Blood Harvest

42

2 November

‘GO IN PEACE TO LOVE AND SERVE THE LORD,’ SAID Harry. The organ began to play the recessional and Harry stepped down from the chancel. The Renshaws, as always, were first to leave church. As Christiana stood to follow her father and grandfather out of the pew, she appeared to be clutching something in her right fist.

Harry went into the vestry, crossed the room and unbolted the outside door. Stepping outside, he walked quickly to the rear of the church, just in time to shake Sinclair’s hand as he left the building. Christiana held out her hand without looking at him. Nothing in it now. Next came Mike and Jenny Pickup. Jenny’s eyes were damp and she carried a small bouquet of pink roses. A week earlier Harry had put a blank book by the church door, inviting parishioners to write the names of people they wanted remembered during the service. Lucy’s name had been at the top. ‘Thank you,’ Jenny said. ‘That was lovely.’

The rest of the congregation followed, each needing to take the vicar by the hand, thank him and tell him something of their lost loved ones. Almost at the back came Gillian, who never seemed to miss a service these days, which he supposed he should be glad about, one more Christian soldier and all that. Hayley, too, had been remembered during the service. Harry shook Gillian’s hand and, knowing she had no grave to honour, almost bent to kiss her cheek. Except the last time he’d done that she’d turned her head at the last second and their lips had met. It had been an awkward moment, which his hastily muttered apology had done little to smooth over.

A middle-aged, red-haired woman followed Gillian out, and she was the last. Harry walked back into the church. Checking that the nave was empty, he set off up the aisle. Someone had scattered rose petals.

He glanced up. They could almost have been dropped from the balcony. They lay at the exact spot where little Lucy Pickup had died, where Millie Fletcher had almost fallen. Harry remembered Christiana’s clenched fist as she left the building. Leaving the petals where they were, he walked quickly up the aisle and into the vestry once more. He checked that the outside door was locked and started to undress. Three minutes later, he was stepping out on to the path again, bracing himself against the cold and locking the vestry door behind him.

‘And tha’s a quick-change artist as well, lad.’ One of his parishioners, a man in his seventies, was walking towards him. His wife, his parents and two brothers were buried in the churchyard, he’d told Harry earlier.

‘I’m a man of many talents, Mr Hargreaves,’ replied Harry, leaning against the church wall to stretch out his hamstrings.

‘Tha’s not goin’ up ont’ moor, is thee, lad? Tha’ll take off in this wind.’

‘Ah never knew vicars ’ad legs,’ chortled a woman, hobbling her way up behind Stanley Hargreaves.

‘Healthy body, healthy soul, Mrs Hawthorn,’ replied Harry. ‘Sorry I can’t show you a better pair.’

Harry jogged slowly past the two elderly people. As he left the churchyard, he saw Alice taking Millie to their car. He should really have a word with her. He jogged down the hill a few paces and saw that Alice was now talking to the woman with dyed red hair who’d followed Gillian from church.

‘So beautiful,’ the woman was saying, reaching out to touch Millie’s curls. ‘I had one just like her. Breaks my heart to see her.’

Millie squirmed away from the woman, hiding her face against her mother’s shoulder, just as Alice spotted Harry. He approached slowly, not wanting to interrupt, unsure how welcome he was going to be.

‘They grow up so quickly,’ Alice said.

‘Mine never grew up,’ the woman replied. Unable to reach Millie’s face any more, she patted the child’s shoulder. ‘You take good care of this little one. You never know how precious they are till you’ve lost them.’

Alice gave up the effort to smile. ‘Yes, I’m sure,’ she said. ‘Well, there’s the vicar. I must just say hello. It was nice to meet you.’ The woman nodded at Alice and then, with one last stroke of Millie’s head, set off down the hill.

‘Don’t know who that cheery soul was,’ said Alice in a low voice, as Harry approached. He glanced at the woman’s retreating form and shook his head. ‘She was in church just now,’ he said, ‘but I’ve never met her before. Listen, about last night…’

Alice held up her hand. ‘No, I’m sorry. I do understand how difficult it is for you. It’s just…’ She stopped. ‘I can’t help thinking there’s something seriously wrong with Tom.’

She bent into the car and put Millie into her child’s seat before buckling the strap round her daughter. Harry leaned closer to the car in the hope that it might offer some shelter. The perishing wind was getting up his shorts. ‘I really doubt that,’ he said. ‘And getting yourself worked up won’t help him.’

‘That’s exactly what Evi said,’ replied Alice.

Harry couldn’t stop. His legs were starting to shake and he had a pain in his chest, but the minute he stopped running the sweat on his body would start to chill down.

He was two miles above the village. Ten minutes after setting off, he’d found an old bridle path and followed it to the road. He’d gone up, climbing higher and higher, until the wind was almost lifting him off his feet. Now he was heading for home.

The walls and hedges offered some shelter, but when the wind hit him full on he almost felt as if he’d stopped moving. His wristbands were soaked through and the cold air was hurting his lungs. This was insane. Even the view was wasted – his eyes were watering so much he could barely see the ground beneath his feet.

High above the trees to the east soared the massive Morrell Tor, a huge collection of gritstone boulders balanced precariously on top of each other. Formed naturally, but once believed to be man-made, tors were particularly common in the Pennines. Morrell Tor, Harry had learned, was notorious locally. Legend had it that in days gone by, unwanted and illegitimate babies would be tossed from its heights, to shatter on the rocks below and be carried off by wolves and wild dogs. Today, it presented a serious problem for sheep farmers, who went to great lengths to keep their livestock away from it. On nights with strong winds, it was said, a singing among the rocks would lure a dozen or more to their death.

He realized he’d stopped running. And that he was freezing. He had to get home, shower and change, then attend an old folks’ lunch in Goodshaw Bridge. And he had a phone call to make. In another few yards he’d be able to follow a footpath along the edge of a field, to bring him out at the end of Wite Lane.

He squeezed through the gap between two tall boulders and set off again along the field edge, heading downhill, keeping his eyes on the ground. At the corner he climbed the low wall into the stubble field beyond. In less than a minute he was at the lowest end. He jumped over the stile and down into Wite Lane. Almost home.

Huddled in front of the burned-out fireplace of the Royle cottage was the thin, trembling body of a girl. Gillian. Twenty yards away he could hear her crying. Except it wasn’t really crying. Keening. That was the only word for it: a high-pitched, heartbreakingly sad keening. The Irish called it the song for the dead.

43

‘IT’S OK, IT’S OK.’ HE’D PUSHED OPEN THE GATE, WAS stepping up the overgrown path. ‘Come on, love, let’s get you home.’ He walked through the space where the front door used to be. Gillian didn’t look up. She remained hunched over, clutching something to her chest. He crossed the uneven ground and bent down beside her. She looked up at him then and he fought a temptation to pull back. For a second the look in her eyes had scared him, had made him think that something essential inside her had slipped out the back way.

‘Come on,’ he said, ‘let’s get out of here. Come on, pet, you’re freezing.’ Gillian was only wearing a thin sweater and her wrist felt colder than stone. He put an arm around her waist and pulled her to her feet.

She continued to sob as he guided her out through the gate and half led, half dragged her along Wite Lane. The churchyard and street were deserted and his was the only car in the lane. He steered Gillian across the road and opened the passenger door. He never locked the car in Heptonclough and his keys were still in the vestry, with his clothes. He reached into the car, pulled out his coat and wrapped it round her shoulders.

‘Get in,’ he told her. ‘I need to grab my bag from the vestry, then I’ll drive you home.’

Shivering, he ran up the churchyard path, pulled the key out of his shorts pocket and opened the vestry door. His bag was where he’d left it. Grabbing a sweatshirt, he pulled it over his head. He was about to leave when something made him stop and turn.

Someone had been in here. The door to the nave was open. It hadn’t been when he’d left, he was sure of it. Harry took a step towards it. It would have been one of his churchwardens, Mike or Sinclair. They were the only other people who had keys now. And yet they’d formed a habit, over the last few weeks, of telling him when they were going to be in the building. He’d seen both of them less than an hour ago. Neither had mentioned plans to come back. Still, it could only be…

He stopped in the doorway, knowing that his heart was beating too fast and his breathing was too shallow, and telling himself it was the result of a fast run over hill country. Not his churchwardens then. Neither Mike nor Sinclair would have taken every single hassock from the pews and thrown them around the building. Harry stepped into the chancel. Dozens of cushions: on the carpet, caught between the organ pipes, on the choir stalls, everywhere but where they should be.

Harry walked forward, knowing that this wasn’t just about the hassocks, that there was more for him to find, and that it was only a matter of seconds before he did. He wasn’t breathing too fast any more, he was struggling to breathe at all.

Something was growing, fungus-like, in his throat, pressing against its sides, blocking the airway as he reached the centre of the chancel and turned to look down the aisle. He was ready to be shocked. Just not that shocked. He wasn’t prepared to see a small child, broken in pieces, beneath the gallery.

Millie Fletcher! He’d seen her wearing that sweater.

For a few seconds it was impossible to do anything but stare. No air at all was getting into his body now. His head would start to spin at any moment. He began to walk forward, clutching the ends of pews like a toddler unsure on its legs. As he reached the halfway point, he realized he was trembling in relief, not fear. And he was breathing again. Not Millie, thank God, thank God, it couldn’t be Millie – or any real child, for that matter – because no part of a child’s anatomy was made up of vegetables. Oh, thank God.

A turnip, still bearing the crude drawing of a child’s face, had smashed apart on the flagstones. The wicker construction of the figure was in pieces. It was the smallest of the bone men, brought inside and dressed up in Millie’s sweater. The shivering running through his body began to feel less about relief and more about outrage. The message couldn’t be clearer. This was intended to be Millie, to show Millie broken to pieces on the church floor, as she so nearly had been on the night of the harvest festival, as Lucy Pickup had been before her. What in the name of God was going on here?

Conscious that Gillian was still waiting for him in the car, Harry reached the figure and crouched down. He couldn’t just leave it there. He stretched out an arm to start gathering the pieces together and stopped himself just in time.

Evidence.

From the vestry he brought a large black bin-liner and the Marigold gloves left behind by one of the cleaning team. Wearing the gloves, he gathered the pieces together, including the pink and orange sweater, and put them all in the black bag. When he was done, he tied a knot in the top and stood up.

He had to let the police know. Teenage prank or not, Millie was two years old and had already been put in real danger once. And this really wasn’t funny. Plus, changed locks or not, someone was still getting in and out of the church whenever they wanted to.

Gillian didn’t ask what had taken him so long; she hardly seemed to have noticed. Harry turned the heater up to full blast and set off down the hill. It only took two minutes before he pulled up outside the town’s post office and convenience store. Gillian lived in a flat above it.

She hadn’t moved. In her lap she clutched a small, pink soft-toy. He switched off the engine and climbed out. His shoulders were starting to ache.

‘Gillian, pet.’ He was leaning in, not really wanting to touch her again but suspecting it was inevitable. ‘You’re home now. Come on, let’s get you inside.’

Still she didn’t move. Swallowing his irritation, Harry slid his arm around her shoulders. She came willingly enough then, leaning against him as she slipped clumsily out of the car. As they crossed the street, Harry noticed two women watching them.

The outside door wasn’t locked. He took Gillian’s hand and pulled her up the narrow stairway with its worn, dirty carpet. At the top, he turned to her. ‘Keys?’ he enquired. She shrugged.

He pushed the door and it swung open with a waft of unwashed laundry and stale air. Either the flat wasn’t much warmer than the day outside or he was well on his way to catching a chill.

He steered Gillian towards the sofa and crossed quickly to the electric fire. Switching it on to full, he turned back to the girl. She was sitting at the edge of the sofa, staring at the wall in front of her. The toy in her hands was a rabbit.

‘Gillian, you need a blanket. Where will I find one?’

She didn’t answer and he turned away from her. If she looked at his face, she’d see how annoyed he was. Angry with her, angry with himself, angry with the old folks of Goodshaw Bridge who, even now, would be glancing at their watches, and very angry with the sick bastard who thought he could scare him by dressing up a pile of bones and twigs.

Gillian’s flat wasn’t large. He soon found the kitchen and then the bedroom. He caught a quick glimpse of a floor covered in clothes, empty glasses scattered around and a greasy dinner plate on the bedside table. He pulled the duvet off the bed.

Back in the living room, Gillian had curled herself up on the sofa, still clutching the rabbit. He put the duvet over her and returned to the bedroom for a pillow. He tucked it under her head and crouched down until he could look her in the eyes.

‘Gillian, I need to call someone,’ he said. ‘Someone who can come and look after you.’

Silver-grey eyes gazed back at him. ‘You,’ she croaked. ‘I want you to look after me.’

He shook his head. ‘I have to be somewhere. I’m late already and you need someone who can look after you properly, not a man you hardly know.’

Gillian pushed herself up on to one elbow. She took one hand off the pink toy and reached up to her hair. ‘Stay,’ she said, stroking her hair to neaten it. She pushed herself up higher and held her hand out to Harry. ‘Stay,’ she repeated. ‘We could, you know…’

‘Do you want me to call Dr Oliver?’ he offered, leaning back on his heels so that he was just out of reach. ‘It might help you to talk to her.’

Gillian was upright on the sofa now, glaring at him. Make-up was smeared on her cheeks. Her nose was red from the cold. ‘Is she your girlfriend?’ she demanded.

‘Of course not,’ he said, knowing it was true but feeling as if he was lying. ‘I’ve only met her a few times.’ No, that wasn’t good enough. It was unfair to all three of them. ‘But I do like her,’ he added.

‘I thought you liked me,’ she wailed.

‘I do,’ he answered. When had she taken hold of his hand? ‘But I’m too old for you and…’

‘I don’t care.’

‘… and you need to get well again before you start any sort of relationship.’ He had to get his hand back. He had to retreat to a safe distance.

‘I could get well quickly if I had you, I know I could.’

He had to tell her. She had to know it was never going to happen.

‘Gillian, I know how difficult today must have been for you, seeing people visiting graves, having others around to comfort them. Believe me, I know what it’s like to be alone.’

‘I’m not a slag, you know. There hasn’t been anyone since Pete.’

‘I don’t doubt that. But trust me, that is not the way to get over Hayley. What about your GP?’

It wasn’t going to work. She was taking a deep breath, getting ready to…

‘You have no idea!’ she screamed at him.

She was right. He had no idea. He was completely out of his depth.

‘What about a friend?’ he offered. ‘Is there anyone who lives nearby?’

‘She won’t leave me,’ said Gillian, speaking to a point somewhere in the middle of his chest.

‘Who won’t? Do you mean Hayley?’

She nodded. ‘She’s dead, I know that,’ she said. ‘I’ve known for a long time, but she won’t go away.’ She grabbed his hand again. ‘She’s haunting me.’

‘Gillian…’

Her head shot up. Her eyes looked terrified. ‘Please help me,’ she begged. ‘You can do something, I know you can. Make her go away. You can do a – what do you call it? – an exorcism.’

The girl was unbalanced. She needed serious help.

‘Gillian, I’m going to call someone. You can’t-’

‘Listen to me.’ She’d grabbed both his hands now, had fallen off the sofa and was kneeling in front of him. ‘This is the Day of the Dead, right? When lost souls who can’t find their way to heaven come back to where they used to live. I never used to believe in all that, but I do now. She was here today. She took the toy, Pink Rabbit, and put it in our old house. I found it just now, where the kitchen fireplace used to be.’

‘Gillian…’

‘She talks to me all the time. I hear her voice, calling “Mummy, Mummy, help me.” It doesn’t matter where I am. In here, asleep, out on the moors, she’s always there, always talking to me. “Mummy, Mummy,” she says, “find me.” She moves things around, here in the flat, leaves little presents for me. Every time I turn round, every time I wake up in the night, I think she’s going to be there, just as she was the last time I saw her, in her Beatrix Potter pyjamas.’

Harry realized he was shaking.

‘She’s with me every day. She’s driving me insane.’

‘Gillian, you know, don’t you, there are no such things as ghosts?’

There was a loud banging on the outside door.

‘Sit down,’ he told her. ‘I’ll go and see who that is.’ She was still holding his hand. She clung on, unwilling to let go, but Harry headed towards the door and she had little choice. Overcome with relief at being away from her, even for a few minutes, he jogged down the stairs and pulled open the door. The middle-aged woman with the dyed-red hair was standing outside.

‘Vicar.’ She inclined her head and stepped forward, clearly expecting him to move aside and let her in. ‘Edith Holcome phoned me,’ she said. ‘She saw you bring Gillian home. Said I should probably get down here.’ She moved forward again.

‘Are you a friend of Gillian’s?’ asked Harry. Had reinforcements arrived after all?

‘I’m her mother. Gwen Bannister. Nice to meet you, Vicar. Don’t worry any more, I’ll look after her now.’

Her mother? Oh, thank God.

‘Well, if you’re sure…’ Had he left anything upstairs? Did it matter? Were his keys in his pocket? Yes.

‘She’s extremely upset,’ he offered, not wanting anyone to go up those stairs unprepared. ‘I think she may need to see a doctor.’

‘I know, I know, I’ve seen it all before.’ The woman had pushed her way past him and was already halfway up the stairs. ‘I lost a child too and did I fall to pieces? We had more backbone in my day.’

Could he go? Darn right he could.

Without looking back, he slipped out of the door and ran across the street to his car. He’d left his coat behind but it seemed a small price to pay. He looked at his watch. If he drove as though all the devils in hell were after him and spent less than two minutes in the shower, he’d still be twenty minutes late. He really had no more time to waste.

So why was he picking up the phone?

Duchess’s hooves were clattering on the concrete of the livery yard when Evi’s phone started to ring. She reached inside the pocket of her coat and glanced at the screen. Oh!

‘Evi Oliver,’ she said, as Duchess edged closer to her box.

‘Hi, it’s Harry Laycock,’ said the voice on the phone. She’d known who it was. His name had appeared on the digital screen. Just the one word: Harry.

‘Oh, good morning.’ Was that right – friendly but with a faint note of surprise? ‘How are you?’

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘In a bit of a rush. Listen, I’ve been thinking. This bonfire thing. I think you should go. I mean come. Come with me.’

He was asking her out. Was he? ‘You told me you were going nowhere near it,’ she pointed out.

‘I’ve changed my mind. There’s something not quite normal going on up here, Evi, and I need to know what it is. And if you really want to get to the bottom of what’s bothering Tom Fletcher, I suspect you do too.’

She could see him? That night? ‘I’m not sure, Harry,’ she said. ‘It seems a bit…’

‘I could pick you up at six thirty and drive you up there. Help you over the rough ground. Not that you need any help, I fully understand that. And it wouldn’t be a date, or anything. Strictly professional, you know – work – for both of us.’

‘Thank you, I know what professional means. I was going to say, it seems a bit intrusive. The Fletchers might think I’m spying on them. Maintaining trust is really important when you’re working with a family.’ Oh, shut up, you silly cow, you’re going to talk him out of it.

‘I’ve already spoken to Alice. She’s fine with it. And we’re both invited for supper afterwards but, I repeat, it’s definitely not a date.’

‘Yes, I got that bit too. I quite understand.’ A date with Harry. She was going on a date with Harry. Duchess started backing away from the box, was twisting round on the concrete. ‘Look, you’ve caught me on the hop a bit,’ Evi said. ‘It might be a good idea but I’d have to talk to Alice myself. Can I call you back this afternoon?’

‘Of course. Now I really have to run. I’ll talk to you later.’

He was gone – and what in the name of all that was wonderful was she going to wear?

44

AS QUICKLY AS HE COULD, BUT NOT FORGETTING TO watch out for anyone who might be lurking, Tom ran through the churchyard entrance, skirted round the ruins, past the church and into the graveyard, then dived behind a stone to get his breath back.

It was four thirty, and a few stripes of orange and pink in the sky showed where the sun had been not five minutes earlier. The cloud cover was thickening rapidly. The light would fade fast now. He hadn’t much time.

He set off again, keeping as close as he could to the boundary wall. If anything happened, he could be over it and in through the back door in seconds. She was fast, Tom knew that, but he was fast too.

At Lucy Pickup’s grave he crouched low again. Someone had left a bunch of tiny pink roses on it and – it looked so sad somehow – a small cream teddy bear with a pink ribbon round its neck. He remembered, then, the reason why the town had its bonfire tonight instead of on November the fifth; November the second was the Day of the Dead. Harry had told them all about it. It was the day when people remembered and honoured all those they loved who were dead now. In Heptonclough people visited their graves, prayed for them, left presents. They honour their dead in Heptonclough, Harry had said.

Tom looked all around. Still enough light. And he was very close to the wall.

Yew trees are no good for climbing, anyone could tell you that. They don’t grow that tall and their branches don’t get thick enough. But this tree had just one strong branch that hung out over the Fletchers’ garden. If Tom was careful, if he didn’t worry about a few scratches, he could make his way on to it.

He had about ten, fifteen minutes. His mother thought he was doing homework and she’d warned Joe and Millie not to come near him. Fifteen minutes might be enough.

Climbing up, Tom was shocked to discover how much of his house could be seen from the tree. He could see Joe crawling along the back of the sofa with his machine gun tucked under his arm. Tom could even see quite a lot of the upstairs rooms too. There was his mum in the bathroom, reaching into the cupboard for one of Millie’s nappies. All of which made him wonder. Did she sit here, on this branch, watching them? Yew trees never lose their leaves. Tucked up in here, if she kept still, she could watch his family for hours and they’d never know.

Round his neck, tucked into his sweatshirt to keep it safe, he had his dad’s digital camera. He knew how to set the flash, how to focus and how to zoom in and out. He’d practised all yesterday evening, taking pictures of Millie dancing around the living room, and then his dad had showed him how to download them on to the computer. Tom was going to wait until the little girl appeared and take photographs. As many as he could. And then they’d have to believe him. If he could show them pictures they’d know he’d been telling the truth. That he wasn’t mad. Best of all, he’d know he wasn’t mad.

In a couple of hours it could all be over.

45

‘SO WHAT’S THE PLAN, REVEREND? KICK OFF WITH SOME voodoo rites before a spot of ritual sacrifice, quick break for a hot-dog and then zombies rising around midnight?’

‘I don’t think you’re taking this seriously,’ replied Harry, guiding Evi round two girls who were clinging to each other in the middle of the road. One of them had the glassy-eyed look of the seriously intoxicated. Ahead of them a pink and green firework exploded in the sky. For a second, he could see the sparks reflected in the clouds. Then darkness again.

‘Am too,’ said Evi. ‘I did a project in my first year on crowd psychology. I love seeing it in action.’

A boy in his late teens appeared from one of Heptonclough’s numerous stone alleyways and lurched towards them. An unlit cigarette dangled from his mouth. ‘Godda light?’ he enquired, before looking into Harry’s face. ‘Oh, sorry, vicar.’ He stumbled away down the hill. Evi gave a soft laugh.

The town was more crowded than Harry had seen it before and he’d been forced to park almost a quarter of a mile down the hill. He’d offered to drop Evi off at the church, so that she could wait for him on the shepherds’ bench, but she’d refused and now they’d joined the others who were walking up the hill towards the bonfire field. The night was heavy with the smell of gunpowder and wood smoke.

Every few seconds, people who were able to move faster passed them. Most turned to nod, wish Harry good evening and stare curiously at Evi. And he really didn’t blame them. In a dark-blue quilted coat the exact colour of her eyes and a matching hat, she might just be the prettiest girl any of them had seen in a long time.

‘What are your professional observations so far?’ he asked.

Evi stretched her neck to look round, then peered up at him. ‘Everything you might expect,’ she said. ‘Kids are excited, so they’re playing up. That makes the parents a bit tetchy – they’re scared of losing them in the dark, so they’ll be over-protective, a bit anxious. That’ll manifest itself as bad temper.’

There was that tiny freckle again, just below her right ear.

‘The older kids will be drinking more than usual,’ she went on. ‘Those old enough to get away with it will be in the pub. The younger ones will have bottles of cider tucked away in dark corners. There’s potential for arguments, even violence, but probably not for another couple of hours.’

If he kissed that freckle, he’d be able to feel the curve of her ear on his cheek, and her hair would tickle his nose.

‘The main problem,’ she said, ‘is that events like this create a certain sense of expectation. Everyone’s waiting for something to happen. People are in a state of anticipation, and if they’re disappointed in some way, then that’s when the trouble will start because they’ll need a vent for their frustration. Are you even listening to me?’

‘Most certainly,’ he said, knowing he was grinning like a fool. ‘Are we still talking about the bonfire?’

The Fletchers left the house just before seven, tucked up in all their warmest clothes. Millie was in her mother’s arms, Joe on his dad’s shoulders and Tom had been told, several times by both parents, that if they lost sight of him for a second they’d cut off his toes. The camera was round his neck.

He’d managed twenty minutes in the churchyard before his mum had appeared at the back door yelling for him. He’d scrambled down the wall and run across the garden, with one hand over the camera to protect it. Once his mother had got the necessary telling-off out of her system, Tom had told her he’d been taking pictures of the sunset for a school project. She’d seemed happy enough. So was he. It hadn’t been a wasted twenty minutes. Oh no. Not wasted at all.

As they reached the top of the hill, Harry suspected Evi was starting to tire. She was less talkative and her pace had noticeably slowed. Why hadn’t she let him drive her up? And would she bite his head off if he suggested stopping to rest for a moment?

‘Can we sit down for a sec?’ asked Evi.

Cute as a button and stubborn as a mule. She was going to be so much trouble; he really had no business being this happy. He steered her over to the shepherds’ bench and they sat down together. Most of the townsfolk had already turned into Wite Lane. He could hear the roar and crackle of the fire and see a faint orange glow above the buildings. Turning to check uphill, he saw that the bone men had all been removed from around the abbey. Apart from the one that he’d handed over to Detective Chief Superintendent Rushton a couple of hours ago. The one that would be checked for fingerprints and other trace evidence over the next few days. He and Rushton had both agreed to say nothing to the Fletchers until they knew more.

‘Was Alice OK when you spoke to her?’ asked Harry. His busy day had continued and he hadn’t been able to answer the phone when Evi had called him earlier. A short message had told him where to pick her up.

‘Yes, she seemed fine.’ Evi was still breathing hard, her cheeks pink. ‘She seemed pretty certain the children all wanted to go to the bonfire. Tom’s developed a keen interest in photography, apparently, and wants to get some good shots. And one of her friends from the town has promised her that nothing sinister happens.’

‘First time for everything,’ muttered Harry.

‘Sorry?’

Harry shook his head. ‘Nothing, go on.’

‘So we decided that, as long as nothing upsets or scares them, doing things as a family will be good for them. And then she insisted I join you all for dinner. She’s sweet.’

‘Nice to see thee with a young lady, Reverend.’

Harry turned from Evi to see three elderly women, including the one who’d admired his legs earlier. She was looking from him to Evi with an evil grin on her face. ‘I always says how vicars should be married,’ she finished. That wasn’t a grin, it was a leer. Evi gave a soft snigger at his side and he felt his cheeks glowing. Lucky it was dark.

‘No, no, Mrs Hawthorn,’ he called. ‘Dr Oliver is a colleague. All strictly professional.’

Minnie Hawthorn’s two friends had joined in. All three of them stood grinning at him like something from a pantomime version of Macbeth. Witch Hawthorn looked at Evi, then back at Harry. ‘Aye lad,’ she agreed, nodding her woollen-capped head. ‘Ah can see that.’

Tittering, the three of them followed the crowd along Wite Lane, Minnie Hawthorn glancing back at the last second. Did she just wink at him?

‘There’s no fooling the old crones,’ said Harry quietly.

‘We should get on,’ said Evi. ‘I’m fine now. And we haven’t even seen the Fletchers yet.’

‘Hang on a sec. While I have your full attention, there’s something else you should know.’

A loud bang made them both jump. A shower of gold shot into the air over Evi’s head and disappeared into ever-thickening cloud. The ruined walls of the old abbey stood out sharply against the brief flash of light. They looked strangely empty without the bone men, although one of them seemed to have been left behind.

Harry dropped his eyes to look directly at Evi. ‘I bumped into Gillian today,’ he said.

As predicted, Evi’s face stiffened. She opened her mouth and he held up one hand to stop her. ‘I know you’re not allowed to talk about her,’ he said, ‘but there’s nothing to stop me from doing it, so just listen.’

Yes, there was definitely still one of the bone men left in the ruin, he could see a figure in the window of the tower. He had to concentrate, this was important. He made himself look down at Evi, not too difficult really. ‘She was in the grounds of her old house, close to hysterical,’ he said. ‘Clutching one of her daughter’s toys. I had to drive her home, but she was barely functioning. Her mother arrived after a few minutes, which was-’

‘Her mother?’

‘Yes. I only met her today. She was quite happy to take over, so I left. But the thing is, we all thought Gillian was getting better. People say she’s improved enormously over the last few weeks, pretty much since she’s been seeing you, but today I was worried. She talks about her daughter in a way that doesn’t seem normal. She said the girl was haunting her. She wanted me to carry out an exorcism.’

Evi was looking at the bench. He couldn’t see her eyes. Another firework hit the sky. He’d been mistaken about the figure. The tower window was empty.

‘I just thought you should know,’ he said.

‘Thank you,’ said Evi, to the bench.

Harry took a deep breath. ‘And also,’ he said, ‘I hope it goes without saying that even if she weren’t seriously emotionally damaged and obviously in need of ongoing professional help, that never in a million years would I even consider… do I really need to say it?’

‘No,’ whispered Evi.

‘Thank you.’

‘But…’ She looked up.

‘Why is there always a but?’ asked Harry, wondering if holding hands might count as unprofessional.

‘Let’s just say, hypothetically, that I could see a potential conflict of interest in my treatment of a patient,’ said Evi. ‘The correct procedure would be to find a colleague suitable to take over the case. But that can’t always happen instantly. And the wishes of the patient have to be taken into account. They may not want to be referred. And as long as someone remains my patient, his or her interests have to remain my priority.’

‘Understood.’ Harry stood up and held out his hand to Evi. She took it, rose to her feet and then took his arm again. They crossed the now empty street and turned into Wite Lane.

The bone men were in a circle around the bonfire, being held upright by people who were dressed in black with black paint on their faces. ‘It’s just face paint,’ Tom’s mum kept saying to no one in particular. ‘Look, that’s Mr Marsden from the paper shop.’ Tom knew his mother meant well but she was wasting her breath. He knew they were people dressed in black. But when they kept to the shadows they could hardly be seen at all. As they’d walked past the family just minutes earlier, it had almost looked as if the bone men were moving by themselves. Now they were standing around the fire, bone men at the front, shadow men standing behind them. Then, forming another circle some distance back were people from the town. Tom and his family had stayed behind in the lane. Joe was still on his dad’s shoulders and Tom was on the wall, just behind his mum, who was starting to mutter about how long the rain was going to hold off. He could see easily over the heads of the crowd to the circle of bone men and the fire in the middle. It really was the coolest thing he’d ever seen.

It was hard, taking his eyes away even for a second, but he had to keep looking round. She was here somewhere, he knew it. She wouldn’t miss this.

As Harry and Evi crossed the street a bicycle ridden by a boy dressed all in black and with a black face came speeding past them. Sparklers blazed from the handlebars. He glared at Harry, before speeding away down the hill.

‘Friend of yours?’ asked Evi

‘Hardly,’ Harry replied. ‘That’s Tom Fletcher’s number-one enemy, a boy called Jake Knowles. I got him in trouble the day I arrived here. He’s never forgiven me. And he’s the prime suspect in the Millie-on-the-church-gallery debacle.’ Harry thought for a second. Had Jake Knowles been responsible for the effigy of Millie in the church? It was disturbed behaviour, even by the standards of a delinquent schoolboy.

‘I think he’s one of the boys who scared Duchess the day I fell off,’ said Evi. ‘I recognized the bike.’

‘Figures.’

There were no streetlights in Wite Lane. Torches, old-fashioned ones with real flames, had been fastened to walls and fences to light the way. Harry could smell the kerosene as they walked past. As the cobbles gave way to weeds, Evi stumbled and fell against Harry.

‘You know, I’m sure it would be easier for you if I put my arm around your waist,’ he offered.

‘Nice try, Vicar. I need a few drinks before that one will work.’

‘I thought you didn’t drink.’

She had a little smile on her face like a cat. ‘I said I’m not supposed to. I never said I didn’t.’

Harry laughed. ‘Finally, my day is starting to pick up.’

No sign of her so far, but Tom knew she’d be extra careful with all these people around. She’d be in the shadows somewhere, behind a wall, maybe on a low roof. Looking through the camera lens made it easier for him to search. There was less chance of being distracted and no one could tell that he was doing anything other than waiting for good photographs. He was still on the wall. How people could stand closer to the fire than he was, Tom had no idea. Its heat on his face was just about tolerable, but the crowd in the field were only yards away from the blaze. Then there were the shadow men, closer still, and then – although he didn’t suppose they would mind the heat – the bone men themselves. What were they waiting for? Harry and Evi had joined them and they were all just standing, waiting.

Harry was beginning to understand what Evi meant about a sense of expectation. He could see it in the faces of those around him, like people in a sale queue, waiting for the shop doors to open. They were trying to talk to their neighbours, making an effort to look unconcerned, but their eyes kept flicking to the grim circle in the field – who must surely be about to burn up, they were standing so close to the fire. In fact, they seemed even closer than when he and Evi had arrived, as though the fire was drawing them in. A sudden movement to his right caught his attention. He turned. Gillian was standing three yards away, very close to the gate of her old house, staring directly at him. She was wearing his coat.

The bone men were drawing closer to the fire. Tom had been watching them, he’d even let the camera fall loose around his neck. very slowly, the people holding them were taking small steps forward. How could they? How could they stand the heat? The noise of the crowd was dying down as well. One by one, it seemed, people were falling silent and turning to watch the bone men move steadily closer to the flames.

‘Harry, listen to me.’

Evi was talking to him, in a low voice that he struggled to hear above the roar of the fire. He tore his gaze away and bent lower.

‘I’m not happy,’ she said directly into his ear. ‘Something’s going to happen.’

He stretched up and looked back at the fire. The whole town, it seemed, was gathered around it in a massive circle. Less than a dozen people – including him and Evi, Gillian and the Fletcher family – were still in the lane. ‘What?’ he said, bending back down to her. ‘What’s going to happen?’

‘I think they’re building up for some sort of dare-devil stunt,’ she said. ‘I think most of these people know what it is and I think it sometimes goes wrong. Since we arrived tonight I’ve seen two people with fairly serious burns on their faces. And people are nervous. Look at them.’

She was right. Couples had moved closer together. Parents were holding tightly to children. Men with beer glasses in their hands had stopped drinking. All eyes except his and Evi’s were on the fire. On the circle of men around it.

They were waiting. Tom didn’t know what for. He’d given up trying to take photographs, he didn’t want to miss what was going to happen next. Not far away from them a kid starting crying – for a second he thought it was Millie. Another three, possibly four steps and those bone men would be in the fire. They were made of straw and old rags, how could they possibly-

One of them was on fire. A stray spark must have caught it, because what a second ago had been a human-shaped figure was now a mass of flames being held high in the air.

‘We honour the dead!’

Tom didn’t know where the shout came from, but as it rang out across the moor the flaming bone man was flung high into the air. It landed almost on the summit of the fire and within seconds had melted into the whole. Someone higher on the moor, maybe on Morrell Tor, released a firework. It shot into the sky and it seemed as though the dead man’s soul was heading upwards.

Another of the bone men was alight and flying through the air. Another firework. Then a third bone man and a fourth. More fireworks. The crowd watched as, one by one, the bone men caught fire and were thrown on to the bonfire. As each one took to the air, the same shout went up.

‘We honour the dead!’

Some of the bone men must have had fireworks in their pockets, because coloured sparks started to shoot out of the fire in all directions. People in the crowd began to squeal and turn away. Just in front of Tom, his dad pulled Joe off his shoulders and put him on the ground. Alice, with Millie in her arms, took a step back and Tom felt his dad pull him down off the wall. Then the fire collapsed into the ground.

‘What in the…?’

Harry stepped forward, leaving Evi behind by the wall. He was vaguely aware of Gareth Fletcher instructing his family to stay where they were. The two men strode forward until they could step up on to the fence and get a better view.

‘I can’t believe what I’m looking at,’ Harry heard himself saying.

‘How the bugger did they manage that?’ asked Gareth.

Where the bonfire had blazed not seconds ago there was now a great, gaping hole in the ground. The fire had become a pit filled with flames. Coloured sparks from fireworks shot out in every direction and Harry could still make out several human-shaped forms.

‘I think we’ve just glimpsed the gateway to hell,’ said Gareth.

Harry watched as the men who had held the effigies turned from the fire at last, were handed spades from onlookers and began to shovel waiting piles of earth on to the fire. Others joined in, some using spades, others their bare hands.

‘They built the fire over a pit,’ said Gareth. ‘They must have put some sort of floor over the top and then built the fire on it. When the foundation burned through the whole thing collapsed.’

‘They’re burying the dead,’ said Evi. Harry turned, startled. She was beside him on the fence. For a moment he wondered how she’d managed it and then realized that a woman who could mount a horse could probably climb a fence. ‘Look what they’re doing, throwing earth on to the bones. It’s what we do at a burial.’

‘Weirdest thing I’ve ever seen,’ said Gareth. ‘What do you think, Doc?’

Evi seemed to think about it for a second. ‘Personally,’ she said, ‘I’m glad it was no worse.’

46

T HE BLINDS IN THE WINDOW WERE STILL OPEN. THAT DIDN ’ T happen much any more. Normally Tom closed them even before it got properly dark. The whole family, apart from Millie, were in the kitchen. The father stood closest to the window, talking to the man who looked after the church. At the table sat a young woman with dark hair and large eyes. They were drinking and talking. They looked happy. Where was Millie?

Tom had climbed up on to the kitchen counter. He was staring out at the darkness. Then he reached up and pulled down the string that lowered the blind. The scene disappeared.

Had they locked the door?

47

‘I CAN’T BELIEVE JENNY DIDN’T WARN ME ABOUT THAT,’ SAID Alice.

‘Maybe she didn’t want to spoil the surprise,’ said Gareth. ‘Tom, will you get down from there? What will you have, Evi?’

Gareth turned away from his eldest son to look at Evi, which gave Tom just enough time to lower the blind on the kitchen window. He noticed that Evi was watching him as he went to the other window, climbed up on to the worktop and did the same thing. Had he checked that the front door was locked?

‘So can we have a bone man next year?’ Joe asked, for what felt like the tenth time that evening. Joe thought that if he asked a question often enough then sooner or later he’d get the answer he wanted. Frequently, it worked.

‘Not if it means your father gets his testicles roasted,’ said Alice, as Joe dissolved into giggles. He couldn’t hear that word without cracking up. ‘I think there must be a lot of singed eyebrows in Heptonclough tonight.’

‘Not to mention other parts,’ said Harry. ‘Thanks, mate.’ He took a lager from Tom’s dad and opened it, drinking straight from the can.

‘Come on, Joe,’ said Alice, ‘it’s time for you to go up. Tom, you’ve got fifteen minutes.’

‘I want to look at my photographs first,’ Tom said.

‘Did you get any good ones?’ asked Evi.

A sudden thought struck Tom. ‘I think so,’ he said. ‘You can come and look at them with me if you want.’

Tom’s mum turned round in the doorway. ‘Tom, sweetheart…’ she started.

‘Thanks,’ said Evi. ‘I’d like to. If that’s OK, Alice?’

‘Of course,’ said Alice. ‘But the computer’s upstairs, is that all right?’

‘Yup,’ said Evi, standing up. Her stick had been leaning against the ironing-board cupboard. She took hold of it and started to follow Tom out of the room.

‘Are you…’ began Harry.

‘Yes,’ said Evi, looking at him with what Tom guessed was supposed to be a glare, but honestly, if she thought that was scary, she should take a few lessons from his mum.

Tom ran up the stairs with Evi following behind. He could hear the soft tap of her stick on each step. By the time he reached the top he could hear her breathing. His mum had told him that Evi was probably in pain a lot of the time and that it was very brave of her not to show it or complain. Tom supposed his mother was right. He could never keep quiet when he’d hurt himself and as for Joe – well, the whole world knew about it.

He led the way along the landing to his parents’ room, where the computer was kept, and they both sat down. Tom connected the camera to the hard drive and uploaded the photographs he’d taken that evening. He hadn’t had chance to look at any of them himself yet.

‘These are ones I took of the bone men when they were still in the abbey,’ he said. Downstairs, Harry laughed. Evi’s head twisted to face the door, then turned back to Tom again.

‘They’re good,’ she said. ‘I like the way you can see the moon just starting to come up in that one. And the colours in those three are great. You’ve really captured the sunset well.’

Tom knew she was buttering him up, but it was still nice to hear. The pictures were good, his mum often said he’d got her eye for composition, but it wasn’t the shots of the abbey he needed Evi to see. He’d brought her upstairs to show her…

‘Who’s this?’ said Evi.

Feeling his heart start to beat faster, Tom clicked on the picture Evi was looking at and enlarged it. There it was. Evidence. The little girl that nobody believed in, captured on camera. The trouble was…

‘Is it Joe?’ asked Evi. ‘No, it’s bigger than Joe. Another friend?’

… the figure in the photograph, skulking behind one of the taller headstones, just wasn’t clear enough. Knowing who it was, Tom could just about make out the strange old-fashioned dress she’d been wearing and her long hair, but to someone seeing this picture for the first time, it could be anyone. Tom closed the shot down and pulled up the next one.

He’d stayed in his position in the yew tree for nearly twenty minutes, getting cold and stiff, and had been about to give up when she’d appeared. He’d watched her enter the churchyard down at the bottom end and make her way up. She moved fast and she came silently. She’d stopped when she was three feet away from the wall and had crouched there, watching their house. Hardly daring to breathe, Tom had taken one photograph after another.

‘There she is again,’ said Evi. ‘Is it a she? Not sure. That could be hair, could be grass, hard to tell. Oh look, there again. These are good, Tom,’ she said, giving him a sideways glance. ‘Shadowy figure in the graveyard, very atmospheric. Oh look, there’s another one.’

Downstairs, someone opened the front door. ‘Someone’s come in,’ he said. ‘I need to get Dad.’

‘Tom, what’s the matter?’ said Evi in alarm. ‘Where are you…?’

Tom jumped to his feet and crossed the room.

‘Tom,’ called Evi, ‘it probably was your dad. Or Harry, getting something from the car. Why are you…?’

Tom wasn’t hanging around to listen to whatever Evi had to say to him. Knowing it was rude, but that some things are just more important, he ran across the landing to the top of the stairs. He was right, the front door was about three inches open. He hadn’t checked it, why hadn’t he checked it? He ran down, hearing a faint tap on the landing behind him. At the bottom he pushed the door shut and locked it.

Was she inside even now? Tom shot into the dining room. No one under the table. The curtains. Holding his breath and standing at arm’s length, he tugged them apart. The window ledge was empty. She couldn’t have gone into the kitchen, his dad and Harry were there. There hadn’t been time for her to go upstairs. If she was in the house, she’d be in the living room.

‘Tom!’ Evi had reached the top of the stairs. He pretended he hadn’t heard her and pushed open the living-room door.

‘Buddy, what’s going on?’ Tom’s dad and Harry had left the kitchen.

‘I heard the front door,’ Tom said. ‘Someone’s come in.’ He saw Harry look at his dad, his dad’s lips tighten.

‘Double-check the kitchen for me, Harry, would you?’ said Gareth, without taking his eyes off Tom. ‘Make sure the back door is locked.’

‘OK,’ said Harry, and Tom heard him walk back along the hallway to the kitchen. His dad came into the room and walked to the nearest window. He pulled the curtains back, then did the same thing with the far window. ‘It’s OK,’ he said. He was standing directly behind the one sofa Tom couldn’t see around. ‘Do you want me to do the dining room?’

‘I did in there,’ said Tom in a small voice.

‘Probably just the wind,’ said his dad.

Tom nodded. His dad was right. This time, at least, it was probably just the wind.

He went back upstairs and he and Evi looked at his pictures until his mum called Evi down for supper and told Tom to go to bed. Five of the shots he’d taken showed the girl, but none of them were clear enough to prove she was anything other than a normal child. All the same, Evi had seemed unusually interested in her. She’d kept asking Tom who she was. He’d told her he didn’t know, that he hadn’t known anyone else was in the churchyard. She’d pretended to believe him, but Tom suspected they both knew what it was really all about. Sometimes it seemed that he and Evi were playing a game, dancing around each other, waiting to see which one of them would give in first.

It was a pity that he hadn’t got a clear shot, but not a disaster. The important thing was that the girl appeared on film. That meant she was real and he wasn’t mad. Tom couldn’t describe the relief of knowing that. And he was going to try again.

48

‘THANK YOU, I HAD A LOVELY TIME,’ SAID EVI.

Alice kissed Evi on her cheek and then reached up to do the same to Harry. Gareth was standing with his hand on the front door.

‘Al, have you seen my keys?’ he asked.

‘Oh, I’ve probably hidden them from you again in your jeans pocket,’ replied Alice, giving Harry a small hug.

‘They were hanging up,’ said Gareth. ‘Just next to yours. I have to leave at six.’

‘Better get looking, then,’ said Alice. She smiled at Evi. ‘My husband loses his keys on a daily basis,’ she said. ‘Often we find them on the roof of the car. Frequently, the garden wall. Even, on one occasion, in the butter dish.’

‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Gareth,’ said Harry, taking Evi’s arm as Gareth turned from the front door and disappeared inside the house.

‘Thanks again, Alice,’ he said. One last smile from Alice and then she closed the front door. Evi heard the sound of a key being turned as she and Harry walked down the drive.

Harry started the engine and reversed out of the drive into the lane. For a minute or two they drove in silence. It would take them twenty minutes to get home, twenty-five if the roads were busy, and at this rate they probably wouldn’t speak all the way there. Evi had been watching Harry’s reflection in the passenger window. She turned to face him. She had to find something to say, even something really lame.

‘They’re nice people,’ she said. Yep, that was pretty lame, even by her standards.

Harry stepped on the brake and the car slowed down. At the side of the road a lone sheep looked up lazily from the grass she was chewing.

‘Who are?’ said Harry, steering round the corner and picking up speed again.

‘The Fletchers.’

‘Oh yeah, sorry,’ he said, glancing at her. ‘I was thinking about something else. How did you find Tom tonight?’

Evi thought about it for a second. How had she found Tom? Still puzzling, was the honest truth.

‘ Alice said she’d mentioned schizophrenia to you,’ said Harry, when she didn’t reply straight away. ‘Is it possible?’

‘Tom isn’t psychotic,’ Evi said. Harry had shaved that evening. She could see the small scars of a rash just above the collar of his coat.

‘What about these hallucinations?’ he said, glancing at her again. ‘ Alice said he hears voices in his head.’

‘Actually, he doesn’t,’ she replied. ‘He doesn’t hear them in his head.’

Ahead of them they could see the headlights of another vehicle. Harry pulled over on to the grass verge, inches from the wall. They sat, waiting for the car to reach them. Now that he was looking directly at her, Evi was finding it hard to maintain eye-contact.

‘Tom’s voices, according to everything Alice has told me, come from outside of himself,’ she continued, dropping her eyes to the wooden trim of the dashboard. ‘They come from round corners, behind doors. And always from the same source. A young girl who he thinks is watching the family, whispering to them – to him, in particular – muttering scary, threatening things.’

The approaching car drew level, flickered its headlights at them and passed by. Harry released the handbrake and set off again.

‘He’s trying to prove to us that this weird little girl of his is real,’ said Evi.

‘How is he doing that?’ Harry asked. ‘Wait, don’t tell me. Has he been trying to take her photograph?’

Evi nodded. ‘He showed me over twenty shots he’d taken tonight. Five of them show a small, indistinct figure, huddling against stones.’

‘Who did he say it was?’

They turned another bend and caught sight of Heptonclough, already some way below them, twinkling in the dark like a city from a fairy tale.

‘He said he didn’t know,’ replied Evi. ‘That he hadn’t known anyone was there. He was lying, of course, the figure was the focal point of the shots. Tom would have had to know he or she was there. I suspect he’s got some friend of his to skulk around in the churchyard, pretending to be this girl. But the point is, it’s clever and it’s rational. It suggests to me he knows the little girl isn’t real but still needs us to believe in her. He deliberately takes pictures he knows will be ambiguous.’

‘So he didn’t actually claim it was the girl?’

Another bend, another glimpse of the dark landscape below.

‘No. He still hasn’t admitted her existence to me. So I couldn’t mention her either. I have to wait from him to do that. Why are we heading up the moor?’

‘Short cut,’ said Harry. ‘What if she is real?’

Evi thought for a second and then smiled at his profile. ‘According to his parents, Tom talks about this girl in terms that suggests she’s not human,’ she replied. ‘And, by the way, there are no short cuts across the moor. Are you kidnapping me?’

‘Yep,’ he said. ‘What about someone who looks unusual? Tom only sees her at night, from what I understand. He could be getting confused. What if there is someone who likes to hide, play tricks on people, maybe somebody a bit disturbed?’

They climbed higher and the darkness spread itself around them like a pool of black ink, flowing across the moors. From somewhere below a firework exploded. As the sparks died away, Evi could see the dark outline of trees against the sky.

She thought for a second and then shook her head. ‘Only Tom sees and hears her. Where are we going exactly?’

‘What if Gillian hears her?’

‘Gillian?’

‘Gillian hears her dead daughter calling to her. She swears it’s Hayley’s voice. Did she tell you that?’

Gillian had never told her that. No, she’d said, I never see her. Never see her?

Harry was slowing the car. He switched the headlights on to full beam and turned off the road. They were driving across the open moor now, along the faintest hint of a farm track. Ahead of them seemed to be… nothing.

‘She says someone comes into the flat,’ he continued, slowing to a crawl as the car began to bump and jolt over the uneven ground. ‘Someone moves things around, especially Hayley’s old toys.’

They’d reached a small open area of land. Harry switched off the engine and headlights. The sudden absence of noise was startling, the disappearance of light even more so. At her side, Harry became little more than silhouette and shadow, and yet, for some reason, it was even harder to look at him.

‘Gillian and Tom are my patients for a reason,’ said Evi. ‘They both have problems.’

He was moving – impossible not to catch her breath – but he only reached up to the car roof and unlocked it. The soft leather folded back and the night, shimmering with wood smoke and gunpowder, wrapped itself around her like a cool blanket. Above Evi’s head, the sky was the colour of damsons and the stars seemed to have moved a light year or two closer to earth.

‘Tell me when you get cold,’ he said, settling back into his seat. A second of silence and then: ‘What if I’ve heard her?’

She risked a proper look. ‘What?’ He was leaning back in his seat, hands behind his head, staring at the sky. Whatever he was about to tell her, it was something he wasn’t comfortable talking about.

The night air felt damp in Evi’s nostrils; rain wasn’t far away. A volley of violet stars hurled themselves into the sky, distracting them both for a second.

‘Your eyes are that colour,’ said Harry. ‘And, yes, I’ve heard voices too. Eerie disembodied voices, coming from nowhere.’

And he hadn’t thought to mention it. ‘When?’ she asked, pushing herself a little more upright in the seat. ‘Where?’

‘When I’ve been alone,’ he said. ‘Only in Heptonclough, though. Only in and around the church. I’ll bet Tom doesn’t hear his voices at school, does he?’

Evi leaned back again. ‘I need to think about that one,’ she said. ‘What are we doing up here, exactly?’

‘I found this spot a couple of weeks ago,’ said Harry, as he leaned forward to switch on the cassette player. It started to hiss as he pressed the Play button. ‘We’re about twenty yards from the edge of Morrell Tor, the highest spot on the moor. I promised myself I’d drive up here and watch the fireworks.’

He was nuts. And she had to stop smiling, she was just encouraging him. ‘You’re three days too early,’ she pointed out.

He turned to her, his arm sliding along the back of her seat. He was inches away. She could smell the beer he’d drunk at the Fletcher’s. ‘In three days I couldn’t have been sure of having you with me,’ he said. ‘Do you dance?’

‘Do I what?’

‘Dance. You know, move your body in time to music. I chose this track specially.’

Evi listened for a second. ‘Dancing In The Dark,’ she said in a soft voice. ‘My mum used to play this. Where are you…?’

Harry had climbed out of the car and was walking round the front of the bonnet. He held open her door and offered his hand.

Evi shook her head. Definitely nuts. ‘I can’t dance, Harry. You’ve seen me. I can barely walk by myself.’

As though he hadn’t heard, he reached across her to turn up the volume. Then he’d taken her by both arms and was lifting her out of the car. Evi opened her mouth to tell him it wouldn’t work, she hadn’t danced in years, they’d both end up sprawled on the ground, but with his arm wrapped tightly around her waist, she found she could walk quite easily across the few remaining feet of farm track and on to the rock of the Tor. He took her right hand in his, his other arm stayed round her waist to hold her up. His jacket wasn’t fastened. His hand felt like ice. Holding her tightly against him, he began to move.

The old-fashioned cassette player seemed to distort the music somehow, making the drumbeat louder, more insistent than she remembered. And it was ridiculously loud, they’d be able to hear it in the town… but impossible to worry about that, to think about anything but Harry, who danced like he was born to it, holding her up without effort, singing softly in her ear.

The wind blew her hair across his face, he tossed his head and pulled her into the curve of his shoulder and still they kept moving, swinging backwards and forwards in a four-time movement, on the hard rock of the Tor. And she’d thought she’d never dance again.

‘The singing, dancing priest,’ she whispered, when she sensed the track coming to an end.

‘Played in a band at university,’ said Harry, as the vocals faded and the notes of the saxophone curled out across the moor. ‘We used to do some Springsteen covers.’

The sax drifted away. Harry dropped her hand and wrapped both arms around her. She could feel the heat from his neck against her face. This was insane. She could not get involved with him, both of them knew that, and yet here they were, on what felt like the tip of the world, clutching each other like teenagers.

‘I’ve had a very weird day,’ he whispered, as a new track started.

‘Want to talk about it?’ she managed.

‘No.’ She felt a soft brushing on her neck, just below her ear, and couldn’t stop herself shivering.

‘You’re cold,’ he said, straightening up.

No, I’m not. Don’t let go of me.

He stepped back, one arm dropped away, he was taking her back to the car. She stopped him with a hand on his chest. ‘I’m not cold,’ she said. ‘Why are you a priest?’

For a second he looked surprised. ‘To serve the Lord,’ he replied, looking down at her, then up at the sky. ‘Was that rain?’

‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I need more than that. I need to understand what makes a man like you become a priest.’

He was still smiling but his eyes looked wary. ‘That’s a lot to ask on a first date. And that was definitely rain. come on, back in the car.’

She allowed him to lead her back to the passenger seat and hold the door open until she was sitting down again.

‘You said this wasn’t a date,’ she pointed out, as he joined her in the car and twisted round in the seat to refasten the roof in place.

‘I lied,’ he muttered, locking the hood and switching on the engine. Then he seemed to change his mind and switched it off again.

‘I never intended to become a minister,’ he said. ‘I come from a working-class family in Newcastle who weren’t churchgoers and it simply never occurred to me. But I was bright, I got a scholarship to a good school and I met some very impressive teachers. History was my thing, religious history in particular. I became fascinated by organized religion: its rituals, history, art and literature, symbolism – everything really. I did religious studies at university, not theology.’

She waited for him to go on. ‘What happened?’ she asked, when he didn’t. ‘You had a road-to-Damascus moment?’

He was drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, he wasn’t comfortable talking about this. ‘Sort of,’ he said. ‘People kept telling me that I’d make a good priest. There was just this little problem of faith.’

The rain came from nowhere, thudding down on the soft roof of the car like small stones. ‘You didn’t believe?’ she asked.

He ran a hand through his hair. ‘I was almost there,’ he said. ‘I could tell myself that I believed in all the distinct parts, but they were still just a whole load of separate theories. Does that make any sort of sense?’

‘I think so,’ said Evi, although it didn’t really.

‘And then one day, something happened. I… saw the connection.’

‘The connection?’

‘Yep.’ The engine was on again, he was reversing away from the Tor’s edge. ‘And that is all you’re going to see of the inner man for one night, Dr Oliver. Fasten your seatbelt and prepare for take-off.’

They drove down the moor at a speed that had Evi wishing she believed in a deity she could pray to: for her own personal safety. She didn’t dare try to talk to him again, to say anything that might distract him. Besides, she’d just been ridiculously indiscreet. How could she tell herself she wasn’t involved with him, when she knew that the skin of his neck smelled of lime and ginger, and the exact point on his chest her lips would touch if she leaned towards him?

Within minutes of the rain starting, small streams were racing down the sides of the road. A quarter of an hour later, they’d left the moor and were depressingly close to her house.

‘So where do we go from here?’ asked Harry as he turned into her road.

‘I’m seeing Tom later this week,’ she said. ‘He seems to be relaxing more around me now. Maybe he’ll open up a bit. If he’d just admit the existence of-’ Harry had stopped the car outside her building.

‘I wasn’t talking about the Fletchers,’ he said, in a voice that seemed to have dropped an octave.

‘I should go,’ she said, bending down to find her bag. ‘I have an early start in the morning and… it was a good suggestion about tonight. Thank you, I think it will help.’ She turned her back on him and found the door handle, conscious of being watched. She was going to have to do this quickly, she could call goodnight over her shoulder as she walked up the path. It was a short path, hardly two yards to the porch.

The engine fell silent. Behind her, Harry’s door was opening. He was much faster than she was, he would make it round the car before she was even standing up. Yes, there he was, holding out a hand, and was there any point in telling him she could manage? Probably not, and in any event, this was a new Harry, with darker eyes and who seemed to have grown taller; a Harry who didn’t speak, whose arm was around her waist as he hurried her along the path, through the downpour, to the shelter of the porch. Definitely a new Harry, who’d turned her to face him, whose fingers were reaching into her hair and whose head was bending towards her as the world went dark.

Oh, this couldn’t be a kiss – this was a butterfly, bruising its wings against her mouth, settling lightly on the curve of her cheek, the point where the smile begins.

Was this a kiss? This soft stroking of the lips? This crazy feeling that she was being touched everywhere?

And this certainly couldn’t be a kiss, not now that she was spinning away into a place lined with dark velvet. Hands were tangled in her hair – no, one was at the small of her back, pressing her closer. The rain against the porch roof felt like drums in her head. Fingers stroked the side of her face. How could she have forgotten the smell of a man’s skin; or the weight of his body, pushing her against the wall of the porch? If this was a kiss, why were tears burning in the back of her eyes?

‘Do you want to come inside?’

Had she said that out loud? She must have done. Because they weren’t kissing any more, just close enough for it to make no difference and his breath was swirling around her face like warm mist.

‘There’s nothing I’d like more,’ he said, in a voice that was nothing like Harry’s.

The keys were in her pocket. No, they were in her hand. Her hand was reaching out for the lock; his was closing around it, slowing her down.

‘But-’ he said.

Why was there always a but?

He’d brought her hand back, was holding it to his lips. ‘We still haven’t done the pizza or the movie,’ he whispered. She could barely hear him above the rain.

And you are a priest, she thought.

‘And I really don’t want to rush this.’ He released her hand and tilted her chin upwards so that she was looking directly at him.

‘That’s rather sweet,’ she said. ‘And more than a little womanly.’

At that, Harry was back, grinning at her, scooping her up and holding her tightly against him. ‘There is nothing remotely womanly about me,’ he hissed into her ear, ‘as I fully intend to prove before too much longer. Now get inside, you baggage, before I change my mind.’

When the phone rang, Harry’s first thought was that he’d only just fallen asleep and that it would be Evi, asking him to come round. He turned over in bed, unable for the moment to remember which side the phone was on. You know what? Sod it. Sod the pizza, sod the movie, sod everything, he was going.

No, that side had the clock. It was 3.01 a.m. He turned over and reached out. He could be dressed in two minutes, at her place in ten. By 3.15 he could be…

‘Hi,’ he said, pressing the phone against his ear.

‘Vicar? Reverend Laycock?’ It was a man’s voice. An elderly man.

‘Yes, speaking,’ he said, his stomach cold with disappointment. He’d be going out after all, but not to a woman’s warm bed.

Someone was dying. Sex or death – the only reasons to call someone in the middle of the night.

‘Renshaw here. Renshaw senior. My son asked me to call.’

Tobias Renshaw, his churchwarden’s father, ringing him in the small hours?

‘My son apologizes for not calling himself, and for waking you, but I’m afraid you’re needed at St Barnabas’s straight away. You’ll see the police vehicles in the lane. When you arrive, you should make yourself known to Detective Chief Superintendent Rushton.’

49

3 November

SIMBA, MILLIE’S BLUE TEDDY BEAR, LAY ON HIS BACK AT THE bottom of the stairs. When Tom had seen him last, not five hours ago, he’d been clutched in his little sister’s arms. So either the soft toy had developed a taste for midnight strolls or something was very wrong. Tom ran across the landing to Millie’s room. The cot was empty.

Downstairs, a door slammed shut. Tom glanced towards his parents’ room. No time to do anything but yell as he ran across the landing, down the stairs and through the kitchen. He’d heard the back door. Whoever had Millie had only just left the house.

He felt a rush of cold air as he dodged his way around the kitchen table. The back door had bounced open again and the wooden floorboards of the cloakroom were wet. It was still raining hard outside and, even in the doorway, looking out over the mass of mud that was the back garden, the wind battered against him, sending volleys of ice-cold raindrops to soak his pyjamas.

His eyes weren’t used to the darkness yet. He screwed them up and could just about make out the churchyard wall and the laurel trees behind it. From the direction of the yew tree and Lucy Pickup’s grave, he heard a grunt.

Someone was out there. Someone with Millie.

‘Dad!’ he yelled. No answering shout. No choice really. He had to go out.

The relentless rain over the past few hours, together with all that had fallen over the previous day or two, had turned the garden into a swamp. Thick black mud surged over Tom’s feet as he stepped away from the shelter of the back door. A few more steps and he could see better. A black figure was trying to climb the wall but it was carrying something in one hand, something that looked like a large, black hold-all.

‘Dad!’ he yelled, as loud as he could, trying to send his voice in the direction of the house but not wanting to take his eyes off the figure at the wall. ‘Dad!’

His dad would never make it in time. Tom ran forward, sinking almost to his knees in mud, and was just in time to catch hold of one of the climber’s retreating legs. The girl – because who else could it be? – began kicking at him, but she was losing her grip on the wall. She made a grab upwards and gave one last kick that caught Tom off guard. Her booted foot connected with the side of his face and he let go. She gave a sort of leap and then she was lying spread-eagled over the top of the wall, kicking wildly as she scrabbled to her feet. She was almost away, but the black hold-all she’d been carrying was still at the foot of the wall.

She looked from it to Tom and then, with a sharp movement of her head, down at the wall she was standing on. She staggered, almost fell, and then jumped down on the other side.

The wall was moving. It wasn’t possible, but it was happening. The bulge of stones, which for years had held back tons of earth, seemed to swell. Tom watched first one stone, then another, then several, topple from the top and fall into the garden. Through the gap they left behind, earth began to spill over from the churchyard. One of the gravestones seemed to be sliding closer. Tom wanted more than anything to run but something was rooting him to the spot.

The bulge swelled more, like a pregnant woman about to give birth to something hideous. The black figure on the other side of the wall took a few steps back as more and more of the earth started to slide away.

Then the wall just burst apart like a tower built by a toddler. Stones flew everywhere and black liquid poured out in a thick torrent. The headstone nearest the wall – Lucy Pickup’s stone – slipped closer and closer and then fell, cracking in two as it landed not three feet from Tom. Earth poured over the slope where the wall had been and a stench of drains and rotting things almost choked him.

The girl was continuing to back away. Tom took a step forward and something landed heavily beside him, missing him by inches and throwing him off balance. Falling to the ground, he recognized the edge of a coffin, a fraction before the wood collapsed completely and revealed its occupant.

The skull grinned at Tom with tiny white teeth. Pieces of flesh, like old yellow leather, still clung to it. Tom scrambled away from the corpse, feeling the scream build inside his head and knowing that if he let it out he might never be able to stop.

A fresh flood of earth poured down on him, filled with pale-coloured objects that he knew could only be bones. He threw back his head and got ready to let the scream out when a beam of light hit his face and an arm grabbed his shoulder. Tom whirled round. A small figure, wearing a yellow raincoat with its hood pulled up tight and carrying a flashlight, knelt beside him. It was Joe.

Tom pushed himself to his feet. Everything in his head was yelling at him to get back to the house, wake his mum and dad, call the police. As he set off for the back door, Joe pulled him back.

‘No, wait,’ Joe shouted, straining to make himself heard above the wind. ‘We have to find her.’

‘It’s too late,’ Tom yelled back. Up in the churchyard there was no sign of the dark figure. ‘She’s gone. We have to get Mum and Dad.’

Joe shone the flashlight on the ground around their feet. Tom wanted to yell at him to stop. It was all so much worse when you could see it properly. The skull, now broken away from the rest of the corpse, lay a few yards away. Lucy’s tiny statue had fallen along with the rest of her grave. Pieces of coffin were scattered around. He saw what he thought was a human hand, the finger bones clenched in a fist.

Joe seemed to be looking for something. At last, the torch flickered on the black bag which the intruder had tried to escape with. It was half buried beneath a pile of mud and stones. With a cry, Joe ran towards it and started tugging at the handles. Still desperate to get away, Tom had a sense that this might be important. Gingerly, he picked his way over to help.

With a glooping noise, the bag came free and the boys staggered backwards, still clinging to the straps. Joe dropped to his knees and started to tug at the zip. Squeaking with frustration, he finally managed to wrench it back. Then, in the pale light of the torch, Tom could see him grinning. He dropped to his knees beside his brother and peered inside. Millie lay in the bag. As the boys watched, her eyes flickered open. She blinked up at her brothers in astonishment as raindrops began to fall on her face.

50

SOMETHING WAS THUDDING LOUD INSIDE HARRY’S CHEST. Not his heart, though, his heart never made this sort of racket. Should he say something, tell them he knew the identity of one of the dead children?

It was almost painful, this pounding against his ribs. If it was indeed his heart, he had a serious problem. Hearts weren’t supposed to beat this hard.

He couldn’t say anything now, he’d sound ridiculous, hysterical even. Tomorrow would be soon enough. He glanced down to make sure he would step on matting, and moved away from the cordoned area. The white-clad figures around him got back to work.

The Fletchers’ back garden was a quagmire. Harry followed in Detective Chief Superintendent Rushton’s footsteps, along the loose-weave steel path that had been laid over the mud. Above their heads a makeshift PVC shelter was holding back the worst of the weather. Powerful lights on steel poles had been positioned in the four corners. Now that he was facing the house, Harry could see lights on in the downstairs windows. The blinds and curtains had all been drawn.

‘As crimes scenes go, this is as bad as it gets,’ said Rushton as they walked back towards the house. ‘We’re working in the dark, in shocking weather, the mud’s close to a foot deep in places and it looks like there was quite a lot of contamination of the site before we got here.’

One of the white-clad figures was moving slowly round the outside of the inner cordon, taking photographs. Another figure, which Harry thought might be a woman, was using a measuring tape. She stretched it from the wall to the smallest of the three bodies, then began scribbling, or maybe drawing, on a clipboard hanging around her neck.

‘The forensics people you see have just arrived from Manchester,’ explained Rushton. ‘We don’t have that sort of specialism locally. Luckily, the first officer on site was a bright lad. He sealed off the area until the team could get here. Did the same up in the churchyard.’

Harry looked up. More white figures could be seen on the other side of the stone wall. Up there, too, efforts were being made to control the weather. An awning had been stretched across metal poles. One of the officers was struggling to fasten plastic sheeting around the edges. In this wind it was close to hopeless.

‘What are all these people doing?’ Harry asked.

‘The photographer is recording the scene before the trace-evidence people can get to work,’ said Rushton. ‘He’ll take pictures from every angle, then he’ll climb up into the graveyard and do the same. That girl over there, she’s sketching. She’ll measure how everything is situated in relation to everything else and then it’ll all be fed into a computer. We’ll get a very accurate model that we can use if we ever need to go to court. The main task tonight will be removing the bodies, intact if possible, and getting them to the pathology unit. Along with everything else that might be relevant. The coffin will go, of course, any bits of clothing, hair and so on. We’ll take casts of any footprints. Looks like they’ve started already.’

Rushton was pointing to a spot not far from the house. A man was kneeling on a mat of chequer-plated aluminum, pouring liquid on to the ground in front of him.

‘The other two bodies could have come from graves on either side of Lucy’s,’ suggested Harry. ‘I can’t tell you whose they were, but there’ll be a plan somewhere.’

‘We have it already,’ said Rushton. ‘Family graves on both sides, three people recorded as being in the one, four in the other. All adults. And from what we can see so far, those graves are still intact.’

‘Is it possible they’ve been in the ground a long time?’ asked Harry, knowing it wasn’t. None of the corpses he’d just seen was properly skeletonized. ‘In a much earlier grave that no one knew about? This churchyard is hundreds of years old. There must be ancient graves all over this hill. Headstones got removed, people forgot who was in the ground.’ He stopped. He was gabbling. And clutching at straws.

‘Well, we can’t rule it out for now,’ said Rushton. ‘But frankly, the team think it unlikely. And you have to see their point. Did they look like ancient corpses to you?’

Harry looked back over his shoulder. ‘Do the Fletchers know what’s going on?’ he asked. ‘They’ve been under a lot of pressure lately, it won’t be the best-’

‘Oh aye, they know,’ said Rushton. ‘It was the kids that brought the wall down.’

‘What?’

‘I haven’t had chance to speak to the parents yet, so I’ve only had half a tale,’ said the detective, ‘but it seems the two boys were out in this weather, climbing the wall. They had their younger sister in a hold-all, apparently. Looks like some sort of attempt at running away from home. Job for Social Services, if you ask me. Where are you going?’

Harry was heading back along the path to the house. A hand fell on to his shoulder. ‘Hold your horses, lad. You can’t go in yet. The family GP is in there and the two youngsters are talking to one of my DCs. Let’s just leave everyone to do their jobs for a minute, shall we?’

Harry knew he wasn’t being given a choice.

‘You’re familiar with the layout of this part of the churchyard, Reverend?’ said Rushton, as they started walking again. ‘Both churches, old and new, were built at the top of a steep hill, so a lot of terracing had to be done to create the graveyard. The wall we’re looking at was built several hundred years ago, from what I’m told, but it was a lot higher on this side than on the church side. Are you with me?’

‘Yes, I know that,’ said Harry, as they reached the edge of the Fletchers’ property and turned to leave the garden. ‘Gareth Fletcher has mentioned it to me a couple of times. He wanted to get a surveyor in, he was concerned about the stability of the wall.’

‘He was right to be.’ The two men were at the side of the house. Another massive awning had been stretched across from the house to the church wall, creating a dry space for the forensic team to store equipment. Unable to reach them, the weather seemed determined not to be ignored. Raindrops thundered down on the plastic roof while the wind kept it in constant, noisy motion.

‘I’m told there’s an underground stream that runs beneath the church,’ Rushton continued, removing his overalls and indicating that Harry should do the same. ‘Ordinarily that’s not a problem, but when there’s been heavy rainfall, like over the past few days, the church cellar gets flooded. The land around here gets boggy. Did you know?’

‘Yes.’ Harry was balanced on one foot, struggling to take off a boot that was too tight and looking round for his own shoes. ‘Gareth and I had a walk around the boundary a couple of weeks ago. I agreed it didn’t look too stable, but there’s a process I have to go through when any work needs to be done on church property. I’d already set the wheels in motion but these things typically take weeks, sometimes months.’

‘Well, Brian, is it my granddaughter’s grave?’

Harry and Rushton both turned to see that Sinclair Renshaw had entered the tent from the Fletchers’ driveway. The fingers of his right hand clutched a cigarette. Harry had never seen him smoke before.

‘It looks that way,’ said Rushton. ‘I’m very sorry.’ Sinclair nodded his head, just once.

‘Do Jenny and Mike know?’ asked Harry. ‘Do you want me to-’

‘I’ve asked they not be told until the morning,’ Sinclair interrupted him. ‘Christiana has made coffee in the vestry. You should come up. It’s warmer in there.’

Harry pulled his own jacket back on. ‘What happens now?’ he asked Rushton.

‘Well, strangely enough, there is a protocol in cases like these,’ replied the detective, indicating that they should leave the tent. ‘When remains are uncovered on church property, they have to be removed from site and examined by a police-approved pathologist. If he determines the remains are ancient bones, a lot of them apply the hundred-year rule: they’re simply returned to the minister in charge – in this case, you – and it becomes your responsibility to re-inter them.’

‘Yes, I think I knew that,’ agreed Harry, ‘although it’s not a situation I’ve ever come across before.’

‘It’s certainly never happened here,’ said Sinclair.

‘On the other hand, if the remains are, shall we say, fresher, we have to confirm their identity,’ added Rushton. ‘Make sure the body really is the person whose name is on the headstone. Do you follow me, Reverend?’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Harry.

‘Once identity is confirmed, we hand the remains back jointly to you and the family and let you arrange for re-interment.’

‘Another funeral,’ said Sinclair, running his hand over his face. ‘It will be too much for Jenny. How can any mother be expected to bury her child twice?’

51

‘WE SHOULDN’T RULE OUT A BREAK-IN,’ SAID HARRY. ‘Tom could be telling the truth.’

Gareth was holding a coffee mug between his palms. Both hands looked unnaturally white, the fingers blue-tinged. Harry felt himself shivering in sympathy. He could hear the creak of the central-heating system, but the events of the night seemed to have brought a chill indoors.

‘No sign of one,’ Gareth answered him, shaking his head. ‘Front door was locked, no windows open or broken. The back door was open, but we keep the key in it and the bolt’s at the bottom. Tom could have opened it by himself.’

‘Where did he get the bag from?’

‘By the front door. I had it ready to take with me in the morning.’

Harry thought for a moment and then turned to walk back along the corridor to the door. Under the window he could see trainers, shorts, socks – Gareth’s gym kit had been emptied out and left behind. Footsteps behind told him Gareth had followed. Through the coloured glass of the front door Harry could see two white figures, ghostly in the orange streetlight. They walked across the road carrying what looked like a stretcher between them. As Harry turned back to Gareth he caught sight of grey dust around the front door handle.

‘What’s that?’ he asked.

‘The police have already dusted for fingerprints,’ replied Gareth. ‘They’ve done all the ground floor and Millie’s room. I think they were just covering themselves. They didn’t find anything.’

‘What about Joe?’ asked Harry. ‘What does he say happened?’

‘Joe heard Tom yelling and got up,’ said Gareth. ‘He heard banging around downstairs, put his waterproofs on – showing great presence of mind for a six-year-old – and went out. He saw Tom lying in the mud and helped him carry the bag, with Millie in it, back to the house. I’d got up for a pee, realized the back door was open and come down. Got the fright of my life. All three of them, soaked to the skin and covered in mud. Tom started yelling about this little girl of his, Alice was all for rushing them to A &E, I took a look outside and realized I’d better get the police on the blower. Just what have they found out there?’

‘Not clear yet,’ lied Harry. He’d been asked not to mention the full extent of what had been discovered in the garden. ‘I’m sorry about the wall. If I’d had any idea…’

Gareth was staring at the row of three hooks that hung by the front door. ‘That’s funny,’ he said.

‘What is?’ asked Alice, who was halfway down the stairs. Harry turned to smile at her and couldn’t bring himself to do it. That wasn’t a face someone could smile at.

‘My keys. They were missing earlier, remember?’ said Gareth. ‘Did you find them?’

Alice shook her head. ‘They were probably there all along,’ she replied.

‘They weren’t. I checked after the kids had gone to bed. I had to dig out my spare set to use in the morning. How could they have got back here?’

Alice looked from Harry to her husband. ‘Tom could have…’ she began.

‘Why would Tom hide his dad’s keys?’ asked Harry, trying to curb his impatience – they didn’t know everything he did. ‘If he’d wanted to open the front door in the night there were other sets he could have used, weren’t there?’

Alice nodded. ‘Mine were there,’ she said, glancing up at the hooks. ‘They still are. And he didn’t open the front door. It was locked when we came down.’

‘He thought someone had come into the house earlier this evening,’ said Harry. ‘He was upstairs with Evi and came rushing down in a panic. Remember? He made us check the ground floor.’

‘Exactly,’ said Gareth. ‘We checked. No one was in the house.’

‘No, they weren’t,’ said Harry. ‘Question is, were the keys?’

52

‘THREE HUMAN SKELETONS,’ THE PATHOLOGIST SAID, ‘almost certainly the remains of very young children, but I’ll get to that presently.’

Harry was hot. The room was smaller than he’d expected. Having been invited by Rushton to be present at the pathologist’s examination – the remains were all still technically his responsibility – he’d hoped to be able to position himself in the furthest corner. It wasn’t going to be. No one was getting too far away from the action today – there just wasn’t the space. A stainless-steel counter, almost a metre wide, ran around the perimeter of the room. The floor was tiled and appeared to slope downwards, allowing for easier sluicing towards the central drain. Above the counters, glass-fronted cupboards lined the walls. Three gurneys were positioned in the centre of the room. They left little room for the pathologist, his two technicians, the team of three police officers and himself. Twice already, Harry had had to side-step, finding himself in the way. He looked at his watch. They’d been in the lab less than five minutes.

‘The one we have here,’ continued the pathologist, stepping up to the first gurney – Harry had been introduced to him fifteen minutes ago but couldn’t recall his name – ‘St Barnabas number one, we’ll call it for the time being, has been in the ground the longest. We can see almost complete skeletonization, with just the remains of muscle and ligament holding together the bones of the thorax and the abdomen.’ He began walking round the gurney, heading for the skull. ‘The right arm appears to have broken away at the shoulder when the grave was disturbed,’ he said, ‘and part of the ulna from the left arm hasn’t been recovered yet. A couple of the metacarpals from the left hand are also missing. The brain and the internal organs will be long since gone, of course. We found some traces of fabric around the upper body and two tiny white buttons that had fallen into the ribcage.’

‘Lucy Pickup was buried ten years ago,’ said Rushton. ‘Is that consistent with…?’

The pathologist held up one hand. ‘The rate of skeletonization is highly variable,’ he said. ‘It depends on the soil, the success of the embalming process if any has taken place, depth of burial and so on. The soil in the area where the bodies were found is alkaline, which would normally slow the rate of decomposition; on the other hand, this is a very young child. Very little body mass. On balance, I’d say a burial timescale of between five and fifteen years.’

‘We’re going to need a bit more than that, Raymond,’ said Rushton, who’d positioned himself at the foot of the gurney, directly opposite the pathologist. Raymond, that was his name. Raymond Clarke, one of the approved pathologists on the police list.

‘How old would you say she is?’ continued Rushton.

‘I’m only just getting started,’ replied Clarke. ‘And we don’t know whether number one is a she yet. As to age, that shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Based on the skeleton we have an estimated height measurement of 87 cm, which would put our little friend here in the fifteen-to-thirty-six-month bracket. Then we look at the rate of ossification.’

‘Fusion of the bones?’ asked Rushton.

Clarke gave a single nod of his head. ‘Ossification occurs in eight hundred points of the body and can offer some very useful clues as to age,’ he said. ‘An infant is born without carpal bones in the hand, for example. Then we have the cranium. There are five major bones in a newborn’s skull, which gradually fuse along specialized joints called sutures. The newborn also has a number of fontanelles or spots of soft membrane on the skull. On our friend here they’ve closed over, suggesting a child of at least twenty-four months.’

‘Between two and three, then?’ asked Rushton. ‘Could be Lucy.’

‘Very possibly,’ said Clarke. ‘So now we look at the injuries sustained to the corpse.’

Harry wondered if anyone else was as hot as he. Why would a pathology room be warm? You’d expect the opposite, surely, to keep the bodies in good condition. The two detectives Rushton had introduced him to – he was blowed if he could remember names – were standing like a couple of statues a few inches to his left. One of them, tall and very thin, looked to be in his late thirties. His hair was as thin as the rest of him and he appeared to have no eyelashes. The other detective was a year or so younger and powerfully built. Neither looked as uncomfortable as Harry felt. Maybe they’d just had more practice hiding it.

‘I’ve received the coroner’s report into the death of Lucy Pickup,’ Raymond Clarke continued, turning away from the corpse to a laptop computer. He peeled the surgical glove off his right hand and hit a key to activate the screen. ‘It’s all here if anyone wants to look. It refers to severe blunt-force trauma to the right posterior part of the skull, specifically the parietal and occipital bones, following a fall from around fifteen feet on to solid flint flagstones. Displaced fractures of the skull caused considerable internal bleeding and the force of the impact would have sent severe destructive shock waves through the brain. Death would have been almost instantaneous.’

Rushton and the taller of the two detectives closed in around Clarke. All three men peered at the computer screen. Harry stayed where he was. He already knew how Lucy had died. She’d fallen, tumbled to her death in his church, and her little skull…

He was looking at that skull now. The pathologist could take as much time as he liked, he knew it was Lucy. ‘In addition,’ Clarke was saying, ‘the spinal cord was broken in two places, between the third and fourth lumbar vertebrae and slightly higher, between the fifth and sixth thoracic vertebrae. There was also a femoral shaft fracture on the right leg.’ He turned away from the computer, caught Harry’s eye for a second and then stepped back to the gurney. ‘If we look at the head of little miss,’ he said, ‘and yes, gentlemen, I’m coming round to the idea that she was a little miss, we can see the extent of the trauma to the skull.’ Pulling his glove back on, Clarke slid his hand under the skull and turned it so his audience could see where the skull bones had collapsed. ‘These injuries are pretty much consistent with a fall from a considerable height,’ he said. ‘I haven’t had chance to properly examine the spine yet, but if we look at her right leg, the break across the femur is quite visible. Can you see?’

‘Could that have occurred last night?’ asked the stockier of the detectives. He was a sergeant, Harry thought. A sergeant called Russell. Luke Russell.

‘Not impossible,’ said Clarke. ‘But if you look at the X-rays taken for the coroner’s post-mortem, the lines of breakage are very similar. Later on today, we’ll take more X-rays. We can compare the two, just to be on the safe side.’

‘If her body was subjected to a post-mortem examination,’ asked the tall, thin detective, whom Harry thought was the more senior of the two, ‘wouldn’t it be obvious? Don’t you have to cut the chest open, remove the organs?’

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Clarke. ‘A full internal post-mortem involves cutting through the ribcage and removing the breastplate. The internal organs are taken out, examined, put inside a biohazard bag and replaced inside the chest cavity. The top of the skull is sawn open so the brain can be examined. All very difficult signs to miss.’

‘So…’

‘Unfortunately, not much help to us here because a full internal post-mortem wasn’t done on Lucy Pickup, just an external examination. It’s always a bit of a judgement call, whether or not to go the whole way and open the body up. The circumstances surrounding the death are taken into account, quite often the wishes of the family are considered. My guess is that the examiner at the time didn’t feel the full Monty was merited. What we do have, though, are signs of the embalming work done.’

Clarke turned to one of his assistants, ‘Pass me that bag, please, Angela,’ he said. The older of the two lab assistants took a clear plastic bag from the counter behind her and handed it to him. He held it up to the light, beckoning the officers closer. To Harry, at the back, the bag looked empty.

‘What we have in this bag,’ said Clarke, ‘is an eye cap. Can you see? Looks a bit like a very large contact lens. Embalmers use them to keep the eyelids closed, make the deceased look like they’re sleeping peacefully.’ He reached a gloved hand inside the bag and removed the translucent plastic disc. ‘We found this lodged inside number one’s skull,’ he said. ‘It would have been placed on the eye with adhesive to keep the eyelid in place.’ He returned it to the bag and handed it back to his assistant.

‘We also found traces of wire in the jaw,’ he said. ‘Consistent with the type used by embalmers to keep the lips together. And if you look at the skull, gentlemen-’ He moved back to the body on the gurney. The others followed and gathered at the head end. Harry moved just close enough to show willing. Clarke was pointing out where the fractured pieces of the skull lay separate from the head. ‘If you look carefully,’ he said, ‘you can see where the skull appears to have been glued together in places. Repairing an injury in that way is classic embalming procedure. It’s all about preserving the body and making it as presentable as possible for the relatives in the days leading up to the funeral. Interestingly, this is the only one of the three showing any signs of embalming. We’ll send tissue off for analysis, of course. Formaldehyde is pretty nasty stuff, tends to hang around for a while.’

Clarke stepped away from the body, peeled off his gloves and dropped them in a biohazard disposal bin. Reaching up, he took a new pair from a dispenser. ‘We can also do a DNA analysis to be absolutely sure,’ he said, pulling on the gloves. ‘I understand the parents are coming in this morning, but if you ask me, I’m 95 per cent certain this is the little lady whose grave was disturbed last night. This is Lucy Pickup.’

No one spoke. Above their heads the fans of the air-conditioning unit suggested a coolness in the room that Harry just did not feel.

‘Right,’ said Clarke, and Harry almost expected to see him rolling up his sleeves. ‘That’s the easy bit over with. Now let’s have a look at her two friends, shall we?’

DS Russell glanced over at Harry, as if wondering how he’d respond to any suggestion of disrespect. Harry dropped his eyes. When he looked up again, the pathologist had turned to the second gurney. The others gathered round.

‘This child is a very similar size,’ said the detective inspector. ‘How sure can you be that this isn’t Lucy Pickup?’

‘These remains haven’t been in the ground for ten years,’ replied Clarke, without even pausing to think. ‘I’d be surprised if they’ve been in soil for more than a couple of months. Completely different state of preservation.’

Harry stepped closer and DS Russell moved aside to allow him to approach the gurney.

‘Number three is the same,’ said Clarke, indicating the third trolley. ‘Can you see?’

‘Not skeletonized at all,’ said Rushton. ‘They still have skin. They look…’

‘Dry?’ suggested Clarke, nodding his head. ‘They should. They’re mummified.’

Harry looked from one child to the next. They were, as the pathologist said, completely dry, as though something had sucked all the moisture from their bodies. Their skin was shrivelled, dark as old leather, wrapped like cling-film over their small bones. Their scalps still had hair, there were tiny fingernails on their hands. ‘Incorruptible,’ he murmured to himself.

‘There are no bandages,’ said DS Russell. ‘I thought mummies were wrapped in bandages.’

‘Mention mummies and everyone thinks of Ancient Egypt,’ said Clarke. ‘But strictly speaking, a mummy is just a corpse whose skin and organs have been preserved by exposure to something like chemicals, extreme cold or lack of air. The Egyptians and a few other cultures created their mummies artificially, but mummies occur naturally the world over. Most typically in cold, dry climates.’

‘It can’t happen in the ground?’ asked Rushton.

Clarke shook his head. ‘Not in normal soil, anyway. There’s a property in peat bogs that prevents oxygen getting to the body and so halts the process of decay. That’s why we find so many preserved bodies in peat.’

‘Could these be peat bodies?’ asked Rushton.

‘Doubt it. No sign of staining. My guess is that these two were kept above ground, somewhere cold and dry, where the oxygen supply was limited. Some time within the last two or three months – we can have an entomologist check insect activity, give us a clearer idea – they were moved from wherever they’d been kept and put in the grave with Lucy. If I were you, gentlemen, I’d be asking why.’

For a few seconds, there was no sound in the room but breathing.

‘St Barnabas number two would have been around 105 centimetres tall,’ continued Clarke, ‘putting her in the three-to-five-year age bracket. From what I can tell from the skull sutures, she’d be in the upper half of that scale, maybe around four. Our best friends, though, in these cases, are the teeth.’ He indicated the area around the jaw bone. ‘Primary dentition consists of twenty teeth commonly known as the milk teeth. These start to erupt at around six months and are usually fully through by three years old. From about twenty-four months onwards, the adult teeth start to form underneath the milk teeth.’ He ran a gloved finger along the jaw bone. ‘Milk teeth start to be lost at around five to six years old,’ he continued. ‘Of course, this does vary quite considerably from one family to the next, but a child who has lost several of their front milk teeth is likely to be at least seven or eight. The adult teeth come through in an order that looks random but isn’t. This makes it relatively easy to age the skull of a young child. There are even some pretty good charts I can show you, once we’ve got the bones clean and can see the teeth properly.’

‘Any idea at this stage?’ asked the DI, whose name Harry simply couldn’t remember. Dave? Steve?

‘Tricky until we do the X-rays, but from what I can tell, number two appears to have a full set of milk teeth, suggesting a child between four and six years old.’

‘Boy or girl?’ asked Rushton. Both detectives looked at the senior officer, then back to the body.

‘This was a girl,’ said Clarke. ‘Thanks to the mummification I can say that with some confidence.’

‘Is anyone else thinking what I’m thinking?’ asked Rushton, looking at the ceiling.

‘I think we all are, boss,’ said DS Russell.

I’m not, thought Harry.

‘Anything I’m missing?’ asked Clarke, looking from one man to the next.

‘Megan Connor,’ said Rushton. ‘Four years old. Local child. Disappeared on the moors not far from here six years ago. Biggest case of my career. Massive man hunt. We didn’t find a trace.’ He turned to Harry. ‘Ring any bells, Reverend?’

Harry nodded. ‘I think so,’ he said. The story had dominated the news for quite a few weeks. ‘To be honest, though, I hadn’t connected the case with this area. I hadn’t realized exactly where it happened.’

‘Not two miles above Heptonclough,’ said Rushton. ‘Lass wandered off from her parents on a family picnic. Never seen again.’ He turned quickly back to the pathologist. ‘Any clothes found with the body, Ray?’

‘Yes. This one was wearing waterproof clothes,’ replied Clarke. ‘Raincoat and wellingtons. Just one wellington found, though. It’s over here. Size…’

‘Size ten, red,’ said Rushton, who was staring down at the dead child. ‘The raincoat is red too, hooded, printed with ladybirds. Am I right?’

‘Yes,’ said Clarke. ‘They’ve been removed and bagged.’

‘I see those clothes in my dreams,’ said Rushton. ‘Where are they?’

‘They’re over here,’ said Clarke. He turned and walked round the third gurney to the counter. A series of large, clear plastic bags lay in an orderly row. He picked up first one, then another and held them out to Rushton. Both had been labelled with lettering and numbers. Rushton took the bag containing one small wellington and softly shook his head.

‘She was also wearing jeans and some sort of sweater,’ said Clarke. ‘Underwear too. Should help with identification.’

‘I find myself relieved she was buried wearing her clothes, lads,’ said Rushton, still unable to take his eyes off the wellington. ‘What does that say about me?’

No one replied.

‘Any thoughts on cause of death, Dr Clarke?’ asked the thin-haired detective. ‘The skull bones seem to be…’

‘Yes, don’t they,’ agreed Clarke. ‘Very similar injuries to the first child. Severe blunt trauma to the skull, mainly the parietal and frontal bones, and in this case we have a fractured right clavicle or collar-bone, a mid-shaft humerus fracture on the right arm and a distal fracture of the right radius bone. Certainly consistent with a fall, although whether this was before or after death it’s very difficult to say.’

‘So both these children fell from a considerable height?’ said Rushton. ‘How sure are you about number two? Could her bones have been broken some other way? Could she – could both of them – have been beaten?’

‘Unlikely, if you look at the pattern of injuries,’ said Clarke. ‘Number one suffered trauma to the rear of her skull, to her spine and to her right leg, all consistent with falling from a height and landing on her back. Number two’s injuries are all down the right side of her body, again consistent with a fall and landing on her right side, possibly putting out her right arm to brace herself. When children are beaten, their injuries are more random. They tend to be concentrated around the head and upper torso, although you might see trauma on the arms if the child tries to defend itself. There are no obvious defence wounds on either of these two.’

‘Could these breaks have happened last night when the grave opened up?’ asked the DI.

‘Can’t rule it out,’ said Clarke. ‘There’s no sign of these bones starting to heal so the breaks definitely occurred very close to death or post mortem. But you had a lot of wet soft ground, and from what I’ve been told, the remains tumbled rather than fell; a height of – what – six feet.’ He looked again at the damage to number two’s skull. ‘I rather doubt it, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Everybody ready for number three?’

No, thought Harry.

The group around the gurney broke apart and moved away, collecting together again at the third and final corpse. Harry was the last to take his place.

‘Disturbing similarities,’ Clarke was saying. ‘Another very young female child, remains largely mummified. What I can see of teeth and bone development suggests an age of between two and five years old. Her height would indicate…’

‘She was clothed last night when I saw her,’ interrupted Harry. ‘What happened to…’

‘Taken off and bagged,’ said Clarke, narrowing his eyes and looking more closely at Harry. ‘Why?’

‘Can I see it?’ asked Harry.

‘What is it, lad?’ asked Rushton.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Harry. ‘It was dark last night. I probably wasn’t thinking straight. Is it possible to see the nightdress, or whatever it was?’

Clarke nodded at the younger of the two lab assistants, who crossed to the counter and checked a number of plastic bags before lifting one and carrying it across. Harry took the bag and held it up to the light.

‘It’s a pyjama top,’ said the lab assistant. She was a young woman, hardly more than twenty-five, slim, with short dark hair. ‘We need to scrape away the surrounding soil, check it for any trace evidence and then we’ll wash it,’ she went on. ‘It’ll be a lot easier to see when we’ve done that.’

‘Just the top?’ asked Harry.

‘That’s all they’ve found so far,’ replied the girl. ‘The bottom half could turn up later today. It’s quite a distinctive garment, though. Handmade, from what I can tell. No label or washing instructions and these animals seem to have been hand-embroidered.’

‘They were,’ said Harry, looking at the tiny figure of a hedgehog.

‘What’s on your mind, Vicar?’ asked Rushton.

Harry turned to the pathologist. ‘Could these be the remains of a twenty-seven-month-old little girl?’ he asked. ‘Been dead for about three years?’

‘Well, certainly nothing to suggest otherwise,’ said Clarke.

‘What’s going on?’ said Rushton. ‘Who do you think she is?’

‘She’s a child called Hayley Royle,’ said Harry. ‘Her mother is a parishioner of mine. She was thought to have died in a house fire three years ago.’

Everyone in the room was looking at him. Suddenly he wasn’t hot any more. A cold stream of sweat was running down his spine.

‘The pyjamas were a hand-me-down,’ Harry continued, turning back to Lucy’s corpse. ‘From that child’s mother, strangely enough,’ he went on. ‘Her aunt made them, they’re unique.’ They were all staring at him. He was probably making no sense whatsoever. Then Rushton turned to the pathologist. He didn’t speak, just held his hands up in a mute question.

‘There’s no evidence of fire damage that I can see,’ said Clarke. ‘How severe was the fire?’

‘It burned for hours,’ said Harry. ‘The house is just a shell now. The child’s body was never found.’

The police officers were shooting glances at each other.

‘The mother was convinced the child didn’t die in the fire,’ continued Harry. ‘She believed Hayley had got out of the house somehow, had wandered away on to the moors. Looks like maybe she did.’

‘Holy crap,’ muttered DS Russell. ‘Sorry, Vicar.’

‘No problem,’ said Harry. ‘If this child didn’t burn, how did she die?’

Clarke seemed lost for words.

‘Did she fall too?’ asked Harry, thinking of course she did. Hayley had fallen from the gallery of his church. Like Lucy had. Like Megan Connor had. Their blood would be on the stones, the police would look later in the day, they’d find traces of it. He closed his eyes. Millie Fletcher had almost become a fourth.

Clarke was talking again. ‘Yes, I’m afraid she may have done. She has injuries to her skull, facial bones, ribs and pelvis. She fell from a height and landed on her front.’

‘Oh, I think we can stop pretending these children fell,’ said Rushton.

53

‘IT CAN’T BE HAYLEY,’ SAID EVI, SPEAKING IN A LOW VOICE, even though the two of them were alone in a corner of the hospital’s main reception. ‘Her remains were found.’

‘No,’ said Harry, still uncomfortably hot in his black shirt and jacket and tight clerical collar. ‘According to Gillian, there was no trace…’

‘Yes, I know what she’s told you. She said the same to me. But she was lying. Oh shit, this is so inappropriate.’ Evi sat back in her chair and ran a hand over her face. ‘I really shouldn’t be talking about this,’ she said.

Harry sighed. ‘Isn’t there some exception to the rule, whereby if you believe someone’s life is at risk, you can break confidentiality?’ he asked.

‘Well, yes, but even so…’

Harry put a hand on the arm of Evi’s wheelchair. ‘Evi, I’ve just seen three dead infants, all of whom died in a very similar manner, two of whom should never have been in the grave in the first place. I really don’t think normal rules apply any more.’

Evi looked down at the floor for a second, then seemed to make up her mind.

‘I went to see the firemen who were on duty when Gillian’s house caught fire,’ she replied, without looking up. ‘They found Hayley’s remains the next day. Just ashes and bone fragments, very similar to what you’d have left after a cremation, but definitely human remains. The bones were examined.’

Harry felt as if she’d just hit him in the stomach. ‘Well, if that’s the case, I was wrong,’ he said. ‘The good Dr Clarke’s going to love me.’ They would all love him. ‘I was sure I’d heard Gillian talk about what Hayley was wearing that last night,’ he went on. ‘And after Jenny told me it was handmade by her sister, well, there didn’t seem any doubt.’

Evi looked as worried as he felt. ‘Gillian must have been mistaken,’ she said. ‘Severe trauma can play tricks with people’s memories. Maybe she gave the pyjamas to someone else and forgot. If they’re unique, they’ll still help identify the body.’

‘Maybe,’ agreed Harry. ‘The trouble is, the cat’s out of the bag now. The police will have to talk to her. I’m not sure how she’ll cope with it.’

‘I can go up now,’ said Evi. ‘I’ve cleared all my appointments for today.’

Harry heard footsteps approaching. When he looked up, Rushton was standing in the doorway. ‘We’re ready to go and see Mrs Royle now, Reverend,’ he said. ‘Are you fit?’

‘Of course,’ said Harry. He stood and turned to Evi. The back of her chair had two handles, one on either side of her shoulders. ‘May I?’ he offered.

‘Don’t even think about it,’ she snapped. ‘Let’s go.’

54

GILLIAN SEEMED TO SWAY IN THE DOORFRAME AS HER EYES fixed on Harry’s. ‘You didn’t tell me you were coming this morning,’ she said, before shooting a sly glance at Evi.

‘Gillian, this is Detective Chief Superintendent Rushton,’ Harry said. ‘I’m afraid we need to talk to you. Is it OK if we come in?’

Gillian’s eyes opened a little wider, then she turned and walked back up the stairs towards her flat. Harry allowed Evi to go up next and then followed. Rushton brought up the rear.

The flat seemed to have been tidied since the previous day. Harry hoped it hadn’t been for his benefit.

‘What’s going on at the church?’ Gillian asked, as they all entered the small living room. ‘There’ve been police cars there all morning.’

Through the window behind Gillian, Harry could see the main road winding its way up the hill towards the church. The rain of the previous night had left a thin mist behind. The edges of the buildings that lined the road seemed to be fading, as though rubbed out by an eraser.

‘That’s partly why we’re here,’ said Harry. ‘Something happened at the church last night.’ He turned to Rushton. ‘Detective Chief Superintendent, do you mind if I…?’

‘No, please go ahead,’ replied Rushton, sinking into an armchair.

Harry waited for both Gillian and Evi to sit. Evi took the other armchair, Gillian sat in the middle of the sofa. Harry dropped down until he was half sitting, half leaning beside her. ‘Gillian, something’s happened which might cause you some distress,’ he began. ‘That’s why I asked Dr Oliver to come.’ Gillian’s eyes drifted to Evi, as if only just noticing that she’d followed them up, then moved back to Harry.

‘Do you remember telling me about the night your old house caught fire?’ asked Harry. ‘About the night Hayley was killed?’

Gillian said nothing, just nodded once, her eyes not leaving Harry’s face. He began to wonder if she’d started drinking again. There was something not quite… ‘Do you remember the pyjamas she was wearing?’ he continued.

At that Gillian drew herself up. Her eyes flickered into focus and she glanced from Harry to Rushton. ‘What’s happened?’ she asked. She was starting to look frightened.

‘Mrs Royle,’ said Rushton, leaning forward. In the small room, they all seemed uncomfortably close to each other. ‘Early this morning we found the remains of a small child wearing pyjamas very similar to the pair you described to Reverend Laycock. Is there any possibility you were mistaken about what your daughter was wearing?’

‘You found her?’ Gillian had pushed herself forward on the sofa, was on the verge of leaping up.

‘A child was found,’ said Harry, putting his hand gently on Gillian’s arm. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see both Evi and Rushton getting ready to stand up. ‘But we don’t see how it could possibly be Hayley.’

‘I knew it.’ Her fingers were clutching his hand. ‘I knew she hadn’t burned. Where was she? What happened to her?’

‘Mrs Royle.’ Rushton’s voice was loud enough to silence Gillian for a second. ‘I’ve seen the report of the chief fire officer who attended the blaze at your house. According to that, your daughter’s remains were found. They were released into your possession shortly after the fire.’

‘No,’ snapped Gillian, glaring at Rushton.

‘No?’ repeated Harry.

Gillian’s head spun back to face him. ‘What they gave me wasn’t Hayley. I know it wasn’t.’ She turned to glare at Rushton again. ‘They were trying to palm me off with a handful of ashes. I know she got out of the house. Stop looking at each other like I’m mad, I know what I’m talking about.’

‘Gillian, what happened to the ashes that the firemen gave you?’ asked Evi. ‘What did you do with them?’

Gillian stood up so quickly Harry almost overbalanced. He watched her cross the room and disappear into the kitchen. A cupboard door was opened and objects moved around. He turned to Evi, who gave a little half-shrug. Then Gillian was back, carrying a metal jar in both hands. It looked like – it looked like what it was – an urn. Harry got to his feet.

Gillian crossed the room and stopped at the small coffee table that sat in the middle of the carpet. She dropped to her knees and swept one hand across the top. A magazine and her purse fell to the floor.

‘Gillian, no!’ called Evi, a fraction of a second before Harry realized what the girl was about to do.

‘Oh, dear me,’ muttered Rushton, pushing himself to his feet.

Gillian had removed the lid of the urn and upended it. The ashes were pouring out, creating a small cloud above the table. Harry could hear hard objects falling on to the wood. Something grey, about two inches long, fell on to the carpet near his feet.

‘This is not Hayley!’ yelled Gillian. ‘I would know.’

Evi was next to Gillian on the carpet. One arm was around the younger woman’s shoulders, the other had taken hold of Gillian’s hand, was trying to hold it back, stop her from hurling the ashes around the room.

‘It’s OK, I’ve got her.’ Harry’s hand touched Evi’s for a split second, then he was lifting Gillian up and taking the empty urn from her hand. She relaxed instantly and turned to face him, sobbing against his shoulder. God in heaven, what had he started?

‘Don’t touch that please, Dr Oliver,’ Rushton was saying. Harry turned his head, aware of Gillian’s hair clinging to his face. Evi, still kneeling on the floor, had picked up the urn and looked as though she were about to sweep the ashes back inside it. ‘I’ll do it,’ Rushton said, taking the urn from her.

Four heads turned as they heard the front door opening and footsteps climbing the stairs. Taking a firm hold on Gillian, Harry managed to coax her back to the sofa. He pushed her gently down and then turned back to Evi. She was still kneeling on the carpet. Not waiting for permission, he put his hands on her waist, lifted her and helped her back to the armchair she’d been sitting in.

‘Thanks,’ she muttered. Her bottom lip seemed to be shaking. Behind her, he saw Gwen Bannister, Gillian’s mother, standing in the doorway, taking in the scene. Rushton had begun clearing away the ashes. Gillian was sobbing again, her head on her knees, her blonde hair trailing to the floor. Evi had picked up her bag and was fumbling inside it. Harry half expected the newcomer to turn and leave.

‘Detective Rushton, I’d like to give Gillian something to make her feel better,’ said Evi. ‘Have you any more questions for her?’

‘Not for now,’ replied Rushton. ‘I’m going to take these ashes away with me, have them re-tested. From what I can gather, three years ago the tests just confirmed they were human bones. I think we need a bit more certainty than that.’

‘Perhaps Gillian can rest for a while,’ suggested Evi, who was trying to stand up again.

Gwen crossed the room and took hold of her daughter’s hand. ‘Come on, love,’ she said, pulling Gillian to her feet. ‘Come and have a lie down.’

As the two women disappeared into Gillian’s bedroom, Harry breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Do you need Gillian to identify the pyjama top?’ he asked. He knew it was in Rushton’s briefcase, bagged and labelled.

Rushton shook his head. ‘I don’t think she’s a reliable witness, do you? What about the woman who made them? Did you say it was Christiana, Sinclair’s eldest?’

Harry nodded. ‘So Jenny told me. The pyjamas were made for Lucy. She thought they were too good to throw away and a few years after Lucy died she gave them to Gillian for her daughter.’ Harry stopped. Clothes made for one dead child had been given to another. Both had ended up in the same grave.

‘What a ruddy mess,’ said Rushton, who seemed to be sharing Harry’s thoughts. ‘Right, I’d better get up to the Abbot’s House. See if I can find someone there who’s still coherent enough to talk sense.’

‘I’ll come too,’ said Harry. ‘At least to the church. I need to find out exactly what state the churchyard’s in. My archdeacon is going to need a report. What about you, Evi?’

Evi glanced towards the bedroom door. ‘I really should stay for a bit,’ she said.

‘Will you phone me when you’re done?’ asked Harry. He gave her a quick smile and turned to leave. Rushton followed him out, with the remains of a dead human in his arms.

55

‘HAVE YOU BEEN IN TOUCH WITH MEGAN CONNOR’S parents?’ asked Harry, as he and Rushton walked towards the Fletchers’ house. At the top of the hill, the mist was thicker. It almost seemed to be seeping out of the stone, hanging in corners and under roof gables. It carried the scents of the moor with it; he could smell wet earth and, in spite of all the rain, a trace of wood smoke from the previous night.

‘Aye, they’re on their way,’ nodded Rushton. ‘Live in Accrington now, moved away a couple of years after it happened. I’m seeing them in an hour. Wish I had more answers to give them.’

Harry could remember seeing news coverage of the Connors’ tearful appeal for their daughter’s safe return. It had been the lead story on the evening news for several days. The police search had spread the breadth of the country and sightings of Megan had been reported as far afield as Wales and the south coast. And yet she’d been not half a mile from where she went missing.

‘What I’m struggling with,’ said Harry, ‘is that the pathologist was so positive the two girls we think were Megan and Hayley couldn’t have been in the ground for more than a few months. So their bodies were kept somewhere – for six years in Megan’s case, three years in Hayley’s. They were both local children; common sense would suggest it was somewhere round here.’

On the Fletchers’ driveway were several police officers, and a short distance away was another, more casually dressed group that Harry realized with a sinking heart were journalists.

‘Be with you in a second, people,’ called Rushton to the police team. ‘You’re asking me if we carried out a proper search when Megan went missing, is that right, Reverend?’

‘Sorry, I don’t mean to…’ The journalists had spotted them, were starting to edge around the police tape in their direction.

‘The answer is yes, we most certainly did,’ said Rushton in a low voice, glancing at the reporters. ‘We had over fifty officers here at one point, and most of the town turned out to help. We didn’t just search the town, we searched the entire moor. Every ruin, every water-pumping station, every bush and pile of rocks. We used cadaver dogs that are trained to home in only on decomposing flesh. They found two fresh corpses. One was a rabbit, up in that old cottage that belongs to the Renshaw family. The other was a domestic cat. They’re trained to leave animal remains alone, so it didn’t hold us up too much.’

‘So how…?’ Harry left the question hanging.

‘We also had a chopper fly over the whole area, with equipment that can detect the heat of a rotting body. It found us a badger, a deer, several more rabbits and a peregrine falcon missing one wing. No little girls.’

‘DCS Rushton…’ One of the reporters, a young man in his twenties, was peering around a woman constable, trying to get a better view of Harry and Rushton.

‘So I’m inclined to think that if the dogs and the chopper and half the county of Lancashire traipsing around the place didn’t find Megan, it’s because she wasn’t here when we did the search. Hayley, of course, we didn’t look for, because no one knew she was missing.’

Other than her mother, thought Harry. One of the detectives from the post-mortem was walking towards them. It was the older and more senior of the two, the one with thinning hair and invisible eyelashes. The one who was called something like Dave or Steve.

‘Give me two more seconds please, Jove,’ said Rushton.

Jove?

‘One of the questions I’ll be asking now is why no one spotted little Lucy’s grave being disturbed. Although until your friends the Fletchers built their house here, that particular part of the graveyard wasn’t directly overlooked. Someone working quietly, at night, being careful to cover their tracks, well, I can see how they might have got away with it. And if they were blessed with fog like this, they could probably have gone about their business in broad daylight.’ He turned back down the hill and faced the reporters.

‘Press conference at three, ladies and gents, I’ll be happy to talk to you then,’ he called. ‘Right, my lovely lads,’ he said, squaring his shoulders and addressing his colleagues. ‘What have you got for me?’

The thin-haired detective, whom Harry had just learned was named after a Roman god, took Harry’s place at Rushton’s side and indicated that they should walk back up the hill towards the churchyard. Harry and the sergeant he remembered from the postmortem followed. No longer in surgical scrubs, the sergeant’s powerful build was more evident. His trousers stretched tightly around his waist.

‘You’ll get a better view up here,’ Jove explained, as they walked through the entrance and along the church path. Harry couldn’t see the top of the tower. Even the crests of the higher archways were lost in grey mist. ‘They’ve taken the awnings down for as long as the rain holds off,’ he continued. ‘Trying to take advantage of the daylight.’ He looked up. ‘Such as it is.’

‘Anything else shown up yet?’ asked Rushton. The four men were walking fast, passing the church and turning towards the tented area close to the wall. A uniformed constable stood guard at the doorway.

‘Other half of the pyjamas,’ said Jove in a low voice. ‘With some evidence of blood-staining. They’ve been sent to the lab. So have a couple more bones. Couldn’t tell you what they were, but they looked tiny. Oh, and you know the grave on the right-hand side of the collapsed one, as you look at the house, belongs to a family called Seacroft?’

‘Aye,’ encouraged Rushton.

They’d arrived at the police tent. The constable stepped back and allowed them inside. Harry was the last. The polyurethane walls only covered three sides. He could see directly down into the Fletchers’ garden. Three crime-scene investigators were working down there. Two of them seemed to be carrying the stones that had been dislodged from the wall over to the edge of the garden. A tiny stone statue of a child had been placed among them. The blinds in the house windows were still drawn.

‘Well, the coffin can be seen now,’ said Jove. ‘There you go, nice bit of oak panelling. We didn’t spot it last night, but most of the side is in plain view, as you see.’

Harry looked at wood, stained with damp, crumbling in places. ‘We can’t leave it like that,’ said Jove, ‘so we’re going to lift it and get Clarke out here to have a look. Anything suspicious and the whole lot goes down the lab.’

‘Very good,’ said Rushton. ‘We need to do the same with the other side. Has someone filed an exhumation request?’

‘I think so, sir, but I’ll check.’

‘There’s a massive cellar beneath the church,’ said Harry, unable to keep quiet any longer. ‘Cold and dry. The sort of place you might expect to produce mummified bodies. It’s been shut up for years. Did you search it when you were looking for Megan?’

‘We did.’ Rushton gave a nod. ‘Sinclair unlocked it for us. All the old sarcophagi were opened up. We took the dogs down too. Not a sniff, if you’ll pardon the expression. They did get quite excited in the church itself for a while, on the steps leading up to one of those old bell towers.’

‘And?’ prompted Harry, turning to look at the church. Only the closest of the four towers, the one on the south-west corner, could be seen from that angle.

‘Three dead pigeons,’ said Rushton. ‘I could smell ’em myself before I was halfway up the stairs.’

‘Will you check the cellar again?’ asked Harry. ‘They were local girls. They were taken from here and found here. They must have been kept somewhere nearby.’

Rushton barely glanced at him. ‘Thank you, Reverend, the force has some experience of conducting murder investigations.’

A radio started crackling. Jove pulled the receiver off his belt and turned away from the group. ‘DI Neasden,’ he muttered. After a moment, he turned back to his chief. ‘Needed in the house, Guv’ nor,’ he said. ‘They’ve found something.’

‘How long will she be out for?’ asked Gwen Bannister.

‘Hard to say,’ replied Evi. ‘Temazepan is a very mild sedative and I didn’t give her much. Someone a bit fitter, maybe with greater bodyweight, would just feel very drowsy, maybe a bit spaced out. Gillian must be exhausted to have fallen asleep so quickly.’

Gillian’s face had relaxed, lost some of the tension of the past half-hour. She looked younger, softer. One arm was stretched out across the pillow. The long-sleeved T-shirt she’d been wearing had ridden up almost to her elbow. Evi reached out, gently took hold of Gillian’s arm and raised the fabric a little higher.

‘I thought she was getting better,’ said her mother, looking down at the livid, fresh scars across the girl’s forearm. ‘She’s improved, since she’s been seeing you.’

‘These things take time,’ said Evi. ‘It’s still very early days.’

Gwen turned to the door. ‘Come on, love, you shouldn’t be standing up. What do you say to a brew?’

‘That would be good,’ said Evi. ‘It feels like a long time since breakfast.’

‘Tea or coffee?’ Gwen left the bedroom. Evi paused for long enough to tuck Gillian’s injured arm inside the bedclothes and to pull the quilt a little higher up around her shoulders.

‘Tea please, milk, no sugar,’ she called out softly, as she walked back into the living room. The mist outside was definitely getting thicker. When they’d arrived at Gillian’s flat, it had been hovering over the higher reaches of the moor and the upper parts of the town. It had crept lower since. She could just about make out parts of the ruined tower. Nothing beyond.

Evi turned from the window and sat down. The coffee table in front of her looked as if it had been smeared with fine dust. She heard the sound of the kettle boiling, of water being poured, the fridge door opening. Then Gwen returned, carrying a tray with two mugs of tea and a plate of biscuits. She stopped and looked down at the table surface, registering the significance of the dust.

‘Doesn’t seem quite right, does it?’ she said, without straightening up. ‘Should I wipe it down, do you think?’

‘I’m really not sure,’ said Evi. ‘Perhaps leave it for now. I’ll try and get in touch with that police officer before I go. I’ll ask him what we should do.’

Gwen bent down and put the tray on the floor. She offered the plate of biscuits to Evi.

‘I don’t think Gillian can be left on her own today, I’m afraid,’ said Evi, biting into a biscuit and regretting it. It was soft and lay like damp cardboard in her mouth. ‘I can call in again later when she’s awake, but she needs someone with her. If you aren’t able to stay, I can arrange for her to be admitted. To hospital, I mean. Maybe just overnight.’

Gwen shook her head. ‘It’s OK. I can stay with her. I’ll take her back with me tonight. I suppose we can put up with each other for once. Ruddy ’ orrible biscuits. Sorry, love.’

‘You’re not close?’ ventured Evi. Gillian so rarely talked about her mother, she really had no clear idea of the relationship between the two.

Doubt flickered across Gwen’s face. ‘We do well enough,’ she said. ‘Gill ran a bit wild for a time. Things were said on both sides. I expect you and your mum have your fallings out at times.’

‘Of course,’ said Evi. ‘Is there just you at home?’

‘Aye. Gillian’s dad died in a nasty car accident a long time ago. My second marriage didn’t last. But I expect you know all that already, don’t you?’

Evi smiled and dropped her eyes.

‘I heard they dug up some bodies last night in the churchyard,’ said Gwen, finishing her biscuit and reaching for another. ‘Bodies that shouldn’t have been there, I mean. Is it true?’

‘I’m sorry, I haven’t been told much about it,’ said Evi.

‘Little kids, I heard. Is that why you’re here? Do they think it’s Hayley they found?’

‘There was some talk of that being a possibility,’ said Evi, wondering how much more vague she could make that sound. ‘But of course…’ She gestured towards the coffee table, at the dust that seemed to be moving now, as though stirred by a breeze neither of the women could feel.

‘How could it be Hayley when Hayley’s been in a jar in the kitchen for the past three years?’ finished Gwen.

‘When you came in,’ said Evi, ‘Gillian was saying that the ashes weren’t Hayley. Do you know why she felt so certain of that?’

‘She always refused to believe it,’ said Gwen. ‘Even when the remains were confirmed as being human, she wouldn’t accept it. As though someone else could have burned to death in the house without her knowledge.’

Gwen sat chewing her biscuit for a second. Evi sipped scalding tea and waited.

‘I sometimes wonder if it was my fault,’ said Gwen, after a second. ‘Whether I should have got help for her a long time ago. But in those days, we didn’t have any namby-pamby counselling rubbish – no offence, love – we just got on with it.’

‘You thought Gillian might have needed help some time ago?’ asked Evi. ‘Did she have problems at school?’

‘Just the usual teenage stuff,’ replied Gwen, putting her mug down on the carpet and brushing biscuit crumbs off her fingers. ‘Smoking behind the bike sheds, sneaking days off. No, I’m talking about what happened to her little sister. When Gillian was twelve. She must have mentioned it.’

Gwen was staring at Evi now. The lines around her jaw seemed to have hardened. Then she picked up the mug again and drank too much. When she lowered it, Evi could see damp splashes around her mouth.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Evi cautiously, as the other woman ran a finger around her lips. ‘I don’t think Gillian ever mentioned a sister.’

Gwen leaned forward and put her mug down on the coffee table. ‘You should ask her,’ she said.

‘I appreciate your advice,’ said Evi, ‘but we only talk about what Gillian wants to bring up. It wouldn’t be fair to spring a subject on her. If Gillian had a sister, I have to wait until she wants to talk about her.’

‘Well, you might be waiting for a long time,’ said Gwen. ‘She certainly never wanted to talk to me about it. But maybe you should know, especially if…’ She looked at the coffee table, where her mug sat amidst a soft film of ash. ‘Gillian had a little sister called Lauren,’ she went on. ‘She fell downstairs when she was eighteen months old. Someone left the stair-gate open – Gillian most likely, although she never admitted it. Lauren tripped over the bar and went from top to bottom. She hit the slate tiles on the hall floor. Lived for three days but never woke up. I never saw her eyes open again.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Evi. ‘How terrible for you both, and then to lose Hayley as well.’ Another child had fallen to her death?

‘Aye. And after that, my marriage didn’t last long. John was the one who found her, you see. He never got over it.’

Evi’s mobile beeped. A text message. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, finding her phone in her pocket and looking at the screen. The vicar could text – after a fashion. Six question marks, followed by two Xs and an H.

‘I have to go now,’ said Evi. ‘Thank you for your confidence. I’ll pop back in a couple of hours. Gillian might be awake then, and we can decide what to do. Is that OK?’

56

AT THE CHURCH DOOR HARRY STOPPED, ALLOWING THE three officers to walk ahead of him. The reporters were still hovering. Rushton and the two detectives walked past them without responding to their questions and disappeared inside the Fletchers’ house.

‘Is it true?’

Harry turned. The tall, heavy-set man had appeared like a genie from out of the mist, had maybe even been waiting behind the church for a chance to catch Harry alone.

‘Hello, Mike,’ he said. ‘How are you and Jenny doing?’

‘Is it true? Did they find two other kids in Lucy’s grave? Both with their heads bashed in?’ Mike Pickup was breathing heavily. His face seemed redder than usual and the muscles around his jaw were trembling. ‘Has some sick bastard been using my daughter’s grave…?’

Harry put his hand on the other man’s arm. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘There’s coffee in the vestry.’ Pickup showed no sign of moving. ‘I’ll tell you what I can,’ Harry added. It had the desired effect and Mike allowed himself to be led along the last few yards of path and through the open vestry door.

Harry’s inner sanctum had been invaded. Two police officers leaned against one wall, drinking coffee. Another was examining plans on Harry’s desk. Christiana Renshaw was washing mugs. The vestry had become the incident room.

Harry took a coffee from Christiana and nodded his thanks, then led the way into the chancel. He walked down the steps into the nave and stopped at the first pew. He and Mike both sat down.

‘I’m breaking police confidentiality by telling you this,’ said Harry, ‘because I think you have a right to know.’ The coffee had been brewed some time ago, it wasn’t that hot. Harry took two gulps, to give himself time rather than because he wanted to drink.

‘The remains of three small children were found last night,’ he began. ‘All of them appear to have tumbled from Lucy’s grave when the wall collapsed. One of them has been more or less identified as Lucy, depending upon the DNA sample, which I believe Jenny gave this morning. The identities of the other two aren’t known as yet.’

‘That little lass Megan, from what people are saying,’ said Mike. ‘I took part in the search for her. Didn’t do a scrap of work for two days. I had all the lads out as well.’ He put the mug down on the prayer-book shelf in front of him and fumbled in his pockets. ‘I felt for her parents,’ he went on. ‘I know what it’s like to lose a child.’

‘How’s Jenny doing?’ asked Harry, as Mike removed a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and sat looking at them.

‘She’s been closeted with her dad and old Tobias all morning,’ replied Mike. He tipped the packet upside-down; Harry could hear the soft pat of the cigarettes falling against cardboard. ‘Family confab,’ said Mike, turning the packet the other way. ‘Nothing to do with me, of course. I’m not much more than the hired help.’ He opened the cigarette packet, allowing the contents to fall into his hands.

‘Grief affects people in different ways,’ said Harry, surprised by the bitterness he could hear in the other man’s voice. ‘I’ve heard there’s a special bond between fathers and daughters.’

Mike held a single cigarette between his finger and thumb. As Harry watched, it started to bend. Mike’s eyes were shining. He was taking deep, slow breaths, as though fighting to prevent himself from breaking down. He began shaking his head. The cigarette in his hands was broken, useless.

‘She wasn’t even mine,’ he said. ‘What do you make of that, Harry?’

‘Not biologically yours, you mean?’ Harry asked.

Mike was still shaking his head. ‘Jenny fell pregnant shortly after I met her,’ he said. ‘We weren’t even going out at the time, it was obvious it couldn’t be mine. She never told me who the father was. Just a silly mistake, she said, not even a relationship, except she didn’t want to get rid of it. I kind of admired her for that. But there was no way Sinclair was going to let any daughter of his be a single mother.’

‘So the two of you got married?’

‘Four hundred acres of farmland I got for my trouble. And two thousand ewes. I come from a farming family, Harry, over near Whitby, but I’ve got three older brothers. It was the only chance I’d ever have of getting my own farm. Irony is, I’d probably have married Jenny anyway. I was halfway to being in love with her.’

The mug in Harry’s hands was cooling rapidly, as though Harry was soaking up all its warmth.

‘And you accepted Lucy as…’

‘There was never any question of it. I adored her from the moment I first saw her. And after a while I forgot; I just forgot she wasn’t really mine. I never got over her death. If we’d had more kids maybe. Now, I doubt I ever will.’

The door from the vestry opened and two uniformed officers, a man and a woman, came into the church. They stopped when they saw Harry and Mike, muttered an apology and retreated back into the vestry. Mike watched them go, then stood up. ‘What happened to them, Harry?’ he said, not taking his eyes from the vestry door. ‘What happened to the other two kids? How were they killed?’ Two broken cigarettes lay on the stone floor.

‘The exact cause of death hasn’t been-’ began Harry, getting to his feet and stepping out into the aisle.

Mike turned to face him. ‘Don’t give me that. No disrespect, Vicar,’ he said. ‘You were at the bloody post-mortem this morning. Had their heads been bashed in?’

Harry took a deep breath. This had been a mistake. He shouldn’t have allowed himself to get drawn in. ‘There was some evidence of head trauma in both cases,’ he began, ‘but we really need to wait-’

‘Like Lucy?’ demanded Mike.

‘The pathologist thought the injuries could be consistent with falls,’ said Harry. Rushton would kill him.

‘Like Lucy?’ repeated Mike.

‘That’s really all I can tell you, I’m afraid,’ said Harry.

Pickup glared at him for a second longer. ‘I’m grateful for your time, Vicar,’ he said. ‘I won’t keep you any longer.’ He nodded at Harry and then set off towards the front of the church. He passed into the vestry and out of sight. Harry’s mobile issued three sharp beeps. He pulled it from his pocket. Evi had arrived at the church and was wondering where he was. He set off in Mike’s footsteps.

‘They’ll be leaving now, I expect.’ The voice startled him. Harry turned to see Christiana watching him. Her voice was like Jenny’s, only softer and sweeter. He didn’t think he’d ever heard her speak before.

‘I’m afraid the police will be here for quite a while yet,’ replied Harry. ‘It’s upsetting, I know. But necessary.’

‘Not the police. The Fletchers.’ She always wore dresses, he noticed. Tailored dresses, in fabrics that looked expensive. They fitted her perfectly and Harry wondered if she made them herself, like she’d made Lucy’s pyjamas.

‘The Fletchers?’ repeated Harry. ‘Why would the-’ He stopped. Christiana’s hair was loose this morning, held back from her face with an Alice band. It was long, past her shoulders, unusual on a woman in her forties. She was standing close to him now, closer than felt really comfortable, as though she didn’t want to be overheard. He could smell the old-fashioned floral scent she wore and was suddenly reminded of the day she’d scattered scented rose petals beneath the gallery.

‘So many little girls,’ she said. ‘Tell them to go, Vicar. It’s not safe here. Not for little girls.’

57

‘SO WHERE DO YOU THINK THE CHILDREN WERE PLANNING to go last night, Mrs Fletcher?’

‘That’s assuming they were planning to go anywhere,’ Harry jumped in, before Alice could open her mouth. ‘According to Tom, he was trying to rescue his sister.’

Evi watched the blonde social worker look down at the notepad on the kitchen table, gathering her thoughts. ‘Yes,’ the woman said, after a second. ‘From this mythical little girl of his.’ She looked up again at Alice. Her lips were a bright, glossy pink. ‘Have they ever tried to run away before?’ she asked.

‘Again, assuming they were running away,’ said Harry. ‘In my experience, children don’t run away in the middle of the night, especially when it’s pissing it down with rain. They go in the day, usually when they’ve been told they can’t have any sweets or have to tidy their bedrooms, and they rarely get further than the corner of the street.’

‘Exactly how much experience do you have of children running away, Mr Laycock?’ asked the social worker. Evi raised her mug to her lips to hide a smile. This was as far from a laughing matter as it was possible to get, and yet there was something about Harry in pugilistic mode that tickled her.

‘Does anyone want more coffee?’ asked Alice. Nobody answered her. Four mugs sat on the table in front of them. With the exception of Evi’s, which was occasionally being used as a screen, none appeared to have been touched.

The kitchen door opened and Joe appeared. Everyone turned to him.

‘Mummy, I need a wee,’ he said, glancing curiously from one grown-up to the next. His lips twitched in a faint smile when he saw Harry. Alice stood up. ‘Stay downstairs, poppet,’ she said, indicating the door to the rear of the room. ‘Can you squeeze behind Harry?’

‘I want to get my remote-control Dalek,’ answered Joe, not moving from the doorway. His mother shook her head.

‘Not till the policemen have finished, sweetie,’ she said. ‘Is Millie OK?’

‘She’s building a tower with Tom,’ answered Joe. ‘With firewood.’

‘Oh good,’ muttered Alice, as Joe turned and left the room.

‘The upstairs of our house is still officially a crime scene,’ said Alice, to no one in particular. ‘I haven’t been allowed in Millie’s room today. I’ve had to dress her in Joe’s clothes.’

‘They haven’t found any evidence of this so-called break-in then,’ said the social worker. Hannah Wilson, she’d introduced herself as, arriving just seconds after Harry and Evi had knocked on the door of the Fletchers’ house. She was in her early thirties, on the plump side and with generous breasts squeezed inside a low-cut, tight-fitting sweater. A long, single chain of stones lay against her breast bone, emphasizing the depth of her cleavage. For nearly twenty minutes now, Evi had been waiting to see Harry’s eyes fall to it. So far, he’d managed to resist.

‘ Alice ’s husband’s keys were missing,’ Harry pointed out.

‘Keys go missing all the time,’ answered Hannah. ‘You’ll need a bit more than that if you’re going to prove attempted child abduction.’

‘How about two unidentified bodies in the mortuary at Burnley General?’ said Harry. ‘Both pulled out of the Fletchers’ back garden last night. Sorry to be so blunt, Alice.’

Alice shrugged her shoulders and glanced over at Evi. Evi half smiled back, knowing she ought to try and rein Harry in a little. A visit from Social Services was standard procedure following any incident when police were called out and children deemed at risk. If Harry pissed this woman off, it could turn personal. Hannah Wilson might start flexing her own muscles and the Fletcher family would find themselves caught in the middle.

‘Well, we don’t know at this stage whether what the police are investigating outside had anything to do with the family here,’ said Hannah. ‘In the meantime, my sole concern is for the welfare of the children.’

‘So is mine, actually,’ interrupted Alice.

‘And you have to admit Tom’s story doesn’t quite stack up.’ The social worker looked from Harry to Alice to Evi, as if daring one of them to challenge her. ‘Tom’s face is quite badly bruised. If I understood you properly, Mrs Fletcher, he says he got it when the little girl, who was running away with his sister, kicked him.’

‘That’s what he told me,’ said Alice.

‘But from what I understand from his earlier descriptions of the girl, she doesn’t wear shoes.’

Nobody spoke. Evi dropped her eyes to the table, mentally kicking herself for not spotting that first. The kitchen door opened again. It was Tom this time, the purple bruise vivid against the pale skin over his cheekbone.

‘Mum, Millie’s spilled her juice on the sofa,’ he said. Alice sighed and started to get up.

‘I’ll do it,’ offered Evi, rising and picking up a dishcloth. ‘You finish up here, Alice. I’m sure Mrs Wilson must be nearly done by now.’

Evi followed Tom into the living room. She could hear heavy footsteps moving around upstairs and people talking in low voices. Joe was at the far end of the room, peering around the drawn curtains to see what was happening in the garden outside. Millie, looking impossibly cute in a pair of denim dungarees that had been rolled up at the ankles, waved a stick of kindling wood at her and nearly tumbled backwards into the empty fireplace. Tom rushed forwards and caught her before her head could bang against the hearth.

‘Hi, cutie pie,’ said Evi, when the toddler was safely on her feet again. The little girl appeared to have been crying. The skin around her eyes looked red and sore. ‘Where’s this sticky mess?’ Evi asked.

‘Der,’ said Millie, indicating the middle sofa. Evi found the juice and ran the damp cloth over the seat. She could feel Tom’s eyes on her.

‘How are you feeling now, Tom?’ she asked. ‘Still tired?’

Tom shrugged. ‘Who’s that woman?’ he asked. ‘Is she a doctor, like you?’

Evi shook her head. ‘No, she’s a social worker. She’s here to find out what happened last night and make sure you and Joe and Millie are OK.’

‘Do I have to talk to her?’

Evi perched on the arm of the sofa. ‘Do you want to talk to her?’ she asked.

Tom thought for a moment, then shook his head.

‘Why not?’ asked Evi, noticing that Millie was watching the conversation, her gaze going from one speaker to the next as though she understood every word. Over at the window, Joe had gone quite still.

Tom shrugged again and dropped his eyes to the pile of firewood on the carpet.

Evi stared at him for several seconds, then made a decision. ‘Why have you never told me about the little girl, Tom?’ she asked. Tom’s eyes widened. ‘I know you showed me her photograph last night, but you didn’t tell me who she was.’ Out of the corner of her eye, Evi could see Joe at the window. He wasn’t peering through the gap in the curtains any more, he’d turned to look at them. ‘Is it because you think I wouldn’t believe you?’ she continued in a soft voice.

‘Would you?’ asked Tom.

‘I spend a lot of time talking to people,’ said Evi. ‘And I can usually tell when they’re lying. They give themselves away in all sorts of little ways. I’ve watched you closely when we’ve been talking, Tom, and I don’t think you’re a liar.’ She let herself smile, which really wasn’t difficult when you looked at Tom. ‘I think you’ve told me the odd little fib now and then, but most of the time you don’t lie.’ Tom was holding eye contact. ‘So if you tell me all about this little girl, and if you tell me the truth, I’ll know.’

Tom looked over at Joe, then down at Millie. Both stared back, as though waiting for him to begin. Then he started to talk.

‘She’s been watching us for a while now,’ he said. ‘Sometimes, it’s like she’s always there…’

58

‘WHAT’S AN EMERGENCY PROTECTION ORDER?’ ASKED Harry.

‘It’s a court order,’ replied Hannah Wilson. ‘It allows children to be taken into care for their own protection. They’re effective immediately.’

Harry sat back down, moving his chair closer to Alice. She was sitting quite still; he might almost have thought she wasn’t listening, had it not been for the trembling in her fingers.

‘Have you discussed this with Dr Oliver?’ asked Harry. ‘As the family psychiatrist I’d have thought she’d be the obvious person to consult.’

‘Dr Oliver can submit a report, of course,’ replied Wilson. ‘I’m sure the magistrate will take it into account.’

Harry was about to respond – quite what he would have said, he hadn’t quite decided – when they heard footsteps coming down the stairs. They could hear Rushton’s distinctive voice, then the front door opening and closing. The footsteps turned in the direction of the kitchen then stopped.

‘This is something the family need to know,’ they heard Rushton say, in a voice that was low but firm. Then he came into the room, knocking on the door politely as he opened it. He was followed by DI Neasden and a female constable. Neasden didn’t look happy.

‘Sorry to interrupt, Mrs Fletcher,’ said Rushton. ‘Need a word, if I may.’

Alice seemed to be bracing herself for another blow. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Do you need to see me alone?’

Rushton looked quickly round the table, avoiding Neasden’s eyes. ‘Oh, I think we’re all friends together,’ he said. ‘’Ow do, Hannah. You on your way out?’

‘Have you found something?’ asked Harry.

‘I think so,’ replied Rushton. ‘What time’s your husband home, Mrs Fletcher?’

Alice seemed to have lost her ability to think quickly. She glanced at her watch, then at Harry. ‘He said he’d be a couple of hours,’ she said after a moment. She turned to the kitchen clock on the wall behind her. ‘A site inspection he couldn’t get out of. He should be back any time now.’

‘Good,’ said Rushton. ‘And you might want to get a locksmith up here. See if these locks can’t be changed.’

‘What is it?’ asked Alice.

Rushton pulled out the chair Evi had just vacated and sat down. Behind him, DI Neasden, his lips pressed tightly together, leaned back against the tall kitchen cupboard. The constable remained by the door, softly closing it behind her.

‘You remember we found some footprints in the garden last night,’ began Rushton. ‘Our forensics people took casts of them.’ He turned to the man behind him. ‘Have you got it, Jove?’ he asked.

DI Neasden had been carrying a thin, blue plastic wallet. With obvious reluctance, he pulled a stiff sheet of A4 white paper from it and handed it to his boss. Rushton turned it to face Alice and Harry. It was a photograph of a footprint in mud.

‘We know the prints must have been left in the garden late last night,’ said Rushton, ‘because of all the rain you had up here. If they’d been left earlier in the evening, they’d have been washed away. So we know at least one person apart from your children was out there round about the time the wall came down.’

Hannah leaned forward to study the print.

‘We took several casts of footprints last night,’ said Rushton, ‘and a whole load of photographs, but this one is the most clear.’ He turned to Harry. ‘You remember me mentioning that the constable who was first on the scene was a bright lad?’

Harry nodded.

‘Brighter than I thought, it turns out,’ continued Rushton, ‘because he spotted this print, knew the rain would compromise it and put an upturned bucket over it until the crime team could get here. They were able to take some very good photographs and make a good cast.’

‘They’ve made a cast of this?’ asked Alice. ‘What with – plaster?’

‘Dental stone, I believe,’ answered Rushton. ‘A very tough, durable sort of plaster.’ He pointed to the footprint. ‘This here’s probably a size seven, maybe an eight,’ he said. ‘Not the most helpful to have, frankly, because it could be a tall woman or a small-footed man. You’re a size four, I understand, Mrs F?’

Alice nodded. ‘And Gareth’s a-’

‘A ten, yes, we know. We took casts of his prints as well. Matched them to the boots he was wearing when he went outside. These prints are quite different. Much cruder tread on them. Can you see?’ Rushton ran his finger around the outline of the print.

Harry leaned forward to get a better look. Horizontal ridges ran across the print. From the shadows on the photograph they looked deep, the sort of ridges you might see on a boot made for walking through deep mud.

‘Looks like a bog-standard wellington to me,’ he said. In the instep arch between sole and heel, he could just about make out an incomplete shape, maybe two-thirds of a gently rounded triangle. ‘Is that a manufacturer’s logo?’ he asked.

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Rushton. ‘And although it’s difficult to see, I’m told the letters immediately below it say “Made in France”. Shouldn’t be too difficult to track down the make and manufacturer.’

‘But you knew about the prints in the garden last night,’ said Alice. ‘Why have they suddenly become so-’

‘Ah,’ interrupted Rushton. ‘But last night we didn’t know about the matching one upstairs.’

‘Boss, we really shouldn’t be…’ said DI Neasden.

Rushton held up a hand to silence him. ‘There are three young children in this house,’ he said. ‘They need to know this.’

‘Excuse me,’ said Alice in a low voice. ‘Matching one upstairs?’

‘On the landing,’ said Neasden, with a resigned look at his boss. ‘Right outside your daughter’s room. I’m afraid whoever was in your garden last night was in your house first.’

Alice’s fingers rose to her face. It would have been difficult to say which had the least colour.

‘Yes, I know, lass,’ said Rushton. ‘Very upsetting, but it means we’re getting somewhere.’

‘I looked last night,’ said Alice, who didn’t seem to want to believe it. ‘I didn’t see any sign that anyone had-’

‘No, you wouldn’t,’ replied DI Neasden. ‘It’s what we call a latent print. Just about invisible to the naked eye and typically left by shoes that are quite clean.’

‘You see, lass, shoes pick up traces of whatever we walk on,’ said Rushton. ‘It’s called Locket’s Law or some such.’

‘Locard’s Exchange Principle,’ interrupted Neasden with the first smile Harry had seen on his face. ‘Every time two surfaces come into contact there’s potential for the exchange of physical materials. We carry away something of what we encounter, everywhere we go.’

‘Yeah, that’s it.’ Rushton nodded his head in his DI’s direction. ‘So, as I was saying, every time we walk on something – dust, mud, carpet and so on – tiny particles cling to the soles of our shoes and then when our shoes come into contact with a clean, dry surface, such as your floorboards upstairs, Mrs F, they leave a faint print behind. We find them – when I say we, I mean my clever lads and lasses – in the same way we find fingerprints. We dust with fingerprint powder and then lift the print with adhesive tape.’

‘Just the one print indoors?’ asked Harry. Rushton turned to the inspector for confirmation.

Neasden nodded. ‘We’re pretty certain there’s nothing else,’ he said. ‘I don’t doubt there could have been more last night, but there was a lot of coming and going in the house, even before we got here. Any others were probably lost. Doesn’t matter though. One’s enough.’

‘You OK, Alice?’ asked Harry.

Alice seemed to be getting some of her colour back. She nodded. ‘Actually, it’s a bit of a relief,’ she said. ‘It means Tom wasn’t lying.’ She was silent for a second. ‘He’s probably been telling the truth all along,’ she added.

Harry smiled at her and turned back to Rushton. ‘Can you trace the boot to its owner?’ he asked.

‘There’s a good chance.’ Rushton nodded. ‘We also, very conveniently, have a tiny gash in the right side of the sole, can you see?’ He tapped the side of the photograph with his right index finger. Harry saw a small indentation, only half a centimetre long. ‘Also, according to our lab, there are wear patterns visible. If we find the boot in question, we can prove the wearer was in your house and garden. Which, given the lack of any sign of a break-in, is why I brought up the subject of changing the locks. Perhaps think about a burglar alarm while you’re at it.’

‘I’ll ring Gareth,’ said Alice, getting to her feet. ‘He can bring some new locks home with him.’

‘Very wise,’ agreed Rushton. ‘But just hold on a sec, lass. I’m afraid that’s not all. You should probably sit down.’

Alice looked at the kitchen door. ‘I really need to check on the kids,’ she said.

‘Evi’s with them,’ Harry reminded her, wondering if the social worker would offer to go and see if the children were OK. She didn’t. Alice took her seat again.

‘Where do you do your dry-cleaning, Mrs Fletcher?’ asked Rushton.

‘My what?’ asked Alice.

‘Dry-cleaning. There’s a couple of places down in Goodshaw Bridge, do you use either of those?’

‘I suppose I would,’ agreed Alice, ‘if I ever had anything to take. But I probably use dry-cleaners once a year.’

There was a moment’s silence, while Rushton and Jove exchanged glances.

‘I have three children,’ Alice continued, as though worried they might not believe her. ‘I paint for a living and my husband is a builder. As a general rule, if something won’t wash, I won’t buy it.’

‘Sound thinking,’ said Rushton, nodding his head. ‘My suits cost a fortune to keep clean, according to the wife. So, have you ever tried these home dry-cleaning kits? You know, when you shove everything in a bag with a load of chemicals and put it in the tumble-dryer?’

‘I’ve never heard of such things,’ said Alice.

‘So you won’t mind if Stacey here and her colleagues have a quick look round your cupboards, make sure there’s nothing you’ve forgotten?’

Alice thought about it for a second. ‘Be my guest,’ she said. ‘You won’t find them very tidy.’

Rushton turned and nodded to the WPC. She left the room.

‘We’re struggling with the dry-cleaning connection,’ said Harry.

‘The floor’s yours, Jove,’ said Rushton, leaning back in his chair. In the hallway, Harry could hear the sound of the front door opening and closing as someone, he guessed the WPC, left the house.

‘The crime-scene investigators found something in your garden last night that puzzled us,’ said DI Neasden, speaking to Alice. ‘We thought it was just a tissue of some sort at first but we photographed it, bagged it and took it to the lab, as we do.’

The front door opened again. Footsteps were coming towards the kitchen.

‘About thirty minutes ago, we got a phone call from them, saying they’ve managed to identify it,’ he continued. ‘It’s an essential part of a home dry-cleaning kit. A sort of cotton pad, soaked in stain-removing chemicals, that you put into the tumble-dryer with your clothes. If you do your dry-cleaning at home, that is.’

‘I’m going to have to talk to the wife about them,’ said Rushton, who was leaning back quite precariously by this stage.

‘Yes, thanks, Boss. Anyway…’

The kitchen door opened and the WPC was back, with two colleagues, both male. ‘OK to start in here, sir?’ she asked. Rushton nodded, lowering the front legs of his chair to the floor again.

‘The utility room’s through there,’ said Alice, indicating the back door. The two uniformed men left the kitchen, while the WPC knelt down and opened the cupboard under Alice’s sink.

‘Where was I?’ said DI Neasden. ‘Right, the dry-cleaning pad. Obviously, we wonder what it’s doing in your garden. It has a strong residue of chemicals clinging to it and it wasn’t particularly wet or muddy when we picked it up, suggesting that, like the footprints, it was left in your garden last night. The lab also say they’ve found traces of the same chemical in your husband’s gym bag.’

‘The dry-cleaning pad was in the bag,’ said Harry. Everyone ignored him.

‘Any reason why your husband might have a dry-cleaning kit in his gym bag?’ asked DI Neasden.

Alice shook her head. ‘Gareth can’t work the washing machine,’ she said.

‘Now, dry-cleaning fluids have a very distinctive smell,’ said Rushton, who seemed unable to keep quiet any longer. ‘You must know, Reverend, all your lovely robes must have to be professionally cleaned.’

Harry nodded. ‘Quite takes your breath away when you take them out of the plastic covers.’

‘And when we took the sheets off your daughter’s bed, we just got a whiff of something. Well, Jove did, to be honest. Very good nose.’

‘How has she been today?’ asked Neasden. ‘Have you noticed anything unusual? The GP took a look at her last night, didn’t he?’

‘He did,’ said Alice, who was starting to look frightened again. ‘I probably should just go and see…’

‘I’ll go,’ said Harry, getting to his feet. He stepped back from the table and stopped. He didn’t want to leave, he wanted to hear where this was leading.

‘The doctor said she seemed fine,’ continued Alice. ‘A bit drowsy, but otherwise OK. He wasn’t worried about her, just asked me to bring her in later today.’

‘Any coughing? Runny nose? Red eyes?’ asked Neasden.

Alice nodded. ‘She has been rubbing her eyes a lot. What’s happened to her?’

‘The thing that puzzled us most about your son’s story,’ said Rushton, ‘because something was telling me he wasn’t lying, was how this intruder could get a small child into a hold-all without her yelling merry hell and waking the entire house up. It’s starting to make a bit more sense now.’

‘I still don’t see…’ Harry had moved as far as the door.

‘The principle component of these dry-cleaning pads is polyglycolether,’ said DI Neasden.

‘What?’ said Alice.

‘Miss off the fancy first bit,’ said Rushton. ‘Ether is what we’re talking about. Been used for donkeys’ years as a pretty crude anaesthetic. I’m sorry to say it, but it looks like someone held a pad soaked in ether against Millie’s face. It almost certainly wouldn’t have worked with an adult, probably not even on one of your lads, but given how small she is and the fact that she was sleeping anyway, it was probably just sufficient to keep her drowsy enough to put her in the bag.’

Alice gave a tiny cry and set off towards Harry.

‘I’m going,’ he muttered, and pulled open the kitchen door. Four strides took him to the door of the living room. He pulled it open, knowing that Alice was hot on his heels. Evi and the three children were sitting on the floor. Four faces, impossible to say which was the prettiest, turned to him. He was still trying to decide when Alice squeezed past him.

‘Um, um,’ called Millie, her little face lighting up, before squawking in annoyance as her mother scooped her up and pressed her against her chest.

Rushton and DI Neasden came into the room.

‘Right then,’ announced Rushton. ‘Schoolboy Superhero Tom and his trusty sidekick, Joe the Invincible, I think we need another word with you two.’

59

‘PERHAPS THEY’LL PUT A PLAQUE FOR US HERE AFTER we’re dead and gone,’ said Harry. ‘Are you cold?’

‘Why?’ asked Evi. Are you going to offer me your coat?’ Harry carried on staring straight ahead. ‘I’ll share it,’ he offered. Evi waited for him to turn towards her, to grin. He didn’t move.

‘You look tired,’ she said, although the truth was he didn’t just look tired. He looked thinner, older. The man she’d met in the hospital that morning hadn’t been the Harry she knew. Someone else had taken his place. Someone else was still there.

‘Yeah, well, I spent the first half of the night thinking about you,’ he said, still keeping his eyes fixed on the building across the street. ‘Then I got a phone call.’

Evi knew from the empty feeling in her stomach that it must be the middle of the day, but the sun hadn’t made it through the mist yet. So high on the moor, she could almost feel it, cold and clammy, stealing its way into her lungs.

‘I really need to see how Gillian is doing,’ she said, knowing the last thing she wanted to do was to go back into that flat. She pushed herself forward on the bench and looked down the hill. ‘Walk me to my car?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he said, leaning back against the wall, folding his arms.

‘No?’ Last night he’d kissed her, danced with her; now he couldn’t even be polite?

‘You need to take five minutes,’ he said, turning to look at her at last. ‘We both do. A tiny spot of reflection in a very unusual day.’

‘You’re not going to get all vicary on me, are you?’ risked Evi. ‘If you make me bow my head I’ll start giggling.’

‘How your patients take you seriously is beyond me.’ At least he was smiling again, she was getting through to him.

Movement down the hill caught her eye. She raised her head to look over Harry’s shoulder just as he turned. Alice’s car was reversing out of the driveway. In the back seat, a small face was watching them. A hand waved. Then the car began moving forwards, past the police cordon and down the hill. Rushton and DI Neasden climbed into a dark-blue estate car and set off after the Fletchers.

‘Will Millie be OK?’ asked Harry.

‘I’m sure she will,’ said Evi quickly. ‘The redness around her eyes and nostrils won’t last much beyond today. She might be a bit tired and grumpy for a couple of days, at worst.’

‘Will they find traces of ether in her bloodstream?’ asked Harry.

‘Almost certainly,’ said Evi.

Someone else was emerging from the Fletchers’ house. Hannah Wilson, the blonde social worker.

‘Miss Pissy down there was talking about something called an Emergency Protection Order,’ he said. ‘Do we need to worry?’

‘I’ll phone her boss when I get back,’ said Evi. ‘Make sure I’m kept informed about any applications to the court. Good job keeping your eyes away from her cleavage, by the way.’

‘Blondes don’t do it for me. Will you oppose one?’

Evi thought for a moment as Hannah Wilson climbed into a small red hatchback and drove away. ‘If I think it necessary, Harry, I’ll apply for one myself,’ she said. ‘No, don’t fly off the handle. Those children are at risk. Given the events of last night, I don’t think anyone can doubt that any more.’

‘But snatching them away from their mum and dad will-’

‘An EPO doesn’t mean taking them away from their parents, it just gives the local authority power to keep them from harm. Gareth Fletcher has parents living close by, is that right?’

Harry nodded. ‘I think so,’ he said. ‘In Burnley.’

‘Well, then a magistrate might decide that the children should go and stay with their grandparents for a while, with Alice and Gareth’s full consent and cooperation, of course.’

‘For how long?’

She shook her head. ‘Impossible to say. EPOs usually only last a few days but they’re often followed by a longer-term care order. Oh, stop glaring at me. I have never believed the children’s parents are part of the problem. But there is a problem.’

‘Rushton is going to have officers watching the house,’ said Harry.

‘And how long will that last? He won’t have the manpower to watch them indefinitely. And even if those children in the graveyard do turn out to have been murdered, if there is a psychopath up here preying on little girls, they’ve still been dead for years. They’re not likely to find the person responsible all that quickly.’

Harry said nothing. She was right.

‘And while they carry on looking, the Fletcher children remain at risk.’

She was still right. Reluctantly, Harry gave a faint nod.

‘I had a good long chat with Tom just now,’ said Evi. ‘He’s finally started talking to me about this little girl of his.’

‘And…’

‘Well, I’m pretty certain he’s not lying. Someone has been frightening him and I think, maybe, what you said last night was right. Someone is playing a rather mean practical joke. Maybe dressing up in some sort of Hallowe’en costume. She tends to appear at night, so he never gets a particularly good look at her. A lot of the time, he says, he doesn’t actually see her properly. Just catches glimpses, hears her calling things to him.’

‘Does he think she put Millie on the church balcony back in September?’

‘Yes, he’s convinced she did.’

‘And he thinks she took Millie last night?’

She turned back. Was it her imagination or had Harry moved closer on the bench?

‘At first he did,’ she said. ‘But when we talked about it, he realized it couldn’t have been her. The intruder he describes is just nothing like the little girl – much taller, for one thing, and wearing very different clothes. Miss Pissy Knickers, as you like to call her, was smart enough to spot that whoever kicked Tom did it with a booted foot.’

‘I said nothing about knickers. I have no interest in Miss Pissy’s undergarments. What’s going on here is something to do with the church. I’m sure of it.’

‘The church?’

‘We know for a fact that one of those children – Lucy Pickup – died in the church. Millie Fletcher almost did. I’ll bet the other two did as well. They’re taken up to the gallery and dropped.’

Evi gave herself a moment to take that in. ‘Four little girls,’ she said. ‘Who would do such a thing?’

‘They’re dropped from the gallery and then their bodies are stored in the crypt. If Millie had fallen that night, if we hadn’t found her in time, she’d have been taken down there as well. That was probably the plan for Lucy, too, but Jenny found her very quickly.’

Evi felt a tickling sensation between her shoulder blades. She clutched both her upper arms to stop the shiver breaking out. ‘That’s quite a leap you’ve just made there, Vicar,’ she said.

‘You were a good Catholic girl once. Ever heard of the Incorruptibles?’

Evi thought for a second then shook her head. ‘Can’t say I have.’

‘I thought of it in the post-mortem, earlier. When I saw Megan and Hayley. Their bodies had been preserved. Hardly any decomposition at all.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘It’s a Catholic and Orthodox Christian belief that certain human bodies, typically those of very pious people, don’t decompose after death,’ said Harry. ‘Something supernatural, the work of the Holy Spirit, keeps them perfect. They become known as Incorruptible.’

‘Incorruptible in soul and in body?’ asked Evi.

He nodded. ‘It’s one of the signs that indicate a candidate for canonization,’ he went on. ‘I can give you countless examples. St Bernadette of Lourdes, Saint Pio, Saint Virginia Centurione, any number of popes.’

‘But from what you told me, mummification, which is basically what we’re talking about, occurs naturally.’

Harry gave a soft laugh. ‘Of course it does,’ he said. ‘I’m not trying to claim the work of the Holy Spirit in this case, far from it. It just got me thinking.’ He turned to face her. His eyes were bloodshot and there were lines on his forehead she hadn’t noticed before. ‘You see, if you’re not taking the supernatural route,’ he continued, ‘you can argue that one of the reasons why so many members of the clergy, relatively speaking, have so-called incorruptible bodies is that their remains were stored in the places most likely to produce mummification – cold, dry church crypts with airtight stone coffins. Like the one almost directly below us.’

Evi couldn’t stop herself glancing down. ‘You’ve told Rushton this?’ she asked.

‘Yep. He’s sceptical at the moment, because the crypt was thoroughly searched in the days after Megan disappeared. But he’s going to have to go down there again now. If they look carefully enough, they’ll find traces.’

‘He’s going to want you on the force,’ said Evi, trying for a smile.

Harry was still looking at her. ‘I find him uncomfortably tactile,’ he said. ‘Always touching me on the shoulder or the arm. Do you think he fancies me?’

Evi gave a little shrug. ‘Can’t think of any reason why he wouldn’t,’ she said.

‘Good answer. Are you busy tonight?’

She made herself turn her face away. ‘No,’ she said slowly. ‘But…’

‘Why is there always a but?’ said Harry.

Evi turned back. ‘I can’t stop seeing Gillian right now,’ she said. ‘The timing is all wrong. And it doesn’t take a genius to see she’s nuts about you.’

‘And that’s my fault?’ He’d taken hold of her hand, was tugging at the glove. She could feel his fingers on her wrist. She tried to pull away, he held firm.

‘Maybe not,’ she said. ‘But whether it is or isn’t your fault, it’s still your problem. Cheer up, there’s probably a guideline you can refer to. Women have been falling for the curate for centuries.’ The glove was being peeled off her fingers. She caught her breath.

‘Never the right ones,’ he said, his hand closing around hers. ‘And what do you mean, maybe not?’

‘You have a great deal of charm, Vicar. I can’t believe you save it all for me.’

‘Well, that’s where you’re wrong. You – and Detective Chief Superintendent Rushton, of course.’ His index finger had slipped inside the sleeve of her jacket. ‘You have such soft skin,’ he muttered.

‘If that child they found last night does turn out to be Hayley,’ said Evi, taking hold of his hand and pulling it firmly away from hers, ‘I can’t begin to predict how Gillian will react. I can’t stop seeing her, not even…’

She stopped. It didn’t really need saying.

‘If the child they found last night does turn out to be Hayley,’ said Harry, leaning back on the bench again, ‘I’m going to have to bury her.’

60

9 November

‘YOU WERE RIGHT, REVEREND. THEY WERE KEPT IN THE crypt. In the third tomb along from the front. We found traces of hair and blood, from both of them. Other bodily fluids as well. Even a button.’

‘God rest their souls,’ replied Harry.

‘Quite.’ Rushton’s voice down the phone was unusually subdued. ‘Of course, we searched that tomb back when we were looking for Megan and it was empty then,’ he went on. ‘So she was obviously kept somewhere, possibly even in the killer’s own house, while we were searching, then moved after all the fuss died down.’

Harry looked at the clock. Six o’clock in the evening. Was there any point calling Evi? It was four days since she’d even bothered answering the phone.

‘We also found traces of blood in the main part of the church,’ continued Rushton. ‘What do you call it, the nave?’

Harry muttered something.

‘From just underneath the gallery. The stones had been washed clean but we dug some of the mortar out from in between them,’ Rushton was saying. ‘We managed to match it to both girls.’

‘And they’ve been confirmed as Megan and Hayley?’

Rushton sighed. ‘Aye. We got the results of the DNA tests a couple of days ago. Not that any of us really had any doubts. We’re still waiting to hear about the remains in the urn that was given to Gillian Royle. God help us if that’s another missing child.’

‘Quite,’ said Harry. ‘Any suspects?’

‘Several leads we’re following,’ replied Rushton.

Harry waited. ‘What about the effigy I found beneath the gallery?’ he asked when he realized Rushton was going nowhere further.

‘We’ve spoken to the family who made it,’ admitted the detective. ‘They say they went to find it on the night of the bonfire and couldn’t. Claim to have no idea how it could have got into the church. There are a couple of prints that don’t match anyone in the family so they could well be telling the truth. The sweater was Millie Fletcher’s, though, her mother identified it.’

‘Then how?’

‘Stolen from the washing line is our best guess. Wouldn’t have been difficult, that garden’s very accessible. I’ve increased police presence in the town for the next few weeks, we’ll be keeping a close eye on the house.’ He gave another deep sigh. ‘We’re talking to young Tom Fletcher and his psychiatrist about this little girl that seems to have been hanging around,’ he said. ‘We need to track her down.’

‘She must live in the town,’ said Harry. ‘It can’t be that hard.’ Rushton had been talking to Evi. Everyone got to see her but him.

‘Trouble is, young Tom’s imagination is on the powerful end of the spectrum. He talks about this girl as if she’s barely human. We can hardly do a house-to-house search for a monster in human form.’

‘Guess not.’

‘And we’ve identified the source of the footprint found in their garden that night. A wellington, as we thought, size eight, rubber soled, made in France. Unfortunately, several thousand pairs are imported every year and there are more than a dozen suppliers in the north-west alone. It’s going to take some time.’

As soon as he’d hung up, Harry tried to call Evi. He got her answer machine and left a message. Then he walked through his quiet house, opened the back door and went out into the garden. On a damp, moss-covered bench beneath a bare magnolia tree he sat down and tried to pray.