemed about to speak and then changed his mind. ‘Word outside, Reverend,’ he muttered, indicating the door to the hall. Harry stood and followed Rushton out of the room. They crossed the hall towards the front door, with Gareth close behind. Rushton opened his mouth to object.
‘Last time I checked, he was my son,’ said Gareth, folding his arms across his chest.
‘Three dead children were found in the garden of this house,’ said Harry. ‘And now another one is missing. This cannot be a normal abduct—’
‘Those children were girls, quite a bit younger than Joe,’ shot back Rushton. He glared at Harry for a second, then seemed to relax. ‘I’ll bring a team up in the morning,’ he said. ‘We’ll get the dogs out, I’ll see if the chopper’s available, we can look for this little girl of Tom’s. But tonight, I have to concentrate my resources on where the chances of finding the lad are greatest. He’s somewhere in Blackburn, I’m sure of it.’
70
‘FEELING BETTER?’
Evi wiped her nose and drew the handkerchief under her make-up wouldn’t smudge too badly. ‘Yes,’ she said, although she wasn’t. ‘I’m sorry.’
After the incident in church, Evi had driven straight to Gillian’s flat. There had been no response to her continued knocking. In the end, the woman from the shop beneath the flat had told her that Gillian had caught a bus not ten minutes earlier. Evi had had no choice but to return to work. Not long after she’d arrived, she’d taken a phone call from the police, telling her about Joe’s disappearance. She had cancelled her appointments for the rest of the day and then driven for nearly an hour to reach her supervisor Steve Channing’s house. His wife was a partner in a large firm of accountants and they lived in an old manor house in the heart of the Forest of Bowland.
‘No need,’ he said. ‘Now, ready to talk?’
She nodded.
‘The police aren’t connecting Joe’s disappearance with what’s been happening in the town?’ said Steve. ‘With what nearly happened to his sister twice?’
Evi shook her head. ‘No. They’re saying because he went missing in Blackburn and because he doesn’t fit the victim profile, it’s unlikely to be directly connected. The officer in charge of the case thinks the media coverage in the town recently has provoked Joe’s abduction. He thinks someone caught a glimpse of him on TV and took a fancy to him. It’s feasible, I suppose.’
Steve stood up and walked to the window. Across the street, porch lights lit up a row of stone cottages. Christmas trees stood in several of the windows. At the end of the street, a stone bridge led over a narrow river. Earlier, Evi’s arrival had coincided with that of a flock of geese. They’d landed noisily on the riverbank. Evi thought she could still hear them as they settled down for the night. Then she could hear something else. A faint beeping noise coming from her handbag. Someone was trying to phone her again.
‘What do you think?’ Steve asked her.
She couldn’t answer the phone, she could not talk to Harry right now. ‘It seems too much of a coincidence to me,’ she said, forcing herself to concentrate. ‘And it would be just stupid to ignore the possibility that whoever killed the girls has got Joe. I wonder if DCS Rushton is afraid to admit the connection because it means he’s responsible, at least partly. If he hadn’t screwed up on the earlier cases, the killer wouldn’t still be at large.’
Steve stepped away from the window and sat down again. ‘That’s a bit harsh, but you could be right,’ he said. ‘So what do you think is going on?’
‘I can’t imagine, Steve,’ she said. ‘It’s not just three murders and an abduction. We’ve also had blood in the Communion chalice, an effigy hurled from the church gallery, homes broken into, disembodied voices, and a seriously handicapped woman sneaking around and terrifying people. None of it makes any sense.’
Steve just looked at her.
‘Millie Fletcher fits the victim profile,’ said Evi. ‘I think she was targeted from the beginning, from when her family first moved into town. But why on earth would someone who had killed twice, who planned to kill again, play so many stupid tricks? It’s almost as though they were trying to …’ she stopped.
‘Go on,’ encouraged Steve.
‘Warn people,’ she finished, because Steve was looking at her in that particular way of his and she knew he wasn’t going to let her get away without answering. ‘But that makes no sense. Why would the killer try and warn the people who were in a position to …’
‘Go on.’
Oh, why couldn’t she think clearly? Joe’s disappearance had sent her straight into panic mode. ‘The killer wouldn’t warn them,’ she said at last. ‘The killer isn’t responsible for the tricks.’ She ran a hand through her hair. ‘Christ, it’s obvious,’ she went on. ‘All this time we’ve thought we’ve been looking for one person. We’re not, we’re looking for two.’
‘Now you’re getting somewhere,’ said Steve, an annoying smile on his face. ‘The killer of the little girls, who may have Joe, and the person who’s been trying to warn those in a position to protect them. Or, in Gillian’s case, not warn her, because it’s too late for that, but tell her what really happened. What did the voice keep saying to Gillian? “Mummy, Mummy, find me”? Maybe she was supposed to take that literally – find the grave.’
‘How does Harry fit into it?’ Evi asked. ‘He’s not a parent.’
‘Harry is responsible for the church,’ replied Steve.
‘The killing ground,’ whispered Evi, as a sudden vision of Joe’s pretty, pale face and long, skinny limbs swam in front of her. She blinked hard to get rid of it.
‘Exactly,’ said Steve. ‘Now, it seems to me the killer cannot be this woman you’ve been calling Ebba. Someone with a severe case of congenital hypothyroidism just wouldn’t have the mental and physical capacity to plan and carry out three abductions and murders. Let alone catch a bus to Blackburn and take a young boy from King George’s Hall. Agreed?’
‘Yes,’ said Evi. ‘Yes, of course. You’re right. But she could be the one who
’s been trying to warn people.’
Steve was leaning towards her. ‘Think about what these voices have been saying. What did she say to Tom? “Millie fall”? He took it as a threat, but turn it around and it could just as easily be a heads-up. Now then, when did you last take your medication?’
Evi had to smile. ‘I missed my six o’clock fix,’ she admitted. ‘In too much of a hurry to get here.’
‘Can I get you something?’
‘No, really, it’s not too bad. I’m trying to lower the dose anyway. Steve, if Ebba had nothing to do with the abductions, if she’s been trying to warn people, she probably knows who the killer is.’
Steve nodded. ‘Seems to me that if you find Ebba, you find your abductor. If you find her before the killer can get Joe to the church, you might be in time to save him.’
71
HARRY OPENED THE DOOR TO THE CHURCH CRYPT. THE stale smell of things long since forgotten came stealing up towards him. He picked up the flashlight and the box of tools he’d brought from his car.
The darkness below seemed to have grown denser. Rushton and his team would be up here as soon as it was light. They’d be able to turn the church and the crypt upside-down. It would be stupid for him to do anything that might jeopardize that search. On the other hand, dawn was eleven hours away. Joe could be down there now.
But it had been so much easier to walk down those steps when it was daylight outside, when he hadn’t been alone and before the corpses of murdered children started turning up. Last time he’d stood here, evil hadn’t come close enough to stroke him on the back of the neck. He shone the torch down. It was a powerful beam, but even so he couldn’t see more than a dozen steps. He was still on the first.
The door key was in the lock. If he went down and left it there, someone could close the door softly, turn the key and … the key went into his pocket. He took a deep breath, pulled his shoulders back. This was ridiculous. He was a grown man. It was just a cellar. Was this to be the night he learned he was a coward?
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