by Sarah Rayne
‘All right. Now listen, if there’s anything you think of that might help us – even the tiniest detail, even if you think it sounds ridiculous – tell us at once.’
He paused, as if allowing her time to consider this, and Nell said, ‘There’s nothing I can think of. Only—’
‘Yes?’
‘She’s been having one or two quite bad nightmares,’ said Nell slowly. ‘She’s been really terrified of them.’
He did not move but there was the impression that he sat up a bit straighter. ‘Can you describe the nightmares?’
‘She said someone was in her room,’ said Nell. ‘Just – standing in a corner of her bedroom, watching her. Oh, but – that couldn’t be actually true, could it? There couldn’t have been someone getting into her room—’ She broke off, hearing the escalating note of panic in her voice, frightened that she might lose control altogether.
‘No,’ he said, so definitely that Nell relaxed. ‘We’d have found signs, and you’d certainly have known if anyone was getting in and hiding somewhere.’
‘Yes, of course. And the only access to Beth’s room is through the window.’
‘Which is two storeys up. Did she describe this figure, though?’
‘She said—’ Nell forced herself to use Beth’s own words. ‘She said he was trying to find her, but he couldn’t because he had no eyes.’
‘Nasty,’ said DI Brent, non-committally. ‘But that could give us a bit of a lead. It’s possible that she saw someone outside the school this morning who looked like her nightmare man. A blind chap, perhaps, or a cripple of some kind.’
‘And ran away from him?’ said Nell, torn between panic all over again and half-guilty hope, because if this was the solution it might not be so bad.
‘It’s not beyond possibility,’ said Brent. ‘I’ll pass it on to uniform right away.’
‘I’ll stay here,’ said the policewoman as the inspector got up to leave. ‘That’s all right, is it, Mrs West?’
‘Nell.’
‘OK. I’m Lisa. We like to be at hand in this kind of situation, just to help out and relay any news.’
Nell did not know whether she wanted this or not. She was not keen on the idea of a stranger, however kind and efficient, being in the flat, offering cups of tea and reassurance every five minutes. But sitting on her own would be even worse, and probably it was police procedure to have an officer there. It would not be for long, of course. Beth would turn up at any minute. She looked at the clock and saw, incredulously, that it was only a quarter past twelve. Only just over three hours since she had dropped Beth off at the school gates.
It was at this point her eyes lit on the old diaries, on the top of the bookshelves, and the vagrant memory clicked into place. Alice had recorded details of a missing child – a child who had been seven years old. She went into the kitchen where Lisa was washing up the teacups.
‘This is most likely of no help, but the inspector said even the smallest thing—’
‘You’ve remembered something?’
‘I think another seven-year-old girl went missing from Marston Lacy in the nineteen sixties,’ said Nell. ‘And I know that’s over forty years ago, but—’
‘But there are such things as copycat crimes,’ said Lisa at once, and Nell was grateful for her quick understanding. ‘And there are weird people in the world nowadays. I’ll call the DI and let him know.’ She reached in a pocket for her phone. ‘There probably won’t be a connection, but let’s not ignore anything. How on earth did you know about it?’
‘It was in some old diaries I found,’ said Nell.
When the voice on the phone announced itself as being Detective Inspector Brent from Marston Lacy CID, Michael assumed it was something to do with Charect House. Perhaps the builders had blown the place up, or maybe there had been a break-in.
But it was nothing to do with Charect House at all. DI Brent wanted to talk to him about Mrs Nell West and her daughter.
‘Beth?’ said Michael, puzzled. ‘Is anything wrong?’ He listened with mounting horror as the inspector explained that Beth West had apparently vanished that morning.
‘That being so, sir, we’re just checking on recent visitors to the antique shop.’
‘Well, I was there at the weekend,’ said Michael. ‘I called in to introduce myself to Nell West. She’s helping some American friends of mine find furniture for a house they’ve just acquired in the area. Charect House. I expect you know it.’
‘I do indeed, Dr Flint. What time would that be? When you called in?’
‘Late afternoon on Friday. I can’t remember the exact time. Oh, and I was there next morning, on the way back to Oxford. Just very briefly, though. About eleven-ish, that was.’
‘Any particular reason for that second call, sir?’
‘Not specially. There was an idea that Beth might become friendly with the daughter of my American friends – they’re the same age – so I thought I’d take the acquaintanceship a bit further. Inspector, what d’you think’s happened to Beth?’
‘We don’t know yet, but I’m sure we’ll find her,’ said the inspector in what Michael thought was an automatically reassuring voice. ‘Tell me, Dr Flint, is there anyone who can vouch for your movements from around eight thirty this morning?’
‘What?’ said Michael, stunned. ‘Are you wondering if I’ve got anything to do with—’ He broke off, fighting the sudden anger. ‘I’m sorry. It’s understandable that you should ask. A stranger befriending Nell West and her daughter – a single man. And two days later the daughter disappears.’
‘I’m grateful you see it that way, sir. It’s purely for elimination, you know.’
‘I had breakfast in my rooms here at seven thirty,’ said Michael. ‘I can’t back that up – oh wait, though, the porter brought up the milk, he’d remember. After that I had a meeting with my faculty head – eight forty-five. That’s a regular Monday morning event. There were four others there – you can have their names, but they’re all senior members of the college. At ten I had a tutorial with four of my second-year students – we had a cup of coffee together at eleven. Any more?’
‘That’s absolutely fine, Dr Flint,’ said Inspector Brent warmly. ‘If there’s anything that occurs to you that might help us, I’d be glad if you’d give me a call. Here’s the number.’ Michael foraged on his desk for a pen and scribbled the number down. ‘Anything at all that you might have noticed while you were in the shop.’
‘I do remember Beth having a vicious nightmare,’ said Michael. ‘I’m no psychologist, but I suppose that might indicate some deep-seated fear. I wouldn’t have thought it would cause her to run away, though.’
‘We know about the nightmares,’ said the inspector. ‘Thank you, Dr Flint.’
Clearly, he was preparing to ring off. Michael said quickly, ‘Inspector – is there anything I could do to help? Is Nell – Mrs West – coping?’
‘Just about,’ said Inspector Brent. ‘The parents usually manage to stay in control until there’s a – well, some definite news.’
‘I see. Thank you.’ This time he did ring off. Michael sat wrapped in thought for a few moments, then hunted out the card Nell had given him and, before he could think too much about it, dialled her number.
She answered at once, with a breathless eagerness that brought home to him how she must be sitting next to the phone, willing it to ring, willing there to be good news.
He said, quickly, ‘Nell, it’s Michael Flint. I’ve just had a call from Inspector Brent. This is dreadful. Is there any news?’
‘Oh, Michael— No, nothing yet. It’s nice of you to phone, though.’
‘Would you let me know when she’s found?’ he said.
‘Yes, of course. Thank you for saying “when”.’
‘No clues as to what happened? Where she might be?’
‘No, except—’
‘The nightmares?’ said Michael.
‘Yes.’ He heard the relief in her voice, as if
she was grateful to him for identifying the nightmares as a possible clue. ‘And there’s one other thing – it’s only very small, but I discovered that another seven-year-old girl vanished in Marston Lacy in the nineteen sixties. I know it’s too far back to have any real connection, but still.’
‘But people sometimes try to reproduce old crimes,’ he said. ‘Does Brent think that’s possible?’
‘He’s going to check the files. He said it might take a few hours because he’ll have to get them from a central division or something.’
‘I’ll ring off,’ said Michael. ‘In case Brent tries to get through. But here’s my number, Nell – I mean it about letting me know.’
‘Thank you.’
He hesitated, wondering if he should offer to go up there, but then thought the acquaintance was too slight. She would have other people she would prefer to be with – family, her husband’s people.
As he hung up, a number of thoughts were arranging themselves in layers inside his mind, like the striations of the earth.
There was the memory of Beth, sobbing and insisting a man had been in her room – a man with no eyes.
Beneath that was the thought of Jack’s emails about Ellie, exactly the same age, also sobbing with terror that there was a man in her room – a man with holes where his eyes should be.
These two thoughts bound themselves together, to create a single curious fact – two seven-year-old girls, living thousands of miles apart, had both been having what sounded to be an identical nightmare.
On top of this was Nell’s mention of a girl having vanished forty years ago. This was a thin, insubstantial layer, probably of little account. But overlying all of this was a very solid and insistent thought, and it was the memory of that first afternoon at Charect House – the afternoon Michael had seen a man crouching on the stair. A man whose eyes had been so deeply shadowed they had looked like black pits.
He considered the memory for a moment, then reached for the phone and dialled DI Brent’s number.
Brent listened intently to Michael’s story of the intruder at Charect House.
‘I didn’t make the connection when you phoned,’ said Michael. ‘And I’d have to say I only glimpsed the man. I was there on my own at the time, and I didn’t feel inclined to confront him. So I dialled the police and waited in my car until someone came out. We searched the house, but he’d gone. Probably scrambled out of a window at the back and down a drainpipe or something.’
‘Your description of him sounds very like Beth West’s nightmare,’ said Brent thoughtfully.
‘Is it possible he’s been watching her, and that she was half-aware of it and it caused the nightmares?’ But that did not explain Ellie having the same nightmare.
‘It not impossible. Dr Flint, I don’t suppose there’s any chance you could—’
‘Drive back up there?’
‘Could you?’ said Brent. ‘To look at photos – maybe spend an hour or so with a police artist to see if we can put together a computer image? It could be done via email, but it wouldn’t give the best result. Say tomorrow morning? It wouldn’t take more than a couple of hours. We could arrange transport if that’s a problem.’
‘No need,’ said Michael. ‘I’ll set off first thing in the morning.’
NINE
He reached the police station around lunchtime.
‘There’s no news,’ said Inspector Brent, taking him into an interview room and introducing a young tousled-looking man who was apparently trained in creating computerized facial images. ‘So I don’t need to tell you how serious the situation now is.’
‘Oh God, no, you don’t. Can I go to see Nell West after we’ve done this? Not if it would hassle her.’
‘I’ll call and ask,’ said Brent and went out, leaving Michael to attempt a description of the figure he had seen on the stairs at Charect House. It was a difficult task, but in the end between them they came up with a reasonable image.
‘I’d have to say my memory isn’t very exact, though,’ said Michael, critically surveying the screen. ‘And if a man looking like that has been prowling around Marston Lacy, I’d have thought he’d be noticed.’ A doughy-looking face with sunken eyes and a heavy jowl looked out of the computer screen.
‘So would I,’ said the artist. ‘Still, it’s worth a shot.’
DI Brent thought it was worth a shot as well. ‘If that’s what Beth West saw, I’m not surprised it gave her nightmares,’ he said. ‘But we’ll get copies made right away and do another house-to-house. That’ll take a long time, unfortunately – there are a lot of outlying districts in this part of the world. Odd cottages scattered along lanes. It’s not like a town where you just walk along a street, knocking at each door.’
Michael said, ‘Did you find out any more about that other girl who vanished in the nineteen sixties? Nell told me about her.’
‘Oh, that girl turned up. Wait a bit, I’ve still got the report somewhere – yes, here it is. Just the basic details were on file, but they’re quite clear. She was reported missing around half-past four – hadn’t come home from school, and a search was mounted later that evening. Apparently, they didn’t find her for nearly two days, but she was safe and well when they did.’
‘Where was she?’
‘Doesn’t say.’ A wry half-smile lit his seamed face. ‘Report-keeping wasn’t so good in those days. They’ve just recorded the “missing” incident and the outcome.’
‘Pity,’ said Michael. ‘Did you phone Nell? Would it be all right for me to call?’
‘She says you’re very welcome. My advice, though, is if you do, don’t stay too long. She’s all right for short spells, but that’s about all.’
‘I will call,’ said Michael. ‘But I’ll bear your advice in mind. In the meantime, Inspector, does Marston Lacy have a newspaper? Ah, good. Can you give me directions? And d’you know if it keeps archives?’
The newspaper offices turned out to be part of a large group, with a chain of papers covering two counties, which Michael thought augured well for an archive department.
The head office was on the other side of the county. He followed Inspector Brent’s directions carefully, realizing he was heading due west, and that he was close to, if not actually crossing, the border into Wales. Village names started to begin with two LLs and end with rhy or og, and most of the signs were in Welsh without the English translation. He rather liked this; he liked the feeling that this was where England crossed over into Wales and where the lyrical Welsh language still lived.
The newspaper said it did indeed have almost all the back issues for the Marston Lacy and Bryn Marston Advertiser, as far back as 1915.
‘We started as a news-sheet to inform people about the Great War,’ said the receptionist. ‘There’s no problem whatever about access to back issues. We get a lot of people wanting to trace odds and ends of local history. And it’s what newspapers are for, isn’t it? To inform people. What years were you interested in?’
‘The nineteen sixties, please.’
As he sat down at the microfiche screen, he thought this was where and how history was stored nowadays. It no longer preserved itself in carefully folded tissue paper, with lavender or camphor or magic charms scattered in the creases, nor was it set down in crabbed writing on curling brown paper, or stored in leather-bound books or pipe rolls or tax chronicles. The modern age packed its history away on microchips and SIM cards and within the electronic and Ethernet mysteries deep inside computers. Michael considered this, and he wondered what would happen to the present age’s history if the language of computers were to be lost. Would this present civilization become lost for all time, or would the people of the far future be able to decipher the fragments that survived, in the way Egyptologists deciphered tomb writings?
The sixties, as experienced in this part of the British Isles, looked to be a slightly gentler version of what was going on elsewhere. This quiet part of England-going-on-Wales did not seem to have succumbed to f
lower power or free love, although people in the photographs wore miniskirts and boots, and the girls had long, straight hair and Cleopatra-style eye make-up. The men sported Beatles’ hairstyles and narrow trousers.
At first he thought he was not going to find what he wanted – that the brief disappearance of a seven-year-old girl would have been too slight an incident to warrant a newspaper report. And then, quite suddenly, it was there. Three columns of a news story, with a photo of a small girl with long hair and a slightly turned-up nose that gave her an impish, rather attractive, look.
MISSING GIRL FOUND SAFE AND WELL IN CHURCHYARD
Local girl Evie Blythe was last night found alive and well in St Paul’s Churchyard, after being missing from her home for almost forty-eight hours. Local residents helped look for her after she failed to return home from school on Tuesday after a sports’ afternoon – searching all night and most of the following day.
At first it was feared Evie, 7, had been abducted, and fears grew for her safety. However, she was found by searchers near an old grave in the disused part of the churchyard, apparently suffering a temporary loss of memory.
Older inhabitants of Marston Lacy recalled a similar case before the war, when a small girl vanished for several days and was later found in the same churchyard, apparently with no notion of how she got there. But police have quashed speculation that there could be some form of copycat crime at work.
Superintendent Halden told our reporter that not only were the two cases a good thirty years apart, but in neither case did there appear to be any sinister motive. ‘We can only conclude that Evie was overcome by tiredness after the school sports’ event,’ he said. ‘And that she succumbed to a bout of temporary amnesia. We’re delighted to have found her safe and well.’
It is known that short-term amnesia can sometimes strike at random, more often after some form of trauma. It is unusual in so young a child, but not entirely unknown.