Property of a Lady (11 page)

‘We know about the nightmares,’ said the inspector. ‘Thank you, Dr Flint.’

Clearly, he was preparing to ring off. Michael said quickly, ‘Inspector – is there anything I could do to help? Is Nell – Mrs West – coping?’

‘Just about,’ said Inspector Brent. ‘The parents usually manage to stay in control until there’s a – well, some definite news.’

‘I see. Thank you.’ This time he did ring off. Michael sat wrapped in thought for a few moments, then hunted out the card Nell had given him and, before he could think too much about it, dialled her number.

She answered at once, with a breathless eagerness that brought home to him how she must be sitting next to the phone, willing it to ring, willing there to be good news.

He said, quickly, ‘Nell, it’s Michael Flint. I’ve just had a call from Inspector Brent. This is dreadful. Is there any news?’

‘Oh, Michael— No, nothing yet. It’s nice of you to phone, though.’

‘Would you let me know when she’s found?’ he said.

‘Yes, of course. Thank you for saying “when”.’

‘No clues as to what happened? Where she might be?’

‘No, except—’

‘The nightmares?’ said Michael.

‘Yes.’ He heard the relief in her voice, as if she was grateful to him for identifying the nightmares as a possible clue. ‘And there’s one other thing – it’s only very small, but I discovered that another seven-year-old girl vanished in Marston Lacy in the nineteen sixties. I know it’s too far back to have any real connection, but still.’

‘But people sometimes try to reproduce old crimes,’ he said. ‘Does Brent think that’s possible?’

‘He’s going to check the files. He said it might take a few hours because he’ll have to get them from a central division or something.’

‘I’ll ring off,’ said Michael. ‘In case Brent tries to get through. But here’s my number, Nell – I mean it about letting me know.’

‘Thank you.’

He hesitated, wondering if he should offer to go up there, but then thought the acquaintance was too slight. She would have other people she would prefer to be with – family, her husband’s people.

As he hung up, a number of thoughts were arranging themselves in layers inside his mind, like the striations of the earth.

There was the memory of Beth, sobbing and insisting a man had been in her room – a man with no eyes.

Beneath that was the thought of Jack’s emails about Ellie, exactly the same age, also sobbing with terror that there was a man in her room – a man with holes where his eyes should be.

These two thoughts bound themselves together, to create a single curious fact – two seven-year-old girls, living thousands of miles apart, had both been having what sounded to be an identical nightmare.

On top of this was Nell’s mention of a girl having vanished forty years ago. This was a thin, insubstantial layer, probably of little account. But overlying all of this was a very solid and insistent thought, and it was the memory of that first afternoon at Charect House – the afternoon Michael had seen a man crouching on the stair. A man whose eyes had been so deeply shadowed they had looked like black pits.

He considered the memory for a moment, then reached for the phone and dialled DI Brent’s number.

Brent listened intently to Michael’s story of the intruder at Charect House.

‘I didn’t make the connection when you phoned,’ said Michael. ‘And I’d have to say I only glimpsed the man. I was there on my own at the time, and I didn’t feel inclined to confront him. So I dialled the police and waited in my car until someone came out. We searched the house, but he’d gone. Probably scrambled out of a window at the back and down a drainpipe or something.’

‘Your description of him sounds very like Beth West’s nightmare,’ said Brent thoughtfully.

‘Is it possible he’s been watching her, and that she was half-aware of it and it caused the nightmares?’ But that did not explain Ellie having the same nightmare.

‘It not impossible. Dr Flint, I don’t suppose there’s any chance you could—’

‘Drive back up there?’

‘Could you?’ said Brent. ‘To look at photos – maybe spend an hour or so with a police artist to see if we can put together a computer image? It could be done via email, but it wouldn’t give the best result. Say tomorrow morning? It wouldn’t take more than a couple of hours. We could arrange transport if that’s a problem.’

‘No need,’ said Michael. ‘I’ll set off first thing in the morning.’

NINE

H
e reached the police station around lunchtime.

‘There’s no news,’ said Inspector Brent, taking him into an interview room and introducing a young tousled-looking man who was apparently trained in creating computerized facial images. ‘So I don’t need to tell you how serious the situation now is.’

‘Oh God, no, you don’t. Can I go to see Nell West after we’ve done this? Not if it would hassle her.’

‘I’ll call and ask,’ said Brent and went out, leaving Michael to attempt a description of the figure he had seen on the stairs at Charect House. It was a difficult task, but in the end between them they came up with a reasonable image.

‘I’d have to say my memory isn’t very exact, though,’ said Michael, critically surveying the screen. ‘And if a man looking like that has been prowling around Marston Lacy, I’d have thought he’d be noticed.’ A doughy-looking face with sunken eyes and a heavy jowl looked out of the computer screen.

‘So would I,’ said the artist. ‘Still, it’s worth a shot.’

DI Brent thought it was worth a shot as well. ‘If that’s what Beth West saw, I’m not surprised it gave her nightmares,’ he said. ‘But we’ll get copies made right away and do another house-to-house. That’ll take a long time, unfortunately – there are a lot of outlying districts in this part of the world. Odd cottages scattered along lanes. It’s not like a town where you just walk along a street, knocking at each door.’

Michael said, ‘Did you find out any more about that other girl who vanished in the nineteen sixties? Nell told me about her.’

‘Oh, that girl turned up. Wait a bit, I’ve still got the report somewhere – yes, here it is. Just the basic details were on file, but they’re quite clear. She was reported missing around half-past four – hadn’t come home from school, and a search was mounted later that evening. Apparently, they didn’t find her for nearly two days, but she was safe and well when they did.’

‘Where was she?’

‘Doesn’t say.’ A wry half-smile lit his seamed face. ‘Report-keeping wasn’t so good in those days. They’ve just recorded the “missing” incident and the outcome.’

‘Pity,’ said Michael. ‘Did you phone Nell? Would it be all right for me to call?’

‘She says you’re very welcome. My advice, though, is if you do, don’t stay too long. She’s all right for short spells, but that’s about all.’

‘I will call,’ said Michael. ‘But I’ll bear your advice in mind. In the meantime, Inspector, does Marston Lacy have a newspaper? Ah, good. Can you give me directions? And d’you know if it keeps archives?’

The newspaper offices turned out to be part of a large group, with a chain of papers covering two counties, which Michael thought augured well for an archive department.

The head office was on the other side of the county. He followed Inspector Brent’s directions carefully, realizing he was heading due west, and that he was close to, if not actually crossing, the border into Wales. Village names started to begin with two LLs and end with
rhy
or
og
, and most of the signs were in Welsh without the English translation. He rather liked this; he liked the feeling that this was where England crossed over into Wales and where the lyrical Welsh language still lived.

The newspaper said it did indeed have almost all the back issues for the Marston Lacy and Bryn Marston Advertiser, as far back as 1915.

‘We started as a news-sheet to inform people about the Great War,’ said the receptionist. ‘There’s no problem whatever about access to back issues. We get a lot of people wanting to trace odds and ends of local history. And it’s what newspapers are for, isn’t it? To inform people. What years were you interested in?’

‘The nineteen sixties, please.’

As he sat down at the microfiche screen, he thought this was where and how history was stored nowadays. It no longer preserved itself in carefully folded tissue paper, with lavender or camphor or magic charms scattered in the creases, nor was it set down in crabbed writing on curling brown paper, or stored in leather-bound books or pipe rolls or tax chronicles. The modern age packed its history away on microchips and SIM cards and within the electronic and Ethernet mysteries deep inside computers. Michael considered this, and he wondered what would happen to the present age’s history if the language of computers were to be lost. Would this present civilization become lost for all time, or would the people of the far future be able to decipher the fragments that survived, in the way Egyptologists deciphered tomb writings?

The sixties, as experienced in this part of the British Isles, looked to be a slightly gentler version of what was going on elsewhere. This quiet part of England-going-on-Wales did not seem to have succumbed to flower power or free love, although people in the photographs wore miniskirts and boots, and the girls had long, straight hair and Cleopatra-style eye make-up. The men sported Beatles’ hairstyles and narrow trousers.

At first he thought he was not going to find what he wanted – that the brief disappearance of a seven-year-old girl would have been too slight an incident to warrant a newspaper report. And then, quite suddenly, it was there. Three columns of a news story, with a photo of a small girl with long hair and a slightly turned-up nose that gave her an impish, rather attractive, look.

MISSING GIRL FOUND SAFE AND WELL IN CHURCHYARD

Local girl Evie Blythe was last night found alive and well in St Paul’s Churchyard, after being missing from her home for almost forty-eight hours. Local residents helped look for her after she failed to return home from school on Tuesday after a sports’ afternoon – searching all night and most of the following day.

At first it was feared Evie, 7, had been abducted, and fears grew for her safety. However, she was found by searchers near an old grave in the disused part of the churchyard, apparently suffering a temporary loss of memory.

Older inhabitants of Marston Lacy recalled a similar case before the war, when a small girl vanished for several days and was later found in the same churchyard, apparently with no notion of how she got there. But police have quashed speculation that there could be some form of copycat crime at work.

Superintendent Halden told our reporter that not only were the two cases a good thirty years apart, but in neither case did there appear to be any sinister motive. ‘We can only conclude that Evie was overcome by tiredness after the school sports’ event,’ he said. ‘And that she succumbed to a bout of temporary amnesia. We’re delighted to have found her safe and well.’

It is known that short-term amnesia can sometimes strike at random, more often after some form of trauma. It is unusual in so young a child, but not entirely unknown.

Evie told our reporter that she can’t remember how she came to be in the churchyard. ‘It’s a fusty old place,’ she said. ‘I’m not going there again.’

St Paul’s Church, thought Michael, leaning back from the screen and turning his head from side to side to ease the tension that had built up in his neck and shoulders. She was found in the churchyard near an old grave. So was another girl thirty years before that. He hesitated about searching for the earlier story, but it was more important to locate St Paul’s Church and get out there as soon as possible.

He went out to request a printout of the article and, while he waited for it, asked the helpful receptionist if there was a local phone book he could consult.

There was one church dedicated to St Paul in the phone book. It was listed as St Paul the Apostle, and it was on the edge of Marston Lacy. Michael got back into the car, turned it round, and headed back.

This was so wild a shot, a bow drawn at such an unlikely venture, that he did not think he could phone Inspector Brent yet. It might take up police time and resources better used elsewhere, and it might raise Nell’s hopes only to dash them. But was it so wild a shot? Two girls, both found in the same churchyard? Yes, but one was over sixty years ago, said his mind.

It was just after two o’clock. If he could find St Paul’s he would search it himself. How difficult could it be to find a church in a tiny place like this?

Marston Lacy did not quite lie in a valley, but it was certainly in a slight dip in the countryside, and the road wound sharply downwards. Michael saw the church spire as he drove down this road – it jutted up into the slate-coloured sky like a skeletal finger, iron-coloured and stark. Good. He turned off the main road and, keeping his eye on the spire, reached it within ten minutes. It was a rather gloomy place, grey stone with lichen speckling the roof, and there was a hopeless air about it, as if it had long since stopped expecting people to attend any of its services. As Michael parked on the narrow grass verge, a thin rain began to fall. He turned up his coat collar, remembered to put the phone in his pocket, and went through the old lychgate. The cemetery was on one side, and narrow, poorly-tended paths wound between the graves. His footsteps crunched on wet gravel, and the trees dipped their boughs, their leaves dark and dripping with moisture. This would be a terrible place for a child, and if Beth had been out here all night . . .