Local radio and television carried news flashes showing a photo of the pretty, dark-haired child, and the chief superintendent made an impassioned plea for anyone who knew anything to come forward.
During the day, Will’s kitchen had become a meeting point for the search parties that were scouring the marshes, but as night descended, they were called in for fear they might become lost themselves. There was no more to be done until first light.
Sam Page had sat with Kate, while Will, Matt and Liz had brewed teas and coffees for those who had been out searching. Two constables, Jack Fleet and Debbie Hume, were to stay the night at Holland House, just in case the child did turn up. The owners of the Tanners Fen village fish and chip shop had kindly delivered hot food for them all. Will, believing that he wouldn’t be able to eat a thing, found he was ravenous.
Kate drifted, half awake, refusing food. She kept wringing her hands together like some Lady Macbeth.
Now, at nine o’clock, Will, Sam, Matt and Liz sat with her in the bedroom. An awkward silence settled on the room. Catching Sam’s meaningful looks, Will realised that he could no longer delay the confrontation with Kate.
With a sigh, he moved from the window seat to the bed, and taking her hand in his, sat beside his wife. Looking into those large sad eyes, all his well-rehearsed lines melted away. Squeezing her hand, he told her that he loved her and asked her to forgive him for what he was about to say.
Kate listened without interruption. Will waited for her response.
The only sound in the room was the ticking of the clock.
After what seemed like an hour, Kate raised her eyes and fixed them on Sam Page. ‘Did you put him up to this?’
With a gentle smile, he said, ‘Yes, my dear, I did. You need help. And you are breaking your husband’s heart.’
Will was certain she would turn on him, spitting venom and hurling abuse, but she simply said, ‘Thank you for your honesty.’ There was another pause, then she said patiently, as if to a child, ‘But you are, of course, wrong. I don’t need help, especially from the kind of doctor that you are suggesting. I am really quite surprised that you can’t see what is going on here.’
‘And what is that?’ Sam asked.
She lifted an eyebrow. ‘Three dead Holland children, Professor Page?’
She turned to Will and said, ‘And, yes, I know about Elizabeth being taken from her playpen. I knew about it long before you tried to hide the website from me.’
Will’s mouth fell open, but Kate was continuing, talking with more animation than he had heard from her in months. ‘Actually, there are more disappearances, but the history is a little sketchy and the Hollands feared a witch-hunt.’
‘And you believe that the house is responsible for all this, and indeed is still claiming young lives?’ Sam’s tone was even and reasonable.
‘For God’s sake! What more evidence do you people want? These are hard facts, those things you policemen are supposed to crave. No child was ever safe here. We should learn from history, Professor, but sadly, my husband didn’t listen hard enough, and now his sister’s child has joined the others.’
Once, when Will was a young constable, he had been present at the apprehending of a serial killer. He had been amazed at how ordinary this man appeared to be, how unassuming. He had talked lucidly to his captors, looking them in the eye and answering their questions quite candidly. He just lacked all emotion. He sensed that same lack of empathy in his wife.
Unintentionally, his own voice became cold. ‘Sophie is not dead.’
‘So, where is she?’ She stared at him, her gaze cold as a reptile.
Unable to meet her eyes, he looked away. ‘I don’t know.’
‘So how do you know she’s not dead?’
‘I don’t fucking know! I don’t know anything any more! I don’t even know who my wife is!’
Sam’s warning look was lost on Will. He took hold of her shoulders and shook her roughly. ‘You are seeing that bloody doctor tomorrow if I have to drag you there! And we’re leaving this detestable bog just as soon as I can get this dump on the market! Understand?’
Her face changed in an instant, assuming a look of pure hatred.
A strong hand pulled him away from Kate. ‘That’s enough, Will,’ said Matt softly. ‘Leave her now.’
Kate had fallen back on the bed, a flat, glassy expression replacing her earlier animation.
She turned slowly to Will, and in an empty, expressionless tone, said, ‘Whatever. I’ll see your precious doctor if you want. It really doesn’t matter one way or the other. If he’s so bloody good, he’ll realise I’m right, then we’ll see who looks the fool, won’t we? But I’m not leaving here. I’ll never leave here. You go if you want, but I’m staying. Understood?’
Will ran from the room.
He raced down the stairs and out of the house. Swifty and Debbie looked up in surprise as he dashed past them, out into the lane and into the reedy grass of the marsh.
He screamed her name, again and again. ‘Sophie! Sophie!’
Somewhere out over the wild moonlit landscape, an owl took up his call, an eerie cry that turned his blood to ice. Slowly, he lowered himself down on to the soft spongy ground.
His wife was right.
Sophie was as dead as his little sister and her husband.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Will had not been prepared for Lawrence Hassel. He had thought they would be meeting with a “professor,” a typical dry academic devoid of any shred of humanity. He recalled a psychiatrist who had once been called to collect an escaped mental patient they had apprehended. He had a goatee beard, half glasses, a tweed suit with a waistcoat and a faint German accent, and wouldn’t have looked out of place in the Vienna of the early twentieth century.
A far cry indeed from the man now talking earnestly to Kate.
Although in his late sixties and suffering from some severe and obviously longstanding illness, Lawrence Hassel had a round and kindly face beneath a thick crop of silver hair. More than anything, he reminded Will of Father Christmas.
Kate had been uncommunicative and unresponsive, with a glassy stare and a fixed expression. Within half an hour, Dr Hassel had drawn her out, persuading her to talk — and listen.
Will could have listened to the doctor’s voice all day. After a while, the doctor asked Will if he would mind leaving. There were coffee and biscuits in the reception area, and perhaps he would wait there until Mrs Stonebridge and he had finished.
Sam was waiting for him. They sat in comfortable chairs and sipped coffee. ‘What do you think he will suggest, Sam?’
‘I’m certain that he will want to keep her here. Whether or not she will agree, I can’t say. It would be for the best if she did, you are far from well yourself, and with that poor child still missing . . .’
There was now a full-scale hunt in progress. The police were sifting through dozens of reported sightings, some possibly helpful, others obviously hoaxes or from disturbed people. Will felt ashamed. He had helped no one by totally flipping the night before.
Swifty and Debbie had dragged him off the fen, kicking and screaming like a madman. For a moment during her harangue about Sophie, his wife had become unrecognisable to him. It had been the final straw. A very large brandy had reduced him to tears, thereby restoring some normality. Sam, Matt and Liz had stayed, consoling him, until the early hours of the morning, and when he finally lay down next to his sleeping wife, he was drained, but his old self again.