by Jane Holland
‘I can make a call for you. But you’ll need to park up and wait. I have to tell you, it could take an hour or more for anyone to get back to you. There’s a bit of a situation in hand down there. If you could turn your vehicle and park over there . . .’
The officer points back the way we’ve come, then spots a scruffy-looking man trying to sneak past him with a camera. ‘Hey, hang on there, I’ve already told you no,’ he shouts, and turns away to deal with the photographer.
While Jon has been wrangling with the officer, I have been watching all the people milling about by the farmhouse. There are so many cars, police vans, even an ambulance, it leaves me with a cold feeling of dread.
From where we are, I can only see the gable-end of the house. It’s a dirty off-white, mud-splashed at the base, presumably from the track that runs around it. No windows, just a blank wall. I can see people congregating beneath it, discussing things, pointing at outbuildings, exchanging information. The entrance must be round the other side, I guess; a steady number keep heading that way, then returning for more pointing and discussion.
Two men are standing apart from the rest. One is a tall man in a suit and duffle coat, with silvery hair – DI Pascoe. He’s on his phone, talking earnestly. The other man is DS Dryer.
‘There’s Paul Dryer,’ I say promptly.
Jon revs the engine, then pulls away from the policeman without waiting for him to come back. ‘Bloody jobsworth,’ he mutters.
He is driving too fast, no doubt to make it harder for the policeman to chase after us. Not a good idea. The car bounces up and down through deep mud ruts, their contours made worse by all the traffic this track must have seen today. Once we are nearer the place, I can see more fully what’s happening. The front door to the farmhouse has been wedged open for easier access, and people are traipsing in and out with bagged items and boxes of equipment.
There’s one old car parked opposite the farmhouse. Not a gold Volvo but a battered Land Rover that looks like it’s nearing the end of its useful life. Its greeny-grey body is smeared with dust streaks after the recent rain, perfectly in keeping with the farmhouse and its surroundings. Both doors and the back door are open, and a man in blue overalls is peering inside, chatting on the phone to someone.
A second ambulance is parked nearby, its back doors also flung wide but nobody is inside. A couple of dogs are being released from a large specialist police van, a spaniel and a German Shepherd, both dogs alert, both wagging their tails for their handlers. Forensics are there too, with bags and cameras, their all-white suits making the place look like the scene of a nuclear disaster.
But it’s not the Land Rover or the farmhouse that is attracting the most attention. It’s one of the outbuildings, its far edge just visible from the track. There are police in what looks like heavily padded riot gear ranged outside, crouched down behind cars as though expecting resistance, perhaps even a shoot-out, which frightens me.
What the hell is happening in there?
Jon pulls sharply to a halt, parking up on the muddy grass bank, maybe thirty yards from the house itself. The car tilts at an angle, but seems stable enough. Besides, there are already several other cars parked along the bank and nobody seems bothered by our arrival.
‘Right, let’s find out what’s going on.’ Jon jumps out without waiting for me, and slams his door shut behind him.
I follow more slowly.
My mouth is dry and my hands are shaking.
Not good.
I should be like Jon, full of nervous energy and thankful that something is being done at last, that progress has been made on my son’s disappearance. But I’m not.
Instead, it feels like my insides have been hollowed out with a spoon.
Because something is wrong here.
Very, very wrong.
Chapter Twenty-Three
My gaze has been moving restlessly across the scene the whole time. I have seen police cars and police vans, and their uniformed occupants wandering about the place. I have seen plain-clothes police officers directing activities. I have seen two ambulances now. I have seen paramedics in their distinctive green jackets standing outside the front porch of the farmhouse. I have seen the sniffer dogs and their handlers. But I have seen no sign that there are any babies here. Nobody is cradling a bundle, or tending to a crying child. And we are the only people here who look like parents of a missing child. Surely if the babies had been found, there would be other parents here by now, looking lost and fearful like us, asking questions, demanding information.
Which means one of two things: either the police were mistaken and this is not where the Cornish Snatcher has been hiding out, or they are in the right place – and all the babies are dead.
I shut myself off from that thought at once. Shield my mind from it, like someone sheltering behind a wall during a controlled explosion.
I can’t afford to flake out, I tell myself.
Not again.
And particularly not here.
DI Pascoe has finished his phone call. He speaks briefly to Dryer, who bends his head to listen to the reply, hands clasped behind his back, nodding like a courtier listening to a king.
Then Dryer turns and gestures in the air, a circular motion like a cowboy indicating, ‘Round ’em up, boys!’ in a Western. There is sudden movement, everyone in the waiting crowd moving forward at once, but with precision rather than confusion. Several of the officers in protective gear are carrying rifles, I realise.
Nobody seems to have noticed us.
Jon has stopped, staring at the police marksmen. ‘Fuck,’ is all he says, but then holds up a hand when I try to follow them. ‘Don’t be stupid.’
Again, I look at him sideways, but say nothing.
This isn’t the time.
I decide that I rather like being stupid though.
Slipping round behind his back, I cross quietly to the other side of the single track and scramble up on to the opposite bank. Then I balance along the uneven slope of the bank, not caring whether Jon has seen me or not, and pick my way across the mud and tangled roots until I reach the entrance to the farmyard. There’s no gate here, only a wire boundary fence that stops on either side of the track. The fence is roughly waist-high, rickety and sagging between posts, with plastic bags and newspaper fragments trapped between the wires in places. I guess it was put up once upon a time to stop livestock wandering, but the livestock is long gone.
I walk round the edge of the fence, staring.
Dryer is marching towards the outbuilding, flanked by the other officers. He’s not as smartly turned out as the last time we saw him, his grey suit a little more tired, his shoes and the base of his trousers not surprisingly showing mud flecks.
I study his profile, trying to gauge the seriousness of the situation from his expression. But he’s tight-lipped and grim, almost blank in his determination; it’s hard to draw any useful conclusions from that. I am more worried by the fact that guns are apparently required. It makes me wonder who on earth is in that building, and what might happen to any babies also inside there.
The outbuilding they have surrounded looks like an old barn, probably built a little later than the farmhouse. It has another high gable-end angled towards the road, only this time with one large window in the end nearest us, perhaps where it once stood open to the weather. The outside walls are in a serious state of disrepair, the wooden frame decaying and sagging towards one side, partially repaired with what looks like straw and mud. Its steeply sloping roof has a large number of slates missing, with some kind of plastic sheeting to cover the gaps. But the plastic sheeting has torn and come loose, flapping limply in the breeze, as though whoever did the job was not a professional. Either that or it was done a long time ago, and never intended to be a permanent arrangement.
The whole structure looks like it might blow away in the next big storm. Though at a guess I would say it has managed to withstand even the most violent gales for at least the past two hundred
years. Maybe longer.
Some kind of order is given. Then I hear shouts. And what sounds like a gunshot from inside the barn.
I stop dead, my heart thudding violently.
A small group of officers in protective gear, at least two of them with rifles raised to their shoulders, suddenly rise up and charge the double doors to the barn. The doors are thumped open with a handheld battering ram, then the men flood inside, shouting hoarsely.
Others rapidly follow, heads down, charging in. More marksmen wait behind the parked cars, their rifles trained on the building.
There is a lot more shouting inside, though all I can hear is a deep voice yelling, ‘Get down, get down, get down on the floor!’ Like a crazed DJ shouting instructions to clubbers. I wish I could see what is happening inside, but I can’t seem to move, my feet rooted, my pulse racing.
DS Dryer goes in last, striding towards the barn with several others beside him, presumably other plain-clothes officers.
A moment later, the police drag a woman out of the barn. Her glasses are askew, one lens cracked, and her ankle-length dress is dusty from where they made her lie on the floor. She looks half-mad, wrestling against her captors, repeating something in a thick Cornish accent, a streak of dirt on her cheek.
An officer is following them with some kind of weapon in his gloved hand. An air rifle, by the look of it.
I stare at her as she passes, and my stomach heaves in shock.
It’s the woman from the supermarket. The thick-set woman with black hair and glasses. The one who wanted to make a complaint against me.
The one who tried to touch Harry.
I can’t help myself. I start towards her, my hands outstretched.
‘I knew it was you,’ I shout at her, shaking and wild with rage, my body flooded with useless adrenalin. ‘I knew it, I knew it. Where’s my son, you bitch? I hope they lock you up and throw away the key.’
I realise with surprise but a sense of rightness that I intend to kill her. That I want to kill her. Then suddenly I find myself being restrained by officers, my flailing arms captured and pinned behind my back.
It doesn’t stop me screaming after her, ‘Where’s my baby, you fucking psycho? Where’s Harry?’
They are dragging the woman towards a waiting police van, her dirty Wellington boots trailing in the mud. She turns her head, staring back at me through her cracked glasses with what looks like blank astonishment. Then she smiles.
She fucking smiles at me.
‘You bitch,’ I sob loudly, rocking against the police who are struggling to hold me back. ‘You fucking bitch.’
I have forgotten Jon, forgotten DS Dryer, forgotten the police twisting my arms painfully behind my back now, forgotten everything except this burning need to get my son back. And this is the woman who knows where he is.
I can hardly get the words out, I am so incoherent with grief and fury. ‘Where is he? Oh my God, what have you done to my boy? What have you done?’
Chapter Twenty-Four
To my amazement, I am not arrested and thrown into the van with the baby snatcher. But no doubt the police can see that I am half-dead with exhaustion, and not likely to be a danger to anyone – except possibly myself.
It takes nearly fifteen minutes and a plastic mug of lukewarm tea, administered from DI Pascoe’s own flask, for me to recover enough composure to start asking questions. By then they have driven the black-haired woman away, and are now methodically searching the farmhouse and outbuildings.
I am led to one of the ambulances, and persuaded to sit down on the back step. Jon joins me there after a minute, his face taut with fury. But he says nothing, of course. He would never do that, not in front of other people.
It is obvious that DS Dryer is not happy to see us either. But at least he has not yet sent us away, perhaps understanding that I will do anything, even break the law, in order to be here for when they find Harry.
‘Detective, have you found the missing children yet?’ I ask.
Dryer shakes his head, his look pitying. ‘Not yet,’ he admits, and I see guilt in his face. ‘But we will. I’m certain about that.’
That’s something at least, I think. Too late to help us though.
Jon has turned on his heel and is staring up at the front of the farmhouse. Its gloomy upper windows reflect the mass of rainclouds once more gathering overhead.
‘I don’t understand what’s taking so long in there,’ he mutters. ‘It’s a big house, yes, but no more than four or five bedrooms, at a guess. Your team should have finished searching by now.’ He sounds strained again, like he’s only just holding it together.
‘How did you hear about this place?’ the detective asks Jon without replying, his tone curt but not unfriendly. ‘You shouldn’t have come out here, you know. It was very dangerous. You saw she had an air rifle in the barn with her; even fired it once, to try and keep us out.’ He looks from Jon to me, shaking his head. ‘One or both of you could have been killed or seriously hurt. How would that have helped your son?’
While Jon is explaining about the anonymous tip-off, I turn my head to survey the farmyard. Thanks to the recent rain, there’s mud everywhere, officers pulling on boots to avoid the worst of it, people slipping in it, walkways being constructed from loose planking. Despite all this chaos, there’s an air of organisation now the longed-for arrest has been made. As though everyone knows where they are supposed to be, and why.
To find the missing babies.
Overhead, I hear the growing hum of rotor blades as a helicopter approaches fast from the direction of Truro, no doubt heading for this farmhouse. As it nears us, the treetops sway, beginning to flatten out.
‘You should go home.’ DS Dryer sounds irritated. I turn to look at him, see the pinched look about the detective’s mouth. Again I feel that sickening lurch in my stomach. The sense that he is withholding information from us. ‘We haven’t called the others,’ he adds, almost as an afterthought.
Jon frowns. ‘Others?’
‘The other parents,’ I tell him, since DS Dryer is gazing up at the helicopter, too distracted to explain what he meant.
I ask, ‘Was it the gold Volvo I saw in the street? Is that how you found her?’
‘No.’ Dryer looks back at me sharply. ‘One of my officers found that Volvo, and spoke to the owner. It’s a local car. We’re satisfied there’s no connection.’ The detective runs a hand through his hair, looking weary again and frustrated. ‘Look, I need you both to go home.’
‘Do you think our son is here, Detective?’ Jon interrupts him. ‘That’s all we want to know. And don’t give me that not possible crap. We’re Harry’s parents, we have a right to know, regardless of . . .’ He pauses, then finishes, ‘Regardless of the circumstances.’
He means, regardless of whether Harry is alive or dead.
The helicopter pilot appears to be looking for somewhere to land. Perhaps there is a field somewhere behind the farmhouse. The noise is horrendous. And most of the police officers seem to have moved away from the barn, I realise. The double doors are still wide though, one door leaning off its hinges at an awkward angle where it was battered open.
‘A simple yes or no.’
‘I can’t say for sure. We have to follow due process. You know that.’
‘But you could have got here sooner,’ Jon argues. ‘Who knows what that maniac may have done to our children while you lot were following procedure, doing everything by the book?’
‘We’ve got her in custody now. We’ll find the babies too. Just go home, give us time.’
DS Dryer is looking up at the sky again, raising his voice to be heard above the mad whine of the helicopter as it hovers above the trees.
Neither of them is looking at me.
I can’t bear this anymore. Waiting, and not knowing. Expecting to be sent home again at any moment, without what we came for.
Without Harry.
I slip away, not checking if they have seen me go or not, and
make my way round a departing police car and towards the barn.
The farmyard is less crowded than it was even five minutes ago when we first arrived; I’m guessing quite a lot of the preliminary work of bagging up evidence and dusting for prints has already been completed, and many officers are now on their way back to the station. Whatever the reason, fewer people are about, and none of them do more than glance in my direction, too busy with their own jobs to bother wondering who this random woman in jeans and pink sweatshirt is, picking her way across the mud. And I suppose most would assume I have legitimate business here, having got past the officer at the top of the road.
The helicopter must have landed. I can hear the blades slowing, the noise lessening.
Suddenly, I hear shouts from the barn.
Excited barking.
Then a series of metallic bangs.
I take another few steps towards the barn, then stop again, fearing that I will be spotted and sent away if I get too close.
‘Guv?’ A uniformed policeman peers out of the barn a moment later, looking round at the other officers in the farmyard. ‘Detective Inspector Pascoe still here?’
‘Gone back to the station,’ someone replies.
‘What about DS Dryer?’
There’s some hurried conversation, and soon DS Dryer runs past me without a word and through the double doors into the barn.
It’s starting to rain again, just lightly. The first drops are like icy fingertips tapping on my forehead and cheek. The sun has been well and truly buried. All I see now are grey clouds in grey skies, and a metallic grey stretch of water below us through the trees. An inlet of the Fal estuary, meandering and branching off into little gulleys along this rural stretch between Truro and the sea.
On any other day, this part of Cornwall might be scenic. Idyllic, even. Today though, it strikes me as cruel and depressing.
I don’t want to be here, but I have to be. I owe it to my son.
Despite being almost speechless with terror, I make my way to the open door of the barn and look round it.