by S J Bolton
‘In this box there are some funny masks and also some quite scary ones,’ she went on. ‘So as soon as anyone starts to feel scared, or anxious or worried in any way, we can stop. Joe and Millie, if you want to go over to the table and draw, or play with the toys in the box, that’s fine. If you’d rather stay and help Tom, that’s fine too.’
‘I want to draw,’ said Joe.
Evi indicated the low table, already set up with paper, coloured pens and crayons. In the corner of the room sat Alice and Detective Constable Liz Mortimer. Evi had asked them both not to distract the children or make them self-conscious. Behind a large mirror on one wall of the room, DC Andy Jeffries was watching and making notes.
‘OK, Tom,’ said Evi. ‘Are you ready to have a look in the box?’
Tom nodded, looking anxious but also, Evi thought, quite enjoying the attention. Evi lowered herself to the carpet. Kneeling for any length of time was a seriously bad idea, one she’d pay for later, but it was unavoidable in this case. She took the lid off the cardboard box, conscious of Alice watching from under a canopy formed by her left hand, a magazine on her lap. Evi reached inside. ‘I think this one is…’ She peered quickly at the mask she was bringing out. ‘Scooby Doo,’ she said, holding up a cartoon dog’s face.
Tom smiled and visibly relaxed. ‘Can I try it on?’ he asked.
Evi handed it over as Millie wriggled off her armchair and headed straight for the box. Tom put the Scooby Doo mask over his head and turned to look at himself in the large mirror. Alice looked up, smiled and turned back to her magazine. Millie had picked up the box lid and was balancing it on her head.
‘Right,’ said Evi, reaching into the box again. ‘Next one is Basil Brush. Can I try this one?’
‘We’re going to the pantomime tomorrow,’ said Tom. ‘In Blackburn. It’s a school trip.’
The exercise was one it had taken several weeks to set up. The idea had occurred to Evi shortly after Tom had first confided in her about the strange little girl. After listening to his descriptions, she’d explained to the investigation team her theory that someone, probably an older child or young teenager, had been hanging around the house and had even crept inside on at least one occasion, wearing some sort of carnival mask. If they could pin-point the mask used, the police might have some chance of tracking down where and to whom it had been sold. It was a long shot, especially as there was no proof that Tom’s little girl was in any way connected to the attempted abduction of Millie, but it was one the police were willing to try.
Having decided to go ahead, the investigation team had gathered together every party, carnival and Hallowe’en mask they could find in the shops and on the internet. Evi had already discarded some that bore no relation to Tom’s description and had arranged the funnier, less threatening ones so that they came out of the box first.
Tom was reaching into the box himself now, turning round with each new find to see how it looked in the mirror. Millie was copying her brother, getting the elastic tangled in her hair. Joe was studiously ignoring both of them. Gradually, the masks became darker, scarier, no longer made with children’s parties in mind.
‘Mum, look,’ called Tom. He stood up tall, an oversized mask over his head. The mask seemed to depict a male, East European peasant with drooling mouth and very little brain.
‘What?’ said Alice, looking up from her magazine. ‘Oh, very nice.’
‘You know who I am,’ prompted Tom. ‘The servant from The Young Dracula. The one who makes them bat-bogey porridge for breakfast.’
‘Yeah, I must get some of that,’ agreed Alice. ‘Any nicer ones in there?’
Tom turned back to the box as Millie waddled over to her mother with an Incredible Hulk mask pulled over her face. It was upside-down.
Thirty minutes later, Tom had reached the bottom of the box and Evi was ready to admit defeat. On the plus side, none of the children appeared to have been disturbed by the exercise. Tom had treated it like a huge game, trying on every mask, even making Evi put on several. Millie, too, had joined in the fun, although she’d grown tired a while ago and was now sitting on her mother’s lap. Joe had completely ignored both his siblings and had concentrated instead on his drawing. He’d been working on the same picture for over half an hour now. He was just a little too far away for Evi to see what it was.
The clock in the corner of the room said it was twenty-five past six. ‘I’m afraid we’re going to have to stop now,’ said Evi, glancing at the large mirror. ‘Tom, thank you. That was very brave of you. And it was very helpful. Thank you, Millie.’ She glanced over at Alice and DC Mortimer in the corner of the room. Alice raised her eyebrows in a silent question. Evi shook her head. Alice stood up, Millie in her arms. The child’s eyes were glazed and she snuggled in close to her mother.
‘Worth a try, I suppose,’ muttered the detective, getting to her feet.
‘Come on, boys,’ said Alice. ‘What did we do with coats? Joe, are you done?’
Evi had almost forgotten about Joe. The boy had been so quiet all the time she’d been interacting with Tom and Millie. Now he stood up, examined the drawing he’d been working on and then carried it over to her. He held it out.
Evi took it, feeling her ribcage tighten. The drawing was exceptionally good for one done by a six-year-old. It showed a figure dressed in pale blue, with long fair hair and over-sized hands and feet. The head seemed large too, whilst the eyes looked huge and heavy lidded. The full-lipped mouth hung open and the neck was terribly misshapen. A movement at Evi’s side told her that Tom, too, was looking at his brother’s drawing. Alice and Millie drew close.
‘Ebba,’ said Millie, her eyes brightening as she reached for the drawing. ‘Ebba.’
‘That’s her,’ said Tom in a small voice. ‘That’s what she looks like.’
63
‘ALL THREE OF THEM? ARE YOU SURE?’
‘Perfectly,’ said Evi. ‘Joe drew her, Tom and Millie both recognized her. Millie even had a name for her. Ebba, she called her. She’s quite real, this Ebba person. The police just have to find her. Are you playing Springsteen?’
‘A man can dream. Hang on, I’ll turn it down.’ Harry picked up the remote control and the music faded. ‘So what is she?’ he asked. ‘A kid, a dwarf?’
‘Hard to say. Tom showed me on a height chart roughly how tall he thought she was. About 140 centimetres, which would put her on a par with an eight-or a nine-year-old child. But if Joe’s drawing was accurate, her hands, feet and head are disproportionately big. That might suggest an adult with stunted growth. And she appears to have some sort of lump, maybe a goitre, on the front of her neck.’
‘If someone like that lives in Heptonclough, people will know about her.’
‘Exactly. And she must live there. There are no other towns close enough.’
‘There are quite a few farms dotted about, some of them pretty isolated. She may come from one of them.’
‘The detective who was there mentioned that. He’s going to talk to his boss about getting a couple of officers to start visiting homes.’
‘They took all this seriously? I mean, at the end of the day, it was a six-year-old kid’s drawing.’
‘I don’t think they have much else to go on, do you?’
‘What did Joe have to say about her?’
‘Nothing. I talked to him for a good five minutes on his own, but he wasn’t saying a word. Tom thinks he’s made her a promise that he won’t talk about her, but drawing her picture doesn’t seem to count.’
‘Could she have threatened him?’ asked Harry.
‘Possibly. Although I rather doubt it. Joe doesn’t show any sign of being frightened of her. He wasn’t stressed by the conversation, just silent. And Millie greeted her picture like she was an old friend.’
‘So Tom has been scared to death of someone his brother and sister are fine with? How likely does that seem?’
‘Tom’s quite a bit older,’ said Evi. ‘In many ways he’s starting to think
like an adult. Joe and Millie, being younger, might be more likely to accept Ebba.’
‘What is that you’re calling her?’ asked Harry.
‘Ebba. It’s Millie’s name for her. Could be anything, of course – Emma, Ella, who knows? The point is, she’s real.’
‘And how’s she getting into the house?’
‘Well, she isn’t any more, according to Tom. He’s hasn’t seen her since the night the wall came down. Now that Alice and Gareth have tightened up their security, she can’t get in. He thinks she might still be watching them when they’re outside, but he can’t be sure.’
‘Come round,’ said Harry, scared at how much he wanted her to.
No reply.
‘I’m cooking,’ he tried, when there was still no response.
‘You know I can’t do that,’ she said.
Inside Harry, something snapped. ‘I don’t know anything of the kind,’ he said. ‘All I know is that for the first time in my life, I’m losing my grip on what’s happening around me. I have reporters pouncing on me every time I go out, I hardly dare answer the phone any more. Everywhere I turn I find a police officer. I’m starting to feel like I’m a suspect myself.’
‘I understand that, but-’
‘I’m dealing with a level of grief that is unprecedented for me, I have corpses of children tumbling out of the ground and my only friends in this place are heading for nervous breakdowns. I find effigies of children in the church, I’ve been tricked into drinking blood…’
‘Harry…’
‘And the one person I’ve met who could help keep me sane refuses to have anything to do with me.’
‘Effigies? Blood? What are you talking about?’ Her voice had dropped. She sounded as if she was holding the telephone away from her ear. Harry heard a soft knocking sound. Had the cat knocked something over?
‘Evi, if I thought you weren’t interested, I wouldn’t be pestering you,’ he said, looking round the room. No sign of the cat. ‘I promise you, I’m not that pathetic. Just tell me I’m out of line and I’ll leave you alone. But I don’t think that. I think you feel the same way I do, and…’ The knocking sounded again. There was someone at the door.
‘What do you mean, you’ve drunk blood?’
‘Look, can we just forget that crap for a minute and talk about us? Come for dinner – nothing else, I promise. I just want to talk. ‘
‘Harry, what haven’t you told me?’
‘I’ll tell you everything if you come round,’ he offered.
‘Oh, don’t be so bloody childish,’ she snapped at him. ‘Harry, this is serious. Tell me what happened.’
‘There’s someone at the door,’ he said. ‘I’m going to have to answer it. If you’re not here in half an hour, I’m coming to you.’ He put the phone down.
Muttering curses, Harry walked down the hall. He could see a tall, dark shape through the glass of the front door. Wondering what the record might be for speed of dispatching an unwanted parishioner, Harry pulled the door open.
Detective Chief Superintendent Rushton stood on his doorstep, one hand clutching a bottle of Jameson. He lifted it into the air. ‘Couldn’t help noticing your own bottle was looking a bit depleted last time I was here,’ he said. ‘So I brought my own.’
64
18 December
‘HEY, YOU.’
Harry looked up. He’d heard footsteps approaching, had just assumed it was yet another police officer prowling around his church. And now, even before he’d opened his mouth to say hello, he was up, striding across the vestry, heading for the young woman who might be wearing the same violet colour as her eyes, only it was impossible to be sure because he’d already taken her in his arms, was far too close to focus on what she was wearing, and she was smiling up at him…
Dream on, Harry. He hadn’t moved from his desk, was still staring stupidly across the room, and yes, she was wearing violet, a large, loose sweater over tight black jeans tucked into long boots; and that was a very unclerical thought he was having about those boots on bare legs.
‘You didn’t come,’ she said, one hand on the doorframe, the other holding the door ajar.
Harry leaned back in his chair. Five seconds it would take him to cross the room, kick the door shut and put the fantasy into action. ‘The other love of my life turned up with a bottle of Irish,’ he said. ‘After an hour, driving really wasn’t an option for either of us; and I hope he’s been suffering all day as well.’
‘DCS Rushton?’ she asked, as her cheeks glowed a little pinker.
‘The very same.’ Would it be five seconds? He could probably do it in four, if he leaped over the desk.
‘How was he?’ She stepped forward, collecting her stick from where it had been leaning against the doorframe, and allowed the door to fall shut.
If he leaped over the desk, he’d be sick.
‘Terrified he’s going to be forced into early retirement before the case is solved,’ he said. ‘At a complete loss to know what to do next. I told him I knew just how he felt and the two of us poured each other another drink.’
Her smile faded as footsteps approached outside. Harry waited to see if they were heading for the vestry but they continued on down the path.
‘I need you to tell me what’s been going on here,’ she said. ‘It’s important.’
Harry sighed. He really, really didn’t want to get into all that now with Evi. All he wanted to do was step forward, pull her away from that door and…
She let her head fall on to one side, looked him directly in the eyes. ‘Please,’ she said.
‘OK, OK.’
In as few words as possible, he filled her in about every weird thing that had happened to him since his arrival in Heptonclough: the whispered, threatening voices; his constant sense that he wasn’t alone in the church; the smashed effigy that bore a remarkable resemblance to Millie; and his own personal favourite: drinking blood from a Communion chalice. When he’d finished, she was silent.
‘Can I sit down?’ she asked, after a moment.
He pulled a chair in front of the desk and she sank into it, a frown of pain creasing her forehead. Then she looked up at him. ‘Are you OK?’ she asked.
He shrugged. ‘Can’t answer that one in a hurry. Does any of it make any sense?’
She shook her head. ‘Not really. But I think I’m getting closer to finding out who Ebba is. That’s why I came up. My laptop’s in my bag. Could you get it, please?’
Harry retrieved Evi’s large, black leather bag from where she’d left it by the door and put it on the desk in front of her. While she pulled out and switched on the slim computer, he brought a chair round the desk so that they were sitting side by side. Evi opened up a window and turned the screen so that Harry could see it. It was a page from a medical reference site. His eyes went to the title at the top.
‘Congenital hypothyroidism,’ he read and turned to her for confirmation. She nodded.
‘Once Tom had Joe’s drawing to jog his memory, he was able to give me a very detailed description of the girl,’ she said. ‘The goitre is what really gives it away, though.’
‘What is it, exactly?’ asked Harry, who’d been scanning the text beneath the heading, unable to make much sense of the medical jargon.
‘Basically, a shortage in the body of the hormone thyroxin,’ said Evi. She was just inches away from him. He could smell her sweet, warm scent, too delicate to be perfume, maybe soap, body lotion. He had to concentrate.
‘Thyroxin is produced by the thyroid gland in the neck,’ she was saying. ‘If we don’t have enough of it we can’t grow properly and we can’t develop as we should. The condition is rare now, luckily, because it can be treated, but in the old days, it was quite common, especially in certain parts of the world.’
‘Can’t say I’ve ever heard of it,’ said Harry, shaking his head.
‘Oh, you will have,’ said Evi. ‘The less politically correct name for it is cretinism. I think Tom’s friend �
� shall we call her Ebba, it makes life a bit easier – is what we used to call a cretin.’
Harry rubbed both temples, thinking for a second. ‘So, she’s what?’ he asked. ‘A child?’
‘Not necessarily,’ said Evi, with a tiny cat-like smile on her face. ‘People with the condition rarely grow taller than about five foot so an adult could easily appear much younger. And they usually have the mental age of children, would act in a childlike way. Do you need some paracetamol?’
‘If I take any more I’ll rattle. How is it caused?’ asked Harry. ‘Is it genetic?’
‘In some cases,’ said Evi. ‘But mainly the causes are environmental. For the body to produce thyroxin we need iodine, which we get primarily from food. In the days when people grew their own food and fed on local livestock they were much more vulnerable. Certain soil conditions, typically remote mountainous regions like the Alps, were deficient in iodine. So if you lived in an area where there was no iodine in the soil, your thyroid gland would swell up in size to suck up as much iodine as possible. That’s what causes the goitre on the neck.’
‘We’re a long way from the Alps,’ said Harry.
‘Parts of Derbyshire were very vulnerable not too long ago,’ replied Evi. ‘Derbyshire neck was quite a well-known medical condition. Look.’
She changed the screen and Harry was looking at a picture of a woman in late-nineteenth-century dress. A massive swelling on her neck pushed her head out of position, forcing her to look upwards.’
‘That’s a goitre,’ said Evi, indicating the lump. ‘And we’re really not so far from the Peak District here, are we?’
‘So the girl that’s been frightening Tom is a local woman suffering from this condition? I can’t believe no one’s mentioned her.’
‘It does seem odd,’ agreed Evi. ‘But the Fletchers are still very new. Maybe people were just being discreet.’
Harry thought for a moment. ‘I need coffee,’ he said, standing up and crossing to the sink. Kettle in hand, he turned back. ‘And you say the condition can be treated?’